LBC and me

May 14, 2008 – 7:52 pm

Back from Long Beach where we hung for the weekend with another newly babied couple.
James went to a composing seminar.
I read lifestyle magazines from bed.
Life was glorious.

Since then, all pain has been absorbed into the every day hum drum of working.
I move slowly, but I still move.
And I feel awful for those other gestating women who must commute, deal with bosses or stand on their feet for their paycheck.

(I remember working at the hot dog stand, how I would never take for granted working inside and sitting down ever again. Cheers! Cheers to the office chair!)

The physical therapy ladies are very nice.  They believe I can beat this booty ache with two weeks of heat/ice, stretching, pool exercises and deep tissue massage. I go back for my second treatment tomorrow. Thank the sweet above that my job requires sitting.

I sit too much to take many photos.
(But the ice cream is delicious.)
It’s to get to 99 degrees tomorrow!
I sit and melt.
I’m smelting.

Thirty two weeks already.
Can you believe it?

Posted in Updates | 2 Comments »

Cranky in the pants

May 7, 2008 – 9:18 am

Over the past three days, I have become unable to walk.
Some pinched nerve/posterior pelvic pain related to the baby in my belly and the loosening of joints.
I thought I was decent at handling pain, but this is way beyond anything I’ve had to deal with before.

I always forget that chronic pain makes one so cranky.
Chronic pain makes the topic of chronic pain  the only thing one wants to talk about.
Chronic pain is miserable for everyone involved.

Did I tell you that tears squeeze out of my eyes when I try to stand up?
When I try to walk, did I tell you about the shooting pain making its journey to my foot?
It takes five obnoxious minutes to climb the stair, and I’m usually crying at the top.

The measly Tylenol I can take doesn’t help.
I have been doing every which kind of maternity stretches and they haven’t helped.
I’m just a grumpy, immobile mom to be.

And I still have (at least) two months to go.

So I apologize if my emails are short.
I’m sorry if I’ve become boring.
I feel terrible about my attitude.

It’s just that I’m hurting right now.

Posted in Prenatal, Updates | 12 Comments »

Zenith

May 2, 2008 – 7:33 am

Baby, it’s the last letter, letter Z.
(This one has caused me almost as much consternation as X.)

As I type this, I sit in the backyard on a stolen wireless internet connection,
our furniture all sits in the garage.

(Your new car seat and stroller sit there too.)

Carpet installers crawl throughout our home.
We get new flooring for your arrival.
We’re excitedly preparing the house for your arrival.

We’ve been awash in advice lately, most lately, it’s “don’t go all out for a nursery or material goods.” Other than some paint and some room reordering, we haven’t, really.

It’s just that Papa and I want to make things beautiful for your arrival. You’re our most honored guest, and we want to show you how very much we appreciate your company.

(Be a good host is probably the number one Hearn guideline. Later this month, I’ll write out the rest of the Hearn guidelines for you, so you can join in the traditions that are important to us.)

Back to Z.
There are three Z letters to you, but they’re all of one of my favorite words, Zenith.

Zenith in the sky, follow me around

I love astronomy.

I loved the class,
I loved learning about the planets,
I even endured all the math that astronomy required.

But, baby, as you’ll find out, we have to make decisions about where our attentions are paid. See, I also wanted to be an obstetrician, I wanted to be a secretary, I wanted to be an artist, I wanted to be an astronomer, I wanted to act, I wanted to write, I wanted to serve.

That’s a lot to roll into one life.

My baser instincts won out and now I consult about the internet for the adult beverage industry. It’s exciting and exasperating and I love it. But that doesn’t keep me from indulging my inner astronomer every short while.

In science talk, Zenith means the highest point above the observer’s horizon in which the observer can see a celestial body.

If you’re looking from either the North or South pole, your zenith is a celestial pole; but if you’re anywhere else, the zenith is a point in the sky where you’ll view a right ascension and left declination as the sky rotates over your head.

(The point right below you is your nadir.)

Okay, that’s a bit much for your first lesson about astronomy. But if you’re interested, we can get a telescope, a patch of dark sky and some hot chocolate and I’ll be thrilled to go over it again.

Let’s observe the above with love.

Zenith Dollarbill is real

When your Auntie and I were little girls, we played dressuppretend every day.

We had a whole cast of characters. A snotty rich boy named Georgeus, snotty, the beleaguered Hattie, a mean girl named Prissy and our favorite, Zenith Dollarbill.

Zenith Dollarbill was a wealthy elderly lady with a mean countenance and a heart of gold.

Much of our creative input came in the form of the television shows “Three’s Company” and “the Love Boat.” On those shows, grownups hung out in a bar, a classy bar, where everyone looked glamorous. So to emulate those glamorous actors, we played bar.

We took turns playing Zenith. One of us would be her attentive bartender, making sure she had lots of fresh pretend ice in her drink. Zenith only drank Suicides, a mixture of all the drinks available in the fridge upstairs.
She always tipped the bartender well because she would often become very drunk.

Zenith wore a fancy teal evening gown, a fur mink stole and a pink hat with flowers on it.
When I am an elderly lady, I hope to wear the same outfit Zenith did.
When I am an elderly lady, I hope to drink Suicides with gusto.

When you are growing up, I hope you play lots of pretend.
I hope you are a good tipper,
I hope you are kind to your bartender,
I hope you turn out as classy as Zenith.

(Without the very drunk part, of course.)

Never reach your zenith

The point of culmination, the zenith, is a point we all strive for. We work hard to reach the peak so that we can retire,
we can quit,
we can give up.

That seems like a very sad goal.

Baby, always strive to reach your zenith. Even when you think you’ve reached it, you will need another peak, another point of culmination.

You have one great role model for that. My mom, your grandmother is in her goldenest years.

She has reached the zenith of her career several times, in music, in theology, in nursing, in education. She’s strives for success in writing, again in theology and in family. She’s not done yet, in fact, she’s one of the busiest people I’ve met. And she will keep striving for that culmination of effort.

You should too.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 2 Comments »

Yuck, Yesterday, Youth

May 1, 2008 – 7:33 am

Yuck means yuck

When I think of all the gross things I stuck my fingers,
that I tasted,
that I played with as a kid, I cringe.

I remember poking at a captured leech for hours.
I remember spending much of five years old with a finger up my nose.
I remember sticky shirts, dirty faces and dirty bathwater.

When I say yuck, I mean yuck.
I would like to save you the embarassment of my memories.
Drop it.

Yesterday is gone

I’ve spent too much time feeling bad about what I did yesterday.
Yesterday is gone.
I cannot change it.
I cannot edit my actions.
There’s nothing I can do differently.

Think about yesterday, yes.
Learn from yesterday, yes.
But obsess about yesterday?
Please no.

Yesterday is gone.

Youth isn’t appreciated until too late

I went to French Fridays tonight at Taylor’s Refresher.
We’ll take you, it’s where the grownups take their kids and everyone is happy.
The kids can scream and run on the grass, the parents can have a glass of wine and some french fries.

Watching the kids run and run and run and run
made me wish for that kind of energy.

I remember when I had to grind my teeth to absorb all the energy I felt vibrating in my fingers.

I wanted to rundancescreamtwirl.
(Part of growing up is realizing appropriate rundancescreamtwirl time.)

