Sticks and Stars

Can I be pathetic for just a minute?

I am in…like.

I’ve sort of met someone.

And I can’t tell you how embarrassingly dear diary I feel to be smiling as I write this and trying not to sigh and stare dreamily off into space.

We had lunch on Friday, sat by a waterfall and discussed, among other things, cross-country travels, our families, string theory, nonprofit funding structures, web trends, Star Trek.

Smiled a lot.

I’m still smiling, in fact.

On Friday night we stayed up talking until almost 3am.

The morons who manage the apartment complex where I live changed the laundry room lock but neglected to give anyone the key, so all my jeans wound up being held hostage in the laundry room. As a result I had to wear a skirt to work on Friday, and since I was in no mood for massive deforestation, I wore my knee boots. I didn’t mind so much because the boot are hot and transfer some of that hotness to me when I wear them and indeed, it was the right choice as he complimented them no fewer than three times and commented on my own hotness at least once.

It’s true. I am hot.

It’s been years and years since I’ve felt like this, this embarrassingly sappy level of infatuation. I forgot the anxiety that goes along with it, how I can’t sleep and feel constantly nauseous. Saturday morning I woke to this incredible feeling of anxiety of tension and it took me a minute to remember that I’m feeling this way as a result of something that’s also making me smile like an idiot. A nice change, let me tell you, because there have been no shortage of times in the past year where the anxiety and tension was the result of nothing nearly so pleasant.

We are planning to have lunch again on Monday and have a “real” date next weekend (if I can find a babysitter — sigh). I love that we work close enough that we can have lunch. No babysitter necessary and I don’t have to worry about putting out.

I love this website for the photos if nothing else. I could never aspire to such cool and pretty lunches but a girl can drool. (Scroll down for some better photos than the one currently on top…like this one.)

I held the first meeting of my mama’s writing group tonight. About five minutes after my babysitter was supposed to show up I got a bad feeling and checked my cell phone to discover that, sure enough, she canceled on me. And not only did she cancel on me, but she let me know she won’t be able to babysit anymore because she needs time to get ready to move. But she wishes the boys and I well.

[Insert many, many expletives.]

So I packed up the boys and drove across town, grumbling all the way, seriously considering just scrapping the whole thing.

I’m so glad I didn’t though. Half of the group showed (as expected) and they were so excited and now I’m excited too. I think it will be a good group. And, best of all, the women who showed up were all single mothers, and one of them even brought her four year old son (who got along famously with my four year old son) and we decided that all future meetings will be child-inclusive, which is particularly awesome for those of us whose [insert expletives] babysitter just quit today. It turned out that they were all attachment parents too, which I never would have guessed by looking at them (I always expect AP mamas to be young, younger than me for some reason). I’m way over needing to only associate with parents who share my parenting ideals, but it was nice to have a conversation about how we felt sad and a little guilty when our little ones weaned themselves at the tender age of two.

And I must say that I loved the little four year old. I don’t know about four year old girls (although I suspect that good-quiet-young-lady conditioning hasn’t quite set in yet), but four year old boys can be pretty rambunctious. I’m very used to my four year old joining the yelling, flailing, bumping, pushing, screaming, running herd when such a herd (even in the form of just one other four year old boy) is present. And even though they’re just energetic four year olds, the level of activity can sometimes feel quite violent. Indeed, last night’s herd of (two) four year olds was not calm or quiet. But instead of violently running around hitting things, they rolled on the floor while having a tickle fight and screamed with laughter. Let me tell you, that was the sweetest rambunctiousness I’ve ever seen.

Our writing group is going to meet every two weeks and we are each expected to produce every two weeks. People are welcome to work on their own projects but I’ll also come up with writing prompts for those who haven’t decided on something. We are all working toward publication (low level publication) and we all identified accountability as our biggest downfall. Participation in the group is required and our first rule of feedback is be gentle. We talked a lot about blogging and now everyone wants to start a blog (woohoo! I am all about spreading the blog love!).

This group feels very good to me. I don’t feel inspired and/or driven to write, but I do feel ready to write and excited to receive feedback and very excited to be part of yet another group of creative women. I particularly love that I’ve built all this creativity into my life but that I’ve managed to slink around the hardest part, which is actually finding motivation to do it. Now I have others to keep kicking my butt into gear!

I did brave the farmers’ market and my four year old was so well behaved that I think I might make this our Sunday ritual…until we go bankrupt anyway. This time I was “wise” enough to come equipped with both cash and carrying materials and so we left with two pints of raspberries (soon to become raspberry muffins), a half gallon of Rockridge Orchards apple cider (I am such a sucker for apple cider), three Rococoa cookies (truly the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever eaten), and a cup of fresh squeezed lemonade (for my four year old who got very thirsty). I managed to resist the pastas and salmon (although I did allow myself to look and drool for a bit), as well as the plethora of baked goods. I didn’t mean to be strong with regards to the baked goods, I fully intended to sample this pastry berry thing that had been waving me over, but I got distracted and was past it before I could whip out my wallet and the momentum of the stroller did not let me turn back.

