Off

We’re about to begin several days of driving around various southern states, none of which is adjacent to our state of residence, seeing family (specifically the sparse family of my stepfather), visiting old haunts in Asheville, NC, fretting about how the pets are doing (the cat will be guarding the house and the dogs will be in a kennel about which I have mixed feelings), and testing Little Girl’s tolerance for road trips, as well as the batteries of her portable DVD player. Traveling for Thanksgiving is a first for me; before it’s always come to me. Guess for my last Thanksgiving in the US it’s time to have the full holiday experience. I hope there’s green bean casserole.

I need bathroom renovation advice

We just don’t know what to do about this bathroom in the Swedish house. We are planning on gutting it but we don’t know how to put it back together.

It will be the only full bath in the (six bedroom!) house and so we want it to have the following elements: toilet, sink, storage, mirror, towel rack, tub, shower. It’s about 5×8 feet (160×257 cm). We had hoped to have a separate tub and shower but it seems the room is just too narrow for that I think.

The other problem is the window–if we have a shower/tub combo over there where the tub is now, how do we keep the window from being damaged by the water? And with that slanted ceiling a shower curtain won’t work, not that I like those anyway, and so I guess we’ll have to get some custom-cut glass panel. Or what?

And it looks like the typical thing there is to have floors and walls and the slanted ceiling all covered with the same linoleum-type material (but you can use different colors; we don’t want tile, except maybe for an accent somewhere).

So what should be put where? How do we solve our problems? What color(s) should it be? What kind of vanity? I need new thoughts on this!

The Afghanis

I was pretty depressed the years I kept not conceiving a child. The usual fixes were sought: the services of a reproductive endicronologist, a therapist, an anti-depressant medication, a new life direction (grad school), and everybody’s favorite suggestion for combating being mopey, volunteer work. (It must be said, though, that with all this, the only thing that really made me feel better about not being able to get pregnant was getting pregnant).

I decided to teach English as a Second Language to refugees and got hooked up with a family of Afghanis who lived in the run-down apartment complex not too far. Twice a week for a year I tutored them in their home. Despite spending so much time with them I never did get to know everyone very well in terms of demographic details–names, ages, familial structure–due to linguistic and cultural constraints as well as what I suspect was a sort of purposeful lack of forthcomingness and clarity on their part that I decided to respect and let go, being aware their previous and current life circumstances were not altogether happy and might not be enjoyable or simple to recount. I know at least one child of the oldest couple present had been murdered, and that mention of the Taliban made everybody drop their eyes.

What became very clear, at any rate, was the kindness of the family, and the exotic tastiness of their food (I remember a lot of almonds) and their tea (I recall a beautiful tea service). What never became clear, to them at least, was much of what I tried to teach them. The kids all got up to speed in their schools, but the adults, particularly the women, seemed so baffled by not only the language but the process of participating in educational efforts, that it felt like every week we just repeated the lessons of the week before. I had taught ESL to illiterate adults before, or at least tried to (it’s by far the most challenging instructional environment imaginable, bar wartime, disability, and total apathy), and had some tricks up my sleeve, but I’m not really sure I left them much better, English-wise, than I found them.

But I know I helped them when I went grocery shopping with them. I know I helped them when I navigated the school system with them on behalf of a child who was having trouble. I know I clarified some impenetrable INS paperwork (to the best any human was able). I know I got one lady to stop applying her nasal spray to her ears, having totally not understood the purpose of the medicine her doctor had prescribed her. I know I made them feel more at home in a new country, a friendly, American face who kept showing up, smiling, carrying confusing worksheets and insisting cheerfully upon their memorizing their phone number and address (not that anybody ever did).

My dad asks after them a lot; once I took him to meet them and he had some sort of wordless bonding with the patriarch. I wish I had kept seeing them, but I gave them up when I was sickly pregnant, working two jobs, and in grad school full-time. I don’t know if they fully understood why I stopped coming. I wonder where they are, how they are doing. I know they would have loved to see Little Girl. They would have been so happy for me; they had always seemed so concerned that I didn’t have children and my family was not close by. To them, I think, nothing (possessions, comfort) could be an adequate replacement for family ties.

Med

My grandfather was a surgeon and another close relative is a pediatrician. I never strongly considered medical school myself, mostly knowing I was not up for the gargantuan effort, and besides, I was jonesing for a baby as early as late college, but I appreciate medical arts and sciences and have had good experience with its practitioners and, yes, pretty much believe most of what my doctors tell me.

Sure, I wish medicine were more evidence-based and scientific and I recognize the unfortunate influence of drug company lobbyists (while being grateful for medications themselves, one of which, metformin, I take daily and which has hugely improved my health), and I know that my c-section wouldn’t have been considered necessary in many other countries, and that sometimes doctors make mistakes or don’t keep up with current research and have biases and strong attachment to preconceived notions just like anybody else.

Yet on the whole I am very cognizant of my good fortune in having access to experienced, educated, and kind medical practitioners, and I believe they mean my family well (insurance companies not so much). Medicine is one of the big perks of being human, and I see it as one of the super-neato ways that human intelligence and capabilities have developed in such a way as to guide our further evolution. No longer does shitty eyesight mean starvation! No longer can a small cut you weren’t able to keep clean potentially spell death! Now you can (sometimes) reproduce even against your body’s own inclination! Now, conceivably, we could be selecting for more subtle traits (in practice, though, the typically more scaled-back fertility of the more successful population–by some definitions–is the antithesis of how natural selection usually works. Now it’s survival of the least-apt to use contraception).

My appreciation of medical advances extends to topics like immunizations, so when the pediatrician finally got some H1N1 vaccine in, I immediately made an appointment. Little Girl’s not in school or around society at large much usually, but we’re about to go on a multi-state, multi-hotel, multi-tourist trap Thanksgiving trip, so I’m glad to offer her some additional protection. And to participate in the larger societal effort to reduce disease.

Plant murderess

Uhhh, I am so sore. Lately I’ve had a mania for yard work. Some patches of the property have gone wild–or were never tamed, I’m not sure–so I feel like a pioneer homesteader, clearing the land for my log cabin. Creating order when before there was chaos is fulfilling, and there’s an artistic element that I enjoy: Which palm fronds to lop off? How to shape that azalea? Do I want to allow that incipient bay tree to grow further or ought that spot to be bare?

I think I’ve got a patch of poison ivy on my wrist, and my stomach muscles today are enormously sore, I guess from the huge project of slaying that climbing wisteria vine yesterday (God, that quite the epic battle), but I’m already planning on patrolling the ligustrum border tomorrow, conquering the ilex. It’s nice to have a hobby.

“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.