Mean Living

Oo-ee-oo-ee-ooooh . . . . . wah, wah, waaah

2011-09-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness those tumbleweeds have been blowing through here, keeping the cobwebs to a minimum. I feel like I abandoned this blog so very unceremoniously. So I'm at least going to update a teensy bit:

I'm not obsessing about my hairstylist and whether or not she wants to be BFFs.
My kid still pretty much doesn't give a shit about me, but at least now I'm pretty sure it's because he's a little messed in the head, and there's meds for that. (I'm going to YAY! here instead of sobbing. For now.)
My other kid is just the bees' knees. But he's two and all two-year-olds are awesome, right? Two gets us good and attached so we don't put them out with the recycling when Three comes along.
I'm still freaking out on the reg about German/Euro synthpop (Beborn Beton and Camouflage anyone?) but have no plans as of right now to ditch my family and vacate without them. Mostly that's because I'm out of frequent flyer miles.
Fitnessy stuff is still important to me. I gave Crossfit a try, think it's just lovely, but am taking a break from that to do some more strength/power work. You are going to have to pry the chocolate cake from my cold, dead hands, so don't EVEN go proselytizing the Paleo around me. My people are from the cold northern climes that INVENTED wheat and dairy and my body loooooves it, thankyouverymuch.

That's all for now. There's a 50/50 chance I'll never update ever again, so follow me on twitter and you can hear me rant and rave about Colin Firth, music no one listens to, and how much I love having open cabinets in my kitchen (but really just don't want to finish painting them). Tweets about food will be kept to a minimum, I swear.

Haar Kutten

2010-03-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

So I have this hairstylist that I like very much. I've seen her every two months or so for the last couple of years and generally she is very sensible and doesn't do anything to my hair that makes me look terrible (razor cuts/thinning shears--GAH). She's also very cool about the fact that when I get my hair cut, I generally just want to sit in the chair quietly and read a trashy magazine rather than do a whole lot of chitchat with someone I hardly know. But here's the thing. I think she's really neat, and when we DO talk, we seem to relate very well to each other. She's the kind of person that if I knew from work or school or whatever, I would totally invite her to a movie or a dinner or something.

But I have this rule about people that are at work whenever I see/interact with them (salespeople, baristas, gym class instructors, whathaveyou). Because I realize that I am making a contribution to their wages, they are sort of obligated to be nice to me. And I respect their right to NOT interact with me for free. Just because they are good at their job, and generally nice, doesn't mean they want to hang out with me. But, um, I stay at home with my kids and don't have a ton of opportunities to meet interesting people. Most of the people I count as friends are my husband's friends from work. And, because he's an Achiever, most of the people he associates with are a good 10-15 years older than we are (which isn't a disqualifier right away, but it makes it hard to find common ground when your life experiences/pop culture touchpoints are different). This girl is almost exactly my age, is German and moved to the States on her own, and is not fakey-seeming. When we talk, we always seem to have something actually interesting to talk ABOUT--not just the weather or whatever banal crap you normally have to talk to hair people about to entertain them so they won't butcher your shit up. So am I allowed to try to befriend this person who cuts my hair? If so, how do I do that in a way that makes it easy for her to decline without it seeming weird?

P.S. As I mentioned, she is German, so I suppose it's ok for her to have hair that looks a lot like this:

P.P.S. Oh my god, I'm totally kidding. Her hair is perfectly normal and cute.

My makeover

2010-03-04T20:05:00.000-08:00

So I have decided that, since this is the year(ish) I got both skin cancer and too many of those out-of-control gray hairs to ignore, I will finally try to figure out how to groom myself into a reasonably presentable adult female. Things I have to deal with:

I finally found a perfume I like (Pacifica's Nerola Orange Blossom), but have no idea how much to use. I think the last fragrance I used with any regularity was Electric Youth and, as I'm sure you know, ANY of that is too much.
I am wicked pale. And, well, I guess vain enough that I feel I can't/shouldn't go out in shorts without some sort of color on my legs. Which, skin cancer to the contrary (what?), usually just meant that I wore capris all damned summer and sweat my ass off. I did a handful of fake bakin' sessions before my weddin' and for some reason when I was, like, 14. I hate the smell of the lotion stuff. So here it is: I am considering the spray tan. What say you, interwebs? Will this end badly (orangely)?
I am going to get me some highlights to try to hide the weirdo hairs that are springing up outta my heed. I have The Fear of the hair color. I have had it done before (10 years ago, omfg) and my hair was reaaaally short when I grew it out because I just couldn't handle the roots looking shittay for months and months. I will certainly have this hair adventure professionally done, but still have The Fear of the stripes. Or the chunks. Heaven help me.
I have absolutely NO IDEA how to put on makeup of any kind. Like, imagine giving a chimp some lipstick and that's about what you're gonna get with me too. The only make-up I have ever purchased/applied was either silvery, sparkly, white, black, or glow-in-the-dark. Thank you mid-90s rave culture for that terrible fashion statement. So, um, has anyone else out there graduated to adulthood (mortgage! matching furniture! children! Volvo station wago for Christ's sake!) without a clue about how to make up the make-up?

Alright! Clap Clap! I haven't even read through this to see if it makes sense! But I needed to get it out there to all three of my readers! HAALP!!

Germany 2008

2010-02-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

So, a funny thing happened to me last year (er, I mean, LAST last year--2008, where DOES the time GO?). I got pregnant with J in July and was very happy about the upcoming baby, but I was less happy about how having a baby means (for me it seems, anyway) that you do very little else for a couple of years. I stopped working in 2005 when I was about 6 months pregnant with F, and don't intend to get another job until the baby goes off to school (sniff). Mostly this is about me not making enough money to offset childcare costs, but I also think I would want to stay home with the kids even if I did have some sort of profession/prospect. Anyway, I was pregnant again and staring down the barrel of another year or two (or three or OMIGOD WHEN DOES IT END) of full-time meal prep/butt-wiping/listening to endless yammering.

For some strange reason, I started listening to Alphaville's "Big In Japan." It isn't obvious, but it turns out this is a song about teenage prostitution and drug abuse. It's a dancey little tune that was fairly popular in the early 1980's and was written by the West German band that also wrote "Forever Young." For whatever reason, I started poking around into their back catalogue and started really getting into this group, and thinking they were all profound and stuff. It's ridiculous! Let's pause for a moment to better examine this group, shall we?

Right.

So, in listening to their other stuff, I branched out and got all sorts of obsessed with Italo Disco--bands no one in this country has ever heard of (mostly for good reason). Except for a-Ha, who were featured prominently in my playlists. (And they really are surprisingly good, I swear.) I encountered a lot of songs and bands focused on Cold War issues--nukes, The Berlin Wall, crazy Russians and Americans, how this all came out of WWII, etc.

A couple of weeks go by and my mind is just all in a tizzy about this music and Cold War and WWII history. I honestly think that instead of nesting or something productive, I get musically fixated. It happened on a much smaller scale with my first pregnancy too. So I mention to my husband how long it's been since we've had a proper vacation and how I wish I could go on a field trip to SEE all these places I've been hearing and reading (obsessing) about and LE SIGH. Now, dear man that he is, he says "why don't you go?" And I remind him that I am four months pregnant, broke, and can't get time off from my job (SAHM to F). But he planted this idea in my head and even though I consider myself to be a normal, rational, predictible person, within the week I had tickets booked for myself to fly to Berlin (frequent flyer miles--YAY!), for my mom to fly out to stay with F so that Z didn't have to take off work, and had a week booked at a hostel (with the remaining week's plan tbd). I was scheduled to leave in two weeks, and stay in Germany for two weeks. So that I could go chase my Alphaville dream? or something?

But do you know what? It was awesome. I've never traveled alone. I wept openly at historical sites and at memorials completely unrelated to me or my family. I ate lots of pickles and pastries. I missed my kid so very much. And I think I got my head on straight so that I could come back and be a better mom/wife/fetus hatchery. I'm so, so glad I lost my mind for a little while.

What's the most out-of-the-ordinary thing you've ever done? Does it make you happy to think about or did lawyers make some money off of it?

Workout music

2010-02-15T21:38:00.000-08:00

So, as with most fitnessy types, I am forever looking for motivating music to work out to. Here's the mediocre crap I downloaded today. Anyone else got any other suggestions along these lines (dancey, strong, NO COUNTRY)? I've mined the Lady Gaga/Britney/Shakira/Beyonce/Fergie vein DRY and I need some new blood (get it?? "mine" "vein" "blood"?? OMG I "slay" me!!).

Starstrukk -- 3OH!3
Now I'm That Chick Part II (Sam Sparro Remix) -- Livvi Franc
Feel It (Explicit Album Version Featuring DJ Tiësto, Sean Kingston And Flo Rida) -- Three 6 Mafia
Break The Ice (Main Version) -- Britney Spears
Dance In The Dark -- Lady Gaga
Telephone -- Lady Gaga
It 's The Way You Love Me (Featuring Kelly Rowland) [Explicit] -- David Guetta
TiK ToK -- Ke$ha

Not Born to Run

2010-02-10T10:38:00.000-08:00

I've got this thing that is making me grumpy. And, no, for once it is not one of the boys who live in my house. I don't really know why it's making me grumpy, but maybe you can help me to either get rid of that feeling or enhance it until it develops into full-blown indignation or something. But before I start ranting, let me say that I am all for all y'alls doing whatever makes you happy. Honestly. I may not agree, but for the most part I also don't care. I think I might be a little upset at feeling left out here, but that is obviously my problem and not yours. Both girls and boys can do awesome things. Yay everybody! Ok, proceed.

