Small changes

Lately, my left shoulder has been pins-and-needles numb. The affected area extends from my shoulder blade to my elbow. It's not painful, or even overly bothersome -- just curious. I couldn't figure out at first what could possibly be causing it. Onset was sudden, and no amount of wiggling or massaging it brought relief. It just went to sleep and didn't wake up. It's made me nervous about carrying my daughter; I haven't lost sensation completely, but who's to say I won't?

Eventually, through trial and error plus some judicious Googling, I realized the tingling was the result of leaning on that elbow while I work. Apparently doing so brings on a repetitive stress response. Once I noticed it, I realized I've adopted this posture in front of the computer for years; the recent increase in my working hours called it to my attention.

I tried to fix the issue in the usual way -- changing positions, rearranging my desk, adding a stretch routine. Nothing helped. The minute I let my guard down, I was slouch-leaning again. (Have I mentioned I have horrid posture in front of the computer? It's atrocious. And apparently incurable.)

Then I lowered the left armrest on my chair to the lowest setting. Bingo. It's now far too uncomfortable to lean. I won't say I'm sitting straight, but I'm not resting my body weight on one elbow any more. And while the tingling isn't gone, it's improved. Just in a couple of hours.

Little things can have a large impact. And little changes can bring about huge improvements.

How many jogs make a jogger?

I've been wanting to get into jogging for a while now. I work ten hours (sometimes more) a day on weekdays, and at least four hours every Saturday and Sunday. I have a toddler, a partner, and a house that does not clean itself. (R tries, but it's a lot for one man to handle while simultaneously watching a 2-year-old.) I also am trying to get back into cooking actual food at least one meal a day. And I need to sleep sometime. So my free time is, suffice to say, limited.

Which is where jogging comes in. I can, and do, walk for fitness, but even at the (fairly fast) pace I set, it takes a while. Jogging can net me more distance in less time. It also provides a greater bang for my buck, exertion-wise. So I'm definitely interested.

I'm also recovering from injury (sprained ankle), have a bad knee (for which I've done physical therapy in the past, and therefore don't want to anger again), and have endometriosis -- sometimes walking is the best I can do. I get that. But I am trying to work in more jogging. On my good days. Just to start building my stamina.

I've now jogged three times. Roughly half a mile each time -- nothing big. (I also walk a mile or three on these outings; I don't just do a couple laps and call it a day.) Does that make me a jogger now? Or do I need to jog a few more times? If so, how many? Will it ever stop feeling weird to use the word "jogger" in association with myself?

Perhaps this will influence my jog cred: The other day, I slipped out while my child and her father napped to squeeze in a jog. Today, I got up at 4 a.m. to do so.

I'm not sure what I think about that.

But working out at 4 a.m. makes sense in the same way jogging makes sense: It saves time. If I save my workout for the evening, I have to contend with my child, who has been without me all day and is ready for some Mumma time. Even if I can get her to play at the playground while I work out, she usually wears out before I do. If I do it before she wakes up, she never knows I'm gone. And I can still start freelancing at 5 a.m. as usual.

So I do understand the early-early-morning joggers. I'm sure their circumstances aren't much different than mine. I'm just not really sure how I went from computer chair potato to someone who goes jogging in the middle of the night.

The very Anyaness of her

I've always been fascinated by genetics. How traits are passed down from the mother and father, and even distant relatives. How eye color can skip generations. Things like that.

One of the running jokes in my family is my obsession with my nose. But seriously -- I don't know where my nose came from. It's not quite like my dad's, and not quite like my mom's. It's almost, but not entirely, an amalgamation of the two.

I can tell you where I got everything else. My hands, my chin, my teeth, my hair, my knees. The one hazel spot in my otherwise gray eyes (I had to go to a family reunion for that one...my grandmother's sister, apparently, has the same eyes). But my nose is a mystery.

One thing I never gave much thought to was the passing down of personality traits. Sure, I share my mother's love of books, my father's love of rocks. I'm obsessed with clean, like my mom. A loner, like my dad. I figured these things came from observation and imitation. The parts of me that are not like either of them -- my love of singing, my creativity, my love of making things from scratch -- these things I just accepted. They never struck me as weird until I had a kid of my own, because I never thought you could inherit who you are as much as you do what you look like.

Anya has my eyes. Her father's forehead. My thumbs. His feet. My thighs. But she also so obviously inherited portions of her personality. She's more like her father than me -- all hot temper and gregariousness and affection. They are athletic. They make friends wherever they go. And they love openly, freely. She's fearless in ways I don't think I ever was.

But she's also got a flair for fashion that came from neither of us. A love of dancing. A need to perform and entertain. She's way girlier than I could ever be. And she has an appreciation for 40s music that neither of us really understand.

From her first month of life, she was struggling to scoot off our laps. Then she was wiggle-worming out of her carseat. She crawled early. Walked early. Ran. Now it's climbing. She needs to go, move, do, reach, with an urgency neither of us ever exhibited. She will run laps around the couch if she has to.

