september mama

i think i mentioned i started watching some workout videos on netflix..? well, the one i'm going with for the long haul is awesome, if gimmicky. "10-minute solutions" carb killer or something like that; it's 50-minutes broken into super-intense 10-min segments with tons of jumping around and squats. she does a quick warm up, then right into fast and furious burn, then another 30-sec cool down. on to the next segment.

i thought it would be worth a try just because my time is often short and i hate the drawn-out blabbing in most videos, but as it turns out, i totally love it for the intensity and the amount of energy i have afterwards. she doesn't chat it up or waste time with long warm-ups and stretching, and by the time one segment is over i am so hyped up i want to do another. my energy level is staying high consistently too, which is awesome because i've been really tired in general most of the time. not so anymore.

i had heard that in order to truly make any metabolic difference, one has to work out for at least 20 minutes, but it turns out that's not true at all.

research shows (forgive the source):

While most experts keep telling us we need to exercise longer if we want to lose weight—we're supposed to exercise 60 to 90 minutes a day just to maintain weight loss—a fast-growing body of research indicates that intensity, not duration, is really the missing piece in our fitness puzzle:

• Last December, Canadian researchers reported that just two weeks of interval training boosted women's ability to burn fat during exercise by 36 percent.
  
  
• Levels of human growth hormone—which assists in building muscle and eliminating fat—skyrocketed 530 percent in subjects after just 30 seconds of sprinting as fast as they could on a stationary bike, according to a British study.
  
  
• Australian fitness researchers had 18 women perform 20 minutes of interval training on a stationary bike—eight-second sprints followed by 12 seconds of recovery throughout the workout, three days a week. The women lost an average of five and a half pounds over 15 weeks without dieting, while a similar group performing 40 minutes of moderate cycling three days a week actually gained a pound of fat over the same period. Two of the heavier women who did intervals dropped 18 pounds.

interval training is my new best friend.

in other news, we are converting back to farmer's market shopping for fruits and veggies as of this week. we were growing so much of our own, then when the garden was finished last season we sort of fell back to the usual (and loathesome) winn-dixie... but i've been going to publix again because it is a MILLION TIMES BETTER... but still not necessarily local. and given that i eat 90% of my diet in fresh fruit and vegetables, we need to get those things from our community, if not from our backyard. it's cheaper, fresher, and all the good things about giving back to the local economy and farms. i'm pretty excited to take the kids out - apparently there is a bounce house on location, haha.

my batch of chicks is fully grown now; the "babies" officially started laying just the other day. so we should be swimming in eggs sometime over the next month, which is both awesome and worrying (because i have to find uses for them). i am crossing my fingers that at least one of the hens goes broody so we can get a production cycle going and actually "harvest" some chickens every few months, but we'll see. our ducks are sitting on a nest right now, due to hatch around feb 22 or so. that should be fun again! :)

i love having a little farmette...

it's been a long time since posting! i'm always, always busy at work... but i like it here, so it's ok. i'm stealing time right now...

the kids are ridiculously grown-up. liam walks/runs/climbs everything, and he loves to dance. and play dress up. anything he can wear around his neck, his arm, or his head makes him literally prance around (it's so cute). i caught him a few weeks ago standing in front of their play kitchen with a shiny pink necklace on, holding a baby against his ear, stirring a pot on the "stove." he's going to make some woman verrrry happy one day, lol.

he's still not talking very well, but he is trying. he manages a few words clearly, but the rest is either garbled nonsense or "eh, EH." oh, and i gave him his first haircut last week... i've been torn because his pretty little curls were very girly, and i felt like he is too boyish for that. so i cut it into a sort of longish mo/faux-hawk with a tail at the end, because i just couldn't bear to cut off ALL the curls. so he looks a little bit like a redneck boy from the mid-eighties :). infant innocence has fully given way to mischievous BOY. alas, all with a few snips... i almost cried the whole next day over it.

rowan is little-miss-not-a-little-girl. i swear that kid is a grown up in a munchkin body 90% of the time. she's just so smart, and so with it, and she comes up with the craziest things. her imagination is a little bit out of control, in fact, but she got that honestly. she's counting objects these days, which is neat, and she can sound out many letters and recognize a couple of words. we went to her first movie a few weeks ago (beauty and the beast 3D), which was exciting for her. she didn't wear the glasses for most of it, but she stuck through the entire showing.

