I think I’d like to start a meme. Just ’cause. SO NERRR.

I was thinking about weird things I did (and sometimes still do) as a child. These are kind of typical things, not necessarily “original” things that ONLY I did, but my weird brain did some of them in a different way, but enough with the explaining and on to the listing.

Childhood, Remembered:

1. Everyone knows the whole step on a crack and break your mother’s back, thing. I never really heard that saying as a child, but I think everyone sort of instinctually goes through a thing with this, I’ve seen it with Ethan, and it’s amazing to see him only walk on certain colored tiles when we’re in a mall, or some such place. Walking in a certain/on certain things, I guess is something everyone has done in their lives.Here’s the kooky way I did it when I was a kid. I was very much into the “cracks” and not stepping on them. Maybe my brain decided that it was too easy, because I then started inventing new invisible lines that I couldn’t step on. For example, if I was walking down a hall, and there was a corner, I would envision the line of the wall continuing on the floor, even though the wall stopped at the corner, and I would not step on that “invisible” line. This is what I saw in my head:
   If there were no corners, I would draw a 45 degree line coming from the corner of a tile and not step on that.
   I would sometimes get very elaborate, because if you look around, there are angles and corners that can create lines everywhere if you continue them past their natural stopping place, the lines multiply and multiply and you couldn’t walk anywhere. I didn’t get obsessive or anything about this (I didn’t go hopscotching everywhere because of all the imaginary lines I couldn’t step on, for example), it was just a fun game that I grew from the original “don’t step on a crack” habit. (I just said crack habit. hee hee!) I still do this today, sometimes, and even if I don’t always avoid stepping on the lines, my mind seems to automatically draw them on the floor as I walk, if I’m not busy looking elsewhere. The lines are always 2 dimensional though, on the floor, even though there’d be plenty of fodder for 3-d lines going every which way.
    
2. Everyone has scary dreams, and I remember talking about the dreams we had as children with someone recently. They stay vivid in my mind, even 25ish years later. I had the typical scary dream that something or someone was going to “get” me and I would round a corner and see it, and could not move my legs. Pretty typical. I also had a couple of dreams where I was the one that would have to “save the day” .. these dreams always featured me and my family in trouble by bad things or bad people, and somehow at the end, someone would declare dramatically that “Amy can save us!” and then, somehow I would, or would at least try. I can think of at least 2 or 3 dreams where in a rush to escape the evil gonna-getchas, everyone would pile into our van, and somehow in the rush, I would end up in the driver’s seat, and *I* would have to drive. I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old, because of the location of these dreams, so it’s amusing to think back about these dreams when I had to do this complicated driving thing or me and my family would all be “gotcha-ed.” I remember being a pretty decent driver, with this very stern, “I can do it, I HAVE to do it!” mentality the entire time.
    
3. One thing that I did that I’m sure everyone has done, and I had no special Amy slant, was jump around the room on random things, following the self imposed rule that I couldn’t touch the floor. Ethan does this now, it’s pretty funny. I don’t know how it is that everyone makes up the same game when they’re little, but we all totally do. Ethan will lay down the couch pillows and jump from pillow, to rug, to his coat on the floor, back to pillow, and proclaim, “I didn’t touch the BUBBLES!”
    
4. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I had this huge thing against medicine of any sort. Someone sometime must have tried to explained how it helps your body feel better, but I just imagined little “things” (organisms? nano-bots? the “things” in my mind were totally scary and alien) entering my body and doing things that my body didn’t necessarily want done and it weirded me out to the point where I would hold a pill in my mouth until my mom left the room and then spit it out. I think it was also because I hated swallowing pills. (becoming a woman and the onset of cramps put a stop to this fear pretty quickly.)
    
