Labels

I am not good at labels. Back when I wrote extremely vague, emo poetry, I almost never titled my work, because I suck at titles. (Conversely, the title to my master's thesis is embarrassingly long and awkward. I guess since I was forced to give something a title, I decided to title the hell out of it.) I find titles too confining. That's why the title of this blog is so vague. I don't know what kind of blog it is. I don't even know what kind of blog I want it to be.

It's not a mommy blog. It seems to me that mommy blogs are about explaining how to handle this or that parenting situation. There's some takeaway, some nugget of advice. I have no advice for anyone. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. And right now, those pants have a cream cheese stain on them.

I do, however, talk about my kid a lot. I can't help it, though. I waited a long damn time to have kids; it's all I ever really wanted to do. And I thought for a while that I would never be able to do so. So I'm pretty excited about the whole parenthood thing. My daughter is my greatest achievement, my favorite person in the world, and the reason I get out of bed every morning. That I've managed to get and stay (knock wood) pregnant twice seems like an embarrassment of riches.

However, though my focus is mostly on being a mother, I do more than mommy. And while I track most of my progress at PopClogs now that 43t is defunct (sniff), occasionally I feel things require more elaboration than I feel comfortable putting into such a forum. These tend to become blog entries. (Or will, once I find the time/energy to write them all down. I've been writing this entry in my head for a week.) I have a host of projects and goals that I will begin to address once I can stay conscious more than two hours at a time and stop feeling so violently seasick. Until then, I'm just surviving.

But it's not just a self-improvement blog. I want to start focusing on my career at some point (right now, it's mostly just a way to keep the lights on). Over the years, I've amassed a variety of related but distinct skills that I would eventually like to package into a service, because I really have no intention of returning to the office. I like working from home. It suits me.

That's part of what this blog is all about. I have no official writing samples in my portfolio -- nothing I'm proud of, anyway. Nothing I feel is special, or indicative of my voice. And the informal writing I've done is all over the place -- entries on this site or that site. I wanted to create a place where I could showcase my best work, and also get back into the writing groove. Part of being an editor is being a good writer, but it's been so very long since I wrote anything more than a few paragraphs that I'm not even sure I remember how.

And I miss writing. I used to write every day, just for fun. Now I barely have time to respond to email. But I want to make a point of writing, to feel comfortable calling myself a writer again.

So...here I am. Welcome to the pile. It's sure to be a mixed bag, but I'll try to make it an entertaining mess, at least.

I'm still here

There goes another month. This one's been a haze of nausea and exhaustion. The first trimester is hard enough without 60-hour work weeks, but with them...well, let's just say that it's a good day when my shirt's on right side out.

Unless I'm suffering from selective amnesia, this pregnancy is harder than Anya's in terms of morning sickness. I haven't vomited (I'm not a puker), but the food aversions are brutal this time. (And when I say that, know that I lived on cheese and crackers for the first three months last time around.) I have days in which I can maybe choke down the equivalent of one meal. So I also have headaches. And exhaustion is just par for the course.

Things have also been crazy lately. In a few days, my baby turns 3, and won't be such a baby anymore. The preparations for her celebrations (yes, plural) have just added to the hectic pace of my life. Today's pretty much booked from morning through bedtime, and I'm not convinced I'll get it all done. I have the possibility of pockets of free time over the weekend, but I can't count on them. 

And this is how the last few weeks have gone. Occasionally I get a free afternoon on a Sunday, but most days I get perhaps a couple of hours of downtime, total. It's wearing on me.

So I was pretty cranky last night. We were folding laundry at 9:30, just so I'd have one less thing to do today. And I was snippy, and I knew I was being snippy, but I was just so tired and sick and stressed out that I could not stop.

All Anya wanted to do was play. But her play was undoing the work I was doing faster than I was doing it, so I snapped at her.

She kind of steered clear of me the rest of the night.

My time with this child is too short as it is; I don't want to waste what time I do have.

So I gave myself the next few days off of freelancing. Being short two articles this month isn't going to make or break me financially, and the extra hour's sleep this morning took the edge off the headache I woke with.

I need to make more of an effort to give myself time off. Yes, we need the money. We will always need the money. But I need to take care of myself, too. It's all too easy to let that slide until the damage is done.

Radio silence

I'm not good at ignoring the elephant in the room. Or small talk, both the in-person kind and the bloggery kind. I find silence easier than pointless nattering. So I haven't updated this blog in nearly a month.

This happened with my last blog, too. For the same reason, it turns out.

I'm pregnant.

This information isn't exactly public yet. But I figure the five of you reading this can keep it on the d/l.

The reason it's not public is because I'm worried it won't stick. I've had a heck of a time getting to this point. We were going to start trying in January...and then I missed three periods. It's hard to make a baby if you don't have menstrual cycles; ovulation is kind of required.

They gave me something to start me, and we tried again. Chemical pregnancy. Then another. And for a while, it looked like this would be number 3: two pregnancy tests, both negative. But I didn't start, either, so I tried one more test. Then ran out and bought another box just to be on the safe side. (These tests are still sitting on top of my medicine cabinet. I can't bring myself to throw them away, gross as that sounds. I worked too hard to get those results.)

This past Friday, I confirmed with my OB/GYN: There is definitely a passenger in my abdomen.

We're being extra cautious because, including the two miscarriages I had before I got pregnant with my daughter, I've had six pregnancies. That's not a stellar success rate. So I get the impression I'm going to see a lot of my doctor this time around, at least in the beginning.

Anyway, now you know why I haven't been posting. I've been a little preoccupied. Sorry about that.

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.