nudle

What goes around comes around.

There is so much tumbling around in my brain that I don't know where to begin. First, this neglected blog. I am considering shutting it down, though I honestly don't know how. I remember starting it all those years ago in 2006 (wasn't that only last year?). I was excited and scared. Who was I to think I could have my own blog? Now I look at that woman and say to myself, who was that person? I've moved forward, which is a great feeling. Now I need to stop asking, who am I to think I can write books, get an agent, have my books published? To that end, I am slowly laying the groundwork for a professional writer's site, including a professional blog. The blog is where I'll start, since I have yet to be published. This is mortifying to admit, but I have yet to actually SUBMIT anything I've written. So I guess that 2006 woman is still living still, in this almost-2013 body. So is my ten-year-old self, full of yearning, and my fourteen-year-old self, full of anticipation and new power. And there is still the twenty-year-old party girl in there and also the twenty-two-year-old adventurer, chomping at the bit.

This morning I remembered the past self who was unable to effectively manage her time. She was the forty-three-year old me. Forty-three was when I decided I'd change my way of being loose in the world. Not really planning my weeks, my days, not having a plan for my life wasn't working for me any more with two kids, with a baby again--though he was really a baby-toddler when we brought him home. A boddler? Anyway, he was already nearly on the run, getting into everything, demanding EVERYTHING. Such a precious, adorable child whom I could not appreciate, because I was blindsided by feelings of being completely overwhelmed. I will always be full of sorrow for both Han and me during those first couple of years. This morning I woke after one of those wonderful, long, rare uninterrupted sleeps and I heard the familiar soft pad, pad, pad of feet on stairs. "Snuggle with me, please, Mommmy!" he pleaded, even though it was after seven and past time to get up. Because my time management issues aren't completely gone, I got back in bed with him and we did snuggle for a few minutes. Man, oh man, do I love that boy now. It took a long time, but he has grown my heart sooo big! (Thanks, Theodore Geisel, for the Grinchly visual.) There is a book in there, something about the boy with three mommies, and it will come when it's ready. But anyway, my being overwhelmed thing that got in the way of the growing the heart thing? It was partly a lack of time management and general organization.

So move from that tender, loving moment to 8:21 today and I was using my voice as a deadly weapon against my daughter, who had once again left a major school project to the very last minute. It's due today, and Tuesday we parents got a reminder about the deadline from her teacher in the weekly letter. Iona's chosen deliverable is a PowerPoint defining most of the Greek gods and goddesses. Okay, she had done some drawings, ready to scan except they were in light pencil, which required some serious Photoshop level-setting by yours truly. Okay, it took a couple hours, but I did it and Iona was effusively grateful, through all my grumbling about how we were NEVER, NEVER, NEVER waiting 'til the la-hast minute. (Thanks, Taylor Swift, for the song now running through my head without mercy.) Okay, so she got pretty much right on it again yesterday after school. I grumbled about how was she going to do a PowerPoint when she had never used it before, and it had to all be done in one night, and I struggled with whether or not I should put together a template for her. Was this overstepping bounds of letting her do her own work? I decided it was, yes. So I gave her a few PowerPointers and set her loose, occasionally helping out if she got stuck.

The thing is, she did it. Not only did she teach herself how to do those cool (horrible! awful!) transitions between slides, she completely changed the template and made all her own design decisions. My daughter taught herself how to use PowerPoint in about two hours. "You know how Dad does all those charts?" she said to me. "That's right here. I bet I could do charts."

The thing she didn't do was put the finished presentation on the flash drive until 8:21 this morning, and then the flash drive didn't work, and her hair wasn't brushed and neither were her teeth, and I saw the big glaring evidence that through genetics and behavioral modeling I had passed my Big, Ugly Flaw on to her. Being organized matters in today's world, because if you're not, even if you're talented and smart, you'll never produce anything and get it out in the world if you can't lay out the tasks and meet the deadlines, or just FINISH SOMETHING. You'll never be able to make a living. And here's where the circle goes round and round like those wheels on the bus Han is always singing about. And who was I really yelling at? I know who.

