You Just Call Out My Name…

Have you heard about the Lifeboat project?  I stumbled across this today and even as I type this, I can hear a little voice in my head* intoning that there are no coincidences.**

You see, I was just thinking recently about how I miss our old house, as it was in the flow of things and friends would kind of regularly drop by. We were just down the street from the local elementary school and the park where many in our circle played Little League and basketball. We averaged one to two drop-in visits a week, and it was nice to be so plugged in to our friends' lives.

Since we moved to our apartment a year and a half ago, we are out of that pleasant little loop. We are just a few miles away, but parking on our street is challenging to say the least, and there’s the intercom to deal with, and the maze of our complicated apartment complex that newcomers have difficulty navigating. However, even beyond that little circle of local friends, I miss my larger circle of friends and how full my life has become that I live in the same city as many of my friends and still don’t get to see them.

So, back to Lifeboat, a “movement of people rediscovering great friendships.” Apparently in this hyperconnected age, it is quite common for people to have tremendous numbers of Facebook friends but still spend only 4% of their actual face time with their friends. The movement was spurred by a couple who were lamenting the decline of their relationships with their friends the further they moved into adulthood (in their case, their 30s). Well, good heavens! You might say this is a very first world problem to have.  But I do think there is something to this, as our emotional relationships are so very important to our overall health. I can say that despite my busy life, there are times when I do feel very lonely.  I love my husband, and I love my children, but sometimes I just need a girlfriend to vent to or hang with, and sometimes it just seems like such a project to get it together that I stop before I’ve even started as the thought of organizing something exhausts me.

Recently, I had lunch plans with some girlfriends who had to cancel because they work together and got roped into working on a Saturday (March 2^nd) at the last minute. As we were trying by email to coordinate our schedules around our children and other commitments, we realized that we probably wouldn’t be able to get together until nearly mid-April. We were all pretty bummed. A couple of hours later, one friend excitedly emailed that her stepson’s mom had emailed to ask to switch visitation weekends, so we are good to go for March 23^rd.  Ultimately, it worked out, but it gives you an idea of how difficult it is to plan things. Lunch during the week is out because of distance and after work is out because two of us have issues with childcare.

That’s not to mention friends who I only see once a year or every couple of years, who live in various far-flung areas in Los Angeles County. It is not impossible for us to get together, it just takes some planning. In the Lifeboat spirit, I am trying to reach out and see people I haven’t seen in some time. Consider yourself forewarned.

Has the frequency of your friend interaction changed over time?  Do you think this Lifeboat movement might be helpful to you or are you appalled that such a thing exists? Or are you somewhere in the middle? I’m curious.
 

* Note that I am not hearing other voices. I am not having auditory hallucinations. But thanks, thanks if you were concerned. No, really, thanks!

** Note that I am really disturbed to realize that the voice I am hearing in my head is Master Oogway (one of the Worst Phonetic Spellings Ever, I have to add) from Kung Fu Panda saying, “There are no accidents.”

Flip Flop

I am seeing a shift in my children these days, and it is this:

The one who was miserably bored with school, now—with the shift to a new half-preschool, half-pre-K situation—jumps out of the car and runs to school. She chatters to me excitedly about volcanoes. She tells me they had green eggs and ham to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday. She is eager to see the fuzzy chicks which are going to hatch ANY SECOND NOW in the incubator in her classroom.

Meanwhile, the one who has always LOVED school, who was not at all apprehensive about her 4^th/5^th grade combination class at the beginning of the year (despite my privately held misgivings), is now dragging her butt to school. Black History Month (more specifically slavery) is one reason.  Another is that the 4^th graders were promised a whole week away from the 5^th graders, who were all supposed to go to Science Camp for the week last week. And then only two 5^th graders went to Science Camp (which at $200 a pop, is out of range for many of the families at school). She was looking forward to her grade having their teacher all to themselves for once. The 5^th graders are a pain in the ass, a thorn in her side.

I am nonplussed. I am of course happy that Ceeya loves her new school, which she started in February (and I can’t believe I haven’t yet posted about that yet). But I am bummed that Viva is now really disliking school. Her grades are still good, but she’s really struggling with her attitude. I know, life is not all peaches and roses – Lord, do I know. But Viva is generally a pretty happy kid and now her general mood is one of Funk. And not in the way that I like.

We are planning Spring Break and her 10^th birthday is coming up and I’m hoping that will help. And meanwhile, we keep talking things through. We keep talking. (And in Ceeya’s case, we keep talking loudly, generally right over somebody as they are in the middle of a sentence, and we get offended if it is gently pointed out to us that such behavior is rude, and then we tell everyone within earshot that we don’t want to talk to them ever again and they are no longer our best friend. And then twenty minutes later we wrap our arms around them and squeeze, lest they forget that they are always our best friend and must never leave us. Oh, Ceeya. She is a complicated little person.)

Purpose, with a capital P

For Christmas, I bought Viva a mother-daughter journal for us to share.  It has writing prompts to help start discussions and also blank pages to write whatever’s on our minds.  I write on the left side, she writes on the right. When I’m done, I leave it beside her bed for her to read; she responds in a couple of days and leaves it on my pillow.

