But You Can Still Be Friends

Isn't it always the case that after you break up, the other party pulls it together and then you can't remember why you wanted to break up?  He gets off the couch, quits the fantasy football league, shuts off the TV, and finally starts the company that he kept talking about while you hung around offering encouragement...he loses ten pounds, he starts cooking, he goes dancing...basically he does all of the things that you had wished could happen while you were together, but he does them with someone else.

Houston is doing that to me a little bit right now.  I have been hanging around, waiting for Houston to come into its creative own, looking for signs of creative life.  Hints of it surfaced here and there, but still it has sometimes felt difficult to actually find people to do creative things with.

Last week, literally weeks before our departure, a new place opened for people to rent space and make things.  People close to me know that I have wanted to try this for sewing; every time I pack up my heavy machines that do not get daily use, I wonder why more us don't share these things.  I have even sketched out a rough idea for a business model.  But the constant moving has stopped me from actually going for it because I was terrified of having to leave it behind.  Anyway, I'm not bitter that someone else did it first; I'm happy it exists because it makes so much sense.  I'm just disappointed that it didn't happen two years ago, when I could be part of it.

Regardless, Houston, you are looking better already, and I'm sure it's not out of the question that I will be back.  Maybe we will make things together at some point in the future.  In the meantime, good luck to Houston Makerspace!

(I couldn't help but add the photo of this cool bus stop bench around the corner.)

A Wise Maker Said (Last Weekend On the Radio)

Last weekend I turned on the radio just in time to hear a snippet of a program to which I rarely listen, but my interest was piqued by the discussion.  The guest was an artist whose name is Ann Hamilton.  Someone asked her how being a maker (the title she prefers over artist) and a teacher and a parent inform each other, and also how she keeps the maker "alive with enough nourishment, how to not claw at the small amount of time/space in [her] head?"  And this question resonated with me, as I'm sure it does with many people who feel that they fight for bits of time in order to bring their ideas to life.

I don't know anything about this artist, so I have no idea what her work or her teaching are like, but her voice was calm and her response was soothing.  Just listening to her response made me feel instantly more relaxed about what I might be able to do in the coming days, weeks, years. I could feel my brow loosening and my shoulders unfolding as she responded to the question.

Backing Into the Day

My husband backs into every single parking space that he uses.  When we first met it was mysterious to me, and I won't lie, odd.  Over time I have become used to it and have ferreted out the reason: he was brainwashed by his former employer of ten years.  There are many things about that company that I did not appreciate, but on this particular matter, their intentions were good.

Apparently, backing into parking spaces increases the rates of safe driving (or should I say 'decreases the rate of accidents while driving'?).  The logic is that we are paying more attention to the matter at hand when we arrive at a location than we do when are when we are departing.  When we depart, we are already thinking about what will be next after leaving the parking lot.  In other words, while we are driving in reverse, our minds are on other things.  Thus, accidents.

I have a habit of preparing for my next day as much as I can the night before.  Mostly it is a leftover habit from when I had to wake up outrageously early in the mornings for work; I tried to pack items I would need for the day and leave them by the door, or place items that I was likely to forget with items that I couldn't possibly leave without (i.e. put the book that I was likely to forget next the keys that I was physically unable to leave without). Planning outfits the night before, or packing lunches the night before, produces this same effect.  We try to dummy-proof our morning in order to maximize precious minutes.

I find that I am happiest when I do the same thing as a mom; it turns out that it is the best way to steal time in which to work on non-mom projects.  While I do not often have to leave the house early, I do still need to maximize hands-free and baby-free minutes.  So I do things like putting out my breakfast cereal bowl, pre-filled, and preparing the baby's morning bottle and diaper bag, before I go to bed.  It's not rocket science, nor is it a new technique.  The only innovation is that I now refer to it as backing into my day, which also has helped my husband understand these habits not as something neurotic and silly, but something that makes all of us have a smoother, more pleasant morning.

Backing into my day is one life strategy which allowed me to finish knitting a vest this week for my son, luckily while it still fits him.

2014

It is New Year's Eve, a holiday that I adore.  I'm a new-year super-geek.  Even home with only a sleeping five-month-old and a glass of champagne, missing my husband and feeling a smidge lonely, I still love the new year.  It is a holiday of closure but also possibilities, and I especially love possibilities. Everything is all fresh and tidy and optimistic again.  A new year feels like a free pass to try and do things better this time, even if it wasn't great last time.

Doing It Myself (But Not Really)

There have been some big developments recently.  Last weekend was a big weekend in fact, but Sunday was especially noteworthy.  I had been home alone at that time for nine days in a row, and it has been intense and challenging.