i have been making very good progress on my attempts at reducing the size of my ass (and thighs, and waist, and arms...). right around jan 1--by coincidence ONLY--i reformed my eating habits basically back to eating raw, without being too strict about that aspect of it. i'm counting calories extremely closely, however, and just this last week have started doing some silly online workout videos a few nights a week. sunday, i ran 2 miles. it feels great, and today i am ecstatic to say that i am comfortably wearing pants that were too tight 3 weeks ago. *happy sigh* i've lost several inches, overall, from various parts of my body. now i just need to work on toning and upping the metabolism. desk jobs are hard :P.

i managed to write a paper on the topic of unassisted birth for a forestry class i am taking... i thought that was a pretty big achievement, haha. something about behavior changes adopted in the past 5 years. it fit, so i used it.

i have to do work now, but i need to post some pics of the kids, especially liam's new haircut.

my days of being a pixie girl are numbered, it seems. last night matt officially requested that i stop cutting my hair because i'm "starting to look like a boy." (he's such a jerk sometimes, lol.)

while i strongly disagree with him--in fact, i feel quite a bit more feminine b/c i'm paying more attention to my face and accessories--i also want him to think i look cute so i will most likely comply with his request. as much as i love having super-short hair.

in a way, though, this opens new possibilities... i have never been an in-between-length kinda girl; i tend towards extremes; but now i think i will play around with style in the neck to shoulder length area for a while. all sorts of funky cuts. and colors. *mischievous grin*

anyway: another stupid hair post. whatever.

nonetheless, i wish that i had a little elf to sit in my ear canal and play a tiny banjo or mandolin so that i could listen to it all the time and no one else would know.

every year, just when the weather starts to change from summer to fall--those first days where you can feel the autumn in the air--i begin to lose myself.

i feel sad. not on the level of "oh, hey, i'm sad about [x]." i just have a deep, vague, unassociated sense of loss... of nostalgia for something i can't put my finger on... it's an apparently natural emotional reaction to the season that is out of my control, but somehow my behavior serves to exacerbate it despite my discomfort with the feelings. i find myself listening to music that makes me feel things long gone, dwelling on things or people i miss, etc. vicious cycle.

the odd thing is that along with the sorrow, i find myself extremely sensitive and vulnerable to affection. fall is the danger-time in terms of attraction to people (even fleetingly and superficially). of course, i will never act on it, but i am aware that i'm weak when this time of year rolls around.

so today, on a beautiful, warm, but autumn-tinged 30th birthday, i am just a thin veil away from a flood of tears. not bawling or justifiable tears; more like a persistent wateryness of longing for who-knows-what. something i don't have, or can't have, or lost somewhere along the way. (but what????)

no, i know what. don't i? but my sense is that i had this feeling even before then, and it has simply been amplified since and now reflects itself back upon that time period...

whatthefuckever, i'm just trying to say i feel kind of depressed, but with a sweet-memory sense lingering inside it. sigh. i wanted a happy birthday.

there are something like 15 birthdays in my close friend/family circle during september. it's nuts.

...and tomorrow liam will be a year old! friday, i will be 30. t h i r t y . whew.

but back to liam. it's been a while since i updated on his shenanigans:
- he has 9 or 10 teeth
- he tries to repeat just about everything he hears an adult say, but he's slow with actual words; he can say "cat," "dog" (more on that later), "mama," "dad," "nap," "nightnight," and he kinda says "brush" and "flower"
- he has mastered balancing on his own feet, as long as he has help getting there. he pulls up, then lets go of his support and gets really proud of himself before he plops onto his bum. it's cute.
- he's learning to eat with a fork all by himself and is really great with a regular cup (though i don't let him have one because he WILL throw it after 2 minutes)
- he tries to feed rowan's baby dolls with toy bottles/spoons and loves to give them hugs and say 'ahhhh'
- he lets me brush his teeth without any argument
- he still goes to bed like an angel without any fuss, and if he does have trouble falling asleep, i hold him for 3 minutes, he puts his head on my shoulder to cuddle, and then squirms to get back in bed. he's so awesome.
- he's very coordinated and manually dexterous, he can work fussy toys and do small stacking tasks and things like that. he's also capable of climbing/hoisting himself up on things that i would not expect him to tackle, which is slightly alarming.
- he's starting to get really into books and will yell for me to read and point to the pictures
- he loves wearing hats/crowns and putting them on and off other people's heads.

