Her Bad Mother

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Decade, Plus One

September 22, 1996

Every year, more amazing than the last.
Ever more amazing years to come.
You, me, we three, we three plus.
Us.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Getting The Funk Out

I'm in a blogging funk.

I keep posting because I need to keep writing, keep talking, but I'm finding it difficult. And I'm finding it even more difficult to venture beyond the confines of my virtual quarters and be neighbourly and friendly and chatty. I wander out into the neighbourhood and hear the chatter and the camaraderie and the friendly debate and am torn between wanting to jump in and wanting to run inside and draw the curtains. I run inside and draw the curtains. I haven't the energy to chat or discuss or pat shoulders. I run back inside and draw curtains and feel guilty.

It's not like there's anything seriously wrong. I've had the flu, sure, and that gets one down. But I've not been facing any real trials, any life-changing challenges. My challenges and trials have been more or less mundane. The thing of it is, I can't write about them.

That conflict with my mom - that I have not been able to write about - was never fully addressed. We called a truce, because my sister is struggling with some terrible challenges - a heartbreaking struggle that I cannot write about - but it remains only a truce. My husband and I are trying to make a decision about a big change in our lives, but we are at loggerheads about how to proceed - and I cannot write about it. Our struggle to negotiate our disagreements on this issue (that I cannot write about) is frustrating me, and I cannot write about that frustration. (Why do we not know how to disagree? Why do we not know how to fight? Does anyone know?)

Blah, blah, blah.

I cannot write about those things, so I write about other things. Britney, physics, the potty (which, for the record, has seen no more action. Wonderbaby insists upon visiting it and sitting on it, bare-assed, with sunglasses, but has not repeated the tinkle of the other day); a review here and there, a lot of mindless gossip - these are easy things to write about. But those posts are just me, talking to myself, chattering away so that I won't feel the weight of heavier things bearing upon my heart. And I can only sustain that chatter on my own, alone, here in my corner. I can't bring it out into the community, because I simply can't just chatter in this community. You all make me talk. Which is good, but. Right now, I don't want to talk.

Does that make sense?

Anyway.

There are a couple of things that I can't and don't want to avoid talking about right now. Breastfeeding, for one. I haven't weighed in on the discussions about Facebook and Bill Maher because - in addition to everything I've said above - the whole thing just makes me mad. There's nothing to argue about. Breastfeeding is natural. Boobs aren't dirty. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be shunned. It's like arguing over whether the Taliban maybe had a point about oppressing women - it's stupid and backward and I thought that we were, as a culture, better than that, or at least, getting better. I was wrong.

So I haven't wanted to discuss it. All I want to say is this: fuck you, Facebook. You too, Bill Maher.

These friends - among many others that I cannot list here, not least because I haven't read them all yet, for reasons noted above - are discussing it more civilly. This friend went so far as to chat with a representative of Facebook. (Facebook, not surprisingly, doesn't really have a satisfactory response. But at least he tried, and was civil. I would have just yelled at them.)


Behold the boob. It is good. If you don't like it, fuck off.

The other thing that I want and need to say is this: even through the fog of all this funk, you are all, always, bright shining lights. The amount of support you have shown for my nephew, and for my efforts to do something, anything, to make a difference in his short life, fills my heart to bursting. Whether you've pledged my walk, or signed up to walk with me, or have staked a duck and a vibrator on raising money for the cause - you've all done so much to sustain my faith that, despite Facebook and Bill Maher and all the many, many other tards out there, the world is full of good.

I'll find some way to thank you all. I really will. Until then: thank you. THANK YOU.

You touch our hearts.

You can still pledge Tanner's Walk, and you are more than welcome to join in if you live in or around Toronto (e-mail me or leave your e-mail for more info). And if you play Kristen's dirty duck auction, you can support the cause and get titillated, all at once. And Facebook need never know.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Potty On

This morning, Wonderbaby tugged on my arm as I lay on the sofa, sniffling and coughing and muttering softly about the evil of Bill Maher and of viruses in general. She tugged on my arm, and said, potty. Pee-pee. Go potty.

Potty?

Potty.

And so I dragged myself out from under the covers, and took her by the hand, and - asking, all the way, are you sure? you want the potty? - pulled out the little green Boon Potty Bench that we had tucked away for the toilet training that we felt sure wouldn't begin until she was two, and I helped her unlatched her diaper, and she sat her little round bottom upon the seat, and she tinkled.

And then she asked for her sunglasses, which I fetched, and she put them on. And then she tinkled some more.

And then she asked for paper, and I helped her dab her parts, and then we tossed the paper in the toilet, and we washed our hands. Then we went back downstairs and I took some more Tylenol and crawled back under the covers on the sofa and thought, what the f*ck just happened?

I considered the possibility that I'd dreamt it, or that it was an hallucination induced by the cocktail of Neo Citran and Tylenol that I've been taking - the sunglasses were, I thought, a particularly fantastical detail - but then I checked my camera:




I must leave the bathroom door open a LOT.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

The Physics of Domesticity

The Second Law of Domestic Dynamics - the Law of Parental Entropy - states that one's children will be demanding in inverse proportion to one's level of energy. Which is to say, the slower the parent moves, the faster moves the child, from which it follows that if one has flu, the rate at which one's toddler speeds around the house (and, correspondingly, the decibel level of the noise that said toddler produces) increases in opposing relation to one's general wellness (or, alternative, in direct relation to one's fever and/or one's headache and/or the degree of one's sinus congestion.)

The First Law of Domestic Dynamics - the Law of Spousal Energy - states that the degree of bickering over small matters in the quotidien cycle of a marriage increases in direct relation to the difference in levels of energy between spouses. This is to say that under conditions wherein one spouse has a headache (or, say, a bout of flu from which derives a headache) and the other does not, the latter will be more inclined to disagree with anything said by the former, such that petty bickering escalates proportionate to the intensity of the former's headache.

These laws derive from the hypothesis, suggested by thermodynamics, that that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle in the maintenance of the domestic sphere is available energy.

All of which is to say - I'm physically and emotionally exhausted from sinus congestion and headache and less tangible irritants pertaining to the occasional difficulty of navigating life with a partner and need to crawl under the covers for, like, days and so have nothing to offer by way of a blog post.

So if you're looking for actual blog content, you should scroll back to previous posts. You want heart strings and a challenge - check this post. You want a take on pop culture skewed by hormones and maternal empathy - check this one.

Otherwise, you'll just have to wait a day or two until my head stops hurting.

The view from here.