August 2006 Archives

Oh. My. God. I can't believe I never watched or heard this before now. (Well, that's probably because I'm not a YouTube addict, and can I just say I think that's a good thing? I have enough timesucks in my life...). I have a very special fondness in my heart for the good ol' Canon in D, and hearing it done like a thrashing metal guitar god solo....it makes me so, so happy. This one is going right on the "Undercover" mix I've been making of various cover songs (and no, Josh, I don't care whether this is technically a "standard" and not a cover--to me, any unfamiliar/unexpected version of a familiar song is a cover). Squeeeeeeal!

I'm sure you can be resourceful enough to get your own downloadable mp3 if you like. Even I managed to do it.

Once again I find myself staggering under the burden of catch-up here in blogland, wishing I'd just dashed off some quick entries at the time they happened instead of trying to reconstruct and write about events long after the fact. (But no use crying over spilt milk; there is only the forging ahead and learning how to love the blog, right?) The last two weeks especially haven't been very bloggy because I've been distracted with other things, primarily a long-anticipated vacation at the beach, during which all my writing energy went towards slogging through the rest of a chapter from the novel that had been stuck in the ol' incubator of my head for way too long. It isn't *quite* finished (the last bits need more revision) but it's damn close and I feel a nearly giddy sense of accomplishment in having pounded out something like 5,000 words over the last couple weeks. (Now if only I could keep this rate of production up, I'd finally be done with this pesky thing and could move on to some other, far less complicated writing project like say, the Great American Cancer Memoir. Or at least that killer short story about whale cheese.)

Anyway, our time at the beach was overall quite pleasant, even if not as sunny as we'd hoped. We did spend some good afternoons at the beach getting plenty sandy and wet, but spent more of our time indoors just lazing about while also trying to keep the kids entertained (I'm not ashamed to admit that their entertainment involved quite a bit of TV time--hey, it was their vacation too, right?). But in addition to TV, it was actually on this trip that the boys discovered the joys of playing "chase" with each other--and believe me it warms a parent's heart to watch one's kids pounding through the house after each other, trailing maniacal giggles in their wake. (I expect to see much, much more of this brotherly behavior in the future, along with added bonus wrestling and scaring the crap out of each other by hiding behind doorways and in closets and then leaping out to scream "boo" and other such nonsense. Aren't siblings great?) We also made a field trip out to the oyster farm and cheese store, had some friends come play on the beach and playground, played Jenga and War and Crazy 8s, barbequed, and baked cookies. We took turns sleeping in, and I got in some good reading and writing time. It was a good week.

Once we got back from the beach we got all caught up in preparations for Kindergarten--there was a parent orientation meeting, a Kindergarten playdate, and meet-the-teacher day. At the playdate, despite his oh-so-serious warnings to me previously that "I'm going to be shy, Mama", Eli had a great time. He recognized a lot of kids from camp, which made us happy we'd sent him, and when he finally got to see the classroom and meet his teacher, he seemed very much interested and not shy or scared at all. In fact, we were one of the last families to leave the classroom. Eli is definitely one of those kids who warms up quickly in any given situation, even if he's a little put off by the newness at first. He is our little social butterfly, for sure!

After all that preliminary school stuff was done, we spent the weekend in our usual whirlwind of social activities: on Saturday afternoon, Eli and I went to a "Celebrating Good Things" potluck at the park with Daphne and Terri and friends (Josh stayed home with Isaac, who was sick, and did house chores), where Eli spent most of the time either in the cute little aquatic museum or splashing around in his underwear at the beach (I hadn't realized that this park included a beach feature so I hadn't brought a bathing suit or towel...luckily my friend Lara had better info and had brought swim stuff and most importantly a towel for her son Max, which she kindly let us share). Then back home to clean and prep for Josh's Mars-themed birthday party on Saturday night. Despite the preponderance of people dressed up in togas (yes, it was a costume party), It turned out to be a fairly low key and relatively mellow party compared to previous years' parties, but that was ok by us. Sunday was cleanup and hanging out with friends who spent the night, then playdate and dinner at a new neighbor's house, which turned out to be a really fun time. (Because really, what we need is to collect even more friends...but hey, at least these ones are close!)

