impleo

32 weeks

2008-05-09T08:01:00.000-07:00

everything is the same, except bigger. we had another perfect prenatal yesterday and the baby and i seem very healthy.

i got a new dress, and i'm so much more comfortable in it than in pants.

65 days, or thereabouts, to go

2008-04-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

i know all anyone is interested in right now is this pregnancy and this baby...so here ya go. :D

27 weeks

2008-04-02T17:31:00.001-07:00

this is from a week and a half ago, but you get the idea. i had a prenatal a couple days before this picture, and i'm healthy as can be, with low blood pressure, and a very active baby.

i'm so tired of people asking what we're having. a baby. other than that, i don't know, and i won't until i deliver him or her into my or latt's hands.

simple pleasures and salamander hunting

2008-04-02T16:45:00.000-07:00

me and latt's 6th anniversary was a few days ago. he got off early from the nursery he's working at, and the rain stopped around the same time he got off. he came home to me and rowan and jack and we got suited up in boots and slickers and headed off to explore the spring-fed creek that comes down labyrinth mountain to terra. it gets prettier and wilder as you go, and since we've been having so much rain of late everything was so clean and cool and the water was just rushing along. the boulders got bigger and mossier as we went, and the sense of being in a magical place got stronger and stronger. my favorite spot we've gotten to so far runs past these enormous columns of rocks, with caves and everything. it's a very special, very powerful, very quiet place. last time i hiked those big rocks, i found an ancient bucket wedged in between a tree so old it was one contiguous carpet of moss and grey, weathered ironwood and a boulder bigger than a tank. i picked it up and peered behind me at the spring, seeing, perhaps only because i wanted to see it so badly, the old trail, and the girl upon it, in a beeline to a deep hole in the stream where the water must have been sweet and clear and cold.

by the time we trekked back down the stream a couple hours later, we had collected five species of salamanders, and eight specimens, from under rotting logs and creek rocks. we took the home and read our field guides and terrarium books, figuring out that we have a cave salamander, a dark-sided salamander, a lead-phase southern red-backed salamander, and one we haven't exactly figured out yet. we also had some type of brook salamanders that are more aquatic, and latt took them back that night to their stream. we added them to the terrarium where the serendipitous spotted salamander already resides (serendipitous because during our last flood, i opened the front door and found it literally on my doorjam, under the heavy steel door, but fine). we've been learning about their needs and their preferred habitat, and we'll be learning from them and enjoying them. the best pets i ever had were a troupe of california newts, with their sweet muppet-y faces and their benevolence to each other as they dove and swam. the ones we have now can live up to 20 years, and are a delight to watch.

i am blessed that my kids, and my husband, share with me this kind of deep love of wild places, and waterways, and the beauty of these woods. northwest arkansas is a treasure for many reasons, but its preponderance of salamanders has pushed it over the edge of amazingly cool to us all.

and it was a perfect anniversary gift to me.

dovetail--gratitude #8

2008-02-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

i love when things fit together well, right. especially when it's pure serendipity that they do so. there's a particular delight i have in the moment--click--when everything slides into place like it never belonged anywhere more truly.

today was a perfect example of a dovetail. that's why i'm so tardy getting this entry up--i've been having a wonderful time all day, working in the studio on stained glass with latt. i have never been able to work so long with him or so productively. the fates smiled on us today though--jackson was here, and he and rowan watched jumanji and just hung out upstairs while we worked for about two hours in the middle of the day, and after bedtime we went back down for another couple. but what a four hours!

we started out the day productively with me seeing a very pregnant woman's torso, in profile, in a piece of glass that had curved lines throughout. latt cut her out of the glass for me, and we worked together to create a piece of glass around her that would do her justice. here she is in the rough. pinks and greens and clear glass. when we saw how well that worked, i thought she would be perfect for sale as a mother's day item. dh agreed and we both got excited. immediately we set to making more just like her, using her profile as a template. by the time we came upstairs to fix lunch, we had four similar pieces in various stages of completion!

tonight when we went back down we were just as productive...latt foiled the pieces from earlier, and i put together two more. then he made some improvements to them and made the cuts needed to make it all fit together perfectly. just like our day together. want to see a slideshow that shows us moving through the day and our various creations? i took pictures as i went once i realized our work was definitely what i was thankful for today.

today not only did so many pieces of glass go together seamlessly--but so did my life and my work. and my life and my love. everything dovetailed so very perfectly. that is a damn good day. and i'd be crazy not to be full of gratitude for it.

gratitude #7--catching fireflies and the act of creation

2008-02-22T08:14:00.000-08:00

there is something so satisfying about learning, and having success at, a new skill. i can really sense my homo habilis roots when i'm taking on a new craft and it actually comes out well. i've dyed my fifth skein of yarn, another big licorice twist one, and i'm finally feeling like it's good enough to sell. :squeee:

this one is "catching fireflies"--it's dyed in the inky deep blue and the silvery blue of the night sky, just past twilight when the other colors recede--which is when the fireflies come out! there's the light and dark greens of the backyards and fields i ran in as a child with my little jar, holes carefully poked in the lid, and of course the flare orange glow of the the little creatures' beacons. i adored catching fireflies and i swear, there is something about learning a new craft that makes me feel just as inspired, as happy--as grateful. because it is somehow the same--the desire to capture something shiny, something difficult to hold. a new ability, particularly one that feeds your soul and looks pretty, is like that moment --AHA! I GOT IT!--when you manage to keep still for a moment something fragile and fleeting. like the fireflies i caught as a child, my creations are especially precious to me, because--not in spite of--the fact that after i admire them, briefly, i let them go.

as a work at home mom, i've let thousands of colorful creatures out of my hands and into the lives' of others. that's what makes dyeing yarn like this such a delight--it's a lovely, ephemeral thing flying through my life, but it's going to make someone else very very happy. i'm grateful to be able to turn curiosity and a love for color and a desire to learn and do new things into that kind of happiness in others' hands.

library day with the girl who loves stories--gratitude #6

2008-02-20T18:45:00.000-08:00

as much as i hate the trip into town--now that we are 15 miles out, it seems interminably long--the lure of our city library is compelling. it's a green built-building, and it's beautiful and huge, and the children's department is amazing and a sensory delight. oh, and they have a great local coffee shop inside, complete with deli fare and the best old-school cheap coffee by the cup in town. what's not to love?

when we get back from the library, rowan is always eager to spread out her take and start in right away on the books, books on tape or cd, or a movie. i'm especially grateful right now for audio books, which let me work and feel almost as good as if another person is reading to her. she;s as quiet and engrossed with these books as with a movie, but they're basically guilt-free for me. :D i like guilt-free--my superego works overtime as it is without any further stimuli.

here's our cream of the crop from the last few days (which included a trip to the big library and our dinky local library, which is pretty good too--a totally different experience, where the librarian knows rowan's name, when i'm due, that we're homeschooling, and who doesn't need my card to check books out for us...she actually knows our names by heart.) these are the ones she and i have really enjoyed, or the ones we're looking forward to especially. she ate dinner while listening to one audiobook, and basking in the splendor of her other choices of books on CD and tape for the next few days. i'm particularly jazzed about roald dahl reading charlie and the chocolate factory and james and the giant peach--he's one of my very favorite authors, age-graded genres be damned. i also look forward to the unabridged jungle book by kipling--i loved those as a child.

my favorite moment of the night happened after supper. rowan is really enjoying this cd book by cornelia funke called igraine the brave, about a young girl who gets the opportunity to become a knight *and* save her family and their castle. she particularly likes the fact that there is an evil character named rowan the heartless in this book. anyway, she was still gnawing on a chicken bone and on a stool right.next.to the stereo, totally enraptured. i'm grateful for moments like this, when she's totally awake and aware about the world around her, taking all of something wholesome and edifying in like a sponge, or a plant's roots uptaking nutrients.

i wish i could make every moment this perfect for her, but i'm glad the ratio of great moments to crapola is pretty high--and grateful that time is on our side.

a real studio--gratitude #5

2008-02-18T19:46:00.000-08:00

ever since we've been making a living by our wits (i.e. running a work at home dyeing business) i've envied the studios of other artists in the wah biz world. i saw pictures of joyce/elliebelly's studio and shed real tears about a year ago. i must admit that was a bit melodramatic, but at the time i was feeling especially like we were a ragtag, by-the-skin-our-teeth operation--dh was making stained glass in a corner of the attic that was inhospitably intemperate for five months of the year, and i was dyeing on a spot on the kitchen floor near the back door, between the washing machine and the dinner table and the door to our bedroom. every time a child or the dog needed to go in or outdoors, or someone needed to go in our room, they had to catapult across my mess , and many many bottles of dye were upturned in the process. then i was processing the tie dye in the kitchen sink, which meant moving dirty dishes at the worst of times and forcing food prep to wait on me at the best of times. feeling the depth of the envy i might have for something like this yet?