I enjoy it because it allows her to broach subjects she might not otherwise know how to bring up, and once I respond, it opens the door to a deeper conversation. And the things she brings up are not what you might expect. I won’t go into them here, because the journal is just for us and I don’t want to violate her privacy. However, one of the pages that sparked a lot of thought for me was (and I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t have the book in front of me):

What did your mother talk to you about when you were my age?  What do you wish she had talked to you about? 

My mother was pretty much an open book and talked to us about everything. She was very frank about sex and about our changing bodies and all that. She talked with us about racism and prejudice. She talked with us about her relationship and marriage with my dad, which ended when I was less than a year old. She probably gave us more than enough information on that last subject.  But one thing she didn’t talk to me about, and I wish she had, was about how to figure out what to do when I grew up.

I think mainly that is because she didn’t know herself.  And let’s be clear:  I don’t blame her for that at all.

Looking back on it now, I remember that lots of people in my family and circle of acquaintances would tell me things they thought I should be. This was all very well-intentioned, naturally, but it had the effect of really confusing me. I was a very bright kid but pretty impressionable, malleable and eager to please. I had talents in several areas, which made it all the more difficult to settle on one thing. So I went in one direction, and then another, and tried half-assedly to figure out what color my parachute was, and ignored my facility for language arts and for anything artsy, and started college pre-med, then switched mid-stream to social sciences, and then toyed with going to law school.

I know that we each have our own path, and we are all going to make mis-steps, but if I can accomplish anything at all through this mysterious, messy, painful and wonderful amusement park ride that is parenthood, I would very much like to help Viva find her purpose. I would like to help her find what she most loves to do, and do whatever I can do, within the bounds of the law and of sanity and not-helicoptering, to help her be the best she can be at it.

So I have been ruminating lately on how best to help my kids be what they want to be – Viva has often said she wants to be a videogame designer, although lately she has become interested in acting (which is a whole ‘nother kettle of worms – how do I support her in this without being Scary Stage Mom, since she is specifically interested in television? But that is a post for a different day).

(Aside:  Ceeya wants to be a teacher—that is, today.  After all, she is 4 and most likely that will change.  At her age I wanted to be a dogcatcher. I thought it would be the most awesome job ever because I would get to play with puppies all day. Then I saw Lady and the Tramp and saw the flaw in that assumption.)

 

 

 

BUT! Very timely that I was thinking about this very topic and came across this article, sensationally headlined “I Don’t Want My Kids to be Happy” in “popular articles” on HuffPo (clicking on the link, you find that the actual headline is quite tame: “The Pursuit of Happiness). I particularly like this excerpt:

A life committed to a goal, even it means you struggle and fail and ask, "What the hell am I doing?" -- that's a life to celebrate. It's a journey that may require you to sacrifice your own happiness or well-being, as any parent on the wrong end of a sleepless night will tell you, but the rewards far outweigh whatever small moments of happiness you may miss.

As I am still on this journey myself at the ripe old age of 44, I am hoping that my, ahem, rather intense recent research on this subject will benefit my children at some point as they are figuring out their goals and such like. As their father has spent the past nearly three years since being laid off patiently and steadily building his own small business, I want them to see us struggle and make adjustments and learn that there will be setbacks but that they shouldn’t give up. I’m hoping to let them see us succeed.

Failing that, we can always find work as circus performers. I think.

Forward! Onward! And So Forth!

 

To meet a goal:

First of all, create one.

Secondly, do one thing every day to help you meet it.

My current goal is to remake my work life by July 1, 2013.

I chose that day because it is the beginning of the new fiscal year for many in the nonprofit sector.

I am trying to transition into copywriting somewhere. Ideally I would be able to work from home at least part of the time, perhaps two to three days a week.

Yesterday I wrote an email to reconnect with someone that I used to freelance for, and he wrote me back a very nice and complimentary note saying he remembered me and was very bummed when I chose a full-time job and could no longer write for him. I asked him to keep me in mind in the future, and he said I am definitely on his list. Now, maybe he was just being nice, but I don’t think so.

Today, I am keeping to my promise to write for 15 minutes a day and I’ve also been checking out the freelance job postings to see if any gigs have popped up. I am open to the idea of freelancing on the side for the moment. But I’m also looking at the freelance ads to see what kind of skills people are looking for, and to find out where my deficiencies lie. I am coming up with a nice list of new things I have to learn, but that is all good. I am cool with learning new things – in fact, I am excited to be branching out finally.

Good things are coming. And I am marching out to meet them.

Putting U Back in Fun

Once, many many years ago, someone that I love very much was not in a good emotional place (unbeknownst to me). We were out on a beautiful summer day, in a park by the side of the river, grass underneath our toes, nowhere to be but there in that beautiful place, surrounded by other folks enjoying the day - walking about, holding hands, lying under trees, laughing, kissing, falling asleep in the sun. 

My dear sweet loved one turned to me and said, "I hate this place!"

"What? Why?" I said.

"Because everyone's having more fun than me!" she said, and she burst into tears.