Every time I do something like this and it goes well, I feel such a sense of hope. It’s no secret that one of my biggest frustrations with being the sole parent of two small children is that I can’t do so many things. Even small things, like going to the grocery store or the library, are such a challenge. I try to tell myself that they will eventually get older and then we will be able to have all kinds of adventures, but sometimes it’s hard to see so far in the future and I feel like I will forever be weighted down by this cumbersome (if adorable) baggage. My babysitter moves out of state at the end of the month and although I finally forced myself to start looking for babysitters, I can’t find anyone who will accept less than twice what I was paying her. Discretionary income or not, I just can’t afford to pay $14 an hour for a babysitter, which leaves my only option that of exclusively doing things that are kid/family friendly…which aren’t always the top of my desired to do list.

I’m trying hard to make parent friends. I posted an ad to craigslist looking for other non-mainstream parents and I did actually meet one woman who seemed pretty cool, although a follow up date has been a bit more of a challenge to arrange. And god, I am just so bad at this friend making business. I also started a writing group for mamas (the first meeting of which is this Thursday) but from our discussion so far, the women in this group are mostly much older than me and, once again, aren’t going to be terribly interested in hanging out with the toddler/preschool set. I am holding out hope that when the small UU congregation not far away resumes services after their summer hiatus, we will manage to attend and possibly meet other families, and my four year old starts Head Start in the fall, which might provide social opportunities as well. I see tons of parents in this city, tons of mamas who look like they could be cool (by my entirely subjective definition of the word), so I know the possibility exists. I just have to keep trying.

Today my little one let me sleep until the unheard of hour of 8:00am. Considering that we usually rise and shine and the decidedly unshiny hour of 5:00am, this was like luxuriously sleeping half the day away. I couldn’t tell what time it was when we woke up but I knew it was unusually late because I didn’t feel absolutely pinned-to-the-bed exhausted. Such a treat, let me tell you!

Then I decided to say a hearty “fuck you” to my heat induced baking prohibition and baked these muffins with fresh raspberries. As the reviews suggest, the sugar definitely needs to be doubled, which results in mildly sweet muffins that are full of tart raspberry flavor. They are so good that there are only six four two of the original dozen left. Clearly I need to acquire more raspberries. Or learn some self-control…but I’m leaning toward the raspberries. Hmm…do I dare brave the crowded farmers’ market with both one and four year old in tow? I am deeply tempted.

Now I’m spending the evening reacquainting myself with my four year old as I always do when he returns home. I’m so happy when he comes back, but damn these transition days are hard. For a while he feels like a child I barely know, one I once knew a long time ago but haven’t seen in years. I feel a little shy and awkward and I don’t quite know what to say, but he feels good in my arms, so good that I just want to squeeze and squeeze.

It’s 9:30 and I’m done with my work for the day. Hell, it was 9:05 and I was done with my work for the day, but I amused myself by poking around that crazy internet for 25 minutes. Now, however, I’m bored with the internet and wishing I could find something else to do. Sadly, it would look too blatant for me to pull out my book and start reading, too damn many people walk past my cubicle.

I’m rereading the entire Harry Potter series in preparation for the new book’s arrival the weekend after next. I do this every time the next book comes out but I usually start earlier (or have more reading time or something) because there’s no way I’m going to get them all read in time. That’s okay, I haven’t read any of them fewer than two times, so I think I’m probably ready regardless. I’m 190th in line at the library (and there are over 1300 holds so far) but it turns out that I don’t need to wait after all because a very kind friend purchased the book for me and so on Saturday, July 21st, I will take my four year old on a ferry ride back to his dad’s and then I will return home just in time to pick up my very own copy waiting at my mailbox. I will put my one year old down for his morning nap and then I will read, read, read. They made an excellent choice for release dates this year, timing it to perfectly coincide with my custody schedule.

On to a new subject though….let’s say you went out on a date with someone and thought the date went reasonably well and were interested in a second date. Let’s also say that your date tells you she’s not going to be available for a couple weeks and that her schedule is very limited in general. So you wait the requested couple of weeks and then call her but she doesn’t return your call. You send her a text message telling her you miss her, but she doesn’t return your text message. So you call her again…and again…and again and she still never calls you back. And you send her text messages telling her you miss her every night, but again, you never get a response. Eventually you send her a message telling her you love her and STILL, no response. At what point do you finally fucking give up already?!? And if you decide not to give up, what exactly is your brain telling you? That she must have somehow missed all of your previous voice and text messages? That she’s just playing hard to get? That stalking behavior is actually endearing?

I worked out this morning for the first time since my surgery and man, was I overdue. Prior to that I had worked out for about a week but that was after a hiatus of…jeez, a couple months I guess. I’m hoping that I can get back on track because it makes such a huge difference to my energy level, especially on days when I didn’t get enough sleep the previous night, which is pretty much every day. I was running for the bus yesterday afternoon (which I ultimately missed) and I definitely noticed a difference from previous times of running for the bus. It’s amazing how much difference a couple months of not working out can make.

