Ok. So I'm watching cartoons with the littles this morning. Bugs Bunny, in fact. (The new, not old Bugs). And Daffy Duck, having been fired from yet another job due to laziness says:
"I'm not cut out for work. I should just be a stay-at-home mom!"
Oh. The laughs just keep on comin'.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
evolution confusion
Somehow, after not one but two conversations about evolution, my son believes that the world was created by a magic man driving around in a big truck. Who created many construction workers, worldwide. These construction workers created life as we now know it.
Me thinks I need to find a better way to explain evolution.
Me thinks I need to find a better way to explain evolution.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
bits of goodness
February has been a hard month over at the home of Mama T and co. But - in the hopes of maintaining some positivity in said home, I'm going to use this blog to remind myself of the small, but not insignificant, bits of wonder and fun February brought.
So - in no particular order:
1. snow forts
2. sparkly diamond snow
3. ginger sparkle cookie baking
4. an outdoor running lesson in a blizzard, which sounds craptastic, but was remarkably enjoyable.
5. watching blowing snow and blizzard-y goodness swirl across a frozen lake from a huge cabin window.
6. a visit with a new friend
7. good chats with good wine with good friends
8. dancing in a saucy outfit
9. many kitchen dance parties with the littles
10. good book club reads
So - As it turns out - February wasn't a wash after all :)
So - in no particular order:
1. snow forts
2. sparkly diamond snow
3. ginger sparkle cookie baking
4. an outdoor running lesson in a blizzard, which sounds craptastic, but was remarkably enjoyable.
5. watching blowing snow and blizzard-y goodness swirl across a frozen lake from a huge cabin window.
6. a visit with a new friend
7. good chats with good wine with good friends
8. dancing in a saucy outfit
9. many kitchen dance parties with the littles
10. good book club reads
So - As it turns out - February wasn't a wash after all :)
Monday, February 27, 2012
Looks Ain't Everything, But it Ain't Wrong to Look | Bitch Media
Looks Ain't Everything, But it Ain't Wrong to Look | Bitch Media
A good little piece from Bitch Magazine about the politics of femininity and the gaze. I liked.
A good little piece from Bitch Magazine about the politics of femininity and the gaze. I liked.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
10 Things you will need during a separation...
1. an umbrella. Keep it up at all times. Shit will fall on you when you aren't expecting it. Trust me on this.
2. an endless supply of friends. You will lose some. Guaranteed. And you will need a stockpile of folks who can tell you, quite earnestly, that you are not an incarnation of Satan. And who will help you through the inevitable lonely days that are to come.
3. a good therapist. Self-explanatory. Really. The biggest gift you could give yourself, bar none, post-separation.
4. forgiveness. You aren't going to get that from other people, because it's much easier to hate someone than to try to understand their choices and what lies beneath them. You will be surprised at just how much easier this is for people. So you'll need to be able to forgive yourself. Or at least give it a good try.
5. a mirror. Use it to deconstruct all the labels you and others might place on you. Homewrecker. Selfish. Slut. Quitter. Bad mother. Bad wife. The one who gave up. The reality of course is that you are none of these things. The reality is that the human heart is too complex to be shorthanded into such tiny compartments. So you will need the mirror in order to practice telling yourself over and over that you did what you had to in order to survive; that there was nothing else for you to do. You will need to look in the mirror and try to see yourself as that wildly irreducible being you know you are.
6. a notebook. this will come in handy to chart your progress or lack thereof. To make note of the passage of time when the days loom long and unforgiving. To write letters you will never send, in self-defence and self-flagellation - both of which are guaranteed to come in turns.
7. resourcefulness. The ability to pull money out of your ass is a definite bonus.
8. a stetson. Black or white, depending on who left whom and how. (Mine is black, of course - at the end of the cowboy flick, I'm the one the posse is coming for with a noose, looking for the nearest sturdy tree). People like to have a bad guy and a good guy. It helps them make sense of things, this notion that there is only the right and the wrong. In reality, of course, we need versions in many shades of grey, but this will be of no comfort to you when your hats gets handed to you, decidedly coloured.
9. a roadmap of separations gone before you. Friends, relatives, so many people have all gone through this before you, and will have landmarks to share to help guide your way. But you will likely need this map only to throw it out the window. Take the wisdom as it is intended; as shortcuts meant to prevent you from having to take the long way around. But recognize also that this journey is, and has to be, uniquely yours. Your feelings, your actions, your process will be a foreign country to others, no matter how well-travelled they are. You will need to chart your own course, decide your own speed limits, tackle your own changing terrains.
10. a sense of humour. Preferably a dark one.
2. an endless supply of friends. You will lose some. Guaranteed. And you will need a stockpile of folks who can tell you, quite earnestly, that you are not an incarnation of Satan. And who will help you through the inevitable lonely days that are to come.
