And since I just scan mine in Photoshop instead of whatever awesome geekification Jase uses, I'll just link here, and you imagine it's in my written text even though it's not. Hmmm... wonder if i could do an imagemap in Dreamweaver & embed it in a post? Surely I could. May try, when I don't feel like a lump of dog pooh.
I feel so overwhelmed and anxious right now. Grandma fell (she still has a cast on her broken ankle from last time she fell. This a.m. wasn't a bad fall I guess) this morning, so my brother E & I were talking
to cheer myseelf up:
Mamaloo of Momcast tells me that fenugreek works by sweetening the milk, and she says that they put in on old dry hay to make it yummier for the horses. The sweetness in mama's milk makes it attractive to nurse, so the baby raises the supply by demanding more. I had no idea that's why it works and I think it's the most darling piece of trivia I've ever heard.
this afternoon about what will happen... . E was with her shortly after. She wants to move to a nursing home, and we both have the feeling that our aunt is very reluctant to do that.
Then E called this evening and told me she fell again. She's at the hospital right now getting X-rayed. She might have broken the other ankle, and has a huge bump on the back of her head. E says the aunt may be realizing now that supervised care is necessary, but they didn't really talk in depth.
I'm waiting to hear more, and worrying. I'm scared we're all going to disagree about how to care for her. We have few options. E works midnights, our aunt works evenings, and I work days all the fucking time and have the baby of course. Bu needs the car evenings for work... my head's spinning.
Meanwhile, I'm racing against time to get design work done by Monday, so Molly's plan ted in front of the goddamn TV again with Baby Einstein for the 6,789th time today, and she's going to spend most of tomorrow with the grandies and I feel like shit. The house is like an angry box yelling at me about how much mortgage we owe and how many loads of dirty dishes and laundry I we need to do.
Hormones are not my friend in this mental state. My period's starting again. Seems to come when I neglect to pump or nurse for longer than I should. That's stressing me too. I know better than to go out for the evening and not pump, or to forget it when I go to work. I'm worrying about my supply, and being paranoid about Molly being too skinny. I'm going to get some fenugreek capsules tomorrow.
into this:
It's the background of a cover for a client's huge-to-me 5o-something page catalog which I can't think too much about or I get a little embryo of an anxiety attack in my gut. It's a bigger project than I've ever done, and I'm still wobbly on my InDesign feet, and it the dealine iscomingthisfastohmygods. 
Happy Belated, L'il Bit:) Many awesome parties this spring. The Souster's "Irish twins*" will be 5 and 6 (holy shit!) in March/April, and Molly'll be a year (holy holy shit!) in May.
*Did I just use a racial slur? Am I allowed if I have a stray ancesetor or two from Ireland somewhere in the mix? What if I named my daughter Molly Shayne**? Does that help?
**Shayne is actually Hebrew (or Yiddish?) for "beautiful." See footer on blog. I was reading Prodigal Summer one very pregnant day, when I read an allusion to the poem, and I convinced Bu, aka Shane, that we had a new spelling (not Shane) for the Birdie's middle name. If we ever have a boy his middle name will be Heidi; it's only fair***.
***and now I stop being silly, and wishing I knew how to do actual footnotes to a blog entry, and get my ass back to work.
Or, "In Which Heidi Rants Aimlessly about Embracing the Real Feminine."
Gender, girls, girliness. Pink shit, prissy princesses, Disney hyperfeminization, Barbie & Bratz, dolls & dresses, Gardisil & sex education. I've been swirling my thoughts about gender around in my brain for a couple of days in preperation for Blog for Gender Liberation Day.
I'm coming up with more questions than answers. My initial thought was about the paradox in my own beliefs... Wicca is so gendered, all about Mr. High Priest does this, Mz. High Priestess does that, perfect balance, blah blah blah. I reject and buy into it all at once. The dual nature of the universe is so evident. Gender is everywhere in nature. The thing is, it can be so obviously oppressive. There's an overlapping that traditional thought leaves little room to explore. Things transition, they sway, they defy categorization sometimes. A little expansion in our approach to gender would be such a positive thing.