But by the time you learn when and where to rundancescreamtwirl, it’s too late.
(You’d rather chase the opposite sex or download music.)

Or maybe take a nap.

I want to appreciate your youth.
I want to give you appropriate places for rundancescreamtwirling.
I want to try it out, and maybe muster energy for myself.

For lately I’ve been so tired.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | No Comments »

On its way

April 30, 2008 – 2:04 pm

We’re just a little delayed due to bocce and
emotions not felt before pregnancy and
moving all of our furniture into the garage and
painting all of our walls and
the cable guy.

I’ll write the last letters tomorrow.
And I’ll put them in a poster.
And a book.
Just for the baby.

XOXO.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 4 Comments »

Xanadu, X-Axis, xBox

April 29, 2008 – 6:28 pm

I’ve dreaded the “X” entry for the last 27 days.
Baby, I apologize, there’s just not a lot of inspiring X words.

Xanadu

When we were little kids, your auntie used to leave dinner early to go to the bathroom. From the bathroom, she’d sing the song Xanadu sung by Olivia Newton John from the movie Xanadu.

We’d all giggle from the table hearing her five year old voice warble, “Xaaaaanaaaduuuuuuu….”
That’s all I have for you.

The X-Axis is horizontal

The x-axis is horizontal.
The y-axis is vertical.

I sometimes have a hard time remembering that, but now you don’t have to.

Practice your xBox

Your Papa’s favorite hobby, after making music and playing bocce, is playing xBox.
(He’s pretty good at it too.)

I’ve been taking lots of Omega 3 acids so that your hand and eye coordination is primed. At least that’s what the research about fetal development says this year.
(Who knows what it’ll say by the time you read this?)

I just wanted to tell you that it would tickle your Papa if you played xBox with him. It would probably irritate the heck out of him if you beat him at his favorite games. I’ll leave that decision up to you.

Grin.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 1 Comment »

Write, Work, Why?

April 28, 2008 – 12:34 pm

Write it down and throw it away

Some people like to express feelings they’re uncomfortable saying in person through a letter.

oommates do this with nasty notes.
Relatives do this with letters detailing how they’ve been wronged.

My advice?

If you feel wronged, write it all down in a letter to that person and throw it away.

You’ve now articulated your position so you can
work through it on your own or
resolve the issue in person.

Expressing your feelings in a letter isn’t fair to the recipient.
They have no recourse.
They can’t explain themselves.
Letters aren’t fair.

If you need to express an unpleasant feeling on paper, do it, rip it up and speak to the offender in person.
We’ll all be healthier for it.

Work is work

Oh! If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life! What a glorious sentiment!

Still, I love what I do more than most folks, and it’s still work.
There are still trash cans to be emptied, dishwashers to be filled, phone calls to be made.
And it’s all work.

I’d rather eat a meal with my family and friends.
I’d rather watch Lost or South Park.
I’d rather canoe down a river.

Don’t get suckered into believing that if you just loved what you did enough, it wouldn’t come with discomfort.
That’s a useless regret.

You will always need to choose between activities.

Some will bring you joy, some will bring you irritation.
This is life.

Baby, I hope you have more joy than irritation.
I hope you love your work.

The Why game

I was in the grocery store last week. It was a long line. Behind me was a television personality with her young son. He was playing the “Why?” game.

After this, we’re going to make dinner.

Why?

Because your dad, you and I need to eat.

Why?

Because it’s 4:30 in the evening and that’s when we start dinner.

Why?

Because of the earth’s rotation on its axis and the location of the sun…etc.

Now when my friends with two young kids get suckered into the “Why?” game they turn it into a critical thinking exercise.
“Why do you think?”

Why do you think indeed.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 2 Comments »

Venting, Virtue, Victim

April 27, 2008 – 4:29 pm

Venting is only good for the venter

Baby, I remember this one job I had.
Employees were venting all the time.

They’d come into an office,
shut the door and
rant about the stupidity of their coworkers.
They’d rant about the procedure.
They’d rant about the idiots around them.

And then they’d leave.
Leave me utterly winded.

It was addictive too, before I knew it, I was venting to my coworkers.
I was overreacting to emails,
blowing imagined slights out of proportion and
venting behind closed office doors.

What I needed at that job, what they needed at that job, was someone secure enough to say, “What are you going to do about it?”

They needed someone to stop the endless roundabout venting.

It’s tempting to vent all the time, about every real and imagined slight.
But before you vent to an unsuspecting friend or coworker, take a moment to consider the effect.
Will you just rile up your listener?

Venting is only good for the venter.

Patience is a virtue

When we were little, your auntie and I were often told “Patience is a virtue.”
(We repeated it as Patience is a Gertrude, but we got the gist.)

It’s just so hard as little kids, waiting for stuff to happen just seems indeterminable.
The wait goes on forever.

And then, all of a sudden, you’re a grownup.
Years become months.
Weeks become minutes.
Time starts flying by, so fast you fear that you’ll never fit it all in — really, is it four-thirty already?

What happened to the glorious anguish that preceded Christmas?
What happened to the indeterminable wait in the car for everyone to pile in to head to Country Kitchen?

I once heard an interesting theory about this perception of time.
When you’re five, a year is a fifth of your life.
At 32, a year is merely one thirty second of your life.
The pie slices become mere slivers.
And time seems to whiz past so very fast.

Baby, I hope to help you squeeze all the joy you can out of these big pie slices I get to share with you.
I’m so lucky to be with you during the big ones.

It’s easy to be a victim

It’s so tempting to treat life as something that happens to you.
It’s so rewarding to feel that live is unfair.
Baby, you will be so annoyed with me for refusing to let you play the victim.

My mom did the same for me.
When I said “I can’t do this…”
She would say, “You just haven’t developed the skills…”
And gosh darn if she wasn’t right.

Yes, there will be times in your life when you are hurt, when someone maliciously takes something from you, when you are attacked.
And I will be there to hug you and share in your pain.
But when it comes down to it, you’re responsible for the decisions you make in your life.
You and you alone can control what happens to you.

I’ve seen it with some relatives, I’ve seen it with friends.
I’ve felt the temptation to be the victim myself.
It’s an easy way to get attention, to feel special.

This is not to say that victimization isn’t real.
There are horrible people doing horrible things to folks that don’t have the resources to defend themselves.
Baby, I hope we can help those people

But if you say that due to some external force,
some unfairness in the universe,
if you say that you can’t,

I’ll reply with,
“You just haven’t developed the skills yet.”
And I’ll be right.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 1 Comment »

Useful, Unique, Ubiquitous

April 26, 2008 – 2:22 pm

Useful plants are my favorite

Baby, growing up in the Midwest, I feel like I miss out on some of the joy that Californians take in beauty for beauty’s sake.
I can’t just have a footrest, it has to hold books and open beer.

I feel that way about plants.

We’ve had a recent run of warm weather and everyone in town’s talks about seeds, tomatoe types, soil preparation and compost. I went to a big hardware store the other day and tried to find some of the plants I was comfortable growing, herbs, peppers, beans.

They were very hard to find.

Here on the West Coast, it seems folks are into growing the most beautiful flowers, big shrubs of green and ground cover. The purpose of these plants confuses me. Landscaping? Enhancing the beauty of one’s yard? I guess it’s the same with lawns.