5. I always felt like clothes fit me better the second day I wore them. If I had my way in the first grade, I would have worn the same clothes for the entire year. I definitely had favorites, and would try to wear them as often as I could. This stemmed an actual feeling of pity for my other, less favorite clothes that I didn’t want to wear, and sometimes I would wear them just so they wouldn’t feel bad, but then I’d go back to my favoritism elitist ways. I don’t remember all the clothes that were my favorite, except for one nightgown that I wore until it either was too small, or fell to pieces. It was a satiny material in soft pastel colors that was very smooth and soft, and it was very full, so that when I spun around it billowed out around me and made me feel like I was wearing a ball gown. Ahhh.. I still miss that twirly nightgown. A girl needs twirly clothes. Always remember that, people! Twirly clothes!

   Ethan definitely has favorite clothes, and the primary was a pair of red pants made in a sweatpants material, but weren’t quite like sweatpants (no elastic at the bottoms, for example). He had a red shirt with blue sleeves that he had to wear with it, and he called the ensemble his “red clothes” and delighted in saying, “Look mommy, I’M ALL RED!” I had to prepare him gradually when they were too small, that soon, we would have to put his red clothes away, and finally I said one morning when he was putting them on that that was the last time he’d be able to wear them. He took it surprisingly well, and the next time they came up and James tried to give them to him to wear, he informed daddy that they were too small, and he couldn’t wear them. He has other favorite clothes, and they seem to be his favorite because they are all one color, all gray, all blue, etc. I’m definitely saving those red clothes, though, it’s like an end of an era.
   Jocelyn doesn’t have any favorites really yet, except a purple poncho which, let’s face it, is just fun, no matter your age. She also is enamored with underwear and we got her some with Dora the Explorer. She gets mad when we put a diaper on her, and sometimes starts exclaiming, “umberwear, mommy! umberwear!”

So there are a couple of “typical” things that everyone has from their childhood (with some cute kid stories tossed in). I don’t think it will be a very hard meme, and it’s interesting to think about the things from childhood that define who you were/are and how you thought/think.

I am going to tag CHRIS, ANNA, & LINDA - these are all folks I know, so if you don’t participate I will beat you soundly I will also tag two folks I don’t know in real life, but read them religiously, and so let’s see if they will also participate, though if not, who can blame them for ignoring some random chick and her silly meme: Rockstar Mommy and leahpeah, I TAG THEE!

And if you want to do it too, that’d rock! Let me know, and I will link to you!

- amy

While they also bring a lot of frustration that makes one want to engage in screaming, hair-pulling and let’s not forget vodka swilling, I can’t think of anything else that can just bring a smile to my face no matter the crappiest mood I’m in. I had this post written for some time, but wanted to get a current family picture to round off the batch.. we didn’t get to it, however. Maybe next week.
My family brings me joy:

(the polyester orange dress with cute white eyelet cotton apron was MINE when I was a baby.)

baby ethan

Betcha think I’ll post kid pics.

NOPE! What, I cant play around? Click to see the (very short) set of me, playing with the camera, which was propped up on the top of the fridge with the timer function on.

I think that “work” would have also been a good word for this, but I HAD to use the laminate flooring as work, so this seemed the next best fit.

I love spring. The obvious reasons, of course. The cold ebbing and the sun warming everything up and the days getting a bit longer, and it not being so hot that you could cook eggs on the sidewalk yet. The little pale green points poking up out of the ground, and the trees showing new buds. Everything is still, but it’s a pregnant stillness, of activity to come. Neighbors starting to sit outside on their decks, the smell of grills getting fired up and the guy down the street with the BEEYOOTIFUL yard beat everyone to the punch and turned on his hose bibs, laid some mulch and watered his lawn.

Anyway. Stillness:

Laying the laminate floor in the basement was work - the good kind, where you feel so accomplished and glowing when you’re done. You look at it and think, “I DID THAT!” Well, I did, James did, Chris did, Kurt did, and Ann did. Thanks guys
Click to see the set, and sorry about the dimmness of some of them. I suck

Hi there.

That word challenge thing? The deadline is today.

So … how many have I done?

mm…. 2? maybe 3?

