January 2007 Archives

Such a strange mess of things going on in my head lately, all knotted into each other like some beginner's macramé project gone horribly wrong. I try to pull out one strand so that I can blog about it, but then it tangles up with the others and drags them along for the ride and whoops, I've got a big unattractive mess (a mess that really only ever aspired to be a plant hanger but now isn't really any good to anyone and has to be thrown out and started over).

So because I'm the impatient type, I'm just going to yank out a knotty chunk containing a few random topics I've been thinking about. I dare you to find any sort of reasonable connection.

Guilt, specifically survivor's guilt (or something closely related):
Overall, things are going pretty well right now in J-land. No major upsets, no crises, no nasty surprises, and things are definitely more on the positive than the negative side of the life-ledger. Sounds like a good thing, right? But strangely enough, I've been feeling awash in guilt lately. Maybe awash is not exactly right; it's more like I've been pregnant with guilt, a small ball of it at first that's been growing and growing in my gut somewhere. Not the straightforward "I feel bad/I done wrong" kind of guilt, but the more complicated "look how lucky I am, and why do I deserve this any more than anyone else" kind. Survivor's guilt, or something closely related. I'm not sure if this is because of my recent cancer diagnosis anniversary, or because I've just recently found myself the recipient of several really gruesome stories (all fortunately far removed from me personally, and I won't detail them here) of the horrible-things-happening-to-good-people variety. During my most superstitious/paranoid navel-gazing moments (I don't have them often, but I do have them) I keep wondering if I'm being given warnings from the Universe or something. I'm acutely aware of my blessings, but feeling like if I enjoy them too much the other shoe might drop and it'll be my turn for the horrible things. Why I can't just straight up enjoy the good things while I have them is beyond me…is this part of the complexity of adulthood? The danger of too much introspection? An unavoidable bequest of my Jewish heritage? I really don't know. But it's been bugging me enough lately that I felt like mentioning it. Maybe by mentioning it I can exorcise it (there goes that superstition again).

Everyone Does Something Different and Together We Are a Beautiful Ecosystem:
Lately I have been boggled (in a good way) by the sheer overwhelming number and variety of types of things that we grownup, wage-earning humans do with our days. (You can insert a standard caveat here about "we" = people in industrialized, capitalist countries, and that unpaid work is equally valid to paid work, etc.) It fascinates me that we have evolved such complex social organisms that encourage so many different specialized niches (and so many more of them with each generation…I mean, even our grandparents' world was simpler). And I am grateful that each of us can choose (at least to some extent) to do something we enjoy/are good at from such a wide variety of different activities, and that we can narrowly specialize and concentrate on knowing a lot about a little rather than being forced by circumstance to know a little about a lot. That being said, I'm also amazed at the ways in which many (if not most) of us just sort of fall into doing the job that we're doing, without necessarily meaning to specialize in it at all. I mean, who chooses to be a garbage collector? Does anyone really start out thinking "hey, I want to be an economist!" I keep thinking about Nature vs. nurture as applied to work…how many of us are doing what we do because it is our inherent talent/ability/calling, and how many of us because of where/how/by whom we are raised? It's a wildly complex world we live in, and I'm constantly marveling at how we all seem to eventually find our place in it (even if that place is constantly changing, or isn't really our ideal).

Angels:
The concept of angels keeps coming up in Torah study (um, have I mentioned that Josh and I have been taking turns going to a Saturday morning Torah study class at the synagogue a few months ago?), and I'm still just generally confused by and skeptical of the concept. I always thought of angels as mostly a Christian thing, but they're clearly there in the Torah. But what are they? They're not God, and they're not humans. They're not like anything else of this earth. Divine messengers? But why? God seems perfectly able to talk directly to humans, or to take action through/with/on behalf of humans. What's the point of angels? What do they do? For some reason I find angels a harder concept to swallow than God. Isn't that strange? And if we're going to talk about angels, do we need also to talk about devils/demons? How about THE devil? Or Heaven and Hell? I thought those were mostly Christian concepts too, but clearly I haven't put too much time into figuring out what Jews (or what *I*) believe about all these things. I'm going to have to see if I can get a minute to ask the Rabbi one of these days…you know, purely for research purposes.

Ok, that's it for now…maybe I'll pull out another chunk next time, maybe I'll just do one at a time. Maybe I'll just go back to regular life-reporting. We'll see.