Then I daydreamed about my superfical femininity in the shower. I am very girly compared to some. I adore long skirts, cute hair, getting flowers, and I am a silly, flirty personality most of the time. I revel in my body hair, though, and I only wear make-up twice or three times a year. I have series of artwork about how awesome my period and the moon are. I think of myself as celebrating a human/mammal femaleness. Soft round bloody milky hairy womanness. When I write that I'm so aware some people will be put off. Why?
The bulk of my musings are about being a woman, raising a daughter, in this time and place. Murky waters there, let me tell you. I want so much to allow her to find her own expression of girl-ness. At the same time, I find it exhausting to think about policing her environment. I have stacks of princess movies, that I loved as a kid, and of course I want to share them with her. I think dolls are mostly OK, but scantlity clad sexed up things will be banished.
The doll thing... I think dolls are wonderful. I can't think of anything more positive than nurturing to teach any child. I used to think I'd shy away from letting my daughter have dolls. I didn't want her to learn that her only worth as a woman is her potential to be a mother. Now that I am a mom in practice and not theory, I can't think of a more important set of skills to have. Learning to nurture and empathize and comfort are so important. It's not that girls need to be exposed to this less, it's that boys need it more.
I feel like I've written poorly organized essays instead of blogposts all day. Indulgent and weird? Back to the usual mommy blog tomorrow. Er.
The past several years I’ve had roughly 1,572 encounters with women, usually younger than I am, who have said/written/expressed, “I’m not a feminist.” After I hear that, my blood pressure shoots up and my voice gets screechy and I get dizzy and have to deep breathing because I am so mad I want/need to scream. I can’t decide if I want to scream at this girl/woman or at the rest of the world. I can’t figure out how a person comes to that conclusion. Not too long ago I read a reference to feminists defined as women who hate p0rnography. What? Every time I hear a girl say that I think of Tinkerbell (clap your hands. Say you do believe in fairies feminists)and some hopeful piece of me wants to die in a tiny way.
When my senses return and I find a zen, reflective place and listen to these young women, it seems that we have a youth culture who have bought the “feminazi” paradigm hook, line, and sinker. It is not cool or sexy or normal to be feminist. Feminists hate men. They hate other women too if they are wearing too little clothing, or do not share in the angry orgy of man hating. I am a naïve thing, because I really thought no one bought that backlash bullshit- least of all girls brought up in this generation. I thought each daughter would be a stronger and more powerful woman than her mother. I thought our moms and dads worked way too hard for us to be where we are now. I am really angry on their behalf that girls are so ungrateful and unwilling to keep fighting/writing/loving/screaming/blogging for our own power. We should be dancin' and hollerin’ with joy that we have the luxury of taking feminism for granted.
The root of the issue, and arguably every conflict I can think of, is binary oppositional thinking. We have got, as a culture, to embrace holistic and inclusive thought. Feminism is a fluid, living ideal. The whole point was to eradicate strictures about women’s roles but so many people are buying into new ones. Feminists can be angry and joyful, beautiful and strong, sexy and intelligent, gay and straight and bi and transgendered, and I could keep going but listen: a feminist is a girl, woman, boy, man, human thinking being who does not believe that any gender is inferior to any other gender or that one’s sex at birth or by choice can determine the path of her/his life.
Arguing over semantics is ridiculous and divisive. Feminism is, by its essential nature, not a single-definition thing. And why should it be? Celebrate your own feminist spirit today. Delight in the anima and do something that makes you feel beautiful, or grab a marker and make an activist T-shirt. Write a letter to your Congressperson or refuse to do the dishes unless your brother/dad/husband does the ironing. Do some little thing. My feminism today is gratitude for a free and expansive outlet for my thoughts, and the promise of a warm, quiet bath with my nursling daughter.