(My secret dream town would have the only lawn on public space, where it would be reserved for barefoot kickball games and freeze tag. In my secret dream town front yards would be vegetable gardens. Back yards would be chicken coops. Side yards would be for composting and hide and seek.

But I’m liberal like that.)

So baby, I’m telling you, when Mother’s day comes around and you’re rooting for a plant to send me. I’m quite happy with the useful ones. I prefer lavender to roses, chamomile to lilies, basil to hostas.

You are unique

You are unique.

There is a chance, however,
there is roughly a one in a million chance that someone will test that they have the same DNA as you.
(But that’s just CSI stuff.)

However, German folklore says there’s a chance you have a Doppelgänger.

Doppelgänger is a German word, meaning any double or an exact look-alike of a person. Lots of fiction has been written about one’s “evil twin”. As I kid, I read a lot of that fiction and it scared me to pieces.

Literally, Doppelgänger means doublewalker, a person who is acts exactly the same as someone else.
Doppelgängers are mostly considered bad luck bringers.

I was terrified of finding my Doppelgänger.
I would scan the crowds at Barbie on Ice or the circus, certain that my double was there, ready to take over my life and bring me bad luck.

But I’ve never found her.
And being scared of her was a waste of my time.
(And I could have spent that time developing some dichotomies.)

It was only folklore, the stuff of stories.

You are unique.
You come with traits and interests and love in a way that no one in the world has before.
You are you.

You are also ubiquitous

People are everywhere.
We breed and make more people.
Those people have people.
And before you know it, we have crowds and masses and groups.

And although those people are all unique, with their own traits and interests and love, there are also many of them.
You are only one of all of these people.

Part of our job as parents is to prepare you to get along with these people.
How to learn the rules of these people.
How to be one of these people.

Some of these rules won’t make any sense to you.
(Why can’t we take our pants off when we’re hot? I don’t know, really.)

Some of these rules are essential.
(We don’t hit when we’re angry. We don’t pass gas at the dinner table. We greet other humans with a smile and open heart.)

You are also ubiquitous.
Baby, I will do everything I can to help you play well with others.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 2 Comments »

Bocce, won 2, lost 1

April 25, 2008 – 12:04 pm

Joanie Loves Bocce update.

Last night, we won two games, lost one against the “Bocce Bandits.”
(They wore neckerchiefs to demonstrate their banditness. We out-styled them in our foxy jackets.)

Our food theme was “All Balls.” So everyone conspired to make ball-shaped food.

It was also hilarious to talk about putting “balls in your mouth” or tasting Caffo’s “Chocolate Salty Balls.”

Next time you need to host a potluck or food theme, remember the balls!

Posted in Nablopomo, Updates | No Comments »

Tenacity, Tricks, Try

April 24, 2008 – 7:58 pm

Tenacity to a point

Baby, be tenacious.
Baby, sticking with a task to completion is good for you.
Baby, I wish I were more tenacious.

I often give up. I often throw in the towel. I often just quit.
I wish I didn’t.

But if you’re tenacious, if you stick with it until you feel
your point has been made
until your idea has realized
until you’re done

You’ll be so far ahead of everyone else.

We’re not really tricks people

I’ll know you take after your Auntie Clare if you like to play tricks.

Your Papa and I aren’t much of a trick player.
It’s kind of like how I’m not much of a gambler.
Just a trait.

But your Auntie Clare delights in fooling people,
in telling tall tales,
in putting one over on other people.

Your cousins are like that.
My dad was like that.
It’s a Yeager trait.

(Just wanted you to be aware of that.)

You only need to try once

When, as little kids, your Auntie and I were presented with food that we found repulsive, our parents would make us try a “no thank you helping.” It could be as small as three peas, but we needed to try at least something from every dish.

Having to take “no thank you helpings” helped your Auntie and I enjoy so much food as grownups. We tried mushrooms, peas, moose, venison, blue cheese, liver, even mussels. A lot of these “no thank you helpings” are now our favorite foods.

This works with trying friends. This works with kinds of literature. This works with sports.
You only need to try once.
Just try it.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 3 Comments »

Spiced, candied bacon

April 23, 2008 – 8:08 pm

(Will post alphabetsomething tomorrow. Am feeling the full brunt of 30 weeks pregnant today.)

Have you ever seen the show “The Party Planner with David Tutera?”

Guilty pleasure, I’ve found your definition. He’s a party planner in New York City who throws celebrity-filled bashes as well as Bar Mitzvahs. (He usually has one divatastic breakdown per show. Damn, I love me some David Tutera.)

Sometimes, Kraft foods sponsors the food, which makes for a fabulously disgusting Jello-mix based punch or Velveeta cheese ball.
I love the show. I love the man.

In his last show, his main passed appetizer was this spiced, candied bacon.

What you say? Spiced, candied bacon?
What’s not to love?
What’s not to love indeed.

Ingredients

1 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 lb. bacon

Directions

Preheat oven to 425°

Mix brown sugar, cardamom, cloves and cayenne together with a whisk and/or fork.

Toss bacon in mixture piece by piece. Lay each piece of sandy bacon on parchment, foil or Silpat-covered half-sheet pan.

Put a little more topping on each piece of bacon before ovenning.

Bake the bacon in the oven for 15 minutes.

Cut each piece of bacon into thirds (roughly 2 inch pieces) before serving.

Posted in Nablopomo, Recipes | 6 Comments »

Science and Spirit, Soup, Spite

April 22, 2008 – 8:16 am

Science and Spirit

It’s popular now to argue science vs. spirituality.

Religion does it.
Some religious leaders will tell you that you can’t be religious and scientific at once.
Our current president enforces this thinking as well,
“You’re either with us or against us.”

That’s a false choice.

Scientists do this too.
I don’t currently know a spiritual scientist.
I can’t wait until I meet one.

This year, at the TED conference, a brain scientist named Jill Bolte Taylor gave a talk about her perceptions as she suffered a stroke. She was able to research the experience, and through that research, learned much about the brain.

From a recent interview, she said:

“People are ready to hear, “I’m not just this, I’m not just that.” We’re tired of the incredible bipolarity of science saying the spiritualists are nuts, and the spiritualists are tired of the closed-mindedness of the scientists. We’ve got this incredible chasm going on. How about a little corpus collosum love! Let’s get both hemispheres functioning and communicating in all of us so that we are open-minded and we are open-hearted because we’re actually utilizing both hemispheres.”

Let’s hear it for some corpus collosum love! Let’s hear it for your whole brain! Let’s hear it for the reward of open-heartedness, open-mindedness and the ability to be both creative and logical all at once.

My job as a web designer and developer forces me to jump between very linear thinking and very creative thinking. Your Papa’s work with music and scoring requires a very logical need to learn software and learn notes, and a very right-brained need for feeling and new ideas.

We support your development of a whole brain.

You can be good at math and art.
You can be an illustrating scientist.
You can be both brains together.

You are science and spirit.

We eat lots of soup

We eat a lot of soup in this family.

Soup is a great way to use up all the foods that may rot away.
Soup simmers all day, making our home smell delicious.
Soup is eaten with a spoon, the first utensil you’ll learn to use.

Some of the soups in our arsenal include:
Potato leek, vegetable, tomato, cheesy potato, beef and barley, cabbage soup, cream of mushroom, split pea, black bean, cream of cauliflower, cream of broccoli, french onion, thai shrimp, coconut curry, lentil, hot and sour, cream of asparagus, fresh pea, minestrone, gazpacho, clam chowder, turkey wild rice, corn chowder, chicken noodle, we can even make stone soup.

