Smarts
Two topics for this bright and sunny Sunday afternoon (yes, there’s snow, but the sun is also here declaring itself).
First topic: naps! Saturday’s Globe and Mail newspaper had a cheery brief on the benefits of napping. Studies show that a 45-minute nap improves both cardiovascular health and mental agility. Agility is not quite the word I’m looking for, but you know what I mean. Nap yourself to intelligence! Should have napped longer today, I guess.
I am napping regularly these days. It is part of my early rising routine. Every day that involves getting up early, includes time for a nap. I nap up to an hour, but rarely longer, and often shorter. Napping has all kind of negative associations, and I had to overcome those by being really really super-tired in order to test out the benefits. No, it isn’t lazy. And no, it’s not a waste of time. On writing days, I’ve gotten in the habit of napping as soon as the kids are out of the house. Within an hour, I’m up and productively at my desk. Without the nap, I’d be up and unproductively at my desk. (I’ve tested both methods). I love rising early. I’m up to four early mornings a week, at least for now, and I love the quiet, the energy, seeing the morning light arrive, and starting my day with focus. I’ve fed myself–metaphorically, anyway–before the demands of the day kick in. It’s a very different way to start the day. Though I look forward to Thursday mornings, when Kevin gets up early instead, that extra hour and a half of sleep is instantly erased by the immediacy of what the day wants from me; often, I’m not even out of bed before the demands arrive, in the form of children needing things. And that’s what I’m here for! But it’s so much easier and more pleasant to give, when one has already received.
Second topic: poetry club! Just a quick summing up of last night’s poetry club, for which we read Billy Collins’ Sailing Alone Around the Room. Kevin read the book too, as I was hosting and he was looking forward to participating–and seeing what the club was all about. I can highly recommend the Montforte Dairy’s Elsie goat cheese pesto spread (which I got from Bailey’s). And I can fairly highly recommend the poems too, though I went to bed wondering … are they too accessible? Is that a fault, in poetry? Collins is a funny funny poet, but it can feel at times that a deeper moment is being sacrificed to a good punchline. Still, there were poems that stabbed into me with a shock of emotion. We talked a fair bit about why we were drawn to particular poems–and because most of us had different “favourites,” we asked how poems could be judged objectively. How do you know that the poem is “good”?
I really enjoyed the many poems about writing. His world felt very domestic and contained, to me, and it revolved around quiet interior days of writing and work, and walking around the house, thinking about writing. What I enjoyed most about these poems was their lack of angst or questioning. He writes with full acceptance that he is a writer. There is no hint of self-justification, nor does he question his own abilities, or the worth of his work, he’s just being who he is. Very refreshing. I would like to arrive there. Certainly, I’m closer than I was a few years ago; even, perhaps, a year ago.
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Speaking of a year ago … Kevin keeps marvelling at how easily our family has accommodated my triathlon training schedule. It is fairly remarkable. This past week, for example, I spent 12.5 hours training. That’s 12.5 hours, out of the house, not looking after the kids. If you’re wondering how we manage it, I would say it’s been a long slow and steady change, adjusting everyone to me being out of the house more frequently–which was an adjustment to the way I thought about my role, too, as much as anything. When I started this blog, two and a half years ago, my youngest was four months old. I was breastfeeding constantly, and up often during the night. That is no longer my reality, with my baby on the cusp of turning three. As he’s grown, and I have said goodbye to pregnancy and lactation, I’ve also grown accustomed to expressing myself as someone other than “mom.” I leave the house as often as four or five evenings a week–only for a couple of hours at a time, mind you–but that’s a massive change from my early years of motherhood, oh, eight or so years, when leaving the house by myself in the evening was an enormous production, and happened so rarely it might not have been more than once a month. And sometimes less.
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Apple-Apple’s supper menu for tonight (Sunday supper, cooking with kids): baked potatoes with cheese sauce, broccoli and cauliflower on the side, and scones and hot chocolate for dessert. I can smell it cooking as I type.
Time Management
I’m taking way less photos: post-365 project, I have to remind myself to pick up the camera. In one sense, I think it’s a good thing. Rather than recording happy moments, I’m simply living them. But in another sense, I want those moments recorded … or at least a few of them.