Thordora's giving away an intriguing book about genetic mutations to a random reader who blogs about her/his own oddity. The post came a few days after a photoshoot with Bu when I noticed that I was always turning my arm away from the camera. I have had a tension between embracing the strangeness that is my body and wanting desperately to fade into the background. I've never made art about my birth defect, and it seemed like a perfect chance to explore it a little.
The photo Bu took is really beautiful I think, and it's weird how that surprises me. The digital collage is filled with personally empowering symbols... text from the Malleus Malleficarum, the book used by medieval witchfinders alludes to my neverending gothgirl delight that in more ignorant times my arm might have been called a "devil's mark." The Hindu god Ganesha is the patron Lord of the deformed and they served as priestesses in His temples. The mirror, a stormy sky, just moody layers. An atique ticket to a circus, because I love the idea of being freaky today. I'm showing you the simple file beneath, too- because I didn't want to hide under a Photoshop veil.
And then, what happens when my brain is overloaded from too much Photoshop. I looked over the shelf that divides office from living room to check on her and Molly was gone: poof. I freaked out until I saw her little bum up in the air and her face happily planted on carpet.
I forgot my pump. Ergo, I look like a p0rn star and feel like the Hoover Dam. I need to learn to hand express better. We need a HazMat team in the bathroom after my squirty attempt to fix myself, since we all know breastmilk is biohazardous and complicated to deal with.
It was totally worth having to blog that I broke my solemn vow:) The good news? 4 1/2 hours of crib time. Hell yeh. I'm so late for work. Blessed place that it is, I can do that once in a while. In more weird blogosphere synchronicity, just as I was going to post about my inability to make changes because of way overthinking the changes, or something like that, Crissy writes about her art sales plans essentially creating artist's block. Also, my imaginary post tied in to The Secret, and then I read this at Blogging Baby.
So my problem is my mind/body do this trick that's like that thing in dreams or cartoons where you run so fast your feet lift up off the ground and you don't go anywhere. I have huge ideas. So huge I want to use a gigantic font to illustrate so here: they are
this big.
They are so big in fact, that they don't go anywhere or do anything. I'm stuck in a crazy extremes-mindset. Instead of say, realizing dairy products are bad for my skin/weight/asthma and cutting back, I think "Dairy products are the devil's own tool to exploit sweet-eyed cows and keep my mucked up with fatty bad chi, so I need to become a hardcore vegan overnight and never ever ever eat cheese again." Of course, it's much easier to fail at that goal, isn't it? I'm the same way in every area of life: big, bold idea for drastic change. No follow through. All or nothing, and surprise: it's always nothing. And as much as the Law of Attraction and visualization works (wow are they working. We have so much web design business it's intimidating me as far as doing it in between momstuff and dayjob,) to create real change I have to get some concrete problems fixed.
So, my new plan is to actually make a few small, implementable changes, one at a time. Quiet, easy changes. So, in this vein, tomorrow morning my new wake-up time is 7 am. If the baby wants to get up with me, so much the better. Your midnight bedtime, Mollymylove, is really, really annoying. In order to try to reinforce this plan, I'm committing to you (yes you, ya sweet pea of a blog reader) that i'm gonna post at 7:15 a.m. at the latest, while I have my tea. My post may be unintelligible, or not. We'll see. Maybe I'll have a cool dream, or Molly will surprise us all and spend 8 hours in the crib.
This is a goatee of applesauce & black beans. And a very amused baby girl. Look at those eyes! They are lightening and I firmly believe they'll be the exact shade of hazel/blue/gray as mine. They freakin' better be. She's a perfect clone of her Daddy except for my eyebrows and forehead. I carry her for ten moons, endure an induced labor in hospital bed with no epi and she gives me eyebrows? Come on... That said, my eyebrows do rather define my face. They are so scary-pointy Jack Nicholson's would cry with envy. If I can ever get a photo of her pointing up one raised brow, I'll post it so you can see she's got it.Happiness = belly full of cookies.
