My daughter came home from a play date naked. The mom she was with got out of her car, and quickly gave me the disclaimer, "I don't usually bring kids home from play dates naked, but you've got to see them". I laughed, said it was okay (was it?) and hussled to the car. Not only were the two kids naked, strapped tightly in their car seats, but they were covered in feathers.
"They glued them on to see if they could fly", the disclaimer continued.
They weren't smiling, they were both sitting there as stoic as someone could be that just realized that feathers don't necessarily make your aerodynamic. I always imagine corrupt politicians tar and feathered, and it was quite a contrast to these innocent wide eyes and little bodies with haphazard color stuck in random places. I could picture them flapping around, jumping, trying their darndest to take off. Luckily we live in a place where most of the houses are one-story (all except mine, which is 4). I don't think that they tried to jump out of a window or anything, and I remembered the story of the little boy that jumped to his death in New York with a Superman costume. That was when I was a kid, and my parents must have given me some lecture on it for me to remember it so clearly. Maybe I was just older than I think, and my parents gave me less credit than they should have.
As I unstrapped my daughter from the seat and grabbed her bag of clothes from the mom, thanking her, a moment of doubt came over me. This is quite silly, but I wondered why the kids didn't do something like this at my house. Did they not feel free enough to have this much fun (or at least conduct this experiment-fun or not)? Is my environment stifling?
We're in the process of selling our house. I'm afraid that I've become a little OCD with "a place for everything and everything in it's place".
When I first met my husband I fell in love with him because his socks never matched, he was eccentric. He had 2 feet of garbage filling a two car garage... all the way across. There were mice living in old suitcases, the dogs had eaten a hole in the wall, there were 3 month old poroge's sitting in the oven. When his pots and pans had ripened in the sink for enough time, he wouldn't wash them, he would throw them off of his balcony into the woods below.
I guess I am the kind of person that goes for hard projects. I looked around the other day, his office was clean, his shirt didn't look like he had pulled it out of a pile of old laundry, and
his socks matched. What had I done?
More importantly, why was I doing it? When you're selling your house you're trying to sell someone on the dream that if they just lived there, then life would be easier, cleaner, more-inspiring. I know because I've fallen for it myself. Our house in on the market because we've found another that promises all these things.
We have magazines that pound us with images of whitewashed hallway tables donning a single flower in a crystal vase with keys hanging neatly on a hook. Only woman buy these rags. You wouldn't find the most metrosexual male standing in line at whole foods with a copy of Real Simple.
All of the ads for cleaning products still display women using them. I recently did an ad for Van de Kamp's fish, they instructed my to write "Moms!" on there, then list the reasons it was a good choice. I almost refused, but really I need the cash to buy more magazine's and cleaning products.
The truth of the matter is though, if you have children, the whitewashed table has probably been written on, and the keys lost. The wonderful part is that the flower is probably a "weed" from the yard stuck in a glass. There are probably feathers stuck to the side of the tub. There's probably a tired little girl, tucked into her bed, not caring about cleaning fluids, or if she left her crayons out. She's just happy to be "Home" after trying to fly.
Tomorrow her mommy won't care if Martha Stewart herself is coming over to view the house. Let them see it how it is, for what it is - a home.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Media
It's naptime and the dogs are barking, so let's hope this lasts.
Apparently it was the contractor picking up the last little bit of retribution that I had against him. It was a ladder. We had someone pick up the rest of the "garbage" that he left. He also left unfinished cabinets, and sinks, and whatever else, so I thought I would keep the ladder, oh well. He drove off fast.
So the contractor has his ladder, the dogs've had their bark, and now the baby's got her boob.
Where was I?
Oh yes, so, I'm not very good at this blogging thing. I can't even remember my own username. I typed it as "mediamom". Which is somewhat Freudian in that that's what I do. I design media.
In the last post I wrote that I was "retouching a photo..." in my rant about Twitter. It dawned on me that possibly someone might think that I was one of those "super moms" that retouches photos of her kids to create superhuman well designed scrapbooks to hand to her kids upon High School graduation.
No. I create Vlasic Pickle ads.
I retouch anti-bush propaganda into them. Not really, but I wish that I did. I don't have the guts. Naomi Wolf, now she has the guts. She's not afraid to be "on the list". Then again, she's a writer, and I am not. Her children are obviously old enough that she's gotten out of the brain fog of mommy-dom. I am sure she doesn't start a sentence and stop in search for the perfect adjective, and finally after a good 20 second red-faced pause decide that she'll settle on "cool".
She's got a head start on me I guess. My father is not a poet, he had an automotive shop. My mother had a beauty salon. I AM middle America--here's to fast cars and beautiful women. Or, bring it down a notch, we've got a running car, and there's no dirt under our nails, and every darn sent is going to send you to art school (so you can get dirt under your nails).
