Window ledge of kitsch, and other business

You know, if I posted a little more often, I wouldn't need to cram everything into these giant posts ...

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Mad's (was) asking us to show our kitsch--once I saw her mad stash, and Cinnamon Gurl's, well, I knew I had to share too.

We have a window-ledge of kitsch, and punnily enough (if you will), it's in our kitchen. Kitschen?


From left to right: a brass toothpick holder from Panama, a gift to me from Pynchon's parents after their cruise there last year; a terribly ugly cow clock, thoughtfully and expressly left behind for our use by the former owner of our house, who thought it matched too nicely with the kitchen for her, in good conscience, to deprive the kitchen of it; a bar of soap from the University of Victoria, where I go to teach workshops and stock up on tiny bars of soap; a tiny Beefeater figurine, a gift to Pynchon from an uncle (I think); my very first academic award, the French prize for the morning junior kindergarden class in 1977-78. I was obviously destined for great things.

(I feel a pang about the french prize. The JK teacher is my godmother. But! I still speak french, and just today spent the day placoter avec une amie qui vit pas loin d'ici. So while the circumstances surrounding the award may have been dodgy, it turns out all right in the end.)

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You know what I didn't put in my list of ten things that silence my inner critic? That I really wanted to put in? But forgot? I'm really good at folding fitted sheets so that they look like regular folded sheets, not some rumpled elastic disaster. The latter outcome was my standard until one bright morning in Saskatoon, when I was visiting the same friend who now lives in Chicago and put Sage and me up for BlogHer. Anyhow. I was visiting her and sleeping on the futon that was the daytime couch, so every morning I folded up all the bedding. All of a sudden, I just knew how to fold that fitted sheet. A miracle! The rest is history. I can even sometimes manage a decent fold of those sheets that are elastic all the way 'round.

This, people, this right here, is what makes the blogosphere so compelling ...

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Commenting on my last post, Oh The Joys offered to exchange me her weather for mine. I then made a crack about my roof leaking. Because the camera was on the fritz, I could not then show you what I can now, which is my roof leaking all over Pynchon's Dell and soaking my daycare file as well as my newly purchase (sob!) copy of Jurgen Habermas's timeless classic, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Worse, the book is not destroyed, but simply warped. Now people are going to think I was reading it in the bathtub. I may be a complete nerd, but, well, I do have some standards. And Habermas in the tub is a level to which I will not stoop!


(Habermas, suffering some structural transformation, the grey triangle underneath the computer's power supply. Sigh.)

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Pynchon is the main pedagogue in our little family unit: Monday morning, after breakfast, but before daycare, he taught Munchkin the answer to the following question--"What does a duck say, Munchkin?"--"QUACK!"

Feel free to quiz her on the major barnyard fauna, as well as domestic animals. She can match sound to species for: cow, pig, sheep, duck, and dog -- and also monkeys, but I'm not sure how to classify that. Surprisingly, considering we actually have a cat, Munchkin can't seem to nail the meowing bit--when asked what sound a cat makes, she invariable moos. No wonder Poor Crazy Kitty is in a huff.

By the way, what on earth possible purpose does it serve to teach a deeply urban baby how to moo and baa? This is not a vocabulary that can be of any use to her. I'm trying to teach her to say 'grande nonfat latte' but she finds the barnyard so much more compelling ...

"QUACK!"

Many different things, really

What a day. It's been raining and raining and raining, and all the kids in the Faculty of Arts day camp have been in my building at work, and making a hell of a racket which would account for why I visited so many of your blogs today. I'm trying to get an article finished, one I've been working on all summer, and I want to send it away for review by the end of the summer. It's currently 40 pages long, but it needs to be about 25--while nevertheless requiring the addition of new material.

