when everyone applauds...

This evening, after we had tucked in both kids and turned out the lights, Jabber popped up from his little blanket cave and said, "When everyone applauds for you, do you clap, too?  Because whenever people clap for me, this is something that puzzles me."

It's kind of a typical Jabber-question, pretty obviously something he's been turning about in his serious little brain for several weeks or possibly for the duration of his last three lifetimes.  "Well," said D, "I guess that depends on the situation.  When was the last time people were applauding you?"

And Jabber told us about the integrity assembly, and how "I didn't know what to do with my hands when everyone else was clapping."  I had to go over there and squeeze him tight because really.  What do you do with your hands when everyone applauds?

I am trying very hard to be more graceful at receiving compliments and congratulations (and improving, I think!), but it has always been a struggle. I know that the correct answer is always a smile and a "Thank you!", but that's always hard for me to pull off in real life, though it's getting better.  I remember at my confirmation in ninth grade, I stood on the staircase of my church in a receiving line, and the congregation filed past us, shaking our hands and congratulating us.  I realized afterward, in a state of dire embarrassment of course, that as I was shaking all those people's hands, I had also been nodding, smiling, and repeating, "Congratulations!" to them like a complete idiot. 

So there's my first possible response in the face of a compliment:  complete and total idiocy.  I'll usually get the smiling part down (probably with a blush to accompany it), and then something that makes absolutely no sense at all will come out of my mouth.  These moments are probably not that big of a deal--the other person probably forgets about it after a brief moment of thinking, "Oh, I embarrassed the poor dimwit.  Perhaps I'll saunter over here to the cake table."  But in my head, they replay over and over again.  Me, stammering nonsense.

Another common response is an attempt to deflect the compliment or make it sound like I don't really deserve it.  Oh, you like my hair?  "Gah! It's so unruly today, and it's a little too long."  My shoes?  "Oh, yeah, they were on clearance at Target.  Super cheap.  And look more closely--this buckle part is pretty ugly, no?"  It's worse if it's something I did or created that I'm being complimented on.  I did a wonderful job acting in that performance?  "Oh, I totally flubbed my lines in Act II, and did you see the way I tripped when I was supposed to be chasing Lysander?"  Well, no, Elissa.  They didn't notice.  Not until you pointed it out.

So what's the problem, responding to praise?  Do I really feel like I don't deserve it?  I...don't think that's it.  A lot of the time, I'm actually proud of the accomplishment, or I actually do like the shoes or the hair (after all, I bought them and...got the haircut, haha.)  And really, when someone puts forth the effort of pointing out something they like or appreciate, they really don't deserve to have it thrown back in their face like that. Is it because I don't want to seem like I'm proud?  Like I have a big head?  Does it come back to that thing all the girls used to start their sentences with back when I was in middle school:  "Not to brag, but..."  Or is it just that it feels awkward to have the attention--like Jabber standing at the front of the gym, seeing all the rest of the kids applauding and wondering what he should be doing with his hands? 

So I started thinking about this in terms of my writing.  I haven't been published before, except for one poem in a very small journal that nobody ever read.  The truth is, not that many people have seen my writing.  So I really haven't had to deal with the response people might have to my writing.  Writers whose books are out there in the world talk a lot about how to respond to negative reviews or comments (i.e. not at all!), but now I'm imagining myself at some public event related to my book (eep, hives!), and instead of managing a winning smile and a confident, "Thanks!" I'll be grinning, drooling, and muttering, "Congratulations! Yes, I love this weather!" OR I'll point out all of my misplaced modifiers and continuity errors if they dare to say nice things about my writing.  (I hope there won't be misplaced modifiers or continuity errors, but if there are, I don't need to call attention to them!)

Maybe instead, I could burst into applause?

I dropped a stitch! the terror of the ginormous revision...

I want to write about revision.  No, wait.  Maybe I just want to hide from revision?  Yeah, same thing.

So anyway, I've spent the past year revising--I'm pretty sure, when you break it all down, (*breaks it down*), I have spent more time this past year revising than sleeping.  And a lot of the time, even when I'm sleeping, the better part of my brain (AKA the part not otherwise engaged in drooling over pretty pictures and unlikely scenarios (not like, literally drooling, of course, ew! *flips pillow*)) keeps right on revising.