I apologized to both kids for polluting the morning with my mad yelling, but I knew it could have been worse. I've been worse. And while Iona looked a little wan and her eyes were a little pink around the edges when I sent her off to fifth grade with her late slip, she's got to be very aware that she's a bit of a genius for conquering PowerPoint and the Gods and Goddesses, because I told her that too. But honey, pulling things out at the last minute is not a lifelong recipe for success. So learn it now.

And the question is, does that ever work? Do we ever learn life lessons because someone tells us to? Or do we learn them when we're ready, or when the choice is so clear as to be like a gun to our head?

Usually when I run, I put one foot in front of the other at my own pace. I keep that zen frame of mind, not trying to catch the person in front of me or stay ahead of the person behind me.

But yesterday, as I ran down our little street that meets with a bigger street, I noticed (out of the corner of my eye--and that's the second time I've used that phrase today) two women in candy-colored jackets. They were twenty or so yards behind me. I ran. One foot, the other. Wondered how it could still be so cold. Thought about how many minutes would pass before my hands thawed.

Then I heard the chatter. Women's voices, talking, only I couldn't make out the words. Just the pitch. And it was constant. I ran a little faster. I thought, what if they pass me? It will affect me badly. My run won't be as fun if they pass me. Maybe if I run faster, I can get out of range of their voices.

But, no. These two women in their bright clothing kept pace with me. Talking and talking. No matter that I was winded because I was running faster than my normal pace. I was probably running a nine minute mile! But they weren't out of breath. I knew that because they talked and talked and talked. How nice for them that they had someone to talk to. Of course, I was glad I didn't, because then I WOULD HAVE LOST. There was no way I could have kept the pace and chatted.

So I got to my turnaround, where there is a water fountain. I drank. I walked a little. And when I rejoined the path, there they were again. It was their turnaround, too! One of them was taking off her jacket and tying it around her waist. She was very thin and muscular, and had a cute cross-back tank. She was tanned. She probably went somewhere on a trip recently, and was telling her friend all about it.

Just as I was passing them, they started running again. This threatened to be awkward, all of us running at exactly the same pace, but me gasping, and them talking about Aruba or Jamaica or, maybe, spray tans. Which I have nothing against, actually. Spray tans rock.

I dodged off, down the hill, to the little dirt path closer to the lake. Now, not only was I running fast, I was running cross-country. Up little inclines, down. Around curves. Skirting dog-walkers.

I could still hear them. Their voices reached down and tickled my ears in a way that was vaguely goading, and I ran faster. Even when I got to the hill close to home, I still ran. Up the hill. Gasping. Muscles straining. I didn't stop running until I got to the top. They kept running, down below, on the main road.

But I knew I had won. I put my hands in the air, my fingers V'd for victory. Ha! You may have muscles and cute jackets, and maybe you go off on exotic vacations, and you can chat and run at the same time, but I beat you!

I am badass.

We are remodeling our house. No, we are not, Stuart and His Guys are. I will likely miss Stuart when this is all over, but I will welcome the dishwasher with open arms and loving kisses. Last night I went to lock the new front door and found that it didn't want to lock. After moaning and swearing I got a screwdriver and took off the strike plate, and then it locked.

Today our interwebs went out. I called Comcast. The Comcast feller was nice, but he didn't solve my problem. I called them again at 9:30 tonight. The guy I got, Bert, was really nice and even funny. But our conversation ended with an apology from Bert to me. Fifteen minutes later I changed a setting and the light on the Apple Express thingy went from flashing yellow to green. I did it. I did. By myself. 

This is all to say that when I take the time I can solve the problem. But before I learned that lesson (again) I chose to grab the kids and escape to The Mall to get some inspiration for certain in-demand holiday wish lists and eat dinner and maybe buy myself a pick-me-up gift. I am so sick of washing dishes, I really can't tell you. Like the thought of cleaning wetfoodshit out of that drain catcher one more time makes me want to vomit. Ah, the problems I face, they are insurmountable.

So we escaped to The Mall and went to the Independent Toy Store that rawks even though their web site is hideous, rather than Toys 'R Us, because I can't help it, I'm listening to the 99% and they're getting to me. And we've lost two great indie toy stores in the four and half years we've lived here and that makes me want to weep.