It does seem like there's a certain disconnect there, doesn't it? My parents lived under a certain rule: you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, until you retire, all the while stockpiling canned good from Costco to save a buck.
So, I guess I convinced them that I needed to go to, not just any art school, but a very expensive private art school. I went to RISD, where learned how to draw, and paint, and how to drop an egg off a 10 story building without it breaking. I learned to be an art-snob, to be trendy and cool. All the working class values seemed not to apply to me. I am arteest! watch me paint.
I towed that line for a pretty long time. I married a mathematician, writer, and musician, a "brilliant man" (albeit that he can't find the hamper, or thinks that a multi-vitamin will satisfy a hungry child). We named our first child "Nico", from the Velvet Underground. I printed out a bullseye with the word "Terrorist" across it and ironed it onto her onesie when she was three weeks old. We waited in line for 3 hours so that Michael Moore could hold her and I could get a picture. I'd have her in "the sling" and slip behind a Hummers with "terrorist" stickers, slapping them on.
Then something changed, my husband lost his job as an Associate Professor (no fault of his own, and that story is for another post), but suddenly he found himself stuck and snoring in my office during the day. It was my job to step up to the plate, making the mortgage, the bills.
I leaned on what I knew how to do--design. Things were tight for a while there. I spent many a night on five hours sleep, tapping away at one project or another. I remember sitting on the ground under the swing, pushing it with one hand while working on the laptop with the other grateful that we were the only ones there. This just goes beyond the catty world of the "good mom/bad mom" wars, and the ringing in my ears may have deafened me.
I worked so Nico could eat, I worked so we could have a house, I worked so we could pay the contractor to finish the addition so that Nico wouldn't have to sleep on a crib mattress next to our bed.
Things are straightened out now in regards to his job. My job is still the same. I'm still tapping away with one hand, holding a baby to the boob with the other. I got through the madness, it changed me deeply. My rebellion and arteest-ness is more mild now. I am not willing to risk too much, or risk it as loudly as I once did and I've learned one valuable lesson through it all:
you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, and you support the people that make a difference (like buying Naomi Wolf's book), until you get out of the fog...
then the Hummers are fair game.
Apparently it was the contractor picking up the last little bit of retribution that I had against him. It was a ladder. We had someone pick up the rest of the "garbage" that he left. He also left unfinished cabinets, and sinks, and whatever else, so I thought I would keep the ladder, oh well. He drove off fast.
So the contractor has his ladder, the dogs've had their bark, and now the baby's got her boob.
Where was I?
Oh yes, so, I'm not very good at this blogging thing. I can't even remember my own username. I typed it as "mediamom". Which is somewhat Freudian in that that's what I do. I design media.
In the last post I wrote that I was "retouching a photo..." in my rant about Twitter. It dawned on me that possibly someone might think that I was one of those "super moms" that retouches photos of her kids to create superhuman well designed scrapbooks to hand to her kids upon High School graduation.
No. I create Vlasic Pickle ads.
I retouch anti-bush propaganda into them. Not really, but I wish that I did. I don't have the guts. Naomi Wolf, now she has the guts. She's not afraid to be "on the list". Then again, she's a writer, and I am not. Her children are obviously old enough that she's gotten out of the brain fog of mommy-dom. I am sure she doesn't start a sentence and stop in search for the perfect adjective, and finally after a good 20 second red-faced pause decide that she'll settle on "cool".
She's got a head start on me I guess. My father is not a poet, he had an automotive shop. My mother had a beauty salon. I AM middle America--here's to fast cars and beautiful women. Or, bring it down a notch, we've got a running car, and there's no dirt under our nails, and every darn sent is going to send you to art school (so you can get dirt under your nails).
It does seem like there's a certain disconnect there, doesn't it? My parents lived under a certain rule: you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, until you retire, all the while stockpiling canned good from Costco to save a buck.
So, I guess I convinced them that I needed to go to, not just any art school, but a very expensive private art school. I went to RISD, where learned how to draw, and paint, and how to drop an egg off a 10 story building without it breaking. I learned to be an art-snob, to be trendy and cool. All the working class values seemed not to apply to me. I am arteest! watch me paint.
I towed that line for a pretty long time. I married a mathematician, writer, and musician, a "brilliant man" (albeit that he can't find the hamper, or thinks that a multi-vitamin will satisfy a hungry child). We named our first child "Nico", from the Velvet Underground. I printed out a bullseye with the word "Terrorist" across it and ironed it onto her onesie when she was three weeks old. We waited in line for 3 hours so that Michael Moore could hold her and I could get a picture. I'd have her in "the sling" and slip behind a Hummers with "terrorist" stickers, slapping them on.
Then something changed, my husband lost his job as an Associate Professor (no fault of his own, and that story is for another post), but suddenly he found himself stuck and snoring in my office during the day. It was my job to step up to the plate, making the mortgage, the bills.