but that's all behind me now. i am the proud owner--ok renter--of a space that is well-lit, warm, and keeps everything in one place... namely, and most importantly, out of my home proper! our studio is in our building, so we can work while the kids are upstairs without worrying too much, and i must admit that when i go down there i feel like i am leaving the shackles of house-drudgery behind and putting on the gossamer wings of an artist. and it makes me so happy to see dh working on...let's see...either five or six different projects here with glass. the white squares on the big table are glass, and have lights below--so we can put a piece together flat and see how it will look with light coming through. very cool!

the right space can make a huge difference in one's productivity. come to think of it, that's what i'm trying to accomplish with this gratitude exercise over 30 days--get my head right about realizing how lucky i am, an effort i hope will have a real benefit in my life. but even if that doesn't happen, i still have this great studio. i'm not going back to the kitchen floor for anything.

oh, and in case you are wondering--the poster on the wall is inspirational in nature. it's ani difranco, and the text says "up up up goes the spire of the steeple/but god's work isn't done by god, it's done by people". it reminds me that the more i whine and bitch and envy, the less i accomplish--and there is so very much to do in this world.

gratitude, take 4--gifts of love

2008-02-17T18:42:00.000-08:00

is there anything that warms the heart more than a purely selfless act done for you, without you even asking?

we have a frigid bathroom. it has no heat, and adjoins a freezing cold part of the building. which means it's always cold, except in the middle of the day.

i love to take a bath at night before bed. but i hate being cold. the tub is so arctic that it literally *sucks* the warmth right out of the hot water that you put in about as fast as you can do so. now add to this dilemma that we have a small hot water heater. a truly satisfying bath requires a heater being brought in, and a big pot of water heated on the stove. and did i mention the tub needed cleaning? all these factors conspired to make the likelihood of me getting a relaxing soaker of a bath infinitesimally small. this also means i've been forced to take showers of late, which isn't a relaxing experience to me--just business.

this is what i walked into the bathroom to see tonight, without even asking--i just mentioned earlier that a bath would be great but it was too damned cold.

he's scrubbing the tub, this man who *always* takes showers. that's the heater you can see he's brought in, near the toilet. and in the kitchen, i found a gigantic stew pot of water boiling. epsom salts and calendula are laid out on the bathroom counter too.

it's stuff like this that makes you see how people can stay married forever, warts and wrinkles and all. this is true love.

thank you, dear husband. i hope i sometimes make your life as easy as you so often do mine.

one mama-gratitude #3

2008-02-16T17:36:00.000-08:00

i have a mama crush. an utterly virtuous one.

it's tara. she's like a tour de force of the art of mothering. a shoo-in for the mama hall of fame.

i really don't know her that well--i'm sure, if i did, i'd have something mundane to say like, "she whips up her fantastically whimsical sewing creations one stitch at a time, like you or me". but i really only know her a little, and so i can just gush instead.

she is a wahm, and she owns this eclectic, artful, small-is-beautiful business. makes the kind of kid's stuff you remember from your own childhood, if you were the bookish, magical type. she makes these amazing velvet pants with patchwork side panels and lusciously usable mama bags. but listen to how she describes this one--

The woman who inspired this set was someone I glimpsed for just a moment--sitting windowside in a London coffeeshop, her glossy brown hair pulled back in a chignon, sipping from her mug as she looked out at the dreary, rainy day. Her clothing was chic, funky, and made from luxurious fabrics. I was inspired by her style in the face of such gloomy weather, and that, along with the designs in the fabrics of this bag, remind me of her.

now i ask you, does that not make you want to buy a "metro bag", whatever they are, whatever that particular one looks like? by the way, it was "simply sublime: cocoa brown, pale peach, sparkling aquamarine, sage green. The inner print is a swirling, stylized floral, and it is perfectly complimented by the thick cotton velvet aquamarine outer."

her blog is infinitely inspiring, of course. she is unschooling her son, which means he mostly directs his learning and she provides the opportunities and resources that will allow him to do so. i read about their projects and outings and i feel like every person on the earth deserves a mother like her--she's interested and involved and bright and energetic and positive. and yes, for you empath mamas, i am feeling a little envious. just a little.

they go to museums and walking in the woods in the rain and she's figured out how he can take a beginning astronomy course from UC Berkeley's streaming site. it seems like an idyllic learning environment and when i'm feeling in the doldrums about homeschool i check out her blog, read a few random entries, and walk away determined to put my shoulder to the wheel a little more elegantly.

that's another thing about her. she's just so classy. she looks and acts like a beautifully educated and lovely person. she's one of those moms you'd love to meet, but would feel slightly nervous about so doing.sometimes i think about particularly productive, talented people as bearing fruits. if so, tara's work, and the tiny glimpse of her life i have seen in her online sharing, is like an orchard. i get the impression that she's eating, breathing, practically swimming in talent and it's obvious how her whole life, and everyone in it, is sustained by it.

i'm grateful for her. she reminds me that despite the drudgery that life at home, mothering, can sometimes seem--what with its thousand thankless tasks, the Sisyphean work of keeping the relationships in a family growing and healthy, and the difficulty of always being the one who keeps it together, no matter what--this life always, also, holds the seeds of what we need to truly flourish. and look elegant doing it.

the gratitude project: in appreciation of online mothers

2008-02-15T17:09:00.000-08:00

i had no idea how much i appreciate the support for mothering (the pro-natal sentiment, my thesis advisor would say) that exists on the boards i frequent, mama-drama and amity mama. today i had a chance to see how wonderful those online mamas are--and why.

today i started what will be a once a week ritual until i defend my thesis--which has been *almost done* for some time. every friday, when latt is off work and able to be home with rowan, i'll drive in to the university, where i've spent so very much time in the last four years, and where i've always felt so very at home. friday will be the day i work, uninterrupted for requests for oranges to be peeled, stories to be read, and glitter glueing to be supervised. today i worked for about five hours and got quite a lot done. (i'm really almost done with my thesis now, and am just running some analyses of data i gathered and entered from about 2,000 attachment parenting mothers about six years ago. the printers at school never run out of ink, and as i already mentioned, no one there needs my help tying their shoes or needs help wiping. or makes such a mess with that atrocious moon sand that i need to take an hour long break in order to clean it up properly.)

at any rate, i walked into that building today confident, ready to work, and excited to see professors and fellow scholars that i haven't seen since finishing up the classes needed for my master's degree last august. and i walked in glowingly, bloomingly, pregnant. obviously pregnant. that was the only difference from the last time i walked in, last fall.

i set to work alone and it wasn't until the printer needed more paper that i took the opportunity to go up to the sociology department and say hello to the faculty and staff while i got another ream.

the oddest thing happened when i got up there. no one mentioned my being obviously pregnant. i am far past the awkward stage of "is she with child, or just putting on weight? maybe i shouldn't say anything! what if i'm wrong?" instead, i appear to have a basketball under my shirt and haven't gained anywhere else. i spoke with two secretaries, the department chair--not a glimmer of recognition that i was gestating. i stopped in to say hello to the graduate student director--and when she asked how the thesis was coming and i said i definitely planned to get it done before the baby arrived, she oh-so-innocently asked, "oh, are you expecting?"

it was as if i had a grotesque growth on my face, and everyone was far too polite to mention it, lest my feelings be hurt. they pretended, instead, that everything was business as usual. as if my round belly was an embarrassment, or a handicap.

i couldn't help but feel this was the perfect metaphor for the general anti-mothering sentiment i experienced while i attended classes in sociology. when i spoke passionately about the importance of mothering and breastfeeding and in-arms care, and talked of my research on a group of women who chose intensive mothering, the cool smiles and amused looks baffled me. and when i went further, when i decried any so-called feminism that denied or demeaned women's right to choose mothering as an empowering, joyful act and instead defined that choice as oppressive, i was always confused as to why there was such an outcry of negative feedback from the women professors and even my fellow students.

but this helped bring it all into perspective. they did see motherhood as a handicap and an anachronism, and must have thought it strange when i spoke of it as a revolutionary, creative act. and here i was, with its mark upon me as clear as day, and all they could do was pretend i was still "normal". as if to call attention to my state would shame me.

thank you, mothers. thank you for asking for belly pics, for doting on me and every pregnant woman in our midst. thank you for creating an environment where gestation is considered a state of grace, a blessing. thank you for noticing that i am with child, and for lifting *us*, me and this little creature, up, as a miracle.

Good Food Gratitude

2008-02-14T18:13:00.001-08:00

tonight i started off this gratitude endeavor right. my dearest fixed me a delicious meal--light, because i was feeling a bit crowded after eating earlier in the afternoon. it's got almonds, a greens mix, romas, and our dehydrated home-grown tomatoes. and the asparagus was perfect.

a simple, well-prepared meal is often the highlight of my day, and i always feel grateful, because i rarely am responsible for fixing it.

i am grateful that my husband is one of those people who understand naturally that food is a blessing to us and that it is one of the most potent ways to show love for others. i am almost as grateful that he takes joy in doing so, and makes food for our family that is not only healthy and usually whole, but with a flourish that speaks to his inner, indefatigable style and natural elegance.

