Category: Parenting
Sunday, Mar 17, 2013 | Adventure, Birth, Blogging, Confessions, Parenting, Publishing, Reading, School, Work, Writing |
Dear readers,
Shortest break ever, huh.
A few things. If you are a blog subscriber, please don’t unsubscribe. I will continue to post updates from time to time. Like now.
I find myself throwing around two vastly different ideas on how to continue blogging, with the intention of keeping it a healthy outlet and connector, rather than a time-consuming distraction or vanity-feeding outreach. My first idea is to become a weekend poster, or “slacker blogger” as suggested by a friend. As an all-in personality, this suggestion sounds tough, but just might work. I’ve got the notion that I would like to pour my daily blogging energies into the writing of a non-fiction book, so maintaining an irregular, special occasion, weekend blog would fit well with that. My second idea is to form a paid subscriber base that would make blogging a job rather than a hobby. I throw that idea out there, while acknowledging that it’s problematic from a number of angles. One is that I have serious inborn qualms about mixing creative endeavours with monetary ones. Two is that I may not have the time to give paying subscribers what they’re paying for, and that would be stressful.
So many other things to write about!
* March break: over and done, and after a long week home alone with the children I am inspired to find alternative plans for our summer holidays. My half-baked plan to let the kids look after themselves while I put ear plugs in and worked was a total fail. What was I thinking??
* Making tea: I read a little article in Geez magazine on making your own infusions/tea by using ingredients like dried orange peel, ginger root, cinnamon stick, cloves, etc. So I’m drying the peel from the orange my son ate this morning.
* Ingratitude is on my mind. How to help my children express and feel gratitude for the many offerings they receive, rather than sulking or complaining about the things they wish they’d received instead? Hm.
* After my last post, I was grateful to hear from readers who hadn’t commented before. The one-sided nature of blogging can feel lopsided and strangely weighted, like I’m writing to a mirror-self, and that sometimes bothers me. I appreciate when people comment, or tell me in person that they’ve related to something I’ve written. It makes writing feel like less of an isolating, interior occupation — which writing so often does. I would miss that about blogging. I think I would miss it too much to stop altogether. That is my weekend reflection. What other medium allows me to connect, in a genuine and honest and real and perhaps most importantly immediate way, with so many people all at once?
So, thanks for reading. Til next time. xo, Carrie
P.S. In response to my vague idea about blogging for subscribers (above), a reader emailed to say: “It occurs to me that it might be possible to think about a blog not on a subscriber model (which might pressurize a daily post), but on a supporter model, which could be more fluid.” She also sent a link to this TED talk by Amanda Palmer on “The art of asking.” Here’s the link. Here’s a taste: “For most of human history, musicians, artists, they’ve been part of the community, connectors and openers, not untouchable stars. Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance, but the internet … is taking us back. It’s about a few people loving you up close and about those people being enough.”
Wow. Thanks.
Wednesday, Mar 13, 2013 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Family, Feminism, Kids, Money, Mothering, Parenting, Politics, Running, Sick, Work, Writing |
Yesterday afternoon, I spent some time helping two little guys launch a squeaking balloon down the staircase, with the happy effect that it squealed overhead and repeatedly smacked its little balloon head against the wall or ceiling before deflating and twisting earthward.
It would be pleasant to turn this into a metaphor, but I’m struggling.
There, no metaphor needed. I’m struggling. That’s it, plain and simple. I hesitate to spit it into word form, especially on a public forum, but there it is. A blog is a troublesome creation: it’s very much in the moment, and therefore can magnify the smallest ups and downs in a person’s life, and this here is a down. Right now I’m happy when I’m running, and that’s about it. But get that right now really is right now.
Suffice it to say that I’m tired after a second night up with a sick child. I’m irritable after another day home with my children, who are on holiday, but who can’t leave the house or have play dates due to the aforementioned sickness. It occurred to me today that the only thing a person can really accomplish while home with four children is cooking and housework — plus the vacuuming covered the noise of the periodic tantrums and steady stream of complaints. So the house is pretty clean. Which is something. But it’s not enough.
I would like to reflect on my impatient response to International Women’s Day, a day I usually respond to with honour and interest, solemnity, even pride. But this year, on this International Women’s day, all that welled in me was intense frustration. And I think my response is the key to unlocking exactly where I’m at right now, and why I’m struggling.
My expectations do not seem to be in line with reality.
I expect that girls and women will be treated as individuals, with the same opportunities as boys and men to pursue lives that are interesting and fulfilling. Every time I read another story about a horror perpetrated on a woman — because she’s a woman — my response is THIS CANNOT BE! Every time I read another statistic coldly demonstrating women’s under-representation in, well, you-name-it, most anything that has to do with power or cultural critique or leadership my response is HOW CAN THIS STILL BE? Every time I read some trumped up story on “The Mommy Wars,” or “Stay-at-Home Mothers v. Working Mothers,” or even hear myself referred to as “a full-time mother,” (what, exactly, is a part-time mother?), I want to shrug it off as mere noise, but instead I feel something akin to disbelief: WHY?