I don't really know how to introduce it, so I'm just going to out with it: I don't understand why people's fitness goals seem to always be running goals, or some other endurance-type activity. It's entirely possible I am just hanging out with the wrong crowd, but why is everyone getting all freaked out about doing marathons and half-marathons and 5Ks and stuff?? Is it because anyone can tie on a pair of shoes and start running? I don't really buy that. There are PLENTY of ways to run "wrong" and hurt yourself. It is just as easy to buy a set of adjustable weights and hang out in your basement for an hour three times a week.

There's this whole idea circulating out there that we as humans are somehow "born to run." I'm going to talk out of my ass here for a little while, so please feel free to ignore whatever it is I'm saying if you know that it is wrong. Or better yet, write to me and tell me what the hell I am getting mixed up. My degree is in anthropology. I focused on physical anthropology. In order to figure out why humans do the things we do NOW, it is sometimes helpful to think about the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness (EEA). I don't have a concise definition for that, and I'm on a spree here, so I'm not going to look it up. But basically it is the environment that our ancestors were living in before we changed (either physically, socially, or behaviorally) in ways that enabled us to modify our environment or ourselves. For example, humans evolved in a very warm environment--we don't normally have a thick fur coat or a heavy layer of blubber to suggest otherwise--but then as soon as we learned how to make clothing and fire and shelter, we were able to move to colder places. So WARMTH (not cold) is a condition of our EEA. This is a simplified example, I know.

Anyway, getting back to the running thing. Everything I was taught suggests that people are born to WALK. Our legs are long double pendulums (or pendula, whatever). As long as our torso balance is shifted slightly forward, walking is essentially a controlled forward fall. Our legs "re-load" themselves when we roll forward off of our front foot. That is, they swing forward without much muscular engagement to catch us just as long as we keep our toes flexed so they don't strike on the way through their arc. OK. So when you RUN, you must use a lot of extra energy to make that forward propulsion happen.

Now back to the idea of the EEA. I am not claiming to be any sort of expert, but I cannot figure out any scenario in which people would have regularly been expected to run at a long, slow, steady pace (endurance running) like, ever. Imagine a community of maybe 50-100 proto-humans out on the savannah (or wherever, if you think this may have been a skill that developed later, even though our physiology would have been basically set in Africa). Why would they have needed to jog anywhere for an hour or so instead of walking? There were certainly occasions where a good sprint would have been called for: closing in on game, avoiding predators, conflict with other human groups, etc. How about when the hunters were tracking their prey? Mmmm, maybe. There may be some evidence for this, although I think there is probably just as much to suggest that people could WALK to where the animals were (the animals, after all, aren;t always running while they are grazing/migrating). But I am willing to accept this as a possibility. I still wonder, though, if we are really "born to run" or if we are just co-opting out excellent walking skills for running.
I might also add that those of us with wider hips (that is to say, women) are less efficient at both walking and running. If we accept the idea what distance running developed out of a desire to track game, then you have to assume females almost never had any reason at all to run these long stretches of 5-, 10- or 40+ miles. Also, since women of child-breaing age probably almost always HAD a young child attached to her, that would make running unlikely. Let's not think about the free-range boobs for too long here.

So that was all an incredibly long-winded way of saying that I don't really buy into this idea that anyone can (or should) run at endurance levels. And yet. AND YET. So many people ARE. For hours and hours and HOURS each week. And we are all in awe of them. I am totally including myself in there, even though I think marathoners are kind of insane and I'm not really sure it's all in a good way. Could be kind of like an Everest mentality happening there--they have to do it because they can.(?)

Why are celebs like Oprah and Will Ferrell and, for crissakes, GEORGE W. BUSH devoting so much time and energy to this one activity? (By the way, check out this Bush quote: "It's sad that I can't run longer. It's one of the saddest things about the presidency." ... Moving right along.) Why does it seem to float the boats of so many people? Or has it become just a status thing? I'm not saying people shouldn't do it, although I'd be damn certain to monitor real close for repetitive motion/stress injuries. What I'm wondering is why my facebook page is littered with people reporting their running mileages, but NO ONE is reporting how much weight they deadlifted or how many pull-ups they did that day. Or just how fast they were able to sprint that mile, and how much faster that is than when they started. Why is everyone so into slow-twitch stuff these days? Am I just listening to the wrong people?

I know that part of my frustration comes from not having anyone to share my fitnessy adventures with. I tried to give endurance training a shot by running a 10K last October. I did it, it was fine. But I don't feel any more proud of that than I am of my progress with strength training, and it seems like others are much more impressed by the 10K. I don't know how strong most women are, but feel pretty good being able to do what I do. And I wonder why more people (and especially women, I suppose) aren't interested in being able to do a one-arm push-up or a true pull-up or whatever. It takes less time to train for these sorts of accomplishments, and I think people might really dig it if they ever tried it. But until we hear Oprah talking about this stuff, will anyone consider it as an alternative to running?

P.S. The baby just woke up and I need to send these thoughts out into the world as soon as possible so I can quit the internal muttering. So sorry for the lack of editing and rambling and typos/spelling and blah blah blah.

Razors! a-Ha!

2010-02-08T09:38:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I was either completely out of decent blade cartridges for my razor or it had gone missing (goddamed kids)--I can't remember which. So of course I used my husband's razor (after asking first, of COURSE. ahem.). And it was AWESOME. Soooo soft and lovely. Like, even though he'd already been using it for a week or two and was ready to toss it, it felt nicer than mine did when they were new. And then. THEN, the angels sang from upon high, a beam of light shone down, and I thought to myself "Why don't I buy the same sort of razor my husband uses and I can use his cast-off razor cartridges?" And, low, it has been like the sunbeams have been shining on my legs ever since. And I get to feel like I'm sticking it to the marketers or women's razors. Do other couples do this? Is this at all icky and I am just not seeing it? Do all y'alls have husbands that throw blades away that are in nicer condition than your new ones? I am willing to cut him some slack because he gets wicked razor burn, but is he being a total wimp or is this just the way it is shaving your face--you NEED super duper schmuper sharpness?

And onto other A-HA! topics, I have found that I can listen to a-Ha's "Take On Me" just about any time at all and always love it. I don't know what (if anything) this says about me. Do you have songs like this? Remind me to tell you about that one time when I got pregnant and had this total aural fixation with 80s Eurosynthpop and went all the way to Germany alone (pregnant!) just to get closer to the music, man. Well, that's not exactly why, but whatever. It's close. The pastries and pickles were calling me, too. And the Cold War history. It's complicated, apparently.

Monday Mash-up

2010-02-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

Thing the First:

J (9 months old) is sick. Last Thursday or Friday he started to get really congested/snotty and had a couple of bug-bite looking things on his thighs. Not a huge deal. He was still mostly jolly. BUT. Over the past week he has kept up with the snot production AND is now covered head to tow in these welty spotty rashy things. They don't exactly seem to bother him, but, y'know sick baby and all = never fun. We had a normally-scheduled well-baby visit on Tuesday, so we took him in for that and the doc said to put some cortisone cream on him and give him some Benadryl. Let's speed this up a little, shall we? Benadryl had no effect, spots got nastier and more numerous, I took him back to the clinic (different doctor this time) and discovered he has strep throat, which is fairly rare in infants (lucky us). GAH. So sometimes infections can cause hives. So he's on antibiotics again and we'll see. BAH.

Thing the Second:

No new Mythbusters until April. Suck. It's the only show I watch regularly and it seems to have the most ridiculously unpredictible "seasons." Does anyone else without a penis watch this show?

Thing the Third:

Oh and then there's the skin cansah. A couple of weeks ago I had three spots removed from my bod for biopsy. They were just regular old freckles--I never would have suspected them. One from my chest, one from the top of my upper thigh, and one from the inner back of my knee. Chest = basal cell sarcoma (not such a big deal), upper thigh = benign, back of thigh = melanoma (can be bad, but this one was wee and shallow, so still not a big deal. HOWEVER, now I have to go BACK and have MORE spots carved off just in case. Take 'em all, I say. My modelling career hasn't really taken off, so I could use the scars to make it look like I have tangled with tigers and knives and whatnot. Also, the melanoma on the back inside of my thigh?? Like, no one is ever tan there. So SUCK IT sunscreen advocates. Us white folks are going to get cancer no matter what. (PSA: the one on my chest is totally from too much sun. Always wear your SPF 30+, kids!)

Thing the Fourth:

I have never seen a decent C-level or better celebrity going about his or her life--like at a restaurant or store or something, and this is really starting to irk me as I get older. I mean really? Dude, look at this list of people I have PAID to see (I am totally not linking these people--if you don't know their names, that exactly proves my point):

Conway Twitty (well, ok. I was, like, 6 and on vacation with my grandparents)
Def Leppard (my first concert, attended with my dad and stepmom when I was about 13--not my choice, btw)
Al Franken (paid to hear him speak when I was in college)
Peter Gabriel
Paul Oakenfold (x2, once as a gift)

Sad.

I guess there was that time I got to dance the Lindy with Chuck Palahniuk, but I'm not even sure that counts since he lives in the same town that I do and is an author--not recognizeable to the vast majority of people. It's a fairly select number of people who both know who that is AND know what he looks like. But still, I guess that is a fairly cool celeb encounter. I'm still holding out hope I will just happen to bump into Tom Cruise while I'm out picking up a movie or working out at my decidedly plebian gym. Riiiight. Have you seen any celebrities in real life or am I just talking to too many NY and LA friends about this?

