“I’ll have that for you right away” and other dumb stuff I say

Husband and I both work from home. He’s physically in the office three days a week, and I am physically in the classroom three hours a week, but for the remainder of the time for him, and about 20 hours a week for me, we’re laboring over our laptops at home. Of course, he works during normal business hours, while Little Girl and I go to storytime and put away the laundry and whatnot, and I generally toil away from bedtime (8 PM) until, occasionally, the early morning.

That totally sucks, by the way. Since Little Girl doesn’t nap, that means I don’t get that much-vaunted “break” during the day, and then I don’t really have any free time at night, because even when I cut myself some slack on my research job, I really ought to be preparing for my class, the curriculum for which is entirely new and up to me. I am often pretty tired, too.

Work is even busier for me right now (both jobs) as I’ve been asked to create and present an in-service to the other instructors on, basically, how to be as totally awesome an ESL instructor as I am. This comes as a result of my recent teaching observation, and is of course wonderful and flattering, but is a whole extra bunch of work and stressful to boot.

And things with my research job are basically fine, but right now there’s a joke about my doing “participatory research” into the use of a newly-popular mind-altering substance among the VPs (all I said was maybe we should add it to our list of substances youths abuse if it’s common enough even I’ve heard of it!), and plus I’m having to hammer out this contract with this really problematic vendor we have to use for stupid political reasons, and I also realized that I really ought to be higher up on the totem pole, job title- and compensation-wise, so I’m gearing up for my arguments on these points in my upcoming performance review.

So with all this my work is spilling into my days, which equals Little Girl in front of the television, because no other method of keeping her quiet during conference calls or careful parsing of phrases in important emails works as well. And that’s the exact opposite of how I want work to fit into my life. I want it to be this thing I do she knows nothing about, that affects her in no way, while nevertheless affording me monetary and self-esteem gains as well as an increased feeling of security and progress and, well, fulfillment in my professional and intellectual lives. I want to be an attentive full-time mother but also something of a career woman. Keep dreaming, Antropóloga.

The holey and the transgressive

I don’t know, I guess I developed some sort of allergy or something, but a few years ago I started being insanely irritated by wearing earrings, and I eventually gave up. But I’d like to wear them, you know? For one thing, people keep giving me earrings, so I have tons. And some I actually like.

But then I had a new problem: I couldn’t get an earring in my right ear even when I tried. And the left ear was no picnic. The holes had filled back in.

So I decided to get them pierced again. I’d had this plan in the back of my mind a bit–not like it was urgent–but last week, the day after my birthday, while running some errands, Little Girl and I passed a store that advertised body piercings. Hey, a real piercer! That sounded good! We went in and a hot Israeli guy said he could probably stretch the holes for me for 15 bucks. Sold!

So Little Girl and I followed him back to a the piercing room, which was wallpapered with photos of young ladies of dubious reputations showing off their belly-button piercings. I wanted to show Little Girl what I meant by pierced ears, so I took her over to the little display of fake body parts with piercings in them, when I realized that there were no regular ear piercings in evidence. Sure, there are noses and eyebrows and lips and other kinds of lips, but no ears, so I quickly redirected her attention.

Explaining that the piercer was “like a doctor” (she likes doctors, and plus he had on latex gloves; they were black, but still) and he was going to fix my ears so I could wear earrings, she held my hand while he stretched one hole (OUCH) and had to pierce anew the other.

Little Girl was cool with it. She asked a few times if she could have her ears pierced, too, but was satisfied with my answer that she’d have to wait until she’s 10, or maybe even 13. (She is familiar with this sort of answer as she gets it when she requests to drive the car. Also, I have no real reasoning for those ages she has to await, except that I myself had to wait until 13 and that seems…sensible).

From a mommy standpoint, I felt a little uncomfortable with the slightly sexual ambiance of the piercing parlor, though Little Girl didn’t seem to notice. The piercer’s attitude towards Little Girl was one I like, though: he neither fawned over her nor ignored her, was just matter-of-fact that she was a small person who was accompanying me. Anyway, it was hardly that transgressive a place to take her, nestled as it was between a Bed Bath & Beyond and an Old Navy.

And my ears are healing nicely, thank you.

