meet the babe

windblown

2007-11-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

My daughter J was camping (well, indoor camping) with her Girl Guide group at the Royal Canadian Legion hall/house/thing in South Surrey/White Rock last weekend. It also happened to be a ferocious windstorm that knocked power out all over the lower mainland and other areas, though it missed us in Seattle. When I picked up the girls, I stopped to take a few pictures of the blustery sea.

The scene seemed to lend itself to black and white so I processed this one in black and white.

my daughter, myself

2007-10-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

Lord knows I've probably blogged about this before. I know I think about it all the time. But this morning I sat through a criticism of my daughter's habits and all I kept thinking about was how it reflected on me. Yikes, that makes me sound utterly narcissistic, which wasn't really what was happening. I guess a better way of saying it is that being forced, or obliged, to view my daughter's flaws up close and personal only made me think that her flaws are also my flaws.

Now, this was an utterly well-intentioned circumstance. My daughter has started attending her gifted class, which is a real change in how she--and we--approach her schoolwork. It's a welcome change, but there's a rather steep learning curve involved. She's having a hard time getting organized and staying focussed. This is nothing new, but she is accustomed to coasting, being the person everyone around her asks for help with things. Now, she needs to be accountable for her own work, since all her classmates are working at the same level as she is, and they don't need her help the same way. Or they're making the same kinds of adjustments as she is.

That's all fine. Like I said, nothing new. But. The other part of the conversation was about communication and how she expresses herself. It's not something I've really addressed with her because, well, I guess I'm used to it. But her teacher, who is getting to know her for the first time, has drawn attention to it as an issue.

My lovely daughter has always been a very fluent communicator. She got language very early and she's always just gotten language. Her dad is a big talker and I guess I am too. She comes from a well-established line of external processors. But, she hasn't developed any filters yet. She will just blurt something out without any thought about how it might be construed by those around her.

An example. Even while we were talking about it, the three of us, this morning, I said something about a work habit that could be improved and she immediately made a rude sound and gesture. "There!" I said. "That's exactly what we mean. Was that helpful? Did it contribute to this discussion we're having?" Of course, the answer was no. I think she got the message.

But she was clearly emotional about being criticized like that, and as a result, I was too. I kept thinking the teacher was scrutinizing me, the interactions I was having with my daughter, and thinking "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree." I didn't like it. I know J needs to work on those things, but I guess I didn't think I did. I wonder now if I do. I know I've always been able to filter and make adjustments relatively easily, but I wonder if it will be so easy for her. I hope it will. I know I need to help her with it.

Observations about J's flaws inevitably shine a light on my own. My faith in my parenting abilities is never particularly strong: for better or for worse, I'm constantly worrying that I'm screwing up my kid. I suppose it's the cross all parents bear, but in this case, knowing others feel as I do doesn't make the burden any easier.

warehouse

2007-09-07T10:32:00.000-07:00

I've always worked around books, and I love the smell of new books. It's not as evident in the bookstore or in the library, where the books quickly start to gather dust and that's an entirely different kind of smell. But for a time I worked in the warehouse of a publishing company and I received skids of books fresh from the printing house.

This week at the district resource centre where I work, the same thing is happening: books are being delivered, piled in boxes on skids wrapped in plastic. The smell of new paper and fresh glue oozes from the boxes, permeates the air and intoxicates. It transports me back to another time and another place.

technical

2007-08-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

I had a conversation with my mom earlier. In the course of the conversation we were talking about computer stuff that neither of us really understands too well. So, wikipedia being my friend, I was able to get to the bottom of things. And I thought it was interesting enough to post here, for my faithful reader(s).

Here we go.

The conversation started with me telling my mom that I had alleviated (or I should say, my smart and patient boyfriend alleviated) my mounting frustration with the issues I was having with my wireless network, by suggesting I might need to update the firmware on my airport card (which I did, and which seems to have fixed the problem). She asked me what firmware actually was, and I really didn't know, but my non-techie brain led me to say that I thought it was not quite software and not quite hardware. Voila:

FIRMWARE: In computing, firmware is a computer program that is embedded in a hardware device, for example a microcontroller. It can also be provided on flash ROMs or as a binary image file that can be uploaded onto existing hardware by a user.

As its name suggests, firmware is somewhere between hardware and software. Like software, it is a computer program which is executed by a computer. But it is also an intimate and vital part of a piece of hardware, and has little meaning outside of that particular hardware.

This led to a conversation about how the "propeller heads" who worked with her on a project once tried to make her understand the difference between an application and a program. I told her I didn't think there was a difference: in my mind, "application" is just a different word for "program," the main difference being that an application is generally smaller than a program. I mean, I figured the point was much too fine for our non-techie brains to make. And so:

APPLICATION: Application software is a subclass of computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly to a task that the user wishes to perform. This should be contrasted with system software which is involved in integrating a computer's various capabilities, but typically does not directly apply them in the performance of tasks that benefit the user. In this context the term application refers to both the application software and its implementation.

PROGRAM: A computer program is a collection of instructions that describes a task, or set of tasks, to be carried out by a computer. More formally, it can be described as an expression of a computational method written in a computer language.

Computer programs, also known as software, may be categorized along functional lines. These functional categories include application software, operating systems, video games, and compilers, among others. Computer programs embedded in hardware devices are called firmware.

THUS, IT MAY BE CONCLUDED THAT: both firmware and applications are programs, but not all programs are applications or firmware. The terms are not exactly interchangeable. Enough to satisfy our civilian minds, and enough also to irk techies. Perhaps the analogy might be the interchange of "its" and "it's," which seems to be fine with people who do not work with words to the extent that we do, but which causes our blood pressure to rise quite noticeably.

venue vs vocation

2007-07-24T09:47:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been wondering if I have chosen the correct vocation...or if I can chalk up my restlessness-bordering-on-dissatisfaction on a series of poor choices of venues in which to practice my chosen vocation. It seems a bit strange to me that I should exercise such poor foresight and judgment when it comes to ferreting out a good place to practice my trade.

I'm not sure I've ever been truly happy and satisfied in my work in the library world. Which is to say, the last 7 or 8 years of my working life, which, given my age, should probably have been some of my most satisfying and productive.

I started out working in a small special library, doing a variety of tasks. I enjoyed it, and the challenge and passion both lay in the fact that I knew very little about the topic in which the library specialized: namely, resources for childcare and early childhood education. Since my daughter was only a toddler at the time, the subject resonated very strongly with me and I found ways to keep myself interested even though the workload, once I found my footing, wasn't terribly heavy.

I moved after that into two part-time jobs. In one, I was doing mind-numbing data entry work on an endless retrospective conversion (recon) project. That was my entrance into the library system at UBC. My other job was providing PC support for library staff at the college where I received my library technician diploma. That was so dull that I spent a lot of time surfing the internet, and that's how I found out about online dating. So that job, while not particularly fulfilling, allowed me to enter the next phase of my social life, such as it was. But I eventually quit that one because although the data entry stuff at UBC was really dull, at least it kept my mind and fingers occupied for the duration of my shift. And there were other opportunities on campus, whereas the college library didn't offer much in the way of movement.

From the recon project I moved to another branch library, and found myself in yet another area of library work that had been unfamiliar to me up until then. I was working with serials, and I found the complexities maddening...and satisfying. However, despite having bursts of intensity in which I found myself working into and out of backlogs constantly, the job was often very slow and plodding. I stayed there for four years and it was the good relationships I developed with most of my coworkers that kept me there all that time. Finally, the politics and poor administration wore me down and I had to leave.

Now, I work in yet another new environment, in a brand new position, in a resource centre that operates like a library, whose patrons expect it to act like a library, but whose entire existence, until about a year ago, was in the hands of people who had never been trained to run a library. The quality of the records, materials and processes shows those years of neglect keenly, and I often find myself in a tailspin, knowing there is so much to be done, but not having the authority (and yes, I admit it, the skill) to deal with all of it.

So here I am, living in an unsatisfying situation yet again. I can't help but peruse whatever other options are available to me, though I feel kind of lame for not making a go of it here. I long for a job in which I feel on the verge of being overwhelmed every minute, because it is in that state in which I do my best work. When I'm in my current state: spending more time reading newspapers online, surfing random entertainment websites, and posting on my blog at work, than I do actually working, I feel ... heavy. Slow. Tired. Interestingly, I don't feel particularly guilty, because when I am working, I am putting everything I have into what I'm doing. And I have a very high standard, so the work I am doing is quality work.

However, this history, in which I have tested the waters in a variety of library environments, makes me suspect that, despite my passion for it, library work may not offer me the stimulation and capacity that I really need to have in my work. But if not this...then what?

boys and girls

2007-06-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend is my daughter J's year-end showcase for CirKids, her circus arts program. It will mark the first time in the 3 years she's been in the program that my boyfriend will see a showcase, since until last year she was in a group that did their shows on Sundays, and he usually leaves too early on Sunday afternoons to stay for it. This year, however, she changed to a group that has its shows on Saturdays, so he'll be here for it.

My Ex will also be there, and possibly his "new" girlfriend as well, which should make things interesting. Ah, the joys of a fractured, patchwork family. Funnily enough, the Ex and I are pretty much at ease with these scenarios. We lived our history, we know what waters are flowing under that bridge. We're getting along pretty well at present, but we know what's done is done, and we've moved on.

Our current SO's, however, get kind of bent out of shape when they have to be in their opposite numbers' company. My boyfriend has never really said anything, but he kind of wears his heart on his sleeve so it's pretty easy to figure out what he's thinking. He has a similar reaction to my Ex as he has to my dad, who has behaved rather badly toward me over the years as well, which makes me think it's a protective thing. And so it's kind of cute. My Ex's girlfriend, he's told me, feels threatened by me, because he and I have an okay relationship. She has a very acrimonious relationship with her ex, so perhaps she has no frame of reference for a couple of exes who have learned to work things out.

It should be an interesting afternoon, anyway.

friends

2007-05-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

Well. So I had a little bit of sadness this weekend and then I wanted to do this blog post, and the topic of it makes me a little sad sometimes so maybe I'll get to feeling sad over this since I've already been a little sad these days, albeit over something totally unrelated. Okay, enough with the preamble.

I don't know about you, but I don't have very many friends. I feel like I'm surrounded by people who have tons of friends and it only makes me feel like I have none. And this is mostly okay...I figure if it really was NOT okay, it wouldn't be so, since I'm not a troll, I'm reasonably sociable and I'm not an asshole. At least, I don't think I am. But, then I see things that make me start thinking (damn brain!) and I realize that having a very small circle of friends could actually be a detriment to me, particularly later in life.

Take this one, for example. My mom has a friend who's been going through the cancer thing. She had cancer and she had it treated. Then the cancer came back and she's had it treated again. Actually she's recovering from cancer surgery at the moment. And the thing about it is, she has this fabulous network of people around her. She's a person my mom has known for a long long time, worked with way back in the day, when I was a kid, and has remained part of my mom's circle for all that time. And my mom has always had that big circle, of women with kids and women without kids...just, friends. Who have now all drawn together in her hour of need, to help and support and just be there.

And I don't have that.

My sister has it. When the subject has come up, she tends to wave it off, like, "pish posh, I don't have that many friends." But the reality is, she does. She always has had a bigger circle than me. She's a more outgoing person than I am. She loves her quiet and solitude just as our mom and I do, but she also has the other thing. When she has a party, she has a guest list.

I don't have parties. I always think: who would I invite if I decided to have a party? Okay. Um, well, my mom, and my sister, and my daughter. My boyfriend, my friend Bella. My friend Fee that I barely ever see.

...

That's about it. Maybe some of my daughter's friends.

Is that enough? Is that enough friends for a person to have? The thing is, I've always had one close pal who was a real extrovert. Someone who attracted people and could do the work of initializing those relationships. Once I'm in them, I'm pretty good at maintaining them, so long as the people don't drift away, as they often seem to do. I was married for 10 years to someone like that, and while we were together we had tons of friends (over 60 of them came to our wedding). But they gradually fell away and when we eventually split up none of them, I discovered, were really mine. Well that's not entirely fair, since I do still talk to a couple people from that time now and then. But they're not people I see every week or even every month.

I see or hear about groups of women who get together and do stuff on a regular basis. They go out to dinner or cocktails. They go for walks or go to the gym. They take classes or do projects like quilting or cooking. They have book clubs. Why don't I have that? Don't I want that? Sometimes, I want that more than anything else in the whole world. I want people who will phone me up and ask me to go do things. I want people I can phone if I just need to talk about something. But I don't really have that. And I suppose, I don't really need it most of the time. Or else, if I felt that need so keenly all the time, I'd surely be like a crazy person walking down the street mumbling to herself, or I'd be locked up in my apartment with 50 cats or something. Wouldn't I?

I really don't have the answer. All I know is, it's something that preoccupies my mind fairly often. And somehow, I got through this post without getting really sad.

comfort zone

2007-05-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

I am the first to admit I am a terrible chicken. I think I alluded to it a couple of posts ago but I thought I'd elaborate now that it's official: my daughter J has been accepted to the gifted class at a new school, and has made the bittersweet decision to accept it. What this means is a whole new set of social challenges and expectations, situations to adapt to. Of course, when I talk about these things I'm talking not about her, but about me.

My daughter has had the great good fortune to inherit one of her father's best traits, which I will call gregariousness. He has always had the ability to enter a room and instantly become the best friend of everyone in it. There are downsides to this characteristic to which he also succumbed when he was older, and we're all crossing our fingers that that does not come to pass for her, but for now I'm pleased that she has that trait. I've never had it so I know what it's like to go through life without it.

Well, let me amend that statement a little bit. I guess for me, the difference is that at this point, now that I've developed skills and confidence in my chosen profession, I have no trouble walking into a work-type situation and brazening my way through. I still have a very hard time in social situations: parties in which I know nobody except the host are my absolute nightmare. I'm definitely a one-on-one type social being. Which has served to make my social circle extremely small -- one could call it a social dot, more than a circle in fact -- but that's a post for another day and ignites a whole other set of anxieties.

J, however, is in grade five, and will be transitioning to a new school in grade six, just before her eleventh birthday. School at that stage is not like a job, where you can have a modicum of social interaction with your coworkers, but the majority of your social life is conducted elsewhere. Elementary school is kind of an equal mix of social and "professional," or in this case academic association. J has always mostly come home from school and been pretty solitary, spending her evenings with me or her grandparents, doing homework, watching tv, playing various electronic games, doing extracurricular activities. It's only been in the past year or so that she's started having social interactions with her friends from school, outside school time. Especially now that we live across the street from the park and several of her buddies live around the corner.

At this point, I don't really doubt that she'll be able to maintain those extracurricular social contacts, even though she's moving to a school that is basically across town. I mean it's only a 10-minute drive, but it might as well be across town. It's a bit of a pisser to me really, since I've spent a lot of time and energy working to reside in the neighbourhood where she goes to school, and now this. Oh well, I keep telling myself it's only for 2 years.

Which is the other bright side to this whole thing, and probably was a point that helped J make the decision to make the change. She will come back to the neighbourhood and go to the same high school as the kids she's been going to school with all this time. In grade eight, they'll all be small fish swimming in a big pond, and they'll need to watch each other's backs. She was reassured by this notion I think -- not because she's anxious about high school, far from it, but because she does have a few buddies at her "old" school and doesn't want to lose them entirely.

I suppose I might be having a wee bit of that "my baby my baby" syndrome too, since the reality is that from here on out, she's going to need and want me around less and less. So although I tell myself I'm anxious about trying to find a niche in a new surrounding, I probably will find myself barely involved in anything going on at her new school anyway. It's been a couple of years since I've had time or energy to be on the PAC for example, and she's perfectly capable of advocating for herself. I will make myself known to her teachers and administrators, but probably won't need to do much more than that.

This comfort zone thing is bigger than I knew!

photos...at last!

2007-05-21T10:58:00.001-07:00

Sorry they are so boring.

this is infokid, hurtling down the slope in the park across the the street from our house this past winter.

this is also infokid, riding her unicycle at her CirKids class. a few weeks ago they took the kids outside to ride, since it was such a lovely day. So i made her pose in front of the mountain panorama because i am a geek :P

and this is an urban park here in Vancouver. It's a lovely oasis of green and trickling stream in the middle of the city. Directly adjacent to it is a community centre, fitness centre and pool, and a nice branch of the Vancouver Public Library. If I didn't live where I live, I'd like to live near here.

one day I will update my links

2007-05-15T15:01:00.000-07:00

It's really pretty sad that this pathetic attempt at a blog is the most lasting of all the links I have on my links area there. The personal ones anyway. I check them all periodically just to see whether there's been any activity, and I see that even darth's has been obliterated. Ironic that he's the only one who actually reads my blog. Hi darth! Where's your blog gone???

fear and change

2007-05-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

well. I am a bit paralyzed by fear because of impending change, and I feel the need to "talk it out."

It's interesting that I'm feeling this way on my daughter's behalf, when a) she seems quite calm and even kind of excited, and b) I'm such a change addict when it comes to my own life, particularly jobs and dwellings. But.

so if you read the last post, you'll know that we've been working for some time toward providing my daughter with a more enriching, more appropriate, more satisfying academic environment, and in so doing also improve her social surroundings. This has been in the works for some time, and I've been chomping at the bit to keep the process in motion, and to see results.

Now, it seems, all our efforts are bearing fruit, as a 2-day visit to the gifted classroom has been successful, it seems that she will be offered a spot, and she is happy with her choice and the changes that accompany it.

but I, suddenly, am feeling very very very anxious about the changes myself! The logical (very tiny, it feels like) part of my brain is reassuring the emotionally charged (very much larger) part that I am just projecting because I lack confidence in my own ability to establish myself in a community. But that emotional side is thinking about all the wonderful people and relationships we've built up at our school, and worrying about what will happen when we leave it all behind.

Let's see what's worrying me:
1) I won't be able to be an advocate for my child among people I don't know and who don't know her.
2) She will lose her friends and be a stranger in a strange land when she enters high school.
3) ...

Okay that's all I can think of right now. But they're big, aren't they?

Aren't they?

Oh all right. I know. It will be fine. She will be happy and having the kind of education I always dreamed she should and never dreamed she could have. I will be able to procure the attentions and benefits she deserves because, well, because I'm her mom and that's what I do. And she has her dad's gift for making a niche for herself and going along through her life with confidence.

Phew. I feel better.

Gifted journey

2007-04-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I have so far failed to post any photographs as promised. I will try to get around to it this week, but please in the meantime, accept this lengthy personal exposition instead.

My daughter J, a fifth-grader, is apparently a gifted child. This is something that every parent wants to hear I suppose, at least when the word is used to define someone who has special talent or intelligence (for "gifted" is also used as a euphemism for people, children particularly, who are deficient in some way). For better or for worse, I am, somewhat grudgingly, accepting this label with which my daughter has been tagged.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, since it was I who got this gifted ball rolling in the first place. Well, actually, I suppose it begins with her Grade 2 teacher, who brought the local school board's summer gifted program to our attention in that year, thinking that it would be a good option for J. Her instincts were correct, and J has attended this program every year since.

What I didn't know at the time was that the summer gifted program is only part of the larger spectrum of programs that is available to children who are deemed, by virtue of a few standardized tests, observation by a few school officials, and some lobbying by a family, to be a bit smarter than their peers, or at least to be at risk of becoming bored of the regular curriculum offerings.