So, in summary, I am hardcorebadass with a Philips and I fixed the Apple Express thingy by accidentally changing a network setting I probably messed up in the first place. I prevailed. And we went out and had some fun tonight.

She wants to wait up for the real deal on Christmas Eve.

I kind of want this. But I think Han wants trains. Or elaborate plastic fantasy figures.

"I love all these!"

This was after Han, terrified, refused to go anywhere near Santa. Not for a candycane. Not for an Altoid. I have a $23 photo of Iona sitting on Santa's lap by herself, and they gave us two horrible flashing plastic snowflakewands.

We ate at Nordstrom. This is the ladies' lounge. Han was dancing to ELO.

And a gratuitous trippy photo from Thanksgiving.

State of me today.

There is a wall of noise in my head, and outside my head. Guys whose names I do not know are sanding the floors directly above me as part of a major remodel that kicks us out of the house today. And it is Monday, and it's raining, raining, raining, the first real rain we have had in a while. Plus I yelled at the kids this morning as I tried to get Iona to school early. Her teacher, for whom I have a lot of respect, suggested it's beneficial for them to be there fifteen minutes before school starts so they can "transition." If only all of life was so gentle. Of course it is, most change is gradual, but we fail to identify those transitions. "Here YOU, this is the transition from youth to middle age. It's happening now." Or maybe, "Time to transition to a surge of joy from just sitting at the beach watching Ewan play in the surf with the kids, here it comes…now! Okay, get ready, 1, 2, 3...it's gone."

I had intense dreams last night about male friends from high school. Two friends in particular -- one is someone with whom I'm very close now, and the other was my first real love, I guess. Like many high school relationships, our love was blissful for maybe two or three weeks before Other Girls started to complicate things. Maybe there were Other Boys too, but my memory says that happened later, after he kissed that first Other Girl when he was supposed to be kissing only me. In the parking lot of his church, by a chain link fence. Or so I heard from a friend who was Catholic. I was fifteen. There should be a book of rules that states it's okay to kiss ANYONE when you're fifteen and sixteen, and maybe even when you're seventeen and eighteen. But my book has always had as rule #1: IF YOU PAY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING BUT ME I WILL BE RABIDLY JEALOUS.

But ANYWAY. This near-comical first relationship was something I tucked in the past around year one into college and gazed upon with slightly bitter amusement from time to time -- until this first love was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor in 2008. He passed away in the first days of 2011, leaving behind a big family and a community that loved them.

I regret that I never could be casual and easy and affectionate with this guy after our fun three weeks. I'm paying for that now, in my dreams, because he shows up frequently. In my dreams he is sick, but I have another chance to show him the pure affection that was part of that early time, and the only part of our interactions that he ever deserved. In my dream last night I took the opportunity to show him that by holding him and trying to comfort him.

Maybe the message is that it's time to get rid of my rule #1. It still gets in my way today.

The noise and the rain and gloom and aftermath of a dream about jealousy and death makes me a little bleak in the soul.

Iona is starting a blog, and we plan for it to live here in Typepadia, with mine. While setting it up yesterday, I messed up my blog, deleting my blogroll and some other things. Stressful, but sometimes losing stuff is a good way to move forward. Moving forward on a Monday. It's possible.

Han adds 'ses' to the end of a lot of words. "There's bookses," he just said, pointing to a pile of them. Then he went up through the construction zone that used to be our house to get in my bed. That's where he wants to sleep these days, my bed. And he started school! It is a very nice place where they feed the children kale.

It is not possible that Iona is in fourth grade and putting up the American flag before class starts. (Something from my chest just reached up and tugged something in my throat and it's making my eyes water.)

Yesterday was more than a tragic day in history. It was my nephew's birthday. It was gloriously sunny. It was a day when a woman I don't know chased our runaway soccer ball down our hill in her pickup truck, stopping three times before she finally got out, grabbed it, and handed it over with a sheepish smile. It was a tragic day in history, too. I heard about this Onion story on NPR while driving, and for some reason it hit me right in the solar plexus and I wept and wept. What does it mean when a made-up humor story about an heinous event is the one that makes you cry hardest? It made me think, too, about how sometimes humor doesn't make you chuckle or laugh. 