I struggle sometimes with blogging about writing.  I enjoy reading and commenting on other writers' blogs, but I don't really feel like I can write about "the craft" with any kind of authority.  What do I even know about writing except how much I don't know?  Still, I keep thinking about the revision process, and I keep coming to one big conclusion.  Ready?  Okay.  Revision is...hard.

Yeah.

Brilliant.  So as a writing teacher, I spend a lot of time trying to teach people how to make their writing better.  We do things like peer critiques, where readers ask each other questions about things they want to know more about, or identify language they really think "works"...that kind of thing.  And we do the kind of revision that is more about refining language--identify your lazy words and get more specific.  Read it out loud and find the sentence breaks.  Check your outline and make sure your paragraphs are organized with transitions and a strong thesis...that kind of thing.

Nobody can ever really teach you how to REVISE, you know?  Like, even when a reader (critique partner, agent, editor, your mom--whatever) tells you what's wrong with your novel--that the voice is awesome but everything that happens in it is slightly wrong, or that the whole thing really needs to begin 20,000 words in, or that the stakes aren't high enough or that your central focus seems to want to shift over about three inches to one side and maybe happen in a different state--even then, they can't tell you what to DO about it.

So far I've revised all of those problems and then some, and I still can't sit here on this blog and tell you what to do when you take apart a key scene about three-quarters of the way through and realize that it's like you've just gone to dig out a dropped stitch and suddenly there are all these loops and strings and holes and you're scared to move and your needles are shaking and more loops are sliding off of them every second and you've spent an entire year on getting this far so the thought of ripping it all out and starting over is paralyzing, and...

...well, I'm not sure how else to put it.  It's terrifying.  But you can't sit there all day holding perfectly still with your needles in the air. So...you start tugging at strings.  You pull a few loops.  Sometimes it works to cover the wall up above your desk with post-it notes, and sometimes it helps to make color-coded notes on dot matrix paper and spread it all over the floor, and sometimes it helps to cry and sometimes it helps to paint a deck with music stuffed in your ears and sometimes it helps to take a walk and sometimes it helps to take a bath and sometimes you have to write what's supposed to happen next ALL IN CAPS with things like "OMG THEY ARE FREAKED OUT" and "WHAT WE THOUGHT YOU WERE JUST A LITTLE MESSED UP BUT YOU ARE REALLY MESSED UP" and even "AND THEN HER PARENTS’ HEADS EXPLODE!" (All of these are either my own actual methods of revision or my own actual excerpts from my current document--I left out the somewhat controversial methods of snarling at my family and going on crazed cleaning rampages...)

Anyway, no matter how you cope with it, revising is freakin' HARD.  And what works for one person may not work for another.  What works for me today may not work tomorrow (assuming I eventually post this and get back to work), but the process of making serious, deep changes to a manuscript time and time again (I'm a slow learner) is daunting and difficult.

But.  Here's the good part.  As difficult as it is, and as many times as I feel like a big failure when I have to go back YET AGAIN and rework something I thought was as good as I could ever do in a million years, and as much as I despair with my huge pile of post-its and my fourteen open documents...every single time, something crazy happens.

The book gets better.

And that feels almost good enough to remember it all the way through until the next revision.  Almost.

*opens fifteenth document*

*sighs*

(for the record, because I'm afraid this post might be too short and might not contain enough parentheses, I can only knit in a straight line, like a never-ending scarf, and my options for dropped stitches are three: tear it all out and begin from the beginning (after I get someone to cast on for me because I always seem to forget how), live with a hole in the middle of my scarf, or bring it over to my mom's house and make her fix it...but so far, I have not yet made my mom do my revisions.)

that's what he said...

Jabber is playing on the living room floor, while D. and I eat our dinner at the table.

J (muttering to himself): YES! My Lego pilot is sitting in his Calkpit. COCKpit. COCK. PIT. (to me) MOM! Isn't this word really hard to pronounce? COCK. PIT. COCKPIT.

me (eyes locked on D's, dying a little): Yes, honey.

J: COCK. PIT. COCK. PIT.

me (dies some more)

J: Hey! That's a compound word, isn't it? PIT, like my armpit. and COCK. Whatever that is. COCK. What's a COCK, Mom? COCKCOCKCOCK.

me (ded)

the devil is in the details

Growing up, my favorite books had nothing in common, on the surface.  I was as deeply in love with the historical feel of Little House on the Prairie as I was with the fantasy elements (science fantasy?) of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and my favorite book for a long time was this strange paperback my grandma had picked up at a flea market called Charley, or The Girl Who Ran Away--a somewhat bizarre, feverish story about a child living on her own in a chicken coop, crawling through hedgerows and going to Sunday School with dying wildflowers in her hair.

