I think I need to get my brains back.
I know I need to get my brains back.
I need to spend more time connecting my mind to the world of the real, and marveling in all there is to see and do in it.
I need to take my daughters with me on this journey.
Return the chores and responsibilities of the everyday world to their proper place - an undercurrent of reality that defines only the physical activity of the day, not the mental activity. No longer preoccupy myself solely with the domestic arts that I find so soothing and enjoyable, but give my mind a workout as strenuous as might be required of someone grossly out of shape. For my mind is out of shape. It's become fat with Food Network and Bravo and no reading and no writing. When I'm too tired to remember to go to the library other than for the book sale. My daughter has only browsed in the library once in her young life, and that is tragic. Yes, I know she can't read yet, but how will she ever get an appreciation for the wonderfulness of the library, with its infinite shelves of ideas, adventures, knowledge- her mind is hungry for it, and I've been feeding her fucking Caillou.
When I was a kid I was brainy, and people made fun of me for it. Rather than being strong enough to embrace my intellect, I dumbed myself down so that people wouldn't tease me about reading the dictionary for fun. I intentionally did poorly, skived off doing my homework or studying, because the smart kids weren't cool. Well, hell of a lot of good it did me- I still wasn't cool, and by the time I started to try to give a damn, I'd already lost a few good years of building good skills. I blamed it partially on a school system that didn't keep a good eye on me, make me do my homework, catch me in the lies I told my teachers and parents to keep out of trouble, but in all honestly if I'd just said to myself, "I don't care what people think, I AM smart, and I'm gonna work hard," perhaps it wouldn't have taken me 12 years to finally complete college and still end up working as a wage slave in a cubicle farm.
I know it's likely that I will tell this to my girls till I'm blue in the face and they'll still do whatever they damn well please anyway, but maybe, just maybe if I lead by example, they'll enjoy the intellectual pursuits in life, and fuck themselves up some other way.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Procrastination! Yeah!!
Heh. Posting to this blog is my new procrastination method. I could say I'm waiting for the washer to stop so I can go do the dishes so I can then make this soup recipe that I think will closely approximate the Pasta Fagioli they used to serve at Sal's (they make it differently now, and I miss it terribly). But that will only be true if I actually peel my butt off the couch to go do that. And since I've been messing around now for the entire time Evie's been napping, that seems slightly unlikely at this point.
But wait. I have already done two loads of wash today, played Clipo with Evie and let her prepare me wooden food, gave her lunch, nursed Sofia three times (hungry baby!), and talked to the MIL twice (once so she could ask if she could buy fleece-lined Crocs for Evie, and a second time to tell me she did buy them, plus four packs of those goofy thingies you can jam into the croc-holes on the shoes). So it isn't an entirely wasted day.
I think I've been going about this whole blog thing all wrong. Every time I'd sit down to write, I'd treat it like an essay for college - plan, come up with a pithy, interesting topic, then edit-edit-edit. In my overinflated sense of self-importance regarding internet meanderings, I felt like I needed to provide An Interesting, Informative Topic every single time. Which led to completion anxiety and a general feeling that this was not fun, which for me always leads to something being abandoned. But why bother? Mine is just another voice adding to the cacophony, and people will either read this (most likely just people who know me who for some reason aren't tired of hearing me talk about myself and my life), or they won't, and it will just be a neat little space for me to keep my writing muscles flexed. So I'm going to take the same attitude with this blog that Matt and I did about Christmas- Fuck it, it's Christmas. I'm not going to get hung up on the minutiae of how it should be, I'm just going to buckle my seatbelt and go on the ride. It won't ever be how I envision it, no matter how much I pretzel myself into trying to make it so. I can either accept this, and enjoy the ride, or I can completely reject it and try to bend circumstances to my will to make the most perfectest, specialest, beautiful-snowflakiest blog that has internashunal reedership (lolcat spelling required here) and a growing fanbase that leads to me getting book deals and cash money and stalkers.
