My goodness, it's been a long time since last August! But that's when our house move began... The interior remodeling ran 4 weeks past due, so we camped in hotels and vacation rental houses for a month. Since then we've been in various stages of remodel purgatory. Meanwhile, DS is 9 months old, crawling and seriously considering walking, so there's babyproofing and general chasing after him to do. It's been a very busy time!
Since last summer we've read the entire Little House series of books to DD (4.5 years old), who loved them. (Among other things, they have provided opportunities for lots of discussion and learning about Native Americans and about how beliefs about disciplining children have changed!) DH and I went on to read some of Laura Ingalls Wilder's other works, including a collection of her newspaper pieces called Little House in the Ozarks. Wilder wrote from the standpoint of a successful farm wife in Missouri, ruminating on issues of importance to her and giving advice to those who might want it. A question she asked in one article was, why shouldn't a family have a motto, as many other purposeful organizations do? She gave "Always prepared" as one possible example.
I got to thinking about it. It was a good time to be considering this, since I was somewhat discontented with our intrafamily dynamics and looking for ways toward more harmony and less strife. It was clear we needed more kindness and cooperation, running in all directions. DD, as a new big sister and an almost-5-year-old, is getting a little obstreperous sometimes, but I don't have to engage in much introspection to see that much of her unkind or uncooperative behavior is learned from yours truly. Ouch. Okay, there's some room to grow there.
I let the idea sit for a couple of days and added learning as another important family value: We parents have a lot to teach our kids, yes, but our interactions with them can be greatly enriched by a measure of curiosity on our part about who they are as people, and what they need from us in a given moment, week, or month. Also, lifelong learning is something I enjoy, benefit from, and want to encourage in my kids.
So, "Kindness, Learning, Cooperation." I decided it needed a bit more of an alliterative ring to it, so it became, "Kindness, Curiosity, Cooperation." I shared it with DH, who liked it. I started talking with DD about it, and it's been fruitful.
Focusing on a value of cooperation has encouraged me to talk about our activities in terms of common goals. So we're not hurrying to get ready for preschool just because Mama is a chronically punctual tyrant; we're doing it because she and I both, for our own reasons, want her to get to preschool on time. Any time I think we have a shared goal, but she's dragging her feet about it, I'll take a couple of deep breaths and say something like, "My goal right now is for you to eat enough food that you won't be hungry during the night, and do it soon enough that you can go to bed soon and not be tired in the morning. And I'd like the food you eat to be healthy food so you can stay well and grow strong. That's what I'm trying to do. What's your goal right now? Do we have the same goals?" This has been much more effective at strife-reduction than just haranguing her some more!
Focusing on kindness has helped keep me honest about my behavior toward others, especially my family. Isn't it sometimes easier, perhaps especially for those of us raised in the middle class, to be kinder to strangers or acquaintances than to those we hold dearest? I mean, there's nothing wrong with kindness to strangers, but why do we so often show our worst faces to our families? Perhaps it's because we feel safe with them, and know on some level that they will not abandon us for having a bad day. But I have to remember -- kids are learning all the time. What am I teaching with my behavior right now?
Focusing on curiosity is totally for my own benefit right now. DD is naturally curious -- all I have to do is listen to her questions and try not to brush them off. But I need the discipline of asking myself, and asking her, about what's going on for her. She can't always tell me, especially if she's in the middle of an emotional upset. But I think it helps both of us to hear me ask.
We have family-motto checkups. Sometimes I'll ask on a ride somewhere in the car, "How do you think we're doing with kindness and cooperation lately?" She usually focuses on her own behavior first: "Well, I cooperated pretty well this morning. And last night I watched the baby for you while you cooked dinner." I love giving her a chance to notice what she's doing well. Then I'll ask, "How do you think I'm doing?" A recent answer: "Pretty good. I think you only yelled at me once today."