I am sorry to say that my first impulse was to laugh, but her significant other and I managed to keep it together and after a period of time, got her to relax and enjoy herself.

Every now and then, I think back on that moment and I ponder how easy it is to look only at the surface of things and think people have it easier than you. Of course that's not true.

But here it is, Friday, and I am thinking about fun. And about having fun. And about how I am going to leave work and pick up my kids and go home and turn on some old 80's music and dance around and maybe have a sock fight. And then no one will be having more fun than we!

Inescapable, Inexplicable. History.

In my lunch time travels yesterday, I came across the above graffito spray painted across someone’s garage. When I shared it with the family later, Viva said:  “Los Angeles? I don’t think so. I think probably Birmingham.”

 Whew, Black History Month, you are kicking my ass. You are giving my baby headaches, and stomach aches, and nausea, and trembly legs. You are interrupting her sleep.  For it appears that in 4^th grade, the gloves have come off, and the reality of slavery is being presented to my child in class.

 (“Not the worst parts though,” she says. “Mr. B____ skips over the really bad parts.”)

They covered the Civil Rights Movement earlier, and that, she could get behind – of course, it is empowering to hear about taking a stand and forcing a change  – but slavery knocked her down.  My kid is super-sensitive to violence of any kind and she is also hyper-vigilant to any kind of injustice, so learning about the details of the slave trade literally makes her ill. We talked about the Middle Passage yesterday, and of how mind-bogglingly inhumane it must have been, beyond what we can imagine.

 “I hate history,” Viva said, her sweet eyes clouded. “Why do we have to learn history?”

 “Because those that don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it*,” I said. “And because it still influences who you are today. You are descended from slaves. Do you realize how strong your ancestors had to be, physically and emotionally, spiritually – to survive that? That blood is in your veins.”

 “That’s true. But still, I can’t wait until this month is over,” Viva said.

“It’s not easy,” I said. “I know, it’s tough.”

 “I still can’t understand how people could be so mean to other people just based on the color of their skin – how they thought we were inferior,” Viva said. “I mean, they thought slaves were stupid, but how would they do if they got stolen away from their families and taken somewhere they didn’t speak the language?”

 “They had to think that way to justify it,” I said. “They had to see slaves as animals, as less than human, to justify what they were doing to them.”

 “That’s messed up,” said Viva. “Especially because you take someone like Frederick Douglass – he was a slave, and he was super smart. When his master found out that the master’s wife was teaching him to read, he got beaten. Who does that?!”

 “You see what they were willing to go through to get an education?” I said. “It was a big deal just to be able to read and write. Slaves weren’t supposed to be educated. We are really lucky to live in the age we do, as far as that goes.”

 "Yeah, I see what you mean. If they could see what we know now, it would blow their minds,” Viva said.

 Yes, indeed. I honestly love these conversations as Viva begins to see the world in all its messy complications. I think it is important for her to learn the journey of this country and how it is part of a larger global journey and that our struggles with bias and prejudice are far from over, here and across the world.  

I love that girl. What an honor to be along for the ride.

* Which I knew I was paraphrasing, but naturally I mis-quoted. What George Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905) was: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” On par with, “You can’t understand where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.”

Back to Bidness

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

The second best time is today.

Oh my GAWRSH, I have badly neglected this blog. Here is what has been happening:

(1) Work (you know the story there)
(2) Kids (lovely but exhausting)
(3) Husband working part-time some evenings, which means at times I am single momming it at the worst time of day - see #4
(4) After working all day, coming home and doing dinner/homework/baths and bedtime/cleaning up the kitchen, etc. = nuffin left.

I am rusty with teh writing thang. Need to flex my muscles. What is funny is that when I was writing regularly, I would always have things to write about.When I don't write regularly, I draw a blank when I sit down to do so.

I will not lie to myself that I will get up 30 minutes earlier to write. I am not a morning person. However, I am also not a night owl. God, I love sleep. Isn't it great?

Anyhoo, I am just going to set reminders on my phone to write for 15 minutes every other day for my own sanity. And I am going to kick-start this blog and get it to what I want it to be.

YEARGH!! (Doing my best Howard Dean.)



Blah Blah over and out.

Curious

Here's a time suck for you, if you haven't seen already:

We've all seen the classic Myers-Briggs personality inventory which breaks down how people perceive the world and provides you with a four letter personality type - for example, ESTJ or INFP. 

On The Happiness Project blog, Gretchen Rubin came up with a different type of personality categorization, and here I quote her extensively: 

To see if you spot yourself in these categories, ask yourself:

How do I respond to an outer rule? A law, a traffic sign, a “request” from a spouse; a work deadline, an admonition from your doctor, an appointment with a trainer, social protocol?
How do I respond to an inner rule? A New Year’s resolution; a decision to exercise more; putting in work on a self-generated project (writing a novel, planting a garden).

With that in mind, consider whether any of these types rings a bell:

Upholder— accepts rules, whether from outside or inside. An upholder meets deadlines, follows doctor’s order, keeps a New Year’s resolution. I am an Upholder, 100%.

Questioner—questions rules and accepts them only if they make sense. They may choose to follow rules, or not, according to their judgment.

