Taking a break.

Haiku Friday - Mental Health Edition

How much of myself
Is a product of my past?
When do I own up?

Disease? Disorder?
Personality defect?
What takes all the blame?

Does our history
provide us with excuses
Or reasons, insight?

I've been feeling a bit... overwhelmed by life the last [lifetime] week or two. I was researching a blog post about a particular manifestation of this blah, and I stumbled across a few interesting insights. It doesn't really matter what diseases/disoders I found that describe my personality. What matters is my question: how much of my faults can be blamed on my past? On the chemical makeup of my brain? When do I become responsible for who I am?

What I'm hoping is that figuring out WHY I'm defective might help me to cope with the reasons behind my imbalance, after which I can work on changing my actions going forward.

Later this/next week: Adult Children of Alcoholics, BiPolar Disorder, Perfectionism (and expectations of perfection), and the "Geographical Cure"

My Fellow Americans

Tomorrow, Barack will show 18 states (Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia) just what he will do with the grassroots money he's raised now that he's declined public election funds. The campaign's first general election ad features Obama recounting his youth and experiences. He seems to be reaching out, saying, "My Fellow Americans..." He reminds us that he is not the typical wealthy politician raised in affluence, but has worked hard to get where he is today.

The essense of Obama's 60-second message is peppered with subtle rejections of GOP's criticisms not only of Obama himself, but of liberal "agenda." The GOP thinks Dems have no morals? Obama calls ours "a country of strong families and strong values," and makes sure we know he was raised with "Kansas heartland" values. GOP says we liberals just want a hand out? Obama espouses his commitment to "working hard without making excuses." Oh, and the GOP think we're all closet communists who hate America? Obama makes sure viewers know just how patriotic he is.

Through it all, Obama gives you the feeling that he's sitting at your table having coffee with you. "I'm one of you," he seems to say, "I've been where you are and I understand your plight."

Take a picture by the pool...

...'cause it's the next Big Thing.

Journal slackers, take heart! Your memories of your children need not suffer because you're too busy to record them.

As an avid journal slacker, I don't discriminate. I suck at keeping up with journals and blogs, but you would think, as a mother, I could at least scribble down important dates in a baby book. You'd be wrong.

I get journals as gifts, and buy them for myself on a regular basis. I have a baby book for Quentin and a whole collection of blogs. If you were to pick up any of these today, you'd see a few pages filled in here and there but nothing consistent. It's the story (or lack thereof) of my life (and my kids' lives). Pun intended.

I was recently reading Swistle's Sundry Buzz post about an awesome but elusive journal she found at Border's, and I thought, "A-hah! A quick and easy way to keep track of those day-to-day moments!" But alas, I haven't been able to find one.

As Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored said so perfectly, blogging is an ideal way to do this. But I feel like, every time I sign in to blogger, I have to write something meaningful and witty, to appease my audience.

So what is a slacker to do? Is there a way to combine the ease of a few-line daily journal and the convenience and permanence of a blog? I've been using twitter as kind of a mini-baby book, posting any milestones and having them archived daily to a private journal. But still there has to be a better way.

The other day, I found it. TotSpot is a sort of facebook for babies and children. With space for blog entries, "what I'm doing right now" updates, and friends lists, it has the feel of a social network. The sections on favorites and firsts give it the essence of a baby book. You can even upload photos or import albums from Flickr and upload videos or import from YouTube. And all changes are recorded for posterity; a 4-d snapshot of your child's life. Not to mention, TotSpot has promised to make data easily available for download or transfer to your own computer or other sites. I'm hooked.

All I need now is a desktop client a la Twhirl. Developers, are you listening?

A.M. Ritual

Sometimes, Often, Once in awhile, my husband drives me crazy. Sometimes he doesn't do his fair share, sometimes I just want him to come home and TAKE THE BABY FOR THE LOVE OF TARGET (see how I jumped on that bandwagon? It's pretty up here!). But mornings? Mornings are, 90% of the time, the reason I'm still married (joking!)

Here's what our mornings look like.