One thing that happened was that I carved out enough time to knit four rows of a baby blanket that I started making soon after I learned that I was pregnant.  I swear it will be finished before his one year birthday.  It has to be or it won't be big enough to cover him after it's finished. Even a few rows a day at this point will get me there.

Another big event was when I took the baby for a walk in the stroller and we entered a coffee house so I could buy some tea and a croissant.  He did not cry.  He cried prior to our arrival and he cried soon after our departure, but I blame the unrelenting Texas heat for that. I give the baby credit for allowing me to get my treats without interfering with the quiet environment enjoyed by the other patrons.

Last weekend I also bathed the baby by myself, with no other person present in the house.  This also probably sounds insignificant unless you have ever held a newborn and understand how unpredictably their heads and limbs thrash about.  He is getting stronger by the hour and and extremely close to being able to hold his head up, but holding him in water without backup hands still intimidates me.

Slow Down to Go Faster

It turns out that babies cannot be rushed.  Especially ours, but my guess is probably most if not all.

As I mentioned in a previous post, our son does not eat quickly.  He nurses in a stop-and-go fashion, and so far any attempts on my part to alter his speed result in retribution when it is time to go down for the post-meal nap. In short, it is best to not separate him from the food source before he is ready, even if he is playing with his food.  This is probably common baby sense, but since I had no baby sense prior to this year, it was news to me.

Here are some other things I've learned this month about being home with an infant:

• Most parents do at least one thing while home alone with their infant that goes against pediatrician recommendations (which is one very good reason to try not to judge other people's parenting). Usually the illicit things parents are doing while home with their baby are related to the procurement of sleep.
• Digestion is everything. Also, digestion is profoundly linked to sleep.  Giving up too early on the burping, or skipping it if the baby looks sleepy, in order to get to the nap sooner, can have serious repercussions involving spit-up and sleep loss.
• An entire industry of products and services has grown up around trying to get your baby to sleep in the crib. Your baby will sleep happily anywhere but the crib.
• Sucking boogers out of your baby's nose using a glorified overpriced filtered straw is more fun than it sounds.
• Amazon Prime is worth it.
• You can order Jelly Bellys on Amazon, along with any other items which may or may not help you survive the first months of caring for a baby.

In the meantime, instead of trying to speed up the baby, I'm slowing down my pace. My goals for these days have become modest, if not skimpy.  They involve knitting a row instead of knitting for an hour or going for a walk instead of going for a run.

It's hard to let go but also nice sometimes to sit still with a snuggly, sleepy baby.

Third Trimester: Monitoring and Adjusting Accordingly

I have dropped some balls during the last couple of months.  If my husband was here, he would very kindly tell me that it is not true; he doesn't like to hear me critical of my own accomplishments (or lack thereof).

But here I am, deep into my third trimester, and still so much unfinished business!  After our period of extended waiting came to an abrupt end, my husband's few days in the Gulf of Mexico in May turned into three weeks, followed by forty-eight hours at home, and now over a month in Indonesia, with the return date still fuzzy but possibly occurring in mid-July.  All of that is helpful from a financial point of view, but less so from a physical and sometimes emotional point of view.  Who knew that the end of pregnancy was so tricky?  Obviously lots of people, but not me; I can't say that I had a full understanding.  Seeing other people do something, and then doing it oneself are two very different animals.

I have had many kind offers of assistance, and it's not that any particular one thing is impossible, yet.  But everything is just slower and clumsier.  I have only one speed, and it is not the one to which I am accustomed.  It takes longer to get dressed and get organized.  I have to take breaks and put my feet up a lot, otherwise I morph into Shrek from the hips to my toes; it seems I'm one of the lucky ones who experiences edema (significant swelling of the legs and feet).  These are small things and I am grateful to not have other more severe concerns, but these things also mean that my high hopes for getting lots done before this little guy comes into the world have been edited to a more moderate altitude.

I was not a particularly gifted teacher.  Most of us that have tried teaching are not.  Like any profession, many of us were fine, having some good days, occasional great days, some bad days and lots of average days in the middle.  Lesson planning was not an area of strength for me, but on the other hand, I was usually adept at changing the course of the lesson on the fly if I could see that the students were not with me.  The education term for this technique was 'monitor and adjust' and it was something that came naturally to me from the beginning.  What's funny to me now is how much I need that skill in my daily non-teaching life.