I bet you’ll even invent some soups that haven’t been invented yet.
(From what I know of you so far, I get the feeling you’re that kind of person.)

I can’t wait for you to help me make soup. I can’t wait for you to help me collect the ingredients, cut the vegetables, combine the spices. I can’t wait for us to stir together until our soup is ready.

Spite is a shameful motivation

Spite is defined as malicious ill will prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate.

I’ve acted out of spite.
I’ve acted with the sole purpose of hurting someone else.
I’m not proud of it, in fact, I’m ashamed.

Spite is the weakest urge.
Throughout history, spite has never been proven wise.
It’s always the weakest reaction.

You will be tempted to act out of spite.
When someone breaks your heart, you will want revenge.
When someone takes your posessions, you will want to humiliate.
When you feel you can demonstrate your strength over someone’s weakness, you will want to hurt.

Stop. Breathe. Don’t.
Spite is a shameful motivation.

Act so that you learn from the experience.
Act so that you grow from your pain.
But don’t act to hurt or humiliate.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 1 Comment »

Righteous, Reason, Ridiculous

April 21, 2008 – 1:59 pm

Two kinds of Righteous

From what I understand, there are two kinds of righteous,
There’s my favorite, the 1970’s term for awesome, rad or cool.
It’s a laid back sort of “Righteous, man.”
To mean something’s dead on, something’s a-okay.

There’s another fierce and angry righteous.
It’s what all too often religious people claim as their right to be better than others.
Where they claim to be free of sin. Where they can call themselves morally just.
They’re more righteous than you.

They believe more than you.
They are better than you.
They’re more righteous than you.

This is a dangerous slope down which you can slide.

I’m not sure what spirituality you’ll decide upon.

I don’t know if you’ll pick up your grandparent’s devout Episcopalian beliefs,
I don’t know if you’ll follow your Papa’s atheism,
I don’t know if you’ll go along with my spiritual agnosticism,
I don’t know if you’ll join Scientology to further your career and earn a couple of dollars.

I look forward to learning about religions with you, and supporting you no matter what you decide.

Once, I knew someone who firmly believed I would go to hell for not being saved by his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He truly believed (and probably still does) that until I had also been washed in the Blood of His Lord, my soul would suffer eternally.

He believed that he was righteous and I was not.

Now, I can’t say whether or not I’m doomed to eternal damnation.
But I certainly hope not.

Baby, be aware of the risks of righteousness.
Believing that one is without sin, when the rest of the world is crawling with it, is a lazy way to ignore our humanity. It’s nothing more than the oldest way to make one feel superior. Claiming righteousness — which cannot be proven — is like claiming magical powers,
claiming ascendancy to a throne,
claiming superiority.

Baby, be the 1970s kind of righteous.
Baby, be totally rad.

Reason, Season or Life

When a very dear friend completely ceased all communication with me due to her new boyfriend, my heart broke.

I mulled the problem over with a bottle of wine and a new friend. This new friend told me why she never got upset about the end of friendships because she believed they fell into one of three categories,
“Reason. Season. Or life.”

It’s true. I don’t need to have all friends forever and ever.
Friends can be part of a time in my life.
Friends’ contribution to my life (and mine to theirs) can cease.
Friends can be seasonal, a time when convenience finds us buddies.

Yes, it’s something to be mourned, but it’s not something on which to dwell.

We are all Ridiculous

You are ridiculous.
I am ridiculous.
He is ridiculous.
She is ridiculous.
We are all ridiculous.

Please remember that when you’re nervous before a performance review.
Please remember that when you feel ridiculed or embarrassed.
Please remember that when you feel completely alone.

We’re all just as ridiculous as you.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 3 Comments »

Question, Quiet, Quicksand

April 20, 2008 – 7:17 pm

The magical question

Baby, my mom, your grandma is a wise, wise woman.
She’s patient and kind and smells good too.

And she gave me some great advice that has helped me every time I’ve needed to have a difficult conversation with someone.

One of the best ways to start out a conversation that could be perceived as critical is to ask, “Are you aware that…?”

Are you aware that when you send one word emails, they can be taken as rude?
Are you aware that it sounds like you’re finding fault with everything?
Are you aware that your excessive drinking is damaging your professional reputation?

This gives the receiver of the information an out — a place to admit ignorance.
Which most likely, they have no idea that’s how they’re coming off.

All of those questions could be applied to me at one time or another, and I assure you, I wasn’t aware of how I was being perceived.

Are you aware that you’re awesome?

We all need quiet time

I knew people in college who could. not. be. alone.
I know people now who can. not. be. alone.
They haven’t ever been to a movie by themselves.
They couldn’t imagine taking themselves out for dinner.

And that makes me so sad.

I guess this hyper-connected society, where rank is determined by how many people are messaging you on your Blackberry, can be a contributing factor. It’s appealing to feel so needed. It’s addictive to be so popular.

But quiet time, time by oneself, is necessary to becoming a full human.
It’s through quiet time that one can find out what’s important to them.
It’s through individual reflection that one determines likes and dislikes.

Constant social interaction can stunt that reflection.

Baby, I hope you take all the quiet time you need.
Baby, I hope you take time to figure out who you are and what you want.
Baby, I hope you don’t get sucked into a messaging addiction.

Quicksand tip

When I was growing up, showing folks drowning in quicksand was a popular theme for television and movies. All I can tell you is that it terrified me. I would walk through Wisconsin forests, my heart beating that I may step into some quicksand.

Silly me. There’s no quicksand

(From Howstuffworks.com)
Quicksand is ordinary sand that has been so saturated with water that the friction between sand particles is reduced. The resulting sand is a mushy mixture of sand and water that can no longer support any weight.

With quicksand, the more you struggle in it the faster you will sink. If you just relax, your body will float in it because your body is less dense than the quicksand.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 3 Comments »

Punctuality, Privacy, Perfection

April 19, 2008 – 11:28 am

Punctuality demonstrates respect

It’s important to me that we be on time.

When I was a little girl, my family was rarely on time.
Part of that it takes a long time to wrangle 5 kids.
Part of that is that we just couldn’t get out the door.
Part of that is that my mom just couldn’t find her purse.

I understand that it was tough to make it to the concert/church/picnic/event with all the packing and dressing and preparing.

But I hated walking in late,
sitting in the back,
feeling those judgy eyes all over my family.

Baby, I don’t want you to feel that way.

It’s important to me that we be on time.

It shows other people that you respect their time.
It demonstrates that you are not high-maintenance.
It is the responsible thing to do.

Some people think that you show you have you have more power when you show up late.
I just think it’s rude.

Your privacy is tantamount

I have always wanted to go back through my middle school and high school journals and laugh at how seriously I took myself.
But my journals sit in mom’s attic, untouched.

One day, one year before he died, my father read my journal from cover to cover.
He annotated it.
He underlined what he didn’t agree with and wrote his comments in the margins.

The last page of the journal was a note with a shaky drawing of a broken heart and his signature.

He wrote on that page how he couldn’t believe he had such an ungrateful, terrible daughter.
He wrote that I was a slut, a whore, and that my behavior would catch up to me.
He wrote how he was so disappointed in me he couldn’t look at me again.

