The Post for 10 November 2013 will have to be Rescheduled Due to Lack of Inspiration

I thought this post really needed some awesomeness.  If you need some, this image is sold as a postcard, at this site.

I took on this blog-post-a-day thing because I knew I really needed to refocus myself on writing. So far, I have been happy with the outcome, and I've put out some pieces that I'm glad I made myself write.  I wish that I could say I started today with good intentions and plenty of energy and sat down at the computer right away.  I could say that, if I was a lying liar from Liarsburg-- but I'm not.  Today I just had a bunch of other things to do, and Sundays are the days I try to stay away from the computer and do non-screen things. These are excuses, not reasons,  for failing to write, I know.  

When I finally did get to the computer, I procrastinated in my usual way.  Didn't check email all day-- I should catch up.  Might have missed something important on Face book-- better just take a peek.  Oh look, someone I follow put a new playlist up on Spotify-- I should listen.  Two hours later, I hadn't written a word. But I did meander through the notes I make to spark ideas for posts when I do get around to writing. This one, a quote from the writer and marketing wizard, Seth Godin, stopped me, and made me start writing:

The notion that I do my work here, now, like this, even when I do not feel like it, and especially when I do not feel like it, is very important. Because lots and lots of people are creative when they feel like it, but you are only going to become a professional if you do it when you don’t feel like it. And that emotional waiver is why this is your work and not your hobby.

         (Read the whole discussion with Godin on Brainpickings.  Love that site!)

I've said that I want this to be my work, so this is the idea that I have to keep in front of me: I'm a writer. Writers write.  Sit down and get to work.  

For today, there's no point in making you suffer while I squirm and try to get something on paper.  See you tomorrow.

More Than A Little

So, yesterday, I ranted about how crazy it is at our house in the mornings.  It may have had something to do with the fact that, in addition to the usual chaos, my older daughter, Delia, chose to have a complete meltdown just moments before it was time to leave.  And then I lost it and yelled at her.  And then I felt just awful for the rest of the day. You might say that I should have felt awful about yelling at my child.  And you might be right, but here's the story:

Delia has been looking for the perfect pair of flats to put on her holiday gift list, or maybe the perfect pair of boots, you know, the short kind that look good with jeans or skirts, and maybe have a buckle or something that makes them super-cute.  To keep her on track with her homework two nights ago, I told her she could browse on line in the morning after she got ready for school.  I thought I was being pretty sly to dangle an incentive for her to get ready early so that she could cruise for shoes.  Yeah, right.

It didn't work out, of course.  Instead of getting ready, she planted herself at the computer in the morning, half-dressed, hair and teeth unbrushed, and started looking at shoes.  When I asked what she was doing, she whined, "You said I could."  I reminded her that she could look at shoes when she was ready to leave, which she clearly was not.  She stomped off to get ready, barely, cranking all the while.  In the meantime, I got ready, made lunches and shut everything off in preparation for leaving for the day.  I was making one last room check, (not in a compulsive way, but in the manner of a person who has come home once or twice after eight or nine hours of work to find that "someone" has left the fridge open just a bit) when I found Delia shopping on the computer I had already turned off.  Our friends who give us a ride to school had already called to say they would be there momentarily.

"What are you doing?" I yelled.  I could feel my blood pressure go up, bam, like my head would suddenly explode.
"Looking at shoes, you said I could when I was ready." She yelled right back, looking at me like I had a screw loose. 
"But didn't you see that I had already shut down the computer? We have to leave NOW!" Same look from me, back at her.
"How did I know?" she asked, then burst into tears.  She stood there sobbing, one arm in her jean jacket, one arm out, screaming, "How did I know? That's not fair!"

Suddenly, I was just sooo angry.  I just couldn't stand that she was sobbing because I yelled at her for doing something she should have known was wrong.  I moved her aside, shut the computer down again, swearing kinda under my breath and kinda out loud.  I scooted everyone out the door.  Fiona, for once not the one in trouble, ran ahead and hopped into the waiting car to proudly let everyone know that Delia was being bad and getting yelled at. Delia shuffled slowly along behind me and was still sniffling as we got into the car.  Awk-waard!