About Gratitude

2008-02-14T17:50:00.000-08:00

i have been thinking about this for a while. i feel better and i do better when i focus on gratitude.

then i started reading about gratitude after we moved out here to terra (where a major artistic theme is actually the "gratitude statue" that the matriarch here makes. one waits in the center of both labyrinths here on the grounds. my dd is loving on one she calls "my friend" in my sig, btw.) anyway i found out there's a whole body of research on gratitude and it's really amazing and delightful. it's just as you'd hope. being grateful makes you happier and healthier.

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/emmons/

Gratitude Interventions and Psychological and Physical Well-Being

* In an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events (Emmons & McCullough, 2003).

* A related benefit was observed in the realm of personal goal attainment: Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.

* A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others). There was no difference in levels of unpleasant emotions reported in the three groups.

* Participants in the daily gratitude condition were more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or having offered emotional support to another, relative to the hassles or social comparison condition.

* In a sample of adults with neuromuscular disease, a 21-day gratitude intervention resulted in greater amounts of high energy positive moods, a greater sense of feeling connected to others, more optimistic ratings of one’s life, and better sleep duration and sleep quality, relative to a control group.

[B] Measuring the Grateful Disposition[/B]

* Well-Being: Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress. The disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance pleasant feeling states more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions. Grateful people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.

* Prosociality: People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others. They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002).

* Spirituality: Those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities such as prayer reading religious material score are more likely to be grateful. Grateful people are more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life and a commitment to and responsibility to others (McCullough et. al., 2002).

* Materialism: Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of wealthy persons; and are more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons.

i used to journal. my life has moved on in a big way since i sat on a porch swing with a nursing baby and my just sharpened #2 eberhard-faber and my notebook. now i have a blog and so do a bunch of my friends online, and i thought it would be nice to journal/blog daily on a snippet of gratitude from our lives for 30 days. i hope to get myself a habit started in that time. :joy:

sometimes the things i am grateful for are easy to spot. tonight dh made me a delicious meal and i don't know what exactly but he's got a handmade dessert in the freezer. we're having a low-tech, no-cost valentine's day, and i'm just happy as can be about it. but many days i'm stressed, mad, hurt, bored, or overwhelmed. it's those days i especially want to find gratitude in. and now i have to.

anyway...if you wanna join me, please do! id love to read others' thoughts on this matter--and i'd love to hear what others are grateful for.

life is just not fair OR going, going, gone

2008-02-03T19:17:00.001-08:00

13 should not look like this. it just shouldn't. it seems like it was just last month or so that i took that pic of jack with the praying mantis. he was 9 i think. and now he's practically out the door. shouldn't he need my permission to grow up this fast?

18 weeks 5 days

2008-02-03T17:37:00.000-08:00

which means i have 150 days, or thereabouts (probably a bit more, given my other pregnancies), to go.

i've been feeling the baby kick and twirl for a few weeks, but day before yesterday jack felt it too. such a delightful expression on his face. latt has trouble feeling the same thing, and rowan doesn't have the patience to wait silently and still.

i've gained four pounds (looks like more, doesn't it?) and my appetite is increasing finally. i feel good.

a dear friend sent her midwifery kit--she is not practicing right now--so that we can do prenatals here at home for now. latt has learned how to take my blood pressure and use the doppler to hear the baby's heartbeat, and we measure my uterus to see how the baby is growing (i am measuring a couple weeks ahead of expected right now--nothing out of the ordinary though). i also have strips to test my urine for protein, glucose, nitrates, etc...and a kit to test my blood for hemoglobin (iron levels). i do want to see a local midwife as i get closer to term, to ascertain the presentation (position) of the baby, in case we need to turn it. i don't mind having a breech baby here at home but i'd rather avoid that adventure if possible.

the plan for the birth is set, barring unforeseen circumstances. kristena and kim will come as friends to support me. i'm excited about birthing again...i've been blessed to have wonderful, positive experiences with both my children, which means birth is an experience i associate with great joy and great power.

branching out

2008-02-03T17:26:00.000-08:00

is anything more satisfying than taking on a new crafting project and succeeding wildly? this is some licorice twist yarn i just dyed up. latt had the brilliant idea that the colorway should be called gingerbread house. it's 560 yards of merino yarn, 7.8 oz.

the licorice twist is a neat yarn. one of the plys take dye more deeply than the others, which creates an interesting variation--almost a tweedy effect. this is supposed to be self-striping, but i'm honestly not sure if that's true or not. i did lengths of color about four feet, so some items, knitted up, will stripe, while others won't. at any rate, the colors turned out very well.

and balling yarn is a new favorite pastime--very meditative!

sea change

2007-12-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

how am i?

lazarita is in the process of rising from the dead.

i've been in a very serious funk (mind you, not the funkadelic or funkalicious version) since finding out i'm pregnant. i had a hint of what depression must feel like and now know that's a foreign language i never even want to hear spoken, much less do an immersion learning schtick in.

i was a sad sack for a few weeks, y'all. plus i was nauseated every freaking day, which i think had a lot to do with the pall of gray-green that washed over the whole world. i didn't leave the house for several days straight, and only then when i absolutely had to. then i got the flu. which resolved itself into a sinus infection. YUM! that helped the nausea!

anyway...this week i am scrabbling up out of the grave and the first trimester, leaving fingernails and a shroud of tattered, snotty kleenex behind. sporting a baby bump and some very bodacious ta-tas, might i add.

i can handle smelling food be cooked, and then eat it and actually enjoy doing so. you just forget what a blessing that is until eating is a miserable torture. i am giggling. i can actually imagine having a baby. i've been dreaming about delivering her warm wet head into my hands after a lovely, short birth. i can agree with dh that we might actually be able to stay out of the poorhouse if we just keep plugging away, and that we can do it with home-grown, hand-made panache, as usual.

does that answer your question? you asked not a day too early i tell ya.

a new beginning

2007-12-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

we're expecting a new baby. in early to mid july.

family snapshots

2007-10-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

despite my most fervent wishes, my children continue to age. sigh. rowan will be five this month, and jack is oh-so-13 and a half. he's playing football for the first time this year, and really enjoying it. he's doing well in school and he's in two pre-AP classes--English and Social Studies--which of course makes my humanities-minded heart so happy. he and girls, previously ships passing in the night, have made contact and he spends a lot of time on myspace and the phone, talking to whoever is the friend girl du jour. he's a happy kid, and funny as hell. but growing up too damn fast.

rowan is just a delightful child, 99% of the time. she's in love with learning, all kinds of animals, stories, pretending, and especially "terra terra" as she calls it. we're cooperatively unschooling her since we are both home a lot now. she's just past the birthday cutoff for kindergarten, but she's ready, so we are working on kindergarten skills now.

here she is looking especially fierce, in playsilks,

and doing "life science" on crawdads in one of the small ponds. we can often be seen, seine in hand, looking and learning about the ecosystem and food web of small bodies of water. everything is awe-inspiring to her, so she's an ideal student. i'm so happy to be sharing it with her.

there's so much to do here that the kids stay busy--swimming, ping pong, tennis, racquetball, a pool table, a sauna, all right in our building! we really enjoy going for walks in the gloaming, and seeing the stars come out--they're amazing here!

gratitude

2007-10-04T07:34:00.000-07:00

i have absolutely no excuse not to start writing here again. i am out of grad school--that death march (no offense to people who have been on real death marches, of course)--and i have plenty of time on my hands.

we've moved to an artist's colony, Terra Studios (more here).

this place is hard to describe; easier to show. there are ponds and bluffs and springs and labyrinths and gnomes and dragons and a bevy of trolls. here are some pictures (and a few more) that show the things about this place that i love, and my little brood in the midst of all this magic.

we have only rent, cell phone, insurance and student loan bills now. next month we'll have an electricity bill too, but all the other utilities are part of our rent. even wireless, which is so nice! what this means for our lives is that we have more time together, as a family.

the theme here is GRATITUDE. the statue you see rowan loving up, above, is an example of a type of hand-made icon that's prevalent here--gratitude statues. the matriarch of terra, who helped her husband make this tiny fantastical world out of pasture and woods in 1975, still lives over the hill on this 110 acres, and she comes down and works in the pottery studios several times a week. she talks about buddhism and psychedelics and serenity and cats. it's impossible not to love her, especially since she looks just like one her peaceful, joyous works--all bright eyes and an almost visible halo. her children live here, or close by, and work and play here too. it's a real community. just what we've been searching for for so long.

i'm so so grateful to be here.

first, do no harm

2006-10-23T21:55:00.001-07:00

it is truly difficult for me to articulate my distaste at the odious and demeaning article that follows. the author is a pediatrician who is flabbergasted *and* preachy in response to the surprising news that some women may want to give birth naturally--yes, without anesthesia. read the whole thing here:

the mother lode of pain from the boston globe

here's an excerpt:

STILL, THERE WILL ALWAYS be people who want their pain. When I was a teenager in New Jersey, I endured an optional religious challenge called the atthai, an Indian Jain custom of fasting for eight straight days. The idea is that the people should dissociate from the material world, even from something as elemental as food. Accomplishing the painful challenge is something of an ego rush; the hunger artists are honored as members of a holy community. (I look back on this now with agnostic disbelief.)