It didn't matter what the book was about; what I wanted was for it to feel so real, so thick with details and rich settings and characters who seemed so entirely believable that I would get wrapped up in the story so tightly that I would forget where I was.  I loved being lost in a book, so far gone the sound of my mother knocking on my bedroom door would make me startle, confused and disoriented in the real world. 

As an adult, that feeling is harder to capture, but to this day, the books that truly amaze me are the books that feel...deep.  Sometimes I think of it as having layers, but other times I think of it like a thick, heavy patchwork quilt.  Every stitch was deliberately placed by hand. Every scrap of fabric has a history you can hear if you're still, if you study it long enough.  There are varied textures and funny smells and a weighty, comfortable feeling in your hands, on your lap.  And when you put it down, set it aside, there's a little moment of longing--a sad little shiver.

I want to write a book like that.  I do.  I'm trying.  But man, does it ever take a long time!

All this was sort of a lead in (or it was supposed to be, anyway) to talk about how I read through the first draft of my Cassandra WIP and scribbled notes about every other paragraph that said, "GO DEEPER HERE!" and "EXPAND THIS!" or "SLOW DOWN AND GIVE THIS SCENE A CHANCE!"  It feels so thin, so very far from that heavy quilt.  It's not even one of those double-layer fleece blankies with the fringes on the edge--the kind anyone can make, provided they can operate a pair of scissors and tie a simple knot.  This book is like...maybe a flannel sheet.

So almost everyone in my online writing group has at least attempted to do literary agent Mary Kole's 100 Declarative Sentences exercise to flesh out characters or settings.  I'm not sure if anyone has actually made it to one hundred, but even so, we've all discovered some useful tidbits about our characters in this way.  I made it to 45 sentences about Cass while I was writing the first draft, which was super helpful.  Some of the sentences actually helped me keep details straight as I was writing, like this:

14.  Cassandra has a sister Dicey, age 15; a sister Lexie, age 8; and a brother Eric, who is eleven months older than she is and will turn 18 at the end of this month.

So mainly, that kind of sentence helps me keep my continuity.  I have a hard time keeping track, for instance, of what color eyes and hair my characters have, or like, if I mention at one point that eating cheese gives them hives.

Other sentences end up telling me more about the character--sometimes giving little bits and pieces of their past lives that may not actually end up in the book, but which may give that bit of different texture to the patch that makes up that place in the quilt.  I learn things about them, like this:

22.  Cass has a vague desire to be a scientist when she "grows up", but she's worried that this is a little too nebulous...what do scientists actually do, in the real world?  She pictures herself in a lab coat, bending over beakers, but...doing what?  All the pictures in her head come out of that old biography of Marie Curie she read for a report in fourth grade.

Now, on my second draft, I'm making sentences for Darin, and Drew, and maybe even Kayla.  So far I'm on Darin number 24, and it's hard, but I've already got some notes in a different colored pen next to "EXPAND THIS!" and "GO DEEPER HERE!"  My favorite discovery is the first moment he ever noticed Cass:

15.  Darin noticed Cass for the first time on an eighth grade field trip to the underground mine.  Something about her face when the tour guide mentioned the underground physics lab reminded him of Meg Murray from A Wrinkle in Time, and he daydreamed a bit about traveling with her through space and time.  Or at least sitting close to her on tall stools, their heads bent together over a Bunsen burner.  He lagged behind the group for the rest of the tour, his mind far away.

So here's hoping that by the time I finish this draft, this story will have a little stuffing!

knock-knock

I admire writers who can be funny.  Bloggers, especially--a funny blog is the best.  But writing humor is difficult stuff.  My sense of humor is understated.  I'm the kind of person who makes quiet, wry comments to the person next to me in the back row.  I'm the kind of teacher who is rarely ever completely serious but also rarely ever completely joking.  Only the quick ones catch on which is which.

