I was all full of lists of things I needed to do this morning. I woke up early, checked my e-mail, scribbled a list of things to do on a scrap of paper, drank coffee, scribbled some more things on my to-do list, went to the post office, ran into some friends hanging out at the local coffee shop, came here and then...
maybe the fluorescent lights drain my motivation away. Or maybe it's the fact that I checked my e-mail (again!) and found that my interview with B*tch magazine is finally out! I've been checking their site a couple of times a week to find out when the spring issue is going to be out, but no word. Then my radical librarian friend e-mailed me to let me know.
Even though I *know* what the interview says (I mean, it is, after all, an interview with me), I scrolled through it to read it again. And again. I wanted to tell someone, but I was sitting in the office all by myself and who the hell could I tell anyway? (It's kind of like the day the books arrived. But, for some reason, having an interview in B*tch magazine seems much more exciting than having 120 copies of my book sitting atop the filing cabinet behind me)
Then I went out to lunch with my mom. Sometimes it's good to get out of the office, clear my head, get out from under the fluorescent lights and the silence & solitude. Sometimes I come back reinvigorated to tackle that to-do list, to sweep all those papers off my desk, to get a move on.
Sometimes going out to lunch with my mom frazzles me even more.
Today was one of those days. I should have known that it was going to be one of those days when I got annoyed just talking with her on the phone. My mother is the kind of person who invades space, who *has* to hover over you while you're standing at the salad bar looking over the choices, who *has* to tell you what everything is even though you are perfectly capable of reading the damn descriptions yourself.
That always annoys me, but today it irked me even more. Maybe it's because I had a long to-do list and, because I had run into friends on my way to work, had gotten a late start. Maybe it was because I'd read the B*tch interview and was excited but my mom is not the type of person who would be excited that I have an activist profile in B*tch mag (esp given the 2nd sentence). Maybe it was going to WholeFoods and having to deal with a long line and an immense supermarket and my mother hovering over me the entire time.
Whatever the cause(s), I am now staring at my to-do list and not feeling like doing any of them. I actually feel like just goofing, not doing much of anything. I feel like writing long, rambling e-mails to people that have nothing to do with any of the events and doings I am supposed to be organizing.
But I should get some of this done. These things will not, after all, get done by themselves and the longer I procrastinate, the more they will pile up and March is the month where I will be running most of the time, doing this, that and the other thing. After this weekend, I have an event every weekend for the next 2 months, so it's not like I have any more downtime after this little stretch has passed.
13 comments on 300 words to beat back the winter blahs--March 300 words
Sat, 05/23/2009 - 12:54pm
I met my mom recently at EQ Platinum in the village nearby. I know the feeling of having good intentions being out with your mom, only to come back frustrated and regretting the encounter entirely. Just gotta remind yourself that anything they do to annoy you, they do so because they care about you - now I sound like my mom! :D
Sun, 04/26/2009 - 5:57am
Certain things are facts of life.
Hot peppers and my digestive system are one of them. I love hot peppers, so tough.
Other things.
Well.
Hiking class. I went into it thinking, Oh, cool, I'll get out into the out-of-doors, I'll get some exercise, I might even spend time with people I've never met before. I might have a conversation! And while I have to drive to get to even the close ones, there are good places to hike around here. I like hiking. I'm not in amazing shape, but I like hiking. I can put in a two or three mile hike without too much trouble.
But I'm not a serious day-hiker. The instructor sounds more and more like a serious day-hiker. And after the first class, which was half prep lecture and half a very truncated walk around the bog (because of the rain), he sounds as though he expects us to go a long way at a pretty good pace. I don't know what "a good pace" is.
The weather promises to be every bit as icky tomorrow as it was today, possibly ickier. We'll hike even if it rains (which is fine with me), but a part of me wants to be rained out (thunder storms will ground us).
Just to keep life interesting, the class was written up as "9:30 to 2:30," but the instructor, and everyone who has taken the class previously, says not to schedule anything for the rest of the day. Chances are you'll be too tired, and the 2:30 ending time has nothing to do with reality. Obviously I had no idea (I do not read minds) and we're scheduled to have dinner out with friends tomorrow. I can show late, but I'd rather not.
A side issue is that the instructor is not just a naturalist, but an herbalist. I actually like that. Except. He got on a bit of a rampage in class, talking about what changes in diet could do to heal a variety of issues. Also fine. Right up until he started ranting about psychopharms being unnecessary, diet and exercise being enough to solve everything.