Happiness = baby with cookies smeared on her face, nursing herself to sleep. Me, licking my finger to clean her face and feeling like a mama cat and swooning with quiet weekend lazy mama bliss.
I'm so overjoyed that my oatmeal cookies are medicinal. Added flaxseed meal for healthy fiber and fat, and brewer's yeast to team up with the oatmeal for to make more milkies. Molly's weight is worrying me a little. We had her nine month check up yesterday... damn, what day is it? Thursday and she's fallen in her weight range the last two visits. So, I'm trying to rev up production in the ol' nummins factories. I need to add another pumping session in at work too I guess. Our pediatric nurse is wonderful. She's an LC too, and she didn't recommend adding formula or an insane amount of solid food like so many doctors do. She actually told us that on my work days she should have her solids when I'm away so she can nurse more in the evenings. She suggested using a regular cup for her pumped milk, too. The grandies tried it today for me, but she spit a lot of it out. This kid is just not impressed with expressed milk. She's never going to sleep through the night.
I hosted a Mom's Night Out for my local online breastfeeding support group. We scrapbooked, to Bu's neverending amusement.
Bu: What are you and your friends doing tonight?
Me, scrubbing soap scum off shower doors: Scrapbooking, hangin' out.
Bu: Scrapbooking? [Mimes cutting and pasting with a scrunched girly face, cracks up laughing.]
Me: Yeh. So? It's fun.
Bu: You!? Scrapbooking? [Mocking, incredulous laughter.]
Me: What is so funny?
Bu: You're crafty.
Me: [Finally getting it...] Ooooh, you mean as opposed to artsy. As in feminist ragey paintings of demon goddesses slaying the forces of the patriarchy?
Bu: Yes. I don't know you anymore. You're a soccer mom.
Me: [Hissing.] Take that back!
Bu: Soccer mom, hehehe... [unleashed tirade of soccer mommish insults.]
Me: Bu, stop it. Look how the baking soda got the scum off the shower here...Oh Fuck. I am a soccer mom. Excuse me- I have to go pierce something.
So, it turns out it is fun, just like I imagined. I also learned that even though I know how to do acid-etching, wood-cuts, and handpainted monoprints, I cannot use a rubber freaking stamp neatly.
The company was the best. I got to see an old friend who I have always adored but don't know well enough, and got to know my friend who made my (gorgeous! photos soon) Mei Tai baby carrier a little more. We talked about birth stories until 1 a.m. Lovely.
OoOooo erggh:
Unhappiness = too many cookies.
Have I mentioned backsliding in February at my weight loss goal?
The ongoing kitchen experiments continue... I am thrilled to tell you I have made bread.
OK, sorta. It was tortillas. But still. The making of bread is the holy grail, the archaic and arcane mystery that awaits me at the end of my kitchen learning curve. Baking actual bread intimidates the hell out of me. I compensate my making all the easy things that are bread-ish. I do banana bread, cake, "batter bread," corn bread, beer bread, and now I have made tortillas.
The cooking thing is an obsession lately, a manifestation of my attempt to become a Real Person. I am not a Real Person, according to my Bu's definition, because of many random things... Real People get up at a reasonable hour, they cook at home more than they eat out, they do not go commando because all their underwear is dirty.
A kitchen covered in flour is one more tiny little step toward the amazing transmutation into the imaginary productive, creative, me.
So, I freaked out on Bu last night because he wouldn't let me go visit Molly at midnight at the grandies' to see the new tooth. Mamaw called in the middle of the party to tell us about the discovery. Yes, the tooth would still be there as Bu and a friend eventually convinced me, and sure we deserved an adults only evening followed by actual solid sleep. This didn't compare in my brain with the fact that her very first tooth ever was found by not-me, so me needed to see it as soon as humanly possible. Nevermind she probably cut the tooth on my nipple and I just didn't check her gums yesterday.
randomosity
A thing I learned this weekend: A charley horse cramp is not nearly as awful after experiencing labor contractions as it is before labor. Even Bu was impressed with my zen-like approach to waiting for the pain to end. Not that charley horses don't still suck.
