August 2005 Archives

I am feeling pathetic. And old. And sorry for myself. And generally not in the best of spirits these days, although there are increasing indications that better times, they are a' comin'. But I will not write about all that, not yet anyway. Instead, I just want to share this story, about a moment which, in and of itself, totally made my day at the moment it happened.

So on Saturday, I took both kids to Bagel Cafe, the bagel store in the local mall. We go there a lot--it's Eli's favorite eatery (I can't quite call it a "restaurant"--it's not that fancy). It was mid-afternoon, and thus it was not at all a busy time at the bagel store; so I let Eli sit and hang out at one of the tables by himself while I took Isaac up to the counter with me to pay for our bagels.

As I'm standing there, from across the store (about 30 or 40 feet away), I hear, in a piercing, loud, little-kid voice:

"MOM!"

"Yeah, Eli?"

"I LOVE YOU!"

(grin)

"I love you too."

"YOU'RE A ROCKSTAR!"

(snort)

"Uh...you are too, honey."

(See, sometimes that whole "little pitchers have big ears" thing works out in my favor...)

I used to have a little framed card on my desk, back when I was in college. It was made by an artist named Renee who does gorgeous loose watercolor illustrations (often with botanical themes) with calligraphied quotes on them. This one had a little pink flower and the quote on it said: "A crisis of confidence is to be expected every now and then." I took (and still take) a lot of comfort from this saying--it reassured and reminded me that the periodic feelings of "I can't do this" were normal (and in fact inevitable) and therefore not to be feared, just endured. Everyone has 'em, they come and eventually, always, they go. Reassuring.

Well anyway I seem to be having one o' them pesky crises now, not so much in the way you might be thinking, that I'm lacking confidence in my working mama of two kids NADM balancing act lifestyle, but creatively. More specifically, I am having a major yawning-chasm type crisis about my novel. You know (or maybe you don't), the one I've been slogging along writing for the last TWO YEARS, and complaining about intermittently (and often parenthetically) on this very blog? Yeah, that one. I carved out a whole precious day to spend at what would otherwise have been a truly lovely and inspirational writer's retreat out at Stinson with the PWG gals, and I wound up spinning my wheels all day, pretty much. I was hoping that having a whole day to just sit with the project and figure out what the problems were and come up with some solutions would help get me moving forward again, but no. I'm still stuck, and frustrated. I am seriously starting to wonder if I'd be better off scrapping the whole thing and starting over, either with an entirely different plot but the same world and characters, or on a whole new book.

Yes, I am admitting this out loud to the internet (and more importantly to my fellow writers in the PWG whom I know read this, but whom I have been too chicken to just talk to about this, probably because I know they'll just be all supportive and, you know, helpful. Apparently I'd rather wallow). Now, I know that this is all probably just one of those run-of-the-mill, normal, expected crises of confidence. I know that things are always darkest before the dawn, yadda yadda, and maybe I'm actually right on the verge of a breakthrough and I just need to hang in there blablabla. (And yes, I need some more sleep.) Sure. I do love my characters, and my world, and I don't want to just pack them up and never see them again. And the writing urge is obviously alive and well, that's not the problem. Here's the problem: I just really have no idea where this story is going anymore, how it will end, or what the point of it all is. So what if (she said plaintively, unable to resist the melodrama) it really is time to just cut my losses and move on to a new project? Are there some things that just can't be fixed? I don't know. I just don't know where to go from here. I want to just write, that's all--to know what comes next, to get back into the nitty gritty of the crafting and the imagining and the details of this particular word, that descriptive sentence/line of dialogue. This big picture stuff keeps making my head hurt and my confidence crack. Maybe it is at least time to let the field lie fallow for awhile, or to stop drawing water and let the well fill back up, as I'm so fond of saying. Or maybe these are excuses, and I really just need to quit whining and power through the fear and keep putting one metaphorical writer's foot in front of the other, just keep on typing and hope that the muse shows up at some point. I just can't tell.

At least I can always say that I saw this crisis coming, that it was expected.

Reassuring.