I leaned on what I knew how to do--design. Things were tight for a while there. I spent many a night on five hours sleep, tapping away at one project or another. I remember sitting on the ground under the swing, pushing it with one hand while working on the laptop with the other grateful that we were the only ones there. This just goes beyond the catty world of the "good mom/bad mom" wars, and the ringing in my ears may have deafened me.
I worked so Nico could eat, I worked so we could have a house, I worked so we could pay the contractor to finish the addition so that Nico wouldn't have to sleep on a crib mattress next to our bed.
Things are straightened out now in regards to his job. My job is still the same. I'm still tapping away with one hand, holding a baby to the boob with the other. I got through the madness, it changed me deeply. My rebellion and arteest-ness is more mild now. I am not willing to risk too much, or risk it as loudly as I once did and I've learned one valuable lesson through it all:
you know how to do something, so you work at doing it, make money, give your kids what they need, and you support the people that make a difference (like buying Naomi Wolf's book), until you get out of the fog...
then the Hummers are fair game.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Starting
I started a blog four years ago...
I've been through several topics, edited, revisited, written, and re-written --- in my head.
What happened was that the baby started crying.
As a matter a fact she started crying after I typed that first sentence (or half of it). It's a completely new baby now, the four year old won't settle from a boob in her mouth anymore, but at least she's tucked in bed, and the new one will settle with the aforementioned pacification after a few minutes or so. So, it's late, and everyone is down, and I'm going to attempt this, after four years.
What I'd like to write about is my life. Go figure, everyone decides that their life is worthy of posting on the internet. We all have dreams and delusions about connecting with others through this electronic means. What really happens is our words get sucked into the void of information, random keystrokes picked up by search engine spiders.
(oops baby's crying again. She must be teathing).
And, I'm back. Talk about "connecting"... more boob in the mouth and we're good to go. If only I could type horizontal.
Back to the blog. I tried Twitter, which I wouldn't call a blog, but more of a place for people with OCD mixed with a little ADD to type what they are doing. "What are you doing?" it asks me, and I have to laugh. I tried to actually type what I was doing in there but I used up too many keystrokes. Most of the posts were along the lines of "Nursing the baby, retouching a photograph, thinking about what we're going to have for dinner, yelling at the dogs to stop barking, and getting a fedex". My posts were mixed in with my "friends" posts of "Thinking in sound today", "coding" and my all time favorite of "16 hours of sleep can't be good for you" - different demographic I guess.
The only time I could relate to someone on there was when he wrote "falling asleep while watching Friends" (however now that I think about it, I think he meant "friends" on Twitter, and I meant reruns of Friends on TV while 9 months pregnant).
I'm sure there is a community out there for me. A place where everybody is doing 5 things at once, holding it all together, making it all happen in and outside of the computer screen. But, hell, I've landed here, and I figure I'll stay here for my own peace of mind. There is no time to go searching through iVillage or whatever else. Google pointed here for "free and blog" and I figure at least it's a place to put my thoughts. At least I've started...
The baby's crying.
I've been through several topics, edited, revisited, written, and re-written --- in my head.
What happened was that the baby started crying.
As a matter a fact she started crying after I typed that first sentence (or half of it). It's a completely new baby now, the four year old won't settle from a boob in her mouth anymore, but at least she's tucked in bed, and the new one will settle with the aforementioned pacification after a few minutes or so. So, it's late, and everyone is down, and I'm going to attempt this, after four years.
What I'd like to write about is my life. Go figure, everyone decides that their life is worthy of posting on the internet. We all have dreams and delusions about connecting with others through this electronic means. What really happens is our words get sucked into the void of information, random keystrokes picked up by search engine spiders.
(oops baby's crying again. She must be teathing).
And, I'm back. Talk about "connecting"... more boob in the mouth and we're good to go. If only I could type horizontal.
Back to the blog. I tried Twitter, which I wouldn't call a blog, but more of a place for people with OCD mixed with a little ADD to type what they are doing. "What are you doing?" it asks me, and I have to laugh. I tried to actually type what I was doing in there but I used up too many keystrokes. Most of the posts were along the lines of "Nursing the baby, retouching a photograph, thinking about what we're going to have for dinner, yelling at the dogs to stop barking, and getting a fedex". My posts were mixed in with my "friends" posts of "Thinking in sound today", "coding" and my all time favorite of "16 hours of sleep can't be good for you" - different demographic I guess.
The only time I could relate to someone on there was when he wrote "falling asleep while watching Friends" (however now that I think about it, I think he meant "friends" on Twitter, and I meant reruns of Friends on TV while 9 months pregnant).
I'm sure there is a community out there for me. A place where everybody is doing 5 things at once, holding it all together, making it all happen in and outside of the computer screen. But, hell, I've landed here, and I figure I'll stay here for my own peace of mind. There is no time to go searching through iVillage or whatever else. Google pointed here for "free and blog" and I figure at least it's a place to put my thoughts. At least I've started...
The baby's crying.
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