Those lovely moments

I love, with all my heart, those sweet kid moments that can come wrapped up in the pockets of everyday frenzy and go-go-go-ness. Today, on the way to school, I got to eavesdrop on a conversation between my children, in which they bickered good naturedly over who would miss who more whilst Boy-o was away at school. And then, post drop-off, before Girlio passed out cold, she yelled animatedly into her pink sparkly Maryjane shoe, turned phone. SayIng over and over: "whaaaaat? I can't hear you! It's too loud in my rocket ship! I'll call you back on Earth!"

1. I have a Big, mooshy, swoon-y mama heart.
2. I hope all rockets cone equips with sparkly pink Maryjane shoe phones for the astronauts.

Rennaissance woman

As it turns out, I'm not really falling apart at the seams.  I'm not combusting, imploding, or going ass over teakettle.  Okay.  I am.  But I'm also having a renaissance.  Yup, it's true.  Just ask my therapist. 

There are many, many reasons why I love my new therapist - not the least of which is her snappy fashion sense.  Really, it's snappy.  Also - she makes me think.  Rethink.  Turn with preconceived notions about myself, my life, my relationships, my choices - on their head.  It is both discomfitting, and pretty fucking liberating.  (To those of you who are feeling all twitchy and embarassed for me because I've mentioned the word therapist a zillion times in this post - I say this - Good lord, why aren't you in therapy?  Maybe it's because I was raised by social-worky-types, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why people are so scared of themselves.  And as a stay-at-home mama - I frankly find the opportunity to talk about my needs and thoughts for an hour once every two weeks to someone who cares (okay, she cares because I pay her too, but girls with limited chatting opportunities can't be too picky!) pretty effing luxurious.  Nuff said).   Anyhow - back to the renaissance. 

My therapist, whom, as I have already mentioned, is a smart, snappy dresser,  had me imagine what I wanted my life to look like in a year.  So I thought for a bit (this question is not as easy to answer as one might think) and began to describe what it might look like.  I won't bore you with the details, but it wasn't anything too outrageous.  And then, we talked about small ways I could go about making some of those imaginings look more like realities.  And she said to me something along the lines of:  "You're not falling apart.  You're having a renaissance!"   Now - while it is clear to me that I am actually falling apart a bit - I am sooooo loving this idea of a renaissance. 

This change in perspective alone is worth the cost of paying someone to listen to me talk... :)  (Like I said - why doesn't everyone go to therapy?!)

Dear Google - You peeps are homophobic IDIOTS

Google has produced a 20 questions app to allow folks to discern whether or not their son might be gay.  Aside from the obvious offensiveness of said app's existence, period, the questions are BEYOND misguided and misleading and wandering right into the realm of hella gross.  Said questions are reposted below:



•Before he was born, did you wish for a girl?


•Has he ever been in a fight?

•Does he read the sports page in the newspaper?

•Is his best friend a girl?

•Does he like team sports?

•Is he modest?

•Is he a fan of divas (Madonna, Britney Spears)?

•Does he spend a long time in the bathroom?

•Does he have piercings in his tongue, nose or ears?

•Do you wonder about your son's sexual orientation?

•Are you divorced?

•Does he like musical comedies?

•Has he ever introduced you to a girlfriend?

•Is his father a very authoritarian person?

•Within your family, is the father absent at all?

•During his childhood, was he timid or discreet?

•Does he have a complicated relationship with his father?

•Does he take a long time to do his hair?

•Does he like to dress well: is he very careful when choosing his outfits and selecting brands?

•Does he like football?

So - from this list, we can deduce that boys become gay through 1. divorce, 2. bad relationships with their fathers (cause we all have fathers!), 3. a commitment to personal grooming and 4. prenatal wishing for a girl,  Moreover, we can further conclude that ALL straight boys love sports, reading about sports, and are aggressive and lacking in sensitivity. 

Are you fucking kidding me, Google?  Please promptly get your shit together and move on into the current century. 

To sign the petition demanding Google remove this ridiculous app, click below:

http://allout.org/en/actions/androidapp


p.s. - yes I am aware that my posts today are a bit, um, frequent.  I'm procrastinating.  I'm aware.  Feast or famine, lovelies.

Dear Kirstie Alley

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/09/24/fat_sex/index.html

Dear Kirstie -

I kinda want to smack you in the face.  Because you are really quite irritating.  And small bits of insufferable. But I figure the four + years you spent not having fabulous (flab-ulous?) 'fat sex' is punishment enough.

