Lily playing in her “house.”
08 May 2007

I had a rare pang for the past this morning.  That hardly ever happens anymore.  I’m so ridiculously happy with my current life that I very rarely wish for things to be different.

But on this quiet, cool morning, I longed for the past so much it hurt.  I remembered all the good times I had with Gene and all the goofy things we did with our friends, and it hurt.  I missed my life with him.

I wonder if Matt ever does that.  I wonder if Matt ever misses England and his friends and family sometimes, and his heart aches.  I bet he does — how could he not?  He gets very melancholy when it rains.  I think the smell and the sound remind him of England.

It’s a  good thing we have such a lovely life here together to help us get through those painful nostalgic moments

On a completely different topic, I will be getting ordained by the Universal Life Church in order to marry my niece.  She’s 19-years-old marrying a 35-year-old.  No one is pleased with the match with the exception of her Aunt Cindy.  Either people think she is marrying too young or marrying the wrong person.  So she’s really bummed about her wedding because no one is involved with it.

So we decided that if I get ordained, then she will be mobile.  The wedding can be special in that way.  She can get married in whatever setting she chooses.

I told her that just because it’s me that will be marrying them, it is still a binding legal contract as well as an oath before her friends, family and God, and therefore needs to be taken seriously.  And she said she understood.

I asked Carla if she was upset that I was doing this (she is one of the folks that thinks the marriage will fail), and she said no.  She said that she hopes that I don’t regret this decision.  That was an interesting comment.  I haven’t quite thought that one through yet.  I wonder if other ordained ministers or justices of the peace regret marrying two people?  It was a really interesting comment.  Considering that marriage is supposed to be an extremely happy event, it was also a sad and morbid comment.  But people are always thinking such things, ie. planning the divorce before the marriage; otherwise we wouldn’t have prenuptial agreements.

Shelly just phoned.  Time to chat. 🙂

Double cuteness
17 April 2007

So both the kiddos are still asleep, so I have time to write, but I have nothing in my head to write about. I’ll post random thoughts.

• Matt’s family paid for our tickets to England, so we are definitely going to England for Christmas. In fact, the dates are Dec 21 – Jan 6. Matt wanted to be in England for Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year’s and both the kids’ birthdays.

• I put “Rupert Murdoch” in the title to one of my blog entries, and I started getting spam comments, and my blog content was lifted and posted on a spam site. I guess people google “Rupert Murdoch” a lot.

• WordPress just sent out an update, and I don’t like the new “code” box. It doesn’t actually allow you to put in whatever html you would like. It changes <div> tags to <p> tags. Very annoying.

• I feel so behind-the-curve with “Web 2.0.” (I’m still uncomfortable with that name.) I feel overwhelmed and decidedly low-tech compared to all the amazing stuff that’s out there.

• I miss Matt during the week. But it’s much better now that we meet at the gym. I have to start getting ready to leave for the gym at 3pm (feeding kids, dressing kids, packing bags) so I can leave the house by 4pm. Before this gym membership, it was just me and the kids at home until Matt got home around 5pm. That’s a long time to be by yourself with two little ones. Hard work and very lonely.

• Between working out at the gym and nursing a 4-month-old 20-pound baby, I have an insane appetite! I get hungry in the middle of the night. Honestly. I had dreams all last night about eating food. The dreams were just me… eating food. It reminds me of the second trimester of both my pregnancies. Well, that’s not strictly true. During the second trimester, I was constantly hungry… always a feeling of hunger even right after I ate. I’m not always hungry right now; I just eat often, about every three hours.

• Damian is 19 pounds 9 ounces at only 4-months-old. And the craziest part: he’s only in the 97th percentile. There are babies out there that are bigger than him!

• I hear my baby waking up in the next room. Babies make the cutest cooing noises. I think you could end wars with that sound.

• I have to go now and be with my baby. And make some food! I’m starving! 🙂

Doing random thoughts is fun. You should try it.

So I’ve been playing with the camera on our new phones.  The thing that I really like about this phone is that I can just download the photos off my camera onto my computer.  Photos taken this morning of the family waking up:

05 May 2007

Sure, the quality of the photos would have been much better if I had taken the pictures with our Nikon camera, but this morning was about photos and playing with new digital toys. 🙂

I better go join my family now.  I’m playing on the computer instead of interacting with my family, and I can only do that for a short time before repercussions start flowing through the house.

Lily putting Damian night-night.
01 May 2007

I’ve decided that blogs are a creative outlet. They are not merely a way to communicate with family and friends (and sometimes strangers), nor are they merely a way to vent, pontificate, or have a cathartic breakthrough in a public forum.

No, blog entries are so much more.  When you have only fifteen minutes a day in which to stretch your creative muscles, you blog.  Laundry, dishes, dinner, phone calls, bills — the stuff of life that steals all your time — leave only a small window for creative expression.