As a matter of fact, the tooth was resplendent at seven a.m. following six and a half hours of uninterrupted sleep. The night of bliss proved that even the moodiest hormonally charged bad day of cranky badness can be made all better by a double strong Tension Tamer Tea, a cuddly husband, and streaming video of heroes on a laptop in bed.
The badness of my day was all in my head. I'm owning my bitchiness. I was the one who decided that, even though I am usually passionately opposed to removing my body hair, I would wax my legs and be Glamorous. Also, I would borrow my best friend's classic black dress-up outfit, including heels, and I would be Sophisticated. I would Do My Eyes and also be Sexy. I would then wow my coworkers, board members, and clinic supporters with my ability to Cinderella myself from funky-messy assistant girl to Put Together Foxy Mama at our Oscars Party. (Bu & I take red carpet photos of guests each year.)
Not so much. I forgot my wallet when I scrambled to the store for brunch items, and had to put away all the stuff WIC vouchers don't cover. Then it was too late to make it back & cook & get the Birdie to the grandies'. Later, the leg waxing began, in a messy and annoying way, and I spilled warm wax all over the bathroom. Cleaned that up, and met souster at the door to retrieve my outfit. Quick shower & make-up. Right. OK, mascara in eye- wash off, reapply. Stings, watering, ouch. On to wardrobe. Only the outfit doesn't fit, and the heels are lethal. They are several inches too high for any human being to walk in and they are so pointy-toes I have a toe cramp just imagining them. So I throw on the dressiest black dress I have- short sleeved very simple. My only dress shoes are ballet flats with bows. They are cute bows, and are adorable- with jeans. As a whole, my ensemble looks like a 12 year old girl at a funeral. My panty hose have no runs- at least there's that. So we go.
The printer won't work with our laptop so Bu has to run home to get drivers for the hardware. Meanwhile I have discovered that my hose are too big and they literally roll down under my butt whenever I walk four steps. So I'm tugging at my ass every few seconds trying to hike 'em back up. I'm an anxious mess by this time, and think I'd love a glass of wine. Only it's a cash bar and if we spend any money we'll overdraw our account. (Ha! Silly me- we did that anyway buying frivolous gasoline.)
The event was wonderful, however. We made roughly twice as much as last year for the clinic. The turn out was amazing. I learned that it's possible to pump in a large bathroom stall in bra and panty hose and not let any of the bottles touch anything:) The whole night I was seeing a scene from The Secret where a woman has a Bad Day which is the result of her telling herself, "It is a Bad Day," and I'd tell myself to shake it off, but I couldn't muster up the conviction to radiate positivity with my hose rolled up under my booty and bunching around my adolescent shoes.
Ask anyone to describe me in one word? "Moody." (Actually, ask my supervisor and she'd probably say "flaky," but that's another post with this headline: "Woman with reasonably high IQ and mad computer skillz finds she can't function at job retarded monkey could do.")
My husband would definitely say "moody." I'm infamous for my hair-trigger tears. This morning? Bliss, pure silly bliss. Why? Sunshine, tiny woody buds on the lilac bush outside my window, a great cuppa tea with stevia extract not honey so I feel like a healthy chick. That's it. In contrast, reasons I have cried in the last 48 hours:
I think I may be having some chaotic hormonal surges. "Due" for my period if we count from my first one post-partum, but having signs of ovulation instead. Weird as I used to be a perfect 28 day full moon mama. Had to reassure myself via Breastfeeding Community that it takes a while to re-regulate when still nursing. I'm thinking about revisiting hormonal birth control. Maybe this new IUD I hear about? Or I think they called it an IUC. I dunno. I just know I'm not letting Bu get a vasectomy before the Mollybird's a year old. He could change his only child stance, but I so very seriously doubt he will. For the record, I'm fine either way. I was with him in the 100% only-one camp, but now I could sway:) You saw that coming, right? Me too. I'm still content with my onesie of course.