Ouch. Okay, still room to grow there.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Friday, August 22, 2008
Perfectionism, Pragmatism, and... Pentathlon
I've been watching the Olympics. A lot. At first I mostly watched gymnastics. But after a while, it got annoying how much the judges were essentially looking for sameness -- for perfection. It's a sport of deductions, and no one measures up to that perfect 10 anymore. Does this strike anyone else as an exercise in frustration?
So then I started watching more track and field events. There, no one cares much what your form is like, only how fast, how high, how far you go. And man, some of those folks can go fast! Usain Bolt is amazing. I liked how he didn't seem to care about the few more hundredths of a second he could have shaved off his time in the 100 meters -- he just wanted to celebrate! I love watching high jumpers, pole vaulters, you name it.
But a few days ago, my Olympics viewing took a whole new turn when I watched the equestrian portion of the men's modern pentathlon. There had been a torrential rain, and the arena was in terrible shape. This being modern pentathlon, the riders and horses only had about 20 minutes to get acquainted with each other before their attempts at the 12-jump course. (Modern pentathlon, I'm told, is based on 19th-century military experience, where an officer trapped behind enemy lines would not have had the luxury of riding a horse he'd trained with for years.) One rider after another racked up penalties for the horses refusing to jump the gates at all. Several were thrown from their horses. And what did they do? Cry? Jump up and down? Kick the judges? Nope. Mostly they sauntered over to wherever their alarmed horses had ended up, remounted, and went about their muddy business. Sure, a few seemed frustrated, but by and large they they took it pretty well. One rider, after giving up and taking the maximum penalty because his round was already so bad -- and, I suspect, because he wanted to conserve energy and unbroken bones for the run afterward -- grinned and patted the horse's neck repeatedly as he returned to the paddock.
I just have to love these guys. Can you imagine, being good enough to get to the Olympics in your sport and still having an event where getting thrown off your horse in front of millions of viewers is a realistic likelihood? Gymnasts and track athletes do risky things and sometimes have embarrassing falls or get hurt, but those horses seem like a far more potent wild card.
So I got to thinking about the parallels between Olympic sports and life skills like getting the house ready to have friends over for dinner. Can you picture these elite athletes as hosts?
There's Gillian Gymnast, cleaning her house with perfect form and grace, nary a hair out of place nor a splatter on her clothes, using exactly the right tool for each task and getting the house white-glove clean. She cleans precisely as her mother taught her, right down the type of cloth she uses for polishing the door knocker, and her roast chicken is exactly the same (and very good) every time.
In the next house is Tillie Track Star. Unconcerned with her own looks while cleaning or the exact design of her tools, she concentrates on efficiency, getting the house company-ready in minimum time so she can knit, get dressed, and try a new recipe for dinner. Sure, there are a few dust bunnies left hidden under the couch, only the high-traffic areas got vacuumed this time, and the spice rack isn't in alphabetical order, but who cares! Bottom line: The house looks great with minimum stress.
And around the corner, we find Petunia Pentathlete. She cleans by the seat of her pants, using whatever tool or cleaning product is available to do the job. As she wipes the bathroom sink, she is suddenly interrupted by sewage erupting from the bathtub drain. Petunia chuckles, takes a photo to show her friends later, checks an online reference to help decide whether to call the plumber, tackle the problem herself, or hang an "out of order" sign on the door, and then moves on with her afternoon. Maybe the whole house didn't get clean this week, but she did her best and didn't stress out, and still enjoyed the friends who came for dinner -- take-out this time, for goodness' sake!
May your days be as relaxed as Tillie's, but when the wheels come off, may you have the grace under fire of Petunia. Happy housekeeping!
So then I started watching more track and field events. There, no one cares much what your form is like, only how fast, how high, how far you go. And man, some of those folks can go fast! Usain Bolt is amazing. I liked how he didn't seem to care about the few more hundredths of a second he could have shaved off his time in the 100 meters -- he just wanted to celebrate! I love watching high jumpers, pole vaulters, you name it.