Cheers,

Mama T

Grown-up sex ed test! How well will you do?!

http://www.salon.com/life/sex/?story=%2Fmwt%2Ffeature%2F2011%2F09%2F27%2Fsex_ed

(I did not do nearly as well as someone who spent years as a sex educator should have!)

A look inside the sperm donor industry in the US.

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/09/25/sex_cells_interview/index.html

CNN's "Gender Identity: A Change in Childhood" | Bitch Media

CNN's "Gender Identity: A Change in Childhood" Bitch Media

An interesting video with tots who are trans and their (supportive) parents...

I'm still here...

Really, I swear.  Um, mostly.

Sorry I've been remiss in posting lately.  I am struggling a bit these days: up to the eyeballs in regular kidlet wrangling and household stuff (which I'm oh-so-good at...) + reintegrating my much-hated task of doing the school run and troubleshooting around Boy-o's difficulty with transition re: starting school and a new routine + researching (obsessively, and probably too much for this particular juncture of application writing, but that's just how I roll) + application writing (read: sad attempts at staring at a page and making tapping sounds on the keyboard without actually writing anything).  I am stressed out, filled with doubt, freaking lonely and bone-tired.  Really - if writing an application while carrying out my regular life tasks is this fucking tricky, then what cloud was I living on thinking I could actually, you know, take courses and stuff?  On the plus side - when I have time - I am really enjoying being able to nerd out and live in my head again.  Nice place to be, that head of mine, when it functions at a reasonable level.  

At any rate - I'm going to apply.  And if I don't get, I'm gonna go to work.  I sort of don't really even care doing what right now.  I just want to leave the house.  Wear pretty clothes.  And meet interesting people.  Maybe even interesting people who sorta think I'm interesting.  (Maybe a longshot, but I've been blowing on a lot of dandelions lately, so you never know).  Anyways - whether it be school or work - I am trying to remind myself that this at-home isolation is finite.

And that, dear readers, if you're still with me, is where I've been. 

I'll try to pop in more and write something resembling interesting soon. 

In the meantime, you should check out the neat link I'm going to post right after this, about CNN coverage of trans kids.  Kinda made me feel hopeful about the world.

Catch 22

I was talking to someone awhile ago about the real challenges posed by being both an introvert and a stay-at-home parent. The primary one is, of course, never getting to be alone. I don't do anything alone, including trips to the bathroom and, at present, even sleeping arrangements involve close up time with the kiddies. And then there's the always having to be 'on'. And you know, talking. Or rather, responding to talking. Eeep! And so I fantasize about having alone time quite a bit.

But then, the catch 22. Which is that this work is also achingly lonely. And opportunities to be with other grown-ups sans littles few and far between. So I kinda don't want to be alone. Except that I do.

Funny that.

(Or not.)


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To Come Out Crazy or Not to Come Out Crazy?

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/were-all-mad-here-the-dangers-of-openly-identifying-with-mental-illness

Eating words

Sometimes, you get to have the coolest conversations with smalls. On the school run today, I asked the kids what they wanted for dinner. Girlio replied: "happy words!". Which resulted in a lengthy conversation about the kind of words that sounded good enough to eat, and what they might taste like. Boy-o, for instance, choose 'big shiny red truck' for his dinner. We decided it would probably taste crunchy. I wanted to eat 'marvelous, spectacular dandelions' - which Boy-o thought would taste like raspberries, grass and trees. Girlio wanted to eat her parents. :).

Then Boy-o mixed up our word dinner in the back seat and we had a nice before-school snack.

Kids are cool.


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I'm no prude....BUT

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that Boy-o's school library book (Wonderwoman's Book of Myths), which contains excerpts such as --

"Zeus had a reputations as a ladies' man. (italics must be read with one's best Barry Manilow voice). He had at least three wives, the last of whom was Hera, as well as a great many love affairs - with mortal women as well as goddesses";

and

"Zeus' wife Hera was often jealous about her husband;'s affairs with mortal women.  She even tried to kill some of his lovers and the children his affairs produced." ;

and

is chalk full of cartoons with heaving bosoms;

-- was perhaps meant to go home with Boy-o's grade 3 reading buddy?