I was sixteen.

I haven’t looked at that journal since.
I felt like a horrible person.

I was sixteen.

That breach of my privacy caused me not to write in a journal again for almost eight years.
I didn’t start a journal until I lived on my own in another state.

What could I have been writing that he thought was so awful?
Boy crushes?
School worries?
Normal high school party gossip?

I was making As in every class, class president, attended leadership conferences every month.
Active in my church youth group, I was active in theater, I was finding myself.

Yet due to the honest assessment of a life in a book I thought private,
I was a disappointment.

Baby, I won’t read your journal.
I just won’t.

I know some parents think it’s their right.
I know some parents think it’s a way they can keep tabs on what their child is doing.
But I won’t.

You can trust me that you can keep your secrets in your journal.
I won’t take them out.
Your privacy is tantamount.

Doing the work is perfection enough

Both your Papa and I find it challenging to complete creative projects.
(He with his music, I with my drawing/writing/cooking.)

We tweak, we edit, we fix.
And we never, ever finish.

We have this image in our head, you see.
And it’s perfection.
(You’ll learn a little more from my man Socrates about this.)

And we try, try, try to make what comes out of our hands match that vision in our heads.
We tweak, we edit, we fix.
And we never, ever finish.

We’ve come up with some art hacks to get around it.
We enforce fake deadlines.
We make sure projects are beholden to other people.
We have deadlines that cannot be moved.

But each project could always be improved,
each project would be perfect if…
And it drives us crazy.

Baby, doing the work is perfection enough.

And you, as a kid already know that.
You’ll draw and glitter and exuberantly paint and each stroke will be perfect to you.
It will be exactly as you meant it to be.

Baby, will you teach me that again?

Will you show me how the intent,
how showing up at the page,
how just doing the work is perfection enough?

I could really stand to be reminded.
(Because I’m late on a few things here that just. aren’t. perfect. yet.)

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 4 Comments »

Friday Exhaustion

April 18, 2008 – 4:54 pm

Last night was our first bocce game of the season.

Today, I played in our town’s Chamber of Commerce bocce tournament.

I’ve been on my feet.
I’ve been dealing with drunk people.

I’m ready for a nap.

Good news: Dinner came from Taylor’s Refresher tonight. We took first place in the Chamber of Commerce bocce tournament. My cheeks are pink from being outside. Bedtime comes soon.

I’ll post my alphabet letter thing tomorrow.
Tomorrow is my friend Hilary’s baby shower cocktail party.

We’re having our babies at practically the same time too.
Knowing us, no one expected anything else.

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Obviously, Objectification, Obscenity

April 17, 2008 – 8:07 pm

Think twice before starting a sentence with “Obviously”

When people start sentences with the word “Obviously,” it can come off as insulting to the person listening.
Baby, think twice before starting a sentence with “Obviously.”

Obviously.

Objectification is tempting

Baby, women often don’t like to be what we call, “victims of sexual objectification.”
What that means, is that women don’t want to be seen as objects.
By object, we mean that we don’t like to be seen as a collection of boobs and sexual organs.

We’re more complex than just being boiled down to one attribute –
How hot?

However, humans objectify animals, buildings, jobs, vehicles, and people.
It’s how we assign meaning.

Humans hate to be objectified.
It’s how we become individuals.

Baby, I hope you don’t objectify people, but I can understand if you’re tempted.
People are so complex,
they have so many different motives,
pieces and
parts that it becomes overwhelming to take all in

Because if you can reduce that driver that just cut you off to a blithering idiot,
if you can write off the man with the big muscles as a stupid jock,
if you can dismiss the opinion of someone who doesn’t make as much money as you,
you’re making things simple for yourself.

Who has time to accept them as fully complex humans?

You will.
We will.
We must.

Obscenity, Indecency and Profanity can be kind of fun

Part of your job as a growing human is to test the boundaries of what’s socially acceptable. I get that. I dabbled in pushing boundaries when I was growing up and I hope that you try a little boundary-pushing yourself.

Just a little.
(Your Papa and I would like to keep phone calls from the principal’s office to a minimum.)

Currently, American society sees the naked human as obscene, indecent and profane.
I disagree.

Part of it is that art school training I had. I drew a lot of naked people.
Part of it is society’s tacit approval of the sexual objectification of women — where women can’t be naked without being sexual because they’re sexual objects. Why would they be naked if they didn’t want sex?
Part of it is just silly.

You’re naked right now.
You’ll be born naked.
I assume in your childish glee, you’ll run around naked.

And someone will probably mutter under their breath about how your naked body is obscene, indecent and profane.
But I will think it’s a miracle.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 2 Comments »

Nuisance, Novelty, Novitiate

April 16, 2008 – 7:22 pm

Some people think that kids are a nuisance.

In fact, I am one of them.
Kids are sticky, messy and selfish.
They take without asking and you never seem to use your inside voice.

Your Papa is one of the staunchest believers that kids are a nuisance.
He doesn’t like to sit near kids on planes or in restaurants.
Honestly, I don’t either.

From what I hear from other parents is that our tolerance for kids will rise. A crying infant will begin to elicit compassion rather than irritation.
I welcome that day, because being annoyed with a child who can’t help it is a waste of my energy.

(Still, to save other passengers from such nuisances, (much to the chagrin of our families) we’re not planning on flying with children for a very long time.)

From what I hear from other parents is that our tolerance for kids may not change - where it’s possible to only be enamored with one’s own children, having extreme distaste for all other younglings.

In our part of the country, there’s a group of folks with extreme distaste for “breeders.”
(People like your Papa and I who decided to give birth.)
That’s the most fundamental kind of nuisance-thinking.

We just wanted you to know that some people think that kids are a nuisance.
We’ll try to protect them from you and you from them.

A Return to Novelty

Baby, one of the things I look forward to experiencing with you is a return to novelty. Over the past many years, I have become used to this life and the items I see and use every day.

Trucks on the road,
Bulldozers,
Scented oils,
Tomato plants,
Pot lids,
A basket of yarn,
Band-aids,
Glitter.

All of these items have lost their magic.
They’re no longer novel.

But with you, baby, they become new.
They become miracles.
They become magical.

I can’t wait.

Welcome to your Novitiate

A Novitiate can be defined as either the time or state of being a novice or a house where novices are trained.
Novices are new to the subject.

Welcome to your Novitiate.
(That’s our house.)
You will arrive a novice human, brand new to our species.

Who knows what experience you’ll bring to the game?
Past lives or old soul?
Brand new or wide open?

We’re thrilled to have you.
Your Papa and I can’t wait to show you what we’ve learned about being a human.
Spoons are pretty cool.
Manners get you far.
And you’d be amazed at the applications for Elmer’s glue.

There are two great things about you being you in this Novitiate.
You can either take that information we share with you and run with it, or
you can reject that information and find your own human truths.

But try to wait until you’re a teenager to reject that information.
We need to feel sage for at least a few years.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 3 Comments »

Martyr, Mealtime, Mantras

April 15, 2008 – 2:20 pm

No one asked you to be a Martyr

I seem to have noticed that lots of women who have children become martyrs.
They give themselves over to the housekeeping, to the child rearing, to full-time work, to husband support, to Can’t You See What I Do For You People?