But a few days ago, my Olympics viewing took a whole new turn when I watched the equestrian portion of the men's modern pentathlon. There had been a torrential rain, and the arena was in terrible shape. This being modern pentathlon, the riders and horses only had about 20 minutes to get acquainted with each other before their attempts at the 12-jump course. (Modern pentathlon, I'm told, is based on 19th-century military experience, where an officer trapped behind enemy lines would not have had the luxury of riding a horse he'd trained with for years.) One rider after another racked up penalties for the horses refusing to jump the gates at all. Several were thrown from their horses. And what did they do? Cry? Jump up and down? Kick the judges? Nope. Mostly they sauntered over to wherever their alarmed horses had ended up, remounted, and went about their muddy business. Sure, a few seemed frustrated, but by and large they they took it pretty well. One rider, after giving up and taking the maximum penalty because his round was already so bad -- and, I suspect, because he wanted to conserve energy and unbroken bones for the run afterward -- grinned and patted the horse's neck repeatedly as he returned to the paddock.
I just have to love these guys. Can you imagine, being good enough to get to the Olympics in your sport and still having an event where getting thrown off your horse in front of millions of viewers is a realistic likelihood? Gymnasts and track athletes do risky things and sometimes have embarrassing falls or get hurt, but those horses seem like a far more potent wild card.
So I got to thinking about the parallels between Olympic sports and life skills like getting the house ready to have friends over for dinner. Can you picture these elite athletes as hosts?
There's Gillian Gymnast, cleaning her house with perfect form and grace, nary a hair out of place nor a splatter on her clothes, using exactly the right tool for each task and getting the house white-glove clean. She cleans precisely as her mother taught her, right down the type of cloth she uses for polishing the door knocker, and her roast chicken is exactly the same (and very good) every time.
In the next house is Tillie Track Star. Unconcerned with her own looks while cleaning or the exact design of her tools, she concentrates on efficiency, getting the house company-ready in minimum time so she can knit, get dressed, and try a new recipe for dinner. Sure, there are a few dust bunnies left hidden under the couch, only the high-traffic areas got vacuumed this time, and the spice rack isn't in alphabetical order, but who cares! Bottom line: The house looks great with minimum stress.
And around the corner, we find Petunia Pentathlete. She cleans by the seat of her pants, using whatever tool or cleaning product is available to do the job. As she wipes the bathroom sink, she is suddenly interrupted by sewage erupting from the bathtub drain. Petunia chuckles, takes a photo to show her friends later, checks an online reference to help decide whether to call the plumber, tackle the problem herself, or hang an "out of order" sign on the door, and then moves on with her afternoon. Maybe the whole house didn't get clean this week, but she did her best and didn't stress out, and still enjoyed the friends who came for dinner -- take-out this time, for goodness' sake!
May your days be as relaxed as Tillie's, but when the wheels come off, may you have the grace under fire of Petunia. Happy housekeeping!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
A Celebration of Omnivory
This week DS turned four months old, which is when most kids get over the food sensitivities that contribute to colic. My DS was sensitive to dairy and soy in my diet, so I cut them out when he was a few weeks old. I also never reintroduced chocolate or citrus after starting my elimination diet.
But this week, I brought them all back, and he's doing great! Yippeee! I got back chocolate, orange juice, ruby grapefruit, Mexican food, Indian food, goat cheese, soy milk (I make my own at home -- soymilk maker, anyone? -- and use the bean pulp to make awesome, fluffy homemade bread)... so many things! I'm loving it. I get to be an omnivore again. (Okay, still not eating beef, hydrogenated oils, or most fish, but those were already off the menu for their own reasons.)