I value funny.  At almost every job I've worked, I've had a co-worker who regularly made it a point to tell me jokes or share funny comics with me or otherwise make me laugh.  But it's so easy for humor to fall flat on the page.  I can't always predict what humor I'll enjoy.  I've definitely enjoyed Douglas Adams several times over (even this sort of bizarre Apple IIe computer game that I recall playing somewhat a lot as a teenager), and David Sedaris is absolutely golden, especially because after listening to him on This American Life and such, I can never read one of his books without hearing him actually narrating the stories in my head.

Recently I read Douglas Coupland's novel, The Gum Thief, at the gym.  I'm not sure I'd say that the purpose of the book is to be humorous.  I mean, to be honest, please do not ask me any time soon what the purpose of this book is.  I loved it, and I have no idea what I think about it yet.  But anyway, this was a book that caused me to allow spontaneous explosions of surprised laughter to escape me while I was running in ellipticals with my ipod stuffed in my ears.  Who knows how loud I laughed? 

What are your favorite funny writers?  They don't have to be writing to be funny...my favorites are often the ones who just are funny. 

is this real life?

Jabber and I spent last Saturday afternoon "rambling"--the code word around here for "please take one or both of the kids out of here before they wreck the place and send us all into a terrible spiral of craziness".  Technically, our job was to get groceries, but our real job was to occupy ourselves long enough that David and the Monkey could get in a good, long nap.

So we rambled.  We spent some time hanging out on the banks of a fast-moving city creek, had pancakes and coffee at a local coffee shop (where Jabber did write his note to Ms. C. and I did some writing of my own, both of us scribbling companionably in longhand in our journals), and eventually made our way through the aisles of the grocery store.  We did all of this mostly without driving each other crazy.

I enjoy being with my kids, especially like this--low pressure, low expectations.  I do best with only one at a time, and without much of a plan. 

On Sunday, after a short family walk around the neighborhood (which included a playground visit, a Laffy Taffy stop, and a rousing game of I-Spy, culminating with a bike ride along the sidewalk out front), Jabber sat on the front porch steps between David and I and sighed hugely. 

"Mom?" he said.  "Is this real life?"

I hesitated.  I mean, wouldn't you?  What exactly is he asking?  What kind of answer can I possibly give him?

"Well, is it?"

I took the Socratic approach, or maybe I was stalling.  "As opposed to what?" I asked.

"Well, it could be a dream."  He took a swig of water from his canteen, gazing out across the street in his little cosmic contemplation.  "It could all be a dream."

Maybe it takes a weekend of spring rambling to get a person back in touch with real life, but it was sort of like the sun got warmer, the air fresher, the Laffy Taffy stickier, at that moment.  I spend so much of my time immersed in fiction--the opposite of real life.  At times, don't we all live our life in a dream, thinking about what we'd like it to be, what we hope it will become?

"How can we tell that this is real life and not a dream?" I asked.  He couldn't see me smiling, but I'm sure he heard it in my voice because he laughed, then, and leaned back against my legs.

"Well, because there aren't any monsters or weird animals," he said.  "Everything just makes sense.  Duh!"

a tangential slalom course of a post

I go through these jags where I listen almost exclusively to Minnesota Public Radio when I'm driving my car, and I'm in one right now. If you were to see me driving somewhere, you'd probably be able to tell. I might be chuckling. I might be nodding thoughtfully. Most likely, though, my car will be parked and inexplicably idling at my destination--the children straining at their seatbelts while I shush them.

So yesterday I hopped into the car (I keep calling it that, but it's really a mini-van, sighhhh) to pick up the boys from a morning at daycare while I was writing, and this Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert, was speaking about happiness, or more specifically, why people mess up so much when trying to predict what will make them happy. A long time ago, I remembered watching this video of a shorter talk he did at some other...ideas thingy...because I remembered the interesting experiments he did with a photography course.

Short story is that he had college students take a bunch of meaningful pictures and create two beautiful prints, and then they had to choose one to keep and one to leave with the instructor. Half the students were told that they could change their minds in four days and switch pictures, and the other half were told that they had to choose and it was a final decision. In the end, the people who had an opportunity to change their minds were less happy with the pictures than the people without that chance. Like, a lot less happy.

Then he asked a new group of students which group they would rather be in, and over sixty percent of them chose to be in the group with the choice. They chose the class that would eventually make them unhappy with their photo.

This was interesting.

