Good Job, Girl

I got cat-called, today.

I know I got cat-called not so much because I heard exactly what was said, but because I heard the tone, and I definitely know it ended with the word, "girl".  Lack of clarity, ladies and gentlemen; just one more peril of leaning out a car window to yell at someone on a bike...

At any rate, my brain turned it into "Good job, girl!", even tho' I knew that probably wasn't it, given the aforementioned tone.  And as I was grumbling to myself about lame-ass catcalls, and how people should have some standards, I suddenly thought,

"But what if it was, 'Good job, girl!'?"

And then I said out loud, with Ryan Gosling hovering beatifically in my brain,

"Good job, girl!  I know things are hard right now, girl- you're stressed out and pressed for time, and don't get enough sleep, but here you are, making the bike commute like a boss, being healthy and awesome.  So good job, girl!  Keep it up!"


And damned if that didn't encourage me to dig in a little deeper, and get up that long-ass hill a little faster.

So thanks, random Scrub.  Thanks for bringing out my inner RG.

Back in Blood

I have officially re-upped my link with the moon.

It's kind of weird to be menstruating again, after more than a year away from it (we're not counting lochia.  That was... it's own special categorization.)  I have had a somewhat adversarial relationship with my cycle in the past (haven't we all?) but I find myself feeling more or less at peace with it, now*.  At least insofar as I'm not like, "Aw crap," about its return.  It's certainly nice to know where I stand from a fertility perspective, anyway.

So no, I'm not upset about the return of menstruation, per se... but I do find myself feeling a little wistful.  Wistful because it's as much a milestone as Neeps's newfound ability to sit unassisted (more or less): a marker that we are slowly/too rapidly moving through this special time where I can meet all of his needs on my own.  The fact that I could now (theoretically) conceive and carry a second child is just another tiny wedge in the ongoing process of separating him from me, and me from him.  The next one will come when he goes to daycare, and then when he starts solids, and then begins to wean; when he is able to crawl and then walk away from me... plus thousands of other little things that will pull us further and further apart, and get him closer and closer to being his own independent human, with whom I will have to establish an entirely different, and more equal, relationship.  And these things are necessary, and good, and I would never try to stop or even slow them... but I will allow myself to feel a little wistful at their passing.








*(maybe ask me again in another year...)

Dead Baby Roses

In fine form this year.  I think they like the forget-me-not we planted around their base.

and then I put them in a tiny vase to adorn the table

Raising a Feminist

Once upon a time, when I was still a child-free individual, I had this vision of what it would be like to raise a little girl, a fierce little feminist.  It was going to be so awesome- she wasn't going to take shit from anyone, and she was going to wear whatever the hell she wanted (pink and sparkly or blue and covered in trucks and footballs) while doing whatever the hell she wanted (playing house or playing helicopter pilot), and be a strong and smart and confident and did I mention not taking any shit?

Other people bought into this vision, as well- like without me even bringing it up in the first place.  I heard from more than source, "Oh my god you'd be such an amazing mother to a little girl!"

But I didn't have a little girl.

At first I found myself puzzled- what the hell do I know about raising a little boy?  But then I reminded myself that strictly speaking, what I "know about" is being a little girl, not actually raising one, and thus I was starting in the same place regardless of sex.  Except that I hadn't really put any thought into raising a boy.  So I put some thought into it, and the immediate thought I had was,

"Don't raise a rapist!"

This is the quip I trot out for laughs when talking to people about my child-rearing goals, but it's also not really a joke at all.  And honestly, it's a damn short step from "Don't raise a rapist!" to "Raise a feminist!" which works just as well for a boy as a girl.  After all, raising up a feminist girl is, frankly, easy, if for no other reason than all you have to do to get them to buy into it is look around at how awfully they get treated by the world.  Raising up a feminist boy, on the other hand?  A boy who will enjoy undeniable privilege due to the accident of his chromosomes, to the point where he might not naturally pick up on the fact that the patriarchy is screwing pretty much everyone over?  Well, that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.  But "easy" is for suckers, and so I say, fish accepted!  No wait, I mean challenge.  Challenge accepted!

Which means that all that stuff I was going to do for my kick-ass daughter?  I'm doing it for my kick-ass son.  Because that is hard-core the spirit of feminism.  I'll point out inequalities, and talk to him about what he can do to make the world less shitty for him and everyone else.  That he doesn't have to be limited by society's expectations of him, and that if he does something coded as "feminine" it doesn't make him inferior, and more than him doing something coded as "masculine" makes him superior.  That he should use his privilege to give a hand up to those who could use it, because that's what real men do.  Real men behave like decent human beings.

And they don't rape people.

