December Blues

Look at me! I'm a mess! If you could look back through your computer right now you would see me: worn-down, slightly frumpy, hungry and thinking about ordering pizza out of desperation, slightly buzzed with a headache and film over my eye sitting in front of the computer at my workplace with a jelly-jar of wine in front of me, my wallet sprawled all over the place because I lost a credit card, and my trusty World Almanac and few pens hanging out on the desk... just in case... It's December. It must be because... just LOOK AT ME!

These are the moment when I never want to take another class again... ever. The semester is winding down and the "holiday spirit" and cold weather are descending upon us (in other words... the desire to stay in your pajamas all day and blow off any and all things that have deadlines is gaining momentum). That is why I find myself in front of this screen blogging at this very moment when my homework is pressing so hard upon my back that I have "checked out." I just simply cannot take another minute of the stress.

My head hurts

My nerves are buzzing.

You see, the thing about graduate school is that it's not like undergraduate school. You just can't blow off anything. You are just stuck having to work your ass off up until the very last SECOND of your semester. And then you collapse. Then you have a few Christmas cookies and some coffee, you toast with champagne on New Years and start up again a few weeks later. It's like... is this worth it?

I am learning a lot from my classes and I enjoy them very much overall and I do know that it is worth it... it's just that at this particular time of year everything becomes more difficult. The sun goes down at 5:00 and doesn't come up again until 7:30, the covers on your bed are very warm (and so is wine in the belly, mind you... especially glugg), the books you've been trying to squeeze in between your readings for class start to be so much more inviting, magazines bombard you on every side viing for your attentions, you start to get crafty (I recently started a quilt and four other sewing projects) you want to eat big meals, you want to move slowly, and you don't don't want to work.

This is the time of year when my procrastination circuitry really starts to groove. I put assignments off until literally the last moment and then I get completely stressed because I have to cram to finish them. That has been my weekend and now it is spilling over into my week. I can see the end: all assignments are due Friday so I simply will not have any more stress after that but getting to Friday can be so difficult sometime!

I can also see the big picture. I will be a real librarian when I finally graduate from this program and have my master's degree. The hard part about it is, I really stopped dedicating my life to formal education after I walked across the stage in 2005 and accepted my BA in Literature. I got married that same summer in a magically romantic dream-wedding vacation to Ireland with my entire family and I spent the rest of that year "taking a break" and enjoying the life of freedom.

The same week that I returned my acceptance notice for UW-Madison's SLIS program I found out I was pregnant. I had been so worried about getting into the program and was so excited to be accepted. A few days later when both lines were pink, I wondered if I should just scratch the whole thing.

I was right to consider it... it hasn't been easy! Annika was born just four days before my second semester of graduate school started. I'm glad that I stuck with it and I will be so glad when I have my master's next January. But now that I have a child I am insanely jealous and greedy with my time and I simply will not put school at the top of my list of priorities. I have many things on the list before school-- including my own mental wellness (that is why I am posting a blog instead of doing homework right now) and while I know I have my priorities just the way I want them, it does make it hard.

I have had to learn how to be a "good" student instead of an excellent student. I was an over-achiever in undergraduate school and I have had to let go of that obsessive part of myself in order to maintain the quality of life that I want with my family and for myself. I am still learning a ton and getting a lot out of my education but I am not spending hours on it every day.

But just like everything else that starts piling up in December, so does my weariness about my grades. I start hyper-analyzing every comment my teachers have made, poring over every assignment, calculating grades and having a hard time sleeping. Next Friday I will let go and allow my classes to turn out as they may (I will most likely get A's in both of them, by the way... I'm just OC when it comes to the end of the semester) but until then, well... it's a bit of a bumpy ride!

So raise your wine glass with me now (well, mine is empty.. I've moved on to water, as I rarely have more than one glass of wine in one sitting) and let us toast PRESSURE, that terrible thing that makes us appreciate leisure.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday and all that shizzy

Well, Thanksgiving is here, or is coming then, isn't it? Here I go, I guess I can't resist. I HAVE to talk about Thanksgiving even though it drives me crazy that every single radio show is about THANKSGIVING or TURKEYS or FOOD on this, the fourth week of November. It's like I can't escape the hoo-ra but here I am adding to it. I am just pitiful.

So have you all heard of a "tofu turkey?" Yes, this is a real phenomenon, although I have never partaken of such fare. Even vegetarians do draw the line somewhere. Let me clear up just where that line falls: I have eaten sliced tofu turkey... like deli-style with mustard or swiss chees (mmm-mmm!), but a round rump (I guess you wouldn't call it "rump" per se... more like "clump") of wobbly product of bean I have no desire to explore-- not even for pure curiosity. I did eat "bean curd" in China though... and quite a lot of it. It was pretty wobbly... hmmm.... what was I saying about that line?