• 4 am - I feed Jude
  
• 6 am - Luke gets up to get ready for work. I may or may not feed Jude again
  
• 6:30 am or 7 am - Quentin gets up
  
• Notice the part about how I'M NOT GETTING UP
  
• 7:45 am - Luke leaves for work
  
• between 8 and 8:30 am - I get up with or without Jude (sometimes he sleeps in)

See, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., Luke takes Quentin duty. He puts on Q's cartoons, feeds him breakfast, and generally entertains him so that I can "sleep in" (often enough this means just trying to keep the baby happy, but WHO'S COMPLAINING?). And I have to say, this routine of not stressing out for a change does nothing to make me reconsider my homeschooling notions. YES I AM THAT SELFISH

Luke definitely wins some sort of award for taking a.m. duty, I think.



This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a contest sponsored by KRAFT BAGEL-FULS

Haiku Friday - Boys and Blogs

Missing my baby
Quentin visiting Nana
He'll be back tonight

He's having fun though
Hanging with his auntie and
playing in the woods

Had an ice cream cone
He couldn't drop the topic
Sugar rush - not mine!



Sister visiting
Keeping a 13-year-old
busy? Not easy.

Jude has a new trick
He puffs out his cheeks and blows
Silly raspberries

Second tooth coming
Maybe he'll be less cranky
and sleep will lengthen

He's sitting well now
and only topples sometimes
Growing far too fast

-------------------------

Discovering blogs
Queen of Spain: witty and fun
Not posting myself

It's hard to keep up
Mommying and blogging and...
Juggling ev'rything

I'm jack-of-all-trades
Master of none or maybe
just nothing to say

With nothing to say
I will keep saying nothing
That's what bloggers do!

----------------------------

Forgot to blog hair
Jude had a horn last weekend
Thanks to my sister.

Haiku Friday - Mom's Night Out Edition

Mom gets a night out?
Improv at comedy club
Drinks and laughs - horray!



Yummy mojito
At the bar next door after
Veggie pizza, too!

A new meetup group
they might see another side
More plans for next week

Socialization
Maybe MORE important for
mom than for the kids

Feeling a little
saner after a night out
Make it a habit

Running the Numbers

I'm sure most of you would agree that you are not one-dimensional. Hell, you're probably not even two dimensional, a piece of paper with a front and a back. If you're like me, your faces look more like this or even this.

I think we all have our certain set of numbers we show freely to the world. Maybe some of us have a set of numbers for our blog, another set for our family, and one for each group of friends. Perhaps you have a set of "mommy" numbers and a set of "girlfriend" numbers. Or a set of "daughter" numbers and a set of "wife" numbers.

The more balanced people in the world seem to be good at throwing their dice regularly. They give themselves an opportunity to show each face on a regular basis, to let their numbers breathe.

Me? I have three basic sets of numbers. I have "wife" numbers, those I feel comfortable showing around my husband, and "public" numbers, which are shown to everyone else. It takes something special to make me feel safe enough to let the third set of numbers out of the corner, where they stand, nose-to-wall, like a naughty child in time-out.

That third set, standing in the corner, are the numbers of my purest self. They don't get shown to many people, whether for fear of rejection, judgment, or something else entirely. They're the completely unfiltered, unabashed side of me, with no expectations or apologies. They're real, and they're raw. And they've memorized the pattern on the wallpaper and are starting to get antsy.

What are your numbers, and how frequently do you give your dice a toss? What happens to you if your numbers don't get to come out of the corner and play?

Perfect

With Mommy-Blogging hitting the mainstream lately, there's suddenly a lot of talk about what it is, what it means, and whether we're worthwhile.

Whatever anyone things of mommy-blogging in general, I frequently come across individual posts that really move me, and so I signed up to be on the mailing list for Petroville and Suburban Turmoil's Perfect Post Awards a few months ago. And then I waited. I waited for a post that was perfect. I actually came across a couple but missed the date for giving the award. Not this month.

Shortly after the Today Show interviews with Dooce, et al., Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored posted her take on being a Mommy Blogger.

Kristen's post perfectly captured everything I love about blogging and why, even though I'm a mediocre blogger at best (hence why she wrote the awesome post, and not me!), even though I have barely a dozen readers, I keep on blogging. It was, in short, perfect.

Thank you, Kristen, for sharing yourself with us.