Like prolonged fasting, enduring labor without anesthesia attracts notice. It casts the mother as a struggling heroine who - by sheer mental force - gracefully keeps her body under control...
In this setting, the pain of unmedicated labor offers up a formidable, if artificial, trial that precedes entry into a highly selective sorority. It creates drama. It captures attention.

Yet pain in the end is an utterly primitive thing, a vestige of insect and reptilian brains. It evolved primarily as a way to change behavior without need for thought - to force one's hand to pull away from fire or tend urgently to an injured limb. Thinking beings, in some sense, have evolved beyond pain. (Some pain reflexes continue even in brain-dead individuals.) If anything, reliance on pain to create meaning during childbirth indicates a constricted imagination.

now, when i read someone write about how we've evolved past pain i get edgy. cause i did read brave new world and i am not convinced that being pneumatic is all that grand of a promise. and you couple that with a man comparing the pain of labor to that of a hand in a fire or a broken bone, and i really am starting to think this guy is a pompous ass who hasn't figured out that telling women what they should or shouldn't do in birth went out with the beehive hairdo.

the startling dis-ease with which "western rationality" views the body, it's mystery and its raw primal power, especially in birth, comparing it to a pathological or crippled state, truly amazes me.

and i didn't realize they were still teaching misogyny in medical school.

both my births have been unmedicated. my first, i was a teenager in a hospital, and my last was at home, unassisted by any professionals.

to me, going unmedicated (and this REALLY is the case with my UC homebirth) is about respect for the process. why do runners choose to feel the pain of a marathon? why do tribal peoples have vision quests and rituals to mark life's changes? why in the world does anyone ever climb a mountain?

ritual/process are extremely important to me. we live in a world that tells us we can't do anything without help from something external to us (usually something we need to buy): medications, diets, new clothes, devices, etc. etc. etc. all developed by EXPERTS. i believe we are being crippled as a race by these messages and our startling willingness to acquiesce to them.

birth is just one example of how we have nascent, hidden, sacred knowledge and abilities planted like seeds in our physical bodies by evolution, and if we listen carefully and respect that ancient primal knowledge we can experience the transcendence possible in birth.

there is no telling a woman who has had a natural birth that she "can't" do anything, ever again. because she knows better. that in and of itself is a mighty good reason to suppress such experiences, from a male-dominated medical mindset.

for a brisk flurry of retorts, may i recommend this discussion at amity's by the derogated group in question--mothers who have experienced and actually advocate for natural birth?

http://www.amitymama.com/vb/amity-mama-market/318874-mother-lode-pain.html

and a longer thread where women share their feelings about the value of unmedicated natural birth is there too.

http://www.amitymama.com/vb/amity-mama-market/318958-spin-off-unmedicated-childbirth-what-did-mean-you.html

sibs

2006-10-18T09:46:00.000-07:00

in these pictures jackson is reading rowan the card he made for her, which entailed an invitation to go to his dad's house (like mecca to her) with him and without me or latt, to jump on the trampoline and play together.

he was so tender and kind to her on her biorthday and he even let me take some pictures of him doing so.

she positively *delights* in him.

2006-10-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

jackson really looks older than 12, and i love how he's trying
to smile a bit (at my request) since i said this picture was
going to be for rowan's scrapbook. it was rowan's birthday
and she's in one of her many fancy dresses and she just adores jack. they are both growing up far, far too fast.

my relationships with my brothers seems a world apart from the ones my kids have. first, i was 6 years younger than rob, 7.5 years less than brent, and 11 years younger than scott. they moved in a sphere of reference almost completely segregated from my own. although the difference between rowan and jackson is 8.5 years, they have spent far more time together--even with jackson spending about half his time at his dad's.

i love how different my kids are. jackson is constantly looking for ways to get around, over, or under the rulebook--and rowan sees it as her duty in life to lead him back to thew path of righteousness in all things. he's shrewd and acerbically funny and smart in an out of the box kind of way, as stubborn and as strong as an ox, and she's always working for harmony and making connections and making compromises and dramatizing, and giving affection and love. they are both bound for happy lives but they are, as this picture shows so well, like light and dark sometimes. the interaction with someone so different has to be good for them both.

a time to wean

2006-10-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

i nursed rowan for 3 years, 364 days, and 15 hours, and it's over.

she nursed for the last time as i laid down with her the night before her fourth birthday. we had been planning this weaning for a while, and i had my fingers crossed that everything would go smoothly. what i wanted was an agreement between her and me--not a coerced weaning. so far, there have been no tears. for that i am so grateful.

it's been this way with both my kids now--jackson nursed for a couple moths past four, and weaned with no fanfare. i didn't even note his last time at the breast, and that was one reason i wanted to celebrate and document this milestone with rowan.

some pics from our last nursing. i told her how happy
i was and how grateful too to have mothered her and nursed her as a baby and toddler, and how excited i am to get to enjoy watching her growing into a little girl.

a time to be born

2006-10-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

Four years ago at this time I was in labor with Rowan. I thought I'd continue my time saving device of re-posting stuff and this is her birth story, written a few weeks postpartum.

Her birth was a great one. Very different from my first birth of my son 8 yrs before (this was harder) but still a good birth. It was my first homebirth/waterbirth, and was unassisted--by which I mean there were no health professionals present. The birth process was much longer than with my son. I had false labor a week before she was actually born for a full day. Then I started having contractions one Thursday morning, had them all day, and called friends (who were three hours away) at about midnight to start to my house, as contractions were at four minutes apart. As soon as they got to my house, contractions just fizzled. We all went to bed, thinking they would wake me up as they got strong again and that i needed rest. Woke refreshed and without contractions at 8:30 the next morning (Friday) . Cntrx were off and on all day, at times hard and coming closer together. Everyone left during that day and while they were gone I had great, strong, steady cntrx. Which fizzled away when visitors returned. Had some more good contractions that night. Then I got a good sleep and woke up again without them Saturday morning.

How frustrating!!! Had I been in a hospital I bet I would have been pressured to have some interventions. After all, my first birth (natural, vaginal) was only 18 hours from first bloody show until son was born, with textbook cntrx and progression through stages--10 hours of easy cntrx, six hours of hard work, and two hours of pushing.

I was so frustrated Saturday. I had one internal check with the help of my friend that afternoon...baby had moved way down and I was FINALLY dilated somewhat (though only between three and four--after 2.5 days of off and on cntrx). Everyone left again that afternoon and it finally hit me. I was having good cntrx when me and dh were together and touching each other but not when others were around!!! Duh...of course I should have noticed that by then but just hadn't. So we really worked together during that afternoon, just enjoying our last few hours of togetherness without a baby between us. Lots of massage and holding and sweetness. Just like magic...things really started moving.

My birth pool had been up for a week now and had been filled and emptied about ten times! Finally I got in it about 7 pm. I stayed there until the baby was born at 6 am the next morning.

Labor was very hard. Felt like she was sweeping very sharp fingernails inside my cervix, back and forth. I had a distinct feeling of this sharp swishing as I felt her move. She was still moving a lot even as she descended. I'lll never know but I guess there was some difficulty there...maybe she had her hand up by her face for a long time, or was posterior. Anyway the last five hours were extremely hard. With my son I was zen mama...meditated through transition and never made a sound. Not one. Thought I'd be the same way this time! Not a chance--I was moaning and groaning, very loud. It just felt good. My two girlfriends went to sleep about ten and that's when things really cranked up! I didn't want dh to touch me anymore and I was counting the stars on this Indian mandala tapestry I have, just to get through each cntrx.

I had dh wake my friends at about two, as I was starting to need more support and things were going very fast it seemed (not really). Finally about five am I was feeling very "pushy" and I reached inside (hadn't done that since getting in the pool) and I could feel the bag of waters bulging! As I had my hand there they POPPED like a cork out of a bottle. Everyone said my expression was priceless! After that things got a bit overwhelming. I could feel her head and within half an hour she was crowning. I just didn't feel like I was stretching! I wasn't having the experience I had seen so often in squatting births (I was up on my knees in the pool) where the vagina sort of telescopes or tunnels out as the baby's head is emerging. Instead it felt like I was open about three inches across and I could feel her head pushing down everywhere. I just felt she was way too big and I wasn't opening enough! I was scared for the first time during labor and it hurt like hell and I DID NOT WANT her head to come out! I just really believed I was going to tear from top to bottom. I was crying and saying I couldn't do it (to which my very wise friend said "you *are* doing it" in this awesome calm voice...) and that the baby was too big for me (to which the same friend said, "no, it's just the right size for your body"). There I was in the pool with my hands down there on the head and really making a lot of noise and arrayed in front of me were my two girlfriends and dh, who (poor thing) has never had a baby before and has never seen me say I couldn't do anything!!!