The thing is, Delia is usually the one I can depend on to get it.  To know what she's supposed to do and, with some prodding, just do it.  She likes to be right, and usually, being good is being right, at her age.  When I really get mad at her, when the dial moves past mere annoyance and into the red zone of anger, she always looks heartbroken, like I have let her down, betrayed her in some way.  That doesn't make me less angry... it makes me self-righteous and frustrated and childish.  And then, it makes me feel guilty.

The ride to school is about three minutes long, so Delia had not settled down completely by the time we got there.  She got out of the car and wiggled away when I tried to hug her and tell her to have a good day.  She walked off ahead of me and Fiona and didn't say goodbye when she walked through the school gate.  She didn't even turn around when I called, "have a good day!" 

Then I felt rotten all day long.  I am the opposite of obsessive, but even I had to make myself dismiss the dark, recurring notion that, if something terrible happened, and I never saw Delia again, we would have ended things in anger.  I had to reassure myself that I would see her at the end of the day and everything would be all right.  And it was, of course.  She barely seemed to remember the morning's altercation, but it was hard for me to let it go.  I hugged her until she was clearly annoyed with me, then went to make dinner.  But the upset was hard to shake.  This was the first time this ever happened with Delia, and, sure, everything worked out fine. 

The problem is,  I know it won't be the last.  Just thinking about what's ahead breaks my heart more than a little.

Morning Becomes Electric

I don't know about you but, every morning, I rise just before the sun and savor a few quiet moments of deep, cleansing, breaths while my loving husband makes coffee and brings it to me so that I can sip it calmly as I contemplate the enormity of the universe and enjoy the fact that I am one with all of the natural and the human world. 

And then, I wake up...

Of course, nothing about that vision is true, except the part about my husband bringing me coffee.  And he is loving.  He knows I'm going to suck down that java as fast as I can, because I'm gonna need more than a single cup to face the chaos of the weekday morning.  But he leaves well before the girls are supposed to be up, when all is still well. 

Usually, before I can catch up on the news of the day, a bed-headed little girl strolls into the living room and demands that I put a kids' show on the TV.  And sit with her, but also get breakfast, but also find out what the school lunch is, but also...  So begins the day.  If you have children, and were not rocketed to Earth as a baby as your home planet exploded, giving you superpowers among us humans, you may have some idea of what I am talking about. 

When my sons were young, many moons ago, it didn't seem like it was such an ordeal to get them moving and out of the house in the morning.  I always had to go to school, or to work, so I had a similar amount of pressure to start the day running, but I didn't have to braid their hair or argue with them about why they couldn't wear a skirt that short without leggings under it... And the boys didn't sneak my lip gloss, then drop the applicator on the carpet, then put it back in the tube, so that I could discover, on my way to work, that I was rubbing disgusting beige fuzz onto my lips. Not even once.  It was so much easier then.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that I tend to remember things through a rosy haze of nostalgia and the boys (now men) have often pointed out that there were plenty of rough times with them.  They say potayto, I say potahto... whatever.  If I want to remember their childhood as a golden time, let's just say that they're not going to stop me. 

On the days we have early activities, or have to run to the store to get food for lunch because our cupboard is empty and they are serving something that both girls declare "heinous"at the cafeteria, I have to practically drag the girls from their beds over strong protests.  "I'm sooooo tiiiired!"  "Make her get up first."  "No. No. No. Nooooooo!"

But, usually, I don't have to wake the girls, because before I know what has happened, they have already insinuated their noisy selves into my quiet morning. They often do this as a kind of maleveolent dynamic duo, by arguing over who grabbed a certain dress first, therefore securing the right to wear it, or over who should go and brush her teeth because her breath is disgusting. 

"She said I was disguuussssTING!  She should be in trouble, and I got out the purple dress first and I put it down to get some socks and she grabbed it so make her GIVE IT TO MEEEEE!"