I’ve been writing less here, and more on the sister site that records my triathlon training. The time spent on that other blog is reflective of the time and energy that is going into the project; and is therefore also not going into other endeavors. I have to pick one project and stick with it, like I did with the 365; and am now doing with the triathlon. There isn’t time for more than one obsessive side-pursuit. But I am continuing to write (fiction) during writing days, and the parenting is omnipresent. As is the cooking. If I’m having a day when it feels like nothing much is getting done, all I have to do is whip up a batch of something–yogurt, pickles, pitas, bread, granola bars, chicken stock–and suddenly the day is productive. That’s all it takes. A couple loaves of banana bread.
I want to describe our past Saturday, for the record. It was a scheduling marvel. And I will need to be as or more marvelous in the Saturdays to follow to continue pulling everything together.
7:30am: Everyone up. The good news is that 7:30 now qualifies as “sleeping in” for me, since I am up three mornings a week at 5:15 (and may add a fourth starting this week, if I can hack it).
8:30: I’m in running gear and off for my planned “long slow run” of the week, only my second, so it’s 12km. That takes me an hour and fifteen minutes. The kids play wii. I think Kevin gets them breakfast. Nothing fancy.
9:45: Apple-Apple leaves with a friend (yay for carpooling!) to go to her Singer’s Theatre rehearsal.
10: Fooey is picked up by a friend to play. I have time to shower and gulp something down, then head out in the truck with grocery bags to load up on the weekly essentials. Done. Turn on radio. Enjoy a few minutes en route to Singer’s Theatre.
11:30: Pick up Apple-Apple and friends and return them home, also picking up Fooey on the way back to our house.
Noon: unload groceries, eat, grab yoga gear.
12:30: Albus walks to friend’s house for playdate.
Same time: On way to yoga, I pick up a birthday gift for a party Fooey’s going to this afternoon.
1:00: Lying on back in hot yoga class. Ahhhh.
2:20: Home again, just missing handing off gift, as Fooey luckily scores a ride to the party with friend. This bums me out more than it should (the missed present-drop-off, I mean). My scheduling precision is off! By a hair! Kevin points out he can drop off gift at end of party, and in any case, Fooey has made a homemade card.
2:30: Rehydrate and snack. Start making giant pot of chicken stock to freeze for later. Start making yogurt. Kevin heads out with Apple-Apple for her 4:00 soccer practice, now apparently a regularly feature of our Saturday afternoons.
5:30: Kevin picks up Fooey and friend from birthday party.
6:00: Chicken stock stored in freezer, yogurt growing bacteria on counter, and children being fed warmed up “mashed potato soup” and bread.
6:30: My mom arrives to babysit. I apply eyeshadow. Rather too much. Wish I could take some off but there’s no time. Decide not to add a necklace to balance it out.
6:45: Kevin and I exit hurriedly, walk uptown, only slightly late for our dinner reservation.
7:00: Debating: should we order a bottle or wine or cocktails? Go with wine. Good choice.
10:30: Home in bed.
He got up the next morning for a 90-minute yoga class. I made waffles and bread and opted for the late afternoon yoga class.
It’s the busyness of all of our lives, and attempting to coordinate the variety of activities and socializing–including that of the parents–that makes my head whirl sometimes. I said to Kevin recently: Just when I think I’ve got this scheduling thing totally under control, a few more variables crop up and I have to take it to a whole different level. I expect to earn my elite gold star in scheduling shortly. After which, the demands will go up to platinum. Because we haven’t even begun to factor CJ’s interests and activities into our lives. He will have to wait til he’s at least five to get interests and activities.
And then someday, before I can blink, our kids will all move out, and I’ll be left with a set of superior organizational skills and a need to apply them somewhere. Look out world.
Book Review by Albus
Max Finder Mystery: Collected Casebook, volume 5, by Craig Battle and Ramon Perez, published by Owlkids.
It’s a bunch of different comics, and they’re mysteries. Some of the clues are hidden inside pictures–they’re not always words. I like how the artist draws the characters. I found out about Max Finder in Owl magazine. I like mysteries because they’re fun to try and figure out who did it. I like comics because it tells a story with pictures.
I also liked how you could find clues on the way while you were reading it, as if you were the detective. Then you could find out if you were right or wrong at the very end of the mystery.