Yeah. I’m going to be late. Oh well, I’ll be out of the running for the tin dog biscuit holders or whatever, but oh well.

I was all into making a post today, in fact, I didn’t clean up post party because I was all settling in to write stuff, but then got distracted with the camera and pictures, and downloading said pictures, and then naptime was OVER and well, maybe tomorrow I’ll post all the pictures and commentary.

It was a lovely day, with lovely warm weather, and oh i feel so lovely! And no, its not the lovely lemondrop martini from williams-sonoma talking, it was ever so loverly! i WANT to tell you all about it but I need to drop dead asleep first. I’ll tell you tomorrow. I’ll just say that a nice time was had by all, including Jocelyn the birthday girl. Funniest moment, Jocelyn seeing her daycare lady in our house. She stood staring, trying to figure out what was going on for a full half minute. I can only imagine it must have been like seeing your 5th grade teacher at the grocery store. Buying tampons or something. Just hard to actually imagine that they are ACTUAL REAL LIVE PEOPLE AND NOT CYBORGS THAT CEASE TO EXIST AFTER YOU LEAVE THEIR PRESENCE.

Sorry. that was a lot of capitals. err, capitols. i’m a wee bit drunk at the moment i highly recommend it. however, i don’t recommend talking to your colleagues via instant messanger while tipsy, because i suspect i am going to be somewhat frantic at looking up my message history after i realize what i’ve done tomorrow morning.

anyway. good niiiiiiiiight never never land!

ps - oh i cna’t wait to tell you all about this weekend, including the party and the gardening ie: the sowing of seeds and the SPRINGTIME that is waiting to be SPRUNG! tomorrow! if it kills me! tomorrow!

Read about the Word Challenge.

I talk all big about being happy going to work, but there is a part of me that just kills when I don’t get to see my kids for hours every day. We get home around 5:30-6pm each day, and we head up for bed between 7-7:15, so you can see that that doesn’t leave a lot of time, especially since you have fix and eat dinner in there also.

Ethan started full time preschool when his school started back in September. I had decided to go back to work and was desparately flailing around for a job in time for Ethan to start full time, rather than part time 3x a week. I knew that it would be better if he started school the way it was going to be all the time, rather than switched from part-time to full-time later. I was lucky and got a temporary gig for a web manager who was going on maternity leave. I got an offer from my current position not long after that, so on the first day of school, Ethan went back full time, and Jocelyn started full time at her home daycare.

I kind of wondered when or if Ethan would ever ask to quit going to school and stay home with me, like we used to. He has said on occasion, “Let’s stay home!” to which I would just say matter of factly, “But you/I have school/work tomorrow!” and it would evolve into a discussion on what I do at work, etc.

Yesterday was another of those days, we had picked up Jocelyn and were almost home, when Ethan stated happily, “School is ALL OVER!” and I could feel that knot of dread and pain start to form in my stomach as I tried to reply nonchalantly, “Yes, it is, we’re all done with school for today!” A pause, and then he said, “Let’s stay home, mommy.” and then the knot was fully formed and in rotation, making my stomach a gurgle of unhappiness. I knew exactly what he was saying, but I purposefully misheard him and said, “Ok honey, when we get home, we’ll stay home.” I think the conversation progressed from there, but I changed the subject and we got home, disembarked, ran around outside like crazy for a while, and went inside to eat dinner and watch Little Einsteins and make crazy GeoTrax layouts.

I would have to say, this is the one thing in my life right now that makes me want to cry. I know I’ve said how work is good for me right now, and when I went back, it was really out of financial necessity, and I may appear to be all gung-ho, “Working mothers UNITE! Together we can CONQUER THE UNIVERSE!” but I miss my kids. When I was talking to the lady at bunko about the costs of working vs. the costs of staying home, I was so sad, even in my defensiveness.