Rebel—flouts rules, from outside or inside. They resist control. Give a rebel a rule, and the rebel will want to do the very opposite thing.

Obliger—accepts outside rules, but doesn’t like to adopt self-imposed rules.
 

I discovered that I am very much an Obliger/Questioner.  I accept some outside rules, while questioning those that don't make sense to me.  I don't respond all that strongly to inner rules. I am not self-motivated to make it to the gym, for example. I put in work on a self-generated project when I damn well feel like it.

What about you? Where would you fall in this categorization, and why?

Like a BOSS

I love this and thought I'd share:

 

We could all use a little encouragement, right?

My Own Worst Enemy

I am not enjoying my job in the least. I know, what else is new? But! A friend emailed me a really cool job posting right before the weekend. It is the perfect job for me on paper -- it is what I want to do, finally. It represents a career shift for me but allows me to use some of my experience and transferable skills. It would allow me to be more creative and would get me out of fundraising/grant writing, which I am truly burned out on. I would still be writing but also editing and working more on the web.

As soon as I sat down with the job posting to write my cover letter, that nasty little voice started to pick apart my qualifications. I don't have a whole lot of experience with layout, I don't know all the Adobe programs, etc. But I've been writing for company publications (print and online) throughout my career, on top of my grant writing responsibilities. At every job I've been in, I'm the first person people come to when they need a document proofread, or tightened up, or they need a creative title. I am also always the person called in to write a quick piece on a new program, or find a key piece of demographic information, or fact check a document before it goes to print. I know I could do this job and do it well.

I just let doubts sink my boat sometimes. Also I have no idea how much it pays, and that makes me nervous as well. I can't afford to take a pay cut.

Nonetheless, I'm going to apply. You never know unless you try. You don't get unless you ask. And it's time to let the universe know I'm ready to put myself out there. Interested to see what will happen. Stay tuned...


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Twenty Thirteen

Okay, no more fooling around. It's time to get serious.*

Returning back to work this week after a simply wonderful long Christmas break, I received a memo which detailed our company's closure schedule for the year -- which holidays will be observed and which the company will pay for. Employees are being told we must take eight furlough days this year, for which we can either be unpaid or use vacation days.** I opened up my date book and started adding the furlough days, and as I did, everything changed. I started thinking, "If you write it down, it is the same as envisioning it is going to happen. You don't want to be in this job in October (Columbus Day) or even April (Cesar Chavez Day). Don't write it down! Don't write it down!" And suddenly I started to have a panic attack. My heart started beating wildly, and I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. I felt sick. I took some deep breaths and went outside and walked around the block until I calmed down, but...yeah.

So...yeah. 

I have almost been in this job a year (two more weeks until my anniversary). It is time to get off the pot and get busy. I have tried to stay positive and focused on learning as much as I can -- and I have, as one does in any new situation. I learned that I can be the boss and it can be horrible at times, but that if I am tactful and respectful and retain empathy I can deal with difficult situations with staff. (By the way, I had to fire a volunteer yesterday. That may have contributed to my panic attack. Fun times!) But I'm not really being challenged here or branching out into other job responsibilities aside from leadership/management. You know I need to add to my skill set, mm-kay? (Stupid buzzwords. As soon as I typed that all I could think of was "swing set" and how much cooler that would be.)

Hey Ma! Look at my cool new skill set! All the kids in the neighborhood wish they was cool like me!

Anyway, added to that, I don't really want to keep doing what I'm doing. I recently learned that my old job is launching a brand new initiative and all I could think was "they're going to need [someone like me=me!] for that" and then I thought maybe I could negotiate a work from home gig with them. And I got a little excited about that but who knows what will happen. Because the future is, like, unknowable. But I will keep the lines of communication open.

I also spent some time around 2 AM today drooling over this site, which combines a lot of my interests -- i.e., writing, drawing, layout/design, and editing. Not sure who I'm more jealous of, the artists who get to create these books or the people who work in publishing and get to bring them to print. In an alternate reality, I would have about ten careers.

This morning at about 3:15 (yup, still awake and driven bonkers by monkey mind) I made a resolution to draw every day -- to take my sketch book with me everywhere and even if I have to sit in my car and draw at lunch, to just give myself that. I need to stretch my muscles a bit. Drawing for me is very energizing and meditative at the same time and I have not let that part of me have fun in way too long.

So for 2013 my mantra is:  Just Do It. And also, Make It So. So that's two mantras. I don't know, maybe it needs work, but you get the gist.

And you?  What do you have in mind for 2013?

*"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty." Sacha Guitry, French actor, dramatist and director

** Which is some bullshit, because (a) this is one more furlough day than last year; and (2) if you don't use your vacation time for these days, you don't get paid -- which for a majority of our staff including myself, is simply not an option. I am lucky because I get three weeks (15 business days) of vacation per year since I am a director. Other folks are not so lucky and only get ten days. So if they want to have paid time off, they are being told they have to use their vacation days at specific times - and then have only two vacation days that they can plan independently. In my case, more than half of my vacation time could be theoretically eaten up by furlough days if I want to be paid for those days off. In essence, I feel I am being robbed in many sneaky ways by this job. Oddly, this is not a good feeling.