What they never seem to remember is that the children didn’t ask to be born and raised.
The house never told them it needed all that attention.
The husband never requested they give up their ladies’ nights.

They quit being themselves to throw themselves at the altar of Can’t You See What I Do For You People?

They’re making themselves miserable so they can feel more important?
They’re making themselves sad to show how much they give up?
They want you to pity them, they want you to see how selfless they are.
How selfish.

No one likes a martyr.
No one asked you to be a martyr.

Baby, please do me a favor, if you see me breaking out the Can’t You See What I Do For You People, will you please crack a joke?
Will you bring me back from the glorious misery of self-pity?
I’d really appreciate that.

Mealtime is more than feeding

Your Papa and I attribute mealtime as one of the most important parts of our relationship.

We eat at the dinner table most nights of the week.
We use cloth napkins,
we set the table, we toast the bounty at the table before us.
And it’s made our marriage stronger.

We talk to each other,
we focus on our food,
we pay attention.

Because mealtime has been so important to our relationship, it will be important to our family. It’s where you’ll learn manners, where you’ll learn nutrition, where you’ll learn some basic motor skills.

Research from Harvard says that families that eat together are twice as likely to have five servings of fruits and vegetables a day as those who don’t. Kids who eat dinner with their families eat more fiber, calcium, iron, folate and vitamins B6, B12, C and E. Yes. That’s a lot of nutrients.

We love nutrients.
We love meal time with you.

Mantras aren’t all that hokey

Back when I was in college, I had an important presentation. I was very nervous, it was a national competition.

Your grandma sent me a note to take to the presentation. In the note was a mantra for me to repeat to myself before the presentation. The mantra read, “I am articulate and well-spoken. People are interested in what I have to say.”

I was so nervous that I went with it. I repeated the mantra hundreds of time under my breath, in front of the hotel mirror, in the back of my mind.

I couldn’t tell you much about the actual presentation, like I said, only about the awards ceremony.
The judges decided to give a special award, one they’d never given before, to the “Best Speaker.” They gave that award to me.

I’d given presentations loads before in my life, but that was my first time with a mantra.
And that was my first time with an award.
And that was proof enough for me.

Since then, I’ve used mantras to help me with all kinds of performance-related activities.
They work for me.
Baby, I think they could work for you.

Here are a few to get you started:
“I’m loved for being who I am.”
“Walking comes easily to me.”
“I’m calm in the face of stressful situations.”

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 4 Comments »

Locomotive, Loser, Laying

April 14, 2008 – 6:58 pm

Locomotive

The Wine Train zooms through our town around one every afternoon and around six every evening.
I imagine you’ll be excited about the wine train.
I get excited about the wine train.

When your Papa and I hang out with other kids, day in, day out, they rush to watch the train go by.
The conductor will wave to you because he is friendly.
The people on board will wave to you because they are drunk.
And friendly.

Being a Loser is Temporary

Lately, a friend of mine has taken to repeating, “Winners win.”
He repeats it during bocce games,
he repeats it while eating a sandwich,
he repeats it while sipping a gin and tonic,
it’s become adorable, a statement worth cheek pinching.

The other side of this statement is of course, “Losers lose.”
And baby, while I guess that’s true, I want you to know it’s just temporary.

There are fewer things sadder than a person clinging to a long lost win from long ago.
There are fewer things sadder than reminding someone of a long lost loss from long ago.

Why do we do this?
Are we comforted as a society, thinking that people won’t change?
If you’ve lost once, you’ve lost for good?

I’ve been a loser on multiple occasions. I was a true social loser throughout middle school. People threw spitballs in my hair and coughed words I won’t repeat here when I walked past. Plus, I wore embarrassingly large glasses. There are people from middle school who would have loved to see me remain a loser.

(Perhaps they still think of me as that loser.)

But then I realize that I could control how I presented myself. That I could be the girl that did things, won things, became things. And I achieved scholarships and accolades and friends.

How sad would it be if I clung to the memories of high school, reminding my contemporaries of my long past successes.

My twenties were a series of big losses,
jobs, loves, opportunities,
but I didn’t let those define me, because those losses were temporary.

And how sad would I be if I clung to the memory of my late 90’s dot com jobs while still working at the hot dog cart?
How sad would it be if I clung to the memory of the HR managers who laid me off, or the memories of the empty bank account?

Being a loser is temporary, it stinks for a while but if you move on and look ahead — you might even grow from the loss.

The difference between Lying and Laying

To lay means to put something down where it’s supposed to be or to produce eggs.
Example: Lay those Pokemon cards in a straight line. The fat chicken lays eggs, the skinny chicken just pecks.

To lie means to tell a fib or to be in a horizontal position
Example: You lied when you told me you weren’t scared of the thumbless man. Lie down and breathe through alternate nostrils until you feel better

Baby, I love you already.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 2 Comments »

Kudos, Kickball, Kindness

April 13, 2008 – 8:12 am

(A note for Nablopomo — I had saved the last three posts as future posts but they seem to require my manual “publish” click — apologies for the late posts)

Kudos for Grownups

Kudos is a short-form of the word “Congratulations!”
(It’s also a chocolate-covered granola bar that I ate exclusively for two months during my eating disordered senior year of high school, but that’s a story for another time.)

Kudos is something not often offered to adults.
Congratulations to grownups generally comes with quitting our jobs,
getting new jobs,
getting married,
having babies and
graduating from some sort of educational course.

Kudos could be given to grownups a little more liberally.

When I walk our dog past the playground equipment I hear “Good job!” applied to everything from gravity’s successful work on a child and slide to juice successfully making it down the child’s throat. And don’t get me wrong, despite what it sounds like here, there are tinier, more measurable places for kudos and kids. You have a lot more skills to learn for the next few years.

Motor skills, social skills, language skills, reaching milestones in all of them deserves its own kind of praise.

But this one’s for you as a grownup. Let’s remember together to congratulate our adult friends on achieving all the hard stuff that make being an adult so rewarding.

Finally breaking up with a bad boyfriend.
Purchasing that first real piece of furniture.
Cleaning out underneath the refrigerator.

These deserve kudos all the same.

If you are chosen last for kickball, it doesn’t matter

Your Grandpa Bob on my side of the family was a real jock. So was your Uncle John and your Uncle Charlie.
They played football, they played baseball, they ran on the track team.
(Your dad and I prefer solitary sports like running and skateboarding.)

However, when in elementary school, I wasn’t much of an athlete.
I was usually found curled up with a book, a microscope, a sketchbook or a musical instrument.
Utterly engrossed.

I’m not sure if they do this any more (especially in Northern California schools) but back in gym class, we chose our own teams for kickball. The two best players picked the other kids for their teams.

If you weren’t an athlete, you were usually one of the last kids chosen.

Standing there, as part of the last two or three, was a special kind of torture.
I realized where I was undesirable to my peers.
And that feeling of human undesirability is one of my three worst feelings in the world.
(The other two being grief at loss and violation.
Hey! Funtime topics for another day!)

But you know what?
Those kids, those kids that were chosen last with me, all have gone on to other kinds of success.
One’s a successful hypnotist!
One’s a research scientist in Chile!
One builds space shuttles!

If you’re picked last for kickball, or even if you’re picked first, please know, it has no reflection on the kind of person you’re going to grow up to be. It might even help build a little character.