Last December, when J started complaining about being bored in class, and also began having some serious homework anxiety, it felt like the beginning of an alarming repeat of her Grade 3 year. We'd avoided it in Grade 4, because J was placed with a teacher who is one of those special, once-in-a-lifetime teachers who kids are lucky to get. This year we thought we'd be lucky again, and while it hasn't been awful as we know it can be, it hasn't been that great. By chance, I happened into a casual conversation with a co-worker, who has a daughter similar to mine, and she mentioned that the public schools have programs for gifted kids. Why this never occurred to me, research maniac that I am, I don't know, but I immediately checked into it. And lo and behold, alternatives do exist.

Conversations with school administrators, with my daughter and other members of our family support team followed. We decided to go ahead with the testing, which seemed pretty non-invasive, and see whether she is actually gifted as the school board defines the word. When we discovered she is, that oepned up several more doors. She attended a 4-day workshop, and has entered a mentorship program in which she gets intensive, one-on-one attention to work on a writing project, which is her special area of giftedness. These are essentially extracurricular experiences though, and not really a solution to the growing problem of boredom and frustration.

Last week, J attended a 2-day class that is a preview of a special class, a "nerd" class, if you will, that is available at a selection of schools throughout the district. Not, unfortunately, our school, but one nearby enough to make it work. Before she attended, J was pretty sure she wasn't interested in changing schools, despite the fact that she usually feels like a fish out of water, frustrated and irritated with the demands of her peers. She's not an introverted brainiac: she's almost hyper-social, has lots of leadership capability and energy for lots of things. But she doesn't have a really special group of friends at her school.

After attending the preview class, she got really excited about the possibility of entering this special class. She's not shy and has lots of confidence that she can make friends and fit in. And she's interested in the different teaching and learning styles that are available in these classes, the project-based learning, the integrated curriculum, and most of all, the feeling not of being the smartest kid in class, but just being one of many smart kids. Now, we're waiting to see whether she will be offered one of the coveted spots, for this is a program that is in demand, and not everyone will get in.

We're both nervous about either outcome: getting in means leaving our comfort zone, which we have spent 6 years building up, and not getting in means working with a system that is increasingly failing to offer us a way for J to meet her potential.

Cross your fingers!

photo blog week

2007-04-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

watch this space. I got a new camera about a week ago, and I intend to post pics from it every day this week. That is, if I figure out how to use it.

ok bye.

rock chick (heh)

2007-02-19T09:15:00.000-08:00

I have added a link to the Misfats blog. You can find it in my links. It is a very articulate blog created by a cool and interesting guy in a super fun band. I became loosely acquainted with these guys because of their friendship with my boyfriend's band, Stay Tuned. I haven't seen them play for a while because, well, I'm wimpy and the only time I go and rock out any more is when Stay Tuned is playing (oh except for last weekend when we saw the Presidents). And the 'Tuned haven't played for several months because they didn't have a drummer. They do have a drummer now and I look forward to becoming reacquainted with my inner rock chick.

Incidentally, I'm not a Misfits fan. I probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a Misfits song from any other punk song (except maybe a few Sex Pistols or DOA songs - and holy cow DOA actually has a wiki entry). But I enjoy the humour and energy of the Misfats. One time when I saw them, one of the guys was wearing a t-shirt that said, "Winning the battle against anorexia," and I laugh every time I see it, even in my mind's eye.

Magic for dummies

2007-01-29T09:24:00.000-08:00

This is what I discovered about myself while seeing the magician David Copperfield this weekend:

I am a bizarre combination of hard-assed cynic and suggestible softie. Throw in a healthy measure of Angry and you have infobabe in a nutshell.

Okay maybe that's a bit harsh.

When we first took our seats in the lovely Paramount Theatre (okay I suppose it's Theater, since it's in Seattle), to await Copperfield's arrival, we were greeted with a large screen (flanked by two smaller screens, in case you missed the huge one hovering in the middle of the stage), constantly scrolling video messages such as "Entertainer of the Year!" and "Largest International Television Audience!" and "Richest Guy Ever to Pull a Rabbit Out of a Hat!"

Well okay maybe not that last one. But seriously. Fine, tell us how many organizations have bestowed fancy titles on you, but you don't really need to tell us how much money you make. So that kind of started me off thinking, "how tacky. pft."

Then, when the lights finally went down (15 minutes after the show was scheduled to start), the first thing we saw was another video presentation. This time, it was about 15 minutes or so of clips. Clips from talk shows, sitcoms, movies and other entertainment media that have mentioned Copperfield. Yes okay! We get it! You're part of the popular culture! You're a phenomenon! Are you going to do some fabulous magic tricks for us or what?!?!

Finally, he showed up on stage in his characteristic uniform of black pants, white t-shirt and pale blue button shirt hanging open. If he wasn't the richest magician in the world, who used to go out with Claudia Schiffer (although apparently there is speculation the whole relationship was a ruse, according to wikipedia), I would have thought he was kind of a layabout schlub.

Anyways. So finally, about half an hour after the show was supposed to actually start, he treated us to a few tricks. And the magic was pretty cool I suppose. I think my trouble with magic generally is that I always think I should be able to see how the tricks are executed, but I never can, so I kind of get pissed off. Also I get distracted from the actual show by looking closely at certain things to see if I can tell how the tricks are done. I can't really just relax and enjoy it.

That's why I enjoyed Penn and Teller so much I think. Because they do these really neat tricks but then they basically tell you how they did them. They bullshit you, but then they go "HA HA! We bullshitted you!" and they explain how. They don't make you feel stupid and you don't walk away feeling awestruck, except by how cool and down to earth they are. In fact, they even sign autographs and pose for photographs after the show is over.

Copperfield bowed a couple times and disappeared off the stage, the lights went up, and the audience was funnelled into the lobby, to make our slow journey out the front door. Lots of time to deconstruct the show. My boyfriend had a slightly different take on it, since he is something of a magic aficionado, but he was just as disappointed as I was. He felt like Copperfield was simply going through the motions, didn't exhibit any enthusiasm or particular passion. And I could see his point.

And yes, we were disappointed. I think I know why Copperfield is the richest magician in the world: he charges a minimum of 55 bucks for a ticket to his show, which consists of 20 minutes of self-congratulatory video, followed by one hour of smoke and mirrors.

My advice, fair readers: search for David Copperfield on YouTube and see the same tricks for free.

Goodbye, dear friend

2007-01-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

11:15am
I remember the day we met so clearly. I was 21 years old, just moved into a house from an apartment, and I was feeling so independent that I wanted a friend to take care of. I told my boyfriend I was going to get you and I grabbed my friend Fiona and away we went.

I knew you were the one the moment I saw you. When we set out I thought I wanted someone younger, someone impressionable who could grow up with me. And there were a few. There was a tangled mat of soft faces and bodies in one spot, but they weren't what I'd envisioned. When I saw you, you were all alone, and you were little, but you had a look in your eye like you'd seen stuff. You'd been through stuff and you knew stuff. I went over to you and made a sound, something you might make at a sweet baby you see, and I put my fingers through the bars, wiggling them to make you come. You walked right up, cheeked my fingers, then promptly flopped over on your back and edged right up next to the bars. My fingers drowned in your soft grey belly fur and my heart melted immediately. "Fiona, this is the one!" I gasped, and she came over to see, and she also fell in love that instant.

My boyfriend had insisted that if I wanted a cat, it had to be male, and it had to be a kitten. But this half-grown feline female was mine. His comment when we returned with our grey fluffy bundle: "You got a used cat?!?!" And he tried not to like you. But that didn't last long. Deadheads as we were, we looked for a good name: Bertha? Sunshine Daydream? Sugaree? No. Althea. It was Althea.

They told me you were rescued, somewhere between 12 and 18 months old (your petite stature made it difficult to tell your age accurately). They said you were pregnant when you arrived, and your adorable kittens had been snapped up one by one, leaving you alone and bereft of your children. I still imagine what those kittens must have looked like, what sweet and affectionate personalities they must have even now. If they are anything like their mother, they are the best in the world.

You quickly proved yourself to be the best-natured companion anyone could ask for. You were a cuddler. You were playful and funny. You were beautiful and regal. We tried to make you into something you weren't: a protector against miscellaneous vermin, but you met your match in dust motes caught on sunbeams, which interrupted your sleep with sneezes. You toyed with rodent interlopers when they crossed your path, but they literally had to walk across your paws before you gave them much notice. At those times, we could almost see the ancestral knowledge of hunting churning in your furry brain, struggling--and failing--to emerge past that of kitty krunchies and catnip toys. We were exasperated with your complete inability to perform this basic feline function, but it didn't last long when you dug your pin-claws into our denim-clad legs and blinked your composed green eyes at us.

You never needed much territory. Your favourite spot was the warm pavement in front of the house, where passers-by would become enchanted by your friendly nature and your unsubtle demands for attention (flopping over under an extended hand was always a helpful hint). "Oooh what a darling kitty!" they would coo. And we would smile indulgently from the stoop. Even when we moved to the country, you stalked through the bushes surrounding the driveway, getting all manner of grass and burrs stuck in your long fur, but never roamed further than that. You always preferred the comforts of home and the company of your human family, those loving hands that fed you treats, pulled the summer dreadlocks out of your fur, and petted, petted, petted you. Endless petting will be your heaven, I have no doubt.

When I had to give you over to the care of my mother a few years ago, after failing to find a rental home that would allow you to stay with us, I was sad and lonely without you for a while. But I knew that as you got older, you needed the stable company of your peers, perhaps weary--and wary--of the child you had learned to tolerate. And our close relationship with mom/grandma meant that we saw you very often anyway. I'd like to think that there's a certain inflection in my voice when I say your name so that you always remember me. The smell of my hands and the feel of my fingernails underneath your chin, the way you fit in my arms, cradled like a baby. I'm not your mother any more, but I think you still know me.

When you started to get sick, we did everything possible to make you comfortable and, yes, to extend your life. Maybe selfish of us, since we knew we would be so lonely without our best kitty. And now you still purr when we pet you, you still push your nose into our palms, you still look toward us expectantly (and with some indignation) when we stop petting you for 3 seconds together. But you can no longer lift yourself into a sitting position. You can no longer get yourself out of your litter box. We think you can no longer really see us. As our mother has said, you have begun to look away into the distance, that life beyond this couch, this pavement, these hands. We suppose you are ready, and all that remains is for us to let you go.

2:00pm
As the day wears on I find myself dreading the end of it. The end of this work day will be when I have to say my final goodbye. I wonder if it's corny of me to feel like the end of her life is closing a chapter of my own. Am I truly an adult now, now that my friends are starting to die? Or maybe I'm so sad and weary because she is sad and weary. I am empathetic to her after our long friendship?

Or it's not so significant and profound as that. It's simply that I don't want to say goodbye to my friend. It's that I don't know what death brings and I fear it. I don't want her to go there, and I don't want to have to follow her, eventually. It's that I will miss her.

5:30pm
I've never seen anyone die before. I've never seen a dead person and I've never watched someone cease to live. I was nervous about going into that experience, worried that I might fall apart just from being present during such a profound transition. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to cope with watching my beloved friend stop existing as I've always known you.

When I was driving to my mom's house I was hoping you would already be gone, so I wouldn't have to watch you go. Failing that, I was hoping you would be so very limp and weary, utterly unable to respond or to hold up your head, so unaware of your surroundings, that my heart would want only for your soul to be free of your weakened, diminished body. But you seemed a little bit alert. You seemed interested to be leaving the house, to be going in the car, to feel the cold air creeping in around the pashmina you were wrapped in to keep the chill away. Your ears were pricked up and your tail was twitching. And I felt so sad, I felt like it was wrong, what we were about to do.

My mom told me that this morning she found you in your favourite place, your spot in front of the fire, your paws caked in a hardened blend of flushable litter, turned to concrete with a small amount of urine. Apparently, while my mom slept a few hours, you had made it to your box and from there could not return without a rest so long, your paws got encased and you lacked the strength to shake or scrape it off. Mom said, it was time for you to go.

You weighed 2.1 kilos. Your legs were shaky as you stood on the scale. When the doctor came in to administer the shot, you lay there as still and docile as anything. When the needle went in you gave a big twitch, as the doctor had told us you would, but then you were gone and your skin beneath my hand began to cool immediately. The doctor said you were so weak, you were gone by the time he was halfway done. I didn't see your eyes as you went. Part of me wanted to see you go, but a bigger part couldn't bear to. I did look at your beloved face afterward, I kissed your soft cheek. I stroked your eyes closed. If I'd been alone, I would have sat down and cried. But I wasn't, and we walked out of the office in a daze, went to the store and bought groceries for dinner. We are sadder and lighter, a little emptier, as our life goes on without our Althea.

welcome to 2007

2007-01-02T09:12:00.000-08:00

What new year would be complete without a resolution to keep up with my journal better??? So, in keeping with tradition, I begin this journal faithfully on the 2nd day of the year, and cross my fingers that I have the energy or motivation or whatever to maintain it throughout the next 12 months.

Unfortunately I fell down badly on my journal last year, and in so doing, failed to chronicle a couple of major issues in my life that will continue into this year and possibly beyond.

First, my own health. I believe it was about a year ago that my doctor, observing that my mood has been consistently low for a while, and my weight continues to be a problem, suggested I get my thyroid levels checked. It turned out that my thyroid is a little underactive, and while I hadn't exhibited many of the common symptoms of hypothyroidism, my doc assured me that this is not unexpected, and a low-functioning thyroid could well be the root of my low mood and inability to shed excess weight. So I went on a low dose of synthetic thyroid hormone and waited for results.

I'm still waiting.

Although the dose has been adjusted upward once, and will soon be again (a recent blood test revealed that my thyroid level is even lower than it was 6 months ago, despite the raise in dosage), I have noticed no effects, good or ill. Except, perhaps, that I have actually gained weight (between 5 and 10 pounds -- not terrible, but disappointing), and lately have begun having IBS-like symptoms. As I write this, I haven't talked to my doctor about the possible link between my thyroid condition and/or the medication I'm taking to "treat" it, and the tummy troubles I'm experiencing now, but a quick google search revealed that others have experienced something similar. Now, I know that a couple of posts on a message board do not equal a recognized link, but I still feel like it's worth asking my doctor about.

If I'd been keeping up on my journal, I might be able to pinpoint when these things started bugging me. My boyfriend has a sense that the onset of my tummy problems is about concurrent with the period of time I've been taking an increased dose of thyroid hormone. So, I believe I can expect some tricky health issues in 2007.

I won't go into the Search for Education Alternatives which will also, undoubtedly, occupy much of my mind in the coming year. I'm sure I can write at least this much on that topic too, and enough is enough eh.

long distance relationship...not for the faint of heart

2006-12-05T16:15:00.000-08:00

It seems that December especially poses a challenge for me and my boyfriend, who live 150 miles and one international border apart. We've been doing it for 3+ years now so the whole travelling thing, the whole doing-without-your-partner-at-important-events thing, the whole only-seeing-each-other-on-weekends thing, is pretty routine by now. And generally I try to stay upbeat and cheerful, but right now I gotta tellya, December sucks.

Usually it's just the holidays that scramble things up. My daughter's birthday is in December, and so is Hanukkah, and so is Christmas. The thing that makes the holidays complicated isn't that classic couple thing of Whose family will we spend them with, because we never spend the holidays together. He goes "home" to be with his family, and I stay home to be with mine. His diabetic cat requires someone to visit with her and administer medication twice every day, and his only friend who he trusts to do that also spends the holiday with his family, and hasn't always been around at Christmas. So even though my boyfriend's holiday tradition and mine don't conflict, circumstances generally prevent us from being together anyway.

This year, we've had the added bonus of the nasty blast of winter that I'm experiencing, which made me depressed and grumpy, threw me off my game I guess, and also made me afraid to drive my car. So I missed my weekend to visit him last week. And now I hear that his cat-caregiver friend's wife has a family emergency that has taken them out of town, which means he likely will miss his weekend this week. Then it's Hanukkah with his family, then Christmas with mine.

So baby, I guess I'll see you at New Years.

father issues

2006-11-28T10:23:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a great relationship with my father since about 1983 or so. It comes and goes, mostly it's just kind of vague and indifferent. It's kind of bipolar actually, because there are times when I think my dad is a funny guy with a weird, interesting sense of humour, which comes from a keen sense of the irony of life.

Other times, he does things that piss me off so utterly, I really and truly don't care whether I ever see or hear from him again. Not because he is mean or malicious, but because he is so utterly clueless that I think he just doesn't care about the impact his words and actions have on those around him, and that isn't an acceptable way to be in my world.

Long ago, I stopped telling him important things that were happening in my life, controversial things, because he has no filters. He would just go ahead and tell my conservative grandmother, for example, without thinking for a minute Hm, does she really need to know that? Which has made for some awkward situations that really didn't need to be awkward at all. He still doesn't know the real reason my marriage broke up, for example, because nobody else in my family needs to know that, and if they did, it would be my choice whether to tell them. And telling him not to say anything doesn't work.

His "new" wife is someone who is pretty tough to take. Okay that's the diplomatic expression for she's a total fucking psycho. And she's not really that new I guess, since they just celebrated their 11th anniversary. This is a woman who has managed to antagonize nearly every member of my dad's family, including my sister, who Wifey refused to speak to for like 3 years because of some imagined snub. And who went on to accuse my sister of being grasping and materialistic, maintaining a relationship with our father only because she needed money from him. A totally baseless accusation, since my sister never asked our father for money, because she needed that hassle less than she needed money. I asked him for money all the time, but I was spared the flak because I had a child. And yet, this person also gets on my dad's case all the time about how she doesn't feel like she's involved enough with his family.

My father has seen fit to side with her over us in these matters. I can understand it somewhat, since she has the ability to fuck with his head, make him feel like shit, and bend over backward to accommodate all her crap, and he has to see her every day. He can blow my sister and me off because he sees us maybe once a year, if that. I'm not saying this is acceptable. Just that that's how it probably is.

Because of this, I have these kinds of conversations with my dad from time to time. The other night he called me, we chatted for a while and I was feeling okay about the conversation. Then, just as I was trying to get off the phone and get dinner on the table, he springs this on me: "It would be really nice if you could take the time to acknowledge our wedding anniversary. It would mean a lot to Wifey." I'm like _________ !! I mean wtf. Their anniversary is for THEM. The whole point of an anniversary is to remember the reason why you decided to get married and reconstruct the closeness, romance, and intimacy that you (hopefully) felt during and as a result of your wedding. It's not about other people, it's about you and your significant other.

This really fucking pissed me off. And it turns out my sister had the same Talk and she was really fucking pissed off too. Her therapist told her she should ignore it. My boyfriend said the same thing to me. And yet we both squared our shoulders and bought cards, even though we were completely livid over the whole thing. That tells you so much about us, and our relationships with our family members, it's kind of scary.

The holidays are coming up, and I'm feeling the same way I felt last year. I want to ignore my dad and his wife and pretend they don't exist. Last year, I went so far as to travel to the state, and even to the city where they live, and I didn't even tell them. And I didn't feel guilty about it. And I feel like that again.

vocation

2006-11-24T09:52:00.000-08:00

I am all for finding the work that satisfies your soul, and then doing it. I work in libraries and I feel it was the work I was born to do. I recently went through a crisis because I realized that as perfect as library work is for me, most library jobs will not pay the rent. That made me really sad, and I started thinking about general administrative work, because what is library work except a specific application of the general principles of administration? Anyway, that crisis was averted when I recently managed to land a job that allows me to support myself and my daughter.

Recently, I discovered that a former friend of mine has started her own business. She has become a Life Coach. This struck me as funny (both funny ha-ha and funny ironic), because the reason she is my former friend rather than my present friend is that she seemed to have difficulty being my friend, needing rather to be my coach. We were close at a time when I was very vulnerable and lonely and eagerly welcomed her attention and ministrations. When I started feeling better about myself and began asserting my own desires and making my own choices, which often didn't align with what she thought was best for me, our friendship faded. I haven't missed it.