If yer innerested, here's a sample of my deathless academic prose:

"As When Harry Met Sally progresses, the characters drop out of history, from carefully marked coeds of the 70s, with big hair, blue eyeshadow, and cynicism to match, through the go-go yuppie early 80s (“Five years later”), all power-suited, shoulder-padded, and briefcase-toding, before beginning their own coursthip story yet another “five years later” in a curiously unmarked and un-named 1987—we would expect, for example, more stirrup pants and asymmetrical haircuts, giant Sony Walkmans, and such. We move from an explicitly referenced problematic period in the history of romantic comedy into … achronicity, the blessed timelessness of fated love. The whole troubled period of the nervous romance is visually ridiculed, its promiscuity and individualism a tacky fad, as outdated and irrelevant as knee-socks and high-waisted shorts. Unshackled from historical referent, the characters are as free as if their story took place a long time ago in a galaxy far away, as Star Wars would have it. History as social and political context disappears as this movie progresses at the same time as history as musical and filmic reference gains narrative traction via the deliberately nostalgic and old-school jazz soundtrack (or its simulation, by launched-to-stardom newcomer Harry Connick, Jr.)."

Just to be clear, my merit pay this year will be based, largely, on whether I can say that this article is 'accepted for publication', or 'forthcoming', or 'published'. For that to happen, it needs to be reviewed, and this can take several months at a minimum. And for that to happen, I need to send it away. Which means it needs to be finished. Which I can't do when there are 20 eight- to ten-year-olds screeching up and down the halls. When it turned out they were all taking over the classroom that's 1.5 paces from my office door, and that they had indeed pre-booked this room, I freaked out. My department just fought a protracted battle with the bookings people to declare that room offlimits for anything other than teaching during office hours.

Anyhow, I was so frustrated and worried, I got mad. I called the woman in charge of the camp and freaked out on her voice mail. I believe I may even have said "I pay a lot of money to put my own child into proper day care centre so that I may come to the office and get my job done." I believe I may also have said, "Please call me back so that we can discuss this. Don't call me on my office phone because obviously I can't stay here and my workday is ruined."

Frustrated and worried. And now a little ashamed of myself.

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Speaking of frustrated and worried, I imagine I'm not the only one to have a scare about the big Fisher-Price / Mattel toy recall? In particular, the words 'Elmo Tub Sub' struck fear into my heart, as Munchkin has an item we might (and do) describe in just such terms. Here, in fact, is the toy in question, along with its owner. Notice the little wake created by its possibly toxic, possibly lead-painted little propeller.


However, this is the tub sub being recalled:

Not the one we have. Pynchon has declared we will buy no more toys from China. I defy him to locate one currently in the house that is not, actually, made in China. Worried.

Speaking, once more, of frustrated and worried, did you, oh observant reader, notice that Munchkin seems to be holding onto ... doudou? In the tub? Yes, that's right, she brought her security blanket into the tub with her, because that's just the kind of day she's been having lately. The kind of day where she sits in the tub pointing and wailing and pointing and wailing until she is provided with both doudou and sucksuck, and right now, dammit.

That's just one more reason why we've got three doudous.

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Omaha Mama tagged me for the '10 things that silence my inner critic' meme. That's a doozy, because you have to say nice things about yourself ... I have to say nice things about myself. Nice things that will interest you, hopefully, and not show me to be too too puffed with pride.

Errr.

1. I'm clever. This I know for sure, and have always known, and it's the one thing about myself I can honestly say I've never doubted for one minute. Sometimes I think I'm pretty, but often I don't. My fitness level alternately impresses and depresses me. I vacillate wildly in most areas of self-regard. But not about my brains.

2. I'm an excellent brunch-maker. You should come to my house. I can do fluffy pancakes, with raspberries or blueberries in them, with butter and real maple syrup. Crispy browned veggie sausages. Fluffy scrambled eggs, with a little bit of parmesan and some fresh basil cooked in. Fruit salad with perfect little melon balls. Coffee or tea, latte or espresso. Everything ready at the same time, everything hot, the table nicely set. I'm an excellent brunch maker.