The funny thing is, I wasn't missing this stuff that much for its own sake. It's actually possible for me to live happily without cheese! Who knew?! The hard part was that anytime I went out to eat or ate food provided by someone else (potlucks, parties, etc.), I had to grill them about the ingredients. Do you know how hard it is to get restaurant food without dairy or soy? Oy vay! So, socially speaking, my life just got a lot easier. And less expensive, since I can stop buying packaged rice milk and bread.
Also, I can go back to having more vegetarian meals, now that dairy and soy protein sources are both available to me. Legumes would normally have been a fallback for me, but unfortunately, the food components that make most people gassy also get into breast milk, so DS suffered when my bean intake became significant.
Now that I've made my first post-colic batch of soy milk, maybe I'll continue the celebration by learning to make my own cheese.
Knitting? Spinning? Mostly casualties of the Olympics, which I'm watching in bits and pieces online. Though now that my giant-size DS has outgrown his infant car seat (You know, the one that's supposed to be good until they're 6 months old? And he's 4 months?), which we could bring into the house if he fell asleep in the car, I'm carrying my sock knitting in the car for those times when he falls asleep and I have time to just park in the shade and knit. Unfortunately, when I finished my first sock, I tried to graft off K2, P2 rib from memory instead of looking it up. Now I'll have to take it out and do it over, 'cause that sock is not stretchy enough to make it over my heel. Feh. But you know, making my own cheese would totally make up for it. :)
But this week, I brought them all back, and he's doing great! Yippeee! I got back chocolate, orange juice, ruby grapefruit, Mexican food, Indian food, goat cheese, soy milk (I make my own at home -- soymilk maker, anyone? -- and use the bean pulp to make awesome, fluffy homemade bread)... so many things! I'm loving it. I get to be an omnivore again. (Okay, still not eating beef, hydrogenated oils, or most fish, but those were already off the menu for their own reasons.)
The funny thing is, I wasn't missing this stuff that much for its own sake. It's actually possible for me to live happily without cheese! Who knew?! The hard part was that anytime I went out to eat or ate food provided by someone else (potlucks, parties, etc.), I had to grill them about the ingredients. Do you know how hard it is to get restaurant food without dairy or soy? Oy vay! So, socially speaking, my life just got a lot easier. And less expensive, since I can stop buying packaged rice milk and bread.
Also, I can go back to having more vegetarian meals, now that dairy and soy protein sources are both available to me. Legumes would normally have been a fallback for me, but unfortunately, the food components that make most people gassy also get into breast milk, so DS suffered when my bean intake became significant.
Now that I've made my first post-colic batch of soy milk, maybe I'll continue the celebration by learning to make my own cheese.
Knitting? Spinning? Mostly casualties of the Olympics, which I'm watching in bits and pieces online. Though now that my giant-size DS has outgrown his infant car seat (You know, the one that's supposed to be good until they're 6 months old? And he's 4 months?), which we could bring into the house if he fell asleep in the car, I'm carrying my sock knitting in the car for those times when he falls asleep and I have time to just park in the shade and knit. Unfortunately, when I finished my first sock, I tried to graft off K2, P2 rib from memory instead of looking it up. Now I'll have to take it out and do it over, 'cause that sock is not stretchy enough to make it over my heel. Feh. But you know, making my own cheese would totally make up for it. :)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Selling My House
My house has now been officially on the market for almost two weeks. No offers yet, though a few people seem pretty seriously interested. The process of getting it ready for showing was truly arduous, especially for someone with my history. There was one room in the house that had never been fully unpacked and set up for use. It was half-full of boxes, files, disassembled furniture, and spinning and knitting supplies. D'you think it's telling that that room is the only room in the house where I have some personal space all my own?? Oy, I loathe the last stages of unpacking. All those decisions -- Do I keep this? Where does it go? And the self-recriminations -- Aargh, I already bought a replacement for this because I couldn't find it! How could I leave this in a box for a whole year? Why do I hang onto so much junk? And so on. Totally paralyzing.
