My Lonely City

Well, I’ve got some herbs and bulbs in the ground, and … mixed success, so far. Everything seems to have survived the hailstorm we had day before yesterday – amazingly enough – but two of my roses, I think, have gone to the great garden in the sky (where they will be much better taken care of, no doubt). But the other three are stubbornly, if irregularly, leafing out just to prove they’re tougher than I thought.

Of course the wisteria is doing great; it had a great head start with the people who owned the house before us and was growing opposable thumbs by the time we moved in.

My herb pot is doing well, also (though the basil, the one I’m most excited about, looks unhappy). But the Italian parsley, the rosemary, and the dill are doing great.

The poor, abused lilacs at the end of the deck are even doing fine, tentatively putting out a bloom in the spirit of scientific investigation.

And of all the bulbs from last fall I guiltily planted a couple of weeks ago, one is actually growing! I think it’s one of the white tulips, but I’m not entirely sure. But hey, that’s part of the fun, right?

Last night I dreamed – wait, let me back up. Last year I was a counselor at a kids’ summer camp called Royal Family Kids’ Camp. Great experience. I don’t think I got around to telling you about it, but yeah. It was great. And I’m going to do it again this year.

So last night, for whatever reason – probably because I stayed up until 5:00 finishing a truly gruesome and alarming book by Sherri S. Tepper – I had a gruesome and alarming dream. Upon waking and after lunch, however, it seems slightly more humorous. I dreamed that we were having Zombie Drills at RFKC. Yeah, like a tornado drill or bomb drill. I don’t know. And most of the other counselors weren’t really taking it very seriously, so it was pretty crazy when the actual zombies showed up. (They weren’t as entertaining as the college frat-boy zombies from another dream, though.) Somehow, however, I managed to make it through with the kids – and even most of the counselors – getting away in my car, with lots of interim barricading of doors and very-last-second escapes. Now, I drive the littlest version of Ford Focus (although mine’s red):

There are approximately sixty kids at camp, and a counselor for every two or at the most three. This many people could not even crowd closely enough around my car so they could even touch it, much less all fit inside. But anyway, we escaped the zombies (though where I got the shotgun from I’ll never know). And then I woke up, rather confused by a dream with a relatively hopeful ending.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with my topic for the day, which is: Baby gear that has designs on the babies inside it. This is most evident in exaggeratedly gender-specific baby clothing. And decor, but mostly clothing. You know the kind I mean; the pint-sized football and baseball jerseys with “please oh please oh please don’t end up gay” practically stitched into the seams; the dresses in every conceivable shade of pink fabric, whispering “act like a girly-girl because it’s cute and I won’t love you if you’re not cute” at the edges of all five hundred twenty-seven ruffles. I mean, these infants are basically concerned with sleep, food, and poop. Sleep, food, poop. Isn’t the complicated world of contemporary gender dynamics a bit much to cram into them at this point? Is it really necessary to drill into their heads from the moment those heads are out of our vaginas that there are boy colors and girl colors, boy shapes and girl ideas, and they don’t mix? That boys and girls are fundamentally different, indeed irreconcilable, even after they start wanting to get into each others’ pants (current estimated age: 7).

“Chicks Dig Me” tee shirt from Pokkadots, available in size 18-24 Months

Ruffled bikini from Dimples and Dandelions, avail. in sizes 2T, 3T, and 4T.

And it’s not just the gender issue, though that’s the one that most bothers me. But infant tees with political messages, brand logos, “Daddy’s Little Girl” or “Mommy’s Little Monster” or whatever emblazoned on them? I ask you.

Do they really need us to graft our own anxieties onto their tiny, vulnerable bodies?

I think my real beef with this is that these overtly-message-bearing garments say, is “this is who I expect you to be.” Now it is my opinion that when it comes to the garments on one’s actual body, the “I” in any statement they make should be the person wearing them.

But that’s problematic, too. First, of course, babies have to wear something, at least if we plan on taking them out in public, here in my particular corner of America. And those clothes are chosen by someone – generally a caretaker – and since (at least according to my philosophy) all created things have meaning, it is impossible to clothe one’s child without making some statement about the expectations you have of him or her.

