Clearing Clutter

I got to clear the closets today. I sat in the floor with my trash bag, my scan-this box, my shred-this box and my keep-this pile and wept and laughed over 20 years worth of collected notes, school essays, notebooks full of terrible poetry from the year I was 19. I kept some things, threw some things away but was finally able to look at it all. Some of it is terribly poignant, like the cards from old friends who I don't know anymore, who write, "I'm so glad we'll always be friends!" Then birthday cards from relatives who have passed on, "I love you" in Grandma's precious handwriting, the little folded rectangular notes friends and I used to pass to each other between classes in high school. I still remember this one spot in front of Lincoln, which I passed on my walk from R1 to... where did I go after that? Inside the main building somewhere, and out front by the gum tree my friend and I would pass each other, nearly at the same spot every day, and we would hold the notes out and exchange them and learn about the other person's day -- who called, who flirted, who said what about whom and what we wanted to be when we grew up, that day. We watched different versions of Shakespeare adaptations and compared them, poured out our hearts to each other about what made us sad and what we hoped for.

I was very happy to find a poem about paper clips that I wrote in middle school. Sounds boring but I was very proud of it at the time (and I think still a bit now). It was something on the theme of how such a tiny simple thing can change everything -- some bent metal can bring order to a terrible mess.

And on that idea, the next part of the clearing which was the most difficult, which I have been putting off for about three years and ten months, going through the bag of preemie boy clothes and picking out which few to keep and which to give to the NICU. It's a particularly sticky issue because for some reason I have very little memory of what happened after we brought Chris home from the hospital, until about Christmas of that year, two months later. But when I see the little outfits, sometimes I will have a little spark of memory and I will remember him tiny and in my arms. Some of them don't spark anything at all, and those I put away to donate. But a few stick in my memory: A sleeper, ten inches from bottom to top, which was too big for him when we brought him home. A tiny, tiny stripey onesie. Somehow sorting through them and putting some away and giving others away is one of those terrible-but-necessary things. It felt good in the way that it feels good to break up with someone wrong for you -- overall it's good, but the doing of it still rips a bit.

It's hard to think of a good way to end this, but just to say that it's amazing how something that happens so quickly can change your life forever, and that the ripples can still be felt so far out on the water, miles from where the pebble dropped.

Kid Schedules

Well, that time has come again -- the time to rework the daily kid schedule to keep both of these energetic, smart, hell-hacking children occupied and engaged with the world.

Several things have shifted -- Chris has exited the terrible twos, which is a good thing, because he'll be four years old in two months. And as if on cue, Norah is stepping up to fill the tantrum void. She is already doing things like throwing herself on the floor, wailing when you (for example) don't allow her to repeatedly smack on the glass on the front of the goldfish tank at Walmart. She has a lot of energy that needs to be channeled into more than just playing in the house all morning.

It's starting to get more fall-ish, but still too hot for any kind of extended outdoor play, but it won't be long before we can start spending an hour or so on the playground every morning. I think that the kids need early morning activity, then some chill time, then lunch, then more activity, then chill time, then evening. I think I should make it a goal not to have the TV on very often during the daytime.

So, when Chris starts school on Monday, what sorts of activities can Norah and I do, to help her burn energy? I think she might be interested just in holding my hands and walking around stores, or playing on certain parts of playgrounds.

Here is a dilemma -- I love to do messy play with the kids -- flour and water, bubbles, play-dough, all that sort of thing -- but I can't even keep up with cleaning the house when we don't do those things -- how can I do those kinds of activities, which the kids need, without completely trashing my house? And I can't do them outside -- not yet.

I think the answer to many of these dilemmas is the same answer that has been there for a long time, which I have halfheartedly tried to work on, but have not succeeded because I am not putting enough effort into it: Get up earlier. I need to get up at about 5:30 so that I can pray, work, and prepare the day's activities before the beasts begin to awaken at 7:15 or so. Right now I sleep until the very last moment, and then I wake up to a headache, two hungry kids, diapers, clothes, getting Ben off to work (which doesn't require much from me, but occasionally has me searching for a coffee cup of a lost shoe)... the dust doesn't settle until after 9am, and I have to wait until naptime for a minute to myself, so that when naptime doesn't happen, I feel totally off balance for days at a time.