I would like to see a "whole" tofu turkey on a menu. Do you "slice" it? Would one put it on a sandwich on the second day? Is there such thing as tofurkey gravy?

I remember eating turkey sandwiches for a week after Thanksgiving as a kid. Do you still do that, my meat-eating readers? Do you look forward to the buttery turkey slathered with gooshy gravy each year only to find yourself feeling nauseated at the sight of turkey three days later? Do you begin to gobble on the fourth day?

Now let's talk about "BLACK FRIDAY." That ridiculous day where people actually line up, LINE UP PEOPLE outside of Walmart at 5:00 am just to stampede each other as if they are at a Beatles concert and buy a cheap crappy telly that will never compare to John Lennon or Paul McCartney and will blow out in a year anyway for fifty bucks or that waffle iron you've always wanted to get that "special someone" for the amazing deal of ten dollars (Great gift ideas, thanks Walmart!)

Is a deal like that really really worth the dignity that one loses by mooing and herding in the pre-dawn hours just to get in the door BEFORE those tellies sell out? I mean, come on. It's no wonder that our government was able to trick us into agreeing to the war in Iraq. We're like sheep. We depend on the media, advertising, and the government to tell us how we feel and where we go when. The corporations holller that they will give you a deal and we clamor like ants to a sugar bowl; we are ensnared! How that does resonate with our current political situation...

I have to give props to those good folks who use this undeclared holiday against the very consumers who make it happen. I'm talking about the enterprising people who go in and buy those discounted items to resell them and turn a profit. Thank goodness someone is taking advantage of the schemes of the corporations and our own weakness for advertising.

I guess one thing I hate more than those Turkey bits on NPR is when the news starts reporting on all the action of "Black Friday." I mean, way to feed the monster. Make everyone even more involved in the goings-on than they already were, and suck me into the mess as well.

This year I have come to understand that all of "the holidays" are just days. We look forward to them so much-- but what are we really looking forward to? We are looking forward to an excuse to get together with our families, relax, stop thinking about WORK WORK WORK and let loose a little bit. The thing is, why wait for a holiday? If we were just a little more balanced, we would be able to enjoy those things on a regular basis.

Now that would be cause for celebration.

Ahh, Saturdays

Well, I can't say it started well, and yet it's off to a good start!

There is something about a Saturday that makes me say to myself, "self, you are excused from doing anything at all all day. You may lay in your bed as late as you wish, you may drink coffee and eat food in bed, you may stay in your pajamas until noon-- or later! if you wish-- and you may put off taking a shower until you go out in the afternoon." It is my credo for weekends. I just need ONE day to sleep in or lay in or whatever and I'll be fresh for a new week.

So... at 4:45am this morning, there I was, sitting on the couch in the dark downstairs doling out breastmilk to an electric pump, half asleep and rather irritable, wanting to be like my husband who was out cold in bed happily sleeping, non-engorged, stretched out and even snoring.

Breastfeeding is so wonderful and not so wonderful. I wouldn't trade it for anything else (or else I would have already, since Annika is old enough, technically, to be eating more table food) and yet, the responsibility of it is unrelenting! Annika still eats seven times a day, SEVEN, people. That is seven times that we sit down together in a quiet place (she won't eat with the slightest distraction... including the turning pages of a book or mag, so I can't even read while we "do lunch".. or dinner or snack or breakfast!) every single day. Now, even as I write that, I realize that I am lucky to still get seven opportunities to snuggle with her and cuddle her and gaze lovingly at all those amazing details of her features, but just once in a while I wish for a reprieve!

Right now, Annika gets four out of about fifty feedings per week from a bottle. And those are while I'm at work. I could ask Jeremy to give her a bottle more often, but at this point there is no point... because I have to pump anyway if I don't feed her; I need to empty and I have to have milk to give her if she's going to have more feedings from a bottle per week. So I really don't get out of anything by letting her take a bottle. I absolutely refuse to give her one drop of formula because I don't need to, so... there I was this morning at 4:45 pumping in my half-asleep confused state of early morningness once again. I am thankful that my milk is in no short supply, but... it doesn't seem to understand the concept of taking a break from production. My milk elves work around the clock!