The thing about the Law of Attraction, i.e. my new obsession, a.k.a. The Secret, a.k.a. a law of Wicca via Ceremonial magick is this: it works to a crazy degree. It's insane when you pay attention to your attitude how much of what surrounds you is brought to you because of the energy you emit.
I think it really ties into the idea of sychronicity. Whatever I'm focused on keeps popping up everywhere. So I'm seeing references all over the place about creativity and rediscovering it. The cool thing is that this reinforces my quest for changing from artslacker to artist. I heard my favorite Tool
song on the radio today, a song I don't have on CD or mp3 any longer. My love for Tool approaches a religious fervor:) The lyrics are so influenced by alchemy and the occult, and the music and lyrics are beautifully dark but transormative. This song is one of those pieces of art that just opens up my soul and reminds it of all the stuff it keeps forgetting- what with me letting my brain & body stay so cluttered.
a bit of the lyrics:
I am too connected to you to
Slip away, to fade away.
Days away I still feel you
Touching me, changing me,
And considerately killing me...
And as the walls come down and
As I look in your eyes
My fear begins to fade
Recalling all of the times
I have died
and will die.
It's all right.
New photos a la Bu at our Flickr page, including this one, which is a strong candidate for a new profile photo. Are you sick of seeing me topless and... well, saggy? Because I think I might be.
And you thought Britney was the most pathetic redneck mother in the country...
Warmer day, start of my weekend. Feeling groovy today: perky, possibly to an annoying degree. Hence, a digi doodle for you:
This is a welcome change from yesterday, in which Bu and then I plummeted into a Funk. Apparently, for me, it was a short lived Funk, which rocks, as I have been known to wallow for months in a dark place. Thank gods I seem to be moving further away from that as I grow more wrinkles and silver hairs. My impression of my life is that I was sleepwalking from age 15-25. A decade lost to just nothing.
I'm doing a lot of daydreaming about reinvinting my life, "Evolution of a moon-eyed etc..." being the presumptive raison d'etre for this blog. Molly has changed me so drastically and beautifully that it's wild. I was thinking about that nursing a wiggle baby fighting sleep while I watched a Sex and the City rerun. It was an episode before Miranda had Brady and there was a pregnant chick breakdown. Their minds were blown pondering how much it changes you, being a mother. My reaction is that it change as much as you want it to. I wanted, needed my daughter to allow me to focus on something huge outside myself. I see her as a cuddly little fire lit under my ass to get my life in order.
When I got pregnant, I wondered what the impact of motherhood would be on my artistic life. Certain professors of the non-namesake variety (Molly's named after my ceramics prof) seem to think it's pretty much a death sentence for my hypothetical career. So, what I thought was that I want her to see me being the best version of myself I can be- that includes producing art regularly. I think it would be so harmful to her to see her mother wasting her talent.
How much art have I made in the time span since I was barely pregnant?
Zero art.
The thing is, it isn't the diapers and the nursing and working two jobs. It's my slacker self doing the same thing I've always done-nothing of consequence. For hours at a time.
So I'm trying to organize this life and family. We are living so loosely, with no routine and no direction. The baby's sleeping in with us then is up too late. The business plan's sitting there in a notebook with weeks?months? of dust on. My studio is a catch all storage room piled to ceiling with miscellania. My clay is in dried bricks, my kiln has never been turned on.
I'm implementing some ideas from The {cheesy} Secret, and I'll go into more detail later about that. My biggest thing need is to just create some structure in my/our life. I've got to start managing time better. I mean I will, I will, I will. I've become the thought police, trying to frame things positively. Constant battle.
Oh, and look: blog pretty again:) It's evolving too. Yay for BlogU.