I forget how I found out about her new vocation, but it was from a funny source. Someone I knew said something like, "I know someone you know" and it turned out a friend of this friend had engaged my former friend as her Life Coach. In an idle moment, I googled my former friend and sure enough, there was her website, describing the services she offers in a nauseatingly new-age kind of way.

I know lots of people make bad decisions, even sometimes ones that might have been avoided if they'd had some guidance. I'm glad those people seek out someone who can help steer them away from bad choices and toward good ones. I hope that in her chosen vocation my former friend coaches from a place of true caring, rather than a need to be in control of the choices of others and a feeling that she can make better choices than others. Perhaps she is a better coach than she was a friend.

new job

2006-11-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

I have started a new job. I entered into this change voluntarily and happily, but I'm not sure how good it is so far.

I feel myself digging in my heels on a bunch of things - admin mostly, things like requirements for joining the union, filling out time cards etc., stuff that I never really had to think about at my old job. Never thought I'd miss the university bureaucracy! Or maybe I'm just forgetting the challenges of adapting to a new system - I was at my old job for 8 years after all, and it's been a long time since my first week there.

The situation here is this: this is a processing and distribution centre for a municipal school district. Books and media materials are received here and individual teachers can order them and have them shipped out. A few months ago, the longtime staff of 4 women, all of them library professionals, ended up retiring literally on the same day. Which left the place kind of rudderless. Since that time, 2 support staff - clerks, really, with no formal training in library processes - have been running the place. It's unclear who here has the knowledge to train me to do my job, and even less clear who is my actual supervisor, since the supervisor position seems to be the last one they are filling. In fact, it's a bit unclear what my job actually is.

I am an extremely high-capacity worker. I can handle a large volume of work and it doesn't panic me or cause me to become frozen or stressed out. In fact, I have more or a "bring it on!" mentality, and for me, when it comes to work, more is better. I become more focused and efficient the more work I have to do. I suppose that makes me a true multitasker.

However, I do need some initial direction, and I definitely need context. Library work is very relational: everything seems to affect every other thing, so it's important to get each thing right. You can't operate in a vacuum. I haven't had a really comprehensive introduction to the way this place works, the relationships between the two units (mine, and the one next to mine, where my apparent interim supervisor works), or even my own day-to-day responsibility spectrum, which, on my 3rd day here, has resulted in a little bit of anxiety.

Luckily, I am a fiddler, a natural gamer, and I can usually feel my way through these kinds of situations (example: it took me about 3 hours yesterday to figure out, using a library software package I'd never touched or seen until the previous day, how to run labels for videotapes. One of the clerks told me it took several people a whole day when the system was first introduced. People who had formal training in the product). So I know I'll be all right.

big picture

2006-11-01T12:12:00.000-08:00

So, I used to be a voracious journal-writer. I mean, I have books and books of angst-ridden memoir from my youth, which I look on periodically and value greatly as an insight into my developing mind and spirit. I think writing, particularly chronicling your life as you live it, is an invaluable tool for learning and understanding your own psyche.

And it's not like my mind is any less filled with anxieties and concerns and delights than it was back when I was a teenager. I'm in my mid-30s now and I have a lot of shit going on. To wit:

1) A 9-year-old daughter who is starting to go through some of the stuff that prompted me to write so madly in my youth. I am very involved in her life and I have a lot to say about it, a lot to observe, a lot of comparisons and contrasts to make.

2) A relationship with my daughter's father that ebbs and flows as a source of anxiety, anger and doubt in my life. From which I undoubtedly carry much baggage that continues to affect my decisions, my family life and logistics, my very self-esteem to this day, although that relationship ended nearly 7 years ago.

3) A 3-year-and-counting long-distance relationship that fills me with joy and has secured my well-being in a way I wasn't sure would be possible again, and also tickles the edges of any regrets I might harbour about decisions I've made in my life. Yes, that is somewhat cryptic.

4) A financial situation, at times quite dire, that has been a source of stress for some time, which has prompted a months-long search for a new job, one that will give me a sense of ambition fulfillment as well as a paycheque that will give me and my daughter a greater comfort level. A search, incidentally, that has recently been successful, and elicits some emotional responses that I didn't figure on when my search began.

5) Miscellaneous other stuff: relationships with family members, ambitions and plans, observations about life and how it all fits together.

Like I said, there's a lot of shit there. Maybe I'll blog in a bit more depth about each of these things as a way of reinvigorating my writing life over the next little while. Perhaps the onset of winter will dampen that energy somewhat, but I think I'll feel better if I try to get back to writing.

The Void

2006-06-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

In the past week or so I have lost a couple of items to The Void. The first was my chequebook, which I was mildly perturbed by but I figured it would turn up. Well it hasn't, and the second item I have now lost is a library book that is due on Wednesday.

Is there anything more frustrating than that?

Oh and it looks like this is my 100th post on my blog. A milestone! Yay!

change day

2006-06-20T13:57:00.000-07:00

I have been very preoccupied lately by my impending move and its relationship with my half-assed job hunt. Part of what's bugging me about all this is the fact that I haven't hammered down the details of the move yet, and I can't really decide what I want to do about my job. And the fact that all of it is happening together is both annoying and inevitable. And it's been stressing me out a little, but today I woke up feeling different about it.

Basically I got to feeling The Change. No, not that change (although PMS most likely has something to do with today's mood). Every once in a while I just get antsy-pantsy. Life is dull, it needs a shake-up. I'm in a rut and I need to do something, anything, to change my trajectory.

I have a lot of opportunity for Change, at least as much as for No Change. I have a boyfriend who lives in another city, and that alone creates a whole universe of possibility. Possibility, you understand, must not be confused with probability. Whatever. It suits my Piscean nature to read through craigslist ads for not just my city but his, fantasizing about all the wonderful changes that are possible. New city, new house, new job, new friends, new activities, new places to shop and eat and play. It makes a girl just dizzy!

Luckily, I do have one foot on the ground at all times. My daughter is my anchor, and it is most unlikely that I would make that particular move simply out of fear that it would be far too disruptive to her. Not to mention that if I were to attempt to take the child away, my mother might just disown me. This, like the Change fantasies I weave, may simply be an illusion, but it is the reality I live every day.

So instead I get a bee up my butt about moving and changing jobs and joining book clubs and all that stuff, but on a much smaller scale. I think about moving, but not west of Main street. I think about a new job, but not outside my rarefied academic environment. I think about new involvements, but only within my comfort zone. Maybe instead of making a big move, to a new city or a new country (or both), I am doing a lot of little changes all at once, which add up to that bigger Change.

when is a positive a negative?

2006-06-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

My faithful readers (all 3 of you) may recall that some months ago I talked about an exciting new job prospect. I prepared an application that got me an interview. I aced the interview but was ultimately passed over for the job because, despite my enthusiasm, my conviction that I could do the job, and my track record of success even in steep-learning-curve situations, there happened to be someone else with the perfect qualifications for the job, and that person was chosen over me.

I find myself in a similar situation now.

Some background. I have been working at my current location, an academic library, for the past 4+ years. I spent 3 years in a position that was fine, it was interesting and had a fair amount of variety to the work. I also had a measure of autonomy, since it was a small unit with a supervisor who lacks any kind of assertiveness. A year ago I was asked to fill a supervisor position in another department while that supervisor was on maternity leave. It's a totally different job but for the most part I've enjoyed it. I think I'm good at it, I've gotten good feedback from my higher-ups, and I've learned some good skills. I'm "movin on up," as they say.

But now, this position is coming to an end as my colleague's leave is nearly over and she's returning to work. I have no resentment about that: I knew going in that it would be temporary. Okay, I guess some part of me hoped that she wouldn't return, since she received her Masters of Library Studies in the interim and is now qualified for a professional position. I don't resent the fact that she didn't get her dream librarian job while she was on leave, but I'm now starting to feel a little disappointed about having to step back into an "old" job. Something about moving backward, even though I do enjoy the work I did in that position, I enjoy my coworkers, and other things also. The cons are: that feeling of moving backward after such a positive step forward, and the smaller paycheque is also going to suck, especially given other things that are going on in my life.

So, because of those mixed feelings, I've kept my eyes on the job postings here at my large academic institution, with the idea that I'll find an administrative job and keep my level of benefits and stuff intact. I have no illusions about moving up in the library system here: the higher level positions are few and far between, and becoming fewer as they are eliminated as people retire. But I'd like to stay here, not just because of the 8 years' seniority I've built up, but also because I like working here. To that end, I've applied for another nice-looking job that's not exactly in my sphere of recent experience, but that I'm sure I could enjoy and be good at.

And so lies my dilemma. I spent weeks, literally weeks, working up my application. I went through the posting in detail, addressing every point of the job description with comprehensive information about my work history and skill set. I got extensive help from my editor-mother, who is infinitely helpful, not just in steering and focusing me, but in encouraging and motivating me. And I sent the thing in, completely convinced that it was a kick-ass application and I was sure to get an interview. Even doing creative visualizations about getting the job (which has a significant pay hike) and not having to move out of the apartment I will soon be unable to afford.

Well, it's been nearly 2 weeks since the posting closed, and I haven't heard anything. I know in my current employment group, candidates who make it to the interview stage of a job posting are generally informed within a week of the posting closing. This new job is in a different employment group, the same one as the last one I (unsuccessfully) applied for actually, and I can't remember how long it was before I got the call about the interview. I have a vague memory that it might have been some weeks, but I can't seem to find the original posting even after extensive shuffling through the archives, so I can't put my mind at ease.

My ability to get fired up about something, to do all that creative visualization, to have all those positive thoughts, may be coming back to haunt me as I tumble down into a nasty crash again. When I failed to get that last job, which I thought would be perfect for me, I was bitterly disappointed. In fact I was pretty depressed about it for quite a long time. How do I stay positive without having to deal with that crash when it doesn't come through? Am I being truly positive if I'm looking ahead to a disappointment I see as inevitable? Is it like signing a pre-nuptial agreement, preparing for divorce before I even marry? Or am I just being practical?

What is more likely, since it is a very common pattern with me, is that I am totally overthinking this. I shouldn't worry about it either way. I should go with the flow, engage my zen, allow the universe to unfold as it will whether my mental state is positive or negative. Why can't I do that? Is it because on some level I believe my mental state does influence the outcome? Or because I'm just a control freak? Can I be positive and proactive without all those repercussions?

our daughters, ourselves

2006-05-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend the Bat Mitzvah of a girl almost wholly unrelated to me. She is the cousin of my boyfriend (as you can imagine there's a significant age difference between him and his cousins), and although I have met his aunt and uncle, the celebrant's parents, on several occasions, I had never met her before.

The way the event went down was this: 3 hours of Temple services and pre-services preparation, followed by 3 hours of napping and other bed activities with my boyfriend, followed by 3 hours of a reception that included dinner and dancing. I had several observations about the whole experience.

First, let me remind you that I am a second-generation lapsed Jew. What this means is that my father, who is the Jewish side of me (yes I know that means I'm not a "real" Jew since my mother isn't Jewish, but my grandmother made sure I was converted before my parents spirited me away to Canada in my infancy), moved away from the Jewish community, probably during his hippie college days, and as a result I grew up with Hanukkah and Passover and some other knowledge of the Jewish faith and practice. I have never been an active member of the Jewish community, and the main source of my exposure to Judaism is through my extended family on my dad's side: various events like Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, weddings and stuff like that. While this exposure has never been frequent, I believe I have always gotten something out of it, maybe like a sense of belonging coupled, oddly enough, with a feeling of regret and alienation. It sounds weird, I know.

I've never minded going to temple, and while I don't believe in the Judao-Christian god myself, I feel I can be there simply because I am a Jew, I'm part of that tradition, and should I ever choose to turn toward it, I will be accepted unquestioningly. I also respect observant Jews, because my experience with them has most often been that they are content to practice their faith without attempting to foist it upon me, which has always been my problem with organized religion. I'm sure there are proselytizing Jews out there, but I've never met them. Anyway, so my experience with temple has always been that you go, there is some singing and some group prayer and some words of wisdom imparted by the rabbi, and there are long sections in which the faithful are more or less alone with their thoughts and prayers, in a hushed and supportive environment, and these periods are often interspersed with or followed up by celebrations for members of the community. Like I said, I usually come away from it feeling mostly good.

The temple my family attends is a Conservative temple. The temple I attended with my boyfriend and this branch of his family was a Reform temple. And the tone and experience was quite different. The temple I'm accustomed to seems more serious somehow, more spiritual and more real. This temple seemed to be more about making the point to others that yes, we are spiritual, which seems to go against the whole concept. The expression of faith is simple and complicated: it seems to me that if you truly are faithful, you simply live it moment by moment, like breathing, you don't need to stand up and thump your chest and demonstrate it for all those around you. When it is genuine, faith is quiet and personal, not shouted from the rooftops.

Perhaps that is why it was so nice to go back to my boyfriend's apartment afterwards, and just lie down with him, talk to him quietly and feel him next to me, to express our feelings for each other privately and intimately. That seemed to me to be much more spiritually fulfilling than reciting lines out of a "draft, not for distribution" prayer book at intervals directed by a rabbi. Of course, I'm not going to deny that indulging my carnal desires was fun too, but I don't think it was wholly separate from the deeper emotional experience.

Moving from there to the fancy resort where the reception was being held was yet another jolt. There, we ate fancy grilled vegetables, steam-table meats, sushi and strawberry cheesecake, kissed and hugged various relatives and chatted amiably about... what? exactly? I have no idea what I talked to anyone about. Mostly I watched the little girls stomping about in their high heels and gauzy frocks, running here and there in packs, screaming excitedly when the DJ put on their favourite pop songs (98 percent of which I'd never heard before in my life). I spent a lot of time thinking about my 9-year-old daughter, only a few years away from this madness herself, and wondering how much of it she would get sucked in by.

When I picked her up, after her weekend with her dad, I described the event and I asked her whether she thought she would have had a good time, because I had considered taking her along. She shrugged and said, "meh, I dunno," and went back to her gameboy. I think I made the right decision in leaving her out of the whole thing.

I called this post "our daughters, ourselves," because I had a lot of observations about how the parents of the Bat Mitzvah girls (there were two of them at the temple that day) presented themselves and their girls and the relationships between them. And of course I am constantly thinking about my own daughter and the influence I have over her and the person she is becoming. And I got caught up thinking and writing about other things, but I haven't changed the title. Perhaps I'll write more about that other stuff later.

control freak

2006-05-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if I am a control freak. I do have my moments, where I like things to be JUST SO, and if they are not JUST SO I get kind of itchy and squirmy and feeling like I can't function unless I charge in and rearrange everything so that it works the way I want it to work. But, isn't everyone like that, to some extent? Don't we all want our worlds to be ordered a certain way, and don't we all get a bit nonplussed when things get turned upside-down or even get jarred a little bit? Isn't that normal human behaviour?

I spend a lot of time thinking about relationships, particularly relationships between men and women. And lately I've thought a lot about men, women and control. I have a lot of conversations about this topic with my boyfriend, who believes quite strongly that women control men, and that men shouldn't have to take that. He and I concur that people shouldn't stay in relationships that are unbalanced in some way, although he is relatively inexperienced with relationships, so to him it seems a simple thing to extricate oneself from an unsatisfactory relationship, whereas I have quite a bit more experience, including being in a long-term relationship that should have been over long before it was, and I know it is no simple thing to get out of that situation.

Both of us have been exposed to lots of different relationships. His parents are still married after over 30 years. My parents divorced after 6 or 7 years, although both of my parents are currently in relationships that have lasted over a decade. We both have a few friends in our peer groups who have stable marriages and children, and I know a number of single moms, some of whom are in relationships and others who aren't. He has several friends who have a history of bad relationships, or who are currently in bad relationships, and he ascribes his friends' unhappiness often with their wives or girlfriends, who become needy, manipulative and controlling. And I can't write it off because I've seen it with my own eyes. And then, this morning in my email, I saw this:

And maybe I'm overreacting, but that comic, that comment by that woman, just sums up everything I think is wrong with relationships between women and men.

Is that woman saying that because she's afraid her man will be injured when he engages in a risky activity? I don't think so. It sure looks to me like she's saying that just to exert some kind of control over him. "I don't want to do that and I think it's a dumb thing to do so you can't do it." Well, I think that's bullshit. So your man wants to jump off a cliff and you don't. What's the big deal? Go let him jump. I'm going to guess you want to join a reading group or knit or watch a chick flick, all activities that will make your man roll his eyes and reach for a beer or a wrench or his balls or some other manly comfort. Or else you'll force him to go with you, under threat of ... what? What exactly is the threat? You'll break up with him? Lady, I don't think he'll mind, if your idea of fun is dragging him along while you shop for shoes.

Is this a real thing? Is it fear? Anger? Do we feel such a lack of control over our own selves and our own lives that we feel the need to exert that kind of control over our men? Is it the fact that Women's Lib has instilled us with a sense of entitlement that overshadows our desire to be in a compatible, loving relationship with a man who shares our interests and world view yet who respects our desire to have our own interests, and whose interests we support in turn? Is it just a perception by men that women want to have that kind of control?

As you can see, I really don't have any answers. I do have a lot of frustration, because I think it is a natural thing in youth to try and control our environment, since so much about our lives is out of our control, and adolescence is nothing if not a precarious balance between wanting to be independent and wanting to hold on to that care our parents have always given us. It is also a natural progression for people to realize at some point that the only person we have the power to control is ourselves, and we have the power to get into happy and fulfilling relationships, and get out of relationships that are unsatisfying or even damaging, without making ridiculous demands on our lovers.

My boyfriend tells me that I am the exception that proves the rule, because rather than trying to change him or control the things he does, I look for the things in his life that are new or strange to me, and I try to learn and grow as he shares them with me. I hope I have something like this to offer him too. By doing this, we increase the pool of commonalities, be they activities or world views or philosophies, that strengthens and nurtures our relationship. I wish all people, both men and women, could live their lives this way.

Kid flicks

2006-04-27T08:54:00.000-07:00

As usual, it was a comment I made on another blog that inspired me to post on my own. I've had a few conversations with my mom in recent months about kids' movies, and the apparent dearth of them compared to when I was a kid. She and I both remember us going to the movies a lot more than I do with my own daughter. There are several possible reasons for that:

1) It is ridiculously expensive to go to the movies now
2) All the movies are shit
3) uhm...some variation on 1 and 2
3) There are just no movies being made for the 8-12 age range.

I think in the past year or so I've taken J to the movies twice: to see Harry Potter and Narnia. She has gone with her dad and other people to see fare such as Hoodwinked (which I wanted to see but never got around to), Chicken Little, and other things, but there really haven't been many films that I've felt would be fun and appropriate for the two of us. And just forget trying to add my boyfriend into the mix. With him we've watched DVDs like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but it doesn't go much beyond that.

BUT. In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine there was an article about kids movies and the movie company Walden (apologies if that's a dead link...I'm not sure at this point how persistent it is). I suspected that the name came from the Thoreau work, and I was right, a fact that only endeared me to the company more (the fact that I *loved* Narnia was the first reason). But then I read that Walden has made a movie of the Carl Hiaasen book Hoot, which J received as a gift I think, and which we read together with great pleasure. It's a lovely story of a kid who accidentally falls into the middle of an environmental issue, with themes of kids making things happen despite not being authoritative or even heard voices, and kids falling through the cracks but somehow managing to make life work anyway. Pretty good stuff. So we loved the book and I'm hoping the movie will be great too. But the thing is, it doesn't really matter.