Early morning pumping is good and bad. It's great because you get a lot of milk since it's been building up all night. It's not so great because after collecting, sealing, labelling, and storing the milk and rinsing off the bottles and such, you are more awake than asleep so falling back to sleep is difficult. Early morning pumping must be perfectly timed also. If you wake up too early you'll be up half the night trying to get back to sleep; if you wake up too late, you'll be up the rest of the morning waiting for Annika to wake up and eat because it's too close to her waking time to pump (she'll have no breakfast) and you're too full to sleep.

So, this morning my timing actually was perfect-- but I was having trouble falling back to sleep after I came back to bed. Finally, as I drifted off, Annika started crying in the next room. Curses!

Hoping she would fall back asleep, I just laid there, waiting. To no avail. She was up and wanted me to be up too. And NOW! So, I got up, brought her into bed and fed her, hoping she might decide to fall back asleep. No, no. She was all about playing with my nose, pulling my hair, crawling over me to talk to her daddy, etc! Normally, I absolutely love these time with her, but I was just so tired this morning for some reason.

We put her in her play area and Jeremy (who had been sleeping all night long, lucky!) hopped up to get moving on his busy day while I waited to see if I could get a couple more minutes of sleep, which I did while he was getting ready. However, as he was getting ready to leave to the hardware store, Annika got all cranked up and did not want to be put down. She wanted her mums and wouldn't have it any other way.

Initially, I was annoyed because I was still in some kind of stupor and didn't really feel like playing but soon I realized after her continuous complaining that SHE TOO WAS just TIRED! Aha! So I fed her again and out she went like a light. I put her in her bed and there she has been ever since.

Now I feel like a new woman! I am ready to face the day and my child! It's ten o'clock now and I hear her stirring. While she's been sleeping, I've read my Time magazine, checked in on my school stuff, relaxed in bed, eaten a scone that Jeremy brought home for me-- IN BED! (I love it!) and had a cup of coffee.

Now that is how Saturday is supposed to be. There is gentle and relaxing music flowing from our rec room down the hall, I am happily posting on my blog, and my baby is sleeping in. All of the frustration from earlier is forgotten like melted ice in a river and life has resumed its normal hue of happy contentness.

Having a child is like living in a theme park. There are so many things that give you so much happiness! You are constantly riding these really amazing rides and everything is novel. But once in while, as much as you love being there, the heat and the lines get a little overwhelming. That's when you just need to get a big glass of water (coffee, in my case) and sit down in the shade to take a break. That's all it takes and then you're ready for the next round. And that is my life over and over and over in cycles-- and I love it! I truly do! Even the lines and heat. I just need my Saturday morning, that's all... it's my water in the shade moment.

My biblioblog

And for more of my crazy thoughts, please feel free to view my "other" blog at www.klonickibiblioblog.blogspot.com

I've been so busy thinking

I've been so busy thinking and not writing any my thoughts down! Shame on me! Recently it actually occurred to me that I have a social or moral obligation of some kind to write down my thoughts and try to publish because that is one of my skills. I used to do a lot of things with my writing, including public readings, workshops, and limited publishing. Now I do nothing. I have gotten so caught up with my mommy life and wife life that I have put writing to the side. That is not really acceptable because I have something to add to society and I should be doing my part, just like everyone else.

So what have I been thinking so much about? Well, I have really been struggling with some certain issues in our society and what I can do to make some changes around me. I tend to be a very overly-critical gloom and doom type of person (a part of my thinking that I am working on to be less consuming of my overall perspective on life) so I know that I probably blow some things out of proportion but I see real-life examples of these problems every day; some of the problems are everywhere I look and I feel overwhelmed, and some of them just pop up here and there and bother me a lot when they do.

Problems with our society in the midwest US right now (this is the area of my expertise, as I live here... Other places probably do have the same problems but I can only speak about what I currently have experience of) are as follows:

