i guess this is it, 2011. maybe.

maybe more mental powers! maybe not.

i found typos in my previous entry. so sad. maybe now that i am succumbing to a seasonal cold, i will be smarter. yeah.

the wife's mom said something i am currently trying to remember because it connects to something i wanted to say... oh well. i shared in this great in-between moment at the wife's on boxing day where us bees napped and the wife's mom took batdog out to the shopping place and the wife made soup while listening to bob marley. it was so quiet. the wife and i later agreed it was an awesome point in all the excess. we had a post-craziness discuss today where we acknowledged our relationship and its benefits.

the dumpling and i (we are considering renaming her 'the pork chop') went on a walk today with her new sleigh. it's the cutest little baby sleigh. well, she might make it cuter. we were able to make two trips to the recycling and mail a letter to our friend field-in-bloom. these are my days and i am glad to get back to them. i even like my stack of dishes. how weird is that?

things that have been accomplished over the holidays:

- i learned how to play craps (and lost five dollars of mrs awesome's)

- i visited my own family, a brother of the queen's, the wife (and her family), an old friend from high school, an old friend from university, a sweet friend with three cats and a beautiful cottage, and field-in-bloom.

- the queen and i hosted the awesomes and chaos, and nothing was even broken. now that's a gift. we also hosted pixie from new orleans, and her chauffeur ms sparkle.

- i collected letters from friends for my friend in jail. i haven't yet mailed these though, so it's only sort of an accomplishment.

- stretched boundaries of dumpling. she came through with shining stars and new abilities and some extra fan base coverage (always good strategy).

i'm tired of listing things. i vacuumed today. the cat is alive. i feel peace in these apparent facts. wit shall come later.

i read an actual book! i thought it was a tawdry mystery from the sixties, but it was actually a rad dystopic novel translated from the swedish. i shan't remember the title (shame) but it's written by per wahloo, maybe with umlauts. okay, definitely almost certainly with umlauts. it joins my collection of dystopic paperbacks. yay. (i will go rescue it from the mystery section. of course i have sections on my bookshelf. i worked at a good bookstore.)

i needed to move the dust buster (charging) to find the dystopic section. oh my.

also, i seem to have lost "the handmaids' tale". it's not a very big section; that's quite the dent.

perhaps i shall retire at this point.

smreiakgagi;an

we went too many places, the dumpling has too many toys, there were festivities and visits and even a bit of jesus. we survived. i was so exhausted, i didn't even drink. seriously. i'm so hard done by...

our house is very messy.

i read this amazing post on grief by an amazing woman. i know i am grieving right now. i feel anxious, tired, sad, bloated, beaten and empty. i feel grateful for my home and family. i feel rich and overstimulated. i feel demanded upon and yet satisfied that i am not twenty and seeking.

we got home last night at around midnight, put the dumpling to bed and opened our presents. i forgot that i had put fancy cheese in the queen's stocking and it sat in the living room for two days. at least the cat didn't get it. it's in schrodinger's fridge right now, possibly gone bad. living amongst the other things that have possibly gone bad.

after stockings and scotch, the queen went to bed and i stayed up, until three in the morning, cleaning. i probably got about a third the way through the slog. i spent some of the time mentally posting on this blog. you should've been there - we were laughing and looking at pictures of the spaceship the awesome possums made for the dumpling out of a cardboard box. pictures i might never actually post. supposing i actually take them in the first place.

merry holidays. may you not run out of toilet paper. my god, this is such a north amercian post of privilege.

an entire post about the cat

when i was younger, i wanted to be a cat... to disappear into the tall grasses... to have the ease of jumping, stretching and curling into tiny balls without doing hours of yoga... to be able to sleep for hours, uninterrupted. i mean, is giving up opposable thumbs really such a big deal?

i just looked over at olive. she was stretched out on the rocking chair, which has the coziest light blue acrylic wool blanket on it, and is currently getting a really sweet sunbeam. i told her she was incredibly spoiled, so she jumped down and curled up under the ring of neglect. poor cat, has to sleep on plastic.

she is acclimatizing to being in second place, though appears conspicuously soon after the dumping goes down for a nap (and her per-day nap is down to an average of 1.5) and plays more - is this competitive playing (you want cute? i'll give you cute, cuter than that naked monkey), or are there simply more available toys? who knows.

cats are great incentive for learning to walk. they tease, and the dumpling falls for it, following her around the living room for quite a while. i think it's a good deal for everyone, as the cat gets the attention she appears to desperately crave, the dumpling gets exercise and i don't have to think about what to do next. coming up with new and exciting things to do is a bit exhausting.

oh noes, the cat blog post is being infiltrated by the dumpling. poor cat; she can't even get her own couple of paragraphs.

merry merry

weekendia! welcome to the land of strangely-timed meals and hobby-cruising queens! welcome to a visitation from Chaos, and only one broken thing after he left (the queen's flask; how i don't know, because i went to bed at a reasonable 1am. but really, how do you break a metal flask? it has no neck anymore, just an empty hole - so sad). welcome to people sleeping on available surfaces, and blatant napping. welcome to greasy breakfasts and another bodum of coffee.

i feel good! visitations are lovely for cleaning the mental and emotional slates. and the queen puttered around yesterday resulted in a hangout spot in the basement for loudness and messiness. it's remarkably satisfying not to worry about cleaning up when i go to bed, and still get a functional table for breakfast.

the dumpling also enjoyed the company, and of course increased her fan base with big smiles and shy waves. we played radiohead and the girls, and Chaos played the banjo. deep and shallow discussions were had. wine was spilled. food was prepared. yay.