Happy birthday to meeeeee...and as a present for myself I'm going to establish a big fluffy guilt-free zone around myself, at least for the day. Today I will not be regretful for the things I haven't done (*cough* blogging *cough*), but rather, I will maintain a laser-like focus on the great things I have done, and am doing. Like stay alive for a whole 'nother year (screw you, cancer!) without losing my mind, my principles or my general sense of optimism. Like stubbornly continuing to feed the creative side of me while simultaneously defending my multiple gold medal winner status in the NADM Suck-It-Up Olympics. Like practicing conscious and loving parenting while also working (mostly) full-time, co-running a household, maintaining friendships, and recommitting to making the world a better place. Yeah. I'm a rock star!

Ok now that I've sprayed myself (and the internet) down with a good dose of Guilt-B-Gone, I think I can go back to "what's up?" mode. Let's see, where to begin? I feel I should put a little of the parent back in parentheticals and at least mention that yes, my kids are both not only excessively adorable and complete geniuses, but also growing like the proverbial weeds and achieving new milestones every time I turn around. Eli is really officially reading now--it just trips me out to watch how he's gone from struggling to sound out a simple word to reading board books out loud to his brother, all in the space between the beginning of the school year and now. They must be doing something right at that there school--although Eli does complain about how he doesn't like school because of "all that *work* I have to do" (to which I typically respond "just you wait". Not that I approve of homework in Kindergarten, mind you, but that's a subject for another rant--I mean, post). He's definitely turning into a "big boy" before our very eyes--he's even practicing sarcasm now (yeah, we didn't see *that* one coming, given whose house he lives in).

And Isaac, here on the verge of 2 years old (wait a minute, wasn't he just born? How did he get to be 2 already??) is definitely a toddler now, with all the "mine!" and "my turn!" and "MOMMMY NOOOO!" that the age entails. But what an amazing age it is too; you can literally watch him acquire new information or physical abilities and then turn around and use them. And he's picking up all this info and all these skills on his own, in the nearly complete absence of parental encouragement--I mean, it's not like we're drilling him with flashcards or taking him to gym class (he's a second kid, after all, and let's be honest, I didn't even have the patience or really even the desire to do that with the first one). It's actually a testament to kids' innate abilities to learn and grow, as long as you provide them with a rich enough environment. (Note that I say rich "enough", which is to say, as rich as they need without going all crazy indulgent on them and overwhelming them with more than they'll ever be able to use/play with/appreciate.)

In other news, I feel I should record for posterity that we've had a record number of actual frosty freezy weather days here. I'm not talking wimpy Californian "oh no it's down in the 40s and I'm freeeeeeeezing" kind of weather; I'm talking actual low 30s "scrape the ice off your windshield and don't forget your gloves or you'll be sorrrrrry" kind of mornings that have been going on for weeks now. It's the weirdest thing. Apparently in addition to global warming we've also got local freezing. I'm sure it's all related and that someday in the not too distant future we'll find ourselves looking back on these "mild" weather swings in fondness as we alternately fry eggs on the sidewalks or hack holes through the ice in order to fish in the ocean that's risen to the level of our front yard.

And finally, let me also just record for posterity that once again I am learning the lesson that the universe moves in mysterious ways, and that clearly one of the things I'm supposed to learn in this life is patience (lately this has been expressing itself in the lesson of equilibrium in the face of uncertainty). Sometimes the hardest change to deal with is not a single big one, but rather the myriad of gradual adjustments that come when the situation you've taken for granted shifts over time, just enough to throw everything else out of balance and make you start questioning again. Sorry, I know that was cryptic but that's the clearest I can be for now (although I will say that this has absolutely nothing to do with my relationship with my loving husband, in case you were wondering).

All right, enough with the "what's up"...time to go out and celebrate my rock star fabulosity with some dear friends and some good food!

Well, it sure didn't take long to go from being sick and sleeping a lot to the usual "oh hell, how'd it get to be 11pm already?" progressive (over the course of the week) sleep deprivation. I tried, I really tried to do some writing tonight, but there just wasn't enough brainpower there. I think I may have to go back to the early to bed, early(er) to rise plan and start getting up at 5:30 or 6 a couple times a week so I can write from that morning-fresh place instead of this tired, fuzzy, full-day-of-working-parent-slog place. Because I really want to get this novel finished, right? Right. At least I did have some writing time with the Pointies (yeah, that's what our writer's group is now calling itself, since we're 3 and therefore the points of a triangle) last Sunday at the good ol' Applebox and managed to at least start the next chapter. Never mind that I need to do some serious edits to the end of the last chapter I wrote, it's forward momentum that's needed here. Starting is often the hardest part for me, especially after a long hiatus like I've had recently.