I started thinking about shopping, about the difference between the way I shop and the way D. shops. First, I make decisions and then I don't look back. Let's say I'm looking for a new pair of shoes to wear to work. I'll go to the shoe store, find my size, look around at all the options, try on a few pairs if I don't already have a tantrumming toddler, pick one, buy it, and I'm done. Those other shoes that I didn't buy? They aren't in my head anymore, unless I've made mental plans to come back for them after I've earned another pair of shoes or something.

David does pretty much the opposite. He will scour shoe stores for several weeks, repeatedly going in and trying on different pairs. He will research the finalists thoroughly on the internet. He'll read reviews of the shoes. He'll go back and try them on again. He'll pit the stores against each other to get a better price (seriously, he does this all the time, not necessarily with shoes, but I wouldn't put it past him). Finally, he'll make his selection, but much of the time it's a close decision, and he may waver a couple of times as he works through all the pros and cons of each.

The next thing is that I don't do returns. So let's just say I don't like shoes when I get home. They actually pinch a little. Wow, I didn't realize they made that weird little sighing sound every time I take a step. That will be awkward while I'm creeping around my classroom. I totally didn't notice that they made my feet look so boxy. Boxy doesn't really look good on my feet. I shrug and tuck them in my closet. Give them away to someone. Possibly I have slightly pinching, boxy, sighing feet for a while until I have a chance and the funds to try again. But it doesn't really occur to me to bring them back. I don't know why...I just feel like it's a lot of trouble. I made the choice, no big deal. I don't usually feel unhappy about the shoes. Shoes are great, but I'm not going to go crazy over a pair of shoes.

D. comes home from shopping and doesn't take the tags off of things until he's certain. Really certain. And then maybe he'll sleep on it. I guess I can't speak to his happiness with those final purchases, but from my point of view, it seems like if he realizes that there's a flaw in his purchase, he's more likely to wonder about that other option...maybe I should have bought that other one...I saw that one review about this on their website, but everyone else said it was fine...it seems a little like agonizing, to me.

Agonizing =/= Happiness.

So Gilbert talked about how choice--freedom--makes people less happy. Because you can wonder about whether you made the right choice? Because you also have the freedom of regretting the choices?

Oh, dear. This is not what this post was supposed to be about. Warning! Tangent! Where did it start? *traces back*

AHA!

Second paragraph. A likely place for a tangent to crop up.

What I meant to write about was the tiny snippet of the Aspen talk aired on MPR that was about CHILDREN. And how they make us less happy. I believe his three reasons that we still think of our children as sources of joy were Armani socks, Heroin, and Baseball. Maybe I'll blather on about that tomorrow. Or maybe there will be another tangent. What was I talking about?

In the Kitchen with Elissa

So last night I was standing in the kitchen, and I had a sort of introspective moment. Ordinarily, those moments are not so great because they involve me making a realization about myself, like that I’m essentially lazy, or self-centered, or that quite possibly that last time I lost my temper with Jabber was the time that will mess him up irrevocably.

But this realization was about cooking.

I always say that I can’t cook. It’s true, I don’t cook. I don't usually tell people that when David is going to be gone from the home during a mealtime, he sometimes leaves a meal ready for me to heat up. That sometimes means always. That he also gives me detailed instructions about the heating.

(To be fair, David likes giving detailed instructions. He’s very helpful like that.)

It’s also true that cooking meat is difficult for me. For one thing, I won’t eat or let the kids eat ground meat (ground beef primarily, but I really can’t eat too much of any kind of ground meat), so there goes the primary source of meat from my childhood. Hamburger in everything, you know? But I just can’t eat it, not thinking about how it’s all ground up and who knows what is in it. I cooked a pound of ground beef once, it must be ten years ago now, and I looked at it, cooking in the pan, and just knew I wasn’t going to eat that ever again. I dumped it out in the garbage, and I don’t think I’ve eaten it since, at least, not on purpose. I won’t get into the e.coli chapter in Fast Food Nation that made me vow to keep the kids away from it until they are older and more…I don’t know, durable.

But still, when we lived in Oregon, I often cooked. I had a vegetarian cookbook, and I made soups, side dishes, full meals. I often substituted ingredients because we were poor and only had a few staples in our kitchen most of the time, but I cooked a lot.

Then we had Jabber, and I went back to work, and there it began. I didn’t get home from work until 5:30, and before I could even get my coat off, the baby would be reaching for me hungrily, with his little baby bird mouth opened wide. We’d settle into our perch on the couch, and there we would stay…both of us exhausted and hungry and a bit cranky.