so that's liam most of the time. rowan is the size of a 3-4 year old and she's not quite 2.5 - no one believes her age. her speech is better than most 3 year olds i have encountered, too, which is interesting. they're both doing great with the new nanny though for various reasons i will not get into, she may not end up staying with us.

we are planning a very small, no big deal party for liam this weekend. i knitted him a totally awesome monster (will post pics after i sew his arms and legs on). i am hoping that in the bustle my own birthday will not be completely overlooked...

i'm actually pretty depressed about it. matt has to work, his mom will be in town (therefore no crazy late-night marital fun when he gets off work), and even if i manage to round up a few friends to go dancing with, it would be disappointing for matt not to be there to have fun with me. call me crazy for wanting him to be a part of my officially-a-grownup-birthday-milestone.

what's worse, i have been really explicit about wanting to make a big deal of it, but somehow i don't think my point was got. i fully expect to have the most unacknowledged, crappy, non-event birthday of this decade. i'm not excited. in fact, i'm feeling really lame and miserable about it in anticipation of the huge let down that i know it will be. :(

i'm already bitter. if matt doesn't at least make me feel really loved/special/yay, even if we don't do anything fun, he's going to be on my shit list for the foreseeable future. i really don't want that.

in other news, we got a puppy. a cute, sweet, super young little stray who ended up in my parents' driveway one morning last week. she's some kind of cur/boxer/shepherd mutt and we named her juno. pics soon. she's going to be a big dog, i think. the problem right now is that she really, really likes to be in the house but i refuse to have an indoor dog... thankfully she's young and impressionable. but matt may turn out to be an obstacle in training her to live outside.

ducklings should be hatching under their mamas any day now, and my 26ish little chickies are growing up. they are officially allowed out of their enclosure and a couple of them were literally trying to eat my ankles last night - never been so painfully pecked before! little crapheads. they like me, which is why they were bold enough to get so close, but for some reason the veins on the top of my feet must have looked really tasty because on of the hens pinched me hard (more than once). anyway, they're cute. my little ameraucaunas are adorable with their fluffy cheeks... i love them.

blah. i just keep thinking about how much my birthday is going to suck. i guess i will get back to work.

today i rode my horse (spirit, 'espirit') for the first time in at least 3 years. she's 22 now, but still as gorgeous and fit and spunky as she was 18 years ago when we bought her from an acquaintance of mine. my parents have been kind enough to keep her even though she spends most of her time in the pasture lately, as my sister and i have been busy making babies and unable to ride until recently. she's always had a reputation--among everyone except me, my mom, and my sister--for being crazy and difficult to handle, but the fact is you just have to know her and her little quirks to deal with her. and you have to be confident enough to bluff if you don't. she's a really sweet horse most of the time, but she does have moods now and then and has been known to rear and buck for no apparent reason :). i've learned over many years how to anticipate that kind of behavior and balance my body to survive it, so it's no big deal anymore.

i went out with two of my cousins, which was also nice, and feel like i want to get back into a regular habit of taking spirit out. i had forgotten how meditative it is to ride... when i was in middle and high school, i would spend hours on her just meandering around where we lived, thinking/not thinking and having peaceful alone time. i used to talk to her a lot. there is something really spiritual and zen-like in the trust bond between horse and rider that allows one to blank-out and go with the flow out in the open. (when you think about it, it's nuts--getting on the back of a large beast weighing about a ton with a mind of its own and just a tiny bit of metal in its mouth for control! who the fck wants to do that?? ha.) i had missed that.