Walden's mandate is apparently to adapt children's books into children's movies. They've done several, with mixed success, including Holes, which I've heard is very good but I've never gotten around to seeing it, and Because of Winn-Dixie(which I confess I've never been too ambitious to see), and Narnia, of which they are planning to adapt the remaining 6 books (yay!). And they are doing Hoot, and How to Eat Fried Worms, which was a book I read in elementary school, Charlotte's Web and some others. Generally, I'm a bit of a snob about these things. I'm an avid reader, I love books, and I'm often disappointed with film adaptations. But I think this company might have something good going on.

The main thing in their favour is the fact that this is all they are doing. They aren't trying to fit kids' movies into their larger agenda, they are focussing on making quality kids' movies out of quality kids' books. I am a parent who will always encourage my kid to read first, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree because she has developed into a voracious reader just as I was at her age. And she is eager to read books whether there is a movie version or not. But I'm just glad that the key word here is quality. I wish other studios had the same ambition for adult movies, because the remakes upon remakes thing is really starting to get old, and Arethusa pointed out that someone has made The Celestine Prophecy, that quasi-spiritual sensation from the early '90s, into a film, which to my mind is completely ridiculous because it was an overblown piece of crap in print, so why will the film be any different. That said however, I *am* looking forward to the film version of Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, a writer whose autobiographical works I have loved. The film is apparently starring Annette Bening, which is enough reason to go see it.

So there are some good things in store for me and my 9-year-old, and I look forward to heading out to the movies with her.

I do read. Honest.

2006-04-13T09:29:00.000-07:00

I just never blog about it. So I'll do this meme, which I read on arethusa's and darth's blogs, and which I think is on jane's as well but since I haven't read it there yet I'll just credit darth and arethusa. Here goes.

look at the list of books below. bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you own (darth says bold the ones you've read AND own, but I am a frequent library user so I have read many books I do not and never will own), italicize the ones you might read, strike out the ones you won't, and place (parentheses) around the ones you've never even heard of.

the da vinci code, dan brown
the catcher in the rye - j.d. salinger (I can't believe I've never read it but I'm not ruling it out)
the great gatsby - scott f. fitzgerald (ditto)
the hitchikers guide to the galaxy - douglas adams
to kill a mockingbird - harper lee
the time traveler's wife - audrey niffenegger
his dark materials - philip pullman
harry potter and the half-blood prince - j. k. rowling
~~the life of pi~~ - yann martel (yes I know he's Canadian. i'm just not interested okay?
animal farm: a fairy story - george orwell
~~catch 22~~ - joseph heller (I tried once, unsuccessfully)
the curious incident of the dog at night-time - mark haddon
pride and prejudice - jane austen
1984 - george orwell
harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban - j. k. rowling
one hundred years of solitude - gabriel garcia marquez
memoirs of a geisha - arthur golden
(the kite runner) - khaled hosseini
the lovely bones - alice sebold
slaughterhouse 5 - kurt vonnegut
wuthering heights - emily bronte (another one i tried to read once and didn't quite finish, but I'll probably try again some day)
the lion, the witch and the wardrobe - c.s. lewis
~~middle sex~~ - jeffrey eugenies
~~cloud atlas~~ - david mitchell (also started but never finished. probably won't bother now)
jane eyre - charlotte bronte (read it after Jasper Fforde's book - see my adds)
atonement - ian mcewan
(the shadow of the wind) - carlos ruiz zafon
~~the old man and the sea~~ - ernest hemingway
the handmaid's tale - margaret atwood
the bell jar - sylvia plath
~~dune~~ - frank herbert
sula - toni morrison)
~~cold mountain~~ - charles frazier
the alchemist - paul coelho
~~white teeth~~ - zadie smith
~~the house of mirth~~ - edith wharton

what titles would you add to this list?
The mists of avalon - marion zimmer bradley
The Eyre affair - Jasper Fforde (as a start - read the rest of his books too)
A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson (and everything else by Bryson as well)
Fifth business - Robertson Davies (and if you like that you'll probably like the rest of the trilogy and his other trilogies as well)

so many books, so little time!

Mac mini

2006-03-23T13:14:00.000-08:00

I've got mine...have you got yours?

happy women's day!

2006-03-08T07:40:00.000-08:00

From www.internationalwomensday.com:

The first IWD was held on 19 March 1911 in Germany, Austria, Denmark and further European countries. German women selected this date because in 1848 the Prussian king had promised the vote for women. Subsequently over one million leaflets calling for action on the right to vote were distributed throughout Germany before IWD in 1911. Now IWD is always celebrated on 8 March and is an occasion marked by women's groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. Women in every country, often divided by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate this important date that represents equality, justice, peace and development.

Find events in your town here.

It is also my birthday, I am 36 years old today and every year of my life I've thanked the universe for making me a woman. Not just because I was born on March 8, but also because I enjoy and relish my womanhood and the relationships with women and men that I have because I am a woman.

So all you women, take a moment today to reflect on how lucky you are to be women, and men, look around at the women you know, and be impressed by their strength and accomplishment.

Have a great day, everyone.

aspiration

2006-03-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

I see no reason why I should not look like this:

So to that end I will be taking a bellydance class beginning in April. Some of my faithful readers will remember that I did this once before but didn't follow through with it for a number of reasons. But this time the stars have aligned.

when did i stop hugging my mother?

2006-02-28T13:48:00.000-08:00

I mean, I still hug her, like when we're greeting each other on special occasions or after not seeing each other for a while, and when we part after hanging out or whatever, but i can't remember when i last really snuggled with my mom.

I had a fight with my daughter this morning, and while we were both feeling upset and trying to work it out, my absolute gut instinct was to take her in my arms, to try to fit her onto my lap (where, at age 9, she really no longer fits), and to make her feel cozy and loved. Because of course, even though we were disagreeing, i still love her more than i love anything else in this world, and it breaks my heart when she feels upset - even moreso when what's upset her is something I've said or done.

And later I got to thinking about it, and I realized that even at that moment, when i was feeling really angry and frustrated with her, i wouldn't even consider keeping that gesture, that comfort from her. In fact, what would make me sad would be if (and when, because I do know it's coming) she rejected that gesture and kept her distance. I'm not overly physical in my expressions of intimacy I don't think, although when i'm walking down the street with J or with my boyfriend, i enjoy holding hands with her or wrapping my arms around him and tilting my head up for a kiss when we stop at corners. And when we're sitting around at home we're close physically. i guess it's my mom though...i don't have much physical intimacy with her beyond the perfunctory. maybe it's just the intellectual nature of our emotional connection...if that makes sense.

anyway, i guess I was thinking about the reasons why I don't snuggle with my mom any more, and maybe it is because it feels strange or awkward to do that, like maybe she wouldn't want me to be close to her physically. Or maybe it's just that we don't find ourselves in that situation very often. but this morning with my daughter made me realize that it's probably just a communication thing, or just a personality thing. I can't see a time when i will ever not want to snuggle my daughter, and i will always initiate that kind of familiar contact with her. At least until she becomes a teenager and spurns me, and then i can see myself backing off. which may well be what happened with my mom too.

sshh it's a sekrit

2006-01-31T12:25:00.000-08:00

This morning on my drive in to work I heard the guy who writes this blog on the CBC radio program The Current.

It was a really interesting interview, and the site itself is quite amazing too. I found it funny and moving and disturbing. I am tempted to send in my own secret, but I think the urge comes not from a desire to cleanse myself of something that's been bugging me or plaguing me, but simply from a desire to be involved. I like to be involved in things. That's my secret.

am I conservative?

2006-01-23T12:30:00.000-08:00

Never in my life have I considered myself conservative or Conservative. I grew up with hippie type parents, in a low-to-middle income household. I learned to believe the value of social justice, which manifested in a variety of ways, mainly in the power of groups to establish and uphold the rights and freedoms of individuals, and the responsibility of government to take care of its people. I learned that the political "left" was the side that cared most about these issues and principles, and I learned that if I wanted to support those goals, often called "ideals" since they seldom were accepted by enough of the populace to be the stuff of actual policy, then I would support that side.

Today is election day in Canada, the second election day we've had in less than 2 years. I've always been interested in staying informed about the issues, and lord knows I always have an opinion or two about everything that goes on. I suppose my political voice is one that tends to chime in with the outraged minority, which can comfortably rage on about the injustices in our society, which surely must exist because We have never had a chance to govern, and therefore show how things Should be done. We can grudgingly accept that economic prosperity can be attributed to the government of the day, although we will grumble that it has been largely on the backs of people who can scarcely afford to carry it, while those who can are offered every means of avoiding their responsibility.

Because the election campaign has been in full swing for the past couple of months, we have been exposed to the usual mass of political rhetoric, most of which I recognize as being pretty much meaningless. But every once in a while something would trigger something in me, and this time it actually came from the Right.

A CBC radio program was doing a series of profiles on what they called "power brokers," or people who held positions of political power but who worked largely behind the scenes. The one that got me thinking was about a high level campaign operative for the Conservative Party of Canada, and particularly for the leader, Stephen Harper. This is a guy for whom the phrase "staunch conservative" might as well have been coined, because everything about his background and experience is about being a conservative. But, the documentary seemed to ask, what is a conservative? At its absolute core, and utterly simplified, the identity was defined as someone who felt that the rights and responsibilities of the individual overrode the rights and responsibilities of the group. This got me thinking.

I have spent many years doing both paid and unpaid work in organizations that are unionized, rely on committees for their operation, are non-profit, and have goals such as the education of the people and the care of our children. I am a member of a union, and I have proudly and angrily walked picket lines. I believe in a "safety in numbers" principle that invites equality and accomplishment. I have witnessed firsthand how a group as an entity can shield and protect its weakest members...even when...they don't deserve it?

Yes it's true.

Okay. I believe there are circumstances in which the group principle is very appropriate, such as in society at large, when I am having a hard time, there should be a safety net that is there to catch me and help me get back on my feet. And if I'm unable to get back on my feet, despite my best efforts, it should be there to take care of me because that is what we have always strived for as a society. That is how our society is set up, what it shouts about and bases policies and decisions on. At least ostensibly. And I believe we as citizenry have a right to hold our policy-makers to those principles.

But okay. I also believe that there are times when the group principle becomes so ingrained that it becomes unhealthy. The shielding and protecting invites abuse, and allows those who are unmotivated to coast along at the expense of others. The struggle for uniformity, for equality at all costs, actually diminishes the quality of the whole, because the Group becomes the most important thing, and we forget that within the Group, Individuals also play a key role. Without individuals who value quality and their own role in producing it, the success of the group is utterly without value. It is meaningless.

When I heard those words, that conservatives value and struggle to uphold the rights and responsibilities of the individual above all else, I had a moment where I wondered whether that was actually a more accurate representation of my own values. Because I do, very strongly, believe that everyone should take responsibility for his own actions, and that our society has many many ways for individuals to hide from those responsibilities, everything from tax loopholes to union contracts to insanity pleas. And then I realized, no. I don't think that I am the most important entity in our society, that I should be accountable only to myself. Yes, I absolutely believe that I should take responsibility for my own actions, and that I am the creator of my own destiny. But I also believe that anything good that I do, and anything bad that I do, ultimately affects the groups in which I live, and I should be responsible to those groups and do my best.

Every time there is an election, I think about the political process and structure in which we all live. I wouldn't dream of giving up my right to participate in that process, even in the small way I'm given, that of marking my X on the ballot where I believe my conscience is best represented. But every time the campaign rhetoric starts up again, I get a little more fed up, a little more disgusted. There is no high road in politics, even in those lofty ideals I've always held.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter U

2005-12-21T10:35:00.000-08:00

After reading bella's latest post, and considering posting a totally typical response that focused purely on one tiny and irrelevant aspect of said post, I got to thinking, and decided to create a whole post on the topic here instead.

But enough with the preamble.

There are a couple of words that contain the letter U that I've never been sure how to pronounce. One of them is Pulitzer and the other one is culinary. Are they pronounced PYU-litzer and CYU-linary, or PULL-itzer and CULL-inary? When I speak them myself, I favour the former, even though when I hear them spoken in the media, they are often pronounced the latter way.

Enter the internet! What a great tool. A quick check of the American Heritage Dictionary on Bartleby.com tells me that Pulitzer is pronounced both ways (plt-sr, pylt- ), but the pronunciation you can listen to says it with a short U (listen here). Likewise culinary, the word is phoneticized both ways, but pronounced with a long U.

Not satisfied with the American Heritage explanation I went to what for me is the final word on these issues, the Oxford English Dictionary. Its pronunciation guide shows (pjultz(r); in U.S. also pltz(r)) and (kjulnr, k-), which did satisfy my sneaking suspicion that, in the former case at least, the American pronunciation is not the "officially" correct one, though as in so many things, it has become the predominant one. Of course, Joseph Pulitzer himself, though foreign-born, is, ultimately, an American, so who's to say the American pronunciation is incorrect?

And that, my friends, is your phonetics lesson for today.

lunatism

2005-12-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a better camera because if I did I would have taken photos of this month's full moon, which is currently occurring, which you can see from my moon phase thingy if you're reading this on the day I am writing it. Otherwise, you'll have to take my word for it.

Driving home from work last night (well you know, like 5pm), coming eastward down the hill I had a brilliant and unobstructed view of the most beautiful wintery moon. She was silvery gold, occasionally obscured by wisps of clouds that tiptoed across her face, enhanced by the crisp dryness of the evening air. The radio kept talking about all the terrible traffic and accidents that were plaguing the evening commute, and blaming it on the moon. I wouldn't disagree, since I am superstitious about the effects our friend in the sky has on us, and I also was occasionally distracted and enraptured by her beautiful face that was directly in my sightline.

Then, this morning as I drove to work (again in darkness, around 7:30am), there she was in front of me again, preparing to go to her western resting place. This time she was very hazy, her vision blurred by morning low clouds, but her brilliance could not be concealed and she lighted my way up the hill once more.

This dry December is a treat for those of us who revel in the spectacle of the heavens, the beauty we cling to in this otherwise bleak, dark time of year.

snowbaby

2005-12-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

I liked posting that knitting post with a photograph so I'm making another post just to showcase a photograph. I'm not a fabulous photographer or writer like Bella but it's kind of fun to do :)

A week or so ago we got a bunch of snow, which is pretty unusual for Vancouver, especially this early in the season. My daughter J and her friend E (who comes over on Tuesdays and I take them both to Girl Guides ) made this little snowman before dinner. They asked me for a carrot and wouldn't you know, just the day before I'd bought regular carrots (instead of the little snacking carrots which I usually buy). They used carrot rounds for eyes and gave it a proper carrot nose, and I gave them a piece of red cabbage for a smiling mouth. It was so cute I had to run out and photograph it. And now I'm sharing it with you, fair readers.

knitting

2005-12-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

it's kind of all the rage these days, isn't it? Well, contrary to my nature I decided this would be a good time to pick it up (generally I'm somewhat behind, or utterly ignorant of, these trends). Actually my daughter J decided she wanted to learn, so I learned too.

it took me 3 hours to do this:

which means it's not the most efficient process in the world for me, yet, but I confess I find it quite enjoyable. The basic stitch anyway. I was also thinking that it would be a great way to pass the time on an airplane, and started looking forward to the flight I'll be taking later this month. But then I realized, I don't know whether the airline will actually allow knitting needles on the plane! I wonder if I should try to find out beforehand, or just take my chances.

connections

2005-12-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

wow, I just figured out that this girl has her blog linked to mine. I'm not sure why, but Hey Girl! How you doin! .. and thanks :)

I think she is the first person who I didn't know from "before," that is to say "elsewhere" on the internet or IRL, or both, who has linked to this here blog.

energy

2005-12-02T14:05:00.000-08:00

One of "my" staff, that is, one of the employees to whom I act as supervisor, asked me this morning if he could use vacation time so he could exercise during the day. Exercise! He said that he can't seem to find the time to maintain his regimen, and with it being winter and all he can't jog after work the way he used to.

For some reason, this irks me. I don't have an issue with him requesting time off, in fact I told him that if he wants to simply take an hour off in the afternoon he can just tack it on to the end of his shift rather than using vacation time.

Maybe I'm just bent because I'm not committed to any kind of exercise program despite my incessant whining about how I need to lose weight and I'd love to get into some kind of shape.

Or maybe it's because this guy is already kind of a dervish, an extremely high maintenance staff member who paces around this slow-moving, quiet environment like a caged lion when he's not powering through some meagre mindless task. Maybe I'm afraid that exercising in the middle of the day will only make his energy level rise, which would make him even harder to deal with.

Whatever it is, for some reason it's trippin me out.

watch and wait: interview update

2005-11-15T20:27:00.000-08:00

Well, I survived the interview. That's what I said on the voicemail message I left my mom after I was done, and later when she called me back she said she'd kind of hoped for a different verb, such as "aced." But I think I was feeling like a balloon with a slow leak, which had finally run out of air. Deflated, but kind of relieved at the same time. As I've gotten older I seem to have developed a kind of anxiety disorder, which makes me freak out about things a lot more than I probably need to. Anyways.

I think I said all the right things. There weren't any questions that I flat-out could not answer, even though big parts of the job don't really fall directly under stuff I've done "for a living." When I started to assemble my publishing background I realized that I've actually been around publishing and information management for a long time, and I've always gravitated toward the "publishing" areas of committees I've been on: newsletters, mailing lists, even minutes. I guess it's in my blood. I know I'd kick ass at this job.

So yes, I believe I did pretty well at the interview, and now it's in the hands of the gods. If I made any kind of impression on those people, I think I've got it in the bag. I'm hopeful, but trying not to be too hopeful, so I don't wind up disappointed.

Tomorrow could be the first day of the rest of my life.

2005-11-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

I have a job interview. As usual I am spending a lot of time today trying to get over a bunch of anxiety about letting my current supervisor know that I'm looking for another job. It seems to me that it's really hard to do that without making it seem like I'm unhappy at this job. Which of course I am, but it doesn't seem smart to let my boss know that, somehow.

If I was feeling less muddled by anxiety I might be able to internalize the fact that, rather than feeling pissed off or perturbed that an employee was looking for a better opportunity, my supervisor might actually support me in that goal. I know that if I were in that situation, with a person I was supervising possibly leaving for greener pastures, I wouldn't hold an iota of resentment toward that person. I might have a few moments of "oh man that means some more work for me now," but that passes soon enough. Obviously I know on some level that that is probably the case, and my boss' reaction to my desire to move onward and upward is much worse in my imagination than it will be in reality. What rational reason would she have for being pissed about that?

I guess the other part of it is that I don't really want her to know that I'm going around miserable. Which of course is ridiculous because there is no reason for her to think that. She will only know what I tell her, and if I simply tell her I've approached a couple of potential advancement opportunities, which really doesn't need to affect the way I continue to do my job here, then I have nothing to fear for recrimination at all.

Writing that down hasn't done anything for the knot in my stomach or the trembling in my hands.

Maybe I'm masking my anxiety about the actual interview in my anxiety about asking my supervisor, who doesn't even know I'm looking to get out, for a reference. Because I really want this job and I'm worried I'm going to fuck up the interview, even though all the signs are looking pretty good right now.

Bah. I think I need to shut off my brain for a while. How does one go about doing that?

33

2005-11-06T22:14:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, a very dear man who I didn't know very well, but who nevertheless had a fairly big impact on my psyche, died in a car accident. After I heard the news last Saturday night I was very preoccupied with it for some days. I was saddened by the gaping hole his death leaves in the world, and the impact his permanent absence, which so abruptly replaces his absolute presence, will have on the lives of his wife and baby daughter, as well as his many friends.