3. a good therapist. Self-explanatory. Really. The biggest gift you could give yourself, bar none, post-separation.
4. forgiveness. You aren't going to get that from other people, because it's much easier to hate someone than to try to understand their choices and what lies beneath them. You will be surprised at just how much easier this is for people. So you'll need to be able to forgive yourself. Or at least give it a good try.
5. a mirror. Use it to deconstruct all the labels you and others might place on you. Homewrecker. Selfish. Slut. Quitter. Bad mother. Bad wife. The one who gave up. The reality of course is that you are none of these things. The reality is that the human heart is too complex to be shorthanded into such tiny compartments. So you will need the mirror in order to practice telling yourself over and over that you did what you had to in order to survive; that there was nothing else for you to do. You will need to look in the mirror and try to see yourself as that wildly irreducible being you know you are.
6. a notebook. this will come in handy to chart your progress or lack thereof. To make note of the passage of time when the days loom long and unforgiving. To write letters you will never send, in self-defence and self-flagellation - both of which are guaranteed to come in turns.
7. resourcefulness. The ability to pull money out of your ass is a definite bonus.
8. a stetson. Black or white, depending on who left whom and how. (Mine is black, of course - at the end of the cowboy flick, I'm the one the posse is coming for with a noose, looking for the nearest sturdy tree). People like to have a bad guy and a good guy. It helps them make sense of things, this notion that there is only the right and the wrong. In reality, of course, we need versions in many shades of grey, but this will be of no comfort to you when your hats gets handed to you, decidedly coloured.
9. a roadmap of separations gone before you. Friends, relatives, so many people have all gone through this before you, and will have landmarks to share to help guide your way. But you will likely need this map only to throw it out the window. Take the wisdom as it is intended; as shortcuts meant to prevent you from having to take the long way around. But recognize also that this journey is, and has to be, uniquely yours. Your feelings, your actions, your process will be a foreign country to others, no matter how well-travelled they are. You will need to chart your own course, decide your own speed limits, tackle your own changing terrains.
10. a sense of humour. Preferably a dark one.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Poems - For the Queer Girls who Dream of Drowing (Lindsay Miller)
So I had a shitty day yesterday. Job rejection. Feeling like nothing ever works. But by evening, I found myself sitting in a coffee shop, sipping a London Fog tea and surfing poetry on-line. And I managed to regain some equilibrium. Below are two of the many, many poems I found.
For the Queer Girls who Dream of Drowning
BY LINDSAY MILLER
Fast forward ten years. The first thing you will notice is that you are taller. Not necessarily farther from the ground, but closer to the sky. This may at first be dizzying, especially if you never learned how to breathe. Practice. Meet your lungs. Take note of the way your skin fits, how your bones have grown into your skeleton. Your shoulders are perfectly balanced at the top of your spine. Your arms are long enough to reach your hands. This, you will discover, is what people who know anything mean when they say beautiful.
Investigate the body you are in. Reach for both horizons at once and discover your wingspan. Crack your knuckles. Lick the gap between your teeth. Place your fingers against the underside of your wrist and feel for a pulse. If you have one, it means you’re lonely. That’s good. This is a good world to be lonely in. Explore the space you take up, the way your body displaces air in the shape of: calves, hips, belly, chin. Trace the path of tingling from lips to nipples to between your legs. Notice that your skin is the color of new skin after the old skin has peeled away. Feel underneath your sternum: there. A scar. Your body has opened up, allowed egress to something it no longer needed, like an appendix. This was painful once, as doorways always are.
Excavate yourself. Turn inside out like a pocket and examine what falls to the ground. There should be just enough coins to take a bus to anywhere. A pressed flower with a breath of purple left in it, the exact shade ofI will always remember you fondly. Keys meant to open something old and worthy. Lint. The lint means you have been places, smelled dust, shaken off dead cells. A piece of paper with a name on it. Nothing sharp: you don’t carry razor blades under your fingernails anymore.
The suitcase you packed before leaving your parents’ house is here, spine-creased books and a one-eyed stuffed dog. The green dress that made your collarbone a lie. Your first lipstick. Jeans that will always have the stain from that night, an empty whiskey bottle. Spread them out like tarot cards on the pavement: the past, the present, the wish. Where the tenth and final card would be, place yourself.
Practice listening to sounds other than the grinding of your teeth. Songs are a good place to start, especially songs with piano accompaniment and lyrics about changing seasons. Listen to crickets. Learn how to divine the temperature from their chirps. Listen to the ground underneath you. Gravity will keep you here until you are ready to leave.
You can still recite those sad poems from memory, but they don’t resonate in your chest the way they used to. You can walk across a bridge without counting the seconds between your bones and the concrete below. There is an ocean, but it is far away, not filling up your mouth. There will be people who want to touch you gently. You know that you can still feel pain, in your eyes and hands especially. But in this moment, all you know of your body is open arms.