i've been thinking for a while now that i would like to be much more involved with horses in general... i was a "barn girl" my whole life and there has been a hole in my life for a long time as a result of my distance from that side of myself. there are two smells in this world that make me think of "home" in the most fundamental sense: the scents of the swampy florida keys ocean, and of a well-used horse barn. i want a couple of horses and a stable. i'm interested in training young horses, when i get my own ass in shape. i want my kids to grow up around horses and know how to handle them. they are beautiful and wonderful animals and i think knowing horses can make us better people.

i wish i had a photo of spirit to share... i will have to take one. anyway, despite the sunburn i acquired, i'm looking forward to many more rides in the near future.

i am so sick of snide "fat" comments that i've actually been pushed into doing something about it just to shut my dear husband up.

so i'm resolved to eat primarily raw food (with the exception of yogurt) 5 days a week, and on our equivalent of weekends, i'll pack in the protein. i read somewhere that humans work better with alternating protein and plant foods over several day spans rather than eating them at the same time. anyway i don't really want meat anymore, so that's good for me.

i've also committed to exercising 5 nights a week. something, anything, for 30 minutes or more.

i'm not really whining about trying to lose weight, but i'm annoyed at what finally got me to work on it. i only need to lose 10lbs or so, but i definitely need to tone up. going raw always made me thin out and feel amazing before, so it seems like the most obvious way to begin the process. here we go...

"i don't wanna eat grabiolies!"


(translation: "mom, that ravioli clearly contains meat and you are NOT tricking me into eating anything slathered with tomato sauce. nice try.")

so i haven't even started my new job yet, and i'm already privy to some mini-dramas/conflict. and i thought i was escaping all that... ! really though, it just boils down to one very cranky woman in a position of not-that-much relevance to anyone else. so it shouldn't affect me often.

related to this, i HEART our amazing IT woman. yes, our IT guy is a woman. woot! she's sharp, witty, personable, and totally adept at her job. we are already friends :).

i haven't posted about animals lately because i haven't had much to say, but we've had some things going on that are worth mentioning. first, my mail-order chickies are growing fast! they're so cute and bouncy, and will shortly be outgrowing the cage i have them in. my three incubated hatchlings are slightly older and are also doing well. james brought me a rooster and hen yesterday who are about full-grown, and i have the two adolescent survivors out of the batch of sick chicks i bought back in march(?). i also have an incubator full of viable pre-chicks! i candled a few of them the other day and i saw kicking fetuses in every one i randomly picked up. so in a few days i will have some brand new hatchlings, totaling my chicken count to something like 40. holy crap.

the problem right now--since we caught the raccoon, fucker--is our ducks. they are BIG, and very, um, reproductively aggressive, which is going to be a serious problem. they attacked our new rooster yesterday, confused as to his sex, and i had to literally grab the ducks and throw them out of the coop to keep them from hurting him. and he was full-grown, much unlike the rest of my flock! i don't really know what to do about this except find a way to confine the ducks and/or get rid of them. i'm not really a fan anyway, but they are matt's project so i will leave it to him to deal with their shenanigans. all i know is if they hurt/maim/kill my chickens they are going in the oven. stat. at least one of the duck hens finally laid an egg the other day (which was promptly eaten by, i presume, crows).

matt is working with a tattoo artist to design a full sleeve for himself, which both makes me happy for him and slightly (so slightly) jealous. i've been toying with the idea of extending my own half-sleeve since i got it, and i know just how i would do it, but i am hesitating due to career issues. more than likely it would never be an issue, but then again, you never know... and i do NOT want to have to wear long-sleeves every day in florida heat. so we'll see. i need to find something spectacular to do for my bigthreeoh birthday, though, and that technically qualifies. :)

the munchkins are lovely, as always, and totally embracing their new caregiver and her kids. i come home and they are happy, rested, fed, and usually playing very intently. it's great. then i get to spend bath time with them and hang out for a little bit before they go to bed at their new, later, bedtime (about 630, lol). rowan has learned how to operate door knobs and greeted me at my bedside the other morning, declaring "i'm awake!" uggggh. so it's time to get those little childproof door knob cover things. i can't have her running around the house while we sleep, or worse, deciding to go outside on her own. liam has mastered the walker and is so funny as he runs through the house with his arms held out, propelled in a nearly-uncontrolled fashion by legs that are just starting to cooperate. he's going to be walking really soon.