3. I am becoming manifestly more politically radical as I age. I like this about me. I used to say stuff like "It's illegal to do crack. Why would anyone even start that? Everyone who does bad drugs should go to jail. How hard is it to just get a job and not do drugs." [pauses while you all collect yourselves.] Really, as I get older, I become aware much more of nuance in the world, and I temper my tendency to rush to judgement accordingly. Most of the world gets more conservative and judgmental as it ages. Not me.

4. My mom used to say that I have feet only a mother could love--this was not very nice of her, but she was probably referring to my lopsided club foot, and my uneven calves, and well, I've a tendency to cellulite on my quite bootylicious self. Loathing and ambivalence! But: I have beautiful big blue eyes, a long neck, square and delicate shoulders, and a tiny ribcage blessed with good boobs. Go, upper body, go! (We won't talk about my nose ...)

5. I am a good wife. I love Pynchon the best I know how, and learn more and more what it means to be in a partnership every day. I like that. It makes me humble.

6. I'm a pretty good writer of academic prose. Fellow grad students, and my dissertation committee, and my professors ... now my colleagues, blind reviewers, and audiences, uniformly note that I make complicated things understandable, and have a clear and even entertaining scholarly voice. Which you might not imagine from how I write here ...

7. I'm an awesome talker. I'm not afraid of public speaking, of giving talks, or teaching, or leading workshops, or whatever. People can always hear me, I don't hem and haw, I get to the point.

8. I have a strong sense of fairness. Reciprocity and probity (in addition, apparently, to pedantry) are my watchwords.

9. Ageing. I'm pretty good at it. I'm enjoying each year as it goes by, and while I'm sometimes surprised--and not pleasantly--that I seem to have wrinkles, I really don't mind getting older. Wrinklier, a little hairier, a little slower, not terribly interested in popular music. There are rewards to age, and I'm enjoying them (ask me again when I pass this obviously very advanced age of 34. I'm a good talker now ...)

10. I know most of my own faults, can call them out by name, and am actively working to rehabilitate most of them. I don't imagine it would be easy for you to surprise me by calling me on a fault: I have probably already accused myself of worse.

I'm going to tag some new friends I made at BlogHer: Moosh in Indy, and Assertagirl. You're on, ladies.

Style, maybe

*edit: goth photo removed because of disturbing number of daily Google Image search hits and downloads (???)

I have been thinking, lately, about what I wear. Specifically, I have been wondering when I became someone who tries on a shirt, and if it fits, buys 4-6 identical ones, in different colours. Then two identical skirts, two identical pairs of pants, and a pair of jeans and a pair of cords in the same cut. And four identical turtlenecks. It all matches. In fact, I have one belt that I wear with everything in casual settings, and three necklaces for all settings that all match with everything. Actually, absolutely everything absolutely matches everything else: it's all shades of grey, brown, off-white (winter), white (summer), chino, and black. It's all, further, machine washable.

I'll tell you, this makes packing for trips very easy.

In my defense, I did try to jazz it up by buying a giant, be-buckled mustard yellow purse, which you saw if you met me at BlogHer or if you came to my house for Mad's Bloggy Weekend, because I always use it when I want to appear less ... beige-brown-black-white-grey. Which is pretty much always.

Any-hooooooo. Mad can tell you I used to be hip. She knew me in my Louise-Brooks-bob phase, my skull-buckle boots and stretch black skinny jeans paired with a pirate shirt days. My PVC and fishnets with army boots to the office years. Blue lipstick. Special eyeliner effects achieved with a Sharpie (doesn't run ...). People used to stop me on the street and admire me. I got what my sister calls the 'nice face discount' but what was in my face more likely the 'nice freak' discount. I had a wardrobe that I would riffle through in my mind before bed, trying to pick out the best thing to wear, the coolest new combination of the gazillions of items. Then in the morning (okay, who am I kidding? in the afternoon) I would try a bunch of stuff on before settling on ... leggings under a floor length lace skirt, combat boots, bondage collar, sleek hair, and saucy 'vampire sex bar' t-shirt. Smokin' hot!*

[ photo removed ]

Now I don't really think about it at all, which is why I buy the mix and match multiples: when I went back to work, Munchkin wasn't sleeping through the night yet, and I needed clothes I could pump in, clothes the barf would wash out from, clothes I didn't have to think about.