Senseless

On December 14, 2012, I was at work when someone told me there'd been another mass shooting--this time in Connecticut, at a school. Some children had been killed, he said.

Throughout the day, as I drove from one work site to another, more details came snowballing through the radio. Horrifying stories of teachers trying to protect their students and being shot down. The description of the sheer number of shots, the screaming, the terror.

Driving home, I just felt sick. Sad. Angry. Hopeless.

I pulled into the driveway, parked the car. I walked swiftly from my car to my front door in the drizzly chill of Friday evening, shaking slightly but not from the cold.

I opened the front door to warmth and light and joy, little strong arms wrapped around my neck, loving faces pressed against mine.

Minutes later, after I gestured my husband to follow me down the hall to our bedroom, we collapsed on the bed together, holding on tightly.

"I feel sick I'm so sad," I said.

Today I am still sad, and still heartsick, but hopeful. Hopeful that we are finally having a larger conversation about how such a thing could happen. Something is broken, horribly horribly broken. I am hopeful that as a culture we can move beyond fear and come together and fix it. I have to believe in something. It is just too horrible and senseless otherwise.

Rage Against the Pink

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a petition going around to get Hasbro to make a gender-neutral Easy Bake Oven. A petition created by a 13-year-old girl, McKenna Pope, whose 4-year-old brother loves to cook and wanted his own toy oven for Christmas. McKenna’s argument to Hasbro is that the commercials for the Easy Bake Oven only show girls using it, and that the over comes in only “gender-specific hues: purple and pink.” My only argument with McKenna is that she’s accepting the societal premise that pink and purple are gender-specific. I reject that assertion. However, my sympathies are naturally with her and her brother, who aspires (for the moment) to be a chef. I have had the same problem in finding a toy stove for my daughters to play with. My oldest daughter, who is now 9, received a red toy oven when she was about 3 years old. I searched long and hard to find an oven that was not pink. Last year, for my 3-year-old, I replaced the oven with a whole mini-kitchen* from IKEA, which is completely gender-neutral – perhaps because it is a Swedish company.

The Swedes are evidently known for their progressive thinking in this regard, because hey, looky here!

Boys can do housework, too!

I have to say, my reaction to the pinkwashing of the toy aisle has pretty much been not to shop in the big box stores and to look for alternatives online and elsewhere. I just figured I didn’t have the time to fight the power and so I just wouldn’t endorse these stores with my money. But I give props to McKenna Pope, because without challenging the existing structure, it’s only going to continue. And I don’t think it’s healthy for any of us.

I raise my glass of low-sodium Lemon Italian Sparkling Mineral Water to you, McKenna. Rage on!

* This picture is part of the IKEA ad. Neither I nor my child is depicted in this picture.

Chopped!

I have lightened my load. I went from, basically, this:

 

 

 

to this:

 

 

 
and in the process, lost all this:

 

 

 

Change can be good. Maybe I'll add some blue streaks!

An Attitude of Gratitude

I am thankful for:
 
A happy ending yesterday at work:  a severely autistic nonverbal client wandered off Monday afternoon and stayed out overnight, but was found yesterday and reunited with his family.

My chocolate turkey that my boss gave me this morning:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My wonderful beautiful smart and happy kids, who bring all sorts of chaotic joy to my world.

My saintly, hardworking and ever-lovin’ husband, who continually impresses and surprises me with his ability to make the best of difficult situations and with his capacity for creativity and fun.

Clean water. Hot water. Food and drink.

My friends and family, near and far, who are dear to me although I don’t see them as much as I would like.

The Internet, which takes me places I have never been and connects me to people I have never met. It is truly a marvel.

 

And for you. A very Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, wherever you may be!

Too Much Technology?

Tonight, I am working on creating a new blog - just setting it up and figuring out what theme I want to use and how I want the format to look. It is very different, mainly because I am making the leap to Wordpress (I am not an early adopter, mm-kay?). But I am poking away on my laptop, and occasionally checking my iPhone or looking stuff up on my iPhone when my home network gets sluggish, and I just had a thought about a book I want to read which is related to creating this new blog, so as I was waiting for my page to load, I downloaded an e-book onto my Kindle. And I realized I have three different devices going and that is a little crazy, no? In other world news, recently Ceeya asked me repeatedly if she could have some cookies. I finally said, "Sure, okay, you mean the ones on the counter, go ahead," and about five minutes later she came back to me with this bewildered look on her face, holding a box of Up & Up Target brand plastic sandwich baggies. It was a new box, which she had completely demolished one end of in ripping it open. "Where are the cookies?" she asked. It took me a second, but then I realized the box had a picture on the outside of cookies nestled halfway into a plastic bag.  "Oh, honey," I said. "These are not the cookies. These are the plastic bags to put things in. They're just showing you how you might use the bags, maybe to put some cookies in them. You know?" "But where are MY cookies?" Cee said, as if I were deliberately misunderstanding her. I, the most asinine person in the land.  So...you see how misleading advertising can be. Particularly if you can't read quite all the way yet. Imagine how the things Ceeya sees each day shape her very impressionable view of the world. My point, and yes, I am getting to it, is that this is the type of thing I will be exploring in my new venture -- how to raise two young women of color with their heads on straight in this rapid-paced, media-saturated environment. My goal is to go beyond plastic sandwich baggies and delve into the sexism, racism and myriad other "isms" we are confronted with every day, and document my attempts to keep my wits about me and respond in a thoughtful manner.  Oh, how I often long to ditch everything and go live in some mythical land where things are simpler. You have no idea how often that fantasy crops up. Failing that, I hope to chronicle my journey and learn something from those I meet along the way. And eat a few cookies. More to come...