Recipe

1 vague geocaching intent
0 geocaching experience
0 geocaching plan
1 fussy three-year-old
2 lazy dogs
0 strollers
0 containers of water
0 snacks
0 maps
and…
1 faulty motherfucking GPS device

This post writes itself, right? You can probably even infer the huge fight in the middle of nowhere after wandering around for two hours and arriving absolutely nowhere.

There’s a happy ending: Husband can run really fast, so he finally went and got the car so we didn’t have to drag ourselves all the way back, and then later we used his cell phone, which has GPS that actually functions, to, uh, drive to the spot, two miles away.

We live at 34 Totalitarian Regime Drive

Little Girl does a lot of make-believe play with various little toys (or, if we’re outside, pine cones and sticks and rocks and whatnot) where the elements talk to each other. Sometimes they’re calmly informing each other, often inaccurately, of each others’ colors, and discussing where they will go and recounting exciting trips to the playground. But often they are castigating each other vehemently: “You need to be a good listener!” And occasionally they even veer into shocking territory with their diatribes: “I don’t like you! Go away!”

What?!? Where did she get that? I’ll admit I sometimes get irritated and go off the rails a bit, but I have definitely not said that. Goodness.

Anyway, I can’t decide how to respond. It’s basically just thoughtcrime. And I know her play is where she practices life. I want to let her have her space and not feel like she has to keep tabs on where her mother is because she can do as she likes only when she has privacy (ahem, I may be projecting from my own childhood). At any rate, I’m uncomfortable with requiring her to censor herself as she plays alone at age three.

At the same time, sometimes I can’t help but pipe up in reaction to both her nasty words and her unpleasant tone. “Is that how we talk?” I’ll say, and try to figure out what prompted the outburst on her, uh, toy’s part. What do you think this is all about, and how should I respond? She did try a similar line on her father once and he totally let it slide but I made a huge deal about it and required her to apologize, but it’s less clear to me what to do when it’s part of play.

PS: Regarding my last post: fairy ballerina.

Maybe I was dressed up as a grown-up, did they ever think of that?

Since my birthday is two days after Halloween I traditionally have weeks of candy/cake/chocolate gifts to enjoy. This has been less the case this year as Little Girl mostly did not get sweets while trick-or-treating but boring shit like pretzels and popcorn balls and little plastic toys. Obviously this was great for her, but since, in addition, she also has a much lower tolerance for trick-or-treating than I do, and was ready to pack it in after no more than a dozen houses, there really has been no candy extravaganza, especially as we didn’t stock ourselves for trick-or-treaters at all, rightly expecting none (which is why we got in the car and traveled to the only child-infested neighborhood on the island for Halloween).

Wow, I don’t know what happened with that sentence, but it is really long. To summarize, it’s my birthday Monday, and Halloween was meager (but fun). They’re starting to do Halloween a bit in Sweden so I didn’t have another this-is-the-last-time-I’ll-ever-do-this-again freakout.

I dressed up, too, as always, and carried the extra treat bag a neighbor had given Little Girl. But nobody mistook me for a kid. One person even asked me, “Are you collecting for another child?” And then at lunch today the waitress, upon learning it was my birthday celebration, asked me, laughing, “Are you twenty-two today?” Why is that a joke? I mean, I could be twenty-two, right? How would she know? Hell, I could even be a teenager, for that matter! Maybe I was trick-or-treating!

Uh, I guess I’m having some birthday issues. But Halloween was good, even though it was pretty weird to be sweating while trick-or-treating. It was so warm that day we swam in the ocean. Ah, island living.

Bonus points if you can guess what Little Girl was. She nodded affirmatively to everyone’s guesses yesterday but nobody got it quite right. Probably because it’s not an actual thing. Cute, though. (She’d also nod affirmatively anytime anyone told her that, too. Which was even cuter.)

My three dogs

It’s my understanding that a lot of three-year-old girls are really into princesses. Not mine. Mine loves to pretend she is a dog. A specific dog, in fact. My mom’s dog, Dewey. At least 50% of the time she insists she is not [her name] but Dewey, and wants to be told not to jump, to eat by sticking her head in the bowl, to crawl around, to yip. If she doesn’t want to do something, suddenly she’s Dewey, and duh, of course Dewey can’t put on shoes, he’s a dog. She’s really into it. Sometimes it’s cute, and sometimes it’s too much.