Sleep and my little one seem to be finding each other a little more easily (no thanks to anything I’ve done). I did install curtains in my bedroom and hopefully the darkness will help convince him that it’s time to sleep (and that it’s not time to get up when he wakes to the 5am morning sun streaming in our window). I’ve been meaning to start a nice consistent bedtime ritual for him in order to help calm him for sleep and trigger all the appropriate “fall asleep, damn it!” cues, but the last two nights have included events that precluded such an effort, so maybe tonight will be a good time to start. I’m not really sure what to include in such a ritual since baths are out of the question (he’s terrified of water — although I suppose that might traumatize him to sleep) and he doesn’t really care for books yet. Maybe a warm sponge bath and some cuddling and rocking time? I don’t know. We’ll play it by ear.

But the real reason I wanted to post this morning is to tell you about the awesome, awesome drawing group I attended last night. I almost didn’t get to go. First my babysitter canceled on me and then the babysitter the group coordinator lined up canceled. But then my lovely friend Kristin stepped into a phone booth, came out attired in sparkly purple tights, an obscenely short skirt and a shimmery cape, raced over to my house on her superscooter, and saved the day. And what’s more, she offered to rig herself up in this getup and save the day every week, which is such an awesome and amazing gift. I only hope she understands how much I really appreciate it, how I wish I could put like twenty layers of italics around that really, and how I hope that I can do something equally as awesome for her.

But so, the women’s drawing group. Oh no wait, the womyn’s drawing group…except that really, it should be wimmin. I guess they didn’t realize that womyn is the radical feminist singular, while wimmin is the radical feminist plural. That’s okay. We can’t all attempt graduate degrees in women’s studies…er…wimmin’s studies.*

Anyway, as I said, the group was so, so awesome. There were four of us and one woman modeled and the energy was incredible. I realized quickly that, much to my surprise, I had never done any formal figure drawing. I took pretty much every art class offered at my high school (pencil drawing, pen and ink, calligraphy, pottery, stained glass, painting, etc.) but I never had opportunity to take a figure drawing class. I’ve made my partners (and even a couple friends) pose for me while I sketched them, but the dynamic of drawing with a group of women, drawing another woman who has taken the step to make herself completely vulnerable for the rest of us and loving her for it, praising and celebrating her for it, god, it was so wonderful. When she stepped out of the bedroom trying to carefully place her hands in a way that would cover her but wouldn’t reveal that she was trying to cover herself, I felt tense with anxiety for her and I didn’t know where to look. But when she sat down and I opened my sketch book, it became instantly clear that the way I could show her the most respect and appreciation for this lovely gift she was giving us was to accept it and do my best with it. And so I drew. And drew and drew.

She started with fast poses where she’d switch every two or three minutes and my hand flew trying to grab some detail, trying to capture as quickly as possible. I felt such adrenaline and felt like such a fucking artist, sitting in this group of women all hunched over our pads, pencils/charcoals/pastels madly scrawling. Then she settled into a pose for about a half hour and I had a chance to really sketch, to really focus. By the end of that pose I was drained! I drew more, I sketched every pose, but my energy was spent. I felt excellent, I felt like I was on top of the world. I looked at the woman across from me whose face was smudged with charcoal dust and noticed that my own fingers were black from the soft leads in my pencils, previously pointed tips now soft and rounded with use.

It took me hours to fall asleep last night because I couldn’t stop thinking about it and every thought brought me back to that energy, that feeling of joy and expression and love for other women. My sketches were okay and, I was relieved to see, no better or worse than those done by the other women, but quality didn’t matter. I wasn’t there to demonstrate my artistic prowess, I was just there to draw, to stretch myself, to open myself to my creative energy and let it wash through me. And boy, did it ever.

I cannot wait to go back next week.

*I should be clear that while I am poking fun, I actually really like it when people fuck with language in that way. I absolutely believe that language defines what we are and are not able to think about, talk about, even conceive of, and that the de- and re-construction of words can shift our entire perception of the world around us. It’s a beautiful thing.

I just returned from a trip to the farmer’s market one neighborhood over and I must say that a) it’s a good thing I neglected to bring any cash, and b) it’s a good thing I also neglected to bring anything within which to transport as there were all too many vendors willing to accept plastic. As it was, I managed to drop almost $20 on a mixed half flat of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, as well as two pounds of Rainier cherries. The $20 was courtesy of WIC, which, if you’re quick enough to get there before they’re gone, provides, in the form of checks to the farmer’s market, a once a year opportunity to add actual produce to the otherwise recommended diet of all dairy all the time. Our WIC office gives $20 per child, so I have $40 with which to treat myself (literally) to the fruits of summer. Oh…and I guess my boys can have some too.

Of course, the WIC checks only cover produce (and herbs I think), which is why it was good that I didn’t bring cash because, my god, the artisanal cheeses! The smoked salmon! The fresh handmade pastas! The honeys! And don’t even get me started on the baked goods. As it was, I only limited myself to the berries and cherries because that was all I could balance atop my little one’s umbrella stroller. I could have happily added baby potatoes and mesclun and sweet onions and…well, you get the point.

I was not tempted by the beets, however. Does anyone actually eat those things?