This one's for Dri:

^ Baby and Babo. Note the similar expressions. This picture cracks my up (as Eli used to say).

Dri gave me Babo. Because I gave her OX. And if you haven't seen the Uglydolls, well, maybe you should. The world needs more Uglydolls. *I* need more Uglydolls. I don't know why these guys get me in the "so cute!" spot, but they do. Just what I needed, more cutesy licensed character merchandise...

The cocoa, it is getting ever so slightly sweeter (as the Manolo, he might say), because the baby, he is sleeping a bit better now that we (excuse me I meant "I") have committed to not jumping up and feeding him every time he cries in the middle of the night. But I feel compelled to whine nonetheless that I did get my first migraine in months last night at approximately 3am. I noticed it because I'd just been woken up by listening to the baby fussing on the monitor, and then once I'd noticed it, it was difficult to ignore the feeling of a red-hot spike being shoved through my eyeball. Luckily some Excedrin Migraine and a swollen backlog of sleep deprivation enabled me to get back to sleep again (once I'd blundered into the baby's room and fed him, just for good measure, since I was already awake anyway). I have no idea what brought it on. I just hope hope hope it doesn't come back again anytime soon. I have enough body issues to worry about, do you hear me, you capricious Universe?

On another note, look what I did with my evening a couple nights ago: Juliart. (Does that picture look familiar? Heh.) Clearly I need to go take a bunch of digipix of my paintings to add to the gallery, since there's practically nothing there right now. (Because, you know, I don't have enough projects on my plate. Yeah, yeah. And speaking of which, I started another couple of paintings when my friend Daphne and I had an Art Day date a few weekends ago, but I have yet to find the motivation or the time to finish them.)

On yet another, totally unrelated note: this article about how scientists think they might be able to use crocodile blood to help fight HIV is just another example of how 1) truth is way, way, way more interesting and stranger than fiction; and 2) how nature really might have all the answers, if we would just pay closer attention (oh yeah and stop wiping out other species). I love this story. The idea is so logical and just makes so much sense, but who knows if it'll work. Smart people are working on it. I feel reassured.

Huh. I don't know if this is the right lesson to take away from this whole experience, but apparently if you are in enough agony (and post a whiny enough blog entry about it), the Universe takes pity on you. I don't think I really want to test this theory, but still...coincidence? I think not: the baby slept through the night last night. (I didn't, but that's my own issue, and in any case I slept better than usual.) I mean, he slept from 7pm until 5:45am, and then once I fed him, for another two hours after that (causing my entire family, which depends on me for its morning motivation, to get an extremely late start out the door this morning, since I was uncharacteristically snoozing myself).

And strangely enough (yes, I am saying that somewhat sarcastically) that little unexpected spoonful of sugar made the cocoa a lot more drinkable today. The morning getting-everyone-out-of-the-house whirlwind wasn't quite so debilitating, work didn't seem so hard, and everything else just seemed...possible again. Go figure.

Here's a weird little irony: today is the first day I've felt good enough (a.k.a. not horribly sleep deprived and therefore not grumpy, spacy and depressed) to post about how bad I've been feeling lately. And let me just say right up front that I offer this whole post up not in a "trolling for sympathy/oh poor meeee" way, but in more of a "recording this for posterity/writing as therapy" kind of way. I wasn't sure at first if I even did want to post about this, but essay-like ideas, metaphors, and sentences have persistently kept forming in my brain, knocking about in there and wanting out. So, fine, I'll take a shot at potentially embarrassing myself in front of the entire internet with my personal problems, in the hopes that, in true "personal is political" feminist form, what I'm feeling might be something others can relate to. (And even if others can't, I don't care. My blog, my therapy. Nyah.)