Which brings us up to yesterday, Monday, Eli's first day of school. We'd made a point of prepping everything the night before, and getting up extra early (even Eli got out of bed without pushing, he was so excited), and the morning went smooth as pudding. We had time to take the requisite first-day-of-school pictures, got out of the house right when we wanted to (early!), had no problems parking (which we'd feared would be problematic because everyone drives their kid to school on the first day, and there's only street parking), got to school early enough to spend a few minutes playing on the playground with our neighbor friends and a few other kids we'd met at the playdate, and then walked him into his classroom, where he promptly took off and did stuff without us. We left him examining the classroom's resident fat-tailed gecko with his teacher and another girl, and he barely noticed we were leaving. Josh and I took Isaac over to the parent coffee, which turned out to be quite pleasant in that chatty, aren't-we-all-on-our-best-behavior kind of way. Everything went so well and was so easy, I couldn't quite believe it: even picking up Eli at the end of the day from his new after-school onsite daycare was a study in happy healthy kidness. I am truly grateful--and I hope today goes as well!

That's it for the catch-up now--pictures will be posted eventually for the curious.

So much has been happening this last couple weeks: a vacation at the beach, parties, family drama, finishing a novel chapter. I swear I'll write about it tomorrow. But today, today there is only one thing to celebrate (even if further details about it must unfortunately also be put off until tomorrow, as I am nearly falling asleep typing): Eli's first day of Kindergarten.

Such a strange mix of feelings I've had all day (hell, not just today but all last week, not to mention all summer, just in anticipation of this day): I'm so excited for Eli, so pleased with the school itself, so nervous about whether or not Eli will have a good experience, so anxiously obsessive about all the new logistics that we have to stay on top of, and so bittersweet sad/happy that my baby is growing up and heading off to school. But all in all it was a smashing success of a day, and I hope it will be only the first of many smashingly successful days to come. More details later; for now, a picture:

^ Eli with his new backpack, before we left for school this morning.

It's funny that I was just blogging about routines and ruts, and how they were chafing me. Because the opposite of routine is spontaneity, and trying new things, and I think that's something I miss. Then in a moment of serendipity I found myself listening to part of an All Things Considered segment on NPR on my way from work to yoga class tonight, about how our sense of adventure seems to diminish with age. The part I heard talked about three areas: listening to new music; trying new foods; and getting body piercing (e.g. tongue pierces). In each case they'd done studies that showed that there was a specific age window (usually teens to mid-twenties) during which people were most likely to be adventurous and try new things, and after that window had passed, most people were increasingly unlikely to try new things. What I found fascinating about this (well, there were a bunch of things that were fascinating but let's take one at a time, shall we?) was the suggestion that this diminishing adventurousness might actually be a hard-wired feature of our biology. In other words, we're *supposed* to become less adventurous, less novelty-seeking as we get older.

And of course, listening to this at age 37, I'm thinking to myself "hey, that means I'm not that old yet, I still like new things!" And it's true, I do appreciate the new and novel (not as much in body adornments and fashion, perhaps, but definitely in food, and music), and I hope I always will. "Adventurous" seems like a positive personality characteristic to me, one that I aspire to at least in some small way. I like to think I've got eclectic and fairly far-ranging tastes, and that plus a general sense of curiosity about the world (not to mention a wild streak of "who cares what other people think") help me stay at least somewhat less rigid. I've always said that I can't wait for retirement, that near-mythical time when I'll have all the time in the world to explore all the new things I've always wanted to see/do/try/taste/hear/etc. I just can't understand people who can't fill up their time, who sit and watch hours upon hours of TV because they can't think of anything better to do. I'm practically the poster child for dilettantism, there are so many things that interest me.