I just remember crying out, "OHH-HH," in this pitieous way to my friend, with this very beseeching look on my face--like take this cup from me! as I was trying to push. That was my most forlorn and desperate moment ever. Then I was feeling the head and those ridges on the top of it from being squeezed in the birth canal, and I actually thought I was feeling the cord! I knew it couldn't get pinched and restrict the baby's oxygen, so I just thought to myself, dammit, just push this baby out and you can get sewn up afterwards--it doesn't matter if you tear, just get this baby here safe! So I pushed like mad and the pain was MANY-HUED but there was the head, out at last! Then I just breathed and waitied for the next contraction, and out came the little slippery body quite easily, as I remembered with ds, and I lifted her above the water.

I still didn't know it was a girl b/c the cord was a bit short and I was holding her so I could only see her back...afraid to turn her over or put her to breast for fear of tugging the cord.The placenta came out with the next cntrx and then I saw that she was a she and put her to the breast and she was pink and so beautiful. I had thought I would call ds (8.5 yrs) in to see the birth but I was so crazy during pushing that i didn't want to. His dad (my ex) was spending the night there at our house to be Jack's special person...so they came in at this point and everything was so happy and wonderful.

Rowan Ts'eh (pronounced "say") was 21 inches, 8lbs. She is named for the Rowan tree, which in pagan lore was the origin of the first woman on earth. Ts'eh is a nickname for a character in Leslie marmon Silko's wonderful book Ceremony. In Pueblo myth, she is the grandmother spider who weaves the world by spinning her web of storytelling.

r & r

2006-10-11T21:07:00.000-07:00

we took jackson to play tennis for the first time and he really enjoyed himself. my favorite thing about these pictures is how perfectly they capture the *constant* motion that jackson really embodies. it was a pleasure to watch him on the court, because he has that kind of natural althletic fluidity and agility that usually i associate with kids i went to school with who hung out at the country club. i'm not sure i have ever seen him perform poorly at a sport, and it's like a miracle that the child of two dexters like me and his dad could have somehow produced such a specimen.

he was grinning in almost all the pictures i took.

he's taking boxing now too although there's no real contact between any of the kids until he's much further into learning all the mechanics of the sport...poses, moves, etc. i like that he's involved in a sport that is co-ed. there are two girls in his class.

2006-10-11T20:54:00.000-07:00

we were hoping that the recent chilly night we had here would herald bug death day. but no such luck. the good thing about mosquitoes hanging around until it starts to get cold is that you have more skin coverage by way of clothing.

we played with daisy for a while with the huge inflatable ball that she chases and herds like a sheep, which is pretty entertaining. then we cleaned up the garden and put a lot of green matter into the compost, which was great since we've been putting mostly brown stuff (like leaves) in lately. a good mixture of both is essential to optimal compost apparently.

then latt started blowing the gigantic bubbles and daisy
went nuts chasing bubbles and rowan was just delighted to be there. such a sweetheart.

beautiful words

2006-10-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

my goodness a beautiful poem makes me happy. and the fact that it was in a textbook was just icing on the cake. beauty really is everywhere.

The Seven Of Pentacles
Marge Piercy

Under a sky the color of pea soup
she is looking at her work growing away there
actively, thickly like grapevines or pole beans
as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,
if the praying mantis comes and the ladybugs and the bees,
then the plants flourish, but at their own internal clock.

Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot tell always by looking what is happening.
More than half the tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden.
Gnaw in the dark and use the sun to make sugar.

Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving.
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in,
a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us
interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.

Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen:
reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always,
for every gardener knows that after the digging, afterthe planting,
after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

oleander

2006-10-03T20:30:00.000-07:00

i see you're still alive, my hardy little blog.

here we are of late... a hiking trip. lots to see and do. the trail ran along war eagle creek so we saw several water birds of different kinds.

know anything about autoethnography?

"an ethnographic description written by a member of the culture." oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth370/gloss.html
what a great definition.

we had to write one recently in my field methods class (all about how to actually *do* sociology). we got it back today and i thought i'd share. apparently time is going to be so limited in grad school that i can only cross post stuff i wrote for school now. :roll eyes:

Where I’m Coming From: A Radical Autoethnography

The study of subcultures, countercultures and deviance fascinate me. After all, the human animal, like our primate cousins, seems biologically predestined to seek and enjoy membership in the broader community. This biological blueprint is legitimized, codified, and reified through cultural experiences that seek to bring individuals “into the fold”—from pre-school to church to clubs, to sororities and festivals and baseball games, the social sphere is a powerful magnet, pulling us into belonging. Yet for many, the benefits, though myriad, of belonging, are somehow not sufficient (and perhaps not even necessary.) Or, put another way, the disadvantages of membership in a group may outweigh the difficulties inherent in being an outsider. It is this push/pull experience that I can’t stop thinking about. Particularly since, with each day that passes, I find myself more alienated from the culture I was born into, nurtured on, and raised to join.

It’s true that I have problems with authority. I left my less than ideal family and its explosive scenes at 15, and I was kicked out of two high schools in the next eighteen months, getting a full scholarship to college based on my GED scores. The last time I was kicked out, it was because I refused to stop advocating vociferously for the rights of an unjustly accused and punished girl who just happened to be my only real enemy. It has always been the case that conforming for the sake of conforming is anathema to me. But these experiences were the nascent stirrings of something in my general paradigm that would mature, over time, from mere youthful rebellion against the powers that be, to a radical rejection of mainstream American behaviors, values, attitudes, and beliefs. The ambivalence this standpoint creates in me is something I struggle with every day. Whoever said, “If you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention” had more than a great idea for a bumper sticker. That well-turned phrase articulates one of the themes my heart has inexorably turned toward over the last fifteen years. But not the only one. The sweetness of this world speaks to me too, and the sorrow that is its dark twin. And a voice I can’t silence--and more and more, don’t want to silence--tells me the world doesn’t have to be this way.

It’s modernity I have issues with. And I know what an easy statement that is to rebut, what a straw man it may seem I’ve propped up before you. I’ve heard the eye-rolling arguments. You don’t like electricity? Clean water? Mattresses? An abundance and variety of foods to choose from? Germ theory? Antibiotics? An average life expectancy of 75 years? And what can I say? I’d be a hypocrite to say these things aren’t good, at least in their proper place, so I’m supposed to just sit down and shut up. But it isn’t that easy. It isn’t that easy to dismiss my feeling, no, my surety, my absolute certainty, that modernity, despite its ease and its efficiency and all the trappings that make life so much softer than our human ancestors could have dreamed of, is a monster. Anthony Giddens called it a juggernaut—the moving machine we built but can’t get off of, hurtling out of our control, changing the world, and us, whether we like it or not.

I’m probably not being clear. If you aren’t in the place I am--and I’ve learned not to expect that anyone is--I haven’t said anything sensible yet. What’s wrong with me anyway? I don’t think a laundry list of what I can’t accept about modern mainstream reality will really bear witness in an eloquent or effective way. Of course I don’t like strip malls…who does? And I haven’t had a television with channels and programming since my oldest child was born. What’s more, I believe that in a world where consumption has become a compulsory national pastime, practicing a gratitude-based perspective like simple abundance and learning to become a producer of one’s own food, clothing, and entertainment is as important as learning math and science. Does that really tell you the uneasy, fractured place I find myself? But these snapshots only refer to the trappings of the age, and my dis-ease, in truth, is rooted in something more integral, more inherent about the state of modern human civilization.

Let me put a finer point on this discussion. I am a radical. I embraced that term only after I learned that “radical” comes from the Latin radicalis "of or having roots," from L. radix, or "root." It wasn’t until after 1800 that the term began to connote reform, and even later, about 1920, that it began to mean “unconventional.”1 My most deeply held beliefs and values are an outgrowth not of a desire to differ, but rather of my having metaphorical, philosophical roots. I believe that human groups hit the apex of evolution about 50,000 years ago, and that it’s been a slow but sure decline into the nadir ever since.

I believe Jared Diamond when he says that agriculture was the worst mistake in human history, judging by declines in life expectancy, child mortality, height, bone density, and general well-being.2 And I was astounded to learn that the number of hours of work per day needed to provide the calories necessary for life are lowest among hunter-gatherer groups.3 But how could such a remote abstraction—that humans lived better long ago—possibly have an effect on my personal perspective of the world? After all, I am a well-educated woman in the most modern culture in the modern age. What existential angst could possibly trickle down through a million years to have a real impact on me today? Herein lies my ambivalence and my uneasy occupation of the space, the age, and the way in which I live.

I don’t valorize the “noble savage”. Please don’t misunderstand me. And I don’t have plans to outfit myself with stone-age hand tools, put my child on my back, and trek into the bush to eke out an anachronistic existence. But I do choose to take many, many lessons from our Pleistocene roots, and where those decisions intersect with the average mainstream American is the difficult terrain that forms the terra firma of this autoethnography.