It is 7:02 on Monday, and this is the sort of thing I usually scribble in a notebook before 7:00. Today I'm scribbling it here.

The wander lust.

I seldom take risks any more. What risks can one take in this situation I've orchestrated, two children and a home and husband? Collective efficacy everywhere. And yet, sometimes, the wanderlust pokes even my settled heart. I'm feeling it. It may have something to do with the fact that Ewan is outside London right now, drunk on Guinness, and I am home with a sleeping toddler staring at my middle-aged reflection in the way-too-glossy Mac screen. It may have something to do with looking (on shiny, reflective monitor) at images of men fishing and skiing, being men, you know, off with other men in the snow and knee-deep in brackish waters chucking fish under the chin. They were beautiful photos, full of weight and seriousness and gear. Looking made me feel inconsequential and way, way too sedentary. So, off to put it all on some pages before my own time ends at 3:00, when it's time for school pick-up.

It's the new year in Scotland already.

I'm feeling melancholy. Usually I surround myself with fun people on the eve of the new year. This year I surrounded myself with family (my immediate, that is). And I'm not saying they're not fun; they are. So why aren't I?

Now we're off to a party, all of us, up the street. It should be fun. They are fun. But will I be? Stay tuned!
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Whew, back home before nine. Iona was about to make demands of the hosts that they put her in front of Rock Band, so we had to make an exit. The party was good though, and booted me out of my new year funk. Now to see if we can stay up...

Stay with us until the next installment!
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Didn't quite make it to midnight, though a friend's text message coming in woke me in Iona's bed on the dot of twelve. The odd, scrub-wearing medical couple next door were having a loud party. Ewan was already in bed, having fallen asleep in front of the fire on the living room floor at about eleven. It's morning now, and I'm thinking about the notion of what will the year have in store for me as opposed to what do I have in store for this year?

I like making resolutions, but I don't really like sharing them broadly. Tune in at the end of the year to find out what they were, and if I kept them. In the spirit of double standards, I'd love to know yours! You can leave them in the comments, or your attitude toward new year's resolutions. Or anything else you want to say, rants, treatises or whimsies.

Brain crack, bullying, and my anti-hoarding initiative.

Cited recently by my internet friend Mr Beagley, this short movie about ideas is worth watching if you've ever thought you might make something. Be amused.

I recently heard that some bullying is going on at my daughter's school, and I bravely made an appointment with our assistant head to talk about it. Apparently (and unsurprisingly), according to some British researchers, bullying can turn kids psychotic.

Now I am off to (more bravery! onward!) recycle some piles of paper. (whimper)

Addendum: This one cracked me up too. Now I'm closing all my browser windows. Maybe I'll even turn off my computer.

Addendum II: Little movies probably not suitable for work or children, as they contain swear words.

My adoption story, so far.

I've been meaning to write this for a long time. It's not easy, because I'm dealing with grief and fear and excitement and my own racism and all my own messiness, so it's likely to be stilted and weird. Right at this moment I don't know why I'm posting it; maybe because there were so many times I looked to the internet when I was agonizing over some decision or another.

This is about Ewan and me adopting, not about me being adopted. I'm not adopted. Just to be clear.

Where do I begin? I didn't want children. I didn't want marriage, stability, or commitment until I was about twenty-four. Until then I was invincible!

Then I saw a woman give birth on television, in the days before I had cable, in the days when I had rabbit ears and barely a boyfriend. I sat in my first solo apartment in Grand Rapids and wept. I realized I wanted children.

Monday morning negativity; an incomplete list of things I hate.

• Insomnia
• Worrying
• Guilt
• Beeping alerts on the clothes washer and dishwasher
• Long regretful periods after committing to things I don't want to do
• Long to-do lists
• That it takes years to master a craft
• Paperwork
• Clutter
• Knowing I have to exercise but putting it off
• Exercising
• Plaque
• Public restrooms, especially in ski lodges (yet I'm grateful for them)
• Embarrassment 
• Nose hairs 
• Being ignored 
• Zapf Chancery