Sorry. I call bullshit. Heaven knows that they're overprescribed and undermonitored, and diet and exercise should be discussed. But for some things, psychopharms are the only thing that will solve the problem. And if I have to listen to a lot of that, I'm going to toss my $60 that the class cost and go hike on my own.
I need to just relax and go to bed and get up and hike and not worry about it so much.
Sat, 04/11/2009 - 1:36am
I love to win arguments. I particularly enjoy it when I can stop someone cold by proving to them that they're simply wrong on the facts. Who knew that working as an unskilled laborer in the theater shop in college would prove more useful in a logical argument than anything I learned in philosophy class? I've always thought that the work in the shop was by far the most practical thing I did in four years (everyone should know how to swing a hammer), but I didn't expect it to be practical in that particular fashion.
It's a bright spot in a weird time. It's definite that F has bipolar disorder. I can't decide whether I'm feeling fatalistic or stunned. I've known for a long time that the kids are at risk -- depending on whose research you look at, the chances for each are one in six or one in three. With three kids, each one with a high risk factor, and mental illness on both sides of the family, it was probably inevitable. Deal with it. Be glad we were alert and caught it early, because it's easier to prevent mania than to subdue it once it's loose in her system.
On the other hand, I want to scream. My *child*. She's my *child*, and she has a disorder which I know from personal experience can be hell to deal with. I can deal, I can do the doctors and the medicine and support her and love her as best I can, I'm really good at it, I am, but *this is forever*. No recovery. No cure. She and her pillbox are going to be inseparable for the rest of her life. And there is an excellent chance of things going to hell some time during adolescence.
Recently, she's begun to get anxious when I'm out of the house. It's not so bad when B is at home, but when I'm out, she's scared. She doesn't have anything in particular scaring her, she says; she's just scared. Hell, that sounds familiar. Unfounded fear. Oooohhhh, shit.
B and P say that her behaviors mimic mine during my last episode. It's part of what made us suspicious, although I had to have it pointed out to me. I remember my behavior from the inside, not the outside.
P is pretty much scared half to death; F's behavior is bringing up some bad memories. We're getting him a therapist. V seems to be all right so far, but then, she's a very articulate child, who understands emotions, including her own, remarkably well. She and I will talk, frequently.
I need to talk with my own therapist. I suspect I may do some crying, which will be the first time in a long time. I had hoped to talk with him my last visit, but I was trying to deal with the death of two of P's friends in a car crash, and it seemed more immediate. I suspect I'm going to have to see dear Mark more often. I don't want to, but I think I need to. B and I are trying to support each other, but this isn't the only pressure, and there are areas where I am super strong and areas where I am weak. Just like everybody else.
Just like everybody else.
Fri, 03/27/2009 - 3:03pm
I was gonna come in early and develop the film I shot while in the Bay Area, 3 more rolls at least, before going to pick up dd and going off to Baltimore to the City from Below conference. But I also needed to print out my outline for what I'm going to present on Saturday and also fliers for my event in Baltimore later next month and I chose to do the fliers first and, because there's a big image of my book cover on it, they're taking forever. One flier per minute.
And I have yet to print my outline.
And I have to pick up dd in an hour and 15 minutes and hurry off to the bus station.
That doesn't give me enough time to unhurriedly develop my film and still be able to clean up in time. So I have to resign myself to not having the time to develop those 3 rolls of film. But better that than hurrying through it and messing it up because i'm hurrying or missing my bus because, once you start developing, you can't stop and set it aside for another day. Or even just being super-stressed about not getting to my bus on time and starting my trip off on that note.
So here I am, in the computer center, scanning images from women in prison (I got sent a GORGEOUS one that, if I'd managed my time more wisely this week, I could have scanned and made into a flier for my workshop for City from Below. Hell, maybe since I have time now, I could make one and, if I feel so inspired, make a few copies to just bring to show off)
I'll do that now. If the cat will stop pushing my fingers while I attempt to speed type.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Tue, 03/24/2009 - 9:03pm
I wonder now if all of my posts this month are whiney little things about how tired or unmotivated I am. That would suck, but it would reflect my month pretty darn accurately.
I don't think I have recovered from the California trip. I don't think I got a full 8 hours' sleep while I was there and haven't until yesterday morning (when I woke briefly between 7 & 8 and then went back to sleep and didn't wake till noon).
Today I feel kind of muddled and tired. I need to read some pieces about community accountability models dealing with domestic violence. I am not enthusiastic, even less so because they're academically written and i'm not finding any concrete examples or models that the authors have drawn upon. I need to figure out other models of community responses and accountability to incorporate into my presentation (this is something I should have started doing a couple of months ago, not just a few days before the conference!)