We have to monitor our home life and adjust plans regularly, as the course of my husband's career takes unexpected turns.  I have had to monitor the impact of all of that on my own goals and adjust my decisions accordingly.  And this year, we have had to monitor our expectations for happiness, togetherness, parenthood, and financial health and adjust appropriately.  The outcomes and structure of the next couple of years are still fuzzy, but our emotional health so far remains firmly intact.  Luckily this feels like a winning adjustment.

In the meantime, some of my other activities have been monitored and largely forsaken as a result of adjusting to the limitations of late pregnancy.  One example is shaving.  Sorry if this is T.M.I. to any male readers out there, but how would you like to shave your face if you couldn't reach it or see it?  I haven't given up all the way, but I can tell that my days are numbered.  Another activity is cleaning the house...it still happens, but very gradually, in stages.  Sitting at the dinner table or in a restaurant for very long is also getting very uncomfortable.  According to the medical people in my life, when I'm sitting up with my feet on the floor, my baby, bless his sweet soul, is cutting off the blood supply that is trying to flow back up from my legs to my heart, which is what causes the extreme Shrek-style foot and ankle swelling.  Traveling is definitively out these days, as is sitting in the sun, which also triggers the swelling switch.  

One more activity has had to be adjusted, but not necessarily just because of the pregnancy...I have slowed down a little on the bread and cooking goals for the year (I was aiming for one new loaf a week and one new recipe a week).  Turns out that being home alone with a lot of baked goods and cooked food just leads to me eating more than I should and to running out of room in the freezer.  I'm still cooking, but I just had to slow it down and not worry about it for a bit while I caught up.  Now that things are kind of caught up, it might be time to start cooking again to make a supply of meals for when we first bring the baby home.

So have I dropped some balls, or just made some appropriate adjustments?  Not sure.  But I can say that now that I'm finally putting together the nursery, there are some sewing projects for the baby that are behind schedule.  Will they get finished?  I don't know.  If they don't, I'm sure the baby and I will both adjust accordingly.

Big Girl Pants: Conclusion

I recently wrote about having accepted a position as a relocation consultant.  I'm not going to lie; I had reservations from the beginning.  But it's always flattering to be offered a job, and it did not feel appropriate to decline while my husband was between contracts.  I felt obligated, and also curious, but not particularly confident or excited about how the position would fit into my life.

That was back in late January.  Fast forward to April and now I'm sure that this position is not the way I want to move forward.  I fought urges to quit (which occurred almost immediately and then continuously), but kept at it long enough to realize that while parts of it are quite easy, it still wasn't right.  At the same time I learned some important things about what I do and don't want to be spending time on right now.

Sunday Cooking

I did not help my mom in the kitchen very much while I was growing up, unless you count making my own school lunches and learning how to make certain foods that I wanted to eat over and over again, like mashed potatoes and chocolate chip cookies.

So when I was living alone as a younger adult, I soon realized that I didn't know how to cook real food.  Recipes had mysterious ingredients in them, like "stock", and unclear commands, like "cut the butter into the flour".  Obviously I avoided those recipes until I had made all of the other ones with easier instructions.  I even tried once to make soup not only without stock, but also without onions.  I have never liked raw onion, and I hadn't yet realized not only that cooked onion completely different than raw onion, but also that cooking an onion is the beginning of almost everything.

I made a lot of gourmet grilled cheese with tomato soup from a box and relied upon Amy's Organics frozen meals for my lunches at work.  I ate out a lot.  I was not unusual among my peers in this, but I know my parents were confused.  They knew that I should have been on a budget, so my habit of eating out frequently seemed strange to them.  But, that's what we did; as entertainment, as a vehicle for socializing, as a way to feel grown-up, and probably because suddenly delicious food was quite hip.

Big Girl Pants (Not the Maternity Kind)

People have been asking me how my new job is going.  I find myself not wanting to talk about it, for a variety of reasons.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.  Some of my initial reactions have been quite negative, but since I have a history of feeling that way when faced with a new job in a new field, I have been trying to fight those feelings.  And, since it is not full-time and I have not yet completed very much paid work, I have been resisting the urge to say terrible things about it.  The lulls in the schedule have also provided welcome moments for me to step back, take breaks to do something else when I have wanted to run screaming in the other direction.

I Love Carbs

I have written in the past about how irked I am by the Paleo diet trend.  It seems unsustainable, extreme and controlling, several qualities that do not feel comfortable in my food life.  I should care what other people are up to, but for some reason the Paleo thing gets to me.  Also, I just really love bread and potatoes, so even if the math added up on the Paleo diet, I could still see myself living with the risks of flour, just as people now openly encourage pregnant women to go ahead and have that occasional glass  of wine.

