Where I've Been (And Where I'm Going)

Whoa.  It's April already!  Which means May is just around the corner.  Which means that my girls are, holy bazongas, nearly a freakin' year old!  Really?  Really??  This cannot be happening.

So much has been going on and I have no excuse whatsoever for not having blogged about any of it but I must admit that I feel less bad about being absent from Blogger than I do about not having kept up with the girls' baby books.  Bad mommy.  Add those to the list of things I visualized myself peacefully doing while my angelic daughters napped peacefully and without incident.  Those idyllic visions of stay-at-home mommyhood that we all have during our first pregnancy?  Yeah.  Let's just say that I was uninformed that those were complete and utter chimera.

There has been an unforseen and completely random high fever with June, an equally unforseen (and unwelcome) bout of gastroenteritis in everyone except me, the addition of worms to our kitchen (in a controlled and intended environment, of course), the birth of my niece Reagan, and countless cups of coffee.

In addition to events, there has been a realization on my part that I need to reevaluate my thinking and an unexpected new interest in the concept of mindfulness and presence - a sort of parenting Zen - for me.  I'm far from religious and would consider myself Agnostic, but the idea of being present in each moment is one that I would consider philosophical more than spiritual.  It is also one that I am starting to consider essential in my life.

The days I've been able to spend time watching my niece have shown me how blessed mothers of singletons are to be able to focus on and bond with their babies in a way that is so complete.  It's something that I never had the opportunity to do with Harper or June in the early days, even with all the help I had, and it's something that I've certainly felt the lack of.

But beyond parenting I have to say that mindfulness and presence is something that I've struggled with all my life, in general.  Part of the nature of ADD is that it prevents me from focusing on any one thing for any significant amount of time.  My house reflects this in the seemingly aimless piles of projects that lay strewn about each room.  Not to mention my lengthy and spotty undergraduate career.  And in my own personal development.

We started having an EI specialist come to our home weekly to work with June, who has been just slightly delayed in terms of language.  As much as I believe that it's nothing to worry about, I know that language is a major area to have a delay in and I made the decision that I'd rather be safe than sorry.  So far, it's been more fun for me than them, I think, just to know that someone is coming once a week and that I'll get to have an adult conversation in the middle of each week.  What's even better about it is that our worker has twins herself (granted, hers are twelve years old, but as twin mamas will understand, sometimes you just need another twin mama to talk to), so she's been a fabulous resource for me if only just to check my own sanity and gauge my own experience.

She made the comment last week that the days seem long but the years go so, so fast.  It couldn't be more true, and it was something that I hadn't been able to put words to until she said it.  It reminded me how important presence is for Harper and June, especially now.  So what I've been doing in my extended blogging absence has been trying to learn how to refocus through the idea of Zen practice.

But I'm not doing Yoga or anything.  I haven't gone that Enya.  =)  I'm also taking a Coursera course on the idea of knowing oneself which has been a really fabulous complement to this whole notion of being mindful.

In the year to come, I'd like to improve on that part of myself.  And I am sure that the improvement will show, perhaps most importantly, in the girls, who I need to remind myself should always be my first focus.  Not the dishes.  Not the garage sale.  Not even my writing.  Just them.  Just sitting on the floor, saying "in, in in," while they drop plastic lids into big plastic containers.  Just repeating their babbles and imitating their facial expressions.  Just dancing to John Prine and singing Counting Crows.  Just that.  Just this moment.

~ * ~

In other news, my article on sleep training comes out in the spring issue of Multiplicity tomorrow.  I'll post the link when it goes live.

And I'm going to try to get better about checking in with you all.  Thanks for all the page views!  I hope I'll post things you'll like.

Breakfast...Under the Chair

The girls did really well with their independent play yesterday, so I was excited when today seemed to be going as well.  Halfway through mixing up a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, however, I realized that the silence was too complete.  Too perfect.  When I wandered into the dining room, I discovered that someone has learned how to climb under the chairs at the table.  I discovered, as well, that a container of puffs had been forgotten, left in easy reach for little fingers.  The result was adorable.  Thought I'd share.

Eff You, Blogger

Every program used to type words has an autosave function.  So why not you, Blogger?  Why not you?  I just spent about two hours on a post about my new worms and where is it now?  Who knows?  The internet ate it.  It's in the internet's bowels right this very moment.

So...yeah.  I'm done for tonight.

Reagan McKenzie

Our niece was born today!  Mike's brother and sister-in-law, Vanina, had a beautiful baby girl at 10:36 this morning.  She was six and a half pounds and nineteen inches long.  She's a cutie patootie!

*Grr*Argh*Grumble*

So, it's no secret that I smoked/currently smoke on and off.  I've quit several times, once for over a year.  I need to quit again.  For real this time.  But here's the thing:

I feel like I transformed, when the girls were born, into a bottle maker, a poop removal system, a vomit vacuum and a housewife during any other free moment I may have.  This is to be expected.  And I don't hate that.  But then I spend time with people I spent time with before I became the Babymatic 3000 and...I smoke.  It tastes good.  It makes me feel normal.  As cool as Jordan Catalano.  And then I come home and smoke and it tastes like that fermented liquid shit at the bottom of a garbage can left out in the sun in the middle of July for...let's say...three days.  And it makes me feel like shit.  And everyone looks at me sideways like I'm smoking crack.  And I might as well be for all the good it's doing me.