oh, totally random product review: tom's of maine unscented deodorant (aluminum free) is awesome!! i usually use the lavender stuff that i bought a few years ago, but it doesn't really work over more than a few hours, but this stuff ROCKS. it says "24 hour" and it is. i don't have much of an issue with stink, thankfully, but what little there is has been quashed by this stuff. love.

i need to buy a bunch of cardigans and some prints for my office, but i have to wait for the monies :(.

i think i am satisfied now--i.e., i won't need to keep writing about hair for a little while, at least. i can move on to other things because i love how the bleach experiment turned out!

voyez:




these photos also serve to mitigate the uber-masculine vibe given off by the last pics i posted... it's much more feminine with the highlights and also with my bangs brushed gently aside rather than forced over.

end transmission.

this girl is my hair idol. normally i would feel awkward and/or guilty over blatantly stealing someone else's hairstyle, but since she lives in NYC and is in a much cooler reality than i am, i don't. i've got some foils in my hair bleaching the fun in as i write this.


my hair is not as dark as hers and i'm doing a significantly smaller chunk (to start with?!), so it should be a more subtle effect, which suits me better. i basically cut off all my sun highlights when i hacked off the length, so i am left with a duller, more solid color than i am used to and i've been wanting to perk it up a bit... this will do it! just in time for the new job next week :).

by the way, this is the final cut (until next time)... i'll have to take post-highlight pics later. see what i mean about dull? i have a lot of red that you can't see in that light, but it's still very boring and uniform...

amid all the bustle of rowan's birth back in 09, i never really got to address the death of my grandmother in journal format. something in me is needing to do it now.

my grandmother, evelyn joanne, for whom rowan was named, was the matriarch of our large and close family. she was the center of our collective universe. warm, spunky, open, and multi-talented in art, gardening, video games, and crafts... she was never disagreeable to anyone but her husband, and that mostly in jest. you couldn't fool her to save your life--she was too observant, too quick, and too full of common sense. she was also beautiful, even just before she died after being long-ill with COPD. my grandmother was the one person any of us--her 4 children, plus 3 by marriage, and 9 grandchildren--could talk to without any fear of judgment, anger, or anything but love and acceptance. she was the most amazing woman i have ever known.

her death was impossibly hard on all of us... there is really no way to describe the barren, lost, and sorrowful feeling that we have all come to live with. my mother still struggles daily. i know that her loss is greater than mine when i think about what it will someday be like to lose her; i don't know what i will do. a mother is a figure of unspeakable importance that i did not truly understand until my own lost hers.

she has been telling me lately, through tears, that i look just like my grandmother; maybe that is where this is coming from. i see what she means, but in truth i am only a pale shadow of her sparkling self. i am privileged to have inherited pieces of her jewelry, some of her clothes, and other random things from her life, and when i wear them (which i do), i am proud. it makes me feel closer to her... i sometimes think i can feel her nearby... i get the sense that she has peeked into my life and is nodding with loving approval. it is a rare comfort, but welcome.

it makes me so sad that she never knew about kai, or liam, or aria... she held rowan once, literally on her deathbed, and it was a moment unlike any i have ever witnessed. a frustrated, crying infant of 3 weeks going silent and peaceful at the touch of her great-gradmother's fragile, shaking hands. they looked in each other's eyes for a long time, gazing through four generations of first-born women. we all watched, amazed at rowan's obvious enthrallment with a putative stranger. there was a photo of this amazing moment on my dad's cell phone, until my mom accidentally put it through the wash... needless to say, she was more devastated than anyone over it.

i have regret, also, which my mother shares. in her last year or so, my grandmother had changed; whether it was a result of the medications she was on, or the illness itself, or the anxiety that accompanied it, she was not herself. she was constantly fearful, depressed, slightly confused, and often angry... she obsessed over things, and repeated conversations too many times, and was just not the same person that i had always known. because of this, she was frustrating to be around, and i let that get in the way of spending more time with her. i let myself be angry with her for changing. my mother did too (we talked about it while it was happening). now, i think back and just wish i would have ignored it, given her more love, and been there in any way i could have for her. it's not entirely true, but i have a very clear memory of throwing attitude and open frustration at her at my baby shower for rowan, and that has stuck with me so strongly and hurts so much. i was short with her and annoyed by her confusion and i hate myself for that. it wasn't the last time i saw her, but it might as well have been... the next times were while she was in hospice, deciding to die. i hate myself for being anything less than caring with her.