Learning time (high school music)

2010-01-26T21:12:00.000-08:00

Along with my realization that many (most?) of us stop evolving fashionisticly sometime in our mid-30s, I also think that whatever music you listened to in high school tends to be the sort of music you will continue to listen to for the rest of your life. I'm not saying you can't discover new bands, but that if you listened to death metal in high school, you probably won't all the sudden decide you like Jungle House when you're 40. Not a profound thought, I realize, but still. I think about it.

So what did you listen to in high school? Let me start MY answer with the following information: I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. There was, uh, not a lot of VARIETY on the radio. There were no college or alternative stations. It was the early 1990s. There was no interwebs, really. Just to refresh your memory, here are the top 10 singles from 1994, the year I turned 16:

1 The Sign Ace of Base
2 I Swear All-4-One
3 I'll Make Love to You Boyz II Men
4 The Power of Love Celine Dion
5 Hero Mariah Carey
6 Stay (I Missed You) Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories
7 Breathe Again Toni Braxton
8 All for Love Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting
9 All That She Wants Ace of Base
10 Don't Turn Around Ace of Base

Oh children, it was a dark, DARK time in music sales. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, I will admit that I own that Ace of Base album. I'm not proud of it, but there it is. It's made me who I am today (I drive a Volvo and shop at IKEA?).

ANYWAY.

My memories of what people were listening to while I was in high school revolve heavily on the word grunge--Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, etc. I liked Nirvana, layered my shirts, and wore flannel tied around my waist, ok? But really my heart was 100% Eurotrash, I just didn't know what that was yet. I listened to some truly atrocious techno. On purpose. Most of the time. I had to blindly buy CDs because stores didn't let you preview them before you bought them back in those days. At least not that I was aware of. This resulted in some horrifyingly bad purchases that I nonetheless listened to repeatedly. None of this music is worth mentioning, because it was produced by people you have never heard of and I am not completely sure actually exist (the This Is Techno series featured prominently in my collection, and those are all compilations).

But I am often still amazed at the quality of some of the stuff I managed to discover during those years, with no help from any radio airplay or web radio or whatever. There *was* MTV, of course, but it was already mostly sucky. 120 Minutes was on at midnight on Sunday night and was some help, but I didn't watch it most of the time. Here is what I listened to over and over and OVER again through ginormous headphones, while slumped on a beanbag chair in my darkened room, waiting for my friends to come pick me up so that we could drive around town aimlessly and eventually wind up at Village Inn:

Siouxsie and the Banshees (a spin-off of my pre-adolescent Adam Ant obsession)
The Stone Roses
Depeche Mode's Violator
Dead Can Dance
The Cranberries
James (especially Laid)
Lords of Acid (omg, seriously. This is NOT SAFE FOR WORK. OR CHILDREN. OR YOUR DELICATE SENSIBILITIES. But I included a link to it because you good people have probably never heard of them. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)
Mazzy Star
Pink Floyd's Division Bell
Yello's Zebra

Aaaand, here's a visual:

That's a photo of my bedroom circa 1995. You'd think I would have been listening to a lot of Morrissey/The Smiths, which I did, but I think I just liked the posters more. I have no idea why I had a whale poster--must have been some vestigial item left over from my middle school Rainbow Warrior phase. And, why yes--those are dried roses on top of that farking HUGE speaker. Because I was moody and deep like that. Except they are yellow instead of blood red. TEEN ANGST: UR DOIN IT RONG.

So really, aside from that Lords of Acid album, I would totally listen to any of that stuff today. Not EVERY day, but I am certainly not ashamed to have picked those albums to be the soundtrack of my teenage years. And here is some of my favorite new music discoveries from recent years:

Early 80s European synthpop (this is a topic for an entire post so I'm not going to discuss this right now)
Depeche Mode (anything and everything)
Ladytron
Röyksopp
Wolfsheim
Mew

This completely leaves out a big chunk of the music that I listen to most often these days which is actually workout music and consists largely of Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Shakira, and Fergie. But I most likely wouldn't listen to them if I didn't need to K some A from time to time. But in general it seems that I am still heavily gravitating toward electronic music, albeit of better quality than the stuff I had access to back in the day, with some European pop bands thrown in. Just like back in my youth.

How about you--are you still listening to the same stuff you were listening to in high school, updated or not?

Monday Mash-up

2010-01-25T19:22:00.000-08:00

Thing the First:

MUFFINS! I finally found a magdalena recipe! I was whining on facebook about how I couldn't find one and a friend sent along this recipe that she found in a cookbook she owns. I was in the process of looking through every Spanish cooking guide I could get my hands on through the library, had checked about ten already, and had had ZERO success. I am so happy she found this for me!

Now. I have totally played this up so much that my friends are all interested in these ka-razy Spanish muffins that I have been pining for for years. Actually, they are not that special. It's just one of those things that I have a memory of from when I was an exchange student, and had been trying to recreate. I am also trying to figure out how to track down some sort of weird casserole-y thing that my host mom made that (to my 17-year-old mind) seemed like it was made with canned tuna mixed with chopped hard-boiled eggs and cooked inside pasta tubes, and covered in some sort of creamy sauce (not cheesey). Are there Minnesota church ladies in Spain? Because this is what they would make.

Anyway, I don't want any griping about how these are just little spongecakes because I know, ok? I KNOW. They are basically Madeleines, but in muffin form. And made with oil instead of butter. But in case you are interested in playing along at home:

From 1080 Recipes (via my friend, Amy, and modified by me):

2.75 cups all-purpose flour
3.5 teaspoons baking powder
.25 teaspoons table salt
3 eggs, separated
1.25 cups superfine sugar
1 cup sunflower oil (I use olive oil instead, but don't use extra virgin unless you want that weird flavor)
.5 cup milk (I used 2%, I don't know that it matters as the original recipe didn't specify)
5 drops lemon oil

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare 12 regular muffin cups with paper or spray oil. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Whisk egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gradually stir in the yolks, then the sugar, oil, milk, lemon oil, and finally, the flour mixture. Add these ingredients a little at a time, stirring them well by hand (I use a rigid rubber spatula). Fill the cups halfway with the batter and sprinkle them granulated sugar (optional, but makes a nice crusty top). Place them on the middle rack in the oven. Bake 18-25 min, until golden brown. Transfer to wire racks to cool. Can be stored for 3-4 days in airtight container.

In my mind, these must be consumed with milky, not-too-sweet cocoa. I think that normal adults in Spain would probably eat them with milky coffee, but I don't like coffee. I ate three mini muffins and a cup of Cola Cao most mornings for breakfast. And chocolate sandwiches for lunch. See also: Stress Eating, Weight Gain.

Thing the Second:

THE NEW ROUND OF TURBO KICKBOXING HAS SHIPPED (or so I hear)!!! REJOICE!!

I am starting up with the weight lifting again, but keeping once or twice weekly TKB as my fun exercisey thing. The weight training program that I follow, The New Rules of Lifting for Women, has worked for me in the past. So that's what I'll go back to until something else catches my eye.

Ummmmm. YEAH. Baked goods and exercise. Besides my family, these are the things that are on my brain. Related? I think so.

A very VERY (un)important announcement

2010-01-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all (all three of you)! I'm changing the name of the blog already. Mediocrity theory just made no sense to anyone and there were too many different phrases floating around that all pointed to me, here. So I am Sahara, at Mean Living. Just forget I ever said anything about the Mediocrity Theory.

As you were.

[Updated to add: um, do you still see "Mediocrity Theory" in your readers? Because everything I have says "Mean Living" but it still shows up as "Mediocrity Theory" in Google Reader. And yes, I totally subscribe to my own blog. Somebody's got to.]

Back to School Time!

2010-01-21T15:00:00.000-08:00

Wha? But it's January. Doesn't matter. Applications for schools are due next month. (sigh)

We have started to look into kindergarten schools for F to start at next fall. What a drag. Do other normal people do this or have I slipped into some weird alternate reality where I am a wealthy high-achieving urbanite? Don't answer that.

Here's the deal: F is a really intense kid--intensely happy and creative when things are going well and terribly, terribly sad/angry and destructive when they are not. I love this article that Nellig referred me to so much that I am going to dig it out of the comments and link to it here because I just keep thinking about it as it applies to F and would love for you all to read it too. Thank you SO MUCH, Nellig, for showing it to me. Here's the synopsis from the article itself:

Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people.

Yes, yes, and YES. This is all affirming what I have been thinking for the past four and a half years. There is a lot of information presented in this piece, but what really struck me is that there could be a positive evolutionarily-sound reason for certain people to behave in what appear to be completely outlandish ways. Most of us are safe bets--we will grow up not taking huge risks, will survive to reproductive age, will make the sort of safe choices that, more likely than not, will allow our genes to continue on into future generations. But we will never be kings. We will never achieve the sort of greatness that drives civilization to new and exciting places (technologically, politically, socially, etc.).

However. HOWEVER. The traits that drive these individuals to greatness--their charisma, their perfectionism, their willingness to test limits--are also the things that can lead to massive destruction, both on a personal and societal scale. Examples that come right away to my mind are Martin Luther King, Jr. (good) and Hitler (bad). According to the article what makes the difference in how these individuals turn out is all about environment and opportunity. And mothering. Oh, lord. Granted, most of the examples cited in this piece were from observations of primates, not humans. But still, the implication is clear. If F winds up in jail, it will be ALL MY FAULT. The Science says so.