Ok. That being said, I've been feeling really crappy. A desperate, bitter, bleak, drained, "everything sucks and I suck too" kind of crappy. I know, I know, I KNOW that this state of mind is largely brought on by persistent exhaustion and Chinese-water-torture sleep deprivation, which in itself is a somewhat inevitable result of being a full time working mama with a preschooler and a 5 month old baby. Sure. But it still. Sucks. A lot. My happy face is becoming harder and harder to put on. No matter how much I reach into the reserves and draw upon my martial arts-like discipline and routine, or my gold-medal-winning training in the suck-it-up Olympics, I can barely keep it together, physically and emotionally. Physically, I'm dealing with persistent pain in my shoulder and achy, knotted back and neck muscles that would probably keep me awake even if I was able to sleep more than 4 hours in a row. Emotionally, I'm unbalanced and definitely tipping towards the dark side (you know, anger leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to suffering, yadda yadda yadda) way more often than I want to. I'm unnecessarily grumpy to my dear husband and oldest child, I find myself resenting the baby when he cries for my attention, I even get pissy with the cat when she desperately hurls herself at my legs, looking any shred of the love she used to get. The usual cyclonic chaos of life logistics and making plans is killing me--even the idea of trying to schedule time with friends sounds like more work than it's worth. Creative projects feel at best, overwhelming, and at worst, worthless (my novel, for example, is foundering badly in a sea of confusion, too full of unresolved plot holes and authorial self-loathing to move forward). I feel lonely and isolated, even in the midst of my life's usual whirlwind. Things which should be sweet are bitter instead, like biting into a square of baker's chocolate when you expected a Hershey bar, or taking a swig of burnt French Roast diner coffee when you expected a teeth-rotting Frappucino.

I'm scared of getting stuck in this state of bleak bitter sadness, too exhausted to appreciate my life and the blessings it holds, or the good moments I definitely do have. I know that some extra sleep is the sugar I need to add back into the crazy cocoa that is my life, to make it palatable again. But, to extend the metaphor until it breaks (as I'm so fond of doing), I feel like there's a war on and sugar has been rationed, and I've already used my meager portion baking goodies for other people and it'll be a while until I get any more. So where do I get me some more sugar? Borrow it? From where? Start growing and pressing my own damn sugar beets? With what copious spare time? Sure, rationally, I can prescribe myself more sleep, you don't have to prescribe it for me--I know, I know. But it is far, far easier said than done. I think for now I have to just sit with the bleak truth that it still might be awhile before life gets back to its full chocolate-y sweetness again. I remind myself of one of my mom's favorite statements: this too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. I repeat it like an incantation, hug it to me like a teddy bear. I am strong enough to survive this. This too shall pass.

**Warning: semi-inarticulate philosophizing ahead, triggered by thinking about something Rebecca just posted.**

Ok, quick, tell me: do you believe people are essentially good, or essentially evil? And do we always stay the same, or can we change?

My first reaction is generally to believe that all people are essentially good, but a bunch of things can possibly screw one up so that one slides down into evil deeds. In reality, I'd go so far as to say that at least on the observable behavioral front, all people are a mix and most of us are somewhere closer to the middle of the good/evil matrix than either of the two extremes (actually I don't think the absolute edge of the extremes--pure good or pure evil--truly do exist in humans). Call it the "bell curve of human nature" if you will. I think we fluctuate back and forth along the curve throughout our lives (sometimes from day to day!), depending on what environment, personality, and, let's be honest, fate serve up to us.

Why do I ask? Well, I was actually just having the "no one is ever entirely evil" conversation with Eli and his two little buddies in the car yesterday--in the context of Star Wars, of course. They were all animatedly discussing how Anakin used to be good and then he turned to the dark side and became Darth Vader. Then one little guy piped up that even when Anakin was Darth Vader, Luke said he (Darth) still had some good in him. I seized my teachable moment (well, I tried anyway, I'm not sure how much they were actually listening) and said as firmly as I could "well, you know, kids, Luke was right. No one is ever entirely a bad guy, even Darth Vader. There is always at least a little good in everyone." This caused them to protest that hey, Darth Sidious (aka the Emperor) was entirely evil, to which the other mom and I both responded nearly in unison, "even the Emperor has some good in him somewhere."