Cuatro

Four years ago, this:

And today, this:

 

My baby is four years old! What the Doc McStuffins?? I can hardly believe it.

 

Before Ceeya was born, I worried whether I would be able to love another child as much as I loved Viva. Ceeya just tromped on in and claimed her space in my heart with absolute certainty that that spot was hers. She is super intelligent, hilariously funny, incredibly stubborn and heart-rendingly sweet. She is my roll dog -- anywhere I am going, she wants to go along for the ride. She has made our family all the richer for being in it and I adore her.

 

Happy Birthday, my little pumpkin. You make Mama proud!

 

 

Every Day, Beauty

Every day there are moments, small things really, that are possible to miss if you are not paying attention.

There are Big Things Happening:  Dub Senior has passed away. Sweet Dub is overcome with wave after wave of sorrow. Sometimes it comes over him at completely random times. He is bewildered by this: he thought the anxiety and sadness would end when his father's suffering was over. I had to tell him no, dear sweet darling, that is not how grief works.

Other Big Life Things are happening: Viva is solidly into her tweens and has begun wearing a bra. (Oh, I can't even believe I just wrote that. Where is the time going - it is spinning wildly fast.) At preschool, Ceeya hit her head and gashed it badly on Monday; Sweet Dub and I dropped our day off plans and rushed to see if we had to take her to the hospital. Speaking of which, we were having our day off together because of another life event: our wedding anniversary. Eleven years, which we didn't celebrate on the day because Dub Senior passed away that very morning. So our date was cut short by another emergency. It seems like this is the new normal, crisis after crisis.

So I try to take a moment here and there to enjoy a small thing of beauty, here and there. Today I found a gorgeous potted orange Gerbera daisy plant at Trader Joe's on my lunch hour. I bought one for myself and one for our receptionist, because she is being let go today and no one wanted to acknowledge it. She has worked here for 8 years and she was being made to feel she had to slink off into the night. Ugliness. My co-worker got a few people together and we are throwing what was to be a small get-together this afternoon. What we discovered is a lot of people didn't know she was leaving, Suddenly we had offers of food, people wanted to sign cards, people rallied around and now most of the employees at our site are coming to this little shindig. It gives me hope. It's the right thing to do.

There is so much nastiness in the world sometimes. I am trying to train myself to be alert to the positive.

Signing off.

Stay classy, San Diego.

Skool

The Pew Research Center released a new study today on student loan debt, which has mushroomed in the past five years. he Pew Research analysis finds that “whether computed as a share of household income or assets, the relative burden of student loan debt is greatest for households in the bottom fifth of the income spectrum [emphasis mine], even though members of such households are less likely than those in other groups to attend college in the first place.”

I read this and it just infuriates me. I know that colleges and universities do the best they can to put together financial aid packages for students that come from families of limited means. Back in the dinosaur days when I went to college, I received a generous package comprised of some grant money, a work-study job, and a couple of student loans. My parents did not contribute any cash, because they didn’t have any. I didn’t expect them to; I worked all summer to make sure I would have some money to buy books and I was pleasantly surprised when my grandparents gave me a check for a few hundred dollars when they dropped me off at my dorm.

My family expected me to go to college and to finance it in whatever way possible. I accepted this; I was very eager to go to college, and very eager to leave it when the time came. I was able to get a decent entry-level job and was horrified by how much of my check was eaten up by my pesky student loan payments. It never occurred to me not to pay them, or to negotiate their amount in any way. However, the burden of that student loan debt made me leery of going to graduate school, which I regret today. I pinched pennies and paid my undergrad loans off over a period of ten years; and I was thrilled at that point, in my early thirties, to feel I could begin to contribute to a regular savings account, and pay cash for things like TVs, and contribute to my 401K.

Sweet Dub went to law school straight from undergrad, and we will be paying off his student loans for the rest of our lives, it seems -- if we ever get back to paying them off, as he has deferred them since he was laid off in 2010.

A higher degree used to translate into a higher standard of living. The Pew numbers are really discouraging for--well, pretty much anyone. But I feel the pain particularly of those college students who come from low-income families that can’t help them out of the hole post-graduation. It makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it.

Other studies have shown college graduates make 84 percent more over their lifespan than do high school graduates, and they have considerably better job prospects even during times of economic uncertainty. No need for alarm--if these statistics hold true in the future. I suppose only time will tell.

Heartsick

After a long couple of weeks during which the family has experienced more heartache and stress and back and forth from hospital to convalescent home to a different hospital (see here and here), Sweet Dub's stepmother elected today to take Dub Senior off of life support. She signed the papers and then she left.