I'm making carpets for my kitchen using this pattern here. I have started them three times, and only on the third time have I made progress. I'm still new to crochet, and my skills aren't as sharp as my knitting skills, so on my first try, I tried to use the pattern as a guideline and then do my own thing. I normally do this with simple knitting patterns (anything where I am either totally comfortable with making it, like socks, or something where gauge isn't critical, like scarves or afghans), so I figured hey, why not just do that with crochet? Turns out I don't know enough about crochet to do that yet. When the pattern tells me to use two strands of yarn doubled and a size N hook, I should just do that and stop getting cute and using 1 strand and size H hook. Theoretically that should work, but it was too loopy and not at all what it should have looked like. Stupidly, I then did it again, but this time added stripes. I also need to practice stripes. Try #2 was now loopy with weird jogs where the stripes began and ended. Yesterday, on Lazy New Year's Day, I tried it one more time but, wonder of wonders, actually followed the instructions as the designer wrote them. And OMG, WTF, it looks just right? Go figure. But then I had to start it again because after I got the pattern going, I snuggled up for a while with Evie to get her to fall asleep for nap, and got the yarn wrapped around my foot and yanked half of the rug out when I got up to put Evie in her room. Gah.
If I get my housework done, though, I might be able to just sit tonight after the kids go to bed and work on these rugs (I want a round one for each doorway to the kitchen, plus semicircles for the spot in front of the sink and the stove) instead of cleaning up or something lame like that... Ooh, that sounds good. Time to go then. So I didn't end up fibbing- the washer is done now. I can do the dishes, throw another load of clothes in, and go make pasta fagioli with white beans and ditalini. Yeah boy!
But wait. I have already done two loads of wash today, played Clipo with Evie and let her prepare me wooden food, gave her lunch, nursed Sofia three times (hungry baby!), and talked to the MIL twice (once so she could ask if she could buy fleece-lined Crocs for Evie, and a second time to tell me she did buy them, plus four packs of those goofy thingies you can jam into the croc-holes on the shoes). So it isn't an entirely wasted day.
I think I've been going about this whole blog thing all wrong. Every time I'd sit down to write, I'd treat it like an essay for college - plan, come up with a pithy, interesting topic, then edit-edit-edit. In my overinflated sense of self-importance regarding internet meanderings, I felt like I needed to provide An Interesting, Informative Topic every single time. Which led to completion anxiety and a general feeling that this was not fun, which for me always leads to something being abandoned. But why bother? Mine is just another voice adding to the cacophony, and people will either read this (most likely just people who know me who for some reason aren't tired of hearing me talk about myself and my life), or they won't, and it will just be a neat little space for me to keep my writing muscles flexed. So I'm going to take the same attitude with this blog that Matt and I did about Christmas- Fuck it, it's Christmas. I'm not going to get hung up on the minutiae of how it should be, I'm just going to buckle my seatbelt and go on the ride. It won't ever be how I envision it, no matter how much I pretzel myself into trying to make it so. I can either accept this, and enjoy the ride, or I can completely reject it and try to bend circumstances to my will to make the most perfectest, specialest, beautiful-snowflakiest blog that has internashunal reedership (lolcat spelling required here) and a growing fanbase that leads to me getting book deals and cash money and stalkers.
I'm making carpets for my kitchen using this pattern here. I have started them three times, and only on the third time have I made progress. I'm still new to crochet, and my skills aren't as sharp as my knitting skills, so on my first try, I tried to use the pattern as a guideline and then do my own thing. I normally do this with simple knitting patterns (anything where I am either totally comfortable with making it, like socks, or something where gauge isn't critical, like scarves or afghans), so I figured hey, why not just do that with crochet? Turns out I don't know enough about crochet to do that yet. When the pattern tells me to use two strands of yarn doubled and a size N hook, I should just do that and stop getting cute and using 1 strand and size H hook. Theoretically that should work, but it was too loopy and not at all what it should have looked like. Stupidly, I then did it again, but this time added stripes. I also need to practice stripes. Try #2 was now loopy with weird jogs where the stripes began and ended. Yesterday, on Lazy New Year's Day, I tried it one more time but, wonder of wonders, actually followed the instructions as the designer wrote them. And OMG, WTF, it looks just right? Go figure. But then I had to start it again because after I got the pattern going, I snuggled up for a while with Evie to get her to fall asleep for nap, and got the yarn wrapped around my foot and yanked half of the rug out when I got up to put Evie in her room. Gah.
If I get my housework done, though, I might be able to just sit tonight after the kids go to bed and work on these rugs (I want a round one for each doorway to the kitchen, plus semicircles for the spot in front of the sink and the stove) instead of cleaning up or something lame like that... Ooh, that sounds good. Time to go then. So I didn't end up fibbing- the washer is done now. I can do the dishes, throw another load of clothes in, and go make pasta fagioli with white beans and ditalini. Yeah boy!
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