You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2007.
Happy Halloweeeeeeeeen! This is my favorite holiday. We used to have a costume loft which was reluctantly downsized to a 6 large boxes when we relocated to the Lost Coast last year. I knew there would come a day when I would miss the vast options that the costume loft provided – it was today. I still managed to slap together an altering ensemble but my style was a bit cramped. All said and done, this was the first year that we’ve properly done halloween since becoming parents. It felt good to be back in the saddle.
When we asked O what she was going to be for halloween this morning, she said, “an egg crack.”What a genius. I’m still trying to visualize how such a costume could be constructed. For six weeks leading up to halloween, Ossian has been wearing her fancy dinosaur costume every couple of days…just to get ready. Plus, it’s really fun to be a dinosaur for no reason at all. There was a painfully cute and unformed costume parade at O’s school today – it ended at the store with gigantic treats. They were giving out full size snickers bars. I decided that was way too much for my child’s first trick or treating experience and did the hard work of eating all of her candy before it could negatively impact her little body. Snickers happens to be my favorite unacceptable treat.
My little dinosaur and her little chicken sister napped hard after the parade to rest up for what turned out to be a long night of partying. We began with a puppet show at Ruth’s barn. It was a rendition of “Pandora’s Box” which we only enjoyed a few minutes of before O got a bit spooked and asked to go outside. We then went treat seeking and visited a couple of parties. It was a real night out. Nola slept in the carrier in her chicken suit and Osh fell asleep in her dino getup at a party so Blase and I got to stay out until after midnight while our kids happily slept within feet and inches of us amidst a jolly group of halloween celebrants. The only thing cuter than watching your child sleep is watching your child sleep in a dinosaur or chicken costume.
We’re back from our San Francisco expedition to see Manama. This drive is alleged to take just six hours of steady but safe driving from bustling Petrolia. This time around, we made the trip down to the big city in ten hours and the return in six and a half. Our friends Justin/Amy/Violet have clocked in at just 5 hours and 19 minutes – and that’s with a toddler. Thom Martin recently threatened to nab fastest trip title with his one-way time of 4 hours and 55 minutes.. in a mini-van, no less. Though no animals were harmed during his trip, kuntrywife does not recommend trying this at home. Our winners in the longest trip category are the Wilson-Haiz lovelies. Their recent trip to see us from San Fran took a record-breaking thirteen hours….this was with two kids, a Prius, and an adopted dog from china. To our amazement, they were still speaking and were very nice when they arrived at 10 pm.
What we love most about visiting the city is, of course, visits with friends and and grandparents. Having made that disclaimer, we also get ridiculously obsessed with the infinite food options. An added bonus for this trip was hotel stay which meant no laundry, no dishwashing, no cleaning, no fire building, and no cooking for five whole days. A real breather for this kuntrywife and tiredhusband.
We stayed in the downtown Hilton where I spent a cumulative total of 84 minutes completely lost over the course of our stay. Sounds silly but have you been there? This hotel squats on a fat city block and is the largest hotel in all of san fran. 2000 rooms – all of which were full while we were there. It’s a teeming, weird, nearly self-contained, somewhat claustrophobic, entirely unnatural habitrail for human beings. It’s a little city within the city that requires more than 1300 front line employees ( mostly union) to operate. My mom was attending the annual Council on Social Work Education conference at the hotel. The conference’s 2300 participants further insulated this little terrarium of hominid, creating a busy ant farm of social workers engaged in networking, ware peddling, idea making, and steam building for their vital social causes.