I realized that death really scares me.

I'm not so arrogant as to think that I'm alone in this: quite the contrary. I'm a conscious person, a consumer of art and literature, a thinking person who interacts with others, and I know that the fear of death shapes and surrounds many things that many people do and create and think about. Most of the time, the fact of our own deaths or those of the people around us just kind of hangs out in the background, nudging us or twinkling our brains, but not existing front and centre. If it did, we'd probably all be paralyzed by fear every minute. And I think I've been feeling a little of that this past week, because the fact of this wonderful person's cruel and sudden departure from this world has drawn the idea of death out of the shadows and into the light.

I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid of the impact that my death would have on the people around me, particularly my daughter. I'm afraid that after I die I'll experience some kind of agony of being aware of her feeling sad and afraid and lonely and I'll have no way of helping her. As I write this, I feel like it sounds like I'm on some kind of power or ego trip...how can I be so sure anyone would even care if I died? Or else that it's just my inner control freak: the thing that I fear is my inability to influence or be involved. Well, probably there is something to that. But that doesn't make it less genuine or legitimate, does it?

When I learned that my friend was 33 years old when he died, I thought of Brian. He was another beautiful person who died suddenly at age 33. He was the first person, the first peer of mine, who was really close to me, who died. I've had family members die: grandparents, great-grandparents, but never a person I'd loved deeply and tenderly, someone I'd been close to and intimate with. When he died, we'd only recently been back in touch with each other after a long absence, and his renewed presence in my life was at that time acting as a catalyst for me to fix some other things that I really needed to change in order to get out of a very bad rut. I was starting to feel hopeful, and good about myself, for the first time in a long time. I was realizing that I could feel love, and that I deserved to be loved, and more importantly, that I was not feeling it or living it even though I thought I was. It was some big stuff. And then he was unceremoniously yanked from this plane, and I was immeasurably bereft, but had no place to express my grief. It was agonizing.

At times like these, people often resort to cheesy platitudes, often with a religious flavour. Things like, "he was too good for this world, and [insert supreme being here] has called him back." And you start hearing about things like the good life on this plane paying off in the Hereafter. Stuff I would normally think was utter bullshit. But when the grief and confusion, the injustice of it, are bearing down on my soul, I find even my own, normally pragmatic self resorting to them. I actually found myself thinking some of those things this past week or so, and when there is no comfort to be had, I turn my hopeful ears to what sounds like some solid philosophy, something that has some suggestion of an explanation for what really makes no sense at all. I found myself remembering that Jesus was said to have died at age 33. As if that means something.

I suppose that through this senseless death, of a superior human whose impact on the world will reverberate for many lifetimes to come, I am revisiting that other tragic loss, and I am facing that which scares me the very most. Yet even as I write this I feel other things crowding in to the recesses of my mind: my daughter's head cold, my messy kitchen, my own wonderful partner. I know that this, too, shall pass, if only because I am living my life and seeking out pleasures and challenges without feeling sad and afraid. I do it every day.

answer poim

2005-10-28T16:26:00.000-07:00

thanks to bella and c, i have created a poem in my spare time. Here it is.

At the library
red satin and denim
Restless

Like a fish with a bad hair day,
I cringe and hold out my hand to stop it:
distant chatter, wheels on concrete, air moving.

My bag is full of my worldly possessions --
sex and rain-boots --
they could be poetic!

Where did that come from?

The right thing is happening...
The breath of a kiss...
Today will be the best day ever.

pressure drop

2005-09-29T08:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday it became fall. All week it was sunny and beautiful, and even yesterday dawned chilly but clear. And then the rains came. And they have stayed.

I was driving home from work, well okay, after-work errands, thinking about how to spend the rest of my evening, and I realized I couldn't make a decision about dinner. I couldn't decide if I even wanted dinner. I was totally spaced out. When I got home it dawned on me that the barometric pressure had rapidly dropped and that always drains all energy from my brain and body. So I resolved to get a couple of eggrolls and a bowl of wonton soup from the Chinese place down the block, watch some bad tv, and go to bed early.

Well, two out of three ain't bad. I ended up staying up way too late playing silly games on the computer and then had to get up at the crack of dawn to go to work. So now today I am a zombie.

word nerds

2005-09-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

This morning I was chatting with my mom on the phone, our usual Thursday morning check-in (my daughter spends Wednesday nights with her and I like to know what they were up to and how the morning went). She mentioned J's homework assignment, which was to write as many words as she could think of about Fall, and that led us to a previous assignment, completed with her grandfather, which was to think of as many words as she could think of that rhymed with "school." One of the words on her list was "minuscule," and my mom said she asked Bompa whether he'd spelled it right and he replied defensively "Yes!" To which I replied, How is it spelled? because I spelled it in my head and couldn't figure out where the misspell might come in. And she said minUscule, related to "minus," which most people spell minIscule. And I wrote down both words and had to confess that, unlike most words that are commonly misspelled, I couldn't tell the difference with my naked eye. Quite embarrassing for an obsessively corrective speller such as myself. But then I said, Well now I will remember it forever, just like "testament," which I misspelled testEment in fifth grade (or maybe sixth) to get myself eliminated from the spelling bee. And I suppose that is a testament (ha ha) to my spelling obsession, the fact that I have remembered this for 25 years, and then my mom goes, "mine was 'murder.' MurdUr. Third grade." And this was 50 years ago, so I see that I come by my spelling obsession quite honestly.

boredom

2005-09-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

Feeling bored and restless gets my head spinning in all sorts of directions. I have been in my present job for six months and today is the first day I've really, seriously considered my options if I were to quit. Well maybe not really seriously but pretty seriously.

I've always looked at a fairly standard set of job sites and HR department pages, keeping an eye on any opportunities that look interesting, even when I'm feeling happy with my job. There have even been a couple of postings that I've almost applied for. But nothing was ever interesting enough to tempt me to the point of actually updating my resume and composing a cover letter.

Today though, I'm feeling bored and generally irritated, and I just want to get out of here. There must be something better, is my thinking. The problem is, that's probably not true. Unless I go back to school for some serious upgrading, I'm stuck in my current income bracket, but my current place in the food chain here allows me generous sick time, educational benefits, and next year I'll get 5 weeks' paid vacation. It's pretty sweet.

so, I'm bored. Blah.

monkey love

2005-08-24T20:59:00.000-07:00

It has been a monkey kind of week. First, last weekend my family and I went to see the latest Leaky Heaven production, which was Bonobo and was about Bonobo apes. It was rather a departure for LH, with only a fraction of the usual irreverent maniacal hilarity, but it was still entertaining and rather moving. Which is not a quality I usually look for in a circus performance, so it caught me off-guard, but it was quite lovely as all their productions are.

anyway. The other thing was J and I went to stay with my man in Seattle for a couple days, the first time in the 2 years he and I have been together that I've taken her there to hang out with us. Which is silly and complicated but there you are. We went to the zoo yesterday and the thing that really caught me the most was when we were looking at the Orangutans.

We got to the Orangutan enclosure and they weren't around in the first window we looked in. At the next window there was a whole crowd of people, and there was a woman drawing an Orangutan who was sitting on the other side of the glass, his chin balanced on his hand which was resting on a rock ledge. He was sitting very still, letting the woman sketch him. I asked her if he always did that and she said he did. She said she sketched him often, and every time she came he would come up and sit down and pose for her, sometimes sitting for hours. He knew who she was and what she was doing. I forgot to ask whether she showed him her drawings, but the whole thing struck me as quite magical. I nearly took her picture, but by the time I thought of doing it we were already walking away.

I forget if it was before that or after, but we saw these other monkeys, maybe they are chimps, and the window to the enclosure came right down to the floor and one of the chimps was sitting right by the glass. And I took a picture of J and the chimp, and you can't really tell there's glass there so it looks like they're sitting together, having an animated exchange or conversation of some sort, which would totally be in character for J, who undoubtedly would have a wonderful and interesting conversation with a chimpanzee. And so I have a new appreciation for our primate brethren.

BLOG SPAM!!

2005-08-24T20:58:00.000-07:00

dammit, I got some spam comments on my blog! I deleted them so you, gentle reader, would not be sorely offended as I was.

I have now added word authentication to my comments area, so spammers cannot pollute my pristine blog environment. Sorry to those of you who comment, for any inconvenience.

zoiks.

2005-08-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

i just had an 80s flashback moment. A guy walked into the library wearing a pink polo shirt with the collar flipped up and I had the urge to laugh out loud. Good thing i'm feeling really tired and dragged out right now, crawling toward the end of my work day, or I might have.

chocolate malted

2005-08-15T09:50:00.000-07:00

last night I met my alter ego. or my mirror image. I don't know, it's kind of weird and hard to explain. let's see if I can do it.

i have this friend named bella and she has a friend named D. She and D have been friends since they were teens, and bella and I have been friends since we were pre-tweens (actually we were "frenemies" way back when, i learned last night), and yet, somehow, D and I had never really met. Maybe we had, at some teenage horrorshow birthday party back in the mid-80s or something, but we blocked out those memories or otherwise failed to retain them.

the thing is, D and I actually have a fair bit in common. Both Jewish girls who married Italian men and procreated, producing overly articulate, gorgeous brainiac daughters, whose radiance and brilliance is rarely more than a fun afterthought to us. Observing her interacting with her daughter last night, i imagined how people look at me when I interact with mine. or did, when she was 2 1/2 years old. Oh hell, I probably do interact with her the same way now that she's 8 1/2.

however, the main thing we have in common is bella. The reason bella invited us both to dinner last night was because she had something of great import to tell us, and she needed us both to know, and it was a long story (so long that while D and I polished off our dinners, listening intently and slurping mojito, interjecting at intervals, she barely ate half of hers, and finally let the server take her plate away after a few halfhearted attempts to finish...though she did manage to drink her martini), so it made sense to tell both of us together. The very fact that she did this represents the most important aspect of the story she had to tell us, which was something that both D and I understood and acknowledged.

and here's the mirror part. Because D and I had almost the exact same reactions to what bella was telling us, almost at the same moments, during the entire story. and bella kept looking from me to D and back again, and said over and over, "this is exactly why I needed you both here!" and it was funny and strange and perfectly natural. later, when we had walked off the pitcher of mojitos and were winding things up, chatting on D's front steps, bella commented one more time how D and I had such similar insights into her mind and actions, and said we must be so much alike, and I said no, what we have in common is you. it's like we each have part of your brain embedded in ours. it's like you're a chocolate malted, and we each have a straw.

dinner at the beach

2005-07-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

for the past couple weeks I have had J at work with me in the afternoons sometimes. This is because of our incompatible schedules but it has worked out okay. The other day we were taking the "scenic route" home along the beach, and I was feeling like I didn't want to deal with dinner and everything, so I suggested we stop and have some dinner at the beach. So we parked the car and bought some hotdogs and curly fries and rootbeer from the beach concession and it was so scenic and my daughter is so beautiful and summery that I took some photos with my camera phone. It was exactly the right thing to do.

fathers.

2005-07-17T21:55:00.000-07:00

i suppose there has been a lot of research done about fathers, their role in our lives, the way their role has changed in families etc etc. I'm here to ponder and contemplate as to whether the art of fathering has gone to shit, whether it never was worthy of being called an art, or whether all my bitterness is in my head.

i've lately had some um, unsatisfactory dealings with my father. i suppose that my relationship with him has never been that great, particularly since i was about 14, started hanging out with boys and other bad kids, and basically gave the one-finger salute to my father, who was (and is) a terrible communicator and if he had a problem with how I was conducting my life, didn't know how to tell me. so yeah, from about that age i lived with my mom full-time (they split when i was about 7) and saw my dad kinda sometimes. he never seemed to mind or care that my sister and i weren't really hanging around with him any more.

when i was 19 he moved away and for about the next 6 years or so i had a continual, nagging guilt at the back of my brain (sometimes at the front) that i failed to take good care of my dad, and now he was off trying to take care of himself and feeling terrible that he must be so lonely and sad all the time. of course this wasn't true and even if it was, it wasn't my problem. it is not a 20-something year-old girl's job to create a comfort zone for her own father. it is not any child's job to be responsible for a parent who is healthy and sane and fully capable of caring for his or her own physical and emotional self. however, it is a parent's job to be responsible for his or her child for the duration of that child's life or until the parent is physically or mentally incapable of doing so. this is something i am more and more sure of the older i get and the longer i am a parent.

the thing is, it seems like every woman i talk to, every woman i know, has a shitty history with fathers, whether they are their own fathers or the fathers of their children. okay not every woman but an alarming number of them. fathers who took off. fathers who fucked up. fathers who said they were going to do things and didn't. fathers who said they never would do things, and then did. fathers who became fathers and then seemed to lose interest in being fathers and just decided to stop doing that job. the problem is, being a parent is like being alive. once you are it, you don't stop being it as long as your child is still on the planet. however, lots of men seem to have missed that message.

so what's the deal with my father? well. without going into details, the long and short of it is that he made a promise to me about 9 months ago. about 5 months ago i acted on that promise, which seemed to be taking forever to be fulfilled and which i really needed to have fulfilled. at the same time, i reminded him that the promise had been made and told him i was going to act on it. about 2 weeks ago i reminded him that the promise had been made, i acted on it, and for the past 5 months i have been struggling to deal with the difficult situation i got myself into, thinking i'd have help getting out of it, since the help never materialized. tonight i received a response to my reminder. it was another promise of help, bracketed by on the one side, a reminder to me that i could have been more supportive during a time of difficulty in his life, and on the other side, an offer of professional advice about how to deal with the situation i find myself in, which i wouldn't have been in if he'd followed through with his original promise.

so. i have a passive-aggressive, unavailable father who doesn't know how to have a relationship with me and who fails to take responsibility for his role in that relationship. another man in my life, one whose role and relationship couldn't be more different, has shown me some real support and sympathy for my plight, and for the difficult job i face, extracting myself completely from this bad relationship with my father. but i told him, removing myself from my father's life won't actually be that hard, since at the best of times, our lives merely brush each other in passing. but even in writing this, i have a knot of sadness in my chest, realizing that i will miss having a father. i have always missed it.

the end.

Jenny Turpish Slapped Me

2005-06-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

I found this quiz while i was googling something completely else. And I took it because, well, why not eh? And I was amused by the result, so here it is:

***

Wackiness: 46/100
Rationality: 56/100
Constructiveness: 72/100
Leadership: 38/100

You are a SRCF--Sober Rational Constructive Follower. This makes you a White House staffer. [ha ha ha]

You are a tremendous asset to any employer, cool under pressure, productive, and a great communicator. You feel the need to right wrongs, take up slack, mediate disputes and keep the peace. This comes from a secret fear that business can't go on without you--or worse, that it can.

If you have a weakness, it is your inability to say "no." While your peers respect you, they find it difficult to resist taking advantage of your positive attitude and eagerness to take on work. You depend on a good manager to keep you from sinking under the weight and burning out.

Of the 129978 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 7.5 % are this type.

***

I think this is a cool analysis and is actually quite true, especially the "fear that business can't go on without me, or worse, that it can" part. Boy oh boy, never really thought about it but yep, that pretty much fits me like a glove and is the source of most of my work-related anxiety :P

Actually I was so amused by it that I forgot what I was originally looking for. Oh well, it's almost time to go home anyway.

You can take it too!

Health day in Canada

2005-06-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

I am going to the doctor this afternoon, and of course, the main affliction that has been plaguing me is not so pronounced today. I hope I will be able to articulate what has been bothering me, because it's not something that seems to lend itself to concrete diagnosis or definition. It's kind of vague and probably the doctor will tell me it's stress-related. The classic medical dodge. However, this is just my completely uneducated opinion.

I also have a pain in whatever it is -- muscle? tendon? ligament? can you tell that I am an anatomy-tard? -- that runs down the back of my foot. Not the Achilles tendon, but kind of next to it. Every once in a while I stretch my leg out too much, usually while bending, and I get this hot ripping pain down the back of my heel. I'm hoping the Doc can help me out with that one too.

Wish me luck!

it's one of those in-between days

2005-06-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

where it's kinda sunny but supposed to rain later, the temp not quite hitting 20 degrees. So I wore cords and running shoes and dammit I'm overdressed for this stuffy library place where I spend most of my day. Now I'm sweating and grossing myself out. Ugh.

Blink and my life

2005-06-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

Okay so last time I posted I mentioned that I'm reading the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Well, it is a remarkably interesting book and I have found several things that resonate with my life incredibly, and I am only halfway through it so I'm sure there will be more before the end, but this one was so timely that I had to write a little something about it. The section in question is called The Perils of Introspection, and it is about many things, but mainly it is about shallow thought vs deep thought (my words), and how sometimes a quick, or unconscious act or decision, can produce less accurate results than a more detailed examination.

He gives the example of an insight puzzle: A giant inverted pyramid is perfectly balanced on its point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it to topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill. How do you remove the bill without disturbing the pyramid? Now, I came up with the solution almost immediately (which he confirms about a paragraph later to be the correct one), but his point is that in a scientific experiment, people's chances of getting it right were greatly reduced as soon as they started trying to explain why or how they arrived at the answer. He uses logic problems and sports analogies to illustrate this point, but I find the philosophy can also be applied to writing and the creative process.

In my meeting with J's school principal the other day, my stepdad and I used, as an example of why this classroom has been bad for her, her joy and talent in writing. It was so free-flowing and exuberant in October, and it has slowly been squeezed out of her over the past 8 months because of the heavy load of corrections that are assessed and assigned after each writing assignment. My stepdad (a writer, publisher and teacher) and I recognized almost simultaneously that this syndrome is J being hung up on the mechanics of writing, which distracts from the creative process, and turns her joy into dread. Malcolm Gladwell, quoting psychologist Jonathan W. Schooler, describes it like this:

With a logic problem, asking people to explain themselves doesn't impair their ability to come up with the answers. In some cases, in fact, it may help. But problems that require a flash of insight operate by different rules. ... "When you start becoming reflective about the process, it undermines your ability. You lose the flow. There are certain kinds of fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience that are vulnerable to this process." As human beings, we are capable of extraordinary leaps of insight and instinct. ... [W]hat Schooler is saying is that ... these abilities are incredibly fragile. Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.

I believe that writing falls into this category of "fluid, intuitive, nonverbal kinds of experience," and that picking it apart by correcting spelling or figuring out what kind of rhetorical argument is represented in the text, only serves to kill the fun part of writing, making J and me both feel like it's not worth it any more. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm the first person to stand up and say grammar and spelling are vital parts of writing, and analysis of form, style and substance can greatly enrich the reading experience also. But after reading this section in Gladwell's fascinating book, I feel like I'm a little bit justified in my understanding of the phenomenon at work in both J's and my experience of our writing classes this year.

She is being made to pick apart her writing mechanically: spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word choices. I am "learning" how to analyze my own writing in terms of rhetorical content and style. This latter part has been extremely difficult for me, inspiring an unprecedented level of paralysis that I am forcing back bit by bit, in my desire to finish this course off and not look back. I've definitely learned something about myself, in taking this course and in reading this book, and I believe that is what the process is all about.

apparently I've been handed something or other...bookish he calls me!

2005-06-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451. Which book do you want to be?

Okay I confess I've never read Fahrenheit 451 (nor seen Fahrenheit 9/11) but I can tell you which book I'd like to be: my all-time favourite book, The Mists of Avalon. Why? Because it's a wonderful story about women in a time that wasn't about women, but was all about magic, and the transition from paganism to organized religion in Britain. Lovely and fascinating.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Yes.