It's a lesson I think that's hard for 4 year old boys to take in, obsessed as they are with superheros and good vs. evil fantasies. But it's one I hope they get, eventually: not only that real people are a mix of good *and* evil, but that no matter how bad someone seems, they still have some good in them somewhere and you can't discount that. When he's older, I hope Eli believes that redemption is always possible, and fervently to be pursued--for ourselves, as well as for others. I want to tell him, like I'm telling you, like I'm telling myself here: it is the struggle towards good, towards doing good, that is simultaneously life's purpose and most difficult test. It will often be some sort of struggle to do good, to be good; but that struggle, that choice we make, is what actually gives life meaning.

Ok, here's something that ought to make you laugh:

So I was looking at this hilarious old picture of Dri and me, taken when we were in 8th grade (that'd be roughly 1983 for those playing the home game), and I realized, with mingled horror and delight, that our *matching* purple outfits (there's a whole world of funny just in that one word, "matching") would actually be kind of fashionable right now. Isn't life bizarre? I guess you really should keep all your old clothes boxed up somewhere.

Apparently I wasn't really paying attention over this last year or so while I was pregnant and bloated up like Monstro the whale, but it seems women's fashions have changed again. (Surprise!) Mixed Asian/Victorian/gypsy seems to be what's in, enthusiastically mashed up and layered. Super low rise pants, cropped tight belly showing shirts, spaghetti strap tanks and double layered shirts are still around, but now I'm seeing spangly ruffly peasant skirts, flouncy sparkly or stretchy ruched scoopneck shirts, and what the hell do they call those loose knit little half-sweaters that cover the boobs, the shoulders and the upper arms? Capelets? I have no idea. I can see the early '80s trends coming back too, not the neon/paint splattered/big shoulders stuff, but the wide studded belts, the ruffled skirts, the layered shirts, the sneakers as fashion (not sports) accessories.

However, even these observations are probably at least a couple years out of date. These days I tend to only notice fashion trends when they're so screamingly obvious, even 12 year old girls are wearing them--you know, years after things could even remotely be considered hip, when they've trickled down to places like Target so that busy moms like me can pretend to make a daring fashion choice for $14.99. I mean, I don't have time for fashion--I don't shop as a recreational activity (much as I'd like to sometimes), I don't read women's magazines (well, ok, except for Working Mother, but you know what I mean), I don't watch TV. I only notice that fashion is changing when I walk down the street to get coffee one day and see that all the little boutiquey clothing stores are featuring new looks on their mannequins, and then suddenly I start seeing the women around me (on the street, at yoga class, in the supermarket) with the new styles. Oh God, I'm so mass-market...how did it come to this?

Believe it or not, I actually like playing with clothes--I wish I had time (and the budget!) to go out and leisurely shop for some new fabulous trendy stuff. There was a brief shining moment when I was in college when my best friend Anji took me under her expert mall-shopper, club-hopper wing and showed me how to cruise the stores to see what the new trends were, and taught me to try on new fashions even if I thought at first that they looked silly, to get my eyes used to the concept of the next hot thing(s). Then when we went out on the weekends, we'd check out what everyone else was wearing, so that when we went back to the mall we'd know what was current hipsterdom and buy accordingly. Ah those leisurely days of young adulthood, with nothing better to spend time and money on!

But not only do I have the time and budget squeeze of being a working mom (and one with an overly active social and creative life) I also have the frustration of being a, shall we say, rubenesque curvy woman who isn't quite big enough for the plus sizes but isn't really small enough or built right for the regular women's sizes. Given my relatively small waist, short legs, and big boobs, I rarely look right in most of whatever the current fashion is anyway. I mean I was always like this, even back in college (back then I was even heavier, actually), but now I don't have the compensatory firm youthful juiciness anymore that used to let me get away with certain not-as-flattering fashion choices. Even though there are places like Lane Bryant now, and even Old Navy offers larger sizes, I still have the hateful experience of going to a clothing store and finding that hardly anything there will fit me, or look good on me. Through years of trial and error (back when I had time for such things), I have slowly figured out the sorts of styles and materials that look good on my body type (short, heavy and hourglass), and I try to stick with those, no matter how tempting the new stuff might be. (Which is not to say that I'm not sorely tempted to go find myself a couple new spangly ruffly skirts...as long as they're long enough they'd probably look good on me, especially if I wore them with a fitted top. But who has the time?)