We did eat some delish Thai Food and a few varieties of Eggs Benedict. One morning, we accidentally got very settled into a ample burgundy booth in what seemed to be a lovely breakfast spot called Cafe Mason. It was only after we’d ordered our food that I noticed the large red letters typed on the front of the menu that read, “Disruptive children and crying babies will not be tolerated. If you cannot contain your child’s disruption or you baby’s crying, you will be asked to leave.” It was at about this time that I also noticed how whiny and tired my two children seemed to be. Oh yeah, we had been on the road until 10:30 the night before and both were underslept. I felt the rumblings of what could be my first really rough restaurant experience with them. Since Ossian’s first days of life beyond the womb, we’ve always taken her to restaurants and never shied from public dining experiences. Now that we live in Petrolia, our opportunities for dining out are few and far between, leaving Nola a bit less experienced in the department of restaurant dining. Despite this, she handles it like a real pro. That is, until Cafe Mason. Not that either of them were crazy loud or wild or anything, they were just snarky and threat of a full-on exhausted child riot loomed in the distance. (Oh yeah, and Nola was teething with a vengeance. She actually cut her first tooth that night, right there in tower one of the downtown Hilton) The only surface wetter than Nola’s drooly face was my sweaty forehead – evidence of the burgeoning anxiety within as the reader board in my head played the scrolling headline “you will be asked to leave..”. Dueling swells of indignant rage and people-pleasing pressure battled in my body as a I wolfed my eggs benedict and green tea. At least I would be ejected with a full belly. Rude, child-hating, mom judging bastards, I thought. Then I would tangle with lurking frustration with the kids for their inability to comply with the restaurant’s edict… back to rage, then back to embarrassment – and so on, and so forth. This was not the relaxing breakfast out ol’ kuntrywife had been hoping for.
I tried hard not to be disappointed by what felt like a small turnout for the “big” peace rally at Civic Center. I’ve since read that an estimated 30,000 people were there and that over 100,000 demonstrated throughout the country. That feels a little better. I guess with over a million Iraqis and several thousand american soldiers dead at our hands, not to mention the many more that come back injured and traumatized, I had hoped that the urgency and magnitude of this disaster would have brought out tens of thousands more. Some suggested that people are experiencing war fatigue – as the thing drags on without so much as a substantive reevaluation by the Bush Administration.
We also made the rounds to the zoo, the sea lions at pier 39, and the aquarium where Ossian found the giant sea bass “too sad” to look at. The are a bit sad looking with their bulging eyes, frowny mouth, and trademark lethargy. Here’s a horrible statistic that I read on the placard at the sea lion hangout: 18% of sea lions have cancer. And it’s not from smoking Marlboro’s.
The Briar-Bonpane team (comprised of Blase on bike, Jen on feet, Ossian and Nola in the jogger) won a coveted Rye and Tide trophy in the annual race event here in Petrolia. Pounding the pavement and gravel for a scenic seven mile run, our team gave a solid performance which brought us in at 24th place (out of 24 – see photo of Ossian displaying our trophy). Our time was lengthened considerably when Ossian exited the jogger to answer nature’s call and then refused to climb back in. Instead, she ran just over a mile in her zippy zippered shoes before surrendering to the comfort of her wheeled throne. Most importantly, despite our late finish, there were still a few skewered hot dogs in the fire to feed our weary bodies after stumbling across the finish line with two sleeping children.
We were joined by race veterans, Eric, Amy, Ozzie, and Sylvie Wilson – up for the weekend from San Francisco. Boy do we love these guys. Together we fed cows, reprimanded dogs, hiked the forest, ate lasagna, picked pumpkins, juiced apples, baked fresh pumpkin pie, rolled fimo, ran a race, and flipped pancakes.
Blase blissfully played drums for the house band while I slung beans in the kitchen – all at the Cabaret – a multi-hour marathon of talent to benefit the Community Center.
Thought it might be worth sharing a photo of the high school where I work. It’s called Triple Junction because of our seismic location at the intersection of three major plates – all of which move frequently.
The school consists of several trailers, a hearty garden, basketball and tennis court, and the river running right next door. There is no potable water at the school and enrollment has steadily dwindled from more than 60 kids in past years to just 7 currently. That’s a longer story for another day.
Despite the less than glamorous structures, the school sits in a beautiful location.
The other photo is of a hay truck topped with matching dogs that I slowly followed on my way home from work last week. It reminded me of wedding figures on top of towering cake.