"Well, she came in when I was in the bathroom, so she deserves it and she didn't have the dress first, she got it out when I TOLD her I was wearing it, just to be MEEEEAANNNN!"

All I can do is grab the dress at issue, hold it above my head, bellowing that NO ONE can wear it, and tell them to get out some clothes and put them on before I e-mail their teachers to say that they won't be at school because their behavior is just too awful for me to unleash them on the public.  The quiet after such a proclamation lasts about 30 seconds. 

In either case, when we have just under a half an hour before we need to be out the door, some strange inertia grips each of the girls, and they both stop wherever they are, be it Fiona, in front of an Arthur episode she has seen 46 times, or in Delia, in her room, suddenly seized by the desire to slowly sort and catalogue every single barrette and hair tie she owns, or both of them at the breakfast table, slowly dissecting their toaster pasties so as to avoid eating the "crust."  (Just for the record, PopTarts do not have crust. I stand by this fact.)

Then, my real work begins: it is time to push and prod and threaten and mush the girls like sled dogs into readiness to get out the door.  All while I am making lunches and trying to get myself ready to leave.  I constantly review the status.  Clothes, check.  Breakfast, check.  Hair, check.  "Teeth, Delia-- brush 'em.  Fiona, for the tenth time, just get your socks on and I'll tie your shoes in a minute."  Then two minutes later, with my own teeth brushed and shoes on:  "Delia-- teeth!  Fiona-- socks!"  By the time we leave, I have begged, wheedled, cajoled and threatened the severe loss of all kinds of privileges.  And it works.  We do leave.  We go out into the world and have our days at school and work so that we can come home and have dinner and go to bed so we can get up and do this all over again.


Sunrise picture from here.

Something About Me, and Some Things About Others

I know it is really cheating to use this day's blog post simply to let everyone know that I have a piece running today on another blog, so I will get this sordid, self-aggrandizing business out of the way and then write something new too, because, after all that is the point of NaBloPoMo, and I want to play by all the rules.  I'm just that way.  My piece on using my food stamps card is on Brain Mother, the daily blog of Brain, Child Magazine.  This is the cute picture of the girls sitting in the tree out in front of our building that accompanies the post. (Photo credit: Aunt Sharon & Uncle Tim)

Since I am doing this post-a-day thing, I am reaching for topics to fill the space that don't just seem like filler.  I thought it would be appropriate, and in keeping with the spirit of a blog-centric moment, to point you in the direction of some of the blogs I read, and now you already know about Brain Mother because of the self-congratulatory squib above (and maybe also the Facebook post, the Pinterest pin, and the random e-mails I have been sending out...) 

I use Bloglovin' to corral most of the blogs in one place, because, otherwise my email inbox would always be full, and I would never want to look at anything.  Am I easy daunted?  Perhaps, when confronted with two hundred new emails on a weekday morning. Anyway, the Bloglovin' thing is cool, not just because it has "lovin'" in the title, but because you can get the new posts from the blogs you follow (and there are lots and lots to choose from) and you can go back and look at older ones, so you don't have to go Pinterest crazy while you're reading.  Here is a sampling of what comes in on my feed:

Shutterbean:  Tracy, the blogger here, is a photographer, cook and food stylist and seems like a cool chick you'd just want to hang out with.  Her recipes are always family friendly (she features her cute little son regularly), tasty (the ones I've tried are new favorites) and well-photographed (you can get a good idea of how the cooking will actually go down.) She also does fashion and weekly round-ups of fun stuff from the web.

Joy the Baker:  Joy is a friend of Tracy's (from Shutterbean).  She has delicious recipes, also easy to replicate at home.  Her cream cheese pound cake (from this book) is one of my favorite things to eat. Ever. She also has a cool, but sparkling, wit and doesn't take herself too seriously.  

smittenkitchen:  Yep, another fun foodie.  This website started as a documentation of what Deb could cook in her tiny kitchen in her NYC walk-up apartment.  She bakes, broils, roasts and toasts.  She tells about how things didn't go right, and what it took to fix them.  She's fun writer who happens to write really good recipes.