This is not something I could ever imagine doing if it were my husband lying there, but then you never know what you would do in a specific situation unless you're actually in it, so I guess I can't judge.

Since Sweet Dub doesn't want his father to die alone, he is driving down to the hospital now to sit with his dad and hold his hand and talk to him, and hopefully his dad will be able to hear him or at least sense that someone who loves him is there with him. 

I have already taken three days off over the past couple of weeks and I know I will have to take more after Dub Senior passes on, so as ridiculous as this sounds, I have to stay in the office (I also have to go pick up the kids, let's not forget about them).

I just feel sick.

End of Summer

Testing to see if I can add photos from my iPhone using BlogPress. These are some of my favorite shots from the summer of 2012:


Viva, of the ever-glowing skin.



This seems to be Ceeya's default pose.



Me and my sweetie.



Classic SoCal life station shot.

About to hit "post" -- here goes....

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Smudge it!

Sweet Dub's dad has been moved to an extremely and utterly depressing convalescent home to, I suppose, convalesce. However, he is still pretty much almost completely paralyzed (limited movement in his right arm, and he can move his head from side to side but not turn his head all the way).

Things don't look good. In an ideal situation, he would have all the top experts monitoring his care and even if he were in a home such as this, it would be sparkling clean and quiet, with a view overlooking a transquil pond with duckies, and the entire facility would smell like gingerbread.

That is SO not the case here.

In one of my not so nice moments, I said to Sweet Dub, "Well, this is really all his fault anyway."

"What do you mean?" Sweet Dub said.

"He should have known better than to get sick while he was poor and black," I said. "I mean, what was he thinking?"

Sarcasm as a coping mechanism. Sometimes the ugliness just bubbles out.

Today, my office-mate brought me some dried sage so I can go home and cleanse the BlahBlahs of all the bad juju by burning it. I am seriously going to do it.

Not Feeling Perkier

 

Are you familiar with this book? Felix stays up late and eats way too many chocolate Blimpies and in the morning he doesn't feel so hot. His mom gives him some sugared prunes to perk him up and, well:

 

"Not feeling perkier," says Felix.

 

Unfortunately, given my recent sad sack post and despite all the positive thinking I can muster, I too am not feeling perkier. Sweet Dub's father was rushed to the hospital last week, and it appears that he has suffered multiple mini-strokes over the past couple of weeks. He is almost completely paralyzed, including his esophagus, so he is unable to swallow.  He can't eat or drink, but he is horribly thirsty and dry-mouthed. Over the weekend it appeared this function was returning, so family members were providing him with water on a swab, and ice chips. Unfortunately it appears that due to the paralysis, when he "swallows," it's going straight into his lungs. So now he has fluid in his lungs and today Sweet Dub was told he can't take any food or drink by mouth ever. As in, the rest of his life.

 

As with most medical issues there is way more than I can go into here, but the end result is, after five days in the hospital things are not looking good.

 

Sweet Dub is not close to his father. Had I written about Dub Senior a few years ago, I might have nicknamed him Not-So-Sweet Dub, since they share the same name, but today that seems like kicking him while he is down, and I do have some standards, after all. But Dub Senior has not been very nice to people over the past couple of decades or so, and now that he is sick, it is difficult to rally people around him. Sweet Dub is calling on all his memories of his younger days, when his dad actually was sweet to him (oh those hazy childhood days when your parents were wonderful), to help keep him centered and to do the right thing.

 

That is what is uppermost in both our minds:  to do the right thing. But it's complicated and these are uncharted, ethically murky waters. He is not in any pain, but he can't eat or drink. The doctor says he wants to perform surgery to insert a feeding tube. We suspect this is because they need to get Dub Senior out of the hospital and into a convalescent home. It seems like a move that is contra-indicated in relation to common sense. Today, he is uncomfortable and can't eat but is being fed by IV. If he has surgery, he will be in pain, and there is always a danger of infection, and he'll still get sustenance through a tube. What we are all wondering is if it's worth it in terms of his quality of life.

 

Uncharted waters. We cling to our raft and peer at the sky and try to paddle in the direction of solid ground. I have never seen my husband so despondent. It is heartbreaking.

It’s Baa-aack…

About a million years ago, when I first started dating Sweet Dub, I had just taken what would turn out to be the worst job I have ever had. My boss had a work ethic beyond anything I have ever seen, and would begin emailing me as soon as she got up in the morning, at around 7, and would continue as she thought of things before she got in the car and drove to the office. Once she got to work, the barrage continued throughout the day by email, phone and in-person visits; I was continually interrupted and pulled in eight different directions. It was very difficult to get any real work done. Once she left the office, she would still email throughout the evening. Since this was a million years ago, I did not have a smartphone; hell, I barely had Internet at home. She was ahead of the curve in terms of being plugged in. While our office hours were supposed to be from 10 AM to 6 PM, I began arriving at 8:30 AM and staying until 7 PM or later to try to keep up, and feeling guilty and anxious about leaving even as I was returning home at 8 PM.