So, self, start getting up early... okay? Did you hear me? Ugh.

This is the mundane daily stuff that takes up some of my brainpower. Parenthood requires constant shifting to keep the balance right. There is sort of a science to it, but when it comes down to it I end up relying on instinct.

Here's to the new school year and new adventures! :)

Vacation Lessons

Vacation was fun! We went back up to Helen, GA, and we rented a private cabin this time which was great. The kids had fun and they did a really good job traveling. In fact I think that Ben and I had more tantrums between us, while on the road, than the kids did. Blame I-75, and GA 85, 485, and 985. Those wretched roadways. Urgh. I was trying to decide if they were better or worse than the 101 and 405 out in LA, and I think they are worse, because it is as if you took the 405, shrunk it down a little, and then let loose a bunch of small-town drivers on it. At least in LA everybody drives like they are crazy. But around Atlanta it is very inconsistent. Some shiny BMWs driving 95 mph and zipping around, and some minivans with ten people and pillows hanging out the windows, crates with chickens strapped to the roof, that sort of thing.

Anyway, I enjoyed myself (due in no small part to the hot tub on the back porch of the cabin. Ben and I decided that a hot tub should be a standard feature of the American home/apartment. You could put one in the middle of my living room. I would totally take it.) and I learned some lessons as well:

1. Traveling with a 1 yr old and a 3 yr old is waaaaaaay easier than traveling with a 2 yr old and a 2 month old. Just in case you were wondering. Part of this is because Norah is old enough now to be a copycat, so when Chris is doing something, she wants to do it too. This might seem annoying on the surface (one person gets a cookie --> the other person HAS to have a cookie too...) but really it is more convenient. One of the hardest things about taking care of an infant isn't the fact of the infant care schedule itself, but the fact that the infant care schedule does not coincide with any other schedule of anything on earth, so there are always conflicting needs. With two kids copying one another, though, you have the joy of experiences like

PRETZEL TIME

From Instant Upload

and JUICE TIME

From Instant Upload

followed closely by NAP TIME

From Instant Upload

2. I really, really, fundamentally stink at relaxing. We were in GA from Friday afternoon until Sunday morning, and I didn't chill out until Saturday night. And I was really working on it. (And yes, I realize how ridiculous and contradictory that sounds.) I think that having so many juggling balls in the air all the time at home puts me on constant alert -- there is always something I should be doing -- so it feels really strange and awkward to just, say, sit around and read a book. My mind keeps running to one thing or another. It was good for me to practice relaxing, and it makes me realize I need to work on it more.

I will post later with more Helen photos but for now I with leave you with a classic Nash (Griswold) family moment, filmed about an hour and a half from home, just south of Tifton. This video makes me love Ben more every time I watch it. I can't wait until we go to the Grand Canyon... ;D

Out of the Office

Today I have been thinking about my work/home life (and they are so intertwined that they are difficult to pull apart and examine) and I am full of gratitude again for the fact that I no longer work in a conventional office.

I met many wonderful people in my office work, and I learned a lot of important things as well. But.

There is an element to office work that I can summarize as the "pieces of flair" element. If you have seen Office Space, you know what I am talking about.

And if you haven't seen it, go see it. Now.

I think that online work suits my personality because the one element of office work that I could never get a handle on was the unspoken not-allowed-to-discuss-it-but-must-perfectly-embody-it "office culture" thing. It is the same thing that has caused me problems in my friendships as well -- when there is an unspoken expectation, and it is too vulgar to actually talk about it, but it doesn't make any sense, and if you ask the wrong coworker about it, they blab to the boss... etc. As an example, one time I was taken aside and berated -- in front of a coworker -- for "doing bad phone." No one could tell me what I was actually doing wrong, but they could tell me that it wasn't right. The people calling expected something more -- some conversation -- but what could I discuss? I didn't know them. I didn't know who they were. And the higher-ups who were high enough got offended by personal conversation, but I was supposed to somehow engage them in non-personal personal conversation, all while transferring their calls as quickly as possible... no one could tell me what to say or not to say, but they knew I was not doing it right.