You already know that I consider myself to be a "dandelion" (Mediocrity Theory HALLO). That is, I would probably have done quite well no matter what my parents or society did to me. I have known this for quite awhile. I went to decent public schools and was bored (who wasn't?) but still got very good grades and didn't rock the boat. F is giving every sign that he is an "orchid"--someone who may bloom magnificently if given the ideal environment, but that may wilt and fail if given anything suboptimal.

Which brings me back to kindergarten selection. What I really want (I think) is a school that cannot just write him off as a "problem" and count down the days until he moves along (either to the next teacher, grade, or school). Ideally, this would mean finding a school that would be K-12 so that he will have a community of people to whom he is accountable (and who are accountable to him) so that both parties will have to try to work out solutions to problems that might arise. I would like a school that is not heavy-handed with worksheets, academic drilling, and coloring-within-the-lines kinds of activities. (As an aside, he has been evaluated by a therapist and is not on the ADHD/Autism spectrum and has given no indication that he has any other "special needs" that would need to be accommodated.)

I know that so far on this blog I have written a lot about F as a problem, focusing on the negative instead of the positive. This is largely because I am afraid of how others will perceive him (and what he is capable of becoming) if he is not handled with care. I do not talk this way about him when he is present or with anyone other than his father. I hope that some day I can find a place for him that I can trust to treat him well so that I can let go of this constant worry.

For those of you that have gone through this process before, what were you looking for in a school and why? Have any of you felt as though even this seemingly inconsequential decision (it's KINDERGARTEN, not COLLEGE or whatever) could set your child up for lifetime success or failure in a very real way? Any other advice for me as I complete applications and then wait for The Process to decide our fate? He's truly a spectacularly good-looking kid, should I include a photo? (Just kidding.) (No, really.) (For god's sake, NO.)

Open Door Policy

2010-01-18T21:02:00.000-08:00

Back at the very beginning of this blog, I had a really really tired day. I was tired partly because I had just spent the day taking F to a sleep specialist (the irony!) where he behaved TERRIBLY. The sleep guy said there was nothing amiss and sent us on our way after a $40 co-pay and a 45-minute wait in the waiting room and an hour-long consultation that consisted of him asking me all the same questions that I had already answered on the written questionaire they had mailed to me in advance. Helpful.

When I got home, the front door to our house was wiiiide open. Our front door faces the street and we do not have a deep front yard, so plenty of walkers/joggers passed within about fifteen feet of the door to our living room. Rather than continuing to pull into the driveway, I straightened out and drove down the street a little ways and parked in front of a friend's house. This friend/neighbor is also F's preschool teacher, and I was fairly sure she'd be home at that time, unlike most of our normal 9-5 working neighbors, since preschool only had a half-day that day. So I take F and J up to her door and ring the bell and, when I explain to her husband what has transpired and ask if he will watch the boys for a minute while I go check things out, he says "Umm, why don't you come in for just a second?" F's teacher is also home, and she also says to come in. I say "no, no--it's alright, I just need someone to know what's up and to watch the boys for a minute or two." After all, I'm tired but also don't want to interfere with their home life. So Adam, the husband, says "No, really--I think you should come in for a minute." Err. I am not completely stupid socially, and I catch the look they are both trying to give me so I'm like "oh, okay--let's go in." Well. Turns out there was some sort of SWAT team (guns drawn, body armor and helmets on, jumping off a truck in and organized and rapid fashion, etc.) fanning out over a nearby park a few hours ago, but no news yet why.

Also, that morning when I had taken F to preschool, there was a pickup truck just sitting, parked, in front of my house with a dude in it reading the newspaper. This is odd but, y'know, people run early for appointments, they need to pull over to make a phone call, WHATEVER. I'm not saying we live in the big city, but we don't live in the suburbs, so there is traffic that moves through our neighborhood and strange vehicles are not out of the question. BUT, it was noteworthy enough that I, er, made a note of it and made a point of looking at the license plate and the bumper stickers and make/model whathaveyou. So, y'know, when the earnest but life-weary female special agent with wispy blonde hair has to hypnotize me and "take me back to that time when I was looking at the truck," I could recall it all with a gasp of clarity and the criminal would be identified CASE CLOSED.

So, that pickup combined with my neighbors telling me that there was some sort of search going down in our 'hood was enough to make us decide to just hang out until the police could come have a look-see and make sure everything was ok before me going back in the house. To shorten this story a bit: we call the non-emergency number, we wait; we wait some more; and then some more; we call again and they say that dispatch never relayed the message and will send someone out; so we wait just a little longer; altogether we wait for about two hours before the cops pull up, by which time is it ABUNDANTLY clear that there is no one in the house or else they are the stupidest criminals ever for not leaving by now. Or at least closing the door, since it's, like, 30-degrees outside. I usually turn the heat off in the house before I leave for a long time because our house is old and drafty and expensive to heat. So at least I've got that going for me.

Of course, I am feeling like a COMPLETE IDIOT at this point because I have inconvenienced sooo many people all because I FORGOT TO PULL THE DOOR CLOSED when I left. But anyway, there's still the teensiest chance that something might be amiss and better safe than sorry and blah blah blah.
The cops arrive and tell me to wait while they go in. They look around the house with their flashlights on, calling out before entering each room, totally creeping me out because that is not something you ever want to see going down at your own house. And of course there is nothing obviously weird inside. The back door is closed and locked, my computer and video camera are right out in the open, nothing is messed up, I'm just an idiot. I apologize to everyone, they are all very nice, and then I go retrieve my children, apologize some more, and go home to my very very cold house where it is past the baby's nap time, too late to start dinner, etc. etc. While I was checking out the house in the presence of the police, the neighbor across the street calls (WHILE THE POLICE ARE IN THE HOUSE--HE IS AN IDIOT). I don't answer (DING DONG The police are in my living room HALLO) so the machine picks up and he leaves some incomprehensible string of jibberish including call him back but he doesn't leave his number and just randomly hangs up without closing the call (good bye, hope everything's ok, call if you need anything, I'm just being really nosy, etc.). So at that point I am fully aware that I am going to have to recount this story to all the neighbors so as to reassure them that nothing ghastly happened, that I am, in fact, just spacey.

So that is the day I wrote the second post on this blog. Goddamn depressing is what it is. And, a few days later, I followed it up with a request for a muffin recipe. HA ahahahahahahaha. LIFE.

P.S. Anyone know why "irrelevant" is misspelled in the url for that muffin recipe post, but not in the actual post title? If blogger is going to sabotage my effort to learn how to spell THAT word too, then I will be spelling it "irreluvunt" from here on out.

Learning time (wallpaper)

2010-01-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

You know how whenever you are asked to introduce yourself to a generic audience of strangers, you are prompted to list your favorite books, movies, music, etc.? Well, I never find those lists to be very helpful. I never know if I should list my favorites of ALL TIME, or just whatever comes to mind first or WHATEVER. Plus then there's the whole "will they like me if I say x" aspect. We are only human, after all, and we like to seem interesting and cool to other people. So I am going to try to think of things that you cannot prepare yourselves for and that (I hope) will reveal something about who you are. Hopefully these will be things that are done primarily for your own benefit, so you're not consciously tailoring it to what others might think. Anyway, here's your first chance to share something (try to contain yourself, I know you're excited). Are you ready?

What do you have on your computer's wallpaper?

This is what's on mine:

That is a photo of Marian Gold, lead singer for the German band Alphaville, holding a...thingy. I have no idea what it is. It amuses me to know that in the original (uncropped) photo, one can see that he is wearing lederhosen. Not oompa-oompa Oktoberfest fancy ones--just, like, everyday (?) plain ones. For reasons that will probably forever be clouded in mystery, I took quite a shine to Mr. Gold last year and decided this image was just the neatest thing ever. What can I say? I was obviously crazy from the pregnancy hormones. I suppose it might also interest you to know that I have this same image reproduced in four different colors (sort of Andy Warhol-ish, but vertical rather than 2 x 2) and framed, hanging in my bathroom. Also, this is an actual screen capture of my desktop. It's really that uncluttered (I never use desktop shortcuts, so I just removed them all).

...

Yeah. So. Well, then. Have fun with that info!

If you'd like to share what's on your computer's wallpaper, leave a comment with a link to an image of it or just describe it.

Pants pants, again with the PANTS

2010-01-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

What sort of pants did/do your grandmothers wear? Charlotte over at The Great Fitness Experiment just posted about skinny jeans and, while I was letting my mind wander all over pantsland (eww, that sounds dirty), I got to thinking about how the women in my family stop updating their fashion sense somewhere about their 30s. That is, they wear the same approximate thing that they wore when they were 35ish FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. So my great grandma wore lots of housedresses (like she did in the 1930s), my grandma wears lots of stretchy polyester pants (like back in the late 1960s), and my mom wears tapered-leg jeans (like she did in the 1980s). I will be 32 this year. I'd better get some classy fashion sense STAT. Otherwise, I am going to be wearing leggings and big sweatshirt/sweater dress things* in 2050. While I am riding in the flying car and taking my meals in pill form, obv.

*By the way, that model much be 8' tall because this sweatshirt hits me mid-thigh. (Clearly she is too tall, there is no way I am too short.)

Mash-Up Monday

2010-01-11T21:15:00.000-08:00

Sort of like Fun Fact Fridays, but suckier and more boring! Also, not really facts. Moving on.