I miss being the one to feed them their lunch, and send them to time-out for being a snot, to sit on the floor and play with their toys, to lay on my back and give them SUPER-GIRL!s and SUPER-BOY!s, to start getting Jocelyn potty trained, to tuck them in for naptimes, for kissing the boo-boos, for taking them outside all bundled up to play, to see them all day and have them drive me so crazy that I wish I was working..

I miss my kids. Not seeing them all day makes me so sad.

- amy has to stop now before she starts to cry.

I am doing War and Hate all in one, baby. You think I’m cheating? SUE ME. Besides, I vomit up enough words that it will be way way way more than necessary to cover both. If I were a better writer, I would be able to tie it all in with half as many, and make all coherent, but oh well, this is me and my rambling brain and I just have to work with what I’ve got, yo. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this post is all about my friend Chris’ Word Challenge. Perhaps you’d like to read the other entries, or even join in! (Chris would be so ecstatic, you should totally do it.)

Have you read Harry Potter?

If you ask someone that question, you get various responses. A lot of people have read them and love them. Some folks have tried and gotten bored. A majority of folks who have not read Harry Potter will answer vehemently, along the lines of, “Yeah, like I’d be caught dead reading Harry Potter.”

There is a better example of this mind set, in fact, I remember there was a movie or a book or SOMETHING a few years ago that I was totally into (along with the rest of the known universe) and James scoffed at it, and at me for loving it. Just about everyone who wasn’t all into it followed the whole, “Ew, everyone and their dog is going on about that, I’m way too cool for school to be into THAT.” James was giving me the business about it every time it came up, and finally I got sick of a) hanging my head in shame or b) defending my “guilty pleasure” which always ended in hanging my head in shame (DAMN I wish I could remember what it was.) Finally, I spoke up and said, “You know why EVERYONE in the country likes XYZ? Because XYZ is actually GOOD, DAMMIT!”

(Now that I think about it, I think it was the first season of American Idol, and I think I said, “Because these folks can actually SING, dammit!!”)

Whatever it is, the things that we like, read, watch, wear, attend, what-have-you.. these things define who we are, which I think is why we get so adamant about separating ourselves from things which we don’t want to be seen as. As teenagers we rebel against our parents with the need to define ourselves as separate entities from them. And yet then we band together with our friends and “non-conform” in our own group-conforming way. Years out of high school, we all still have our cliques and ways of conforming and non-conforming to show ourselves to the world in the light in which we wish to be seen.

Jon on Blurbomat recently posted thoughts on this same sort of subject in his post, “Going Big” which I read and nodded my head along the entire thing. I’m also reading (OK, i’m re-reading it for the umpteenth time, you caught me) Chocolat, by Joanne Harris. I own the movie, and also love it, but the book has a lot of different aspects which aren’t really pinpointed in the movie. One of the characters in the book, Guillaume, owns a small dog whom he loves dearly, but is very sick. He seeks comfort from the priest and the book’s antagonist, Francis Reynaud, who informs him that dogs have no souls and he’s wasting his time and feelings on a pet. The sad day comes when he has to allow the vet to put the dog to sleep because he is in too much pain. The morning after, he comes into Vianne’s shop. Vianne and Armande let him grieve in his own way, and in discussing the “advice/ comfort” that Reynaud had given, Guilliame asks Vianne what exactly she believes in. She thinks for a moment, and answers, “I believe in whatever makes you happy.”

At Bunko a few weeks ago I sat down to a new table to a discussion in progress about staying at home with one’s kids. It was decidedly pro-staying at home, which is fine, but I thought it needed another point of view, which would be mine, which would be hello, some people HAVE to go back to work in order to pay their mortgage and buy, oh you know, FOOD AND ELECTRICITY.. I really wasn’t riled up as I dove into the conversation, just matter of fact, but as one lady pressed me about what exactly the cost of daycare, and gas, and eating out while at work, and didn’t I think, if I REALLY added everything up, the cost of working would balance out and make the entire situation not be worth working? The fact is, I make more money than daycare, gas, etc. (which came out great, btw: “Actually no, I make more money than all those things. I make a boatload of money!”) and if I didn’t go back to work last fall, we would be in pretty dire straits. Like, defaulting on our mortgage kind of suckiness.