And second, pretending to our children that the world into which we’ve brought them is not a place of complicated hierarchical structures and class-, gender-, etc. stratifications, or that they will not be judged and treated to a large extent based on things over which they have little if any control, is misleading at best.

So … is there any solution?

I think not.

Oh, well.

Today’s Quote of the Day comes from a spam email that I’ve already deleted and am thus unable to reference fully.

“Your love is like weed.”

Um, what?

On a different, if perhaps no less weird, note, here’s my new nose ring:

My birthday was Friday before last. Good Friday. I’m 25 now. Um … huzzah, I guess.

My husband bought me shoes. He knows me very well. They are the awesomest, jaw-dropping-ly coolest shoes ever – or, depending on your perspective, the cringe-inducingly weirdest shoes ever. I first saw these shoes when we went out to dinner with his family to BJ’s (review to follow … not really).

My brother-in-law, who exceeds even my passion for camping, hiking, and otherwise putting oneself in mortal peril of an outdoor sort, and I immediately reacted with, “Oh my gosh I want some!” while Jared and his Mom equally immediately reacted with, “Those are the weirdest things I’ve ever laid eyes on.” They looked waterproof, and they had TOES! Wow. So Jared, sweetheart that he is, got me some for my birthday.

He actually got me the olive drab/dark khaki ones, because that was what they had at Backwoods (very cool store, btw), and I didn’t want to wait for them to order them in another color. And since then, I’ve barely taken them off. They are so awesome! They are not, you know, warm, though, so the day after I got them when it rained my feet were pretty cold scudding across the parking lot. However, they dried off quick and – even better – seem to breathe incredibly well. So my feet stay cooler than they do even in my Keens, strange as that is.

And then, yesterday afternoon, I got my nose pierced. Discussion and pictures to follow (when I get around to it).

I’ve decided to be vegetarian (lacto-ovo) rather than vegan. While yes, being vegan is sometimes a hassle (though not as much as you might think), it’s not really that. For me, right now, it’s more about trying to find the right balance between making compassionate, responsible, and wise choices and driving myself to bitchy insanity by turning every decision into an acute reminder of the horrors of this world. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Don’t let the blues make you bad.

–Billie Holiday, in “We’ll Be Together Again”

There are many ridiculous holidays. Flag Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day, National Flossing Day, or whatever. (Do we have one of these? Why not? And for the record, I like TLaP Day a lot, and I have nothing against Flag Day. I just think they’re a bit ridiculous.) But Easter, to me, is not one of those holidays. Easter is my favorite holiday.

Not because of candy. And while the origins of the holiday, and its ties with pagan fertility festivals and what-all are interesting, I don’t have a lot to add to that discussion, so I mostly stay out of it. (Or try to.)

Easter is my favorite holiday because at some point, every Easter, I am again overcome with gratitude and awe for a God who would love me that much. Not just enough to suffer a tortuous and humiliating death, but also to return to the world that inflicted it on him, and continually offer such a lavish love. I revel in the idea of a God who has already tackled everything I’m afraid of, and won. I love Easter. Happy day!

(Now the family get-togethers are another story. But for now, we’ll leave it at that.)

It occurs to me that the times I’m most interested in blogging are when I have something to complain about. You know, “I don’t like this about that,” “I can’t stand when this happens,” etc. And while I enjoy a good whine as much as anyone, surely there’s enough of that going around that adding to the mix doesn’t really accomplish much. So instead, I’m going to go off into another Next Big Thing. (And griping about that instead.)

I’ve been on a kick recently about redecorating my living room. Now, I’ve only been married four years, and we’ve lived in this house two years, and we have stylish, new (the year before we married) furniture, and the room is actually pretty nice. I just got the bug, you know? So I planned it all out (down to CAD drawings of the living room to arrange the furniture, a PSP drawing to play with colors, and a detailed price sheet including links to specific products) and had a marvelous time, as you can see:

And of course I start fiddling around with colors …

And since I want to be able to visualize these items in my living room, I have to draw scale models of them …

…and it’s all downhill from there.