So we write our little byte-sized orations that we hope are in some small way witty, insightful, entertaining, or relevant.  Perhaps they are; perhaps they aren’t.  But, as we crawl into bed at night, we feel a little more fulfilled.  Today I created something — good or bad, entertaining or tiresome — at least I had an outlet for the creative pressure that builds up inside.

Daddy and Damian
28 April 2007

We recently purchased new cell phones.  We were using the Samsung T309 which I do not recommend.  The sound quality is muffled and it doesn’t take a standard headset.  These phones were the cheap-o phones that came with the 2-year T-Mobile contract.

We’ve had the T309 phones for the past year, and I was pretty unhappy with them from the very beginning.  So I’ve been coveting another phone for awhile.  Shelly has the very sexy Motorola Razr phone. She’s had this phone for a few years, and I was seduced by its sleek industrial design from the first moment I saw it.

So when we decided to actually spend money on new phones, I thought we would be buying Razr phones since we had been talking about how pretty they are for a couple of years.  But after doing our research, we found that Nokia phones have the best sound quality.

I have been listening to muffled conversations for the past year.  There was no contest, no debate.  Functionality won by a landslide over design.

We bought the very fun Nokia 5300 XpressMusic phones.  I was a bit dubious about spending $150 on this phone since I wouldn’t be using one of its main functions, the mp3 player.  I have my iPod for that.  But after having crappy phones for so long, we splurged.

And I tell you what, it’s a fun phone.  It may not have the sexy vibe of the Razr phone, but it’s a lot of fun.  I’ve been playing with it for two days now.

And, more importantly, the sound clarity is wonderful.  I talked to Shelly for an hour and missed only one word.  I was so happy.  I can finally hear what the other person is saying. 🙂

Lily asking Daddy a question.
25 March 2007

HotSchedules, Matt’s work, started a corporate wellness program.  The company pays for Matt’s gym membership to a really nice gym, Lifetime Fitness, and we pay for mine and the kids’ memberships.

Before Matt and I got together, we both led very active lifestyles.  Then, like many couples who fall ecstatically in love, our life became about enjoying each other, and absolutely everything else faded into background noise including proper exercise and diet.

Over the past six years, Matt and I have become sedentary and our diet has detiorated into fast food and easy meals.  (Well, I always ate badly, but Matt had a decent diet before me.  He was introduced to the American diet when he moved here in 2001.)  At first, we didn’t notice our descent into this very unfit lifestyle — it was slow and subtle and easy to miss in the day-to-day minutiae of living.  It was only after a few years and 50 extra pounds that we said, “Hm, maybe we should do something about this.”

So when Ray, Matt’s boss, told us about the gym membership, Matt and I were excited and hopeful.  We had been talking about exercising for so long, and here was the opportunity literally handed to us by fate and kindness.

We have just finished our fourth week at the gym.  We go four times a week, doing both cardio and weights.  This is also our fourth week of no fast food (well, very little; we still go out once a week).  And in just four weeks, the psychological shift has been amazing!  I have greater patience with the kids and am enjoying my time with them more.  Matt said he can focus better and can concentrate longer.  I swear, even my vision has improved.  All this in just four weeks.  It’ll be interesting to see what other things happen to our minds and bodies as we continue with this exercise program.

In my teens, I used recreational drugs a lot.  It was a combination of fun, disaffection, withdrawal, and ignorant youth.  I quit using drugs when I was 20-years-old, and I really dislike drugs now.  I have been on drugs and off drugs, and I can tell you from actual experience, you live a half-life when you habitually use drugs.  Everything is muted.  Your vision, your hearing, your memory, your ability to change and adapt, your brain — everything.  Muted and muffled and covered in cotton.

And here is the amazing thing I just discovered: when you live an unfit lifestyle, the same thing happens.  Sure, it’s to a lesser degree, but it still happens.  Your world becomes muffled; a thin, white haze settles down over your life, and you don’t even realize that you’re living in a world of dull edges and muddy colors (not to mention you’re moody and your brain doesn’t work as well).  I had no idea that eating badly and not exercising could have such negative psychological and physical consequences.

So there ya go.  Choose life. 🙂

Lily being her normal fabulous self.
08 April 2007

Have you ever had an idea that demands attention?  An idea that keeps nudging you and pestering you?  An idea that desperately wants to be released into the world to begin its own life?

That’s what has been going on for the past week or so with me.  The idea of creating a podcast of romance stories has been constantly in my head, constantly reminding me.

I want to do it soon.  I can contain desires for only so long.  Sewing, writing, creating a podcast –  feeling creation.  Creating is cathartic and fun.  And I miss it… very much.