But I didn't...and now I have to move through the mud of inertia and tiredness to get it done.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Thu, 03/19/2009 - 9:00pm
I know I have a lot to do, but this afternoon I just can't motivate myself to do any of it.
This is the good thing about having a to-do list. I can slog through it, or try to make myself slog through it, so that at least one thing gets done off my list and so, when I have more energy (or even less time), I am not frantically trying to do stuff that should have been done days earlier.
I didn't do a lot of those things on my list. I got the url for an interesting prison project, but I haven't actually examined the site yet. (I do have it open in another tab)
I met with the hostess of my book launch party and we went over what needed to be done by Saturday. I just got another friend to agree to work the bookselling table. I finally followed the link that someone had sent me about media & technology (although I was disappointed at the contents).
I dragged my slow, unmotivated self to the post office to mail books to the women who are now out of prison and also to Free Battered Women to use as a raffle prize for their upcoming fundraiser.
I did not type any of the (still-incarcerated) women's suggestions about media access into one document so that I have it all in one place. I did not answer any mail (well, I did finish a letter that I started yesterday...the woman got my book and wrote me a very enthusiastic (and full of praise gods) letter about it. She's the only one thus far who has told me that she's gotten my book. I'm hoping that I'm not going to find an avalanche of returned books awaiting me this Sunday.) I did not pitch my interview idea to a magazine, although I think the topic would be perfect for the theme of their far-off issue. (Maybe having the deadline be in November just makes it so much less pressing)
I did not even start to think about what I would/could/should write about women, families and imprisonment for the journal whose editor really seems to want *something* from me and who has graciously extended the deadline by a month to accommodate me and the women with whom I work. (I'm still stumped by this. What exactly *can* I write about that isn't a repeat of what my book says? Maybe I should reread that particular chapter and see if I should simply ask if they would be willing to excerpt part of that for the journal)
well, I should pack up and get ready to go. Even though I have been slow and unmotivated, that is no excuse not to pick my kid up from afterschool on time. Maybe I *do* have time to write that query before I pack up and go.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Thu, 03/12/2009 - 2:41am
For now, I don't give one flat damn about much of anything. I want two things. I want some nice weather so that I can set up the new compost bin, and I want half an hour to bag up the metal recyclables. I'm not sure why, but those are my accomplished-something-feel-good-be-useful goals right now.
They are dangling just out of reach.
I know that the reason I'm focussing on those two goals is because I'm taking on a lot of responsibilities I never used to. Pretty much across the board, I don't want any of the responsibilities. The truth is, they're things I should have been doing a long time ago. Nothing special, just taking responsibility for grown-up things. And I feel swamped.
In back of everything is a growing lump of knowledge that, for all it feels slightly overwhelming, this all represents a huge leap forward since my episode. I was just starting to explore the world of adulthood (late) when I got sick. The episode threw things back so far it was appalling. I have spent a good bit of the last four or five years trying to recover my competencies, and, not incidentally, learn not to beat up on myself for the things I can't do.
B has said for a long time that he can see me moving forward steadily. I'm glad he's seen that, because I haven't been able to, and part of what I beat myself up about is that I lean so heavily on him. According to the magazines, most married women are pissed at their husbands because the husbands don't hold up their end. I've been tremendously worried because I haven't been holding up mine. Honestly, I've worried endlessly that he's concealing anger at me for not doing my share.
This is really the first time I've felt, from my own observations, that I'm making serious progress. Ironically, I know I'm making progress because I can feel myself pushing back. Every step forward I take is against tremendous pressure, but it's such a good feeling to be able to take on that pressure. I feel as though I may be so strong someday.
It makes me hopeful. I really am growing, getting well. Who knows who I might still have it in me to be?
I realized the other day that I need to get out, and I need to do it in an organized fashion so that it happens. I've been reluctant for a long time, because I've felt that I don't deserve it. Now I'm realizing that's nonsense.
In the fall, I may go back to college for a class (just think of all the great stuff I didn't have time to study when I was a full-time student), but for now, I'm looking at a simple hiking class to get me outdoors. I've invited B to take it with me if he wants, but I'm taking it myself one way or the other. Something just for me.
Mon, 03/09/2009 - 5:37pm
How can this be? mamaphonic is letting me post!!!! usually I can't post, I have windows 97 running on my old computer and it just won't let me into mamaphonic. I come here and read, but not post, and have been organizing mamaphiles by sending out emails.