In the meantime, in lieu of actually going out shopping or updating my wardrobe any, I've decided to change my glasses. I figure that, along with my new hair, ought to be enough of a style shakeup for now. Maybe people just won't look past my neck. Right? Suuuure. For those of you who are just dying to know (and I'm sure all 4 of you are), here's a picture of the new glasses (with the caveat of course that this is not the most flattering picture, given that it was a candid of me sitting around with the baby on the weekend. But you can get the idea):

Augh. There's so much more to say on this topic. But my lovely soft bed is calling...and I must answer.

Hubris. It haunts me. I seem to vaguely recall that it was not too long ago that I was chirping brightly "I'm doing pretty well, actually...it's easier the second time around" when people asked me how I was feeling, and if I was getting enough sleep these days. Well I'm here to testify, my friends, that I am not. Not, not, not.

I know from past experience (you know, the experience I gained in those wild salad days before kids, let alone before kid #2) that my body actually functions best when I get between 8 and 9 hours of sleep a night. But these days, even though we are theoretically in the "settled baby" stage (i.e. the stage where I only have to wake up a mere 1-2 times a night, and at relatively predictable times), I rarely sleep more than 6 or 7 hours total in a 24 hour period. And even when I do get to take compensatory naps, the fact that I never sleep more than maybe 4 hours in a row at any given time makes the total number of hours nearly irrelevant.

Of course, as anyone who has read more than oh, two of these entries over the last few months knows, I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to actually getting the sleep I know I need. My usually strong personal discipline just fails me for that last crucial half hour before bedtime, when instead of finishing up the evening chores and going to bed at an appropriate hour, I instead wind up reading or surfing just one more blog entry until suddenly even if I dive into bed without brushing my teeth there's no way I'm going to get even 7 hours of sleep (let alone seven hours in a row. Hah. I haven't had that for *months*.) It's really hard to balance the need for sleep with the need for personal "down time"--neglecting either for too long comes with a price, so I try to compromise. But compromise doesn't always work.

I thought I could tough this out, but I have come to discover that this kind of sleep deprivation is like some new, modern form of Chinese Water Torture. Each hour of lost sleep, like each drop of water, isn't so bad. A few days, or even weeks of lost sleep, isn't enough to start to drive you insane. It's the cumulative effect of week after week, month after month of not enough sleep that starts to make you simultaneously irritable and forgetful, dulled around the edges and dimly wondering why everything (you know, like writing a blog entry that actually hangs together and makes any frikkin' sense) is so damn hard all of a sudden. It really is like trying to slog through sticky mud while it's raining--no matter how great your rain gear is, it's still just damn slow going.

Let me put it yet another way, as long as I'm in metaphor mode: sleep deprivation is a wily, devious beast, and it sneaks up on you like an oh-so-patient tiger while you are just peacefully going about your daily routine, minding your own business and feeling all smug and self-congratulatory. Then suddenly, with what seems to be very little warning*, you feel a huge furry warm weight crushing your body so that all you want to do is lie down. Right now. And never move again. Yeah. That's what it feels like.

Aww, screw it. I'm going to bed.

*Well, except for the fact that it's already been happening for weeks, if not months, and yes, I should have known better and yes, I can hear the rousing chorus of "duh" that everyone reading this who knows that human bodies really do need at least 7 or 8 hours of *unbroken* sleep on at least a semi-regular basis in order to function properly (in other words, everyone who is NOT me or Josh) is now uttering. Shut up, ok?

(Obligatory whiny excuse: I was *gonna* post earlier, but internet access is inexplicably down at our house, and my IT department, aka Josh, is away on a biz trip all week. Oh yeah and then I've also been single parenting, and we all know how that goes. Anyway.)