In fact, this year one of my goals is very flour-focused.  After years of hemming and hawing about wanting to make bread after one or two long-ago failed attempts, I have finally made some progress.  I have successfully caused dough to rise, and navigated my way around a packet of yeast.

For my weekly attempts in the beginning of the year, I stuck with one basic white/wheat yeast bread recipe and repeated it several times until it became more comfortable.  But this week, I have cleared a new hurdle: the soft pretzel.

Resolve

We are three weeks into the new year.  Into our resolutions, goals, promises and lists.  Which means that many people, myself included, have likely reached the feeling of discomfort that occurs from venturing into unknown territory and not feeling great about the results.  Suddenly we wonder if the goal was silly, or if we are not good enough, or if we have wasted our time.  And very often, we slink away to lick our wounds, letting the new goal slide off the table, no harm done.  But why do we feel uncomfortable?  And how do we build that bridge between old familiar skills and new desired expertise?

I have so far been essentially meeting the weekly goals I have set for myself, with some minor deadline tweaking, and with hints of the aforementioned disappointment.  For example, since one of my goals is to learn to bake bread, I am working to accomplish it by baking one loaf per week.  The first loaf I made went mostly according to the recipe and I was tickled when the dough actually rose, just as the recipe suggested it would.  I did, however, forget to add salt.  So, it looked nice, but tasted less than fabulous.  Then last week, I made the dough on time, but it turned out that there was no time to finish the baking process until today.  Since I'm within one day, I will still count it for last week's loaf.  And I am still required to make one this week.  So...progress, but definitely no artisanal bread just yet.  Obviously.  What we forget is that in the beginning, everything feels hard.  We have adult, gourmet expectations, but our skills always begin as elementary.  Time and patience are required.  This is not surprising, but it is easier said than managed.

When I Started Writing This Post, It Was Still 2012

But now 2012 is over, unbelievably.  Back when I started writing this, a few morsels of 2012 remained with which people could quit smoking, get skinny, top off the 401k, be better neighbors, or whatever it was they started working on last January.  And then it was over.  

I've missed writing my blog, and feel bad about my no-warning disappearance.  I have reasons for my lapse, but who cares about that.  I'm back and what's important is that this is my favorite time of year.  I love making the lists, cleaning out the cobwebs, and just generally trying to do a better job doing life.  So it seems like the right time to get back on the blog horse.

Before launching into this year's list of goals and plans, it seems wise to review my performance from last year:

Pursue Happiness

A program on the radio that I've listened to recently featured several TED presentations related to happiness.  One of the speakers, Barry Schwartz, concluded that "the secret to happiness is lowering expectations."  Not a romantic notion, but difficult to refute, as I happily snuggle further into a city that I thought I would hate.  Another speaker featured on that same program  concluded that too much choice increases dissatisfaction and also increases paralysis.  My husband and I can support this theory; while we have long appreciated options presented by his work, we have also suspected that the buffet of possibilities before us made our heads spin and sometimes threw up distraction barriers as we labored to make a more definitive life plan.

However, whatever the methodology, I am thrilled to report happiness.  Inside my gut, bubbling in my heart, leaking out onto my face regularly.  We have made lists, done comparisons, laughed and cried and imagined, and finally, decided not to move home to Minnesota.  Decided to remain here, in Houston, in order to prevent having to be separated while he is at work.  Making a hard decision like that was tricky enough, but the the truth is that my effervescent fountain of happy welled up from what followed, as we certified the first decision with a concrete second one: I fell in love with, and we are in the process of buying, my first house.

More Can, Less Can't

A few years ago, I included the goal "More 'can', less 'can't" in my list of New Year's resolutions.  I felt that I had been saying "can't" a lot over the years; that I had not been imaginative enough in finding solutions to feel happier and more fulfilled.  This feeling was compounded by the third party in my marriage: my husband's company, which was fully in control of where we would live and for long.  A feeling of powerlessness permeated our efforts to make major decisions and to plan our lives.  Intricately linked to that was my slowly-dawning realization that my professional path would be forever and greatly altered each time we moved for my husband's work.

The minor victory of having been partially in control of our move out of New Orleans left me wanting more of that feeling.  Being able to go back to school around that time to learn how clothes are made then increased it.  And so, more "can" trickled in.

During the first couple of weeks in Calgary, sitting on the floor while we waited for our moving truck to bring our belongings, we wondered aloud what would happen if we left the company and had to get back to the U.S. without their assistance.  Again, "can't" snuck in.  We said "No way, that won't happen."  I said, "Whatever happens, I'm not moving us out of here.  I've had it with the moving.  Someone else will have to do it.  Surely any job you have next would offer a moving benefit anyway, right?"