If this happened to me now, I would request a quick meeting with the boss and ask for some concrete suggestions. But that sort of imprecise-yet-exact requirement is very common in an environment where so much of the instruction is verbal. With online work, everything you are told to do is in writing. So you know what is expected of you, and there isn't any secret extra requirement, because there is no whispering in the break room and no "office culture" outside of what is communicated.

I am not sure if this is a strength or a weakness on my part. I think that not dealing with office politics certainly saves a lot of time, and I am not handicapped by my apparently terrible first-impression (people in professional situations tell me I come off as a snob who thinks she's better than everybody, just because I don't talk a lot when I first meet someone). I make a better impression in writing, maybe? Or maybe online we all just do our work and quit worrying about gossip.

In any case, I have not missed office work, and I like not wasting time on politics. It gives me more time to waste on Facebook. Hahaha. :D

Occam's Diet

There is a theory attributed to a 14th century friar that is now called "Occam's Razor." While there is more to it, the basic idea is that when there is a simple explanation for something, contrasted with a complicated explanation that relies on unexplained phenomena, you should put your money on the simpler option.

It's kind of liberating.

Complicated theories tossed aside, I see the evil Weight Loss Debacle (frozen... plateau... constant dieting... no results... occasional Oreos...) in simple terms -- not enough exercise, or too much food, or a combination of the two.

I get headaches when I exercise, but the weight's not going to budge unless I exercise.

So, get used to cardio and headaches.

Cuts like a knife :p

Happy (Little) Nashes

I haven't done an update on the kids for a while, so I thought it would be a good time.

My little Norah is not so little anymore. She's 15 months old (almost 16 months) and incredibly full of spirit. She is "so talky," as Chris says, and she knows how to make her opinion heard, and she is never short on opinions either. She has strong tastes in food (cheese: yes; squash: no) and a growing vocabulary, including (but not limited to)

Yes
No
Mama
Daddy
Cheese
Brother
Baby
Food
What's This
A word of her own devising, which sounds like "Da!" but which means "Give me the thing I am pointing at, and make it snappy."

She also sings along with songs and quotes movies and parrots nearly anything you say, although it is hard to get her to repeat these words or phrases ever again after she utters them miraculously for the first and only time. A great example of this was two months ago when Chris walked into the kitchen holding his toy yellow Lamborghini Murcielago. Norah pointed at it and said "AMBURGEEN!" And then never, ever said it again. I suppose the thrill of making her mother look crazy is enough to encourage her to expand her vocabulary in secret, without ever displaying her knowledge to anyone else ;D

She will walk now, sometimes, with some inducement. She still prefers to crawl, and she crawls really fast. From time to time she will stand without holding onto anything, but when she needs to move quickly to steal a toy or get some cheese, she still prefers all-fours.

Chris is getting ready to turn 4 (in October), and in the past month or so his storytelling has really taken off. He tells me stories at bedtime sometimes now, instead of the other way around, and they are intricate, involving action, intrigue, and loads of imagination. I wasn't expecting such a lively imagination along with the ability to express it quite this early, but hey, I'll take it! I am constantly amazed by his powers of observation, and the way that he can size up a situation almost instantly. If he watches 5 minutes of a movie or TV show, he knows everybody's name, their relation to each other, and what they are trying to do within the plot of the movie or episode.

He also reads stories to me, not actually reading them, but memorizing the stories and telling them. He reads stories to Norah's dolls and feeds them bottles, although when they need new diapers he always brings them to me ;D

He still really likes playing with his toys from Cars (Lightning McQueen, etc.) and is going through the second or third iteration of a continuing fixation on the movie Shrek. This is mostly benign, but produces some pretty funny situations, including the scene that played out a week or two ago. There is a part of Shrek in which Shrek calls Donkey a "stubborn jackass," which, strictly speaking, is an accurate description. But not exactly the kind of thing you want your preschooler saying. Chris and Ben were play fighting and having some sort of standoff within their game, and Chris made a serious face at Ben and said "Stubborn jackets!" I love that his mind reinterpreted that phrase to something gentler. We laughed for days about that one.

