Did I mention that there was a tyke revolution protesting all things slumber oriented last night? There was not nearly enough sleep.
Today held over an hour of hiking, an hour of cross stitch (alternative hand therapy since I flunked out of the hard core stuff thanks to a flare up), 25 minutes of paraffin hand dipping (see previous parenthetical), some reading, and approximately fifteen hours of eating.
Or so it seemed.
As far as my Thoreau-esque enlightenment from my long walk in the woods... didn't happen. I just walked. It was highly successful in other ways. I did not step in mule poop. I did not fall down. Little victories, baby.
Discernment: Cold hurts hands.
Discernment: Food and children are harmless only in tiny doses.
Reading: No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew it Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again and expect to see that abbreviated in further posts because I need a paraffin dip after just typing that monster. The book is also close to 800 pages long and almost 400 of those come after the title is finished.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
Day 2 - Study Leave, stress the Leave
When I said I would blog every day of my study leave I probably should have mentioned that I was about to embark upon three days in a cabin in a national park with my family. No internet access, or so I assume because I didn't want to bring my computer. Not even the new blazin' purple iPod nano.
Live and learn. (About the blog promise, not the joyful freedom from technology.)
I am transposing this from nearly illegible longhand two days after. (Note to self- Day 4 study leave: typed stupid notes from that stupid idea to blog every day.)
{At this point in my notes I wrote a sentence that made absolutely no sense. I think I may see a few of those. I'll be cutting this entry short and you should be thanking me}
{Two paragraphs later...}
... I roasted. I baked. I sauteed. I steamed. We gorged. We toasted. We cleared the table. I wondered what happened to my day.
Discernment: A month is too short.
Reading: McSweeney's again. Turns out I am reading the issue from Early Fall 2004.
Also finally picked up again No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again by Edgardo Vega Yunque
Live and learn. (About the blog promise, not the joyful freedom from technology.)
I am transposing this from nearly illegible longhand two days after. (Note to self- Day 4 study leave: typed stupid notes from that stupid idea to blog every day.)
{At this point in my notes I wrote a sentence that made absolutely no sense. I think I may see a few of those. I'll be cutting this entry short and you should be thanking me}
{Two paragraphs later...}
... I roasted. I baked. I sauteed. I steamed. We gorged. We toasted. We cleared the table. I wondered what happened to my day.
Discernment: A month is too short.
Reading: McSweeney's again. Turns out I am reading the issue from Early Fall 2004.
Also finally picked up again No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again by Edgardo Vega Yunque
Friday, January 02, 2009
Day 1 - Study Leave
Let's go back in time. Imagine a simpler time when all the world looked new. Think back... to yesterday.
I am on study leave for the month of January. Some people call these sabbaticals, but 31 days is not a sabbatical. Then again, most people never get a study leave or a sabbatical, so I am NOT complaining. It is my personal goal to either make everyone want a study leave and construct their lives to make that possible, OR to show the world that four day work weeks and early retirement are a better answer. We'll see.
When planning my time off, one of my goals was to blog... every day. Just a little. Just to share a bit of wisdom that day had to offer. I don't expect I'll get a study leave again so, at the very least, this month's blogging could be my souvenir of the experience. All good ideas.
But yesterday I did not blog. Let's not call this an omen, OK? Hence, the time travel back to yesterday.
January 1 - New Year's Day, my husband's birthday, first day of study leave. Isn't that a bit much for one day to have to be carrying around?
We began the day with a 5 family sleepover breakfast extravaganza at a friend's house. Discernment: bacon is good.
We ended the day with a birthday dinner at my mother's house.
Discernment: when other people cook, it is very good.
In typical fashion, I did two hours of work. Oh well.
But why did I NOT blog? Why did I betray my study goals on the very first day?
Discernment: Ricardo Montalban.
Hubby had been saving the Netflix of Star Trek's original series, episode 24 "Space Seed" guest starring Ricardo Montalban as Khan. At the end of the day I could blog or get my geek on. As if that is even a choice. Besides, it was his birthday.
Reading material for the day: old McSweeney's issue and a Burpee catalogue
I am on study leave for the month of January. Some people call these sabbaticals, but 31 days is not a sabbatical. Then again, most people never get a study leave or a sabbatical, so I am NOT complaining. It is my personal goal to either make everyone want a study leave and construct their lives to make that possible, OR to show the world that four day work weeks and early retirement are a better answer. We'll see.
When planning my time off, one of my goals was to blog... every day. Just a little. Just to share a bit of wisdom that day had to offer. I don't expect I'll get a study leave again so, at the very least, this month's blogging could be my souvenir of the experience. All good ideas.