A few more WHYs.
WHY would any family rationally choose to have more than one or two children, understanding that childcare, particularly during the early years, will either cost one parent his or her career, or two working parents the better part of a decent salary? Let’s ask the politicians who a) have no interest in funding childcare and b) want Canadian families to produce more children FOR THE ECONOMY. (Surprise! They tend to be the same ones.)
WHY is Canada’s major news magazine running a photo, this week, of a woman shaving her face under the headline “Man Up,” suggesting that women should be more like men if they want to succeed in the workplace? WHY are we always being told to be someone we’re not? Which reminds me: WHY is success in the workplace our main measure of success? Further to that, WHY are good and moral choices so often couched in economic terms, as if that’s the only language that matters, the only real currency? I heard a news report, happened to be on International Women’s Day, in which an economist (who was a woman) explained that educating girls and women is a sure-fire way to increase the economic well-being of communities and nations. So let’s do it, people. Let’s do it FOR THE ECONOMY.
Friday, Mar 8, 2013 | Feminism, Kids, Mothering, Parenting, Play, Politics, Work |
It’s International Women’s Day. As a long-term forever feminist, I appreciate there being a day to shine light on the distressing and mind-boggling inequities suffered by girls and women world-wide. But I noticed a curious tone to some of the posts coming through on my Facebook feed on the subject: irony, impatience, humor mingled with rage. Oh, a whole day for women? How can we thank you enough? (As an aside, I was also intrigued by a post on a cookbook devoted to vulva-shaped cakes.)
I don’t know if it’s something in the air, but I’m feeling a bit impatient too.
What’s so radical about the idea of men looking after their children with the same intensity and care and aptitude that women do? None of us know what the hell we’re doing when we start off parenting and I refuse to believe I’m somehow instinctively better at it than my husband. Just like I refuse to believe that I’m better at housework. Hey, we can all learn how to clean a toilet. Just like I refuse to believe that it might be damaging to claim for myself the words “competitive,” “driven,” “confident,” and “leader” (because it’s unwomanly? it wouldn’t look good? because I shouldn’t naturally feel or be those things?). Just like I refuse to believe that it might be damaging for my husband to claim for himself the words “nurturing,” “collaborative,” “gentle.” Those words aren’t in conflict with each other; we could both claim them all, and wouldn’t that be fabulous!
Finally, I’ve observed that neither my husband nor I is necessarily better at being the stay-at-home parent than the go-to-work parent. The stay-at-home parent is inevitably more harried and flustered and irritable by the end of the day when compared to the parent who has been out of the house. So it’s nice to mix it up and share. We’re all happier.
Our most contented days combine elements of just about everything. Alone time. Parenting time. Play time. Work time. A bit of cooking, but not all of it. A bit of dish washing, but not all of it. You know?
My greatest goal, in our family’s life, is to share everything and get along.
Maybe that’s what is grating on me when I think about the concept of International Women’s Day. A day where women are told we’re different. We’re singled out into a category that is, still, somehow, seen as inferior, or whose inferior status must be overcome. We’re a plight. We’re a cause. We’re not like men.
None of us should carry a heavier burden, in any one area, merely because she is female, or because he is male. Are we different? Sure, we’re different. But we’re not that damn different, people. We’re just not.
Monday, Feb 11, 2013 | Chores, Mothering, Parenting, Sleep, Soccer, Work |
Woke up yesterday to this: silvery wonderland, trees covered in what I remember being called hoar-frost. I walked the dogs, then came home for the camera. By noon, or sooner, the long white shards had melted off the branches.
*
I had the urge to slow down this weekend. It didn’t happen, but I wondered whether I might find a way to shift my habits and routines, even just a little bit, in order to allow myself to alight in the moment, and rest. I alight in many moments. It’s the rest part I can’t seem to locate. I parented alone all weekend and sprinted from task to task, from must-do to must-do. At one point yesterday, I realized that I was using precious adrenalin to whisk bread dough into greased pans before racing out the door to soccer — it struck me as oddly wrong. The slow preparation of bread, the two long rises, the “simplicity” and genuine goodness of homemade set against my relentless schedule — shoe-horned into my relentless schedule. What is the cost of operating at such high levels of intensity? Is it my health? I definitely feel like I’m aging more rapidly or visibly these days — rogue white hairs squiggling out of my scalp, facial wrinkles deepening.
I laid the bread into the pans and forced myself to breathe deeply.