I saw that susan posted a thread asking for help really and everyone thinking how to make this a more vital place. but I dunno..i think its ok, even though its slow. it could have stuff here surge. Like today I come and read the 300 words and I see everyones posts for march - and they are all particularly profound to me, its also good to catch up with how my friends are. Even V. in nyc, sometiems she writes stuff here, that I don't know about.
anyway...i was wishing I could post. and I tried it just for the hell of it. and I can!
So, march, march, march - oh boy!
Its the birthday month. My daughter turned 21 on the 3rd and we had a giant party at the house this saturday. I've never had a party in this house before, although I've lived here for 7 years, and I'm not much of a party giver. AND the party turned out GRAND and so sentimental and well attented and stories and everything...
so just getting past that big event, today I need to start things that the birthday planning had tooken over from.
yea, by the way, I am used to it. both me and my daughter, our lives seem long. a lot of things have happened. she is a wonderful person.
I am thinking alot about my friend, who didn't come to the party. I found out his mother recently died.
its weird too getting older, as a peer group, and find out, even folks in their 30s' - one of them got a pacemaker from too hard a life of drinking and drugging and so forth...and others, the kind of stuff that happens to old people.
but I got stories of the kind of stuff that happens to young people too. stories stories stories.
I'm in the party afterglow, where your house is clean and your fridge stocked with food - and you can eat crab dip for breakfast and ponder making up another batch of sangria with all the fruit thats left..and theres another bottle of wine.
yea!
I'm a little worried about the state of books, and even bookstores that seemed cornerstones to me for ever and ever, I feel something different, in some of them, with old men, and hair, and cats, and time is coming on us...
changes, changes, changes
but sitting on the porch, drinking, at a good party, with your daughter grown and beautiful, and conversing with friends you have known for over 21 years, some you met when they were 14, some that were at your daughters 4 b-day party, and some that are new friends, and went to bording school with your daughters bf when they were 15; when you lived in a house long ago, a city long enough, a body long enough, and can toast to the living, celebrate the birthday, share all that together, light and food and drink and music ...
well its not so bad.
I think I am a party convert. my birthday is at the end of the month, I'll be 43, but really who cares? whats a big deal about 43. I'm sure I'll be busy with the city from below conference stuff and just coming down from the after glow and effort of all that and company - so it will probally be a chill day like most of my birthdays they are pretty chill.
but i'm really glad I threw my daughter a party!
Mon, 03/09/2009 - 5:13pm
So wrote one of the women who shared her stories, thoughts and experiences for my book in response to my telling her about the anti-climactic day that my books came.
She's right, I know. It's not every day that my books arrive. I should be more excited. But I'm still not. Maybe doing the whirlwind round of book events in the Bay Area later this week and early next week will make it seem more real and exciting. Or maybe it'll be the book launch party here with all the booze (including drinks that were last mixed in the 1920s!) and people and well wishes.
Or who knows? Maybe having a book isn't as exciting and adrenaline-producing as falling in love.
I have lots of stuff to do before I leave on Wednesday. Of course, at this very moment, i'm tired and don't quite remember what those things are and so can't just write them all down and cross them off my list--scritchety, scratch, scratch, scratch...I know I have to call the woman from Baltimore today and ask her if any of her staff members would be willing to be part of my book event next month. (I talked with her last week, but she was in the middle of writing 2 different grants and so I'm sure that my question got pushed out of her head the moment she hung up the phone)
I know that I have to answer the mail that's in my bag.
I know that I should buy a money order at the post office (I wish I'd have known that I needed to do that earlier today) and send it to one of women with whom I correspond.
I know that I need to figure out what I did with those letters that I had been carrying around to mail on Saturday. I didn't mail them, at least not that I remember, but I can't figure out where I might have left them. I e-mailed the person whose house I was at on Saturday and asked if I'd left them there. I remember seeing them lying on top of my coat as I got ready to leave, but I *thought* I had brought them with me. But they were nowhere to be found in the darkroom or upstairs in the office and I'm scratching my head and wondering what might have happened to them. It sucks too, because I was asking for suggestions and recommendations to use for my presentation later this month at City from Below.
*I need to e-mail the people setting up a meeting of Radical Spaces this weekend and let them know I'm unable to attend. I also need to send them my collective's feedback on the proposal.
There's more on this list, but now of course I can't remember.
Maybe step one is to go and get coffee. hopefully that'll chase the drowsiness out of my head.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Sometimes paper is the only thing that will listen to you.