But yesterday I did not blog. Let's not call this an omen, OK? Hence, the time travel back to yesterday.
January 1 - New Year's Day, my husband's birthday, first day of study leave. Isn't that a bit much for one day to have to be carrying around?
We began the day with a 5 family sleepover breakfast extravaganza at a friend's house. Discernment: bacon is good.
We ended the day with a birthday dinner at my mother's house.
Discernment: when other people cook, it is very good.
In typical fashion, I did two hours of work. Oh well.
But why did I NOT blog? Why did I betray my study goals on the very first day?
Discernment: Ricardo Montalban.
Hubby had been saving the Netflix of Star Trek's original series, episode 24 "Space Seed" guest starring Ricardo Montalban as Khan. At the end of the day I could blog or get my geek on. As if that is even a choice. Besides, it was his birthday.
Reading material for the day: old McSweeney's issue and a Burpee catalogue
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Return of the Claw
Watch your peanut M&M's. I've been released back into the wild by my hand doctor. He feels that I am healthy enough to forage for sustenance and care for my young outside the cage. This may be a week or two premature but then, he knows I am on steroids for the RA which means...
I CAN DO ANYTHING!! Except - remember anything for 5 minutes or get my internet connection up.
Sorry for the silence. My tech king is working on the internet problems. The steroids are working on getting my hand to move. And my muse is stirring from her late Fall hibernation just in time for the Solstice service.
Come on out and hang with us Sunday night at 6:00 PM for the First UU Solstice celebration. We will be observing the timeless equinoxian shifting from dark to light in that natty First UU/Rev. Alane fashion for which we are known. (Think ritual + band + Ukrainian soloist + good company. Wear your urban druid rock star outfit.) The service will be followed by a trip to the labyrinth in Northside. (Add comfy shoes and warm coat to previously described outfit.)
Hey, look at you! You are more centered, hip, and happy by having read this. Now fork over the M&M's. Mama has mouths to feed.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Fear, Agony, and Facebook
FEAR
Two kids in the Miles household - very different makes and models. A boy and a girl. An extrovert and an introvert. A TV addict and a lover of all things costume. (No, wait - there are three of us in the house that fit that costume affinity.) My point - they are different in almost every way, except...
Night terrors. Age 3 and one half onset of shrieking and howling in the night. And hers just began this week when, naturally, my lovely cousin finally agreed to come for a visit. After multiple nights of yowling, Lovely Cousin is now sleeping in empty house next door vacated by grandma who is now a nursing home resident and no I do not want to talk about my grief over that. What was I saying?
Oh yeah. Night terrors. Every night this week has been interrupted by a full body scream about bugs. It would be funny if she weren't sobbing, trembling, and shutting her little fists into balls. We bring her into our bed where she lies ramrod straight and deathly still but awake fearing that if she moves the bugs will get her. It makes me cry. It makes my lovely cousin cry. My husband is not crying. He says that his tear ducts have been welded shut by a lack of sleep. In hopefully unrelated news - she is composing amazing punk lyrics in her waking hours.
In our sleep-deprived ramblings my cousin and I have been discussing the nature of fear. Baby girl's terror aroused in my cousin her own deep fears: "She's going to get a raging fever and start vomiting and then we will all be sick by Friday." And also touched on mine: "What if this isn't a stage? What if her brain is wired in such a way that she is always fearful? How will my husband bear it because I WILL LEARN to sleep through it..."
I lead a rebuilding after divorce group. The night we talked about fear we were all stumped. In so many ways we have learned to reduce fear to anxiety in our lives. When faced with real fear we are caught off guard. This is one of the issues I teach in community grief workshops- fear is sublimated in our lives in so many ways that we are often ill-equipped to experience it when it inevitably comes. If I ever sleep again I will talk to my little punkin some more about fear.
AGONY
I am a one woman economic effort to keep physical therapists gainfully employed in 2008. I am now in hand therapy. Hand therapy looks tres Zen. We sit at little desks in a circle facing each other. Each patient removes whatever brace they have and we begin these small movements. I am slowly crumpling a towel. The patient on my right is gently rolling a ball six inches forward and back. The patient on my left is removing marbles from a giant blob of Silly Putty. It is so quiet and would be relaxing if...
WE WEREN'T ALL HOLDING BACK OUR SCREAMS!!!!
Do not fall. Do not dislocate fingers. Do not sprain your wrist. Do not break your fingers. Do not immobilize a non-broken finger when you have rheumatoid arthritis thus causing it to swell up like a big toe and barely move and no I do not want to talk about the myriad bad words that run through my mind when I try to chop vegetables. Hmmm. Lost my train of thought again.