Over the summer some friends of mine made some jelly from grapes that had grown in a neighbor's yard. I was present while the friends were cooking and canning, but mostly I was playing with the babies and just puttering around while they were being productive. In return for, I dunno, being there and telling them how good the jelly smelled, they gave me a couple of jars. The jelly turned out pale greenish and DELICIOUS. There wasn't too much sugar in it and so it was fairly tart. It tasted like grape jelly, but not weird and artificial purple grape stuff. Anyway, I ate it all up (not sharing with either the husband or the child because they didn't appreciate it the way I did). And now I am sad sad sad. Because I have bought, like, five more kinds of jelly trying to find an acceptable replacement. I have bought red currant, regular grape (I don't know what I was thinking either), and, er, was I really listing what jellies I have bought in the last month? (I love you interwebs!) SO. Who's got a tart jelly suggestion for me? Responses that include double entendres will receive double points.
Sort of on a similar topic: is it possible to slice crusty bread without little crumbs flying all over the damned place? I have a nice sharp bread knife and cut from the side edge, but every time I do it I feel like I missed some life lesson that everyone else knows about.
I read something about someone (I think it was a friend of Swistle's?) making a New Year's Resolution to find a signature scent for her house. I thought that was really neat and all, and wished I had thought of it, but then just went on my merry way. And then. AND THEN. I was at the grocery store the other day, putting my groceries on the conveyor belt when I caught a whiff of just the best perfumey floral kind of smell EVAR. I would say it is THE best smell ever, but no. That has to go to some baked good: cinnamon rolls or bread or cookies or something. But I don't want to smell like that and my house already does most of the time. So I quick looked around me to see who I should compliment on their smellerificness, but didn't see any likely candidate. I went back to unloading my cart and I smelled it AGAIN. Turns out it was a bar of soap placed in the impulse-buy section that I kept leaning closer to every time I put something on the belt. Oh you bet your butt I impulse bought the hell out of that soap. And then, when I got home, I carried the box around with me and huffed it all day. And then I looked it up online to see if it was single and if maybe I could be its facebook friend and then marry it and, and.... As it turns out, there is a matching perfume and lotion and CANDLES and omigod they do not cost a fortune. It is Pacifica's Nerola Orange Blossom which, I asssure you, does not smell like oranges. It smells like heaven. Feel free to copy this and make it your signature scent. I do not know you so do not care if you smell like I do but would like this product to stay in print for as long as we both shall live.
I love my son. Today at Target he picked out this really gawdy gold cuff bracelet with big chunky gem stones on it. He thought it was just so beautiful and wants it for his birthday next month. Alas, it was still $12+ (down from $18ish, I think) and that is just too much for that kind of fugly. For his birthday he would also like to have a wedding cake: white frosting over chocolate cake, four to six cakes tall, with pink roses all over it. I am unclear whether he wants these roses to be edible, as he keeps flip-flopping on whether that should be fabric or frosting. I am going to try to oblige (maybe with just three tiers), but haven't figured out where I am going to KEEP a cake that big before serving time. Anybody got an extra fridge I can borrow?
Also, he wants to marry his (male) friend, Kai, so that they can catch squid together when they grow up. He has the diagrams for the squid traps all drawn up.
I don't own a cell phone. I had one once, when F was starting preschool and I was also traveling solo. But no one ever called me and I never called anyone, so I cancelled it (it was month-to-month anyway). It'd be nice to have a cell phone, but it'd be nicer to have a maid.
I do have different-colored eyes. One is blue, one is...green...ish...brown...ish. Olive drab. They used to both be blue but then in 6th grade one started shifting. At first no one believed me and, me being 12 and all, I hated it and wanted a blue contact lens to make my eyes match (as if that would have helped). At the time I did wear just one contact lens in the one eye to correct for a childhood injury (which happened about 7-8 years before the color change). Now I have an artificial lens implant, wear no corrective lenses, and still can't see for shit out of that one eye which is a total downer with all these nifty 3D movies coming out (Alice in Wonderland, I'm looking at you). But I've got a David Bowie eye thing happening which, depending on the day either makes me feel distinctive and cool or like a malamute.

2009 Year in Review

2010-01-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

(Oh my GAWD, people. I just finished this behemoth after three evenings of typity typing. It's LONG. I don't recommend reading it since I haven't done any editing/spellchecking. I'm reluctant to post it because I don't think I actually AM as depressing and whiny as this makes me appear, but I sure don't want to have completely wasted my time. I mean really. These are not questions I'm sure are constructive, unless you are just naturally Chipper McHappypants (eww.). So if I sound ridiculous and lame, YOU ASKED, QUIZ. YOU ASKED. Next year maybe I'll just keep this crap bottled up, thanksverymuch.)

------------------------

I'm obviously a little late with this post, but only just decided I might as well try it out. Here goes.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Gave birth to a second baby while my first baby was asleep down the hall. Ran a 10K. Bought a pair of non-bootleg jeans. Went to therapy (technically my son is the patient, but he's FOUR so really it's for all of us).

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?  

I didn't make any last year, but am working on setting some goals for myself this year. I can't think of any really monumental ones, so at this point my biggest resolution is to get some friggin' resolve. (Can I get that from the Wizard?) (Eek. Is that the second reference to The Wizard of Oz on this newborn blog? That can't be good.) (In all fairness to myself, I DID take F to go see it just a couple weeks ago at a movie theater.) Maybe I need to resolve to ween myself off of unnecessary parentheses.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?  

Nope. One of the great mysteries in my life is why NONE of my good friends have children. I will be 32 this year and have two kids. I have friends that have been married or partnered plenty long enough to start breeding. I think they are all busy with their careers right now. Before I decided to try for a baby, I was a nanny, so really didn't intend to develop that into a career that I would put off having my own children for. Grammar. Bad.

4. Did anyone close to you die?  

Nope. What a terrible question to think about.

5. What countries did you visit?  

NONE.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

A happier marriage. A more comfortable house (ours is basically fine, it just has layout issues and only two bedrooms). More patience with F.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

April 20th, my due date. April 26th, J's birthday. October 24th, my first ever Event Run. Not that these events are even vaguely similar in importance, but I'm a stay-at-home mom so my calendur® is pretty flexible and all the dates sort of run together (HAR! RUN! TOGETHER!). This event was called the Run Like Hell because it was the week before Halloween, thus making it even easier to remember.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

I'm sure if I'm really thinking about it I have to answer that my biggest achievement was J's birth and so-far successful babyhood and my transition to a mother of two. But really it feels like more of an accomplishment that we seem to be pulling F away from whatever black hole of defiant behavior he was stuck in for the past year-plus. It feels crummy be so focused on F all the time, when J deserves just as much--or more, because he's still so young.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Oh, there have been so many big ones. I feel like I have failed F just because I happen to be a terrible personality match for him and I cannot DEAL with who is/was becoming. Now that we seem to be through the rough spots (for awhile, anyway), I can appreciate more of who is and will be, but am still saddened because I am fairly certain we will always have trouble relating to one another. I know I have failed Z as a wife. I felt let down by him for quite awhile before and during my pregnancy and now am trying to work through my resentment of that. I don't think I've been mean or cruel, just distant.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I could check my pregnancy diary for this information, but that would require that I actually get up, so I'm just going to try to work from memory here. I can't remember if I was sick with puking once or twice while big-bellied with J. Having the flu (or whatever) while pregnant is one of the least fun things in the world, short of something truly tragic happening. (THANKS QUIZ FOR ALL THE DEPRESSING THOUGHTS.) Other than that, I've had a couple of minor colds and whatnot, but for the most part have been doing just swell.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

Did I even buy ANYTHING last year? It doesn't seem like it, based on my closet or looking around me at my living and dining room. OH! I bought a food processor. THAT. is AWESOME.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

F's, once we figured out a method of interacting that seems to push the right buttons on him. J's, because he is such an even-tempered baby. I never realized quite how difficult a baby F was until I had another to compare the experience to. Night and Day.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?  

My own. My husband's. The whole world's sometimes. I am much more the kind of person that tends to see the horrors in the world than the joys. My baby gives me joy, and someday he will break my heart on his way to becoming just like all the rest of us. Jesus christ, maybe it's time to STOP this quiz. But I won't delete that bit, because it is generally how I view things. People tend to do mean and hurtful things with astounding regularity--even when they don't intend to.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Shouldn't this question read something like "Besides mortgage, car payments, taxes, childcare, student loan payments, insurance, and food, where did most of your money go?" Let's see. Our money went to mortgage, taxes (just the normal ones, nothing exciting), car insurance, food (damn but we spend a lot of money on groceries), the midwives, F's tonsillectomy, Z's 401K, F's preschool, new windows for the house, a new roof, a new lawn...and that leaves us BROKE.

15. What did you get really excited about?

Cooking and baking. I didn't feel like cooking or eating much of anything while I was pregnant, and once I was up and part of the world again after J was born I flung myself right into it all with renewed vigor. My neighbor, Mary, who loves to cook loaned me a cookbook (unsolicited) because it had a recipe for Grasshopper Pie in it. I hate that stuff, but Z likes it and has asked me before if I would make one for his birthday. So Mary was trying to help me find a recipe that wasn't so nasty sweet and weird. Turns out I love the cookbook and now use it as my go-to guide for ideas. I haven't had a single recipe in that book fail or even turn out less than delicious. It's not a quick-and-easy or light or what-have-you niche cookbook, just an all-around American cookbook. This is the one: The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I have used other, traditionally-bound, cookbooks of theirs but seem to find this one the easiest to use.

I don't even know if I would describe myself as "really excited" about being a mother for a second time. I love that little baby with everything I've got, but it's a quiet kind of happiness--not a tell-everyone-you-know kind of excitement.