Now, however, that I’ve actually located every piece of furniture and even made some headway deciding about colors, fabrics, textures … I’m not going to spend that money, you know? It was a fun thing to plan, but not a practical one to do. (Of course, I’m not big on practical anyway, but this is pushing it even for me.)

So I’ve decided to shift this domestic focus outdoors, and begin planning this year’s gardening attempt. I say attempt because it’s a rare plant that doesn’t whither and cringe at my approach. I’m also tinkering with the idea of patio furniture, because (unlike, say, living room furniture) we actually don’t have any. Except those two green lawn chairs Jared got when he was in college, and which I keep expecting to disintegrate the moment I sit in them. And they don’t count. So, yeah, gardening.

To be continued!

So my dad – who now has thirty – thirty! – pins in his leg – will not be driving for a while. Obviously. And when he does, a standard transmission is pretty much out of the question at least at first. Well, of course that’s what his car, a 2004 Ford Focus, is. My Taurus – which was a gift from him four years ago – is not. So … to make a long story short … shorter, anyway … we’re trading. And I drove it home today. To place this experience in context, you should know that I haven’t driven a standard for around five years, and that was either the one time my Dad “taught” me how by letting me embarrass myself trying to drive his sports car or my multiple but extremely brief experiences driving the curmudgeonly old ‘76 pickup (with the hole in the grill from when one of my grandfather’s mules kicked it before Grandpa hauled it down from Wyoming and foisted it on us) around our place. I do like the Focus. It’s small and red – I like red – and generally unassuming. Its headlights look like it’s had one too many facelifts, I’ll admit, but … well, it’s a cute, little, red hatchback. My parents had a similar one when I was growing up, so maybe it reminds me of good memories involving songs from The Lion King. Whatever.

So I drove the squirt – that is, the Focus – home today. Today is Saturday. Saturdays in college towns – in February – mean basketball games. And basketball games? Mean traffic from hell. You know how the most difficult part about driving a standard is starting again once you’ve come to a full stop?

Yeah. I’ve gotten plenty of practice in that now.

And to add to it, I had to pee. Really, really, bad. I actually stopped at a Starbucks – I figured, cleaner restrooms, and I’ve given them enough of my cash they owe me – on my way home.

Then I collapsed on the couch and enjoyed the sensation of not moving. Yee! I did it! And nobody died! Not even that one asshole who honked at me.

But if I meet him again and I’m in the truck, he’d better run.

I asked my cousins, one night they spent with us, if they’d like one more bedtime story before they went to sleep. Of course they said yes, and the older girl asked me to read aloud a chapter from a book she’s been reading. It’s one of the Scary Monsters Don’t Do This or That series – I had one when I was young called Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots, which was actually pretty good. This one was Ghosts Don’t Eat Potato Chips.

Break for literary nerdiness: I recently re-read Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, which is in many ways a satire on the Gothic novel. In it, the main character, who has read rather a lot of Gothic novels, is led, or rather pleased, to imagine that her friends’ father has murdered or imprisoned his wife who died of a sickness some years before. This conjecture, and her other romantic flights of fancy, not only lead her to behave imprudently, though with no lasting ill effect, but they also prevent her from perceiving the true character of those with whom she deals before that character is brought up forcefully before her attention. This same conflict – between the imagined and the real, the fanciful and the present – informs the Ghosts Don’t Eat Potato Chips book and series. The main characters are staying at a – rather verbally abusive, it seemed in the chapter I read – relative’s house, and think the ghost of her long-dead husband is living in the attic. Of course it will turn out to be someone fairly innocuous, and everyone will laugh about how silly the kids were for being so carried away. And then life will go on, until the next book. No point, just some fun comparisons.

I just read a book that I actually had bought for someone else, but never had the opportunity to give it to them. It’s called ScreamFree Parenting and it’s by Hal somebody. (I wonder, when he gives advice, how often he hears “I can’t do that, Hal” and chuckles – or wishes to scream.) My husband and I spent a few days last week caring for my cousin’s children. It was an … intense experience. Enjoyable, but also frustrating. Hm. Anyway, it made me think of this parenting book, so I dug it out of the armoire where I keep the gift things, unwrap it, and read it over the weekend.