I really don’t mind people feeling strongly about staying at home, or going back to work, these parenting issues are important and it’s important to think them over and decide which side of the fence you are on. For example, I believe that breast feeding is best. However, I’m not going to go hand out pamphlets to the formula-feeding moms, that is THEIR decision, and one I’m sure they came to after a lot of thought. I will however, give a momma breast-feeding in public a grin and a thumbs up, and if I’m really feeling cocky, a “YOU GO GIRL!” But I digress. The point is, it’s a damn good thing that I actually feel good about being back at work at this point in my life, because IF I had really felt miserable about my needing to work and being away from my kids all day long, this woman GRINDING it into me that I really “could stay home, if I weighed all the costs” (except that no, I COULDN’T AND I THINK I KNOW MY CHECKBOOK BETTER THAN YOU) would really have made my misery make me want to cry myself to sleep that night. As it was, I just got a little pissed, and then forgot about it until now. I’m not really mad at this woman either, btw, I think she just got a little too into the discussion to hear my side, and was so positive that her choice was the right choice for everyone, that it got a little carried away.

We all make choices for the good of our families and ourselves. I don’t think it’s anyone’s job to make that decision FOR them, or make someone feel bad about that. Just as in Chocolat, Vianne’s response to Guillame, “I believe in whatever makes you happy,” is entire message of the book. Not only living your life in a way that makes you happy, but NOT pressuring others to live THEIR lives according to your beliefs. The “battle” between Vianne and Reynaud really is about letting people be happy with their own choices, which also means allowing people to do/ read/ watch/ love the things that they want to love and makes them happy regardless of whether it is cool and exclusive or if it is totally mainstream and gauche and, you know, American Idol and Britney Spears. Or choosing to stay at home with your kids. Or choosing to have an abortion.

So how does War tie in to all this? I believe that a lot of the wars we’ve seen lately revolve around this issue. If religious groups (or zealots, I guess I should say) could just allow others to make choices and not try to force their own choices and beliefs on them, would there be terrorist attacks? It makes me a little frightened of events in our country. When we try to remove other peoples’ choices from them and foist our own beliefs on others, I think it spells trouble. We already have domestic terrorism with church burnings, abortion clinic bombings that sane people frown on, regardless of their beliefs, but we also have the more subtle things, pharmacists refusing to give out birth control/ morning after pills because of their beliefs. I believe with every fiber of my being, that abortion is wrong. This means, that I won’t be having any. That’s my choice, for me. I would never, ever deign to make that decision for someone else. Just like I won’t make the decision for other mommies to breast feed exclusively, or stay home or go back to work, or any number of things.

Free choice, people. Living a life that will make you happy. That’s what it’s all about. That, and not deeming yourself worthy of making those choices for others. Not belittling others because their choices are different. Not throwing bombs because their choices are different. Not flying planes into buildings because their choices are different. It starts out small, but we are all warring in our own way, battling over choices, and trying to impose our personal choice on others.

Hate and War

fini

I have totally been digging Chris’ Challenge(we need to determine a name for it, my friend), and seeing the various threads of everyone’s friends criss-crossing back and forth like a spider web all based on this event. I have been mulling over what I am going to do with the various words when I snapped a picture this morning that will be perfect for the word “hate.”

And then today as I was reading at lunch, I got more insight into my whole thought process that goes along with “hate.”
And I remembered another blog entry I read recently that totally tied in, and i’m so ansy and wired up about it all i want to vomit it all down on the page, but i can’t. i have to WORK! and there is more work to be done TONIGHT! and tomorrow we are being all solemn and serious for some “I DOs” and then we are BOOGEYING DOWN until the wee smas!

So I thought I’d tell you. Hate. Soon.

Coming this Saturday,
to a crazy mokes blog near you!

- amy had a very nice birthday thankyouverymuchtoeveryone