Now, I will tell you, I am generally a very conscientious employee. I have a strong work ethic on my own. But I could not keep up with this woman’s demands, and though I had only started working for her in October, by Christmas I had developed a twitch. A nerve under my right eye started jumping. This went on for weeks. Sweet Dub was horrified. Mind you, we had only been dating a few months at this point.

Finally, by March, we had both had enough. “You have got to quit this job,” Sweet Dub said. “Look at your eye! She’s affecting your health!”

And then I did something unimaginable:  I quit that job without another one to go to. I gave my notice at my apartment, moved in with Sweet Dub and started freelancing. I had some savings set aside, but really didn’t have to dip into them, since fortunately I was able to get the freelance gig off the ground fairly quickly. By June I was working 40 hours a week, mainly from home with occasional client meetings.

But I digress.

The point is: once I quit the job, my eye stopped jumping around. Sure, it was stressful trying to get the freelance gig going, but not nearly as stressful as dealing with my boss’ craziness.

And now….

The twitch is back. Not as severe as before, but it’s back.

Recently, I had an encounter within my department which pushed all my buttons. I believe this incident was condescending and revolved around a bit of racist microaggression on which, if I had called the person on it, I would have been given some crap about how I was misinterpreting what this person was saying and being too sensitive. But you know how it is: when something gives you a sick feeling in your stomach and you can feel the heat rising to your face, that’s a pretty good sign that you’re not misinterpreting a damn thing.

Hence, the twitch.  I don’t have the financial cushion I had back then when the twitch made its first appearance, and quitting is not an option. Freelancing is also not an option, since that’s what Sweet Dub is doing. For now, one of us needs a full-time job so we can have some crappy health insurance that we’re paying too much for.

Without getting into details, this recent incident is not the only reason I am unhappy with my current position. So, I’ve updated my resume, and I’m determined to just grit my teeth and bear this until I can work out where I want to go next. My boss is happy with my performance (I got a glowing six-month review), the job pays well, it keeps food on the table and a roof over our head.

Sometimes you just gotta suck it up. Either that or start drinking heavily. And I don't think I'm cut out for that.

Holding Out Hope

Nothing from Google seems to want to load this evening. I had a whole photo post I was planning, and now:  zip. Hmf. Is it time to ditch Blogger? I finally am back in the groove, wanting to put fingers to keyboard, and technology is gettin in the way. I will now hit send and see if my blogging by email works. Stay tuned for further griping.

I am not THAT bad

I have posted to my blog via email a couple of times in recent weeks (no, really, it's true), and then today was looking at my blog and realized neither post actually posted. So much for all my great intentions! Although I have been able to post by email previously, apparently this feature was disabled at some point so nothing I wrote recently was showing up.

You did not miss anything earth-shattering. I'm just ticked off that I actually made the effort and nothing happened.

Oh, and on a related note:  the check is in the mail.  And I have a bridge and some swamp land to sell you.

(No, really!  I did actually type up two posts which have gone off into the ether!)

Summer, summer, summertime…

It’s summer, and that means it will be hot.

If it’s hot, there will be swimming.

If there’s swimming, hair gets wet.

If hair gets wet and you are the parent of the person who’s swimming, that means your kid’s hair dries out.

If, furthermore, you are the parent of a black girl, that means you have to deal with the question of whether or not to get your child’s hair “braided up” for summer.  Perhaps your cornrowing skills are not up to par, or perhaps you don’t feel up to a five-hour marathon braiding session.
 
If you consult your mother-in-law on this (who is not against the hot comb, on which you have agreed to disagree, so there’s your baseline right there), she will tell you to take your child to her stylist to let her cornrow your child’s hair and “add some hair.”

Barring this, she will tell you to “grease up that child’s head” with “that green grease” to protect it from the chlorine, the drying out, and the fuzziness.

You may, at this point, bite your tongue and just flat twist your child’s hair up against her head and hope for the best. Get yourself a glass of lemonade and kick back. It’s your summer too, after all.

Wednesday - Words of Wisdom

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always try to do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."— Mark Twain

Amen to this. Let's all try and stay on the positive.

Something New

In my spare time (of which, like many people, I have far too little) I have been rethinking what I want to do with this blog. Or more specifically, whether I want to continue this blog or start something completely different. And I am thinking the latter. And in that spirit, I have been doing some research to refine what I want to talk about, as well as trying to do some planning so that I actually have a cache of blog post ideas ahead of time, and even some posts written. The goal is that I might (heaven forbid) post on a regular basis.

I think Joseph Campbell said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that in order to find out what really drives you, what really interests you, you should closely monitor what grabs your attention, where your interests naturally take you over a few weeks. And when you realize that (for example) you can’t stop thinking about basket weaving and deep-sea diving, that is what you should pursue.

That’s what I’m working on here, since my blog has been really unfocused over the past year or so. I’m not trying to be mysterious; I’m just in the midst of a process I don’t want to bore you with.

In the meantime, I’ll try and post a bit more here as well so I can get in the writing practice and keep anyone who is still reading (hello?) up to date on my little corner of the world. Thanks for reading and for being patient with my evolution.

P.S. Also, rereading this post before I publish: I will try and reduce my use of parentheses.