But on the flip side, I don't seek out novelty as much as I once did, and even when I've identified something new that's potentially interesting to me, I don’t take the time to delve into it like I once did. Is that because my life is more crammed now, so it's harder for things to get through in the first place? Or is it my biological clock ticking, saying "hey, you're almost 40, time to quit fooling around with new stuff and start being nostalgic for your youth"? Let me give you a couple random examples from the tech world (it could just as easily be from music or something else, but familiarity with new tech is often an age-related thing too): text messaging. Podcasting. MySpace. I'm right on the periphery here--I know *of* these things, they interest me, I have even occasionally used them, but I can't quite seem to take the time to fiddle around with them enough to make any of them part of my life. And since most people I know don't use them either, I don't get forced into using them as part of regular life--I have to seek it all out on my own if I want to know. And with all that's going on in my life already, why bother? What's my motivation, other than straight curiosity?

There's a lot more interesting stuff to muse on here, but I'm once again foolishly blogging at bedtime so it's hard for me to truly muster my thoughts. But I guess my takeaway from all this is that a sense of adventure, seeking out and experiencing new things, actually *is* a feature of youth. (And did you know, by the way, that "Julia" means "youthful"? Go figure. Parents, be careful what you name your kids.) So if you do want to stay young, you should keep going on adventures and looking for novelty. Screw the botox, the gym, and the plastic surgery. Just find something new.

I am starting to feel a little chafed again by the early morning and evening bookends to my tightly scheduled days. This is in particularly sharp relief right now, since I'm solo-parenting again this week while Josh is in Ottawa (and still sick, just to add icing to the cupcake), but I've been feeling it for awhile now. I've certainly mused on this topic before, and I'm not saying that schedules or having a routine are bad--I'm certainly not an advocate of anarchy and "seat of the pants" living---it's just that after awhile of being so disciplined all the time, so constantly on the clock (and so constantly stuggling against it, always those critical 5 or 10 minutes late), I start having these fantasies of--are you ready?--leaving work whenever I feel finished! Or swinging by the car wash/mall/movie theater on the way home! (Crazy, I know.) But instead I have the 6 o'clock hour hanging over my head like a great pointy Big Ben. Because 6pm is the beginning of the nightly routine: empty lunchboxes. Scan mail and phone messages. Entertain/feed kids while Josh cooks dinner (or this week, it's me who's got both duties). Bathtime. Isaac bedtime. Eli bedtime. It's a lot to pack in to 2ish hours, especially after a long day. (Mornings are no better; if anything, they're equally squeezed and stressful.) And even then, it would probably be better for Eli to go to bed earlier, since he has such a hard time waking up in the mornings, but it's easier to stagger the bedtimes. I can't even imagine how we're going to fit homework into this (let alone how we're going to get us all up and out almost an hour earlier than we currently do), once Eli starts Kindergarten in a couple of weeks. Waugh. Can't think of that now. Must. Repress. Anxiety.

On the other hand (because in my octopi family there are always several more hands to consider), I'm not sure what I'd do if I didn't have the tyranny of routine to keep me going. After the initial enjoyment of not having to adhere to the strict schedule wore off (assuming it ever would), would I feel lost, unanchored, without purpose? (I do feel that way sometimes, on those rare occasions where the tyrant is absent for whatever reason.) Or have I just learned to love my jailer? Check back with me in 15 or 20 years, we'll see what happens.

Ooog. Sick today. Mild so far, but not feeling especially motivated. So rather than going back to the camping report, I'll just be lazy and go for a meme.

Josh said to try this participatory personality assessment test, so here's mine. Even though I always hate having to pick only a few things that represent me (or others), it's still pretty interesting. I'll do yours if you do mine!

(Now I feel so...MySpace.)

Well, even though we were back from camping last night, I lost focus and didn't post. And it's too late now for an actual thoughtful post, so let me just record for posterity: camping at China Camp with friends was pretty fun this weekend. And it was some good ol' fashioned filthy fun too (the kind where the kids roll around in the dirt and mud, not that other kind). And did you know that there was a beach out in China Camp? I didn't. But now that I do I might have to go there all the time, it's so close and cute and convenient. We even got to see a Chinese junk pull in at the dock there, which was definitely one of those you-don't-see-every-day kind of sights. And also for the record, now that I have tasted peanut butter s'mores, I may never go back to the regular kind. So, so good.