I had to decide, over and over again, not to pay attention to those awful voices in my head. With a lot of help and moral support from my cousin, who is working this summer as my babysitter/organizational assistant, I slogged through the hardest stuff, pitching the junk, filing the files, packing up the craft supplies I won't be able to use before we move. Then in a couple of days on my own, I got through the rest. The room -- a den with my desk in a little nook -- is beautiful, peaceful, CLEAN. And so is the rest of the house.
Getting ready for showing was sort of like a Manhattan project. A Herculean effort to get the house ready to be that special fiction that house-hunters want to see: spacious, clean, uncluttered, and depersonalized, to allow maximum imagination of what their stuff would look like here, and how gracious their life could be in such a beautiful, sparsely furnished home. When I get moved to the new house in a month or two, I think I want to put the same level of energy into getting the house set up for the life we want there. No more of this not finishing unpacking until it's time to pack for the next move stuff. I'm hoping this next house will be a long-time landing place for us. I want every room to be usable. Know what I mean? My cousin says she LOVES unpacking. I hope she has some time on her hands!
Meanwhile, back at the current house, we get calls for showings every few days, often on short notice. That means we pretty much have to keep the place immaculate all the time, which is an extremely foreign way for me to live. Relatively uncluttered, functional, comfortable -- yes, I strive for that and often achieve it. Immaculate and ultra-pared-down? Sorry, that girl doesn't live here.
But then this voice pipes up. She's been getting louder over the two weeks or so of living in a semi-staged house. "Wouldn't it be easier to just clean up the lunch dishes now, while they're fresh, instead of checking email or paying the bills first? Wouldn't it be nice to just relax tonight and not worry about doing cleanup chores after the kids are in bed? C'mon, darlin', just do it now. You won't be sorry." And this voice? It comes from inside my head. I can't blame my Mom, who's hundreds of miles away, or even DH, who's on a business trip again. Sure, I could have internalized my Mom's urgings, but it doesn't sound like her. This is me, folks. Or maybe I'm being haunted by FlyLady.
Do I always listen? Nope. I stopped writing in the middle of that last paragraph to do the last of dinner cleanup, at 9:30 p.m. That gentle urging proved irresistible, albeit belatedly. But you know, in the old days, I'd put off the dinner cleanup and the litter boxes until after 10:30, when I should really be getting to bed -- or hours later on a bad night. I guess the triple pressures of DH being gone, the house being for sale, and the housekeepers we tried to hire for the for-sale period not returning our calls, are doing some good. I can't claim I'm doing all this great cleaning-as-I-go alone: DH and my cousin have also put in a lot of work. But the good news, my friends, is that I am doing it at all.
I had to decide, over and over again, not to pay attention to those awful voices in my head. With a lot of help and moral support from my cousin, who is working this summer as my babysitter/organizational assistant, I slogged through the hardest stuff, pitching the junk, filing the files, packing up the craft supplies I won't be able to use before we move. Then in a couple of days on my own, I got through the rest. The room -- a den with my desk in a little nook -- is beautiful, peaceful, CLEAN. And so is the rest of the house.
Getting ready for showing was sort of like a Manhattan project. A Herculean effort to get the house ready to be that special fiction that house-hunters want to see: spacious, clean, uncluttered, and depersonalized, to allow maximum imagination of what their stuff would look like here, and how gracious their life could be in such a beautiful, sparsely furnished home. When I get moved to the new house in a month or two, I think I want to put the same level of energy into getting the house set up for the life we want there. No more of this not finishing unpacking until it's time to pack for the next move stuff. I'm hoping this next house will be a long-time landing place for us. I want every room to be usable. Know what I mean? My cousin says she LOVES unpacking. I hope she has some time on her hands!
Meanwhile, back at the current house, we get calls for showings every few days, often on short notice. That means we pretty much have to keep the place immaculate all the time, which is an extremely foreign way for me to live. Relatively uncluttered, functional, comfortable -- yes, I strive for that and often achieve it. Immaculate and ultra-pared-down? Sorry, that girl doesn't live here.