I think this is her little obsession because, instead of siblings, she has our dogs as playmates. Daily I herd my three puppies on walks on the beach. I take my three puppies out in the yard to pee (uh, yes, all three of them, sometimes). My three puppies beg for snacks in the kitchen. My three puppies need me to yell to get them to come.

She’s particularly close to Loki, who is just immense but the most tolerant creature, and is apparently just happy to get attention when she sits on him, pours sand on him, bats at him with palm fronds, tries to draw on him with sidewalk chalk, tugs at his collar, takes away his dog food, adorns him with accouterments from the dress-up box, and yells in his ear. Our other dog, Freya, is not as enthusiastic about such activities, and will look as dejected as possible when, say, Little Girl drapes her in dish towels and tell her she’s a babushka.

What’s funny is Dewey (the real one) has similar relationships with our dogs; Loki is happy to go along with his silly little puppy games, and is just so sweet when he dabs gently at Dewey with his immense paws as they “wrestle.” Meanwhile Freya keeps her distance, having less patience for the constant nonsense of puppyhood.

I guess Little Girl and Dewey really do have a lot in common. No wonder she identifies with him so much.

Why even get a wallet if there’s no money left to put in it?

My wallet’s falling apart. I wanted to get a new one. But wait–Swedish crown bills are a different size–I should just wait until we move.

I guess I’ll just add that to the increasingly-distressing list of Shit We Gotta Buy All Over Again In Sweden. I don’t understand how we are shipping a 20 ft. container and it doesn’t include any of these items. What the hell are we sending, then? The only stuff I remember for sure are fancy china we never use, pillows, and Christmas decorations.

Anon for this (I wish)

I googled my maiden name recently to alarming results.

There was an entry from a discontinued blog with a name referencing the college town near where I went to high school, so where many of my buddies matriculated; I could only read the snippet with my name in it from the search page, but, using my full name, the writer mentioned I had punched someone in the nose. WHAT?! I have no recollection of that. And I think I would.

Another site, I think it had something to do with MySpace, had some sort of thread in which I was mentioned and a poster whom I did recognize from high school (though she has a newer, sluttier look) made a rather nonspecific comment about never being able to forget my full name and “the incident with the garbage.” WTF?! I don’t remember anything about that, either, but it certainly sounds bad.

And why are these people even using my full name? Have they never heard of initials?

I also encountered some innocuous but embarrassing comments I stupidly made with my full name on forums on a) Oaxaca, Mexico and b) Kabbalah that are still hanging around on the internet eleven years later. Gah.

With my married name you mostly get Swedish ladies and multiple mentions of my one (1) publication, so that’s acceptable.

I know to be careful with what using my name on the internet (um, now), but evidently I have to worry about what other people might write, too. I may never tell anyone my full name again.

Anything juicy on the internet about you?

We spent all day downtown

Little Girl today noticed our dog, Loki’s, penis. This has only served to heighten her recent desire to discuss genitalia and who has what. And why. She’s in that phase where she wants to know the whys and wherefores of everything.

–Loki has a penis, why?
–He’s a boy. Just like Daddy!
–He’s a boy, why?
–Some people are boys and some are girls. Girls have vulvas and boys have penises.
–Why some people are boys and some people are girls?
–Because we need some to be girls and some to be boys.
–Why we need that?
Uh…

And so forth. This usually continues until I use some phrase with which she is unfamiliar, like “Because that’s the social norm!” (that was about leg shaving) and she has to stop and think about it for a minute. I do try to give her real, comprehensible answers as much as I can, and encourage her inquisitiveness, but it isn’t always easy.

At any rate today’s main topic was about everyone’s equipment. She’s been getting the various elements and purposes of her own personal anatomy straight in her head, and her interest extends to those around her.

–I need to see Loki’s penis some more. Where he put it?
–Well, Loki likes to keep that private. So we don’t look at it a lot. It’s just for him. Just like your vulva is just for you. It’s private.
–It’s private, why?