So David had to cook.

And essentially that’s the reason he continues to cook: I work late, and the kids are hungry much sooner.

But last night I realized what my real problem is. It’s not that I’m a bad cook; it’s that I’m a bad meal planner. I look at the cupboards, and I truly can’t figure out what to make out of it all. I can sometimes think of one part of the meal, but then I’m at a loss as to what to do for the rest of it, or how any of it would go together.

Like a couple nights ago, when I went grocery shopping, the store bakery had these enormous loaves of garlic bread on sale, so I bought a loaf and set it on the counter. While David was asking me what I we should have for dinner, all I could think was, “Well, we should eat the garlic bread because it was probably not fresh to begin with, so…garlic bread. Goes with spaghetti. But we only have alfredo sauce made. And Jabber won’t eat that. Because it’s cheese. And he’ll only eat orange cheese, that’s not melted. Unless it’s on pizza, when white cheese, melted is okay. And Monkey won’t eat noodles at all. What kind of a kid won’t eat noodles, for crying out loud. Why the hell do my kids have to eat the complete opposite, anyway?”

And at this point, I think I wandered out of the kitchen. It was just too much for me.

David, on the other hand, turned on the oven and stuck the garlic bread in, a plan forming around in the back of his mind. He threw some chicken into a pan, melted some cheese, steamed some broccoli, tossed some chickpeas, and made us grilled chicken sandwiches on garlic toast with two side dishes.

I’m not completely helpless, though. I mean, sooner or later I would have poured us each a bowl of cereal.

The More Things Change

I went to a birthday party today (Happy first, Little B!) for a friend's son who turned one year old. It made me sad because I realized that I haven't seen him or his parents since my own son's first birthday (well, and my other son's fourth birthday because we're super lucky and both our boys were born one day apart, conveniently just a little over a week before Christmas...parenthetical tangent over), which was seven months ago.

It got me thinking about how much our lives have changed since having kiddos, because really, David and I used to be really good friends with these people, before Jabberwock was born. She was the first friend I made in college. David worked with him, and the four of us even got together for a road trip to Vancouver, B.C., when David and I lived out in Oregon for a couple years. True, they did move quite a ways out, and David got this annoying schedule that doesn't allow us to have much of a social life anyway, but it all happened right around the time we had our first kid.

Becoming a parent changes so much about the dynamics of your family, your friendships, your identity, and sometimes that's hard to think about too much. I love my kids, so much that it's incredible--a love I didn't know was possible before they came along. That sounds trite and cliche and it is, but it's only cliche because it's true. I can't imagine my life without them in it.

But there are times when I mourn that other life we had, full of backpacking, late nights that went unpunished in the morning, time that belonged only to me, time alone with my husband. I feel like we knew each other as people much better back then, instead of now, where so much of our relationship is orbiting around these other humans in our lives. Happily, joyfully orbiting, you understand.

I get most nostalgic about the pre-kid days when I am stuck in the day-to-day of fighting siblings and wrestling kids down for naps and searching for the binkie under the car seat on the side of the road so Monkey will stop screaming. I miss travel and hanging out a whole lot, and deciding to just skip dinner now and again. I miss taking luxurious baths when I felt fragile. I miss going through entire weeks, months even, without arguing with anyone. Lately, I'm lucky if I can make it through three minutes.

But I think, too, that the more things change, the more they stay the same. (I'm just full of the cliches tonight!) That look in my husband's eyes when we steal a moment to hold each other in the kitchen or while brushing our teeth--it's the same. Deeper, even, because we cannot take each other for granted. I'm still stubborn as hell, which is the real cause of most of those arguments (perhaps my memory is flawed, after all, about the frequency of arguing). I still get to do my writing, even if it causes me to choose every night between writing and being crazy tired at 6:30 when they get up and not writing but getting some sleep. If anything, I think I'm better at writing because I can't play around as much, wasting time. And even though our camping and hiking is much closer to home and MUCH less spontaneous, we still get out there every so often, and I have faith that things will get easier as the kiddos get older.

I'm not sure what my actual point is with this rambly post tonight, except to say that I'm musing about the way life has changed in the last five years, and feeling a little down about friends we've grown more distant from (there are more than just one couple) since becoming parents. But then I have just two seconds of absolute cuteness from one of the little curiosities, and instantly I'm so grateful for their miraculous little selves. (Thought I'd end on a cliche, just to round out the post. Hmm?)