But I miss that part of me. Still, I don't really have time or money right now to pursue my love of, as Pynchon calls them, 'shoes with accents.' Everything will be mix and match and machine washable for a while, I think, and when I find t-shirts long enough to cover my new mommy-tummy and my just generally incredibly long waist? I'm still going to buy four.

I'm engaging now in a little style by proxy. I've just been out to buy Munchkin her fall clothes at the neighbourhood Bonnie Togs (seriously, I walked there. It took about 5 minutes). Everything matches everything else. Check it out:**


I feel competent when I buy her clothes that mix and match like this. I miss being fashionable and unique, but I really really like that my baby has cute, practical, unfussy, and ... timeless clothes. It occurs to me that what I'm doing is dressing Munchkin much the way my own mom dressed me. Cute. Practical. Unfussy. Am I nostalgic for my own seemingly-simpler 1970s childhood by de-hipstering my baby? I'm sorely tempted by Bumper's AB/CD shirt and Wonderbaby's cholo 'Muthasucka' onesie still elicits a chuckle from me. I once bought a faux-leather biker jacket and a little velour tuxedo sleeper for my first nephew, way back in 1995. But I don't think I could dress Munchkin like that now--I would feel like a faker, I think. A little self-conscious. Me, who was troubled not by the idea of a bondage collar and a lace skirt to wear to work at the computer lab, but rather boggled at the choice of which collar best matched the skirt. I'm happier with my little kiddo in lavender onesies with embroidered leaves, with contrasting track pants.

Last summer, I used to really enjoy shopping for clothes for my then-Miss Baby because I was ambivalent about my new body, about the slow gradation between post-partum and back-to-self, and everything about shopping for her was simpler and more satisfying than shopping for myself. Pressed for time, I tended to go out size-by-size and just get everything at once, and usually all at one store: all the fall clothes, then the winter, then the spring. Tonight, I've bought all the 18mos-24mos clothes she'll start to wear in the fall. Everything matches everything else. Nothing fussy--cute stuff in corduroy, and jersey, and denim, and cotton, all of it machine washable.

When I went back to work I was still pressed for time and I started to shop like that for myself. Like the fashionable me was too much work. Or was maybe irrelevant. I don't know. It's not any issues I have with my body--yeah I've got a bit of a tummy (hello? I grew another human being in there!) but I'm just as thin as I was before. I'm still not sure how I feel about this change in ... my attitude.

Still, I kind of suspect that if I dress my baby like my mom dressed me, I might turn to her for tips on stylish motherhood, too.***


Have any of you noticed your sense of style changing after your kids were born? Or your practice of style? I'd love to hear about it.
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* I know! But it's totally me! At a Nine Inch Nails concert at Molson Park the day before I got my navel pierced. The flannel shirt is my friend P, who bought me my first Barbie in JK. We got married, in the same dress, within three months of each other, and gave birth within three months of each other, and were born within three weeks of each other. Our mothers went to teachers college together. Did I mention we have the same giant stroller? But she went flannel and I went Goth. We! Are! Individuals!

** Do you think I have a problem? Do other people do this?

*** BTW, she made these clothes herself. I'm 15 months old, and she's six months pregnant with my sister. Yikes.

Back from BlogHer

Who would have imagined that, after a grand total of 16 or so hours together in a car together, after getting lost many many times, and spending pretty much three meals a day together for four days, I would like Sage even better now than I did before? Blogging: the kind of passtime where you meet people you can talk to for 16 hours with no CD player. I'm just saying.