In case you think I only read about food (and there are about six more food blogs I look at, so don't be surprised to get "Even More Blogs I Follow" as the NaBlo thing winds down), I am also interested in all kinds of design and style stuff.  These are the equivalent of flipping through a virtual magazine-- perfect during a lunch break, or winding down to fall asleep.  Of course, that means you have to blithely ignore any DIY element, and think about how you would fix up your space if you had unlimited money, time, and trained and licensed help.

Design*Sponge: This has more than just home design.  There are fonts, foods, and fun little travel guides, all impeccably curated and beautifully presented.  I always find cool things to make, buy and do.

sfgirlbybay: Victoria, the "girl" of the title is a design maven, with an interior design/art buyer/stylist background.  She looks at houses, furniture, clothes and all kinds of products and places.  The blog makes me wish I lived in her town, because she often showcases local retailers and the shops always look like great places to hang out and browse while finding just the right gift for a special someone (or yourself).

Apartment Therapy:  I love this site, and the people there post a lot because, apparently, they are idea machines with limitless creativity and energy.  This has a lot of practical advice for redoing every home space and includes lots of product round-ups and ideas for DIY on a shoestring budget. They have a special section just about family and kids rooms which is really lovely.  

Finally, a site I really love to look at, because it has all kinds of internal links that lead you from article to article.  I always find it is all fascinating and thought-provoking, and somehow, I look up and 92 minutes have gone by.  The only thing I don't love about the site is the name, Brain Pickings, but could I have done better?  Not sure.  Maria, the woman who puts this together has got to be a genius, so who am I to quibble?  

Hope some of these appeal to you.  Let me know what you think.

More than Princesses: Hell, Yeah!

You have probably already seen this video, and you may think I am a little late jumping on the bandwagon, and a little half-assed using it as a prompt for a blog post.  And we all know that this is an advertisement-- a genius advertisement for a product whose time has come, but an advertisement nevertheless. But no matter.  I have two daughters who are right at the heart of the target demographic for this video and I am glad it is out there:

I also have to say that everyone I know who has seen it has told me that the little ballerina with the hammer bears a striking resemblance to my younger daughter, Fiona.  But that isn't the only reason I like it.  Like a few breakthrough ads before it, this video pushes not only a product or a reason to buy a product, but an idea.  The idea is that we need to radically alter our perception of half the planet's population.  No biggie, right?

The "more than a princess" tag is as important as the very notion of girls getting into building.  The idea that girls can do more than play house, decorate a house, or maintain a house has been part of our culture for a while now, but there has not been an accompanying shift in our expectations for generations of girls.  What I am really hoping for, in the not too distant future, is a much more fluid idea of what girls and boys are good at or suited to.  The best thing about this commercial is that it shows that you can wear a tiara and swing a hammer-- you don't have to choose.

Though I have noted in these very pages that the idea of "doing it all" has poisoned the well for generations of women, it is simply because such an unreasonable expectation increases pressure on women to try to be too many things at once. Over and over again, we see that trying to be everything to everyone is a plan doomed to failure because it doesn't allow women to feel comfortable making choices and setting priorities.  One of the beauties of this ad is that it pictures a much different kind of "doing it all."  The ballerina and the rock star have balance-- they have the tools and the tulle-- which will make for a well-rounded, high functioning life.  

Another key element of the ad is that it shows the girls building things their own way, not simply imitating things boys build.  I would argue that one of the reasons women have become so miserable in the workplace today is that we have tried to work like men-- to play their game, on their field, so to speak.  At first, of course, they were the only game and field in town, but by now, we should be developing our own models of what a workday looks like and how the workplace should function.  Maybe the girls who are encouraged to see the possibilities for many kinds activities and occupations will have an easier time setting their own terms for success in the occupations they choose.  It's a lot of pressure to put on one idea from one advertisement for one toy company, but marketing is all about dreams, right?  And for my girls, and all the others, I say, let's dream big!