1. Disintegration of the overall community. I cannot get over how people take such meticulous care of their little space in the world, trimming their grass, clipping their hedges, and planting their trees and flowers, ultimately so that their neighbors don't think poorly of them, but they never talk to their neighbors nor do they ever sit outside in their own lovely yards and enjoy them. The whole setup is just ridiculous to me! Invisible lines that mark "property" that is divvied up among people who then cloister themselves within their lines and create tiny worlds of their own, separate from the tiny worlds of their fellow neighborhood dwellers. So where does the community go?! People have been conditioned to fear each other and be suspicious of most, if not all people outside their arbitrary little property lines. It starts when we are children and we are cautioned in a well-meaning way "not to talk to strangers." Don't get me wrong, I don't want Annika, for example, talking to strangers when she is a little one. But it is one thing to caution your child against talking to strangers because she is a helpless child whose experience in the world cannot compete with an adult's so she is much more easy to be taken advantage of and another to just preach fear so that she is instinctively afraid of anyone and everyone forever. As it is, adults are actually the ones who are afraid of strangers and they pass that right on down to their kids. Instead of viewing the person who is pulling up to ask for directions or who turns around and talks to you in the grocery line as another person with kids and a wife, or who also works a crappy 9-5 and is just doing their thing in the world, we automatically go on alert, thinking "is this person trying to hurt me? Is he going to follow me to my car? Is he going to grab me and pull me into his car?" etc etc. UMMM MOST LIKELY NOT! But that is our first impulse every time a stranger talks to us and it starts young--- it is an impulse that is ground into our systems from the first moment we can speak. I have been trying to debug this pattern in my software for a while now and will probably be working on it for a long long time. Community has broken down between neighbors and "strangers" and this is because of the starchy mechanization, incorporation, and sterilization of everyday things.. Such as: Grocery shopping. We all need food and other essentials to live. For ages and ages we have come forward to the front lines, as I may say, with our wares and presented what we worked hard for while people came through the marketplace, meeting with each other and meeting with the vendors, negotiating fair prices for all commodities, and picking the freshest and best ingredients for their needs from a selection hand-picked by the vendor. Such a thing is no more where I live. We rely almost solely on the "X-MART" big box grocery where produce comes from all over the world, ripened in the box, food is pre-made by someone who cares nothing about you, your health, or your palate-- who cares only about your money. That food is bagged and boxed and is stacked hundreds wide and several deep down long and clean aisles where shoppers do not interact, the prices are set by someone far far away at a desk who has no relationship to you or your community, and the only contact with a person is at the check-out where a little "hello" may happen but not likely much more. Even having a real checker is not necessary anymore. A person can literally (and many often do) go through the entire supermarket experience without having to interact with one person face-to-face. Where is the accountability of the producer, in this picture? When the person you are buying your vegetables from is Joe from down the street, his kids play with your kids and you all share other many things in life, he is not likely to load is produce with toxic chemicals which will not only affect your food and his, but his water and yours, and all the children who play in the gardens and fields. But who is to stop the producers of today? They will do whatever they please in other countries where the natives (the neighbors, whose children will be playing -- and working for too small a wage-- in those fields) don't have the channels to say no to the toxins and the work conditions. So they get poisoned, their land is destroyed and stolen, their children pay the price and then the food is shipped here, where our children are poisoned and we pay the price. What do the owners of the farm care? They dont live on the farm. They hire the locals to live/work on the farm. They live in poshy homes on beaches and have never gotten dirt under their fingernails before. Now the natives who do all the work do not get fair pay for the work, like they would if they were taking their own food to market. The person who reaps the wide profit never does a day of manual labor in his/her life. Do you all see the problem with this picture? The community of the workers falls apart, our community falls apart.
   