Somehow I have to create a podcast of romance stories and sew and raise two small children and keep a house.  Not an easy task, and certainly not one that I have figured out how to accomplish yet.  But I have hope.  I always have hope.

Matt stayed home from work on Monday because of a stomach virus.
Lily and Damian kept him company on his sick day.
(Dave, from Matt’s work, said “Lily is morphing into a superhero.”)
19 March 2007

I just watched the Frontline special on marketing to teenagers, titled “Merchants of Cool.”  You can view the entire episode here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view/.

After watching this show, it reaffirms my decision not to have television in our house.  Our kids are going to be bombarded enough with this crap just by being a part of this society; we can lessen the impact by not having cable television.

And “rage rock” is awful.  The lyrics are awful.  Geez, what does it say about our society that our kids listen to such soulless, tuneless, violent non-music?

(By the way, there is another Frontline episode, by the same fellow Douglas Rushkoff, about marketing and advertising in general, not just to teens: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/view/.)

Lily being uber-cute.
(This is not a staged photograph.
This is just Lily being Lily.
She is, of course, my hero now.
She wears what she wants when she wants
without any regard to what others may think of her.)
17 February 2007

I was living a life of frustration. I would wake up in the morning, full of hope and plans, and by the evening, I was frustrated, annoyed, irritable, and not much fun to be around.

How did I manage this, you ask?  By being inflexible with two small children.  By trying to force them into an adult schedule.  By having a rigid plan.

I would wake up with an idea in my head of what I would get done that day.  “Today, I’m catching up on my emails, balancing the check register, cleaning the bathrooms, and making a gourmet dinner.”

So, appropriately, I would sit down at my desk to answer emails.  Then Lily would start crawling all over the desk because she wanted attention.  I would endure her presence, annoyed the whole time, for a little while until she did some final thing, like pressing the sleep button on my computer and crashing the computer, that would send me over the edge and I would yell at her and send her out of the room.

At this point I would be feeling guilty as well as annoyed, but I would push on, trying to finish the emails.  Then the baby would start crying.  Instead of spending time with my baby, I would run in the other room, try to shush him with the pacifier, and then run back to my computer to work.

This is how the entire day would go.  The day would end with nothing on the to-do list completed, and Matt would come home to a really grumpy wife.  It wasn’t working for anyone.

Then two days ago, I realized that I was shushing my baby to finish emails and that my baby was much more precious and something to be enjoyed now.  So I gave up.  I decided to flow with the chaos.

So now, nothing gets done just like before — the house is still messy, dinners are still not being made, the emails are going unanswered.  But I’m a lot happier about it.  And so are the children and Matt.

Zen and the art of raising children.

Damian
09 February 2007

For Valentine’s Day, Matt bought me an iPod. He received one as a present from his parents for Christmas, and I thought it was really cool. (Apple owns industrial design. Everything they create looks sleek and cool and sexy.)

While playing with my sexy (hot pink, by the way) new iPod, I suddenly had the overwhelming desire to create a podcast.  How fun would that be?!

But what would I podcast, I thought to myself.  (Is “podcast” a verb?  It’s difficult to keep current with all the emerging net jargon.)  I don’t want to do a show like Sam has done.  My talents don’t lie in that direction.  Then I thought, I can read something!  But I can’t use copyrighted material, so I would have to read my own work.

Well, that sounds like a lot of fun!

At least, that’s where the idea began.  Fun.  But then I began to worry.  What if it’s crap?  What if I create something that is utter crap?  The fear of creating something subpar — something that people will point to and say, “Whoa, what loser created that?” — kills the idea… dead.

And then I do nothing.  I attempt nothing.  My life, which is finite, is wasted in fear.

Bruce Willis and Russell Crowe may not be the best musicians, but at least they actually did something instead of letting fear strangle their dreams.  There is some really terrible art and stories floating around on the internet, but I say, Good job, people!  You were brave and you created.  F*** the critics!  Dream and do!  Follow your bliss!

I’m thinking now that the title of this blog entry should be “F*** the critics.”  It’s so easy to point out mediocrity.  It’s so easy to belittle, but through belittling we destroy the creations of others and the unmade creations within ourselves.

Now that I have children, I realize how important it is to encourage fledgling attempts.  Lily is not good at using her spoon, but I tell her what a great job she is doing as she spills food everywhere because she is doing a great job.  She’s learning through doing.  If I expected her to be able to use a spoon expertly on her first try and criticized her when she didn’t, all I would be doing is destroying her confidence.  She would no longer attempt new things.

So create.  Nurture your fledgling attempts.  It’s better to create, whatever the final quality may be, than to live in fear.

Since my children are so very young right now, it may take awhile for podcasts to show up on this site, but they will.  Oh yes, they most definitely will.