it is hard to lose anyone, but in this case our family has lost the greater part of its glue. we still gather every holiday and see each other at random intervals--we are all essentially neighbors--but there is always a palpable absence. a hole. my mother has taken on the administrative role of matriarch, and does a good enough job, but she can never and will never try to be a true substitute for her mother. my mom is guarded, somewhat judgmental, and not unconditionally warm; my grandmother was the opposite. i miss her so much. we all do.

of all the things i have wished for in my life, i wish the most that my grandmother could see my children and be part of their lives. i wish that every single day.

i hope she can hear me.

note to self: subway fucking SUCKS! don't buy it. even if it is the only place to get food on campus during break week... you'd rather be hungry. stale bread+weak toppings+poorly structured sandwich=suck.

ugh, my eyes are bleeding from staring at the same annoying document all day. and all day yesterday. and i can look forward to doing another one on friday! i am rather looking forward to a day off tomorrow, even if it does mean doing chores.

at the risk of rambling on and boring even myself, let's talk more about new hair. this cut i created is lending itself most ideally to the kind of styles i have never done before--choppy, edgy, jagged, and brushed forward. it feels a little weird when i look in the mirror, because while i like it, i don't see it as "my" style (yet?). i need to work on the cut so i can pull off something a little more romantic and effortless, as despite the numerous visible tattoos on my body, i don't really consider myself "edgy." i think i am going to shorten the crown section (esp around the forehead/bangs) and let the rest grow a bit to more closely approximate the pic in the post below. i do love her hair. now that i think about it, her hair is actually a reallreallyreally subtle
mullet. HA! and so i revisit the days of my youth.*

"with short hair you begin to crave pearl necklaces, long earrings, and a variety of sunglasses. and you brush your teeth more often. short hair removes obvious femininity and replaces it with style...short hair makes you aware of subtraction as style. you can no longer wear puffed sleeves or ruffles [says who?!]; the neat is suddenly preferable to the fussy. you eye the tweezers instead of the blusher. what else can you take away? you can't hide behind short hair... you may look a little androgynous, a little unfinished, a little bare... but your face is no longer a flat screen surrounded by a curtain: the world sees you in three dimensions."
- joan juliet buck for american vogue, c.1988

i have to argue with the "unfinished" bit, and forgive slightly outdated sensibilities in general (she was writing in 1988!) but otherwise YES. the first thing i did when i cut off my hair was sit down and really edit/shape/polish my eyebrows... of all random things. and i am learning that earrings are an awesome, uber-feminine accessory for me. as are cardigans, which i can never have enough of... anyway.

the devil can take subway, but at least i got a dr. pepper out of it. mmm fountain soda!


*in first grade, i begged and begged my mom to let me have "spiked hair" and she did. so at 6 years old i had a spike-top mullet (which i styled carefully every day) with long hair everywhere else. there are photos. they are funny.

i want this hair! now!!


*drool*

seriously. this chick has a whole crazy flickr album of great hair (all hers). jackpot! :D

i think my length might even be right for it, so i may whip out the scissors yet again...

i am really, really, really enjoying the pixie cut thing. i almost want to say "i'm never going back..." to long hair, but we have learned that 'never' is not an honest word. so: maybe i'm never going back.

some good(?) things have come out of this new-job-preparation state i find myself in. i almost feel a sort of mild nesting impulse, if you can imagine that.