This morning, Ossian packed up her shark backpack with sea creatures, put in her back and announced she was going to work. This is a daily ritual and I am always interested in hearing about what kind of job she is headed for – it changes all the time. When I asked what her job was today she said, “I’m a tired husband – that’s my job.”
Nola loves to play her tiny piano… she’ll do it for a long time. I can almost finish debriding a heaping sinkful of crusty dishes before she finishes a little recital. Check out the video for a sample.
Yesterday, Ossian picked up Bird By Bird, written by Anne Lamott, settled into a cozy valley between laundry pile ranges and announced that she “just wants to read this book for a little while I think”. She then lowered her sunglasses, adopted an exaggeratedly grown-up thinking expression and “read” this 237 page book for nearly a half hour.
This is a great book, by the way, for anyone working on the business of writing something. Though I haven’t gotten very far into the book, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of her advice to just write what you can see through a one by one picture frame in your mind. It’s a concrete method of breaking things down into writeable pieces rather than being hijacked by overwhelmedness.
I tend to read multiple books at a time and periodically I try to break myself of this tendency by getting very strict, directive, and linear – with myself. During these periods, I decide that multiple book reading is not methodical enough and that finishing one before starting another is the higher ground. Then I feel a little oppressed and slowly I stop reading altogether. Thankfully, about this time, I alway encounter someone I respect describing the 4 books they are currently nibbling at and I let go of my little fascist exercise and resume reading books again.
I just finished Obama’s auto biography, Dreams from My Father and now, in an attempt to be fair, I am reading Hillary’s, Living History. I was hoping these books would give me fuller picture of how these two potential world leaders think.. what they’ve been through, what they value, how they are motivated, etc. I want a better sense of their personal experiences and inner workings to understand what drives their political wills. I love that Obama was a driven community organizer – he’s seen and responded to the institutional injustice around race and socio-economics that is so obviously emblazoned in communities burdened by poverty. He’s been on the ground, viscerally experiencing the shortcomings, power, and need for responsible domestic policies. He has struggled with his relationship to race and has not shyed away from hard questions he’s sought to answer for himself as the nation aired its dirty racist laundry for all to see. Hilary’s story is so different, but like Obama’s, tells the story of a potent historical era. Hilary, a baby boom girl, coming of age as feminism stepped up its march. All the dreams and hopes of her mother and generations of women before her strapped on her back – all their work and suffering having paved the way for a slightly broader future for her. It reminds me of my mom and the responsibility she has carried throughout her career – early on, to prove she could do it like a man and later, to cheer lead for other women – to bring them along and now, to relax a little and find a sustainable way to balance self, career, health, politics, and baggage.
It dawned on me this morning, while panting uncontrollably behind the sweaty handle of our pre-school bound jogger, that Ossian could write a tell-all memoir or publish a toddler-sized enquirer filled with the confidential information she’s privvy to. Nola is no less innocent, though her goo goo ga ga looks might lull you into thinking otherwise.
When I load my girls into the jogger to run with friends, I look forward to their contented containment and the “freedom” it affords me to sweat and listen and talk. Once we get rolling with physical and verbal momentum, Ossian gets silent with focus. She doesn’t miss a word. She hears everything. It makes me blush and cringe ever so slightly to think about all the jogger talk she’s been exposed to. When she’s not in the jogger, I’m quite careful about what I say in front of her. But when she’s in the jogger, I quickly forget that she is listening. Maybe because she is atypically out of sight, out of center stage, and out of danger. My vigilance collapses and my mom self relaxes a little. What a delusion it has been for the past 25 months that she’s been a jogger jockey. My nascent panic about this subsides a bit when I remind myself that I rarely ran with friends when we lived in Seattle… but since we’ve been in Petrolia, it’s a whole different story.
It’s not that she’s heard anything evil or damaging, just private and juicy woman-to-woman talk about partners, friends, work, health, doubts, dreams, and day to day dishy drama. On the positive side, maybe she’s learning about the deep trust of friendship. Maybe she’ll feel more comfortable listening to another person’s worries and listening through a pal’s sobs to be their loving friend. Hopefully, she’ll lean into the trust she builds with her future friends to share all parts of herself and find the support, understanding, and love that she’s seen me rely on with my friends.