I am also still wicked excited about Turbo Kickboxing. I miss going out and dancing to loud ridiculous music, and I think this highly-choreographed kickboxing-inspired dance class fulfills that same need. See also the need to balance out all the baking.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

There are so many, and all of them are trashy. This has to do largely with the kickboxing choreography I spent the most time with, Round 38, which features a lot of this music.

She Wolf -- Shakira
Yahhh! -- Soulja Boy
Poker Face -- Lady Gaga
Nobody Listens to Techno -- Base Attack
Shots (feat. Lil Jon) -- LMFAO
Right Round -- Flo Rida

But I guess there are some others that have been very significant this year:

Sweet Baby James -- James Taylor
Mama Tried -- Merle Haggard
Patsy Cline's best-known upbeat singles.
I haven't listened to it since J was a newborn, but I put on the Donnie Darko soundtrack a lot during that time. It's not as weird as you'd think--a lot of spacey piano music. If I listened to it again, I might think of this year. Or maybe not.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: 

– happier or sadder? Probably about the same. I had normal levels of apprehension and excitement about being pregnant. Now I have less fear and excitement to look forward to but more joy.

– thinner or fatter?  Err, THINNER, thank the lawd.

– richer or poorer? I don't know. I feel poorer now, thanks to that Home Equity Loan. But techinically we're probably better off.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?  

Smiled with my babies. Felt like smiling with my husband.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?  

Been so sad about F. Laundry.

20. How did you spend Christmas?  

At home, with my three boys. We were up shortly after 4AM and totally done with pancakes before the sun came up after 7:00.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?

Yes, with my new boy. He's just the best.

22. What was your favorite TV program?  

Mythbusters. We watched the marathon during Christmas 2008 because we were snowed in and just plum out of ideas for entertaining F. This is one of the few shows that we can all three watch and enjoy. I believe F even thinks of it as "our show"--that is, his and mine--because sometimes toward the end of my pregnancy I was just too worn out to do anything else but buy an episode of Mythbusters on iTunes and lay on the couch watching it with F. Besides just really liking the show in general, Adam Savage sort of fulfills the notion of what F's potential is. Of course I have no idea what Adam was like as a kid, but I suspect he could have been really trying and could have been an extremely troublesome adult. Instead, he channeled all that creative energy and found a way to work through frustrating situations without freaking out (most of the time, anyway).

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?  

I have definitely been more frustrated with my sister this year than in many years past. She is an extremely negative woman who lacks tact and does not know when to quit talking about something (even if I specifically ask her not to). Add to that that she sees my son as a problem to be solved and you see where this is going. NEVER insult someone else's kid. EVER.

24. What was the best book you read?

I can never remember any books that I have read. Maybe one of my goals for this year should be trying to keep track of which books I read (and liked). I liked The Help, but so did everyone else. I LOVE the parenting book that has been helping us out to have a reasonably relaxed family these days, but I deduct points because the title is so ridonculous. Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? 

Sadly, I think I used all my music-discovering energies last year. Maybe I'll get back with it in 2010.

26. What did you want and get?

Oh my goodness--so much. A perfectly healthy baby. A "transformed" older boy. I'm so grateful for both of them.

27. What did you want and not get?

I was really hoping for something nice to mark J's birth (I mean, besides J himself). I'm not saying I want some big ol' honkin' piece of jewelry as "payment" from my husband for growing and delivering the baby, but I would have liked some little token thing that I can dream of passing down someday and telling the recipient that it was a gift from Z to me when J was born. Instead, I actually got a way too expensive beautiful antique big ol' honkin' piece of jewelry that is so big and so outside my ability to wear it (it's like finely-wrought costume jewelry) that it will sit in its box forevermore. I know, cry me a river, right? But it was kind of a stab to my heart because it indicates to me what kind of woman my husband thinks I am, instead of the kind that I actually am. He wants to make me his princess, but I cannot be and don't want to me. I bought a personalized charm necklace for myself for $45 a week later, I can wear it daily and the baby likes to play with it.

GodDAMN this is depressing me. I've come back to complete this quiz three times now and every time it puts me in a funk. Do other people do better at this? Like, does it make them all hopeful or something? GAH. Now I totally understand what Tess talking about, going through this wringer/snoozefest.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

Are you kidding me? I can't even remember the name of the movie I watched last WEEK. Oh, wait. Yes, I can. AVATAR. meh. I know, I know, best movie EVAH and whathaveyou. But listen. I'm nearly blind in one eye and that 3D shit doesn't work on me. And it never for one second left my mind that these "people" were cartoons. REALLY REALLY GOOD CARTOONS. But still. Fantasy ain't my thing. So. Ummmm, I saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie. And it had cute boys in it. And I can't remember and other movies I saw this year, so let's go with that. (lame)

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

For my birthday what I wanted this year was just a really relaxing day where I didn't have to care for two squawky kids and prepare a million meals (like every other normal day). What I got was disappointed. Without going into too much detail, Z went off the rails again trying to make me happy instead of listening when I told him I just wanted peace and quiet and takeout. I got to watch the kids, stuck at home, while he took the car and futzed around running errands and, eventually, picking up the takeout that I called in because us homebound ones were starving and I'LL BE DAMNED if I was going to cook my own birthday dinner. The food was super duper though and we discovered a new favorite dish. Damn it's hard not to feel like a complete haggy bitch for complaining when your husband tries too hard to please but makes things overly complicated and fail-y.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

You mean besides having a better relationship with my husband? By the way, we ARE working on it, he DOES know what I'm thinking, etc. The next best thing would be having a kitchen that isn't quite so craptastic. It is teensy tiny (old house), can't be easily expanded in any direction (is hemmed in by the brick chimney, the basement stairs, and the garage), and features broken cupboards and drawers that our now-deceased dog chewed on in order to open. I really like to cook, but it is such an isolating kitchen it is hard to do anything in there and still be even remotely connected to the rest of the family. The pantry and recycling bins are only accessible by opening the door to the basement, which can't be open if the dishwasher is open, etc. The primary workspace is the glass-top stove, which means you can't ever use more than two burners. The list of complaints is nearly endless with this little hellhole.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

"I'm losing the babyweight before I buy new clothes." Sad, but true. New clothes purchased at after Christmas sales!

32. What kept you sane?  

Having a baby to squeeze. Being able to escape to the gym for just a couple of hours each week.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I can't think of any that really stand out. I think I did most of my boy-craziness last year (Marian Gold, oh my god what was I thinking?).

34. What political issue stirred you the most?  

I am an extremely progressive liberal/socialist. So health care reform is very important to me. That said, it will be a long, slow process and it isn't terribly interesting on a day-to-day basis. However, I have frequent little reality checks when I hear about something terrible happening in some other country. Whenever I hear about a bomb going off in a church or a market, or some natural disaster killing hundreds or thousands of people, I immediately think about the moms. No matter WHAT happens to me (oh, I wish I could afford a new kitchen, my husband tries too hard and misses the mark, whine whine whine), I am SO lucky to be able to take the safety of my children for granted on a daily basis. So in terms of "stirring" political issues, the killing of mothers and their babies (which is to say, everyone) bothers me deeply.

35. Who did you miss?  

Sometimes I missed me, sometimes I missed Z. Sometimes I missed the old us.

36. Who was the best new person you met?  

J.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.  

If you focus on the positive, and tell people CONSTANTLY how much you appreciate their effort, truly amazing things can happen.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.  

One and only rebel child,

From a family, meek and mild:
My Mama seemed to know what lay in store.
Despite all my Sunday learning,
Towards the bad, I kept on turning.
'Til Mama couldn't hold me anymore.
And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cos Mama tried.
Dear old Daddy, rest his soul,

Left my Mom a heavy load;
She tried so very hard to fill his shoes.
Working hours without rest,
Wanted me to have the best.
She tried to raise me right but I refused.

[--Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried"]

Do you know you are my sunshine?

She asked so sweet and tenderly.
Do you know you are my sunshine?
Do you know what your smile did to me?
Do you know you are my sunshine and it looks like you're always going to be?

(And would you do it one more time for me?)

[The Statler Brothers, "Do You Know You Are My Sunshine"]

It's Time to Play: WHAT'S ON MY MANTEL!!!

2010-01-05T20:25:00.000-08:00

What? Putting in caps like that doesn't make it more exciting? Damn.

Well, I have known for a long time that I want to do something with my mantel besides let it be the catch-all surface for junk in our house. I have one child who is capable of reaching just about anything he wants, but has grown up knowing that things on the mantel are mostly off-limits unless he has specific permission. He runs right over just about every other rule in the house with a big fat steamroller, so I don't know why he would choose to respect this one, but whatever. I have another child who is too young to disobey the rules and will pull down anything above knee-height onto his wee soft bald head. Also, in the spirit of honesty, I don't like clutter so keep crap from accumulating anywhere else down to a pretty strict minimum.

So there is the first roadblock I face every time I get a wild hair (hare?) to do something about my hideous lack of hearthkeeping skillz. We have no other place in the house to keep things where THE CHILDREN will not mess with them. Therefore, the things that find themselves on the mantel can sometimes be really, ummm, aesthetically unpleasing. Here, let's have a look (shall we?):

Now, I could list everything on the mantel and that would be BOR-RING (not like this! which is FUN!). So instead, I will hit the highlights (L-R):

Three pairs of my sunglasses because I am quite literally blinded by any significant amount of sunlight (also, am pale and moody = probably a sexy vampyre).
A basket that holds the grown-ups' wallets and keys (and whatever else my husband, Z, throws in there before I get all up in his face about it).
Some bills
A hammer
A voltage tester
Monopoly money
Some fancy pants LED lightbulb thing
A book about how to grill (yes, this photo was taken TODAY, in JANUARY, in OREGON--what of it?)
A really nice Danish crystal bowl holding a matchbox and some really ugly Christmas candy.
A box of Kleenex (no, they're not really kleenex but I can't say the word "tissues" out loud any more than I can say the word "moist")
Aaaaand, a way-undersized Parrish print that was cut out of a calender (calendar? clearly I have learned nothing from Swistle and am hereby going to spell it calendur from here on out) and framed over ten years ago by my sister, who then tired of it and was unable to sell it at her garage sale for $.50 so my mom hauled it all the way here from Kansas to give it to the poor decoratingly-challenged younger sibling.