When Sorry Seems to be the Easiest Word

Not long after I met my husband at the book store where we both worked, he asked me why I apologized constantly.  "You're always saying you're sorry, even when something couldn't possibly be your fault." No one else had really called me on that before, and it took me a minute to answer.

"Wow, sorry..." We both laughed, and obviously, the relationship worked out, but even then, I didn't wise up to the fact that my default reply was one of apology.  It wasn't just a verbal tic, either.  I always felt like I should be sorry for something.  For years, I had been a single mom, working at retail jobs while going to school.  My parents helped me and I felt bad about that, and I always seemed to be falling short at work, or with the kids, or at school.  I was late, or forgot something, or needed an extension or had to cancel something or missed something at school.  Disappointment was a constant theme, and I could think of no one to blame but myself.  

So, mea freaking culpa!

I think this was compounded by the work I did.  One of the main tasks for a retail manager is smoothing out customer service difficulties.  I apologized fifty to a hundred times a day, sometimes just because people had to wait in line for a minute before they had a chance to pay for their items.  Sometimes, because someone bought the wrong thing and wanted to return it.  That's right, I told people I was sorry because they had made a mistake.  Sheesh!  

This morning, my friend shared a link to this article from the New York Times website (thanks, Alex!) and I had a moment of thinking: "someone gets it."  I was glad to see that the someone, Katrina Alcorn, has written a book called Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink about the weight of the high expectations that are crushing many moms today.  The book came out in September, but of course, I haven't gotten to it yet.  Sor-- no I'm not going to say it.  Anyway, from what I've read, in the blurb and in the Times article by K. J. Dell'Antonia this morning, the book springs from Alcorn's own story.  She was a busy, successful mom who tried to have it all and found herself crumbling under the pressure.  Sounds kinda familiar, huh?

The New York Times article talks about how we women find ourselves "apologizing for failing to do the impossible," and how our impulse to do the impossible flows from the widely held, but genuinely misguided, belief that we can "have it all." All we need to do is plan, prioritize, lean in, focus, breathe, etc.  Alcorn contends that, because we are told we could do it all-- and do it all well, mind you-- if we just put our mind to it, we always feel that there is something that we are not doing right, so we apologize all the time.  

I think the point Alcorn is trying to make is that we need to think about the problem differently.  Instead of asking ourselves what we can do better, we need to question the myth of "work-life balance."  Maybe in a world full of princesses, unicorns and wand-wielding fairy godmothers, we could expect to live a fantasy life where we work at fascinating jobs that pay well and give us plenty of time off to spend with our families.  In reality, many women I know have jobs that are barely covering their expenses, mostly because the biggest chunk of those expenses goes to childcare.  And the irony gets uglier: we would like to spend more time with our kids, but by the time we get home, we're so tired and stressed out that all we can do is yell and wheedle until bedtime finally rolls around.  

Then, the cycle of apologies really sets in.  We're sorry about everything, especially when it seems that the choices we have made, the goals we have devised, have somehow set us up for failure.  Apparently, Alcorn understands that the circumstances of our culture contribute to our sorrow.  I think that's true, for the most part, but at some point, when we see that our own expectations are causing us trouble, we have to reconsider our lives and make some difficult choices.  If "having it all" is a pipe dream, a fantasy, a unicorn wearing a crown of diamond-studded daises, then we have to think about what not having it all might mean.  We have to think about opting out in some areas, so that we can improve, and maybe even enjoy, others.  

Most of us can't choose not to work, and we certainly can't decide to give back the kids, so we have to ease up on our expectation of what being a working mother-- and every mother is a working mother-- is supposed to be like.  If we can actually give ourselves a break, give ourselves permission to be less than perfect, permission to just be real, then maybe we can stop apologizing all the time. If we can't, then we are really going to be sorry.




Alphabet letters image from here, photo credit to Alexandra Bone.