BlogHer. Hm. The highlights for me were the road trip with Sage, and both of us staying with a friend that MadHatter and I both knew long ago and who lives in Chicago now. Highlights further included meeting bloggers I read a lot and who read me. And then I met bloggers who I read occasionally but got on so well with I'm adding them to my little-scrap-of-paper version of bloglines right now.

As much as I enjoyed myself, I do have to say it was a little weird. Initially, I started blogging because it allowed me to reach out to people when I was isolated and alienated--however, I've grown to love the form for itself, for its own particular strengths. It's a text-based medium, and the rules of engagement are pretty clear, and the friendships and relationships pretty equal and manageable and defined. So it's hard to walk into a room of 800 conferrees and feel as comfortable as I do conferring with you (all 30 of you) online. Thursday night, Sage and I attended a cocktail party:


The drinks were free, the hotel was chic, the bloggers were enthusiastic and well dressed, and, increasingly, drunk. It was really loud and though I immediately got to meet a couple of bloggers I knew--there was Oh, The Joys right at the door, and, whoop, it's hard to miss Her Bad Mother's platinum bob, and Bobita's smile lights up the room--it was crowded and awkward and not really my thing. I did get to meet Kyla, and I have to say, she's the bomb. I have not been a terribly regular reader of her blog, but I am so girl-crushing on her right now, I hope she'll be my friend.

There was an incredible amount of swag at this conference, a real shock as I'm used to more academic affairs where even the styrofoam cups of coffee are charged at a premium. At BlogHer, the lattes are free, served up in a quiet rooftop lounge to the caffeine-deprived. As we registered on Friday, there was not one, but two bags of stuff. Stuff stuff stuff. A butterball turkey pot holder. A glow in the dark cocktail glass. Weight loss breakfast cereal. Branded messenger bag. An AOL-branded Flash key. And more, more, more. It really struck me what a marketing bonanza the female blogosphere represents: in an exercise called 'speed dating for bloggers', I met nearly as many marketing people as I did bloggers, which gave me pause. Apparently, we have money to spend as consumers, readers to deliver as bloggers, and credibility with and access to, women with money. While this may be true, it's not the way I would characterize myself.

The cocktail party on Friday night revealed to me a fact I did not suspect: the female blogosphere is good looking and well dressed! A sea of wrap dresses, beautiful leather purses, and daring shoes. Nice hair and stylish sunglasses. I can say I've never been to a conference where the attendees were so consistently well- and stylishly-dressed (present company excepted of course--I wore sensible shoes because my friend's condo was a bit of a walk-train-walk away, and the days were longer than twelve hours). I managed to snag babies from people in the guise of giving them a break--but mostly I just wanted to sniff their little baby heads. I was missing Munchkin, but she did just fine without me. And Friday night I met more people I 'knew'--Kittenpie, Motherbumper, GingaJoy, Sandra--and more I knew of--The Redneck Mommy, Something Blue, Metro Mama, I Am Bossy, and and and too many more to list--and I started to feel more comfortable. Comfortable enough to put MBT stickers on my shirt as pasties. (You're going to have to dig around the intertubes if you want to see a photo of that. I'm not putting one up ...) What fun, funny, people: if you are reading, I'm so glad to have met you, and hope to see you again. You're all good dancers, too.

But blogosphere, I'm glad to be home with you. I'm thinking back to April, when Mad, Cinnamon Gurl, Bubandpie, and Sage came for a bloggy sleepover party, and how much easier that was--more lowkey, less noisy, fewer people. I'm not, as it turns out, much of a party animal. BlogHer was great for the opportunity it offered to meet so many possible friends, to get drunk, to chatter and laugh, and in such surroundings as the wildly overcrowded and touristy Navy Pier, the too-cool-for-school and outrageously noisy W Hotel, and generally the beautiful and bustling city of Chicago. My inner quiet nerd is all a little overwhelmed, I think. Um, and possibly hungover. I'll be mulling over all my experiences in the next week, I'm sure, so you can expect more BlogHer related posts.