2. Disintegration of the family unit. So, whose fault is it anyway, that today's children are raised by television, raised on junkfood, and raised to continue being children until they are thirty and up even though they start having children of their own at half that age? Is it the parents' faults? Does no one love their children anymore? Does no one want the best for their children anymore?! I find that highly unlikely. While I'm sure there is the occasional parent who really doesn't give a crap about their kid because of drug problems or mental problems, the instinct for humans is to love their children with a feverishly immense love. So, why are peoples' children going to the wayside under the loving eye of their parents? My bet lays in misdirected love in a society that does not prize or even appreciate the family unit anymore. Let's start with the institution of marriage. Now, I am not the guy who walks around shouting about how the "institution of marriage" is being corrupted by gay marriage. I don't feel that way at all. However, I understand why people are saying that. It is a scapegoat because the family unit IS being corrupted-- but not by gay marriage. The institution of marriage has always been corrupt and easy to be based on the wrong things and is still today, only now parents and good parenting is no longer appreciated; those two things are a deadly combo for society. When people get married because of social pressures to create a family but then receive no support or encouragement from their community as a family, the family breaks up literally or psychologically and parents find themselves unable to give each other or their children what is needed to be healthy and happy functional people. It starts on the wedding night-- and no, I'm not talking about the hot bed scene! That's a good part of marriage, which also, too often, becomes lost in the shuffle. I'm talking about the fact that after marriage, the couple is no longer "check up on." Nobody asks how the couple is doing-- I mean really DOING. There is no support system for the couple and people prefer that they keep their "dirty laundry" to themselves. Therefore, problems in the marriage, with no help, become bigger and bigger and dysfunction can easily take over any relationship, no matter how much love was there to begin with. Then, add to the mix a social acceptance-- even encouragement, in some cases-- toward divorce when things are "unresolvable" and now we have a breakdown of the family unit. Now let's talk about kids. Oh, people are more than willing to give advice about child-rearing, and that's good; at least it's not like marriage, which people are expected to do alone but raising your own children is no longer a real option for most working people who need two incomes to survive, or who didn't make it with their spouse or mate (see the last section) so now their ONE income is extra-essential. Let's talk about maternity leave. Six weeks?! SIX WEEKS IS NOTHING. What is a mother supposed to do with her child in six weeks? A newborn is hardly cognitive at six weeks, not to mention the predicament of how a mother is supposed to nurse her baby if she has to return to work at six weeks. Now the mother-child bonding of breastfeeding is lost as a mother returns to work, the ability to relax and take the day moment to moment, as child-rearing should be is lost as the mother has to have the child to daycare before she is to work at some ungodly hour of the morning. It is noon here, and I am still in my bathrobe; Annika is just waking from a 3 hour morning nap and I have nursed her three times since she woke up this morning. I have an amazing relationship with my daughter because I have time to ENJOY her and also time to keep my house clean and to cook dinner and to sit down and nurse my baby several time a day. We take walks, we go to the park and she is learning essential life skills even now at six months. I have chosen to rebel against the norm and stay home almost full-time to raise our child for at least the first year of her life while she is nursing full-time. How many women in our culture get to do that? I am very lucky to be able to. Most women do not even have the option and if they do have the option to make it work (like we do) with very part-time work, extra work for the husband, and a little cutting here and there of extra expenditures, they don't realize it because it just isn't encouraged in our culture to even TRY to make it work. I'm glad for the feminist movement and all, but the whole idea of women working has turned against women and family in general. Now all women are expected to work and there is little provision and no monetary support for staying home to raise children-- a priceless duty to society that society is not willing to pay the price for, but is paying the price for not paying for! The entire family becomes strained when both parents have to be out the door early in the morning and they all return together at the same time at night to try to negotiate dinner, relaxation, and bedtime together. It's no wonder children are plopped in front of the TV while mom or dad makes something (prepackaged and quick from those wonderful food corporations we were talking about before) for dinner while the other one tries to pick up the mess that couldn't be taken care of that morning. Weeks turn into long stretches of barely seeing each other and weekends turn into catch-up time around the house and selfish "me-time" for moms and dads and kids because they haven't been able to relax all week. So before you know what's happened, parents have little-to-no significant understanding of their children who are growing fast into adults and it's hard to create that relationship when it's been neglected for so long, children are learning their values and morals from peers and television, and having kids of their own.

I have to cut this short now because Annika is ready for a playdate and i need to get moving. i'll post some more later!

LIfe After Childbirth

Life after childbirth is nothing like life before. By the time you go into labor, you are so ready to be un-pregnant that you could care less about anything that happens to you or your body after baby comes out because you are too busy thinking that nothing could be worse than carrying around a full-term baby inside of your body.

Now, five months later, let me tell you, I long for the pre-pregnancy days. The most obvious complaint is the belly that never goes away no matter what, even while breastfeeding. I know I don't have too much room to complain here, as some women gain a lot of weight while pregnant. I gained the usual thirty and lost it again easily after having my baby but my middle-self, that place where my belly button resides, just seems as though it will never be... the same. I now rock a fluffy and pillowy bulge where my stomach used to be and while that may be nice for baby's comfy naps with mommy, I could do without.

Well, it was ma birthday

Birthdays... ah, what do they mean anyway? Now that I have given birth-- shot another entire human being right out of my hooty-hoo-- I have come to appreciate birthdays even more than ever!!!

So far the day that I experienced the amazing sight of my child being pulled (by my husband) out of my body is the best day of my life-- that moment the best moment of my life. I am happy to celebrate it every year until I die. The birth of a person really is worth stopping to appreciate at least once a year!

So stop, now, and appreciate my birth. NOW!

Birthdays are just another excuse, like every other holiday not to spend money, as you were anticipating me to say, but to appreciate another human being. And I have to admit that I felt very appreciated this year! My husband treated me like a goddess, putting a lot of love and thoughtfulness into my day and the rest of my family made sure I knew I was loved and cared about as well.

So now it is the day after my birthday and I still feel ten feet tall because all my favorite people took time on my special day to let me know they love me-- and I love them too!

I am the worst about forgetting or mixing up my friends' birthdays but I'm going to try to do better because it feels so nice to be remembered, although I don't particularly expect people to remember, as I never do!

So happy unbirthday to all you (one or two) readers-- birthday or not, take some time to appreciate someone special soon; make someone feel like it's their birthday as soon and as often as you can!