Perhaps the best way to really get at the kinds of choices I am referring to is through a “rich description” of them. One domain in my own life that has been strongly influenced by my appreciation of our species-specific roots is the way in which I parent. When I share that I had my last child at home, unassisted, without a doctor or midwife present, I can see the shock this causes—despite the fact that this is how women bore babies for millions of years. When I nurse my three year old after she falls and needs comforting at the park, I see responses ranging from discomfort, to defensiveness, to outright disgust, though anthropologists say that based on a number of life history factors, a normal weaning age for hominids is somewhere between 2.5 at the earliest and 7 years, at the latest.4 I have received so many negative remarks while carrying my babies and toddlers in a sling as I go about my daily activities—no one seems to realize that the practice of infant-carrying is not only what our human brains have evolved to expect in infancy, but was the common experience of 99.9% of human babies, until very recently. When I eschew cribs, strollers, playpen, walkers, and a million other gadgets and gear meant to distance my young children from my body, I feel, despite my certainty that I know what is best for my children, the negative perceptions of those around me, who think I am either judging them for doing differently, or unhealthily attached to my children, or both. Co-sleeping with my young children never failed to get staggeringly negative responses, despite the fact the cross-cultural research indicates that even today, a majority of the world’s cultures see shared sleep as normal—and it is certain that all human groups shared sleep with their children in our recent and ancient past. When I leave the “child’s physician” line blank on my daughter’s preschool forms, I steel myself for the questions that are laced with concern, puzzlement, and judgment. We don’t use allopathic care or physicians as a matter of course, I say, explaining that I consult an herbalist friend, or my own books and knowledge, when my children need support for their already good health, and that they are rarely sick since we don’t use antibiotics and breastfeed long enough to fully facilitate the development of a normal strong immune system. Until I worked diligently with state representatives to create a philosophical exemption to the Arkansas law that requires vaccinations mandated by the state, I had a choice of keeping my unvaccinated children out of pre- and public school, or filling out forms fraudulently, claiming that I was compliant with a law I deeply disagree with. When I need to let someone know that my children don’t regularly eat wheat or dairy because, based on the research I have become familiar with, both are highly allergenic and likely to cause systemic, chronic problems, I don’t even get as far as explaining that both foods have only been part of the human diet for a few thousand years, and therefore we didn’t evolve or adapt to expect to ingest them. I usually stop well before then because I see the completely flabbergasted, uncomprehending stares. One that you may currently find on your own face as you read. And these are just a representative sample of the parenting decisions I make as a reflection of my understanding and agreement with ancient human practices.

When others learn that I hold similarly radical views about other facets of my life—regarding work, politics, consumption, the family, the community-- it doesn’t make things any easier. No one, except a handful of mothers I know in real life, and a more sizeable group of mothers I know only know via online interaction, “gets me”. Worse, many who are more conventional write me off as a freak, or convince themselves that I must be judging them and their own choices, and proceed to reciprocate. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make friends with people when your children don’t play with the same types of toys they do, when you have absolutely no knowledge of a mainstream pop culture that others constantly refer to, and even your diet is radically different from theirs? One is forced to either express no preferences whatsoever, thus failing to maintain consistency in one’s own and one’s children’s lives—or to haltingly, falteringly, attempt to explain a life so far down the road less taken that it can’t even be perceived, or seems to be a veritable fist in the ear of the listener. There is often no common ground to be found—and where values and norms diverge wildly, community doesn’t exist.

My desire to understand this place I find myself in has led me to a certain kind of research. I don’t kid myself—I know that, in part, my work with Attachment Parenting (AP) mothers is an effort to create theoretical buttresses that support my own precarious sense of identity. Like me, they are American, generally middle-class, well-educated women who mother in ways so strikingly different from the mainstream that they appear to have more in common with hunter-gatherer mothers than with their own sisters and neighbors. Understanding how they manage the internal ambivalence and external stressors (like disapproval and sanctions from those around them), and what compels them to choose to do so rather than simply acquiesce to cultural norms and values is not only important to the fields of feminism, deviance, and parenting. It’s also very important to me, for very personal reasons. Perhaps this is the case with all researchers who choose to analyze a group or behavior that they themselves are a part of or practice. I’d like to know what causes me to think and act the way I do, despite the difficulty it causes me. I’d like to know if the shared meanings among AP mothers constitute a kind of countercultural or sub-cultural disaffiliation with mainstream ideology, like I experience. What’s more, and perhaps most important of all—and I see now what I most need to divulge in this essay--moving through this world like an ash-smeared, wild-eyed ascetic out of the wilderness has a certain appeal, but it is community that calls us home. That said, community, in a modern world that has so much to disagree with, may have less to do with geographical and spatial and kinship ties and more to do with shared norms, values, and mores, . My research reassures me that no matter how alienated I feel from the world around me, I know that “out there”—spread out over the 50 states in America—there are at least 1500 women who understand. Despite my sense of utter separation from the world, I know there are those who know where I am coming from, and what I’m getting at.

1 Online Etymology Dictionary (2006). Search for word “radical.” Retrieved 10 September, 2006.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=radical
2 Diamond, J. (1987) "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race". Discover, May: 64-66. Retrieved 10 September, 2006.
http://anthropology.lbcc.edu/handoutsdocs/mistake.pdf#search=%22jared%20diamond%20the%20worst%20mistake%22
3 Sahlins, M. The Original Affluent Society. Retrieved 10 September, 2006. http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
4 Dettwyler, K. (1995). A Natural Age of Weaning. Retrieved July 20, 2006.
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html

about feminism and mothering

2006-07-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

i've been working on part of my thesis this summer, and this is a section i am *mostly* done with, though it has errors, needs citations, etc.

any comments are welcome...that's why i am posting it here. i know a lot of smart mamas online (sadly, this isn't true in my department...so i need this supplemental perspective!)

this starts at the end of one section that explains the significance of understanding the demographics, attitudes, and practices of those who practice attachment parenting...this is where i talk about another aim of this research--to give voice to the growing number of women who feel that motherhood is an empowering, meaningful type of work and are frustrated by liberal feminism's framing of motherhood as an oppressive, overwhelmingly negative experience.

edited october 3, 2006:
i'm all done with the paper now and got a hard-won A for both the class and the paper. if you're consumed with curiousity about my ongoing research/thesis on AP mamas, feminism, power, and agency, let me know.

pretty things

2006-06-26T10:14:00.000-07:00

me and latt set up to sell at an earth day event

belly dance veil (or playstand canopy for a kid's fort) that's three yards long and 45" wide

a tank for me

a custom-ordered dress

back on this horse

2006-06-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

if this blog were a plant it'd be brown and dead.

that said, and because i don't have the ego to convince myself that you care why i've not updated, i'll get straight to the good stuff.

1) our garden. we have a lovely small garden, which is decidely NOT brown and dead,because i have been a faithful steward to *it*, unlike this blog.. several tomato plants (one beauty has 25 tomatoes on it!), 18 squash plants (9 of them are insurance against the various blights that affect squash around here), 8 blackberry bushes (some of them already putting out fruit, though they aren't supposed to do that until next year!), five exotic bell peppers (chocolate, yellow, and purple), a sweet potato that volunteered further life from its grave in the compost pile, an avocado plant (planted on the day of rowan's birth), and some greens that are definitely listing.

2) the kids. i'm really enjoying these long summer days with jackson and rowan. we've been working and playing together and jack is so much better at listening and not arguing and being compassionate with his sister when he has constant reminders and long stretches of time to see how these courtesies affect our family dynamic. i'm really enjoying him, and getting lots of practice with using non-violent communication and active listening, with both kids. both rowan and jack are thriving.

jack is raising tarantulas.

rowan is happy and in love with learning about the living world, especially what happens when things die. the compost has been a really useful source of examples for talking about how energy is neither created nor destroyed and how life begets life, even in death. she's taken to asking people we've just met what they want to happen when they die..."would you like to burned when you die? or buried so the bugs can eat you and you can turn into dirt and make flowers grow? what kind of flowers would you like your body to grow?" which is shocking but healthy, i think...better than her announcing to very surprised clerks that santa is dead (to her credit, she just means the real saint nick is no longer among the living...but the looks she got amongst all that saccharin yuletide cheer were priceless, though i tried not to laugh).

3) my work. i'm finishing the first part of my master's thesis on attachment parenting and it's good but hard work. i have 25 pages that include an introduction, problem statement, significance, and an extended literature review. having an advisor who thinks that intensive mothering is oppressive to women is a real challenge, but in a good way.