So the point of this post is: all of you who didn't go, I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you, and while I'm glad I went, it was a lot of people, noise, bustle and I'm going to hide in this digital cave for a couple of days. All of you who did go, thank you for bringing me out of my nerd shell and making me comfortable enough to drunk and sticker-covered and to do my Molly Ringwald dance for you. I would stay up late for you people if the opportunity presented itself again.

A little bit of calm ...

Breakthrough: a Situational Irony

Well. I think we've resolved the daycare dilemma, and not a moment too soon: last night, I got Munchkin home at 5:20, and after a series of meltdowns, tears, tantrums, and flailing, she was asleep at 6:25. She cried, I cried, Pynchon worried, it was awful.

I've been worrying and worrying and worrying, and I've been thinking through all that you've shared with me in the comments to my last post--I very much appreciate the support that you've offered, both of my choices and of my mothering.

This morning I went into daycare to chat with Munchkin's team--H, K, and M. H is Munchkin's favorite. She calls her by name and willingly leaps from my arms to hers in the morning, treating H to a snuggle and a pat while vaguely waving bye-bye in my general direction. We all got to talking this morning, about how bad the evening was, about how poorly Munchkin is sleeping at daycare, how pitifully snuggly she is.

And this is where the breakthrough came: the problem, you see, is that they care too much for her. I am calling this a situational irony because so many bloggers and commenters have noted daycare workers for their lackadaisical and callous attitude toward their charges. But the problem with Munchkin's daytime naps is that she was soaking up all the love she could get, and not wanting the snuggles to end. You see, at our daycare, staff sit in the nap room with the babies, next to the crib, and lean in to rub their backs and pat them until they fall asleep. Munchkin has a voracious appetite for pats and hugs, and would seem to fall asleep, only miraculously to awaken as soon as the patter stood up. Sometimes they were patting her for 30 minutes at a go. Similarly, if she woke too soon from a nap, someone would come in and pat her, and never get her back to sleep.

Aha! I said. At home, we walk around the house with her, singing her songs and patting her back, but then we walk into her room, put her in her crib with her doudou and her bear, pull up the blanket, and walk away. And that's the end of it.

So. Today at naptime, H did what we do at home--snuggle, sing, tuck, leave. She stayed to pat another baby, while Munchkin tried valiantly to get her fix, sticking her hands out through the crib bars to pat H on the back as if to remind her. H noted that she had to try really hard not to make eye contact, but she managed. After she walked out?

Munchkin slept. For one hour and forty minutes.

Thank God. She was a changed toddler when I picked her up at 4:30: cheerful and alert and fun. We went for a walk and played in the park until we saw Daddy get off his bus. He played with her while I made supper. She giggled through bathtime and happily went to bed at 7, stretching out in her crib as I covered her up. What a wonderful, wonderful evening.

To summarize, the daycare staff was just snuggling her too much. These are the kinds of problems, really, I'm kinda glad to have.

But now I can go to BlogHer with a happy heart! Woo! Are you going?


Munchkin says: I want you to meet me at BlogHer. Sage is picking me up tomorrow morning at 8 for the great road trip to Chicago--don't tell her, but I made muffins especially for the occasion (well, okay, and to feed Pynchon and Munchkin while I'm gone away).

How much fun are we going to have? I can hardly wait to tell you. I can say, though, that today I bought 100 US dollars and it only cost me 106 CDN. It's like some kind of currency miracle--last time I went to the US, for a conference when I was on the job market, 100 US cost me 148 bucks.

Anyhow, if you're going, I'm the one who looks like me, but carrying a giant mustard yellow purse. Say hi!