Dragonscale II

Auruna grew rapidly in those early days, as I knew she would.  The afternoon she put on her first coat of scales I could hold her in the palm of my hand, but by the end of the week she stretched, nose-to-tail-tip, from the crook of my elbow to the end of my middle finger, wings hanging down half again her length.

As she grew the metal she had laid on cracked and pulled apart, much as a parched stream bed might do in the river.  It must have itched terribly, but she never scratched at it- only took endless gold dust baths to fill in the gaps that exposed her tender pink hide.  I began mixing in actual flakes of gold, to see how that would affect her habits.  She seemed to appreciate the larger bits, and began hunting out the part of the pile where they lay most densely.

Gradually the growth began to slow, about the same time that the gold shimmer of her skin began to look less like skin, and more like scales.  By that point she was a month old, and about the length of a wolf, not counting her tail.  She was more than large enough to attract attention, and I decided the time had come to change her nesting material.

Tripping on Guilt

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you may have begun to pick up on the fact that I'm a pretty big fan of my mother's parenting style.  Sure, if it was just me that came out so well, it could have been a lucky accident, a fluke- but as it turns out, my younger brother's even more awesome than I am, so obviously my mom knows what's up, when it comes to rearing a non-sociopath*.

My mom has given me lots of good advice down through the years about how to handle children and relationships (of all stripes), but I realized the other day that one of the most important lessons I learned, I didn't learn because she explicitly told me- I learned it from years of watching her behavior.  And it wasn't until the other day that I realized it with utter clarity;

My mother has never, in the entire time that I've known her, used guilt as a weapon.

Oh sure, she used it as a tool to deal with us (guilt can get a kid to confess to a wrongdoing real quick, if they're of the correct personality type), but she never used guilt against us, to coerce us- or anyone.  We make our decisions, and even if she doesn't agree with them, she supports us.  This is an incredibly healthy relationship to have with another adult, and having had it modeled for me throughout my childhood and into adulthood surely has something to do with how good my marriage is- as well as my relationships with the rest of my friends and family.

The only downside is that lack of practice has left me a bit unprepared for when people do try it on me.

I shouldn't say "people", actually.  Because the vast majority of the population could try it on me and I would laugh in their faces, and cold-logic along my merry little way.  But when someone I care deeply about does it, it leaves me frozen like a deer in the headlights: taken unaware, not totally sure what's going on, and with no game plan for how to escape the horrible monster bearing down on me.

I still generally don't give in- primarily because nothing makes me so viciously stubborn as another person's passive aggression- but it leaves me feeling resentful that I was put in the position in the first place, which is never a good place to be with a loved one.

In conclusion: let's all agree not to use guilt as a weapon, and hopefully within a few generations it will be bred out of the species, anyway.  And think how much healthier the human race will be for it!






*(for the record, I did in fact clarify with my mom whether or not she ever feared she was raising a sociopath.  She was quick to reassure me that she never thought that about my brother.  And after a long pause for consideration, she said she never really thought it about me, either**.)

**(I may have paraphrased that conversation just slightly, to make it a better story.  Don't shoot me, Mom.)

Filling Up My Heart Tank

An Old Friend of mine came to town recently, and when he asked if I was "able to do anything this week", I replied:

"Should be- if by 'anything' you mean 'hang out at my house'."

Because honestly it is hard to get "out" to places with a baby, if you plan on spending a good chunk of time at said place (and I did want to spend a good chunk of time with my friend).  Infant schedules complicate life, you guys.

But then I remembered that I had today off!  And so I suggested we go out hiking, instead, because a) I haven't hiked on a weekday in a while, and it is such a treat to be on a less-crowded trail; b) I was craving some good Forest Time; c) I need more miles; and d) honestly I think hiking is one of the best possible ways to spend quality time with someone you care about (it also works as a good first date- it's a pretty quick way to weed out the ones that aren't going to be worth your time).

We ended up doing one of my favorite hikes, the Multnomah-Wahkeena Loop, which meant that all told we got in more than five miles worth of back-and-forth catching-up, and since I was schlepping an 18lb kid (plus a backpack) that was a good chunk of time, indeed.

So pale.  So very, very pale.

I've noticed over the past year or so that there are some breezing-through-town Old Friends that leave me feeling exhausted after our "catch up" sessions, and not in a good way.  Other Old Friends (such as today's companion) leave me feeling energized and happy.  I think I'm now in a stage of my life where I'm going to try to gently disengage from those people who deplete my energy, the ones I tend to see out of a strange sense of obligation to the past, and instead save myself for those who leave me feeling better than I did before I saw them.  I need to embrace opportunities to refill my Heart's fuel-tank, and avoid those that drain it, because I just don't have the time to recover like I once did.