4) my other work...the one that actually feeds us. my work at home biz is growing all the time. i have lots of custom orders lined up, as usual, and we are selling at one market per week. we stopped one market some distance away because it was just too stressful and hot and long and we spent too much money getting there and setting up and eating while we were there. some things i have done recently... hmmm, i can't seem to load any more pics on this post so i'll start another and see if i can show off my pretties there.

the beginning of the end of an era

2005-11-29T06:21:00.000-08:00

last night, and the night before that, rowan slept all night long.

she's been sleeping on a futon in our room for about 6 months, and we moved the futon to her room about a week ago. the first two nights were hell. i nursed her to sleep at the computer as usual, put her to bed, and put the baby monitor in her room and the receiver under my pillow. she woke and cried in the middle of the night and i went to lay down with her there and get her back to sleep--which was easier said than done. it took about an hour of nursing each time. uggh. but i was determined to do what it took to help her make it through the night in her bed, in her room. and it paid off--for two nights now we have both slept all night, without nursing or crying.

i took some proactive steps to help her make this transition--fed her TWO suppers, the latter just before nursing to sleep, so her belly was nice and full. and i've been tweaking the cloth diaper set up so she stays *really* dry at night. i'm still learning all the cloth diaper stuff since getting a new (used) cd stash of big girl sized covers and AIOs. (we cd'd when she was little, but when she potty trained during the day at almost 2, we switched to pull ups at night.) and i've been getting her into full length pjs so she doesn't get chilly legs when she kicks the covers off.

i'm ready for her to night wean, though i know she isn't completely ready to give up nursing altogether. and i'm so proud of myself for helping her sleep in her room without force or letting her cry--which is, in my mind, something akin to murder. i know some people feel they have to do it but it's just not a possibility for me. i have been blessed with two children who learned early on their needs would be met, period, and i've helped them to communicate as early as possible so that crying wasn't their only means to get my attention.

anyway, a small victory. i know i'm doing it right when we *all* are happy.

a few days of sweet freedom, then back to the mines

2005-11-25T08:19:00.000-08:00

being out of school for a few days now has been positively ethereal. the house is maintaining some degree of order, we are eating 3 real meals each day, and the laundry and custome tie dye orders are caught up. if i were a cat i'd be curled up contentedly among the verdancy of our houseplants in the rare and beautiful late november sun streaming through our kitchen window. but i am most definitely *not* like a cat (i'm far too busy), and i keep finding other corners to improve, furniture to move, books that need to be re-organized...you get the idea. i'm positively domestic this week.

it's at times like this that i really feel ambivalent about my grad work. i want the freedom and career capital a master's degree will *supposedly* provide. but i want to end up homesteading, teaching my kids to keep bees and gather mushrooms, not sitting in a campus office. but i have an almost primal bias against quitting anything, so i plod on. there are definitely bright spots in the program thus far but each day i am faced with examples, writ small and large, of how my ideal life and my daily life do not, precisely put, dovetail.

the one shining light that i can still make out is the promise that my own research will eventually be able to be worked on. i owe that to the families i feel so much gratefulness and obligation to for taking the time and energy to help me flesh out exactly what this strange, and lovely throwback of a parenting strategy called attachment parenting REALLY is. boxes and boxes of data--about 2000 responses, each several pages long-- to be analyzed yet, but my current student/assistantship duties prevent me from taking the serious, big-chunk-of-time necessary to do that. when i get to the point that i can begin working on my thesis for credit hours, i can really concentrate on them.

:sigh:

a small break in the madness

2005-10-11T11:36:00.000-07:00

it's midterms week for me and latt, and we just finished a belly dancing convention (shimmyfest) all weekend and are gearing up for an all weekend craft fair that starts tomorrow. furthermore, rowan's third birthday is thursday, and we have a Katrina evacuee couple coming to layover here for a few days this weekend.

in the midst of all this scurrying to and fro, my mama (bless her country heart) is here, visiting, doing laundry, cleaning countertops like i never seem to find time for, and most importantly, playing with rowan while we work madly. if she weren't here, rowan would be watching WAY too much kipper and dora this week!

as a lovely bonus, she stayed with the kids and latt and i were able to get a way for a VERY rare lunch date on sunday. we really never leave rowan, as we don't have those kinds of friends here in the area, so this was a really nice break. i got to flirt with my husband, have a conversation NOT interrupted a thousand times to keep rowan in her chair or keep jackson from just eating meat and bread, and even eat something with cheese in it (my kids are really sensitive so i usually opt out too, to keep things easier for them).

did i mention i got to flirt with my handsome husband?

heading south

2005-09-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

i'll be out of pocket for a couple of days. it's my birthday on saturday and a friend has invited us to come play in honor of the occasion of me turning 31. a birthday party thrown just for me...i'm elated. almost takes the sting out of getting so damned old. i remember thinking 30 was ancient. but, now that i've passed ancient i still feel like an ingenue. i guess that's normal, huh?

from where i sit

2005-09-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

this is the view from my computer chair. just one of the perks of marrying a starving artist.

down and dirty

2005-09-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

I observed and wrote up the following field notes after visiting a local strip club with one of my professors as part of my work toward a master's in sociology.

Arriving at the club, I was coaching myself to just relax and enjoy myself. Since I had never before been to a strip club it was quite a new experience for me. When I went in and didn’t see my supervisor immediately I took a seat at the bar to give my eyes time to adjust to the dark, since I didn’t want to traipse around the very dark corners of the club looking for her. I took a deep breath, and for the first time in my life saw a woman (to be honest, she looked like a girl) dancing for purely titillating purposes. Being a belly dancer, my preconceived notions of what "dancer" means were certainly tested by what I saw. The woman’s movements were more bump-and-grind than anything else—meant to simulate the sex act. There was a lot of writhing and leg-spreading and simulated masturbation as well. Furthermore, the term striptease really does not connote properly what the woman was doing, since she came out in a thong and bra and actually only removed her top. There was no foreplay, so to speak, no flirtation, no dance of the seven veils slowly revealing the mystery and beauty of the feminine form. I did not expect to see a purely pornographic display, and I was slightly embarrassed to watch, but didn’t know what else to do, given my circumstances. I was painfully aware of being the only woman other than the employees there, and could see the men looking at me, likely wondering about why I was there. This steeled my resolve: I was there to be a dispassionate observer and apprentice sociologist, so I determined to set aside my surprise and naive expectations and get to work.

Around this time my supervisor, M., arrived, having been stuck in traffic for a few minutes, and we took a seat. I was beginning to notice more details about the place we were in. It was much darker than most nightclubs I have been to in the past. It did not appear to be very clean, and it was quite small. I was reminded more of some of the bars I visited while in Beijing and Xian, China, than of the kind of bars and clubs in this area that don’t feature nudity. I had lots of questions and since M. had been observing, conducting interviews, and writing about the subject for years she had lots of pertinent information to share. The arrangement of the stage was such that there was a recessed level of seating around the "runway", and then other seats up a couple of steps with a few tables. More seating was at the bar; also a few steps up from the lower level nearest the stage. We were seated near the very end of the stage itself on the upper level. I noticed right away that all the patrons were sitting in seats relatively far away from the stage. I asked M. why no one was seated in the lower seating area. If they came to really see the dancers up close, after all, I would have expected them to be on what amounted to the "front row". Yet those seats stayed almost empty throughout the night. I assumed that the desire of the patrons to maintain the relative anonymity and complete observer status possible in the darker, higher-up seats was stronger than the more carnal desires that might push them closer to the action—but also into the "observed" area the rest of the club’s patrons all had their eyes on. I also wondered if research into primate hierarchy had any application here. Would there be "alpha males" or "silverbacks" willing to claim the seats closer to the stage and the women?

The dancers came out one after the other, announced by name. There were about 6 or 7 different dancers there that night. I noticed that the similarity in moves on the floor and "tricks" at the pole was striking. In belly dancing, each member of a troupe is expected to have her own style and to specialize in something—veil work, belly flutters, shimmies, etc.--while the most accomplished dancers have an entire performance (or more than one) full of mostly original takes on basic and advanced forms, choreographed into a seamless "dance". Here I was surprised at how many dancers did the exact same thing as the dancer before her. It left me feeling that what was expected here of the women, what worked best to get tips, was a cut to the chase, faceless display that was interchangeable from person to person. No one dancer left an indelible, memorable mark, due to the conformity. In belly dancing, the women make lots of eye contact with the audience—both with women and men. Here I saw some eye contact made by dancers with men who walked down to the stage to tip them, but almost none with us two women watching and talking intently. M. had said that the strippers would not know what to make of us—were we lesbians, were we somehow judging them, were we competition for the dollars and drinks men might otherwise bestow upon them? —and would therefore keep their distance from us, and she was right.

Soon a waitress who said her boss wanted to buy us drinks approached us. M. had told me to expect to be asked if we wanted jobs, so I figured this was the first step in what would become that proposition. I ordered water and she had a drink, and soon after began a conversation with the bar’s owner when he came over to chat. I liked her creed—"talk to anyone who will talk to you"—and basically sat back to watch her work. The first thing I noticed in her dialogue with him is that she took on a much more bubbly, less serious tone than I had noted in my conversations with her. Gone was the fairly serious academic woman I had met and spoken with, and in her place was an effervescent party-girl out for a good time who just loved hanging at strip clubs. I was so intrigued at this massive persona-shift that I had to ask about it after he moved away. She said she had learned early on in her research that if you go in like an academic, asking lots of questions and divulging your researcher status, people would shut down and tell you absolutely nothing. I wondered aloud after our observation how similar a process this was to what the dancers themselves do in their work. A highly empowered dancer who verbalized any genuine, negative feelings or thoughts about some of the things she sees, does, and has done to her, wouldn’t get tips or have a job for long, after all. Much more efficacious to play the part of a dancer who loves her work—loves to be stared out, and fantasized about. The club owner told us about one dancer onstage. He said she used to be a dancer at a big club in Houston and that she had made enough there to buy a trucking company, but that she was dancing again because "just can’t stay away from it". I asked, "Why do you think that is?" and without hesitation he shrugged and said, "She’s an exhibitionist". I wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince us, or himself, or if he truly believed it, but I had a hard time believing anyone independently wealthy would choose to dance on a Thursday night in a seedy dive in northwest Arkansas. But it must make everyone feel better about being there if they believe the object of their desire is there by choice, and even more so if she actually wants to be objectified as she plays out her own sexual fantasy of exhibitionism.