The last book you finished is?

Good Faith by Jane Smiley, my new favourite author. I'm fascinated by writers who can write so well and say so little.

What are you currently reading?

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. Utterly fascinating!!!! One of those ones where I'm torn between sucking it back like a shot of tequila and sipping it slowly like cognac.

Five books you would take to a deserted island?

Oh shit. I hate these questions.

1. Mists. See above.
2. Probably A Thousand Acres since I saw the movie and never read the book and now I love Jane Smiley.
3. Three Plums in One because Evanovich is perfect for reading on the beach and I don't know if I could settle on one.
4. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I'm sure I could read it at least twice more without getting bored.
5. A book of crossword puzzles because I always get restless after hours and hours of reading.

Who are you going to pass this book to?

is this a trick question? I guess I could pass it to Bella, my stepdad (even though he'd probably scorn it), and my mom...do you have to have a blog to qualify for this game?

I have just decided that I am bored.

2005-05-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

when I posted that just now to my boyfriend on IM he suggested that I drive down to his place and make him "some chicken soup in a skirt" to which I responded that the skirt might not taste so well. Dangling modifier dontchaknow. Then I told him it was a dangling modifier and he is about to make a penis joke. To be exact: "But my pants are zipped up." Does this mean I've been too long to the fair? I did laugh :D

So I'm bored so I thought I would write a few words about what's been occupying my mind lately. I have had virtually no motivation to work on any of my intellectual activities, such as keeping up my journal, updating my blog or working on my distance ed course. All I can think about is making sure life is going okay for my kid.

On friday I have a meeting with the school principal about J's placement for grade four next year. As this year draws to a close, I find myself hating and hating her teacher and I will kill myself if J ends up in her class again next year, so I'm doing all in my power to make sure that doesn't happen, up to and including bringing my scary stepdad to the meeting with me.

I had a planning session with my mom and stepdad last night and it was very clear during the session that it would be hard for me to keep the conversation to topics that were relevant, and not to let it devolve into a rant about J's terrible teacher. So my mom suggested my stepdad accompany me to the meeting. Which is good on the one hand, but also makes me nervous, just because he's so good at that kind of thing it's quite intimidating to me. But I have no doubt it will be good to have him there.

Once the meeting is over I will post more. This is what has been occupying all my mental energies of late.

just the eyes

2005-04-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

here you have my new specs.

perception

2005-04-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

so I have worn corrective lenses for the past 20 years and I never have worn contacts. Until this week. Three days ago I ventured forth into the world without a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of my nose, and the experience was.... disconcerting.

First of all I keep feeling like I'm forgetting something. I keep touching my nose where my glasses sit and finding only...nose.

However, I absolutely LOVE that when I want to put my sunglasses on, I just yknow, put them on. No fiddling with cases, no switching out pairs. And when I want to take them off...oh great heavens above, I simply slip them up on top of my head! This ease and convenience is exactly what I was hoping to experience when I decided to try contact lenses.

I think, this morning, I put the right one on inside-out. It was kind of bugging me, and I couldn't see from it as clearly as I would like. I still can't, in fact, but since I fiddled with it it's a little better. I think the prescription is a little off. My eye doctor told me that my eyeballs are a little more steeply curved than the average eyeball, which means getting contacts that fit will be a bit more challenging. Not impossible, but not simple. Of course, those of you who have read my blog know that almost nothing in my life is simple, so why should my eyeballs be?

The hardest thing to get used to about wearing contact lenses is how my face looks without glasses. Asada, geekboi that he is, seems to like his nerdy library girl bespectacled. I wonder if it is harder now, at age 35, at a stage in my life when I am quite comfortable with my appearance, to readjust to such a change in my face, than it was when I got glasses at age 15. Fifteen, an age at which it is nearly impossible to be comfortable with anything about yourself...a terrible time, really, to start wearing glasses. But after 20 years I'm pretty used to it. In fact, at the same time as I got these contacts, I also picked out new frames for the first time in 3 years. They aren't ready yet but I'm looking forward to wearing them because they're very nice.

I guess I've just afforded myself some more choices, about how I perceive myself, and how I am perceived by the people around me. That's kind of cool.

I have concluded that I should not own a car.

2005-04-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

After owning it for not even two months, I managed to crash my new car. It is my very first accident ever, and it was totally my fault. I rear-ended someone who had stopped ahead of me for an occupied crosswalk. The pavement was wet and my tires didn't catch and I slid right into her. My front end is crunched, although my headlight didn't even break so maybe it isn't all that bad.

For some reason I'm kind of circumspect about all this. While I recognize the "victim" statement in the title of this post, I actually feel prepared to deal with the insurance company (hopefully tomorrow, when I happen to have a day off work), find an auto body shop that can do the work quickly and as cheaply as possible, and just move on, rather than wallowing in any kind of self-loathing.

That self-blame is lurking around the edges of my consciousness, but I hope to smother that spark before it smoulders into flame.

scent sense

2005-04-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

I don't claim to be very fashion-savvy (in fact, quite the opposite), but I do think I know a little bit about scent. At least, I have a pretty sensitive nose.

There are two women I work with who seem to have very misguided notions when it comes to personal fragrance. One is a woman who wears a very large dose of something extremely heavy, which she trails in her wake everywhere she goes. Also she sits in a cloud of it any time she is still for any length of time (which unfortunately really reminds me of the image of Pigpen from the Charlie Brown cartoons).

The other I don't smell very often--mostly first thing in the morning, which leads me to believe that she wears something that tends to wear off pretty fast. But when I do catch a whiff of it it reminds me of a men's cologne. Not one of the good ones either, but the cheapies you often find in scent strips in cheesy magazines. I know that some men's fragrances smell just as good (or better) on women as they do on men, but this woman isn't the most feminine person to begin with, and it makes me wonder.

I try to use scent to enhance something about myself. My personality, my sexuality, my social outlook, my outfit. What does that mean if you apply it to the woman who wears a scent that is clearly masculine? Perhaps that's a judgment call and she doesn't perceive it as masculine at all. Or the one who walks around in a cloud of heavy scent all the time? That woman I think must have a very dull sense of smell. No matter what fragrance I choose to wear, I wear a very little of it. It's ironic with perfume because the rule is, if you can smell it yourself, you're wearing too much...right? So why choose something you like yourself, if you can't even smell it?

Nerd story.

2005-04-06T15:55:00.000-07:00

okay so I had the following conversation with my daughter while we were in the car driving to school yesterday morning.

j: I've been having a math fantasy.
k: oh?
j: yes. Do you want to hear it?
k: well okay. Only if you want to share it with me.
j: I do.
k: shoot.
j: my fantasy is that Ms. S [her teacher at school] tells me that because I'm taking math at gifted learner [summer challenge program], I don't have to do any more math homework this year!
PAUSE
k: you realize what that fantasy makes you, right?
j: what?
k: a NERD!
j: oh that. I already was a nerd!

exercise machines

2005-03-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

okay so I'm currently shopping for exercise machines. My life doesn't leave me room (or cash) to join a gym and I can't seem to keep myself motivated or interested in fashioning my own fitness program at home, so I figure if I can buy a machine and position it in such a way that I can do other stuff while I'm moving my body (like watching tv or reading), it might help.

I don't want to spend a shitload of cash on this thing because I know it might *not* keep me interested. Also I don't want a humungous thing because I don't have a lot of space for it. Man, I hate paragraphs that focus entirely on the negative aspects of a concept or decision, like the paragraph I am writing now, but the fact of the matter is I don't really know what it is I *do* want, since I've never done this before. So it's easier to figure out what I don't want. What I don't want is to be fat and unhealthy.

I was going to shop for a machine in the US next weekend but I realized I might have to pay tax and duty on it so I think I'll shop here instead. I think I can buy something cheap, and hope that cheap in this case translates simply as "inexpensive."

Watch this space for updates to Infobabe's Fitness Quest.

if a change is as good as a rest, then why am I so tired???

2005-03-14T17:45:00.000-08:00

today I officially started my new job. I have temporarily been promoted to circulation supervisor here at the library, which is a jump of 3 pay grades (a whopping $2K per year) and a bunch of responsibility, as well as a change of geography.

I now spend all of my time in the circulation area as opposed to technical services which, for those of you who are wholly unfamiliar with libraries, means I am now "out front" as opposed to "in the back." Interestingly, I have spent nearly all my 7 years in libraries in tech services, meaning I work on preparing materials for public consumption, and rarely see them moving around. Also, I have always been less accountable to my coworkers, at least in terms of my physical presence, than I am now.

When my daughter was younger, I was nervous about being in a public service job in which my presence might be inflexibly required. I never wanted to be in a position where I might have to leave suddenly to attend to a family matter, and have nobody available to cover for me. This paragraph has inspired me to post about Epilepsy Summer, which I will do in due course, but for now I will just say that 3 years ago this feeling, about being solely responsible for the maintenance of a work environment, was completely justified. At this point, I'm feeling less nervous, mostly because I have a solid "village" in place to assist me with the care of my daughter. So, I agreed to take on the challenge of a whole new work experience, for a year anyway.

I don't doubt my ability to be a supervisor, since I am naturally, um, assertive (heh) - although my manner can be a bit brusque as that assertiveness constantly battles my also-inherent self-consciousness. Also, I am a good multi-tasker and tend to find order in chaos if it is to be found, and I can see already that this job is going to require all my formidable juggling skillz. I was feeling very tired and had a pounding headache by the end of the day, mostly from the effort of trying to seem smoothly competent and assume an air of confidence and authority while remaining affable and accessible to both patrons and coworkers. It was a struggle. But I can see glimmers of enjoyment in among the bumbling. Perhaps I will soon be able to rest, a little.

international women's day

2005-03-08T08:01:00.000-08:00

when i was a little girl growing up - and even today - i sort of pitied boys born on this day, kind of how I pitied kids born on February 29. Maybe there are tons of boys born on March 8 who have no idea that it is International Women's Day. I grew up with a feminist mom and a bunch of activist women who never failed to remind me how lucky I was, not only to have been born a girl, but also to have been born on a day set aside specially to honour and celebrate our options and accomplishments.

I think my most memorable birthday party ever was in 1977 or 1978. There is a parade every year in Vancouver on this day (or there was -- I think there's just a rally these days). That particular year, a feminist collective had gotten together and commissioned a big load of fortune cookies from a local fortune cookie factory, with custom-made fortunes in them. I have no idea what they said or anything, but I imagine it was a feminist theme. That year I had my birthday party in the back of a pickup truck that was moving through the parade. I remember it was the best feeling ever, sitting on the roof of the truck with my best friend Eve, waving to the crowd. I think there was a banner on the truck that said "Happy Birthday K" or something like that.

Nowadays my birthday is a little more low-key, but I remain grateful for my femininity. Not just because of this auspicious day, but also because, well, it's great being a girl :)

flexible thinking

2005-02-28T12:07:00.001-08:00

I had this conversation with J the other day that got me thinking about kids and how they receive and process information, and form opinions and ideas. It went something like this:

J: Jen's boyfriend proposed to her last week in front of all the kids and the other staff!
K: Jen?
J: the daycare worker. She has a little baby with her boyfriend and now they're getting married! He gave her a diamond ring and it's really pretty!
K: that's what you do when you ask someone to marry you. You give them a ring.
J: You do?
K: Yeah, it's like a tradition.
J: oh. [pause] Well it was a really nice ring. She cried with joy!

So two things struck me about this conversation. First, that J didn't have the slightest bit of confusion about the fact that her daycare worker had had a baby and then decided to get married. Second, that she had more trouble with the idea of giving a diamond ring as a gift when proposing marriage. Is this just indicative of the society she is exposed to, or is it completely attributable to my influence?

I'm not the most conventional person. I wasn't even legally married to J's father. She doesn't have the same last name as me, but rather carries his (a thing that sometimes irks me now that she is mostly mine, but that's another post). Even the fact that I am a single parent is kind of odd, even though most of J's friends' mothers are also single, since most of her schoolmates come from two-parent families.

But I was raised with a consciousness of differences, be they sexual identity or religion or skin colour...mostly because I fell into a number of those categories myself. My mom was a feminist and hung around with lesbians for quite a few years in my youth. I still have many "moms." I'm Jewish, and I remember when I was about to start high school, my mom sitting down with me to explain that some people, for no good reason, don't like Jewish people, and I might get called hurtful names when people found out I was Jewish. I just never had any problem accepting people who looked different from me or who liked girls instead of boys, or whatever. As long as they weren't assholes, they could do whatever or look however they wanted.

When I explained about the giving of the ring and the marriage proposal, I noticed myself deliberately not using genders to describe this exchange. I realized partway through the explanation that, by the time J grows up, same-sex marriage will probably be quite commonplace. After all, it was only a generation ago that drunk driving was socially acceptable, even cool, and now it's an offense that is not only frowned upon by society, but it carries quite harsh penalties under the laws of most jurisdictions. A generation before that, women were only just being allowed to vote -- a thing that would seem ludicrous were it still prohibited today.

If we play our cards right, our children will be the most tolerant and open-hearted people ever to walk this planet and make the rules that govern this country. I'm not saying there are not narrow-minded, ignorant people in the world, still procreating and continuing to instill their irrational hatreds and fears in their children. Unfortunately, we have daily proof that there are. However, I feel proud that my daughter will be accepting of all kinds of people, not because she is coerced into it, but because it is part of her world. If only we could all think so flexibly.

ok so the Texas Biscuit thing.

2005-02-25T21:29:00.000-08:00

Here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

Reaching over to the bookshelf beside my desk, the closest thing was The Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantzakis.

"He sloshed through the mud in the blue half-light, anxious to reach the lake of Gennesaret. The bitterness of all he had seen in Nazareth had already begun to settle down calmly within him. The crucified Zealot had become a distant memory and Jacob's mind was once again dominated by his father's fishing boats and men: by everyday concerns."

Make it stop!

2005-02-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

Okay, so now that I have purchased my new-to-me car (a 1998 Corolla, not the Mazda I posted about earlier), how do I turn off the urge to shop for cars???? I've been doing it for so long, like 4 months now, that it's like second nature to fire up buysell.com and surf through ads. Actually what it feels like is when I was pregnant, and near the end of my pregnancy I kept thinking I would never get used to the absence of the sensation of having a person inside my belly. Okay so it's a weird analogy. But that's what it feels like.

I am officially sick of car shopping.

2005-02-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I test-drove and put a deposit on a 1998 Mazda Protege. It's a solid car, nice and clean, 5 speed 4 door with power group and CD player. Pretty much has everything I want. The price is a little high, but I realize I have to either compromise my perks or my price, since it seems pretty clear that unless I devote my every waking minute to securing the absolute best possible deal, there's no way I'm going to get everything I want for a price less than what this car costs. And I am unwilling and unable to put any more energy into this thing!

The thing is, I would really like to just pay cash for it. Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to do it, even though that was my original idea and intention with this project. So now I'm grappling with the concept of a payment plan, which I will have to enter into even if I get 2/3 of it paid off in the next 3 weeks, which is pretty likely.

It's all just stressing me out. And I've ceased to be able to see the forest for the trees here. This car has everything I need and want, it's a reliable car, and I like it! It's "me," I suppose. But I can't quite trust it all the way, I think because I am so exhausted by the whole process, my consciousness is muddled. And I'm in information overload. Blah.

drive me to distraction

2005-02-06T19:45:00.000-08:00

As I was driving home from work this evening, I felt my cell phone vibrate in my pocket. I fumbled for it, and just as I was opening it to take my call, I noticed I was driving through a cloud of marijuana smoke. I didn't think much of it because this is BC and wherever you are, you probably know that BC has a reputation for a large amount of marijuana consumption.

I concluded my call having had to make no trickier a manoeuvre than stopping at a red light and observing a few crosswalks, and noticed that I was still in the marijuana cloud. The call was short, but I'd still travelled several blocks. Then I noticed smoke issuing from the driver's side window of the small sports car in front of me. A short time later that car moved off to turn left, and as soon as I was clear of him, I became clear of the bud odour.

Which got me thinking, what is more dangerous, driving a car under the influence of conversation, or under the influence of cannabis? I think while we were engaging in our respective distractions we were both driving more slowly than we needed to on the otherwise deserted roadway, which doesn't seem too dangerous...but obviously people do get in accidents under these conditions. Probably neither of us should have been doing anything but driving.

"congratulations kid, you're a capitalist"

2005-02-04T13:12:00.000-08:00

When I told my stepdad that I own Martha Stewart Omnimedia stock, that's what he told me.

This development, by the way, is thanks to my grandmother, who is apparently beginning to divest as she nears death. Not that she's ill or anything, just that she thinks she's about to die, when the opinion of the rest of the family is that she will outlive us all.

I just wanted to say that so you don't think I ran out and bought this of my own free will. Because I didn't. Although now I guess I'll have to go get a safe deposit box to put my piece of Martha in.

doh!

2005-02-02T15:04:00.000-08:00

Six more weeks of winter. You read it here first.

oh it's you darling!

2005-02-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

This morning as I was pulling on my tall boots with the square toes and the chunky heels I was thinking about fashion and style. I am privileged to know a few people who have an impeccable fashion sense, as well as an interesting and comprehensive personal style, not the least of whom is Bella, and also my friend Nat. I do not have this innate sense, and it's something I kind of lament.

Maybe it began when I was a little kid growing up with a single hippie mum and not much money? Hmm. Well Bella and Nat had the same kind of upbringing, so that can't be it.

Maybe it was because I went to a hippie high school with a bunch of freaks who cared more about finding a reliable dope dealer and wearing clothes that would assist them in their drug trips? I think now we're getting somewhere. I did kind of identify with that group, and even though Bella went to the same high school for part of the time, she was never really a hippie chick flower child like I was. Hell I was even a Deadhead for most of my 20s.

So yeah, then I was a girl who cared more about function than fashion, who didn't have the motivation or the money to spend on clothes and makeup.

Then I was a young mum and I was lucky to find a shirt that didn't smell like baby poo.

Now that I'm in my mid-30s, and in fact ever since I hit my 30s and actually began dating again (oh yeah, the fact that I spent age 19-29 in a LTR with a single man probably dampened my need or desire to make myself pretty) I have found myself taking the time and spending the money on clothes and makeup. And haircuts. I actually have a haircut that requires maintenance, which is kind of fun sometimes but mostly is a big pain.

The problem is that I still don't think I have a personal style. Take today for example. I'm wearing Old Navy boot-cut jeans, my aforementioned boots, a black stretchy scoop-neck t-shirt and a rust-coloured cotton blazer/jacket kind of thing. What does that say about me? I'm known to wear jeans or "work" slacks, skirts with boots or low-heeled shoes, opaque nylons or knee-high socks. Cotton shirts with or without buttons. Mostly muted colours, and even though I'm a bigger girl now, I wear form-fitting clothes because I think loose clothes, which bigger girls are supposed to wear, make me look fat.

Anyway, the whole point of this is that sometimes I wish the phrase "it's you!" referred to something else, or even something specific, when I try it on. Why are the square-toed chunky-heeled boots "me"? Why not pointy-toed, pointy-heeled boots? Why cotton 3/4-sleeve shirts and not cashmere sweaters? Is it because of my colouring? My body type? My job? Today, I wish I knew.

Ye of little faith

2005-01-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

I recently read The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong. I have known about this author for some time because of my general interest in the study of religion, but for one reason or another I have never read any of her books. I fully intend to now, since I was captivated by her writing style and perspective in this volume of memoir.