Jabberwockisms

A couple of short funnies from my short little funny one:

Jabber: Mom, whew! That rice milk sure crunched my thirst! It crunched it right up into bits!
Me: It crunched your thirst, huh? When I drink something and I'm really thirsty, I sometimes say that it quenched my thirst.
Jabber: Oh. Well, that's just silly.

A little later.

Jabber: Mom, are there other worlds, than ours?
Me: ... (I'm thinking, I'm thinking...what is he wondering? Is he looking to have a talk about heaven again, and if so, what should I tell him? Is he wondering about other worlds like in a fantasy book, like through the looking glass or Narnia or that wacky island of Sodor where trains talk to each other and make strange faces in elaborate miniature settings? Is he curious about alien life forms or simply taking an astronomical interest in, say, Jupiter?)
Jabber: MOM! I said are there any other worlds than this one?
Me: Well...like...what exactly are you wondering?
Jabber: Well, like there's Disney World, and...are there other worlds?

Still later.

Jabber: Mom! (super excited, dancing in place) I've figured out who I'm going to marry!
Me: Ohhhh? Really?
Jabber: Yeah! Yeah! I'm going to marry Monkey! I love him so much, and we're going to get married, and I'm going to live with him until we die!
Me: Ohhhh? Really?
Jabber: Yeah, when we grow up, Monkey and I are getting married.
Me: Well. Usually people don't marry their brothers or sisters. Usually you marry someone who isn't related to you. If you get married, that is.
Jabber: (devastated) But I want to live with Monkey until we die! I just really really want to! (collapses into a puddle of tears and snot and such)
Me: Come here and hug me, you sweet thing.

Jabberwock really must be working out the difference between life and death lately. He speaks about dying very repetitively, and he's constantly asking questions about "when we die," and "is that like heaven," and when someone is late arriving (according to his measurements of time, anyway), he'll often say, "What if s/he died? I think s/he died."

A couple of weeks ago we were having a playdate (have I mentioned I hate that term; it makes me feel like a socially awkward teenager just typing it!), and the other boy asked me over a picnic lunch, "When did Jabberwock's sister die?"

The other mom looked really uncomforable until I said, "Jabber never had a sister, T. It's just him and Monkey."

Jabber insisted, though. "Yes I did!" he said with considerable passion. "I had a sister and she died. She was older than me." Then he adopted the nana-nana-boo-boo tone of voice and added, "She died before you were even born!" He didn't add the "So there!" but it was clearly implied.

Some of the talk is heartbreaking, like when he told me he hopes I die before his daddy, and some of it is light-hearted, like when he pretends that his toys die and then he brings them back to life. All of it reinforces the fact that the little imagination man is always thinking, always listening, always storing things away in that wonderful brain of his. Just waiting to drag them out at the next opportunity when Mama looks like she's not doing enough at the moment.

Dumpster Day Indeed!

Ha, sometimes the timing of the universe frightens me with its synchronicity. After my post yesterday about wishing I could have a Dumpster Day in my own life, a time to stop and get rid of everything I don't need, clean everything I've got, and put everything back in its place, I came across this article in this week's TIME magazine called "The 100 Thing Challenge." It's about a guy named Dave Bruno who is trying to fight our consumer culture by whittling down his belongings to only 100 things. After reading the article, felt like I understood the why of the decluttering challenge, and why others around America are feeling inspired to do similar challenges. "Organizational consultant" Peter Walsh is quoted in the article as attributing people's desire to get rid of stuff to their desire to get some control over their lives, "even if it's just a tidy kitchen counter." (The online article, btw, has a photo of a really cluttered kitchen counter. Despite your suspicions, it is not mine.)

I get it. I want to have control over the stuff that sometimes feels like it is taking over, too, and I have already said that mainly my husband and I limit our consumerism. We really don't have as much stuff as a lot of people. Still, it weighs us down.