Kindness is easier than they will let on

It is easier to be kind than they think.

If you walk away from gossip or refrain from spreading it,
if you take a minute to sympathize with the complaint instead of joining in,
if you hold on for just a moment to make sure they’re okay,
it won’t take as much effort as they think it does.

Kindness isn’t all about volunteering in Rwanda, feeding the homeless and chaining yourself to a tree.
Kindness is smiling, lending, and taking an extra moment to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Kindness is letting others be others.

The moneymakers and the corporate climbers think that kindness is hard.
That it makes you weak.
That kindness takes away from the task at hand.

I worked for those people at the big corporation.
And those people are wrong.

Kindness has a place in business.
It’s easy to be kind.
It’s easier than they say it is.

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Justice, Jubilee, Jealousy

April 12, 2008 – 7:22 pm

Justice comes to those that fight for it.

If you want to have life work out so that all is fair to you,
if you want justice for the wrongs you feel were perpetrated against you,
you have to work for it.

Justice doesn’t come for those that wait for someone else to take care of it.
Justice requires work, all kinds of work
paperwork,
legwork,
Kraftwerk
(Just kidding about Kraftwerk).

This will matter when you’re fighting for fairness with your siblings and classmates.
This will matter when you feel the rights of others are worth defending.
This will matter when unfair charges are brought upon you.

If you have a chance to attend a Jubilee, take it

By jubilee, I mean a celebration, a party, a gathering of like-minded happy makers. If you’re in Scouts, you might attend a Jamboree. This isn’t a Jamboree, this is a jubilee. It’s a celebration.

You should take every opportunity to celebrate that you can.
You may find that the most memorable jubilees happen smack in the middle of tragedy.

I remember being unemployed,
having sold my car to pay for my rent,
with a very broke roommate,
whose parent became ill,
and who just got a parking ticket.

We had a party that night, the two of us.
We toasted the Gods,
we toasted the lessons we were supposedly learning,
we toasted our misery.

And baby, it was one jubilee I’ll never forget.

Jealousy isn’t much of a motive

I remember in high school, a lot of girls blamed other girls for acting badly because they were jealous.

This accusation happens often in adulthood too.

“He’s just jealous…”

Jealousy hasn’t been much of a motivator in my life. I guess that’s because whenever I’m jealous of someone, I try to be more like them. I find that when jealousy rears its sneaky head, it’s because it’s pointing out a spot that I want to do better.

I’m jealous of _____ because they have beautifully sculpted arms.
I’m jealous of _____ because they own a house.
I’m jealous of _____ because they’ve been to Italy.

See? Those are all things I want but haven’t achieved
yet.

In Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way, you are to complete a Jealousy Map. You list out all the people you’re jealous of and the reasons you’re jealous of them and use that information to take action.

But what surprised me is how much jealousy was a disincentive to action, it’s rarely the reason I do something, it’s more often the reason I don’t do something.

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Friday Night Light

April 11, 2008 – 8:35 am

This Friday is one of my free days,
I had three free days,
I now have two free days,
where I can write that I’m just too busy for this.

You’re too busy for this too, I know that.

But damn, making enough money to have a baby takes a lot of time.
Keeping clients happy and trying to stay on a timeline requires sneaky management of all kinds.
And it seems to be that it all comes out of the funtimes bank.

And my ankles are swollen.

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Interested, Inspiration, Idle

April 10, 2008 – 7:44 pm

Interested people are interesting

Whenever your auntie and I complained of being bored, your grandma always told us,

“Bored people are boring,
Interested people are interesting.”

I guess it goes along with my belief that one should act like one wants to feel.

You want to feel happy when you’re feeling cranky?
Smile.

You want to feel loving when you’re feeling selfish?
Complete a loving action.
(It can be as simple as filling up on gas so the next person has a full tank. That’s a loving action. Another loving action would be putting your toys away without being asked. Ahem.)

So back to being interesting.

Are you compelled to find out more about the people around you?
If you ask people questions about themselves,
learning more about the world around you,
you will become interesting.

No one becomes interesting by focusing only on themselves.

Interested people are interesting.

Inspiration strikes when it’s least convenient

I always have my best ideas when my notebook is farthest away.

Baby, please sleep with a notebook near your head so that when great ideas happen during the middle of the night, you can jot them down.

Baby, keep a notebook in your pocket for ideas from your friends.
Baby, keep a pen on you for important notes.
Baby, keep ready for inspiration.

Idle hands aren’t always idle

Sometimes, when I seem to be staring out the window, I’m actually solving a problem.

I know that sometimes, when it appears that I should be
folding laundry or
reading a non-fiction book or
completing a project,
I actually just need to just sit and think.

Help to remind me that sometimes you may need to just sit and think too.

Not practice your spelling,
not attend music class,
not compile your life’s work,
just sit and think.)

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 5 Comments »

Hurry, High-Maintenance, History

April 9, 2008 – 5:59 am

Hurry, Hurry, Hurry

I have a terrible habit of rushing. I like to wait until the last minute and rush rush rush.
I do this with craft projects,
I do this with grocery shopping,
I even do this with my clients.

But where I’ve been most successful is with doing a little bit every day.

I’ve walked the dog every day.
I’ve made the bed every day.
I’ve written my morning pages every day.

These daily practices get me farther than any hurried attempt at cramming it all in at once.
And these daily practices are much more fulfilling.

Doing a little bit every day helps to keep me gregarious, calm and pleasant.

Take a look at where you’re hurrying.
You might be able to chop it into a little bit of daily work that will keep you loving and happy.
You might be surprised at how it all gets done.

High-Maintenance is not a compliment

Your Papa is from Southern California. When I’ve hung out with his friends, I’ve heard them talk of high-maintenance dates, high-maintenance clients, high-maintenance celebrities. Where I grew up, in Wisconsin, high-maintenance wasn’t an adjective that was often used on people. Very few people in Wisconsin are high-maintenance.

Television will make you think that the adjective “High-Maintenance” is something to be desired. Television shows you celebrities and their demands. Television equates those demands with power.

Television tells us that the more powerful you are, the more you can demand of others.

I love television, but television is wrong here.
High-maintenance people are not more powerful, they’re just more rude.

Time is currency.
The more you save people time,
the more you respect time,
the more you get back in return.

Please, don’t aspire to be high-maintenance.
Diva is not a flattering description for anyone.
Not even Bette Midler.

History

Most people love to tell you their histories.
Most people rarely want to hear yours.

Take into account the histories of others and you will do well.
Ask them about their histories.
They will be happy to share.

(And you may even learn something.)

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 2 Comments »

Gregarious, Grouchy, Goals

April 8, 2008 – 3:42 pm

Your gregarious nature

My dad was a gregarious man.
He always paid in restaurants.
He was the life of the party.

Your auntie and I have always tried to emulate his gregarious nature. It was infectious.

His laugh was legendary, deep and hearty.
His belly big.
His wallet open for anyone who needed it.

Gregarious people are fun to be around.
I always want to be more gregarious.

I’ve learned that to feel gregarious, one needs to act gregarious. When I’m feeling closed and irritated — I just need to remember to act like I’m gregarious. And then the people around me smile, their laughs become legendary, their bellies big, their wallets open for those that need it.

Baby, out of all the traits you could have inherited from him, I hope that your grandfather’s gregarious nature comes first.