Ah, yes, agony. There is a reason why so many of the torture scenes in spy movies involve fingers.
FACEBOOK
I just found the chat feature on facebook. Goodbye, cruel world - I will never surface again. In 40 minutes I traded parenting laughs with a congregant, invited a friend to church on Sunday, made a date to visit a graveyard in honor of a lost friend, and planned a Sunday service at the Charlottesville church.
I would write more but I need to go back on Facebook to find a cure for night terrors and a remedy for hand pain. While chatting on Facebook I may also talk a wee bit about the fact that sleep deprivation makes everything larger than life including the attractiveness of Hugh Laurie's stubble and the smell of curry lingering in my kitchen and the fear of going to sleep from which I now am suffering because I am tired of being jolted from my dreams of singing ska duets with Billy Ray Hatley on the White House lawn wearing footie pajamas with a feathered headdress awake into the eardrum piercing wails of my sobbing precious tot and no I do not want to talk about my grief that I have never sung a duet with Billy in waking life.
I wonder if he's on Facebook...
Two kids in the Miles household - very different makes and models. A boy and a girl. An extrovert and an introvert. A TV addict and a lover of all things costume. (No, wait - there are three of us in the house that fit that costume affinity.) My point - they are different in almost every way, except...
Night terrors. Age 3 and one half onset of shrieking and howling in the night. And hers just began this week when, naturally, my lovely cousin finally agreed to come for a visit. After multiple nights of yowling, Lovely Cousin is now sleeping in empty house next door vacated by grandma who is now a nursing home resident and no I do not want to talk about my grief over that. What was I saying?
Oh yeah. Night terrors. Every night this week has been interrupted by a full body scream about bugs. It would be funny if she weren't sobbing, trembling, and shutting her little fists into balls. We bring her into our bed where she lies ramrod straight and deathly still but awake fearing that if she moves the bugs will get her. It makes me cry. It makes my lovely cousin cry. My husband is not crying. He says that his tear ducts have been welded shut by a lack of sleep. In hopefully unrelated news - she is composing amazing punk lyrics in her waking hours.
In our sleep-deprived ramblings my cousin and I have been discussing the nature of fear. Baby girl's terror aroused in my cousin her own deep fears: "She's going to get a raging fever and start vomiting and then we will all be sick by Friday." And also touched on mine: "What if this isn't a stage? What if her brain is wired in such a way that she is always fearful? How will my husband bear it because I WILL LEARN to sleep through it..."
I lead a rebuilding after divorce group. The night we talked about fear we were all stumped. In so many ways we have learned to reduce fear to anxiety in our lives. When faced with real fear we are caught off guard. This is one of the issues I teach in community grief workshops- fear is sublimated in our lives in so many ways that we are often ill-equipped to experience it when it inevitably comes. If I ever sleep again I will talk to my little punkin some more about fear.
AGONY
I am a one woman economic effort to keep physical therapists gainfully employed in 2008. I am now in hand therapy. Hand therapy looks tres Zen. We sit at little desks in a circle facing each other. Each patient removes whatever brace they have and we begin these small movements. I am slowly crumpling a towel. The patient on my right is gently rolling a ball six inches forward and back. The patient on my left is removing marbles from a giant blob of Silly Putty. It is so quiet and would be relaxing if...
WE WEREN'T ALL HOLDING BACK OUR SCREAMS!!!!
Do not fall. Do not dislocate fingers. Do not sprain your wrist. Do not break your fingers. Do not immobilize a non-broken finger when you have rheumatoid arthritis thus causing it to swell up like a big toe and barely move and no I do not want to talk about the myriad bad words that run through my mind when I try to chop vegetables. Hmmm. Lost my train of thought again.
Ah, yes, agony. There is a reason why so many of the torture scenes in spy movies involve fingers.
I just found the chat feature on facebook. Goodbye, cruel world - I will never surface again. In 40 minutes I traded parenting laughs with a congregant, invited a friend to church on Sunday, made a date to visit a graveyard in honor of a lost friend, and planned a Sunday service at the Charlottesville church.
I would write more but I need to go back on Facebook to find a cure for night terrors and a remedy for hand pain. While chatting on Facebook I may also talk a wee bit about the fact that sleep deprivation makes everything larger than life including the attractiveness of Hugh Laurie's stubble and the smell of curry lingering in my kitchen and the fear of going to sleep from which I now am suffering because I am tired of being jolted from my dreams of singing ska duets with Billy Ray Hatley on the White House lawn wearing footie pajamas with a feathered headdress awake into the eardrum piercing wails of my sobbing precious tot and no I do not want to talk about my grief that I have never sung a duet with Billy in waking life.
I wonder if he's on Facebook...
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