So the premise of this book is that, first, we must focus on ourselves – rather than wholly on our children – and approach parenting as though it were as central a part of our own emotional, psychological, and spiritual development as it is for the children for whom we care. We are not, he continues, responsible for our children, responsible for making them into the kind of people they ought to be; rather, we are responsible _to_ them to give them the resources they need to choose for themselves to become “self-directed, responsible adults”.

When we feel responsible for our children, we respond by emotionally reacting (or overreacting) to their behavior – behavior for which _we_ feel ashamed. When we do this, we are actually pressuring them to change their behavior in order to calm us down. This response is counter-productive because it puts our emotional state, even health, in their power – and their responsibility, which is an overwhelming thing for a child to bear. It also, even more sadly, fails to teach them to make – and be responsible for – their own choices.

The book recommends giving kids their own space – both physical and emotional – while at the same time teaching them their “place” or their relationship to and among others in the family and beyond through healthy structure and consistent, reasonable consequences for the behaviors they choose. I liked the book a lot, despite its tendency to overuse the word “responsible”. I liked most of all, however, the idea that no one is responsible (again, that word …) for meeting your emotional needs but yourself. This is different advice from Harley’s His Needs, Her Needs which argues that in order to have a strong and faithful marriage, each partner’s primary emotional needs must be met by the other partner – or they will be met by someone else. I think both sets of advice are good. Where’s the balance?

First, there is something about winter – especially this kind of grim, grey, threatening wintery weather – that makes one wish to sound important. I am actively fighting against that as I write.

And second, the expression “cool beans.” Beans are, generally, not good cool – they are much better hot. Much, much, much. I can only think of two exceptions to this – Vegan Yum Yum’s Chickpea Mash (I could live off this and nothing else. No, really.) and rinsed black beans in a crisp summer salad, with some raw corn and balsamic dressing. Other than these, beans are meant to be hot. So the expression “cool beans” makes no sense. Is all I’m sayin’.

My dad recently bought a Harley Davidson motorcycle.

Today, he – really, on Valentine’s Day and everything – broke his leg riding it.

But otherwise, he’s okay.

Phew.

No, this is not about dog abuse in the Iditarod race – it’s about keyboards.

You know how each keyboard has its own sound? Like an accent. And that in some ways affects how you type. Oh, of course the shape and texture and size and whatnot does, too, how crisp the edges of the keys are, but the sound plays a big part. Well, my husband and I recently got new keyboards. The same model. They’re nice; kind of swishy-shaped, with a comfy thing on the front. (To anyone who worked on the Logitech Wave, I’m sorry to so abuse your marketing language.) But they sound mushy. Mush, mush, mush, mush. Like typing your way through a bog. And it’s affecting how I type; it’s much less .. emphatic. I’m not trying to ram the keys through the desk anymore; I’m just mushing along. I don’t think it’s affecting the speed; if anything, it’s faster, but … I’m still getting used to it. I feel like I’m not trying hard enough.

And then I got the mouse on steroids. Seriously. This is the mouse that takes the other mice’s lunch money and says rude things about their parentage.

Of course it’s made by Microsoft. It would have to be. Its slogan is – I’m serious – “The Most Comfortable Mouse from Microsoft.”

Pardon me while I laugh uproariously, and possibly hiccup.

And mush.

“It’s Friday? Are you sure?” Grandpa asks. He is now ninety-three, and we were at a lunch in his honor, with three of his daughters.

“Yes, Dad, it was your birthday yesterday,” said Peggy, the second-oldest, who now lives in Kansas.

“Oh. Are you sure?”

I’m not sure why it affected me so, but this exchange particularly struck me. I mean, birthdays aren’t really a big thing to me. I like getting the presents, of course, but I like just as well if not better just going shopping myself, or just eating dinner with my family for no “special” reason. But … I feel sorry for my grandfather because it is difficult for him to remember things – like what day it is – and that must be unpleasant. Frightening. Wearying. There are some similarities between advanced age and childhood, mostly related to the way that one’s interests seem to settle back in upon one’s self, one’s health, one’s wants and thoughts and fears. I hope, when I am aged, that I have a family who cares as much about me as my mother-in-law does her father.