Sun, 03/08/2009 - 4:11pm
How do you respond when you discover that you have inadvertently passed on your own worst curse to your child?
How do you survive the back-and-forth jerk of treating, succeeding, treating, losing ground, treating?
Two weeks ago, the psychiatrist confirmed what everybody already knew. I've passed bipolar disorder on to F. I know this is not my fault, but I can't help wishing desperately that I had somehow been able to avoid it.
The meds we put her on are acting a lot more quickly than we expected; she's already showing noticable improvement. P says she doesn't scream at him half as often as she used to. She'll even give him hugs instead of stiff-arming him at the very suggestion, the way she usually does.
I have to admit that this is bittersweet. I am thankful that we can treat, but I had hoped my children would never be bound to a pillbox the way I am. F is being very mature and responsible, taking total responsibility for her meds, but why-o-why does a nearly ten-year-old even have to do this?
In one rather ironic way, her response to the meds is a particular relief. She doesn't remember the years when I was a termagant, but I have been wondering whether this might have its roots in the craziness when she was a toddler. I'm pretty much sure now that it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with chemistry. Whisper it down a dry well at high noon: this is not my fault.
Right now, things are as easy as we could ask for. We have a diagnosis, we have a proposed avenue of treatment, and she's responding well. It looks as though we're not going to go through the mis-diagnosed, mis-medicated hell that we went through with me. Hopefully, we've caught this soon enough that her sense of herself hasn't been damaged too much.
I am caught between sweet optimism that things seem to be coming out well, and a deep unhappiness and drive to answer the question, "Why?" I don't want my kid to respond well to medication -- I want her not to need the medication in the first place. I want to have dodged the bullet.
Sun, 03/08/2009 - 10:05pm
My youngest has weaned. At 4 years, eight and a half months. We had a party. Nursing these two kids until they were done is about the only thing in life that I feel totally good about - definitely the best thing I have done with my life. And now - my purpose in life seems to be over. I am just-so-tired when I think about trying to feel that unequivocally sure about anything else.
Fri, 03/06/2009 - 10:44pm
i've been so crazy busy i haven't found much time to write here or anywhere else for that matter. my mamaphiles article is late and i can't seem to find a focus for it. i have long rambling paragraphs where some fit together and others don't--like maybe i'm writing two different things and not sure if i can reconcile them into one. peep is with mama L today (his step mom) they went to rifle to visit grandma so i have some baby free time before they come back this evening.
i've been belly dancing alot and will be having a performance at the end of this month. a friend and i have choreographed a drum duet and a combined solo--which sounds like a duet but it's not. we've had a great time and i can't wait to perform.
pee p is growing so fast i can't believe it. his 1st birthday passed on jan 31st. we had a huge party for him everyone had a good time i think except for him--he just started getting sick--for the first time in his life--so he had an ear infection, pink eye, and cold and then his first diaper rash from the antibiotics. not a fun time.
he's spending a lot more time with his papa M now, which is way cool. he spends 1-2 nights over there every week which is nice to have some bed space : ). M also takes him a couple of times a week when i work. L and i get a long really well and support each other alot. for those of you who don't kno...i'm about 17 weeks pregnant. L is about 10 or 11. so peep is going from an only child in two families to one of three. we're all really excited for each other.
my partner Q, peep, and I just moved into a house with my doula LR, her Partner JC and their cute 6 month old R. it's awesome to live with other parents with similar values and parenting styles. we are called the black diaper collective and are one of three collective houses in our conservative ass town. so it's way cool to see how our community has grown over the last few years.
the red pill has been publishing for over 5 years now. our radical bookstore is doing really well, we've put out our first dvds regarding the working and living conditions of h2a visa workers in n. colorado and s. wyoming, and our first book publication should be arriving any day now. so things are going great on the activist end. we have monthly alternative parenting workshops which has allowed us to connect with other non mainstream parents, tho some may not consider themselves radical.
so much has been going on and it's been great to be so busy. but i wish i had more time to write. i read alot, but writing has definitely fallen by the wayside. i can't wait to start laying out mamaphiles and reading everyones stories! it's going to be so much fun! well i think that's all for now... i need food. happy spring to everyone!!
Thu, 03/05/2009 - 6:32am
MARCH! It's MARCH!
No. I don't really have anything else to say. We'll just roll with that for tonight.
"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library
"Do not forget. Remember and warn."
-- Plaque fixed to the hollow shell of Sarajevo's National Library