The book details the years from 1969 to the present, basically the 35 years it took her to recover from her 7 years in the convent. I won't go into the whole story here, since she tells it much better than I ever could, but her story is very compelling. Throughout the book, she is immersed in academic scholarship, the social changes that were occurring in the late 1960s-early 1970s, and issues of her own faith. Eventually she also writes about her discovery of other religions which, perhaps not surprisingly, she had absolutely no experience of during her immersion in Catholicism, and which surprised and delighted her. Since 2001 she has been increasingly involved in writing and lecturing about Islam, attempting to enlighten a largely ignorant public about the spiritual customs of Islam, which have become obscured (or never were available) by the political extremism of Islamic nations.

I definitely have an interest in this latter issue, but what originally grabbed me about this book was something she mentions quite late in the narrative, which was something that struck her about the difference between Judaism and Christianity (or perhaps I should specify Catholicism), when she begins to learn about Judaism. I probably will not do it justice here but the basic principle was that Judaism is a religion about good and right actions, without a lot of theology and doctrine, whereas Catholicism is all about the doctrine and not so much about the actions. In theory it is, since there's all that stuff about "love thy neighbour" and "turn the other cheek" and stuff, but the history and reality of Christianity is just the opposite. At least, that was Karen Armstrong's experience. Actually one thing that stayed with me throughout the reading of this book was something she said about convent life early on. She said that friendly relationships between the girls were discouraged, because they needed to save all their love for God. This struck me as so very wrong, like, how could anyone be devoted to a God that insisted that all love must be devoted to him. It made me really angry and sad.

So where is all this going. Well, I guess her later insights into the differences between the Christian life and the Jewish life made me kind of proud to identify as a Jew, even though I don't really practice a "Jewish" way of life. In fact, I felt a little sad that I'd kind of missed out on being able to have a Jewish life. Then I started wondering whether going to temple and having a marrow-deep understanding of the rituals and celebrations of Judaism really defined a Jew. After all, what Karen Armstrong identified as a Jewish way of life doesn't necessarily have to depend on those observances. It's how you conduct yourself through your daily life and interact with your fellow humans.

Which all inspired me to be a better person and put as much positive energy into the world as I could, in the hopes that it would help others feel better and be more positive. Ultimately that is probably a naive hope, and the cynical side of me, the devil on my shoulder I suppose, is whispering in my ear even now that I shouldn't waste a bunch of energy on a hopeless project like that because I'll just wind up frustrated and more sad. I think I'll have to work on it though, because even if the only person who feels better is me, it will be a worthwhile exercise.

response to Bella and school for thought

2005-01-14T14:46:00.000-08:00

inspired by Bella, here is a rant about our local public school system and other related things.

The funding of public schools, in Vancouver School District anyway, is made up of several factors. One of them is neighbourhood property values and one of them is school population and I don't know what else there is. Many neighbourhoods, particularly on the East side, where Bella and I grew up and continue to live, do consist primarily of homes that are split up into rental suites, many of which house low- or moderate-income people. So it is absolutely true that the funding of schools is based on an inaccurate picture of the people who live in the neighbourhood, since the homeowners themselves, who pay the taxes and whose incomes are presumed to represent the neighbourhood, tend not to live there.

I'm sure there is a fairly good proportion of houses that are occupied by owners too mind you, since lots of times you have a house that has 2 suites in it but members of the same extended family live in the whole house.

Okay and then writing about this reminded me of something that is happening in my neighbourhood that I look on with some scorn. Rightly or wrongly, that is my reaction to this phenomenon. Namely, the building of high-end townhouses on land that was once zoned semi-industrial. So it's not like they tore down low-income housing in order to build it, but it's still kind of wacky to me. I mean, I understand the concept of gentrification, but I don't buy the line the developers use to ingratiate themselves into the existing community.

There is one development (which seems to be stalled) that did its community presentation, city-permit plan dealie at J's school last year. They went on and on about how all these new townhouses will attract all these great families to the neighbourhood. Well, that's great, but what about the families who already live in the neighbourhood? I am a single parent and I cannot afford to buy a townhouse for $300,000+ !! I can't even afford to rent that place, assuming it will be bought by an aforementioned absentee landlord type!

There is another development that is steaming ahead, also $300,000+ townhouses, and apparently a representative of the development is coming to speak to our Parent Advisory Council meeting next week. On the one hand I'm very curious to see what they have to say about how they see themselves "contributing" to the neighbourhood (perhaps taking a big ugly empty lot and transforming it into expensive "family" housing is enough), and on the other hand I have to stop myself from concocting cynical, accusatory questions to throw at them and see how they handle it. Perhaps I'll report back here as to whether the angel or the devil prevails.

Getting back to Bella's question and point about neighbourhood public school funding, these two developments will significantly bump up the average value of property in the neighbourhood (since they are taking over lots that had been unoccupied), while contributing, at the absolute maximum, 10% of the children who attend the local school. That's assuming that ALL of the people who move into these 30-40 units of housing have school-age children. Presumably, those kids will be in the privileged minority, even assuming they attend our school, which is not one of the French Immersion schools and which has as its neighbourhood "competition" a "magnet" type school with a specialized program. Meanwhile, the 95% of 600 kids who eat hot lunches, and the 15% of 600 kids who come to school without winter coats or breakfast, see their programs cut and their chances dwindle.

Despite all those challenges, however, our school has done great things. It has taken a population that is about 85% ESL and given all those kids a sense of pride and inclusion, a feeling of safety and fun. It has devoted staff that take their own time and money to see that all the kids have something a little extra in their school experience. I sincerely hope that schools like ours offer the kind of environment that people like Bella are attracted to, because I would feel pretty damn good if she was one of my daughter's teachers. :)

Resolution

2005-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

Well, I generally do not make resolutions in January because I don't keep them. I think the dead of winter is a dumb time to commit to new projects because my instinct is to curl up in bed and try to stay warm. And with only 1/3 of the day actually being DAY, it's hard to stay motivated.

But, I also needed a definitive starting point for those typical new-year activities that I've been meaning to get to, namely getting my body and mind together, and I guess after Christmas is over is as good a time as any to get those projects underway. My resolutions are almost always the same. Here is a list of them and a week-in update.

1) Diet and Exercise. yeah, yeah, I know it's a cliche. But really, I've been trying to get this happening for a while now. I did Atkins (or a modified-Atkins, low-carb type regimen) for about 6 months, oh jeez I guess it was 2.5 or 3 years ago now. Yikes. I think I was about 30-40 lbs overweight at that time, and I managed to lose 20 in 6 months. I thought that was pretty good. But one thing led to another and I eventually gained most of it back. Since then I've hovered at the same weight and I still think it's 25-35 lbs too much. So I've been thinking about how to get that off. Thanks to a generous friend, I have free access to the weightwatchers site, and I've spent the last week or so investigating that and figuring out whether I can stick to it. I think I can, because it's not too far off what I've been doing. My nemesis is sugar, and if I can lay off the sweet treats, I'm halfway there.

Between being conscious and as observant as possible of the WW regimen, and making a stupendous effort not to indulge my sweet tooth, I've already, somehow, kicked 5lbs. I know it's common to see a rapid loss at the beginning of a program, and I fully expect to seesaw quite a bit, but I gotta tellya, seeing that needle falling back really gave my motivation a boost. I also plan to swim twice a week and do morning strength exercises, concentrating on 3 problem areas, three times a week. I'm being realistic and giving myself weekends off (exercise, not diet) since I know I won't stick to any weekend exercise program.

2) Journal, Blog, Course. These three things all fall into the same category because they are all about me being motivated to write and keep up with everything. So far, this has been slow going.

I've barely started my 2005 journal so I'm already falling behind in that. I haven't even done my 2004 wrap-up which is worrisome because the longer I leave it the less motivated I am to do it. I will, I WILL! I WANT to!

While I was off on the timeline a little bit (AGAIN!) in my course, I managed to get some good study time in and get my first paper of the new year in on time. The draft is very very rough, but I do have almost 2 weeks to revise it before I hand in the final thing. And I've already looked ahead to the next assignment and have begun searching out the research materials I'm going to need for it. I consider this a good beginning.

And since this is the first real entry in my blog of the new year, I guess I'm a little off on this one also. Although I don't expect to write in here very often so there's not as much pressure. I've also felt a little self-conscious about the quality of things I write about here. I've been told I'm a good writer and I think technically, I am, but I just don't think I have the most interesting content. It really is more of a journal than anything, writing about my boring life rather than the things I'm interested in or the cultural things I'm engaged in. Lots of my blogging friends write interesting things about books or music or movies, and I dunno. I just don't have anything to say about any of those things. So I feel boring. But, here I am, throwing the details of my life out there for all to see anyway. My next entry will be "Am I a Writer?" because I still don't really know.

Well that's it, and I think that's really enough. One thing I've learned about goals, is I need to keep them simple and easy, and FEW, or else I get paralyzed and don't accomplish ANYthing. If I have 2 things to work on, it's easy enough to fit them in. If I try to do 5 or 12 or 74 things, then I watch more tv and read more books and waste more time on the computer. Oh, the irony.

I probably shouldn't write while I'm PMSing

2005-01-08T08:23:00.000-08:00

so I won't. Just a few words to welcome 2005 and mention a couple things that are causing preoccupation to my brain.

snow.

car shopping.

exercise.

assignment due monday.

Film at Eleven.

2004-12-24T22:25:00.000-08:00

Christmas tree 2004 - fully loaded

writing

2004-12-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

"The unexamined life is not worth living for man." - Socrates (or Plato)

I keep a journal. I always have, ever since I can remember. Probably it started as me wanting to emulate my mom (which is a perfectly good reason to start something like that), who is a chronic journaler. Or "diarist," I suppose is the truly technical literary term for one who keeps a chronicle of one's own life.

When I was a teenager I wrote copiously, pouring out all my angst and all my arrogant ideas. I guess I had more time for it back then too, since I didn't have a TV when I was a teen, nor a computer with internet to waste time on. So I read and wrote a whole lot, and I have wonderful autobiography of that period. About 12 or 15 years ago I decided that I wanted to fill a book every year, and I started getting a dated book for each calendar year and designating a certain amount of space for each day or each week, with a couple of pages at the end so I could write a kind of summary. Every once in a while I'd fall so far behind that I couldn't fill the entire book by year's end, but by and large I'd fill the thing, if only to satisfy my own anal-retentive need to do things to completion.

A few years ago I started using a book that did not have dates in it, but provided approximately 1-2 pages per week for reporting and reflection. Each year I seem to be less able to finish up the entire book, despite meticulously figuring out how many pages I have to use and how many days to allocate to each page. This year, I wound up about 2 months behind, which sometimes really bugs me, but not enough to force me to sit down and fill the damn book up. It's just been such a good year, I didn't have enough angst to fill the book with, until the past few months, which have been characterized by a kind of suffering that requires me to file it away and attempt to forget about it, rather than writing it down for endless rehashing and analysis. So I haven't been writing a whole lot this year.

Now for my present dilemma. What I have been doing is writing in this here blog, which, while not providing an outlet for my innermost thoughts (yes, believe it or not I do have an even more private life than what you all read here), does give me an outlet for writing and reflection on less intimate topics. So, my question is, do I purchase a new book for 2005, and if so, which kind of book should it be? A full-size book that I can, say, paste blog entries into, and augment with extra private thoughts as they occur to me, or perhaps a book with smaller amounts of space, for general reporting? I'm leaning toward the former, which seems to make the most sense. I have a few more days to make the decision, and in the meantime I can review what little I did write last year, and prepare my annual summary. The blessing and curse of the examined life.

parenting is paradox

2004-12-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

in a theme that has recurred throughout my career as a parent, i have felt a disturbance in the Force all day. I am preparing (mentally, at this point - the physical preparations won't begin until later tonight) to send my daughter to her father and his family for their Christmas celebrations. This will include a visit with her uncle, aunt, cousins and grandmother at the uncle's place, and her dad will join them on Friday. As this event approaches, I am spinning as usual between keen anticipation of a short break from my parenting duties, and acute melancholy at being bereft of my child for such a long time. It is 3 nights.

I wonder whether I will have the same experience next week, when not only will I be absent from my child, but I will also be away, hanging out with my boyfriend. I wonder if, this time around, the anxiety I feel about her being away from me is made worse by the fact that she will be in largely unfamiliar surroundings. She has visited with her uncle and aunt before, and she will undoubtedly have big fun with her cousins, but she has never stayed with them for that long before, and her dad will not be there for the first part. I will be at home, puttering around, doing the last few preparations for our family Christmas, and enjoying a couple of evenings to myself with no responsibilities beyond my own needs. I will be thinking about her. Next week I'll be escaping with my sweetie, having even my own needs seen to by him, and taking care of him in return, so perhaps I won't feel it so keenly.

No matter what the circumstances, I feel an absence from my girl with a mixture of relief and sadness. My mother tells me that this feeling will never go away, and this weekend I witnessed another mother feeling and showing both pride at her grown son's independence and accomplishment, and a kind of grief at the distance that now lies between them, and the resulting diminished contact. I don't think any of us realizes the depth and breadth of emotion that we sign on for when we leap into this thing called parenting. I wouldn't give it up for anything.

silver lining

2004-12-21T08:19:00.000-08:00

the good thing about this being the shortest day of the year is that from here on in, the days will get longer and longer. It will be imperceptible until a few weeks from now i'll notice that when I leave work, there's still a glimmer of daylight in the sky. I'll miss the twinkling christmas lights that adorn all the houses though, a substitute for sun.

sexy

2004-12-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

grr, can't find a good title for this post.

okay so I got this inspiration from Yikesahootie's blog, where she says guys can meet women by writing a blog. At least, someone in her acquaintance seems to have managed this, although that was not his prime motivation for writing a blog. Which begs the question...why DOES he blog? But that's a topic for another day.

Anyway, so I read this article entitled Reading: The New Sexy on The Tyee, a local online lefty political and opinion site. The article is kind of mostly about a campaign by Penguin to make reading sexy, and the comments (which I confess I didn't read because usually those things are so trite it makes me want to barf) were (probably) critical of the article, but I'm more interested in the idea.

I do like a well-read man, or at least a man who reads. I managed to hook up with a man who doesn't read for recreation the way I do, and the way other men in my life have done, but I find it's not a detriment to my attraction to him. He reads lots of news and articles online and in magazines, and he's creative and stimulates his imagination in other ways, which make up for the fact that he's not particularly turned on by curling up with a book. He's still a smart guy :)

I liked the idea of creating a dating service based on what people like to read, except that when I take myself as an example, I like to read through the whole spectrum of stuff. Something from just about every genre has piqued my interest at some time, and I'm just as likely to be turned OFF a given genre at other times. It's all very complicated. I'm not sure I could identify a man who might be a good all-around match with me based on a book he might have in his back pocket when we met, just as I'm not sure I'd want to be assessed based on my current literary interest. It's an interesting idea, although as I said, I think just knowing the guy is smart and thinks outside the box would be enough for me. Which is why I enjoyed meeting men on the nerve.com personals. It's kind of an edgy site that seems to attract people outside the mainstream.

Hoy's

2004-12-11T19:05:00.000-08:00

Hoy's is the Chinese restaurant a block from my house. In a city with literally thousands of Chinese restaurants, Hoy's is not a standout. But, I can arrive home from work, phone in my order, walk over 10 minutes later and pay $6 for a plate of hot food that will be dinner and lunch the next day. And when I leave my door I can smell my food cooking :)

8 years ago today

2004-12-10T11:42:00.000-08:00

I was welcoming my daughter into the world. Almost this hour, in fact.

I have a very imprecise memory: most things I remember in terms of how I happened to be feeling at the time or from whatever was happening around the event in question. The birth of my daughter? I remember every detail with perfect clarity. From waking up at 5am on December 9 with cramps and lower back pain, having to pee, and hearing my mom, who was staying with me in anticipation of the event, get up and go to the bathroom. I heard her stop in the kitchen after using the toilet and I heaved myself up out of bed. I told her I had cramps and lower back pain and she said she did too: she'd gotten her period. Which was a very sporadic event back then, since she was menopausal. I went to the bathroom and went back to bed, but the cramps persisted and I didn't go to sleep. I didn't sleep again until 30 hours later actually, after I'd managed to endure the greatest physical (and consequently emotional) trial of my life.

I spent the day before my daughter's birthday in labour. First phase labour I guess they call it, something like that. Contractions that felt like menstrual cramps, on par with the worst cramps I'd ever had in my life. Something like having someone punch me in the gut about once every 10 minutes. My husband and mother went about their day, and I sat on the couch watching Rosie O'Donnell, soap operas, and Oprah, my attention focused inward. I was ready for this, utterly tired of being pregnant. I wasn't afraid. It hurt.

I didn't eat much dinner that night, partly because I wasn't hungry and partly because in prenatal classes they'd told us we shouldn't eat too much before we went into the hospital, because you never know what kind of effect the labour will have on your digestive processes, and with all the pushing...well, you get the idea.

We just kind of hung around all evening and the contractions, which had remained steady all day, gradually became stronger and closer together. At about 10pm we called the hospital, which was 35 minutes away down the highway. The contractions were about 30-60 seconds long and about 5 minutes apart. They told us we still had lots of time, but we could go in if we wanted. I was starting to feel a little nervous so we packed up and headed off. That was a difficult car trip. I was definitely hurting now.

When we arrived at the hospital they told us another mother was in the maternity suite but the delivery/labour rooms were free. It was a small rural hospital with one labour room adjacent to a single delivery room. The labour room had 2 beds in it in case there were overlapping deliveries, but tonight I was the only one there. The couple who had delivered earlier that day were still there, but they would likely be gone before I was done. The husband came by to visit (they had been in our prenatal class) and offered us his video camera. We declined, and I have never regretted that decision.

At about 10pm or so they offered me some demerol because I was pretty much exhausted by this time, having been awake since 5am. With reluctance I agreed to the shot, since they assured me I'd be able to doze before things got really serious. It would just take the pain away they said. I don't do well with narcotics of any kind, even codeine makes me very woozy. This shot didn't do shit for the pain but it made me very stoned. I stayed awake.

Around midnight or so my water broke. I will never forget that sensation, like a balloon suddenly popping just under the skin somewhere in my belly. I had the sudden, desperate urge to pee, and the liquid leaked out from between my legs as I shuffled, knees clenched together, to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and the liquid (somewhere in there it dawned on me that this was not just urine) tinkled down for a good 5 minutes. I endured at least one contraction during that time, and now that there was no cushy balloon between my baby's head and my pelvic bone, the pain took on a whole new dimension.

In prenatal classes the nurse warned us repeatedly about "back labour." This is where most of the pain is centred in the lower back. I did not experience this: my pain was all in the front. I found the best position for labouring was sitting backwards on a straight-backed chair, with my arms crossed over the backrest. I would hunch over and breathe through the contractions, now coming pretty much one on top of the other, with maybe a few seconds to relax in between. It was somewhere in here that I fell off the chair. Still in a Demerol haze I straightened after a particularly gruelling series and just kept going. The nurse and my mother got me sitting back up again.

The night passed pretty much like that. Around 6am the nurse decided to call my doctor. I was about 8cm dilated on one side, not quite so much on the other. I was dilating unevenly, which isn't a problem, it just meant I wasn't ready to push yet. My doctor arrived around 7am and I was fully dilated on one side. I still couldn't push because I could have torn my cervix. In prenatal class they had taught us panting, like a dog on a hot day, as a technique for resisting the urge to push. As that urge came on me, I dragged this memory from somewhere in my pain-riddled brain and started panting. It had seemed like the stupidest thing when we'd learned it in class, but damn if it didn't work. For a while anyway. When I was finally given the go-ahead to push, I was pushing for all I was worth before the words were even out of my doctor's mouth.