Oh my

Once again, I ponder the fact that I was sooo excited to go to Superstore (All By Myself) tonight.

Clearly, this must be a sign that I need to get out more...




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Body joy

We were early to pick up Boy-o from school, Girlio and I, and we had the opportunity to listen to one of the older students practice an original piano composition (on the piano in the school common area - very cool). Anyways, my Girlio stops a second, takes in the music, and just begins this full-bodied, fearless and intent dancing. It was bloody beautiful.

When do we lose that ability to be spontaneously joyful in our bodies like that? It is a saddening thought.



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Happiness

Yesterday, through a blur of sick brain and cold meds, I took out a scad of books from the U of A library. While there, I helped several first years find their ways through the stacks. Apparently I looked like I knew my way around. ;). I loved being there. I loved the smell of books and the hush and the sounds of pages turning.

And now, sitting on my couch, pajamaed and surrounded by photocopied essays and books, I might actually feel the beginnings of this creaky brain turning on.

It feels like happy.


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While we're in the business of ranting, here's an oldie but goodie by Joy nash

I don't need kid gloving, thanks anyways

This blog post stems mostly from recent conversations I've been having with a few friends who wear similar shoes.

Here goes:

I am an emotionally literate soul. Which is to say, I'm pretty aware of how I feel and am okay, for the most part, with making myself vulnerable enough to talk about it when I feel it's warranted. (Or in the case of this blog, possibly even when it's unwarranted).

I am also fairly vocal about what it's like to live with lots of anxiety. Cause I think all of the above beats the hell outta the alternative of silence. (If silence really is an alternative at all).

And what drives me effing, super, all kinds of crazy-nuts, is that the most common response to the aforementioned me-ness results in being treated like a wee fragile wisp of a thing. For starters, it's annoying. More importantly, (and this is the really pissy part), it's infantilizing and paternalistic. I don't need to be protected from myself or anyone else (and even if I did, it'd still be my job to do it - or not to do it).

I can handle it. Because I'm a big girl now. And all kinds of scrappy. Really and for true. So please, can ya take off the kid gloves?


Mama T, on behalf of emotionally literate, scrappy & nutty women everywhere







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MIA

Hello fine blog readers. Just a quick note to say I'll likely be mostly MIA for the next little while. Stuff to do is piling up! I'll be back ( I say in my very best Arnold voice).

See ya soon.

xo Mama T

Recharge

Yesterday was a 14 hour solo day with the kids, after a really long week. We did pretty good, barring a few minor tantrums (mine) following a few major tantrums (theirs). But it was a lonnnng day, I got absolutely nothing done on my to-do list, the house was beyond a train wreck and though relieved we'd all made it through the day in one piece, I mostly felt defeated by my inability to get shit done.

Then, last night, around the lovely hour of four a.m., I awoke in Girlio's bed to 'Mama - I'm wet!' and a diaper malfunction. Middle of the night fun times.

And then here we are this morning. I'm zapped. I hate mornings like this, when I should have new energy and patience, and instead, every whine makes me twitch. Every sibling scrap is fingernails on a chalk board. My responses, less than kindly parental.

But this afternoon, I get a haircut. And an hour or so to myself to wander through shops or have quiet coffee time while L takes the kids out with some friends of ours. And tonight, I'm going out dancing.

Never has a 'me-time' break felt more well-timed.

Postscript add on - just after writing this, L. got out of bed and Boy-o shouts 'hooray, my favorite mommy!'.

Break. Well-timed.




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Stuck In The Middle With You

So - as a special treat, I put Boy-o and Girlio down in our bed tonight, as L. was out, and it just seemed easier that way.  But, because I'm cute but apparently not too bright, I lay down in between them to settle them, thinking they'd bug each other less that way.  And then (after threatening them with axe-murder to finally get them to stop fucking around) they feel asleep.  You know, on either side of me, all snuggled up and spoon-y.  Cozy, yes - but how the hell to extricate myself without waking my little light sleepers?  I spent the next 15 minutes contemplating just that, with the aforeposted song running through my head...  Ahhhh the joys of parenting.

frustration

Such lofty goals I had for today.  And so far, just getting by.  Marginally, at that. 

Douchebag Decree: Bad Mothering Lawsuit | Bitch Media

Douchebag Decree: Bad Mothering Lawsuit | Bitch Media

Lawsuit. For bad mothering. Yup. You read that right. Nuff said.