I remember when David and I first left on our westward adventure, how good it felt to get rid of everything we couldn't carry in the trunk of my car. Granted, it was a 1987 Mercury Grand Marquis, and the trunk was massive. Still, all we had for a year or so was what could fit in that car. It was pretty funny when we finally stopped and moved into the four bedroom house (briefly) with the two roommates, and we unloaded all of our stuff into the house for about a week before the roommates arrived. There was all this wide open space, and our little camp chairs, our sleeping bags on the floor, our single candle, our one beautiful rug. It felt good, and clean...and a little bit ridiculous, if you want to know the truth. Like when we had to sweep our huge living room floor with a little hand brush and dustpan that we used to brush pine needles and such out of the tent. Or when we sat cross-legged on the floor of an expansive dining room, eating rice out of a shared camping pot with a stick David carved into a spork.

My first reaction to the article, though, was a little misled. I believed that this guy was actually trying to only own 100 things (that is sort of what the article says, that he was the beginner of a "grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.") So I started making a mental list of my essential 100 items, while I was jogging on the elliptical machine:

1. My house. That's my hugest possession, though maybe it doesn't count since I don't really own it yet, and won't for what seems like a billion years?
2. My van.
3. Our other car, Zoom-Zip. (Due to my husband's weird schedule and the absence of buses during that time frame, the only way we could narrow down to one vehicle is if I were able to wake up both boys every morning at 3:00 am and drive David to work, then he would have to take a bus to my work, pick up the car, and drive to daycare at noon to get them.)
4. Then I thought, so do I have to count two carseats as possessions? I own them.
5. I live in northern MN. That means I need at least three coats for the different weather, two hats, at least three pairs of mittens/gloves, warm boots, dressy boots, fleece pants, snow pants, neck gator, snowshoes, you know. Does "winter gear" count as one thing?
6. Oh, shit, I got to books. Sorry, game over. I can't even limit myself to 100 books in each room. I can't even limit myself to 100 journals of my own writing! This was my weakness when we went out West, too. I can recall David physically restraining me in a bookstore in Jackson Hole, our first rare trip out of the wilderness and into a real shopping environment.

So then, as I was pondering whether the gym membership was a possession (yeah, I think so), I started wondering if this whole idea was even a good one. I mean, isn't there something to say about owning things and using them right up to their limits? I mean, hanging on to the stuff and reusing it as much as possible. You look in the closets of old people who have lived through the Great Depression, for instance, and you're likely to find all kinds of things saved in bundles and bins, things that can be reused. Drawers full of twist ties, cardboard from panty hose packages, recycled greeting cards. Isn't it better to hang onto things, so we don't have to buy more later?

Take my bicycle, for instance. Now, later on in the article, another person modifies the challenge to just getting rid of things you don't use daily, never mind the number. OK, sounds a little more reasonable. But even accounting for the winter months, I haven't ridden my bike for several years, since becoming pregnant and having the second kiddo. So yes, I could get rid of my bike, saying well, I'm not using it, so it's just extra stuff. However, I'm pretty sure that I will love riding my bike once again when I don't have to figure out how to transport two small children on the back or in some kind of trailer (that I'd have to buy) or whatever. Like maybe in a few years when they're riding their bikes. (Helmets? Separate possession?) In that case, I'd have to be a bigger consumer by buying another bike.

Another case in point is the espresso maker. Haven't used it in a really long time, 'cause well, it's a wonderful treat that takes more time than I can put into right now. Plus it's really hard to operate with a toddler monkey hanging off my hip. But there will probably be a time in the future when I can see David and I having the leisure time to cuddle up with some homemade mochas. And I'm not going to buy another machine (especially since this one was a gift I got in 1997--now that's getting some use out of it, right?)

So, with all these questions, I finally visited this blog, which is the guy who the article was based on. He clarifies there that it's about personal possessions, not things like furniture and vehicles. He also completely excludes both books and filled journals. Now I'm back in the game. Also, it's only things for himself, so I don't have to count the car seats or kids' bike helmets. I'm also quite relieved to find out that he lumps some things together like underwear and socks! I mean, gross. Then I'd just have to be a crazy laundry soap consumer. Or else really stinky.

I noticed that Dave Bruno has nothing on his list like toothbrush, hairbrush, contacts, glasses, maybe a little shampoo, lotion, etc. Did he count those as shared possessions (ew, toothbrush)? Or just not count them at all? I was a little humbled by the fact that I probably use 100 things just as personal care products, and I'm not even a girly girl, Sex-in-the-City type. Well, next week when I have the boys in daycare for a couple of mornings, I guess I'm going to have to get together my Goodwill boxes. There is some junk here that needs to go away, but I still don't feel that 100 things is enough for me.