But, oh, worth it. That’s why I can’t seem to stop. Homemade bread. And a really fun soccer game.
Last night, before bed, I applied a face-mask of yogurt and grains: maybe the sloughing of a little dead skin will help with the rapid/visible aging problem; maybe not. Still, I took the time.
Monday, Jan 21, 2013 | Baking, Kids, Parenting, Running, Soccer, Swimming, Weekend |
Day two of swim meet. Day two of early rising, despite it being the weekend. Day two of coffee cup, snow melting off boots in over-heated environment, crammed-together hard bench seating, trying to read for poetry book club (The Book of Marvels, by Lorna Crozier).
Day two of trying to get her attention, and waiting for her races.
Last race of day two. 50m freestyle. Lane 6.
She doesn’t love the sprints. She thinks she’s more a natural endurance swimmer. She’s behind at the turn.
But she powers home to win the heat in her best time yet: personal bests in every race this weekend. Swimming is all about personal bests. It’s set up like a race, yet according to my girl you can’t really see the other swimmers around you, and have little sense of where you are positioned. It’s not like running on a track where tactics come into play, along with strength and speed. You’re basically just going as hard as you can in your own lane. It’s a very individual sport.
I can’t say I’m a convert, exactly, after these past two days. It’s a lot of waiting for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. I can’t appreciate the technical abilities of the swimmers, having none of those abilities myself, and being unfamiliar with the sport. And I don’t really enjoy the rush of adrenalin that I get when I’m watching her race — it’s very intense, almost embarrassing. I care too much! I am seriously shaking immediately after her races. Do other parents respond like that?
cinnamon raisin bread
I came home and baked four loaves of regular bread, and four loaves of cinnamon raisin bread. We ate a loaf of fresh bread for supper last night with split pea soup. I baked the cinnamon raisin bread after supper — heavenly smells in the house, and everyone was excited to wake up and eat it for breakfast this morning.
*
I also played an indoor soccer game yesterday. But I did not go for a long run. I’m realizing that my weekends are very squeezed as it is … and maybe I’m just too tired by the weekend to add in that extra element. I try to make room for so many different activities, but there are limits, and I’d rather go with the flow and enjoy and appreciate all of the things I’m getting to do, rather than getting down on myself for those additional wish-list activities I just can’t seem to shoehorn in.
Thursday, Jan 3, 2013 | House, Organizing, Parenting, Work, Writing |
transforming my office
This is my birthday gift from my dad. It’s still a work in progress, as you can see, but already I sense how it will alter and expand my space in this lovely little room.
When I first moved into my office, just over a year ago, I loved the blankness of the space, the empty walls, the echoing newness. I wanted to spend time in the room before building anything permanent into it — to see where the light fell, to see what was really missing or necessary.
I set up my wheelie computer desk, which I’ve been writing on since grad school, c. 1997; my chair; a plastic office organizer with drawers, formerly Kevin’s; my great-aunt Alice’s tiny rocking chair (she was a tiny woman); and a cast-off cupboard with doors, inside which I hid my piles of paper. After we got dogs this summer, the dog beds somehow migrated here too. The dogs love the heated floor and finding retreat from the constant attention of the children. (The children know to knock.)
It didn’t take long, really, for the blankness to be replaced by clutter.
And darned if I could no longer blame the clutter on other people — for the first time since about 1999, I had a space that was all mine. Which meant the mess was all mine too. The room began to seem small. Piles of books teetered atop stacks of paper. Soccer cleats took up residence on a windowsill. Framed artwork was stacked in the corner, facing the wall. Behind the doors of the cast-off cupboard, items became so crowded and sprawled as to be basically unfindable.
I couldn’t afford built-in shelves and desk, but thought maybe I could put my GG finalist earnings ($1000) toward Ikea shelves and a desk. And then my dad got wind of my plan. Before he became a professor of Anabaptist history, he seriously considered apprenticing as a carpenter instead. He used to make our Christmas gifts out of wood when we were kids. Now he’s retired. He’s got a wood-working studio in his garage. So he volunteered to take on the job of Carrie’s office.
I’ve been working in here for the first few days of this new year, still using the old wheelie desk, c. 1997, but with the architecture of the shelves in front of me, giving my eye some relief from the blank wall. I’ve been writing steadily. For my birthday, I bought myself Scrivener — no longer a trial version. This promises to be a big book. I’m not sure how big, but it seems quite big already and it’s not done yet. Oh, and it’s a novel. I’ve also started believing my character is a real historical figure, which is weird. I’m making her up but I feel like she really lived.
I’m imagining a hibernating winter with these shelves warm with books and pictures, the dogs in their beds, the clutter temporarily wrangled and contained. I imagine a filled space, and the comfortable march of words. I’ll be writing.
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