Fast forward ten years. The first thing you will notice is that you are taller. Not necessarily farther from the ground, but closer to the sky. This may at first be dizzying, especially if you never learned how to breathe. Practice. Meet your lungs. Take note of the way your skin fits, how your bones have grown into your skeleton. Your shoulders are perfectly balanced at the top of your spine. Your arms are long enough to reach your hands. This, you will discover, is what people who know anything mean when they say beautiful.
Investigate the body you are in. Reach for both horizons at once and discover your wingspan. Crack your knuckles. Lick the gap between your teeth. Place your fingers against the underside of your wrist and feel for a pulse. If you have one, it means you’re lonely. That’s good. This is a good world to be lonely in. Explore the space you take up, the way your body displaces air in the shape of: calves, hips, belly, chin. Trace the path of tingling from lips to nipples to between your legs. Notice that your skin is the color of new skin after the old skin has peeled away. Feel underneath your sternum: there. A scar. Your body has opened up, allowed egress to something it no longer needed, like an appendix. This was painful once, as doorways always are.
Excavate yourself. Turn inside out like a pocket and examine what falls to the ground. There should be just enough coins to take a bus to anywhere. A pressed flower with a breath of purple left in it, the exact shade ofI will always remember you fondly. Keys meant to open something old and worthy. Lint. The lint means you have been places, smelled dust, shaken off dead cells. A piece of paper with a name on it. Nothing sharp: you don’t carry razor blades under your fingernails anymore.
The suitcase you packed before leaving your parents’ house is here, spine-creased books and a one-eyed stuffed dog. The green dress that made your collarbone a lie. Your first lipstick. Jeans that will always have the stain from that night, an empty whiskey bottle. Spread them out like tarot cards on the pavement: the past, the present, the wish. Where the tenth and final card would be, place yourself.
Practice listening to sounds other than the grinding of your teeth. Songs are a good place to start, especially songs with piano accompaniment and lyrics about changing seasons. Listen to crickets. Learn how to divine the temperature from their chirps. Listen to the ground underneath you. Gravity will keep you here until you are ready to leave.
You can still recite those sad poems from memory, but they don’t resonate in your chest the way they used to. You can walk across a bridge without counting the seconds between your bones and the concrete below. There is an ocean, but it is far away, not filling up your mouth. There will be people who want to touch you gently. You know that you can still feel pain, in your eyes and hands especially. But in this moment, all you know of your body is open arms.
Published in Muzzle Magazine, Winter 2011
http://www.muzzlemagazine.com/issue3-poetry.html
Advice for the Newly Single - Elaina Ellis
Advice for the Newly Single
BY ELAINA ELLIS
Be a fierce dragon lonely queen,
Emma. Be a drunk barren
crowbar. Be a cocktail waitress heart-sewn
tease. Be a desert plant, Susie,
succulent. Need no water at hand.
Be an empty-fridge sale salad
scrimper. Be a sharp-tongued solo
chef. Anna: watch TV on a lonely moon
through the static of milky way
reception. Concentrate
on falling asleep. Slut,
Mona. Slut your book open.
Keep your legs open.
Do not write any name but
your name on those acre-wide
pages. Be hollow,
Sally. Keep canary-singing
in a thirsty well. Be a singing
flighty bird with open beak.
Don’t try a cushion,
Mary. Don’t swallow soft.
Chew only sticks: carrots, twigs.
Sit on your bones.
Sit on their bones.
Don’t try for dreams.
Don’t try for dollars,
Leah, this is a coin job
for you. Turn out the light.
Tear out your eyes.
Published in Muzzle Magazine, Winter 2011
http://www.muzzlemagazine.com/elaina-ellis.html
Be a fierce dragon lonely queen,
Emma. Be a drunk barren
crowbar. Be a cocktail waitress heart-sewn
tease. Be a desert plant, Susie,
succulent. Need no water at hand.
Be an empty-fridge sale salad
scrimper. Be a sharp-tongued solo
chef. Anna: watch TV on a lonely moon
through the static of milky way
reception. Concentrate
on falling asleep. Slut,
Mona. Slut your book open.
Keep your legs open.
Do not write any name but
your name on those acre-wide
pages. Be hollow,
Sally. Keep canary-singing
in a thirsty well. Be a singing
flighty bird with open beak.
Don’t try a cushion,
Mary. Don’t swallow soft.
Chew only sticks: carrots, twigs.
Sit on your bones.
Sit on their bones.
Don’t try for dreams.
Don’t try for dollars,
Leah, this is a coin job
for you. Turn out the light.
Tear out your eyes.
Published in Muzzle Magazine, Winter 2011
http://www.muzzlemagazine.com/elaina-ellis.html
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
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