Not too much else to report here on this sluggish-brain eve, even though it's been a week since I last posted. In addition to the writing time, there was decent-if-not-especially-eventful family time, there was Girlz Gamin', there was a return to school for Eli (after two weeks off) and a return to yoga class for me (after a month of not going due to one kind of distraction or another). There was a slow recovery from snot and sickness back to something approximating a normal energy level. There was (and continues to be) a mess of Secret Stuff that is currently causing me much anxiety but which I can't post about.

But life's ok. We've settled back into most if not all of our routine, and we're not quite in overwhelm (yet…if the sleep pattern keeps going the way it's going, it's only a matter of time until overwhelm comes back home to raid the fridge and do laundry). I can actually breathe through my nose again, without even the magic of Sudafed, and for this I have been wildly grateful the last few days. The kids are hanging in there and not getting sick (or not too sick anyway…Isaac's had a cough). Stay tuned…I'm sure there's some drama just around the corner.

(I started this entry on New Year's eve, right before I came down with a whomping fever-filled flu, which literally laid me out for 2 whole days…I swear there were a couple hours there where I was so hot I felt I was leaving char marks on the sheets, like some feverish Hiroshima art piece. Anyway now, 4 days later, I'm back up to barely functioning but at least there's no fever. So I thought I'd at least try to blog a little.)

A year is a barely manageable amount of time to sum up. I can look at pictures from last year (over 100 albums and 3500 photos) and still remember what it felt like to be there, but the weight of all that has happened in the months in between that time and this time irrevocably changes the way the memories feel. Blog entries give me a clue as to what was important enough to write about, but certainly not everything that's on my mind ever makes it to the blog (sometimes that's intentional, but often it's mere overwhelm and/or laziness). A lot happened: Isaac transitioned from baby to toddler; Eli transitioned from pre-schooler to Kindergartner. We took little indulgent trips, we ate LOTS of indulgent food. We had all the usual seasonal rituals with family and friends. We dealt with the declining health of our beloved Oreo kitty, and then eventually lost her. We lost a friend too, in that permanent way that you never expect and never forget. We got more involved with our synagogue. We got sick, we got well, and what a blessing that is right there.

Overall I would say that 2006 was a time of finding balance amidst transitions. (Although now that I type that, it seems to me that every year is like that, isn't it? Of course it is.) Looking back at this time last year, it seemed like I was overwhelmed with the dance of details, and of course, still wildly sleep deprived (come to think of it now, I'm still often sleep deprived, just handling it a bit better). I am hoping that 2007 includes not only more sleep but also hopefully more balance. Being out of the baby months will probably help with that (although the toddler years I'm now in certainly have their own challenges and high exhaustion rate, oh yes they do). I hope for more grace, at least, so that while dancing in this crowded, whirling ballroom of life I can at least avoid crashing into other people and large, immovable objects (most of the time). Is that so much to ask?

Enough with the recap. Here are a few of the resolutions I feel like putting on public view this year (in no particular order of priority):

* I want to finish my novel. Yes, finish. It's been way too long already, and I think I can do it. I just need to break the task down into small, achievable chunks, and then give myself deadlines. I know that if I ask for accountability I will get some. (Yikes!)

* I want to take the concept of tzedakah more seriously this year. Mitzvah (good deeds) and Tikkun Olam (healing the world) too. Whether with money or time (or both) I really want to make more effort this year into helping the world become a better place.

* I want to be more physically active this year. I want to make it to yoga at least 3 times a month, and I'd like to start going for hikes and walks too. Even better would be family walks and hikes--hopefully this is something we can make into a habit. Good for the body *and* good for the soul.

* I want to be better about keeping in touch with old friends. (I'm pretty sure I say this every year but I mean it every year…and it's a goal I can always get better at.) The older I get, the more friends I collect, but I still love them all, and I want to prioritize keeping those relationships going, whether by emailing or calling every once in awhile, or putting dates on the calendar months in advance…whatever it takes.

* I want to blog more. (Oh stop rolling your eyes.) A couple times a month (or even less) is not enough. Time to re-build the writing habit.

Ok, that's it for now. Time for the sicky mama to get some sleep. Happy 2007, everyone!