I think it’s made for 7-13 year olds. It’s made for multi-gender (boys and girls). This book is cool.
by Albus, age 9
Keepers
Some food stores well in our cold cellar. Some food does not. The sweet keeper squash is still going strong, but all other squashes are turning, uh, squishy. Squishes. We’ve kept them past their prime. Note to self: buy in bulk early in the season, eat lots, and by January at the very latest, shred and freeze the rest. Late February is too late. Although also note: some slightly squishy squash may be peeled and turned into soup.
Excellent keepers: garlic, stored in brown paper bags (I love my Ontario garlic! If you think you know garlic, and you’ve only ever met grocery store Chinese-grown garlic, I would like to introduce you to a whole different vegetable [is it a vegetable?]); potatoes, as long as you root through the big bag and compost any soft specimens–they keep best stored in smaller amounts in brown paper bags; beets, just like potatoes, only everyone gets much more tired of them, and kind of wishes they wouldn’t keep so well (though they do make good pickles).
Good keepers: apples. Our cold cellar can’t preserve them as well as Martin’s, our local apple farm, but we buy half a bushel or more at a time, and, stored in our cold cellar, they stay crispy ’til eaten. But we can go through half a bushel in two weeks, so it’s hard to put a fine end date on their cold cellar lives.
Decent keepers: yams, turnips, green cabbage, napa cabbage, pears. Lower your expectations. Don’t leave them to linger all winter long. Eat within the month (even sooner for the napa). We store them loose on wire shelves, with the exception of the pears, which are stored, like the apples, in a handy bin. The pears must been eaten within two weeks, we’ve found, and they rot deceptively, from the inside out.
Not to be kept in the cold cellar: onions, which apparently have an ill effect on apples, so we store them in a dark cupboard in the kitchen; and carrots, which keep best in the refrigerator. It’s not practical to have more than 10 lbs in the bottom drawer of the fridge, but luckily, through Bailey’s Local Foods, I can buy a new 10 lb bag every month. And when that’s not enough, I can drive to Martin’s farm and buy more.
In the freezer, which I’m digging into with ever more gratitude for last summer’s kept harvest, I wish there were more: corn and green beans. And less peas and beet greens. I am absolutely thrilled with the amount of plums and apricots, and the happy surprise of blueberries, (enough to get us through til April or May). But the frozen applesauce is wasted space. Note to self: can the stuff! My canned pearsauce has lasted til now (last jar opened last night). My tomatoes are hanging in there, but with an upswing in soup and stew production, the jolly red jars are beginning to dwindle. I must do a head count. I want them to last through May, and it’s time to start rationing. The frozen roasted red peppers continue to delight. And finally, I am happy with my frozen herbs, but could have frozen far more cilantro and basil, the latter particularly, because there is nothing like a heaping bowl of pasta with pesto to make a winter’s supper sing. But I would like to critique my own freezing method–packing fresh leaves into ice cube trays and covering with water to freeze, then removing to store in bags. Note to self: less water, more leaves.
More Sayings
CJ’s newest excuse, when he doesn’t want to do something: “I too weak to do it, Mama! I too weak!” This applies to everything from picking up a game thrown in a fit a of pique, to walking instead of strollering, to climbing into a chair when he’d prefer to be helped. So far, I must say, it’s totally working. Who could resist helping a weak two-year-old?
CJ is also throwing more fits than he used to, a surprisingly endearing phenomenon. His feelings are much more sensitive than they once were. Yesterday, at supper, he crawled off his chair and stomped to the kitchen and declared: “I not eating supper ANYMORE!” No one knew what had happened, but he finally told us: Albus had been “interrupting!” With an apology from Albus, he climbed back into his chair and joined us again, entirely cheerful. His declarations of refusal are many, and are set off usually by hurt feelings, by someone telling him he’s doing something the wrong way, or by being ignored or not included, or not included in the way that he wishes: “I not eating cookies ANYMORE! I not be your son ANYMORE! You not be my mommy ANYMORE! He not be my sister ANYMORE!” etc. Maybe it’s because he’s my last, but man, I just love this stuff. It kills me.
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Our house is so exquisitely trashed that I don’t have the heart to tackle the mess all at once. So today I decided to do one room at a time. I started with the office/playroom. Phew. One done. Next up: the dining-room, so we can eat supper together. AppleApple is going to cook with Kevin and they plan to make vegetarian lasagna with garlic bread.