But then this voice pipes up. She's been getting louder over the two weeks or so of living in a semi-staged house. "Wouldn't it be easier to just clean up the lunch dishes now, while they're fresh, instead of checking email or paying the bills first? Wouldn't it be nice to just relax tonight and not worry about doing cleanup chores after the kids are in bed? C'mon, darlin', just do it now. You won't be sorry." And this voice? It comes from inside my head. I can't blame my Mom, who's hundreds of miles away, or even DH, who's on a business trip again. Sure, I could have internalized my Mom's urgings, but it doesn't sound like her. This is me, folks. Or maybe I'm being haunted by FlyLady.
Do I always listen? Nope. I stopped writing in the middle of that last paragraph to do the last of dinner cleanup, at 9:30 p.m. That gentle urging proved irresistible, albeit belatedly. But you know, in the old days, I'd put off the dinner cleanup and the litter boxes until after 10:30, when I should really be getting to bed -- or hours later on a bad night. I guess the triple pressures of DH being gone, the house being for sale, and the housekeepers we tried to hire for the for-sale period not returning our calls, are doing some good. I can't claim I'm doing all this great cleaning-as-I-go alone: DH and my cousin have also put in a lot of work. But the good news, my friends, is that I am doing it at all.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Creative Block
I'm in one of those periods where I can't think of anything interesting to write about, and I'm not even in the mood for knitting or spinning much. I'm doing okay with my house and my kids. Maybe it's that I've been rereading the fifth Harry Potter book. Rereading novels doesn't do much for my creative side. But I'm done with the book now, so it's time to jump-start the writing thing again.
So here's a meme. It came to me from sockpr0n, who I noticed on Ravelry because of her GORGEOUS handspun socks. I wanna do that someday.
So here's a meme. It came to me from sockpr0n, who I noticed on Ravelry because of her GORGEOUS handspun socks. I wanna do that someday.
- What was I doing 10 years ago? In 1998, I was single, but had begun searching in earnest for a mate. (I found him in 1999.) I spent the first half of 1998 working as a science writer and editor at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the second half at grad school, in the Master's and Credential in Science and Math Education program at UC Berkeley. I ended up finishing the credential but never finishing my master's project.
- What are 5 things on my to-do list for today? Get my house listed for sale (already closed on the new one, but tenants are there through July); do bedtime for both my kids (DH was out playing competitive badminton this evening); get a neighbor to move the camper parked in front of my house before any potential buyers come looking; do the grocery shopping with my 2.5-month-old son in the front baby carrier; look through kitchen magazines and books for inspiration for remodeling the kitchen in the new house.
- Snacks I enjoy? Date/roasted almond/coconut bonbons my postpartum doula taught me how to make; chips and salsa (SOO glad DS isn't sensitive to corn in my diet, as DD was in her colicky days); hummus and pita/veggies/chips; baked sweet potato "fries," popcorn popped with oil and sugar to make a light, sweet coating...
- Things I would do if I were a billionaire? Go big into microlending as a way to address poverty in developing countries and elsewhere; endow school music, art, and experiential science programs; let DH quit his programming job and do photography, electronic music, open-source software and woodworking in between helping me with the above; start a center where people could learn pre-industrial crafts and survival skills like sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, gardening, food preservation, woodworking with hand tools, metalsmithing, etc.
- Places I have lived? In order: Dallas, TX; Colorado Springs, CO; Walnut Creek, Oakland, Alameda, and Pleasant Hill, CA; Boulder, CO.
- Jobs I have had? High school physics and math teacher, science writer/editor at a national laboratory, middle school life science and pre-algebra teacher, full-time mom.
- People I want to know more about? Some of my fellow spinners -- do we really have the values and interests in common that I project? My sister -- she's built quite a life, and sometimes I think I don't know her all that well.
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