This is sort of a baseline amount of random unrelated crap that is pretty much ever-present on my mantel. Until I have some idea what to really do with it, it will probably stay this way. So, here's your job (you like how I'm totally pretending that I have readers now?):

You have to tell me what the hell to put on/around my mantel so that I will quit hating that area right in the middle of my house. Please note that clearing it all off looks terrible and empty and putting random vases full or rocks and crap would make me feel like I was living in a model home.
Until you do, I will continue to post updates like this one about what is on my mantel. It's boring and tedious for everyone, people, so let's not let that happen.

If you will help me figure out something attractive for my mantel, I will figure out how to get all that other crap off of it or somehow suitably contained (e.g. the basket might stay so we don't lose our minds looking for our keys all the damned time).

Also, perhaps it is relevant that I am not made of money and cannot seem to find any big space-filling pieces of art that I don't hate for under $200. Also perhaps relevant: I live in a 1925 craftsman-ish bungalow, and that brick fireplace that you see there? was PAINTED by some idiot in a fairly hideous shade of glossy cool brown so that it looks like it is PLASTIC. The beige electrical plate that you see floating a few inches above the mantel? That's not centered over the fireplace. So it's really hard to hide. Clearly, we just gave up trying.

ALRIGHT THEN! LET'S DO THIS!

Fancy footwork, but not fancy food

2010-01-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

Jennie over at She Likes Purple asks everybody:

What's the most expensive meal you've ever eaten? (And, was it worth it?)

And maybe it's because I've got strep throat and can't eat or drink anything with any amount of joyful relish (mmm...relish...) but this set me off thinking about really good, memorable foods. Now I will admit that I don't think I am truly capable of being fully relaxed at a really fancy-pants grown-up restaurant. Which is not to say that I haven't been to them. My husband apparently likes to feel grown-up. Me? I like to feel like I just saved $100 for a vacation that I won't get around to taking anytime soon.

So. My version of Jennie's question will be THIS:

What meal stands out in your memory as being some combination of the best AND the cheapest?

Now, I think my question has an unfair advantage because you can put up with some pretty crummy food if you've got Paris at dawn or a tropical island at dusk in front of you. BUT, I trust you all understand the spirit of this question--the food should be AWESOME, and also REALLY CHEAP. I will leave it up to you to decide what "really cheap" means.

It would be hard to pin down my most favoritest cheap food experience is, but here are some that come to mind instantly:

The first (jet-lagged) day of our honeymoon in Paris, when we were awake and leaving the hotel just as the bakeries opened. We got some pastries and sat down in a very empty Luxembourg Gardens to watch the sun come up. BEST CHOCOLATE CROISSANT EVER.
Dinner made to order on the most inaccessible island in the British Virgin Islands. This was a $50 dinner, so not what I would normally call cheap, but consisted of Rock Lobster (half or whole but ohmygod have you seen how BIG they are?) and parrotfish that we watched get hacked up with a machete on the dock in front of our table after our order was placed.
Anything purchased from a street vendor, basically anywhere. These would be nutella crepes, gianduja gelato, döner sandwiches, or anything noodley. Super yummy and always available for less than $6.
The Bánh mì sandwich I had last week after seeing Sherlock Holmes with a good friend. That was a damned fine sandwich for $3.75.

So, how about you?

Is it really tragic?

2010-01-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

I suppose it's time to explain the title of this here blog.

While I was in college, I became aware of the fact that I would probably never do anything radical or spectacular with my life. It's not like the sky opened up and the heavens boomed with the announcement or anything, but still. But when you're 18ish and just realizing that you're not particularly clever or gorgeous or bound for greatness, it can be kind of a downer. Or not. I can't really remember. Anyway, I frequently mentioned my "Mediocrity Theory" (does a theory like that even deserve capitalization?) as it applied to my perception of my self and my life to one of my good friends. I allowed that there were two outlying variables for me, but that was pretty much it: I am of below average height and above average general intelligence. Why do I always feel so dirty admitting that second one? That's a post for a different day.

So, there's the "Mediocrity Theory" part. "The tragedy of the commons" is a phenomena that occurs when multiple entities share a common resource. No one feels personally responsible for the resource, and so it gets overused and destroyed. The resources that I most often hear of associated with this theory are water and land. If no one feels a sense of ownership for a particular piece of land, they might over-farm or allow their animals to over-graze on it, thereby making it unusable for anyone. A common water source might become polluted by run-off or diverted for personal gain, tipping some systemic balance and making the whole watershed collapse. Now what, you may be asking yourself, does this have to do with me and my blog? Not a whole hell of a lot. But my point (I guess) is that I did not invent that phrase. Instead, I am using it more to express some level of grumpiness that I feel about being almost totally average. Also, I learned about the theory as applied to sub-Saharan pastoralists, and my pseudonym "Sahara" is a play on words with my real last name. So that's a bonus, right there.

And then I had to think of an email alias. I didn't want to invent a whole new phrase/name, but couldn't figure out any way to turn "Mediocrity Theory," "Tragedy of the Commons," and/or "Sahara" into an alias that wasn't cumbersome or already taken. So meanliving at gmail dot com was as good as I could come up with, with the "mean" part attempting to convey both the "average" thing again as well as "sometimes possessing a rather bad attitude and propensity for snarkiness."

So *clap clap*, are we good? Alrighty then.

Your boyfriend's pants

2010-01-01T15:08:00.000-08:00

I have these new jeans. So far I looove them. But really that might just be because I had been wearing jeans from before I was pregnant, two winters ago. And I only had two pairs that fit, soooo...yeah. Those two pairs of jeans were looking pret-ty bad. ANYWAY. So I have these new jeans. They are all distressed and dangerously close to being cool. I think. But I got them at Ann Taylor Loft, so they can't really be THAT cool. But the style name is "Lean Boyfriend."

Now, I will admit that my experience with boyfriends is extreeeemely limited. Especially if we are talking about boyfriends whose PANTS I'd possibly be wearing. I had one boyfriend in high school, dumped him freshman year in college to start going out with the guy who is now my husband. So that makes, like, one or two boyfriends in my life. So far. (Just kidding honey!) The guy in high school was 5'11" and 180 pounds. My husband is 6'0" and 215. When I was growing up, people often said things to me like "dynamite comes in small packages" and I was encouraged to try water skiing and gymnastics and other sports where having a low center of gravity is advantageous. If someone asks my dad how tall he is, he answers to the 1/4 inch. Got the picture?

So do any of you have a boyfriend who is about 5'2" and shaped like a girl? Because I seem to have found his pants. But I don't think I'm going to give them back.

P.S. OMG did I really just post something about body shape/size despite all this bidness of late? Might as well do it now before I actually have any readers, right?

The Children

2010-01-01T14:16:00.000-08:00

I am rethinking my previously chosen pseudonyms for my two boys. Kitty just isn't working for me, even though in our family it is extremely significant. And I can't call my sweet baby Angus, even though that is ALSO significant, because it makes me think of burgers. So I'm just going to call them F and J for a while (or maybe forever). For those of you playing along at home, F was born in February 2005 (so will be 5 soon) and J was born in April 2009 (he's 8 months).

end of line.

What I did on my Christmas vacation

2009-12-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

Well, I went and saw Avatar as a present for my husband (holy crap! $22 for two tickets to an 11:30AM show!). It was fine, it was good--fantasy just isn't my thing and because of a childhood eye inury I don't see the cool 3D thing that is all the rage these days. It just looks like a normal movie, except I have to wear glasses (which I don't normally).

I did some laundry.

I went sledding with my kids and a kid buddy.

I finally bought some non-bootleg pants (more on that later, because I know you're on the edge of your chair with this one).

And I did this.

So there's that. It seems ridiculous that I hadn't done it before now. And, really? Now that I've done it? It seems like it should be one of those things that all healthy adults do. Like it should be as easy to sign up for as organ donation. Or easier, really. What happens to you after you die can be a much bigger deal to family members than bone marrow donation, which doesn't have any negative feelings for major religions (at least not that *I* know of, like I'm any kind of expert). And you can do it while you are alive and tell your family to stick it. ahem.

So go ahead. You should do it too. What are you, chicken? No, wait. That's the wrong tone. I had started my registry form about a week ago, but then saved it to finish later. What really made me sit down and finish it was a story on NPR about a little girl of mixed heritage (Indian and German-English) that needs a matched donor but is having an especially hard time of it because of her mixed genetic background. My own genes are nothing hard to come by in this country, but I am crushed by just the thought of being in the same situation as her parents. Registration is free.

Roger Irrelevant

2009-12-28T20:48:00.000-08:00

HEY! Anybody got a recipe for Spanish Magdalenas they want to share? I've been looking around online but can't seem to find a consistent formula. Some recipes call for one whole egg, some call for eight separated. Some use only butter, others only olive oil. I am basically trying to recreate a packaged muffin (appealing, I KNOW), but I never had any that were homemade, so don't know what they'd be like without all the preservative chemical-y stuff in it. mmmmm...chemicals....