exorcised nightmares

okay, here it is:

it's really hard to be a stay-at-home parent for the same reason it's difficult to be a stay-at-home, DIY anything: motivation rests solely on one's own shoulders. in a slump? no one will notice except you (especially if you're good at faking it). no one will beat it out of you, challenge you to better yourself, or come to the rescue.

however, it is really awesome in that YOU choose the course, you choose how things play out. and i have needed that for a long time. i have a strong tendency to blame authority figures for my misery, and i have made the queen out to be my authority figure, when in fact he is just the only other adult in this household. yeah yeah, he's a man, but that doesn't make him The Man. i am my own boss and i always have been, as everyone who knows me will laughingly attest.

so i finally finished a painting (or at least took it off the easel and hung it up). and i am finally figuring out a rhythm - coffee breaks come with a workday, so there is both work and coffee in my day but the order they come in is of my choosing (well, allowing for things like business hours of the post office and family time with the queen - today we danced with the dumpling to this awesome wagonchrist song). it doesn't matter how it looks to other people, it doesn't matter if it's weird, it just matters that i feel the balance works for me and my family (because if it worked for me and not my family, that would be sad - shared space needs to be respectful for all parties), that i find some peace in my day.

okay. there it is. i'm living the dream. thank you.

dumplings with a side of mustard

am attempting to blog right beside the dumpling, so pray i have luck and patience.

the dumpling has evolved her ability to cast things aside. she throws things away with a royal disregard. right now she has the hiccups and she's playing with giant lego blocks and an old greeting card given to the queen. upon opening, it plays m.c. hammer's "u can't touch this" (no link provided; if you want to listen to it, you're on your own). the dumpling thinks it's the greatest.

it's blowing snow outside in that way that heavily implies hot chocolate. i want to make it to the post office today to mail a letter or two, and other than that my intentions are all household bound; walk-shoveling, bathtub-cleaning, and maybe some kind of crafts. heavy hitter i am!

if you noticed the exclamation mark, i am typing on an early christmas present - the queen bought me a new macbook pro!!! it's soooo lovely, though i do miss my old french-canadian keyboard. but this computer has memory! and the use of the tab key! and fancy new (probably not so new) features like glowy keys. i feel totally spoiled. 11111 (ahhhh).

i want desperately to read something so i can tell you about it. i think i'm going to try a collection of ray bradbury short stories. i need to wake that part of my brain before it atrophies completely. probably right now isn't the best time to test my brain; i couldn't sleep last night. at least i got to listen to the queen talk in his sleep. he was saying something about the cat.

we have some visitors coming for the holiday season! hopefully more than i realize, but definitely pixie from new orleans!!! i am mildly excited, and i know once caffeine starts running through my system, i'll be really stoked. gotta get on that caffeine thing.

half a glass weeps its heart out

i was chatting with another parent today and we were discussing Things We Should Be Paranoid About. i'm surprised i am not more paranoid about more things. before parenting, i was very paranoid: cancerous foods, cancerous plastics, cancerous stores. now, i'm paranoid about my child eating known allergens too early, and our cleaning products. seriously, the dumpling chews on toys that will probably be banned in fifteen years and i'm only mildly traumatized. why is this? because i exist on way less sleep. i shove aside paranoia in favour of exhaustion quite regularly.

this is also my justification for reading less, reading more crap, watching more tv and eating more (gluten-free) toast (okay, i always ate too much toast). also, not watching foreign language movies; too tired or distracted to read the subtitles. it's good that i find some meaning in parenting, because i sure as hell get less meaning elsewhere.

case in point: i came across this blog entry, and in my previous life, i would have been fascinated by the linguistics of it all. and i still find that interesting. but mostly i was caught by a mention of an author of a cool mystery novel i read, and disappointed that what with his interest in physics and politics, he just didn't get much mystery-writing done. sad. see how far i have fallen?

the wife says a lot of free time and brain power returns with the fifth birthday. i just want my ability to construct reasonable sentences back. see what i'm saying? not sure. right-o.

i miss free time, and the freed-up mental space that came with it. i miss perspective. i miss having taken the time to rub out my own sore spots so that i am free to help others. now i'm just proud of shovelling the driveway. but it's only our driveway. i have friends that are Occupying, and i don't even know why. i have a friend who is going to jail for activism and government interference, and i'm worried i won't write her enough letters because i will forget she is in jail.

i have never felt so selfish, and yet, my life has never felt so challenging. what the aitch.

just click on the links, they're awesome.

the queen has returned - long live the queen.

it's really nice to have him back, for reasons i will get to in a second. but i have to laugh first, and so can you. ah, dirt.

we went to the queen's family farm to look for a holiday spruce tree, and found a gooder. the queen's parents have a patch of spruce that need thinning, so we gave one a temporary home. i love the smell of spruce. i have never gone tree-hunting before, and it was super fun. the dumpling seemed to enjoy it. of course i wanted all the scraggly peanuts trees, and the queen chopped down one that was too tall for our house. there is probably some good relationship analogy in there... it smells really wonderful in our house. the cat is angry about Change.

it has been lovely to have Da Man back home, especially since it's no longer movember so he shaved it off. whew.

just a dark moment here: how do i cope with all of the terrible things that are going to happen to the dumpling? i mean, i'm not even talking about pedophiles and car accidents and little kids with guns. i'm talking about bullies and puppy love and puberty. she is going to suffer even more than she has this week, with two teeth popping out. i have no idea what to do, and i am desperately going to need to do something. what the hell.