I said earlier that most of the dancers used the same moves in their performances, and several of them also looked the same. Though there were some exceptions in hair color and proportions, most were blond, slender, big-breasted (several had had breast-augmentation), "Barbie"-types. There were a couple of exceptions. One girl was very, very thin with long dark hair, and another was bigger than the others, with extremely short, brunette hair. Even her name was different—Shy. I was surprised to see someone looking so different (in reality, her physique was "normal", but compared to the other dancers she looked overweight). M. said she was new and when I asked how she knew (since this was her first time to observe at this club as well) she said, "Two things. She walks a little differently in her high heels, and she is bigger. If she is still dancing a year from now she will have lost weight". I thought her dancing style was a bit more explicit even than the other dancers’, and wondered if that was a kind of compensation for not being in the preferred, "ideal" physical state.

It was when Shy was performing that I first saw two men come down to the actual stage and stay there in seats, rather than just putting money on the stage and walking back to their seats.
They were mature men, in their mid to late 30s or 40s—the "alphas" I expected to see there, if primatological behavior has any application for humans in strip clubs. She "presented" a bit more openly to them, spreading her legs practically in their faces, and stroking herself. One of the men had a dollar bill in his hand and seemed to be taunting her with it, as she was prostrate before him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying but there was definitely a kind of teasing going on with the money. The dancer stayed on the ground writhing even more wildly and the second man also stood over her, as well. Their faces were hovering near her splayed crotch, and they were leering and holding onto the money instead of giving it to her, as if by doing so they could engage her longer, make her become even more revealing or somehow give them more than she already was. There was an overt dominant/ subservient aspect to the situation, and it was the only time I felt extremely uncomfortable and protective of one of the dancers. I really had to fight the urge to go down there and push them aside, which I know would have been wholly inappropriate on many levels. Had I been on the street and seen someone treating a woman in that way, no matter what her dress or behavior, I would have engaged the men angrily and put myself between them and her.

Soon after, we were propositioned by a very intoxicated man who seemed to assume he could have sex with both of us. Even after we said no thanks and let him know were married, he slurred "Me too, that’s ok". He was having trouble communicating in English. In my rudimentary Spanish, I told him no, that we were nice girls. His reply was so ironic that it really stuck with me: "That’s what I like, nice girls." We married women were being clumsily and repeatedly invited into a proposed threesome with a married man who preferred nice girls. It was surreal, and had I not been in that equally surreal space I would have responded with some choice words and possibly a physical reminder that my, and our, space was our own. Instead, we just moved to the bar. M. told me there that she was sometimes groped by such patrons, but I got the impression that she saw it to some degree as part of the job—the important thing being that she could continue to maintain her relatively undercover status and get more information for her research. Even as ostensible customers, some men seemed to think we could be treated with a standard of interaction far more cavalier than the normal rules of engagement between men and women on the street.

Here, I was confronted with the fact that all the rules were different, and no one—not the men, not the dancers, not M., and not even me--acted as they would have in real life, outside. As we stood in the parking lot talking, I felt as if I had just walked out of a small, dark factory created solely to feed some men’s desire for no questions asked, impersonal, mechanistic, assembly-line sexual titillation; a kind of holographic fantasy of someone else’s making, or a dream I had been having where I just couldn’t bring myself to act or speak. And I was just an observer. Knowing that questions of agency were important to M.’s work, I couldn’t help but wonder if there really were dancers who managed to feel otherwise.

acerbitas

2005-09-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

or, poignancy.

For some reason lately I've been surprised to find myself actually, seriously, missing people from my past. I've searched out one friend on classmates and bought blackberry seedlings (to be delivered in January) from another college friend's family's berry farm. I haven't heard back from either though. The talking and laughing and talking I associate with them is strikingly compelling, and I'd love to be able to visit again and see what they are like now.

I don't know if this is happening to other people around my age; maybe it's a generational malaise.

On another, decidely less poignant note, this silk is something new and extremely vibrant. I love the apparent depth especially in the extreme center of the mandala.

ask me anything

2005-09-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

saw this on my friend's journal (www.rabbitconspiracy.com) and asked something of her i have *really* wanted to know but never felt comfortable asking... so now i have to post this here.

* Ask me 3 questions.
* Any 3, no matter how personal, private or random.
* I have to answer them honestly. I have to answer them all.
* In turn, you post this message in your own blog or journal and you have to answer the questions that are asked of you.

Bring on the probing.

like a weed

2005-09-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

my son is growing up and out at a rate i previously associated with kudzu and bad tv. he's almost as big as me now and i'm a pretty big woman myself. i wear a size 11 shoes and he just officially grew out of my clodhoppers...which means he's in a men's size 10 shoes now. i've dated guys with smaller feet than my 11 yr old. geez. but he's always been big. he gained a pound a week ("good" growth is a half pound a week, adequate is 1/4 pound per week for a newborn) and was 24 lbs at 6 mos, 31 lbs at one year. now he's 120 lbs, 5'4". his dad, my ex, is a big guy, but we all think jackson is going to outstrip us. supposedly you can double the height of a child at 24 and 30 months and get a range for their adult age. going by that he's gonna be somewhere between 6'4" and 6'7".
at any rate, he's growing up fast, and we were goofing off yesterday and i *made* latt take a pic of us. it was the first time in a looong time he sat on my lap, and may be the last time ever. i love that kid.

about us

2005-09-04T21:41:00.000-07:00

my kids are the biggest source of jubilation in my life. i am without a doubt 100% improved as a person for allowing motherhood to consume me for a few years with each child. i consider it as having bestowed on me an advanced degree in humanity. i am more sensitive, less selfish, kinder, and more intuitive for having done so. mothering has been the hardest and the best thing i have ever done. the knowledge that one is helping stweard a child into becoming a loving and well-loved adult who has been treated with generosity, respectfulness, and compassion (and can therefore treat others in those ways) is a real trip. marx's idea of the perfectly fulfilling, elusive "creative work" doesn't even come close to describing it.

here's jack, who is 11. he knows more about entomology (the study of insects and their intricacies) than some adults charged with teaching about insects i have known. he needs to get sweaty and work like an ox a few times a week or he gets cranky and surly. he has a natural wit and humor that surprises me sometimes in its sharpness. he and i grew up together in many ways and he taught me how to be a good mother. even when he is an ass i see the qualities (stubborness, self-confidence, ingenuity, curiousity, perseverance) that will serve him well in a pinch as an adult.

rowan is almost three. she is so much fun to be with. here she and i are "getting married". she is fascinated with ritual and order and harmony, and she has working plans for not only her upcoming birthday party but also her upcoming weaning party and a few other fiestas she wants us to have. she wants to know the right way to do things and she has a strong desire to make things better in her immediate environment. this makes her a desirable helper and an easy compatriot in most things we do as a family. she absolutely loves going to famer's markets and other events where we hawk our wares because it gives her a chance to socialize and dress up. i delivered her myself in a birth pool in our bedroom and i am crazy in love with her.

my husband latt is my best friend and a fabulous cook. he fixes me coffee at least once a day while i work at the computer and in my mind that's about as perfect as you can get. i'm wild about him and still not sick of being with him most of the time even after we've been working together in our stay at home business for a few years now. he also has great hair, an infectious laugh, skills too varied and exotic to explicate upon here, and impeccable taste in poetry and clothes...and none of that hurts his official status as best boyfriend ever.

and finally, here's me with some of our hand-dyed work on me and behind me. i'm a freak for color and symmetry and tie-dyeing, particularly now that we are dyeing silks and cotton with the mandala pattern, is great fun and some kind of therapy for me.

it's about time

2005-09-04T21:10:00.000-07:00

that i joined the rest of the thinking world and have myself a blog.

just in case you are wondering:

1) impleo: to fill up; to satisfy or fulfill (wishes, hopes, prophecies, appetities); to make pregnant; to cover with writing. i love latin for tolerating such a beautiful word that covers all those far-flung bases.

2) yes, i *am* aware of the existence of the caps lock key. half the time i am nak (nursing at keyboard) and that means one-handed...the other half the time i am just trying to be consistent. :D

3) speaking of latin and why i am here now...i have a bad case of cacoethes scribendi that i'm hoping this outlet will help me scratch.