I've never been so ambivalent about anything in my whole life.  I want to quit.  And I want to press on, like all the other smokers who have come before me.  Even though I know what's waiting at the end of that road.

It's so stupid.  I feel really stupid.  And Mike just showed me his check without overtime, which is his regular check now that overtime has gone away until next fall, probably.  And I feel extra stupid.

Anyway, I want to make a decal for my car that says "What Would Atticus Do?"  Because, in life, that's really all that matters I think.  My moral compass points Atticus.  Or I try to keep it trained on him, anyhow.  It's been a while since I've read Mockingbird and we're working through it, one chapter a night at the girls' bedtime, but so far he hasn't really given an official position on cigarettes.  Hmmm...does the Ouija board work on fictional characters?

Working on Videos

I'm working on getting my videos of the Venango Brigade up on YouTube.  One is finished and embedded in the post I previously posted about their performance.  Check it out.  And check back later in the week for more.

Vermicomposting...It's Coming

I'm not sure that Mike really, truly understands what I've kinda, sorta told him.

I'm getting worms.  Two pounds of worms.  In the mail.  And they're going to live in our kitchen.  And they're going to eat our garbage.  And then we're going to plant vegetables.  In their poop.

He wasn't sufficiently shocked.

Perhaps when he comes home and sees this little beauty by the end of the week (which I'm making myself, by the way...no expensive worm bins for us).  So long as the little composting rock stars haven't died on their way here.  And I'm thinking to myself that I probably should have gone the logical route and bought night crawlers from the bait shop rather than ordering them online. But then logic is not my thing, I guess.

In any case, I've decided that I am not going to go all Williams Sonoma on this project.  Not that I do on any project.  Because I can't afford to.  But also because of that Bitch article I shared a week or so ago.  About how chicken coops are so in right now.  I'm not getting worms because all the cool kids are doing it.  I'm getting worms because I don't want our food waste to be waste and I can't afford to buy as much fresh produce as I could grow.  And can.

Here's the thing:  I really want my girls to grow up knowing that they are capable of producing much more for themselves than any store owner would like them to believe.  Of course I want them to appreciate supporting local business.  But that's where you go to buy supplies for your compost bin.  And, you know, don't buy worms online.  That too.  I'm slapping my own wrists right now.  I'm a newb and, as such, am entitled to my rightful share of newb mistakes.  But imma be a diamond someday, Lord.

I had this roommate in college and she was a total hippie.  And she and I didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things.  But I wanted to be like her.  I wanted to eat organic food.  Hell, I'd have settled for knowing what made a food organic, really.  I wanted to shop at the co-op and have a garden and be all...that.  It was as if she and her mother had this understanding.  This knowledge and a contentment with the Earth and what came from it that set them apart from everyone else.  Not above the rest of us.  They were humble and really kind.  Not the types of hippies that look at you all stanky because you're eating a Little Debbie.  But patient. Like, when you were ready to learn they'd be there to teach you.

Well, they're not here.  But the memory of them and their lifestyle has haunted me and made me, at the risk of sounding more like Jack Nicholson than I'd intended at the outset of this post, want to be a better wo(man).  I'm slowly evolving into a much more conscious and intentional person.  Sort of like a hippie hybrid.  I don't know that there's really a classification for me.  Mentally ill, perhaps.

In any case, after much internet research, I've come to realize that vermicomposting, like everything else in this new boom of eco-coolness, has the potential to be big business.  There are worm bins going for hundreds of dollars online.  Like, these worm suites are nicer than some of the dorm rooms I've inhabited in the dusky days of my sordid past.  True story.  So I've got some rules established for my garden/composting adventure of 2013.

1)  No buying expensive shit.  I will recycle, I will upcycle, and I will make use of things that I either have, can get for free, or can get for next to nothing.  I already bought the worms.  But I will repent.  I will make that right.

2)  I will stick with it.  Because my brain likes to get me really excited about something and then move on to the next thing without me realizing what's happening.  But I'm having none of it this time.  No sir.

3)  I will buy the supplies I can't find./make on my own locally.  Because Walmart is convenient, but it is going to eat all of our souls one day.

4)  I will blog about it.  Like it or not.  Well, not really.  If you really don't like it I'll stop.  But I hope you'll like it.  If for nothing other than laughing at me as I try to make gold out of worm poop.  It's a funny sort of alchemy.

5)  I will not treat my worms like worms.  My hope is that one day I might be good enough at making compost (and worms) that I can sell them at the Farmer's Market here in town.  Then I can't be responsible for what happens to the little boogers.  And that's an ethical dilemma I'm going to need to puzzle out before I start that leg of the journey.  Yes.  Seriously.  I'm having a problem with the idea of selling worms to the slaughter.  It's part of the illness.  I'm sorry.  But not really.  In any case, that's far, far away in an uncertain future.  But I'm just making this rule now to remind myself that they're not worms.  They're lives.  And they're helping me out by eating my old newspapers and pooping them out into a box for me to spread on my garden.  So I need to do them right.

I'm such a freakalatrobe.