----------

Also, JEBUS. The sh*tstorm that's been going on over at Swistle's place is enough to make me want to bury my head in the sand and never even think about trying to start a blog of my very own. Go ahead, talk me out of just throwing my hands up in the air before I get too invested.

(chirp. chirp.)

Bloggar Love

2009-12-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

I find that I am extremely self-conscious of this blog thing. I mean, I hope to have readers someday, but they are purely hypothetical at this point since I have decided to keep the news of this blog's creation under wraps for awhile. So. How should I write for an audience that may never exist? All this self-absorbed yadda yadda is making me think maybe I'm not cut out to have a blog at all. AND THERE IT IS AGAIN. My belly button, it is the most interesting belly button there ever was.

Another reason I am self-conscious is because (clearly) I have not yet found my "voice." It really must be in quotes. It makes me think of Ariel in The Little Mermaid and, like, having a "voice" in a jar somewhere and I just can't figure out where Kitty put it. I seem to want to edit everything that is flowing out of my brain because it seems far too much like some other blog that I read (and admire). So, for now, I thought maybe I'd just discuss some of the blogs I read and love.

I feel like such an outsider to these blog people who all seem to know one another, but since I have been lurking around some of them for YEARS it feels weirdly like being a stalker. I love that Dylan eats dog hair, but does Sundry have ANY IDEA how many people out there read her work and wish they could write as well? I mean, porno brain and all, she's the shizzle. I don't even remember how I came across her site, but since she is a mom and is all fitness-y and stuff, I think it was probably through many channels.

The very first blog that I ever followed was So the Fish Said. I VIVIDLY remember being awake at some ungodly hour when Kitty was wee and being so terribly frustrated that I (gasp) started googling something like "15-month-old will not sleep" (I know, I know. What did I hope to find??). BUT. What I FOUND was Beth and her lovely family. This would have been maybe 3-3 1/2 years ago. For a long, long time hers was the only blog that I read. The whole idea of blogs was very weird to me, and I wasn't sure what they were for, etc. etc. But she was very often funny and seemed like a real person and held many views that were frighteningly similar to my own, at least with regard to parenting, so that I began to wish that I too could be in on this whole blog experience in order to count her as my friend, instead of just some lady who sort of eavesdropped on her life.

From Beth I was eventually referred to Swistle. Y'all know Swistle already, so what is there to say. I don't know what it IS about her, but clearly she strikes a chord with me. Would I listen to just anyone yammer on and on about the fantastic things she found at Target? No. No, I would not. And yet I love her to pieces. And again with the weird stalker-y feelings. If I have any sort of goal for my own blog, it is to somehow figure out what it is about Swistle that I (and so many others, obviously) adore and bring a little bit of that into my own writing.

Oh but then I do also wish that I could be just a little bit like Tessie. I found her at her previous blog, read the archives and giggled A LOT, and then didn't feel like I should pry when she made her blog invite-only. So I lost track of her for a year or two (tear). I do so wish we lived in the same city so that we could host the most awesomest party EVAH (see--her influence!). Everything would have velveeta or canned soup or canned chili or canned ham or some damned thing in it and it would all be SO GOOD and would knock the socks off all these west coast haters I have to deal with.

And then there were some very dark times, when I was reading things like this. And, even worse, this (we are averting our eyes, oh lord). Clearly I was losing my mind. I was also reading a lot of other fitness blogs, like MizFit and The Great Fitness Experiment, among others. I'm still cool with GFE, because well, I have no idea. But Charlotte is always nice, entertaining, and more often than not, educational. And she's a dorky girl from Minnesota who loves the TKB. ME TOO. Well, not the Minnesota part, but I try to represent since that is the land of my people. And then, and THEN. I got pregnant again. And she got pregnant too, so I kept reading even though I didn't be up in the gym just workin' on my fitness no more. And the girl made me feel like I was FAMOUS just for putting a reader question from me up on her site. It takes so little to please me, people.

At some point in the pregnancy, after some hormone-induced hysteria about 1980s German synthpop (OH MY GOD YOU GUYS--HAVE YOU HEARD ALPHAVILLE?? hoo boy.), I started reading jonniker. She was pregnant too, and is another funny writer that I feel strangely stalkerish with. Just to clarify: I am NOT stalking any of you people. I am just overly aware of the fact that I feel like I know you (Her car! It probably STILL smells like lavender after that Mrs. Meyer's incident!) and yet I have shared nothing of myself.

And so there it is. There are plenty of other blogs that I read (The Sneeze and Zesty Enterprise should get some honorary mention here), and yet these are the ones that have made me want to start my own. Thank you guys for giving me some sense of connection to the larger world, even on days when I couldn't find the get-up-and-go to get-up-and leave the house.

Ding dong the witch is dead

2009-12-15T09:22:00.000-08:00

And just like that I'm suddenly confused. It seems I may have the best kid in the world after all. Ryan and I managed to have one whole weekend with both the kids present without getting that twitchy I-need-to-escape look in our eyes. I'm sure we will have setbacks, but for right now I am so...not tired.

Our love is like a roller coaster baby baby

2009-12-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

I'm just so tired. Now that's an original thought. Kitty is just so...HARD. He's up and he's down and just just makes me so. dizzy. He tells me multiple times each day how much he hates me and then, fifteen minutes later, how much he loves me more than anything in the universe. I feel the same way, kid.

Angus is just a basket of warm puppies. Because my first impressions of Kitty seem to have panned out pretty accurately (intense, funny, expressive, etc.), it is making me think a lot about what sort of person Angus will grow into being. So far he seems so full of happiness, so I am reassured that he will not be sullen later in childhood. He seems very earnest. And still. There are times when he isn't moving at all, which is not something I can ever recall being the case with Kitty.

Since this is the place where I am going to try to maintain anonymity, and therefore honesty, I feel fairly safe in admitting that I often (daily) wish I could take a vacation from Kitty so I can have more time to enjoy Angus. I'm sure this isn't a novel thought, but I've never had anyone else tell me something to that effect, so it still feels wrong, like I have somehow failed because I don't want to be around my own kid. Every time I hear someone say that he or she is the parent to the best kid in the world, I feel very sad because I don't think I would ever say the same thing. And if I feel this way now, how can this possibly lead to a good place over the next 15+ years. How WILL we survive the teen years?

This last week we started a new therapy method, based on the book Transforming the Difficult Child: The Nurtured Heart Approach. It seems to be working, mostly. The idea is that for whatever reason some kids are more attracted to energy than others, regardless of whether this energy is good or bad. So when we thank or congratulate the kid, our reaction tends not to be nearly as spectacular as when we are really and truly pissed, so they will continue to piss us off just to get the big fireworks. The book compares it to being addicted to energy. Just as a junkie may loathe his drug, so the child loathes the negativity. But because that's where the energy is, that's where he will go every time.

So the idea for transforming this kind of kid is to flip our societal norm upside-down and offer fantastically exciting rewards for positive behavior, and just matter-of-fact consequences for transgressions. Credits are offered as rewards for conforming to the rules, brief time-outs are calmly administered when those rules are broken. Credits are then redeemable for privileges, including things that you would normally do for the child anyway (play a game or go to the park), as well as special event-type things (go swimming or to a movie). So if the child chooses not to follow the rules, he will earn fewer credits and is essentially self-restricting his privileges. Credits are never taken away for bad behavior. The only consequence is a brief time-out, unless the behavior was particularly egregious, in which case a "community service" will be required before credits can be spent again. But I think that is mostly for older kids who can, like, set things on fire or steal cigarettes or something.

It's just so sad to realize that your precious baby is broken. Oh sure, it's not like he has a life-threatening disability or anything, but it doesn't bode well for his relationship to society into adulthood. One of the defining aspects of my personality is that I avoid conflict at almost any cost. So how can I possibly be expected to keep up emotionally with this person who seeks it out just as energetically? The defining word for this type of kid seems to be "intense." I am...not intense.

What I really want to find right now are brief profiles of leaders and celebrities, written by their childhood caregivers. Was Barack Obama a difficult child? Did Oprah's mom worry about her daughter being TOO MUCH for society to handle? For christ's sake, is this what George W. Bush was like as a child? Because I can totally see that. And it makes me so sad.

Here we are

2009-12-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

So. I am going to do it. I am going to write for no reason other than to make my thoughts external without actually having to speak to anyone. I haven't done this since I was 9 (?) and was obsessed with Harriet the Spy (THE BOOK, kids. There was no movie then (back in my day, etc., etc.)). As luck would have it, I have had a completely horrible day and have a lot to write about. Unfortunately, the day has left me too emotionally drained to...what was I saying?

I would say that I am confused about many things, but that implies that I know enough to be confused. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that I have a lot of things to do before this blog even makes sense. But rather than try really really hard to come up with the perfect first post, I'm just going to get it rolling and figure it out as I go.

Perhaps the biggest 'HUH' I have is wondering whether or not I want anyone to read this. I mean, if the whole point is to candidly discuss my life, then do I want people who know me to stop by and have a look? Probably not. But if they don't read it, no one will. And what's the point of that? For 30+ years I've been happy to have an active inner dialogue, so why would I feel like I need something more now? All this navel-gazing is making me hate my own blog, and it's only, er, five minutes old.

I have come up with pseudonyms for my two children. I'm still trying to think of one for my husband. I am pleased with the name of my blog and its url. That is good enough for today, I suppose.