I pushed for over 3 hours. I started pushing at around 7:30am. The relief I got from pushing was immense, and immediate. The contractions seemed to slow and the intensity seemed to diminish. I felt like I was actively involved in the process, instead of just enduring it. But it was exhausting. After a couple of hours I started to actually doze off between contractions, I was so tired. I even started snoring a couple times, to my mom and husband's amusement.

Finally they figured out I needed help. They attached the suction cup to my baby's head and pulled while I pushed. At the very end, she was suspended with her head in the opening as I prodded my belly, for the first time in 30 hours begging for a contraction. It was the longest minute of my life, but when the next contraction came, I bore down and they gently pulled, and she slid out. I don't remember feeling any greater relief in my entire life. I was nervous about delivering the placenta, but with the flurry of activity that followed her birth--the discovery of her gender, the counting of digits, the weighing and placement of tiny pink knit cap on her head, I didn't even notice the placenta coming out (though I did get a glance of it in a metal dish later...ew.). They laid her on my breast and she looked up at me and the first thought I had was that it was exactly right. I was absolutely certain that I loved her and I could do it and everything was fine. It was 11:13am.

In the 8 years since that day I have had many, many moments where I was not so certain. In fact I was absolutely sure I'd made the biggest mistake of my life, becoming a mother. Luckily those moments, while numerous, are spread far enough apart that I can regain my certainty before the next one happens.

This morning while I sat with my daughter and watched her open her presents, I felt calm, happy, and confident. I was so caught up in the moment I forgot to have my shower. I remembered the first moment I saw her. I remembered the first time I felt her fluttering around in my belly. I remembered the moment the stick turned blue and I knew I was going to have her. I remembered the first time I knew that I wanted to have a child. I look at her with wonderment because she is 8 years old, she is my big girl and my baby. She is her own person and she is a part of me.

nature

2004-12-03T10:30:00.000-08:00

There is almost nothing in nature that stirs my heart so much as seeing canada geese migrating. I don't know why exactly, but it excites me and lifts my spirits to see them. Their flight represents strength, freedom, and intuition. I saw them this morning as I was walking from my car to my office. A smile came to my lips and I had to stop and watch them as they climbed.

A couple years ago I was dating a guy who I was destined NOT to be with. We had a very strong physical attraction but our situations and philosophies were completely different. One of my strongest memories of being with him was lying in bed one morning, just waking up. I was just becoming conscious and the first thing I heard was the sound of geese honking outside. From the sound of it, they were passing overhead, and in my mind's eye I could see them, their long necks straining, their wings beating, their voices carrying over the houses and the trees. My eyes were closed and my heart began beating a little faster and my lips curled into a smile. I felt my friend stirring beside me and heard his voice say, "mmm...I wish I had my gun."

it was like he had thrown ice water over my head. My heart constricted, my muscles tensed, and my mind shut down every good feeling I had toward him, just like that. It was a clear illustration of everything that was different between us, and even though we dated a little longer, I never had the affection for him that I had hoped might develop.

it was a little sad to know that he wasn't the guy for me, but at the same time, I was delighted to learn that I could follow my own heart, I could keep things in perspective, I could do what felt right to me, and not have to sacrifice my own ideals just to alleviate some loneliness. Strength, freedom, intuition. I think I know why I love the geese so much :)

Molehills, not mountains.

2004-12-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

i've never been a drama queen. I think honestly, i'm too damn lazy to get worked up over things. Don't get me wrong, I have my passions and I take things to heart...hell, I probably take things to heart more often than I should in the grand scheme of things. But I don't tend to act out. I pull my grievances in instead of projecting them outward.

If you've read my recent posts, you know that I've been in kind of a slump lately. Things just haven't seemed to be going my way, and I suppose part of it is my own fault, since I find myself goofing off instead of doing homework, spending money foolishly instead of socking it away for a rainy day, feeling sorry for myself for the things I lack in my life rather than feeling happy for the things I do have. I'm not going to do something silly like make some grand pronouncement about how it all ends here and now, because I'm nothing if not realistic, and I bear the burden of self-knowledge.

I went to the dentist last night to have a filling, and I was feeling pretty sorry for myself over that. Not because I feel put-upon about my dental hygiene, just about the procedure itself. I have a needle phobia so having the shot pretty much made me cry. The dentist asked me if I was okay while he was injecting me and I said "Unh uh" in that way you do when your mouth is being jacked open by fingers and dental instruments. It felt good to say No when he asked me that question, instead of lying and saying "oh yeah, this is just dandy" or the open-mouthed equivalent.

As I sat alone in the chair, waiting for the shot to take effect, I started to become filled with the "why-me's" again, and I realized, a little freezing really isn't much to get depressed over. I'm not a fan of comparing my own problems with the greater problems of the world, like war, famine, natural disasters, and the people whose lives are shattered by those types of things. Of course, my little woes don't compare, but that fact doesn't really make me feel any better when my self-esteem is in the toilet and I have 14 cents in the bank until payday, a week away. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say, exactly. I guess my point is mostly that I feel entitled to my woes, but I don't want them to take over or be the central focus of my life. It's exhausting to be down all the time.

So, even though I have all these little things that have piled up on me simultaneously to create what feels like a mountain of stress, I'm not going to moan or bitch or whine about them any more. I want to let myself feel them but I want to try and think positively. I don't want to fling myself down and pound the floor with my fists and scream and cry. I also don't want to do the thing I usually do, which is to plant my head firmly in the clouds and daydream myself out of my present dilemmas. I want to try and keep my feet on the floor and my eyes on the prize. Life is just more fun that way.

home for the holidays

2004-11-23T16:08:00.000-08:00

it's funny, but even though I've never lived in Milwaukee, I think of it as "home." Not all the time, just when I'm about to go there for a family visit. I always think to myself, "I'm going home for a visit," even though home is here and never has been anywhere else.

Home is where the heart is? I have the greatest amount of love and affection for this place and these people, not that place and those people. I love them like family, but they also drive me crazy. But I love them.

When I do go to Milwaukee for a visit, I roll my eyes and complain about my family, how their values are so different from mine, how they talk over you and never listen to you, and all the other little things about them that bug me. But, when it comes down to it, they are my people.

Lately I've been feeling like I'm in a bit of a jam, and while I feel reluctant to ask for help unless things get really really dire, even from the people who I know will help me, who help me without me even having to ask, I know that if I had no other recourse, my family would help me. At least, I think so. I've never asked, so I really don't know. I just believe that, despite their little annoying quirks, they are my family, and they are good people, and they would help me if I needed it and if they could.

But, they are more my last resort than my first one. Aside from family visits pretty much every year when we were kids, my sister and I were always a bit apart from the family. Over the past ten years I might have only made half a dozen visits there. And yet, everything remains the same and I feel comfortable stepping into that world just as if I were part of it every day. It's like a part of me, usually dormant, awakens when I'm in the presence of my family.

life is hard

2004-11-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

well, right now it seems to be. I wonder if complaining about it makes it seem easier, or if it just serves to rub my face in the hardness even more.

anyways, I don't have anything positive or witty or insightful to write about, but I did want to mention how much of a trial life is seeming like at the moment.

And also to put in writing the reminder that I am not alone, a fact that I seem to need to be reminded of pretty much daily. Maybe I should make that the banner on my cell phone.

coworker from HELL

2004-11-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

I guess I'm focusing a lot on what's going on at work, simply because the rest of my life is pretty harmonious I guess. This is a good thing, but we as humans are inclined to dwell on things that bug us, so here is another post about my coworker from hell.

I have always found it difficult to understand anyone who would or could spend 8 hours a day in a place and not have any social contact with the people you interact with all day long. Maybe because I don't have a lot of social interaction OUTSIDE work, but I actually like (most of) my coworkers and enjoy talking to them. This one person I work with simply does not talk to any of us, unless she has to, about work.

So we're in the midst of planning our holiday social events, and we've decided to have a little nosh/gift exchange dealie near Xmas, which we did last year also and which was actually quite fun. S and I were musing as to WHY it was so much fun, given the level of office discord, and we realized it was because CFH was on leave last year at Xmas. So the discord level was way way down. But, we all enjoy the holidays and we all enjoy each other (aside from this one person), so we decided to engineer it again.

Last week we had a cake break in the office to say farewell to one of our number, who was leaving us to get married and begin a new career. We hadn't had a social event since the summer, so it had been a while. We all gathered in the back office to chat and eat cake, and CFH just stayed at her desk and ignored us all. Later, the woman who was leaving, asked me if it was always like that and I said yes, it was. Don't take it personally. She seemed as incredulous as I at CFH's extreme unwillingness to engage with us.

Today, CFH approached S and requested that, if we were planning to have a Xmas celebration, to do so on a day when she was going to be off (ie. flex day or planned vacation day), because she "didn't want to have to take another sick day" to avoid our celebration. WTF?????????????? I really just don't get it. It makes me sad. We were sort of planning to do that anyway, since we're all kind of tired of trying to include her, but for her to actually REQUEST to be excluded, that just seems so wrong to me.

holy shit my work is dysfunctional.

2004-11-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

so when I started working here like 2.5 years ago the place had a couple of quirks. The main one that I faced every day was the extreme hatred between 2 of my coworkers, which predated me by at least a year, was spawned by a simple misunderstanding and has been perpetuated by general personality clash and stubborn pride on both parts. I get along very well with one of the women involved, and not at all well with the other (see the post "downwind of lunch"), but the feud is by now so ingrained that it has become part of the office culture. These 2 people never EVER speak, and this is an open office with common space and equipment. They have learned to work around each other, and luckily their duties do not overlap at all. Sometimes I wonder at our bland acceptance of this unacceptable situation.

Lately, the quirkiness has accelerated into what I can now classify as full-blown dysfunction. There has been a lot of staff movement over the past year or so. First, the woman I do NOT get along with, who also happens to be my backup for when I'm on vacation (and vice-versa) went away on an extended leave. Another person from the library stepped in to fulfill her duties during her absence, since his job is kind of seasonal and doesn't keep him busy all the time. That was fine, he seemed fairly competent, although there were a few gaps and errors that occurred, which I chalked up to sloppily executed training of inadequate length.

The woman returned to her job and was NOT happy with how it was done in her absence. She proceeded to stop talking to the guy who was filling in for her. Which was fine, because his regular job didn't have much overlap with hers.

Six months later, another woman went on leave, and it was arranged that this same guy (who still didn't have enough to do) would step into HER position during her absence. Unfortunately, his motivation and abilities seem to have severely deteriorated over the past several months, and he spends most of his time reading gaming forums with his headphones on, and his work is shoddy or left undone. People are always cleaning up after him.

Meanwhile, underlying all this is the complete lack of leadership in the library. There is a head librarian who has been "temporarily" promoted at the head office. Speculation abounds that she is in line for a permanent promotion, and will likely leave. Instead of hiring an acting head, the management temporarily promoted another librarian, who has worked here for many years but who did not WANT to be the head, and is not an effective leader. The supervisor in my department was likewise thrust into her position, by virtue of her job classification and seniority, although she lacks assertiveness and communication skills, and her sphere of authority has never been outlined clearly.

In the near future, the one effective supervisor, in a completely different department, will be going on maternity leave. It remains to be seen whether someone from this branch will be slotted in to fulfill her duties during her absence, or whether they'll bring someone in from outside. Obviously, given the history here, the management prefers to fill leave replacements internally. The only person from this branch who could do her job...is me. There are others who have more seniority and at least equal knowledge of the operations of the various departments, one or two who have the capacity to learn new duties quickly, retain the information and build on it. However, with the aforementioned communication problems, there is nobody else who actually possesses those qualities who also is speaking to everyone else in the library.

Sometimes it drives me crazy to come to a workplace every day where so many interpersonal problems exist. Maybe I'm too lazy or too something else to allow it to bug me too much, day to day, but sometimes I want to tear my hair out at the tension and the seemingly insurmountable conflict. Other times I just want to laugh with the ridiculousness of it all. I mean, we are ADULTS! I see my 7-year-old daughter having more mature relationships with her friends and colleagues than some of the people I work with. I find myself dwelling on the time, sometime in the future, when the people who do not "play well with others" just finally decide that they've had enough, and leave. Or I fantasize about the time, sometime in the future, when I decide I have had enough, and leave.

there's just not that much going on.

2004-11-15T15:36:00.000-08:00

except for the usual stuff that keeps me busy day to day. Here is what my typical week looks like, beginning with Monday because everyone (except, apparently, people who make calendars) knows that Monday is the first day of the week. Except for if you're jewish then it starts on Sunday night. Whatever.

Oh, by the way, the list doesn't include things like drop J off at school, feed J, put J to bed, or things like go to work or chat to CA online, since they happen pretty much every day.

Monday:Volunteer 1 hour in school library. Work till 6pm. Go grocery shopping. Meet J at CirKids.

Tuesday:Work till 5. Pick up J. Evening activities: clean hamster cage and/or bathe child and/or some other home-based project. Sometimes PAC meetings.

Wednesday:NIGHT OFF! Fun or functional shopping after work, dinner out with or without friends, veg out in front of crap tv all night.

Thursday:Kidless morning. Aaaaah. Brownie night. Rush through evening feeding ritual, take J to Brownies, do some small errands if necessary or go home and be domestic for an hour.

Friday:3 choices: a) pack up J and me for our weekend travels; b) frantically tidy house for weekend visitor; c) regular morning if it's a rare weekend at home alone together.

Saturday:Chill. Shop. Relax. If it's a good weekend, me and CA are hanging out or me and J are hanging out. Or hell, I'm hanging out.

Sunday:Relax as much as possible, then kick back into gear. Bathe child if possible, try to prepare some food that includes leftovers to make Monday morning as smooth as possible. Laundry!

So there you have it. Now everyone knows how interesting my life is.

2004-11-01T20:50:00.000-08:00

halloween 2004 - the full effect

2004-11-01T20:49:00.000-08:00

lil unicorn

2004-11-01T20:48:00.000-08:00

eek! smoky pumpkin!

learning...before my very eyes

2004-10-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

so last night, as i do every monday evening, before i went home from work, I went to the CirKids arena to pick up J. At first when she signed up for Cirkids, I was seeing her participation there as an additional opportunity for me to have some time to myself, maybe attempt to go swimming or work out at some gym or something. Instead, I've found myself coming in late to work on Mondays so I can volunteer at her school library, then stopping at the grocery store on the way home and then heading over to the arena. The fact is, I love watching her, and the other kids too, at CirKids.

first of all I find it fascinating, watching all these kids, ranging in age from about 7 to about 15, using their bodies in fun and creative ways. The atmosphere is not coercive...in fact I was worried that she wasn't actually getting enough guidance at first. But she really enjoys herself. All the kids do, that's really obvious.

there are several stations:

Movement (or Motions, as J calls it) is everything from basic ballet moves to choreographed dance routines. It's obvious to me, the adult observer, that these movements are done for basic muscle strength, control, and balance. J finds it very difficult. The older kids are working on a Thriller routine which is a total gas to watch.

Unicycle: pretty straightforward. I was worried about this on J's behalf, since she's not much of a cyclist. I don't think this is a physical difficulty though, since she has reported improvement in uni. She has felt coerced into cycling, and she really doesn't enjoy it. I wondered whether proficiency on a bicycle would correlate to proficiency in uni, but it doesn't seem to. She likes unicycle.

Juggling: also a difficult skill. I never learned it, though I never had any concentrated training either. I think it's one of those things that she'll eventually get if she works at it.

Tightwire: this is one of those skills that fascinates me. I think it's all about centre of gravity, and focus. Oh, and balance of course :) She seems to enjoy it, and my heart swells with pride when she lets go of the coach's hand for a few seconds, then kneels down and swings herself off the wire to the mat.

Trapeze: since J's favourite activity on the playground is hanging and swinging from the bars, I knew this would be one of her favourite stations in CirKids. And she really is like a little monkey, sure of hands and feet, her fingers and toes curling comfortably around the bar. Her face and voice are filled with joy when she's working out trapeze routines.

Tumbling: flipping, somersaulting, cartwheels, all that fun stuff. J is very confident in her physical abilities so it's a lot of fun to watch her...although I've never managed to see her at this station. She always seems to hit it before I get there.

Trampoline: what inspired this post was watching her on tramp last night. I was feeling a little anxious because she didn't seem too comfortable on the trampoline. Oh yes, she will bounce and bounce and bounce away happily, but as for doing even simple tricks, she didn't seem to really have it. Until last night, she achieved a "swivel hip," which is a seat bounce-turn around-seat bounce, without putting the feet down in between. She had a lot of trouble with it, but then there, right in front of my eyes, she did it successfully for the first time. The sight made laughter bubble to my lips. She looked over at me and gave me a thumbs-up, the most ecstatic expression on her face. It was one of those moments of pure parental joy.

I think this is one of the most worthwhile activities I could have possibly found for her.

downwind of lunch

2004-10-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

what is ruder:

unpacking, preparing, and eating your lunch at your desk, which is in the middle of a common space that contains several workstations, where your colleagues are working, or,

telling your coworker who has unpacked and prepared and is now eating her lunch at her desk, the next desk over from yours, that the smell of her lunch is making you sick to your stomach?

fun fun fun

2004-10-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

one of the words i often use to describe myself, whenever i have to write some kind of profile, is "playful." sometimes I get kind of down (see previous post) or distracted or irritated, but generally i'm a pretty happy person and I like to have fun. I have a serious life, serious job, serious issues and all that shit, but sometimes I just need to get silly. it's always been just integrated into my personality, but I think it appears incongruous at times, to the outside observer.

it's not just the desire to have fun, the way adults have fun. How do adults have fun, exactly? Going out for meals or drinks or coffee, doing activities like biking or hiking or canoeing...what? what else? taking classes in knitting or life drawing? that stuff isn't really what i mean when I talk about having fun in a playful way. What I mean by playing is more how kids play. You know, teasing (not in a mean way) or wrestling or making faces or talking in funny accents or trying to talk with your mouth stuffed full of saltines...jumping up and down for no reason at all, making paper airplanes or launching plastic parachute men off the balcony. stuff that gets its own momentum so that by the time you're caught up in it you're collapsed in a heap of giggles...then you shrug it off and go down to the corner store and get a popsicle.

I think this part of me predates parenthood, although I'm sure the fact that i spend a large amount of time with a child probably has served to let it come out more than it would otherwise. I don't really feel the need to keep that bubbly energy trapped inside, the way i might if I didn't have a kid around all the time. sometimes farts make me snicker.

Sex is fun. I think -- hell, I know, from first-hand experience -- that nothing kills a sex life faster than always being serious about it every minute. The human body is fun and it's funny. It looks funny sometimes. If we can't laugh at ourselves and our own bodies, then it's very easy to get hung up on our imperfections and start feeling bad about ourselves. I'm very happy to sit and make out, serious as a heart attack, for hours and hours, but then i like to get up from the couch and skip to the bedroom wearing a smile (and nothing else, if possible).

don't get me wrong. i like to have fun in sophisticated ways too. Getting dressed up and wearing makeup and fancy shoes, sitting in upscale restaurants talking about art or politics or fashion. Or sitting down with a bunch of parents and talking about our kids, our schools, our neighbourhoods. For me, those things can be fun too. And in all honesty, i really try to bring as much lightness to those freakishly adult moments as possible. Like I said before, I'm a serious person with a serious life, but I know the value of humour, and I think almost any situation can bear an infusion of fun when it's introduced at the appropriate moment.

but really, almost nothing beats a good game of hopscotch and a gumball from a gumball machine.