Inappropriate for a letter to a fetus, regardless, I trudge ahead:
I remember my dad’s favorite shirt said “Hug Therapist.”
He loved to hug people, his hugs were so satisfying, around that big belly.
But there was an unfortunate kerning issue with the typeface on the t-shirt so that when viewed from a distance, his shirt said, “Hug The rapist.”

Due to that darned gregarious nature, (no one said it couldn’t be twisted) he loved that shirt.

(Now, you have a different Grandpa, Grandpa Brad. And he’s amazing. We’ll talk about how lucky we are to have him in our lives later.)

Sometimes I feel grouchy.

Sometimes I feel grouchy.
Sometimes, due to hormones or fatigue or hunger, I snap and become irritable.
Sometimes I grouch.

For you, I will try my hardest to make sure that I get enough sleep and eat right.
For you, I will be the best me I can be.
For you, I will probably still grouch.

I will try very, very hard not to grouch.
If I do grouch,  here’s a secret .
Put your arms around my belly and squeeze.
Immediately, I will smile, my laugh will become infectious and my wallet will open for those who need it.

P.S.  Your Papa doesn’t grouch.
That’s why we do so well together.
He just focuses on the task at hand and takes care of it.
We’re very lucky to have him in our life.

Achieving goals is fun, but not everything

Maybe it’s because I spend a lot of time online for my job, but all around me, I see the
top five ways to be more efficient
list of ten methods for reaching your dreams
seven ways to achieve

All these hyper-efficient/keyword oriented/bloggy blog blogs begin with listing your goals.
And I think that can be a great idea.

By listing goals of paying off credit cards,
getting married,
moving to wine country,
having my own business,
etcetera etcetera etcetera,
I’ve worked so all these things come true.

But it’s not everything.
Sometimes you don’t need to be working on your goals.

Sometimes, you need to zone out at reality television.
Sometimes, you need to feel your hands in the warm dirt.
Sometimes, you need to hug a friend, hard, and when they ask why, say, because you are beautiful.

Achieving goals is fun, but  not everything.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 1 Comment »

Fears, Favre, Fat

April 7, 2008 – 5:56 pm

Fears wasting time

When we were small, we liked to play at our neighbor’s house. Their house backed onto a small old growth forest.

To prevent us from going into the woods after dark, the mom of the house told us the story of Cheesy, the scary man who lived in the woods.

She said, “If you are caught in the woods after dark, Cheesy will come after you and give you drugs.”

During my childhood, this was the worst thing that could happen to a kid. It terrified us so that when we played at dusk, you would hear us whispering,
“Until Cheesy comes out…”
“How far do you think Cheesy will come up to the house…”
“When Cheesy gets you…”

I remained terrified of Cheesy for far too long.

I tell you this, baby, because fearing Cheesy was a waste of my time. He was a made up person who didn’t exist. He wasted my worries, my energy and my imagination.

Baby, I know that I may need to scare you to keep you from running into the street, from leaving your backpack on the street in San Francisco, from getting into white vans with strange men.

But I don’t want to lie to you to keep you safe.
I want you to know the truth.

Aside:
Things I’m currently afraid of include: thunderstorms, statues, bringing our family into financial ruin, succumbing to the depression that nips at my heels, bee stings and having a stroke. This list changes over time.

(I’m not afraid of ghosts, snakes, nature or spiders. In fact, you’ll grow to learn that with Pinot at number one, I’m the number two spider killer in our family.)

Brett Favre is spelled FAVRE

Baby, the year you were born, Brett Favre retired.
I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Brett Favre is a pretty big deal there.
Maybe, sometime when we’re visiting your grandparents in Green Bay, we’ll go to the Brett Favre Steakhouse.

Once, when I was a sign painter, I painted a sign for a special Brett Favre brunch.
(However, I spelled it Farve.)
Since the sign was folded up, no one saw it until they got to the brunch. The sign hung behind Brett Favre for the whole brunch with the misspelled last name. The sign even made it into the newspaper.

The guys made fun of me for a long time after that.
Green Bay is Packer country.
You’ll probably be a fan of another team, but I am a fan of the Packers.

Fat

I have wasted too much time in my life thinking I was fat.
Baby, I hope you don’t waste as much time as I did thinking the same silly thought.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 3 Comments »

Entitled, Eccentric, Enthusiasm

April 6, 2008 – 3:55 pm

Sorry, You Aren’t Entitled

It’s so awful to have to tell you this, baby, while you’re in my womb of all places, but you’re not entitled to anything.
You’re not entitled to a television series on MTV.
You’re not entitled to finding a soul mate.
You’re not even entitled to health insurance.

I’m not saying Life Isn’t Fair.
On the contrary, I think life can be quite fair.
(It’s all a matter of perspective, you see. But that’s a discussion for another day.)

I’m just saying that there are no grounds for you to receive anything out of life.

The media, teachers and our government will try to tell you
that you are entitled to be treated fairly,
that you’re entitled to clean air,
that you’re entitled to respect.

But they’re wrong.
You’re not entitled to any of it.
Especially respect.

This may sound harsh and mean.
That’s not my intent.
I just mean that nothing is yours simply because of your admission to this world.
And to learn this can be quite painful.

It’s all up to our individual decisions.
It’s up to how we as people decide to move ahead as a society.
It’s up to how you as a human decide to move ahead.

But I have a feeling your humanity will help us move on forward.
It’s just a hunch.

(I can be entitled to hunches, right?)

Eccentric sprinkles

The nicest part about eccentric people is that they don’t care what anyone thinks.
I think I worry too much about what people think.

The worst part about eccentric people is that they don’t care what anyone thinks.
This means they get in your space while invading your life.

I think a few sprinkles of eccentricity is the way to go.
It’ll keep the paralyzing worry at bay, but keep you open to pursuing new ideas.

Enthusiasm has responsibility

When I am asked about my traits in a job interview, I always list enthusiasm first.
I can be a very enthusiastic person.
I muster up excitement at new ideas, at clever ideas, at imaginative ideas.

You’ll make fun of me for it later, the way I clap my hands, the way the pitch of my voice rises.
There’s nothing less cool than enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is catchy, it spreads to other people, other people who feel a surge of energy at the new, the clever, the imaginative.
Enthusiasm also bears responsibility.
This is where I often fall short.

Because the excitement of the new, clever, imaginative, fades quickly for me.
I’m on to the next big project before I finished.
New projects can be so tempting.

My best friends understand this and gently guide me to completion.
Gently put me back to see my excitement through.
Gently show me where my enthusiasm can be applied to a project well completed.

I will work on this for you, baby.
There are fewer things more frustrating than a mom who doesn’t follow through with an enthusiastic idea.
I will follow through for you.

Posted in Nablopomo, Prenatal | 5 Comments »

Restie.

April 5, 2008 – 8:22 pm

The best part about there being 30 days in April is that there are only 26 letters in the alphabet.

I get four whole days this month free from posting alphabet missives.

And after a day filled with work, housework and celebrating our friend Joseph’s birthday, well, the letter E is going to have to wait until tomorrow. I’m beat.

Here’s a photo from the bocce courts today.

Bocce season starts in two weeks.
I couldn’t be more excited.

Oh! And please meet the newest pug of our friends’ dogs.

Posted in Nablopomo, Updates | 5 Comments »