I'm in awe of these things because they prove that she is far greater than the sum of her parts. She is not simply Mumma + Daddy. She's something more. And I am captivated by the differences, the innate Anyaness of her.

Letter to my 18-year-old self

This week looks to be fairly crazy, so instead of a blog entry, here's my latest Cowbird entry: To me, on the eve of my high school graduation.

Change

Change. The bane of my young life. I shed bitter tears over change more often than I welcomed it. As an older child, I was nostalgic for my carefree early grade school days. (I'm not kidding. I was that kind of kid.) As a college graduate, I mourned the loss of my college years -- even though they were largely miserable. The devil you know is often less scary than the devil you don't.

Then something happened in my 30s: I started initiating change. Seeking out change. It was terrifying and liberating, and oddly boring at times. (Yeah, yeah, new thing. Been there. I guess everything can become routine after a while.)

The birth of my daughter brought about the biggest changes of all. First and foremost, baby. Nothing changes your life like the addition of a helpless, squalling infant. But at the same time, my relationship with her father and my parents underwent drastic, irrevocable changes. (Some good, some bad. Mostly just different.) I also moved, from my home of 10 years to the house next door to my parents, in the town where I went to high school. And shortly after I gave birth, I left my job of 12 years for the opportunity to work from home (and a much rockier financial outlook).

Change, indeed.

Possibly due to my age, I'm suddenly fascinated by change. I drive through old neighborhoods, picture them as they were when they were new, and wonder what happened. I try to see the young person in older people. And I find myself thinking fondly on the persons and events that made up what I still contend were the worst years of my life. It's enough to make you question your sanity at times.

But I think it's natural to look back as you move on to something new. And I'm entering a new phase of my life now. It's just that, for the first time, I'm aware of it as it's happening.

I'm also far more accepting of change. I won't say I welcome it; change is still scary, even when it's for the better. But I'm getting better at making room for it in my life, and letting go of the old. Do I still mourn vinyl? Sure. But my music library is exponentially larger now that it's all electronic. So my daughter won't discover music in record stores (!!!). She'll find way more music than I ever had access to on the internet.

I can't compare her childhood to mine, any more than I can compare my childhood to my parents, or grandparents. Because things change, and because we're all products of the time in which we were raised.

However, we can adapt and fit into the world as it changes. All we have to do is be willing to keep up. I'm doing my best.

Because change can also be a lot of fun.

Parenting is teaching

I teach my kid every day. Not just the alphabet and how to count -- all her toys do that, anyway -- but how to manipulate objects in her environment, how to treat people, how to deal with new situations and things outside our control.

On his Facebook page, Joe Hedges summed up teaching like this:

Hey, check this out. Isn't it cool? Now you try it! Yeah, pretty good, but I bet you can do better. No, you can't leave early.

That, to me, is also how you parent. (Though that last item is sometimes replaced by "Yes, we have to leave now.")

I'm teaching her about the world so that in a few (way too few) years, she'll know enough to go live in it. Which is what school tries to do, too. But I think something gets lost in both parenting and school (at least, I don't remember there being a tremendous amount of emphasis on it when I was growing up): Those first two sentences in Joe's summary.

Hey, check this out. Isn't it cool?

We assume kids will find their own cool stuff on their own -- and if not, the TV will show them what's cool. But there is so much more to life than what comes through the television. Fireflies and fingerpainting and flowers and fireworks. (And there are 25 other letters in the alphabet -- this could go on for years.)

So I'm making it a point to incorporate discovery into our daily lives. I might learn something, too. Which would be cool, because I also love learning new things.

To be

“We all know people…who are at loggerheads with existence; unhappy people who never get what they want; are baffled, complaining, who stand at an uncomfortable angle when they see everything askew. There are others again who, though they appear perfectly content, seem to have lost all touch with reality. They lavish all their affections upon little dogs and old china. They take interest in nothing but the vicissitudes of their own health and the ups and downs of social snobbery. There are, however, others who strike us, why precisely it would be difficult to say, as being by nature or circumstances in a position where they can use their faculties to the full upon things that are of importance. They are not necessarily happy or successful, but there is a zest in their presence, an interest in their doings. They seem to be alive all over."

- Virginia Woolf, “The Narrow Bridge of Art”; emphasis mine.

The text above, particularly the bolded portion, is what I aspire to be. Everything I do, and everything I do not do, filters down to that one thought.

I was in pain yesterday, so I did pretty much nothing. A short grocery run and dinner, preceded by naps. Plural. And it was nice, being lazy. I'm not often lazy. But I also felt frustrated because I was wasting my day. I have so very many things I want to accomplish, and so few hours in which to accomplish them. I'd rather not waste those hours sleeping, or playing games, or watching TV.

I want to be. And I want to do so to the best of my ability, over and over until I get it right.