I think she’s learning about the world of women, too. I never thought I’d find myself making such a gendered statement but here I go… I think friendships between women are often different than those between most men. I know this is not a new idea and to say there are exceptions to this would be a cavernous understatement. I’m only suggesting a tendency that seems to be present, more often, in womens’ friendships. Is that diplomatic enough? That tendency is to talk often and openly about our inner-workings, our dissatisfactions and fears, our intentions and our secret dreams, our love lives and the nitty-gritty of our relationships. Men do this, too – maybe just to a far lesser degree.
Blase will get off the phone or return from a night out with a male friend, for example, and I’ll ask him for an update..how their situation at work is, how their health problems are faring, how their rocky relationship is going or how their dying relative is feeling, etc. Usually, his response is, “we didn’t talk about that”. “How did you not talk about that?”, I’ll wonder aloud. “It just didn’t come up”, he’ll often say. “How did it not come up during five hours together?”, I’ll respond with predictable shock… “Um, it just didn’t,” he’ll say. This always amazes me. When I get with women friends, generally within minutes, we get right to it; down and dirty with what’s really going on.
Blase has lots of close male friends and is an exceptionally evolved man in many departments that were foreign to most men in our fathers’ generations. He listens and cries and cares and soothes babies and tells friends he loves them and checks in on friends who are down. If even he’s not talking about these things as the core substance of his exchanges with male friends, it begs the question of whether there is a bit of a gendered style of friendship – even among Blase’s league of cutting edge men.
Or maybe he is just really good at keeping his friends’ secrets…
Thoughts?
This morning was a real mommy slammer. I started off a bit rocky due to insufficient sleep. It never fails that on the nights that both kids sleep relatively well, potentially giving the grown-ups a chance for good sleep, one of the four-legged animals stages a late night riot. Normally, it is our long shepherd, Faucet Alexander. Last night however, or more accurately – early this morning, it was our elusive feline, Waylon. She’s been making the blog more than usual lately… maybe she wants her fifteen minutes of fame.
We got up and began our predictable AM routine – cuddle with Ossian, cuddle with Nola, cuddle together, use the little potty, jammies off, eat cereal, change nola’s diaper, feed mommy, etc. By now, it was 7:30 am and just before it was time to feed low-blood sugar mommy, everybody got a little needy. I started cooking pasta to take with Ossian to her playdate/babysittee gig. Nola was growing increasingly frustrated with her inability to scoot forward toward the toy piano she loves to play – her giggly cooing slowly getting louder and morphing into yowliness. Piles of paper, art supplies, and shoes crashed onto the floor, ejected by the accelerating vibration of the eagerly spinning dryer upon which they’d been perilously perched. This startled Faucet who whined and jumped. I pulled out the overflowing kitchen garbage bag which had been impregnated by droves of greedy gorgonzola ants (have I explained the gorgonzola ants? – another post). They were so greedy that they immediately ran up my fingers and wrists when I disrupted them. (No matter what the situation, Gorgonzola Ants inspire a visceral rage that starts in my spine every time I tangle with them). I was planning my response to the swarm of ant pests climbing up my limbs while trying to calm nola’s escalating irritation when Ossian hollered that she needed to be wiped. The teapot launched into a whistle as the phone rang, sending Faucet back into whiny land. I stepped over the ringing phone as I passed a now shouting baby, noticing that the dying fire needed a log or we’d be chilly on this rainy day and quickstepped to Ossian. As I reached her, my nose unleashed it’s congestion leaving me desperate for a kleenex. In that instant, Ossian spotted Faucet gulping her unattended cereal from her perky green bowl. He is such an opportunist. She became hysterical, charging after Faucet, pantless and poopy, shrieking, “NO, Faucet. That’s not ok!!” I’m sure you’ll recall previous posts which illustrated my approach to triage in this type of situation – live and uncontained poop gets priority. Sorry to mad Nola, nervous Faucet, the darkening fire, overflowing garbage bag now spilled on the floor, unidentified caller, my running nose, outraged teapot, stolen cereal, and my own growly low blood sugar – all of whom had to take a back seat for this moment. I had to wipe that now sprinting and hysterical toddler. A moving target is more of a challenge, especially when Gorgonzola Ants are circling your neck. I did the job while flinging gorgonzolas off with spastic jerks of my body, and scooped up Nola. Off went the teapot, back in the bag went the garbage, a dry log hit the fire, a new bowl of cereal was poured, my nose was attended to along with Nola’s, Faucet received enough attention to soothe him (don’t want to overdo it), and the frenetic energy slowly left the room. I squatted down in front of Ossian to apologize for using a snappy voice when I impatiently told her to hold still so I could wipe. She gave me a knowing smile, hugged me with her whole body then pulled her sweet head back to make eye contact before telling me, “it’s ok mommy, I love you still.” Still? Where did she come from… this little angel in my kitchen.