Skin Game

I used to have good skin.  It was clear and smooth and soft.  I never really did anything to it-- you know, washed it with a little soap and water, put on some sunscreen, when I remembered.  Many of my friends and both of my sisters suffered with at least some acne, but I was already dealing with buck teeth, thick eyeglasses and a mop of mousy, frizzy hair, so I suspect the gods of puberty took pity on me and just let the skin thing slide by.  Did I mention that I grew up in Southern California?  In sunny, beachy Orange County, where the high school hallways featured surfer chicks and cheerleaders fit for the life-sized posters that junior high school boys had on the inside of their bedroom doors. Oh yeah, the rest of us were there too.

Back then, I was just glad that I didn't have to contend with dermatological woes on top of everything else.  I had a friend who went twice a week to get UV treatments where she lay on a table as pulses of purplish light were aimed at her already scarred cheeks. Another got steroid shots on the days she wasn't getting her braces tightened and restrung with fresh rubber bands.  Several of my friends started taking birth control pills as freshmen, ostensibly to stop the raging hormones that caused their tremendous acne, but really, who knew?  All of them also layered on copious amounts of concealer and foundation which gave the illusion of smooth skin until about the end of second period, when the makeup started to smear onto their cowl-neck sweaters (yep, it was the '80's), leaving an unsightly, but obvious line right along their chins.  I didn't wear make-up, because, by some cruel trick, make-up was the one thing that made my skin break out.  I didn't even wear mascara, because just when my mom would finally let me out of the house with it on, my parents also finally let me get contact lenses, and the ophthalmologist made swear I wouldn't wear eye make-up. The lenses did less than I thought they would to minimize the impact of my mouth full of impressive orthodontia and my still frizzy and uncontrollable hair.  On the upside, the dents that had been forming on the bridge of my nose from the heavy glasses I'd worn since seventh grade did start to disappear by the time my senior picture was taken.  

A year after high school, I had my oldest son, and two years later, my second.  I guess I can spin that little bit of personal history positively by noting that, with contacts and straightened teeth, my frizzy hair didn't keep me from finding a boy friend.  I don't think I thought much about my skin again until my boys were in high school, and I found out that teen-aged boys are as deeply invested in the smoothness of their skin teen-aged girls are. I still never really did anything to my skin, and even if I'd had beauty products, the boys were using the medicine chest shelves for face-wash and medicated acne pads, zit cream, and so forth.  They had to, because I don't recall anyone suggesting that the boys try birth control to improve their skin.  As their mother, I have to say they've both grown up to be very nice-looking men, basically unscathed, at least by the acne.  

Lately though, with grown-up children and age fifty on the horizon, I've noticed that my skin just isn't the same.  And by not the same, I mean not young.  Actually, I mean old. My skin is no longer fresh or smooth or even naturally blushed like it used to be.  It's wrinkled and seems thicker and kinda blotchy and just, you know, not the same.  The skin dial has spun from "low maintenance" to "shrieking cry for help" and I didn't even realize it was happening.  Of course, I know the answer to any personal problem like this is shopping, and this has lead me to stalk the skincare aisle of department and drug stores near my home.  

But here's a crazy thing I'm noticing as I peruse the well-stocked shelves at my local retailers.  It's not about maintenance anymore, it's all about repair.  Daytime repair, nighttime repair, hydrating repair, color-correcting repair. There are thirty or forty moisturizing creams, as well as freezing creams, sculpting creams, and firming creams.  And everything that comes as a cream is also available as a serum, whatever that is. The boxes and jars carry adjectives like intense, transformative, regenerative, and revitalizing.  Am I alone in feeling like a science project when I look at this stuff?  Or worse,  like a dilapidated house in need of remodeling.  There are fillers and sealers and resurfacers and restructurers.  Shouldn't these products should come with some kind of a tool kit? Or maybe a construction crew, because damn, I really need to get some serious work done.  Just thinking about it stresses me out and makes me tired.  And I know that's not good for my skin! 

I think I did notice something called "blur" cream on the shelf crowded with anti-aging lotions and potions.  That actually sounds like a friendly alternative to all the heavy artillery we've been talking about.  But I don't need a cream for that:  I'll just remove my current pair of thick glasses whenever I'm in front of the mirror:  Voila! instant anti-aging.  

Image is from this blog.