the first thing: terrariums. (yes, that is grammatically correct.) oh. my. word. they are addictive! i realized that because my office has no windows, and less because i work in forestry, i definitely need some plants in my space. but the no-windows thing sort of poses a problem, no? enter MOSS. velvety, otherworldly green, beautiful, beautiful moss. it happens to love shade. so i found a nice little DIY kit on etsy and ordered it for myself. i have a slight obsession with containers--boxes, jars, bottles, etc--so i happened to have a stash of suitable terrarium enclosures on hand... then i went outside into the woods and gathered up rocks, lichen/mushroom-covered branches, and forest trinkets, and last night i assembled it all together into the most amazing, wonderful, dreamy little ecosystems i have ever seen. i am in love. i just want to stare at the moss and shrink myself so i can live inside the jars and roll around on it. (incidentally, i am positive i was a dryad in a previous lifetime...) here's a few pics, but trust me when i tell you they do NOT do justice to these magnificent specimens.

rowan has been doing really well with the potty, until two days ago. she decided to pee on the floor twice in a row, and then again the next day. ?! no idea.

but she watched the french babies dvd a few more times and she was counting in french all by herself, and she came up to me, pointed to the apples, and said "I need a pomme!" :D. she even tried to sing 'mary had a little lamb' in french (marie avait petit mouton, petit mouton, petit mouton) which was totally awesome. so i think we're making progress, and i barely have to do anything... i'm a little worried that the nanny won't be able or interested in keeping up (or maybe she has an atrocious accent), but i guess that comes with the territory.

i'm supposed to bring home dinner and i have no idea what to get. ugh.

and now i appreciate my soon-to-be-had freedom from this job, even if it means twice as many hours a week. i have been doing the kind of job a robot will DEFINITELY be doing in the next 15 years or so, all. freaking. day. i'm having the soul sucked out of me.

copy+paste, then format. 1003950876 times. almost the same information, in exactly the same template. and when i'm done, i get to do it all again for a different document! holy shit.

on top of the mindlessness factor, i'm also having to edit/crop faculty CVs, which, if you know anything about faculty, can be a really touchy task. this is for a big important review and here i am, ms. knows-nothing, hacking away at their decades' worth of high-level academic experience in an effort to make it fit into two pages at 12pt Times New Roman. wow, thanks! i love having that kind of responsibility without any guidance whatsoever.

best part of all, is I ALREADY DID THIS THREE WEEKS AGO--all of it!--but someone failed to tell me back then that "oh, well we have this new template so we should probably use it..." no, they forged ahead with outdated versions not thinking that we might need to re-do all previous work in yet another insane crunch deadline, instead of just doing it right the first fucking time.

oh and by the way, THANKS for going out of town and not even letting me know, when we have this huge deadline that you still haven't given me a date for. it makes resigning really simple when i don't even have to look you in the eye. *sarcasm*

((starting to think this is an effort to make myself feel better for leaving them... at least if i'm mad i can't feel guilty, right? but it is all true nonetheless))
arrrgh!

well... i wasn't planning on doing this until the kids were a bit older, but an opportunity arose that i just couldn't let pass, and now i find myself preparing to start a full-time job.

fuck.

i mean, it's a really amazing situation--better than i would have dared hope for--so i really have nothing to complain about. except the kids. i am so, so, so dreading leaving them for multiple full-days each week. to the point that i almost called the whole thing off; great salary, flexible hours, cake job, and all.

they are going to let me work 4 days @ 10hrs each so that i can be home 3 days/week(!!!), after an intial let's-get-going 8 to 5 run. because matt is also a state employee, our health insurance is going to be $15 a month instead of over $200. i'll get ample vacation leave. i'll be on salary (i.e., no time clock). i'll have a closed-door office that i can decorate as i please. and yes, i will have some mental and social stimulation while doing something i am really good at and people openly appreciate me for.

but (oh the huge BUT)... this is a major sacrifice and it is scaring the hell out of me. i just tentatively hired a stranger with two kids of her own to come to my house and care for the loves of my life. without me. ((they need me! don't they?)) i know millions of mothers struggle with this every single day, and my plight is not unique, but bollocks this hurts. how does a mother leave her newborn when maternity leave ends? i cannot imagine.

i have sought counseling from the only other working mom i know, and she assures me that the time i am with them will be all the more special once i start working, because there won't be all the time that i now spend trying to do chores around them, or whatever. and that is a good point. i spend a lot of our daily time doing maintenance work for them, managing liam's mischief, making food, and trying to clean/work/whatever around them. we don't have a whole lot of really 'quality' time, other than in brief moments here and there. so i can see what she means... but still. is it better to be there more but slightly distracted or less and fully attentive? i am going to miss them so fucking much.