My grandma (who is my sole surviving grandparent at this point) has been in town for the last week or so, and it's been fun hanging out with her, especially watching her get to know Eli better (and meet Isaac). Now, my grandma is not your stereotypical Jewish bubbe--she doesn't particularly like to cook, keep house or knit, was iffy about mothering (my Dad and she had a years-long non-speaking feud for many years, which is now, thankfully, mended), and has generally seemed to prefer to interact with both her grandchildren and great-grandchildren at arm's length. But did I let that stop me from practically forcing her to act like a good bubbe on this trip? Nope. Like a good Jewish granddaughter, I applied much guilt and shamelessly abused my "favorite grandchild" status (which I still am not sure how I ascended to, except that I *did* go visit her in Boca Raton that one time a few years ago while I was in Miami on a business trip) and got her to agree to do a special cooking project with me and Eli. (Isaac was there too, but he won't remember this project. Eli, hopefully, will.)

That's right, gentle readers, I coerced my 80-something year old grandma into spending an afternoon making kreplach. From scratch. Enough kreplach to feed 8 people, no less. (My grandma, my parents, my aunt and uncle, my cousin, Eli and me.)

What is this kreplach, you ask? Well, it's basically Jewish ravioli. You make some dough, you make some filling (in our case, we made both potato/onion and chicken/vegetable), you roll out the dough and cut it into squares, you put the filling in the dough, you seal them and shape them, you boil them (although some sources suggest they might be better fried, but I've never had them that way), you eat them. With schmaltz. What, you don't know what schmaltz is? It's Jewish butter: rendered chicken fat. (And before you go off shrieking "ewwwww!" I suggest you try some. Oh my GOD is it delicious. But then, keep in mind that one of my favorite nasty food indulgences is to surreptitiously eat the drippings out of the pan while I'm basting the Thanksgiving turkey. YMMV.)

I remember my grandma making this dish for me and my brother at my parents house at some point in the misty recesses of time back when we were young teenagers, and I've never forgotten it. In part I'm sure it was memorable because my grandma only visited us on the West Coast every once in a great while, and I don't remember her attempting such large, labor-intensive projects with us very often, but it was also memorable because of the kreplach-making experience itself. It wasn't just the novelty of making something from scratch that appealed to me back then (hell, it's still a novelty for me now, pretty much); it was also the exciting exoticism of an ethnic dish that was rightfully part of my own background, something that had been missing up until now but which I could lay claim to if I wanted (unlike, say, Italian food). So I wanted to see if I could recreate one of my favorite childhood grandma memories, and if possible, pass it on to the next generation too. What can I say...I'm a sucker for family traditions and family history, even if I have to create it myself. (Which I did...my grandma adamantly did not remember having made kreplach for me before, nor did she exactly have a from-scratch kreplach recipe ready-to-hand--she wanted to use pre-made wonton skins. We had to look up the dough recipe and sort of made up the filling as we went along. But once we got rolling, she remembered how to do it just fine.)

And you know what? We had a great time making kreplach, my grandma, my aunt Janis (her youngest daughter), Eli and me. There was banter, there were stories about bygone days, there were pointers on technique, there were language lessons (e.g. singular=krepel, plural=kreplach). Eli had a terrific time cracking eggs, adding flour, kneading dough and pinching kreplach. They came out great and half of them got devoured right out of the pot before we even sat down to our official dinner. Even Eli, a.k.a. "the pickiest kid in the world", ate a ton of them. (He liked them best "juicy"...i.e. with lots of schmaltz drizzled on top. That's my boy.) In my official role as family historian, I took lots of video and pictures (I'll try to post some when I get my internet access back). I also took copious recipe notes so that I can someday replicate the process even if my grandma isn't there. I'm trying to come up with some "excuse" of a holiday or other event, a once-a-year justifiable occasion where I can regularly make kreplach, just so I don't forget how. (Labor Day maybe?) Because the whole experience was delightfully filling, in more ways than one.

Thanks, grandma!

UPDATED (because my internet access is back!): Here's a picture of my grandma and Eli making the chicken & vegetable kreplach.

^ The dough has been rolled and cut into squares, and they're in the midst of filling the squares and shaping them into kreplach. You can see the typical finished kreplach shape over on the side of the board near Eli.