We finished getting dressed, reading books, packing up lunch, changing Nola, driving trucks, and playing on the feltboard before donning dino boots and raincoat to head to Nick’s house. On the way to the car, Ossian chanted, “Jesus, the ants are everywhere!,” more times than I care to reveal here. Where could she have learned that?
On the other side of Lighthouse Road, mischief of another kind was sneaking around this morning. On my way back from Nick’s house, I interrupted a party of delightedly guilty looking goats who had escaped their acreage and were gorging themselves on the tasty apples at our favorite apple stand (ok -it’s also the only one).
We have somehow been fast-forwarded to pseudo winter with daily torrents of relentless rain and chilly evenings. Some windstorms to boot. Rumor has it that the waves down the road are supposed to roll 30 feet high for the next couple of day. It’s invigorating. Such weather makes for lots of spontaneous rainbows, little treats that emerge during our fleeting sun breaks. One such rainbow, the girls and I attempted to capture in a photo below. Sometimes what’s at the end of a rainbow is your silverstreak trailer, not a pot of gold.
With the winter weather, we are also re-awakening our fire tending selves. Our house is heated exclusively with wood so we need an ample and dry supply, like…yesterday. We didn’t have any free time anyway but somehow, with an entire season free of fire tending, the return to the woodstove routine means yet another consistently time-consuming chore to fit in. Blase has been on the gathering and cutting of firewood. A photo below depicts him on a water break during a wood hunt mission – one of his favorite things.
In other random news… Nola is driving: see photo below. Nola is also sitting up with minimal capsizing.
The last photo is a bit of challenge… can you tell if it’s Blase or mini-Blase?
This post’s title was written by our questionably literate orange cat, Waylon. She writes quickly, with just one paw so her work is quite impulsive – uui89i – there she went again. At this moment we are engaged in a physical struggle, a bit of a cat and woman scuffle that involves her forceful placement of mouthfuls of kibble onto my keyboard followed by my gentle push of her body and brush off of her deposit. Her paw then swipes the keys to get a few words in, I push back again, and we lock eyes. Eventually, we both move on and I am able to type for a fewuoi899uuoiu more seconds before she comes back again and we repeat the cycle. The whole cycle takes about 23 seconds to complete.
he55uiyiy hrre here she comes – phew, she’s moved onto punching the dog in the o2222222222221mq – guess I spoke too soon – nose. I guess I’ll feed her some fancy feast and buy myself a little time.
What I wanted to say in this post is , gheez, sorry about the angsty tirades I betrayed you all with yesterday. It was a little too much of my inside voice. That is one danger of having a private, un-stuctured blog. It’s apparently a slippery slope and anything can happen. Just to make us all feel a bit more comfortable, please know that today is delightful and has been filled with post-storm rainbows and blissed out cows loafing in the road. The girls and I went to town and did seven hundred thousand small and medium errands before they both collapsed into snores in their well-worn carseats. That last 48 minutes of the drive from town, with a trunk full of supplies, two safely sleeping children, and the ipod on some cheezy babe music, is like my little vacation. I drink cold coffee like it’s an 18 carat mojito and feast my eyes on the steamy view of our great western edge.8 1““p5 Jesus – waylon just stormed the computer and made the screen go black for an entire minute. I don’t even know how to do that.