it will be very good for rowan to (finally!) get to play with a little girl, and she got along marvelously with both kids and immediately took to their mother, which i take as a great sign. (we interviewed one other mom+kids and rowan was NOT into them. it was obvious.) liam too, of course--he was all smiles and her kids played with him as much as with rowan. so yes, it will be good for them, and at least they will get to be comfortable and secure in their own home... but rowan is going through a mommy-withdrawal stage where she clings to me on my return and then worries--i can see it in her face--about when i will leave again. i am afraid this might subtly scar her emotionally. really.

another but: this basically means that breastfeeding will not be increasing after all. there is no way i can get my supply up working 5 days/week. i'm not even going to try. we will continue to nurse in the morning (if he's awake) and evening as long as he wants to, but i don't expect to actually provide much in the way of nutrition... though at least i can provide comfort. i will be doubly sad when that relationship ends, because now i feel like it is mostly my fault... and i'm sorry to say i expect the end is just around the corner.

i am excited about the job, i am... i'm just in a terribly depressed funk that i pray to the gods passes quickly. i'd like to say it's just hormones but the fact is this is a totally justified emotion and i am not exaggerating. women are taught to force away their maternal feelings in favor of what society expects of them, no matter how unnatural... i'm not going to do that. it's a fucked up and horrible thing to have to leave (/abandon) your children and i plan to feel it until i don't anymore.

*sob*

edited to add:
in addition to all my stress/worry/sadness over the kids, i forgot to mention that i am feeling like a total asshole with regards to my boss, who just a few weeks ago asked me pleadingly whether i was planning to stick around for a while, because "we can't do this without you." so. guilt? yes. more guilt? oh yes.

i gave my notice today (via email, while the poor guy is traveling!) and i just feel ill over it. i know they will be ok but i hatehatehate causing a ruckus and making other peoples' lives more difficult. sigh.

*whistles* this one is a doozy.

many of my friends, most of whom are serious intellectuals (like, have PhDs or will soon), are child-free and intend to remain that way. i used to consider that kind of life myself, before i got pregnant. i get it.

i even agree that for people who just don't like children, knowing there are a few places in your town (or on vacation) you can go to enjoy your time sans-kids is a great thing. trust me when i say that as a parent, i KNOW how valuable some peace and quiet can be (not that i remember what that's like anymore...).

the issue is that underneath all this catering-to-the-child-free is a very nasty, ugly sentiment that says "children are not worthy." that frightens me on a level i can't really put into words. something along the lines of the motivations of pedophile priests and child abusers... the basic belief people like that MUST carry is that children are a lesser entity. i am not comfortable with that belief going mainstream. kids aren't pets and they certainly aren't second-hand smoke, so don't class them as if they are. like it or not, children are valuable, beautiful human beings and they have rights and thoughts and feelings just like you and they do, in fact, have a place in society.

as for the argument that "more and more people are choosing to remain child-free" and thus the market for anti-child policy is growing, let me suggest that what that really says is: if there are less of them than there are of us, we get the upper hand. it's ok to discriminate against minorities because they are minorities and we don't like them. wtf?! hello progress--not.

whatever you think about having kids or not, the problem is clearly not the children; it's bad parenting. (i blame bad parenting for soooo many things. it is a horrifyingly rampant problem in american society.) so rather than punish the children by exclusion, when in all likelihood they are simply emulating what they see from their parents and/or acting in whatever way is tolerated at home, how about we find constructive ways to improve the average joe's parenting abilities? or build in an embarrassment factor in places such that if your kid is a monster, you are openly asked to leave? if bad parents and their kids aren't even allowed to enter places or be around peers who would otherwise reprimand them for their (in)actions, how are they ever going to learn publicly appropriate behavior?

but i guess the intent is really just to make the breeders and their crotch-fruit stay at home and out of the sight of the first-class citizens as they go about their merry way.

the no-kids-allowed movement is spreading