Ok, that's all the detail I can handle right now, because I'm still running on a sleep deficit. I'll try to do a more coherent post and put pictures up soon, I promise--I've been posting more and more pictures and am now at least within a month of being caught up. Really. In the meantime, here's one:

^ I told you the kids got filthy…and this wasn't even the worst face of the weekend.

Almost midnight here in J-land, but somehow I can't seem to turn off the computer without adding an entry. I guess it really only does take a couple of weeks before you really form a habit. But I fear I will be foiled from my daily blogging just when the habit seems to have finally clicked in again: we are going on a camping trip tomorrow, and no, I'm not bringing the computer.

That's it for tonight, I'm afraid. Everything else requires too much effort to report, and there isn't much all that earth shattering anyway (although, speaking of earth-shattering, we did have a wee 4.5 earthquake here yesterday. Heartstopping for a few seconds, then over before I could really react or even get out of my chair). Talk amongst yourselves and check back here in a couple days.

Today was my annual cancer check-up. I've been in remission for 14 years now. Pretty impressive when you think about it, which, strangely, I haven't really. Thought about it, that is. Even today's check up was pretty much routine healthcare hassle for me, the way any old doctor visit is with its "sign here/wait there/poke/prod/see ya", without much emotional charge. I was a little nervous (and jokey/talkative, which is how I often deal with nervousness) in the presence of the actual doctor, but overall I felt fine (and for the record, I seem to be still firmly and pleasingly in remission.) If anything, I almost feel surprised that I didn't have *more* nervousness or other emotional juju around the appointment, and that I didn't spend more time before the appointment thinking back on the whole thing and replaying some of the memories in my head. There was a time--there have been lots of times--that all those cancer experiences were so close to the surface that they could not be ignored, and they informed much of what I thought or did. Maybe I'm just distracted by life more these days, and have less time to angst about or even reflect back on the lived experience of and lessons learned from the cancer discovery and treatments (and aftermath); maybe it's really true that time does begin to heal all wounds, that my whole cancer experience has finally been so digested by my psyche that it's now just a past-tense, biographical fact, not a current-tense, perspective-shifting touchstone. Don't get me wrong, I still believe that having had (and survived) cancer was a life-changing experience, a blessing in disguise even, but unlike times before, I didn't really feel that rush of "glad to be here" that I have in the past. I don't know, maybe I'm just tired and cranky today. (Imagine that.) Maybe tomorrow I'll feel differently.

Can you believe I'm angsting about how I'm not angsting? Sheesh. Talk about postmodern reflexive navel-gazing. This entry veered off somewhere I didn't really expect it to go, but I'll leave it there. For the record, I am still very, very glad to be here, and if the attitude o' gratitude isn't especially prominent today, I'm sure it will come back around with the next crisis. (Not, oh occasionally cruel and capricious Universe, that I am in any way suggesting that now might be a good time for a crisis, because I *swear* I've learned my lesson. Lessons. All of 'em. Really.) Or even before then.

Whoo, how did it get to be August already? Now begins the long downhill descent towards the end of summer, the first day of school, and Fall. August has always been an odd month to me--there are no major holidays, and by the end of the month everything is hot and dry and brown, and you've already done most of the summery things you were so looking forward to back in March when it was still cold: beach trips, barbeques, camping, picnics, pool parties, fairs, outdoor festivals of all types. You've already worn all your summer clothes often enough that they're starting to become boring, and even eating all those great summer foods is no longer the thrill it was back in July when everything was finally showing up in the market (although I do have to say the peaches are amazing right now…mmmm). August is the time to just make sure you've covered everything on your summer agenda, and then maybe to do them all a couple more times so you can store up enough summer memories to last you through until next year.

That being said, I am very much looking forward to the remaining bits of summer fun we have planned in the upcoming weeks, and I will try not to ruin the enjoyment of the "now" with the bittersweet grownup knowledge that the season will be gone all too quickly.