Oftentimes now, Chris's pre-terrible-twos personality shines through, for an hour here or there, or sometimes (like yesterday) for an entire day. I look forward to getting to know him again without the constant public tantrums, although on days like today (end of a long week, heat index 107) I can't hold it against him if he has a tantrum or two. I'm pretty close to having one myself, and at least he has the excuse of his age.

I had a spark of an idea earlier this week to make Chris a place in the living room where he can play and be part of the action, but where Norah can't get to him and his toys. I turned our loveseat around backwards to face the wall, and it has been a hit. He keeps his most precious cars in there, and likes to play sometimes without his sisters sticky fingers reaching into his play scenarios. He seems more like Ben and more like me every day. His teacher told me something that reminded me a lot of myself the other day -- they said that when he plays in the dress-up room, the other kids dress up like firefighters, doctors, etc., but he will only wear the hard hat that goes with the builder costume, and even then, he will wear it only if he has some tools and is about to build something. This makes me smile but it doesn't surprise me -- I took myself very seriously as a little kid and I am not surprised that even his role playing has a pragmatic twist to it -- to him, the hard hat probably has a practical purpose aside from encouraging his imagination -- probably, it just seems like a smart safety precaution to take, when you are operating heavy machinery.

So often lately Ben and I spend the evening before the kids go to bed just sitting on the couch and watching them play. Their minds are expanding rapidly, and while their newly developed skills are often put to use in order to give us trouble (as in Norah's newly expanded vocabulary, which allows her to say "Mama, NO!" when I carry her down the hall to go to bed), I can't help but be proud of my sticky little smarty-pantses. They keep me hopping, they wear me out, they make me old, and they keep me young. I have my hands full for sure! :)

Carrot Sticks

I am not a big proponent of "the good old days" propaganda, in which people gather in misty-eyed reverence to pay tribute to a glorious past that most likely didn't even happen.

But a recent crop of "breaking" news articles about how Americans are obese because they eat too many calories, and about how difficult it is to eat right when you rely on restaurant food, and how everyone is tearing their hair out to figure out a way to make a hamburger on a white bread bun and a little paper sack of fried potatoes into something healthy, gets me thinking about my childhood and the lessons I learned there about the value (or lack thereof) of restaurant food.

Imagine a trip to the beach or a long day of running errands in the old woodgrain-paneled Plymouth Volare. There would be no stops at McDonald's on the way, in part because there was no McDonald's on the hour-long drive to the public beach, but also because there was no reason to waste the money. It was general knowledge that we were not going to stop at a restaurant -- instead, we traveled with cheap and portable homemade food. PB&J on whole wheat (natural no-sugar-added PB of course), the ubiquitous carrot sticks, apples and oranges, and homemade cookies, and a cooler of iced tap water from home, with cups from home as well. For a treat, a watermelon to cut open and eat in the blowing sand, juice running down our chins. It was a meal that didn't take a whole lot of prep, and it didn't cost $25-$50 for the family to eat. Also, notably, very little saturated fat, trans fat, or HFCS. Or perhaps even none at all.

When I was younger I used to dread the homemade food, with its fiber and crunchiness, its lack of sugar, and envy my friends whose parents bought them Happy Meals as a matter of course. I envied them their Chicken McNuggets dipped in Sweet 'n' Sour Sauce, and when they brought lunches from home I coveted their prepackaged fruit snacks, juice boxes, and cans of soda.

Now it turns out I was being trained in a simple rule that Americans are in danger of forgetting, myself included at times -- that there is rarely a situation in which you have to go to a restaurant. With a little planning ahead and an economy-size jar of generic peanut butter, you can face down almost any kind of hunger.

It may not be shiny and glamorous, but neither is overspending and overeating.

Turns out my crunchy-granola no-you-may-not-have-Lucky-Charms mom may have been onto something after all.