She sees her father and me naked a fair amount; typically after we swim in the ocean, or at any rate wear our bathing suits at the beach (which, yes, the week before Halloween we were able to do, despite my recent dithering about The End of Summer for All Eternity), we all shower together. She has no interest in her father’s personal area except insofar as it relates to his getting to stand to pee, which she considers the height of awesomeness, and is something she frequently mimics. “I Little Daddy! I pee pee standing up!”

And tonight was her pièce de résistance. She managed to straddle her little potty, facing the wall, and really and truly pee standing up like daddy. I’ve never seen such joy. We were very proud. What a talented and curious little girl!

I’m not a woman, and she’s not my daughter

Three years in and I’m as yet unable to refer to Little Girl as my daughter. I can say, “my kid,” “my little girl,” or her name, but absolutely not “my daughter.” I am somewhat taken aback when other people call her my daughter. Of course she is, but…do they have to use that word?

And in what I think is the same vein, it weirds me out if someone refers to me as a woman. Sure, I’m female, but “lady” or “[Little Girl's name]’s mommy” or [Husband's name]’s wife” or my name are all much less discomfiting. Actually the wife thing may be a little alarming, too. Can I just be me?

Normally with a post like this I’d do some self-analysis and come to some conclusions, but really I can’t quite figure out why I have aversions to these perfectly common, perfectly accurate terms. And it’s not really a problem, just a quirk. I don’t, like, correct people who use them. But I wonder. Are the words perhaps too generic for me? Too grown-up? Threatening in some way? Do they refer to someone else in my head? Am I having identity problems? Am I a goofball?

Review

The last few weeks have had me reviewing translated reports of research findings. For work, obviously; it would be a horrible hobby. Coincidentally, the last few weeks have totally sucked.

I’m comparing hundreds of pages of text that basically go like this, but I have to read them in English and Spanish:

Slightly more [redacted]-ineligible youth experience [bad things] due to [other bad things] (47.0%) than their [redacted]-receiving counterparts (40.0%), even though the difference in [how much of the bad thing] was not statistically significant (÷2 = 2.45, df = 1, n = 1,094, p > .05).

And I can’t skim, either, I have to make sure it’s exactly perfect in all APA format and numerical particulars, for both language formats, and also keep track of certain vocabulary and phrases we need to be consistent, and other really boring things. The project is ultimately related to providing needed services for physically and mentally ill children, but it’s hard to feel buoyed by helpfulness when I’m mired in how many spaces are after each period and how exactly did we decide to translate the 18-word name of the program again?

My favorite part is that no one is ever likely to read these documents. Even if they tried, readers would find them so boring and repetitive they’d give right on up pretty quickly. I bitterly envy all who have the option of not reading this stuff.

Cloth-diapering my three-year-old

First, why is my three-year-old being diapered at all? Why is she not potty-trained?

Why indeed. I don’t know. She was, kinda, to the point where we would go out for the day with her in panties and me with no spare clothes, and now she isn’t. I assume one day she will be again. In the past I was concerned to see young people who could correctly use adverbials and irregular past tense verbs who nonetheless were unable to control their bowels, but now that I have such a person in my house, I’m all “eh” about it. I mean, I’d like her to use the potty at all times for all functions, but she does not. We’ve only recently solved her anal retentiveness (or Miralax did anyway), and step one of using being a potty user is wanting to allow waste to leave from you in the first place, so we’re giving her some time before we start on step two.

Anyway so she’s still in diapers, at least some of the time. When she was half a year old I started cloth diapering her, and she is still wearing the size medium Fuzzi Bunz I bought used back then (we have some that are other brands that don’t work well anymore. Actually I kind of hate them by this point.) Boy are they starting to look ratty. We’ve never had to size up–she’s not even on the largest settings (they’re adjustable). The hemp inserts are all falling apart, and mostly we rely on auto shop microfiber towels to stuff the diapers, which we only do at night, since she pees in the potty during the day. Of course, she’s now capable of making so much pee that she often wakes up all soaked, and that’s unpleasant.

Huh, this isn’t all that interesting a topic after all. In summary, my three-year-old has a small tushie and has been wearing the same 20 or so diapers for nearly the last three years. I guess your take-home message can be: petite children are more economical.