Anyway, don’t leave me over yesterday’s rampage. Waylon is my new editor so I think things are really looking up.
oh the pain of motherhood.
a few times in the past week, Ossian has been playing and said things like, “but that’s just for boys” or ” only boys can play that” or “that’s a game for boys”. .. I have tried to ask her about this but her answers have been less than informative. I want to know why she’s come to think that some games are for boys and how she encountered that message.
As I often do as a mother, I deeply freaked-out internally but continued smiling and quietly nodding to ossian as she spoke during each one of these gendered proclamations. Luckily, now that she’s in preschool, we can blame a lot of things on that new institution in our lives. Don’t get me wrong, we love it, but it’s always nice to have a new scapegoat when it comes to disturbing behaviors that crop up in your child.
I asked her teachers about this today, wondering if they had seen any interactions between kids that would have conveyed these messages. Nothing came to mind for the teachers. They did report that since the rain has started, they’ve been having play time in the gym instead of on the playground. In the gym, the teachers explained, the boys, particularly the older boys, are usually on one side of the room being loud and more physically wild or active. (I am so aware just in writing this sentence about the potential for gender stereotypes even in my description, yikes!) All but one of the older kids are boys and the one older girl (in this instance, older mean more than 3 years of age, no offense to the senior readers, here) has been absent for the past week and a half. When she is present, she is able to play with the older boys. Without her, the older kid play is also exclusively boy play and these older kids tend to ignore Ossian (another gut-wrenching heart-breaker for this mom to hear) and all the younger kids at playtime. So, it is possible that Ossian has interpreted this older kid snubbing and exclusivity as a “boy thing” during this absence of the older girl member of the not-even-close-but-lets-call-it-a-clique. I’m fascinated and disturbed at the same time. Amazed that she’s noticed these groupings and that she perhaps has understood it as function of gender.
What are we to do? We teach her that she can do and be anything. We limit the pink clothing to the occassional parade of lovingly given gift outfits. We make sure there are more trucks and trains on hand than dolls and avoid all use of the “p” word (princess). We let her pee standing up like her friend Salmon Bear (a person, not a bear) when she chooses to and encourage her to wear whatever clothes in the closet that strike her fancy. Her best friends have been boys and she has spent equal time with mom and dad for the duration of her life to date. She sees mom cooking, cleaning, lifting heavy stuff, running, and chopping wood. She sees daddy do the same things. We teach her to sew and to build and to sing and to jump in puddles and play ball and run and read and do dollhouse and cook and laugh and play drums and love her sister. It’s not that I think or want to convey that men and women are the same; I’m not that type of fool. I just want her to see and believe and assume that she can do or be anything. I want to be proud of being a girl. I want her to be undaunted by isms and empowered to follow her dreams and be fully herself. Probably all of the things my parents wanted for me.
And still, I was told in countless ways that I was just a girl. For example, when I met with our high school counselor as a national honor society senior to decide whether to drop AP calculus (due to the overt sexism of the teacher who had asked all the girls in the class to drop his class in exchange for the raising of our grades – that’s another story!!! – he was later promoted to head of the math department) or stick it out despite a somewhat hostile teacher. I was worried about my standing with colleges to which I would be applying. I was interrupted mid-sentence by this male counselor who leaned forward and, putting his hand on my knee, said “Jen, you have such a pretty face. I hate to see you worrying about this. Did you know that Barbizon Modeling has a rep in the library right now? Why don’t you go on over right now and talk to her?” These things happen, and lots worse, too. Even to those of us raised by educated and passionate feminists in conscious communities of privilege. Part of the pain of parenting is accepting that you’ve brought a perfect being into a mightily imperfect world.
I will no go quietly…. AAGHGH!
life on the lost coast 
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