Although my last post said it would be continued, it didn't happen. But today I've done some fun stuff that should be blogged about! Today I shopped like a true "tightwad!" If you don't know what that word refers to, you're probably not alone. But I have become a convert. And maybe if you read it, you will too - "The Tightwad Gazette" by Amy Dacyzyn. (I think I got that spelling right!) And today I bought 20 pounds of onions and 20 pounds of tomatoes!!! I came home beaming. They were the "loss leaders" in a few stores and I went around and bought only those! Now I'm getting ready to blanch them and freeze the tomatoes for pizza sauce! Every Friday is pizza night here. I'm so excited!
(I know, I know... I have a low entertainment threshold. LOL.)
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Musings
Today I would like to learn the meaning of true reverence. Not just respect. Not the false kind of respect we bestow upon our parents because we have to in some cultures that insist we treat elders with respect. But reverence. True reverence that includes awe. Everywhere I look lately I see signs of aggravation, as if we were irritated not just with the people around us but ourselves. And so we find it necessary to anger them or get them to react in a way that mirrors what is inside us. And so on it goes.
This is of course not to say that I'm immune - that I have achieved Nirvana of some sort. In fact, it's just because I'm so irritable all the time that I've begun to examine what it is that makes me so angry.
Is hell really other people?
I want to learn to be quiet, to silently, peacefully live with my entire being. I want to ignore people that impinge on that peace. I want to forget that I can speak for just a little while, cease to think thoughts - this endless chatter in my head drives me crazy until I feel like there's nothing that's substantial going on inside it.
Maybe it's just that time of year when we turn inwards. Then again, maybe I should move to a quieter place.
This is of course not to say that I'm immune - that I have achieved Nirvana of some sort. In fact, it's just because I'm so irritable all the time that I've begun to examine what it is that makes me so angry.
Is hell really other people?
I want to learn to be quiet, to silently, peacefully live with my entire being. I want to ignore people that impinge on that peace. I want to forget that I can speak for just a little while, cease to think thoughts - this endless chatter in my head drives me crazy until I feel like there's nothing that's substantial going on inside it.
Maybe it's just that time of year when we turn inwards. Then again, maybe I should move to a quieter place.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Today I'm a Parent
Call it a mother’s intuition or call it panic, I am taking Bombie to Kaiser today. She’s had pretty bad diarrhea for almost a week now (going on five days today) and calling the advice nurse and speaking with the doctor on call has not helped. This morning her crib looked like a crime scene and in the middle of it was my precious baby. When I gave her a bath, she just sat in the tub listlessly, which is very unlike her. Later, at breakfast, her eyes stared vacantly at nothing. So this time when I called, I insisted I see the doctor. Today. If they didn’t have an appointment for me, I was going to take her to the emergency room. (But, thank God, they do. This afternoon. So we’re waiting for James to come home and then we’re both going in with her.)
This kind of assertiveness is rare for me. I’m one of those people who worries excessively about inconveniencing others. Especially people that I deem to be authority figures – experts of any kind: doctors, teachers, cops, professionals and so on. And I can’t help but see how true the phrase really is, how having a baby really does change everything.
Maybe even me.
The weekend has been enlightening and oddly inspiring. If I haven’t thanked you God for sending me such a wonderful man to call my husband, let me do it now. Thank you. James has been the model of a patient, caring and yet disciplinarian parent. Last week we had some issues with Bombie being difficult and we started time-outs. This weekend she has been sick. And James has – with remarkable precision and intuition – gauged when she needed love and when she needed discipline. I was so in awe all weekend as he ditched his dinner to hold her and sit on the swing outside to make her feel better. He changed her nasty, smelly diapers and he even encouraged me to go to the bookstore like I was planning and not feel like I had to be with Bombie at all times. He did laundry maybe four times because the diapers just weren’t holding the diarrhea. And I was right by his side, I’d like to believe, but I was so stunned at how good he was at being a father that I couldn’t think of much else. (We’re using disposables for this sick period; the cloth diapers were worse!)
And through all this I’m learning something about love, an aspect of it that I hadn’t known before. As we each had dinner by ourselves so the other could hold and rock the baby, as we looked to each other for encouragement or so we didn’t lose the moment to frustration, I believe we learned something about love as duty. It is different. It’s entirely different, for instance, from the selfish love we felt when we were first married. It’s also entirely different from our usual romantic love, although it sure feeds directly into it. I guess you could say when I feel now raising our kids together is a mixture of admiration and pride in our little but growing family. And I can’t help but also feel humbled and grateful to have it and be a part of it.
This kind of assertiveness is rare for me. I’m one of those people who worries excessively about inconveniencing others. Especially people that I deem to be authority figures – experts of any kind: doctors, teachers, cops, professionals and so on. And I can’t help but see how true the phrase really is, how having a baby really does change everything.
Maybe even me.
The weekend has been enlightening and oddly inspiring. If I haven’t thanked you God for sending me such a wonderful man to call my husband, let me do it now. Thank you. James has been the model of a patient, caring and yet disciplinarian parent. Last week we had some issues with Bombie being difficult and we started time-outs. This weekend she has been sick. And James has – with remarkable precision and intuition – gauged when she needed love and when she needed discipline. I was so in awe all weekend as he ditched his dinner to hold her and sit on the swing outside to make her feel better. He changed her nasty, smelly diapers and he even encouraged me to go to the bookstore like I was planning and not feel like I had to be with Bombie at all times. He did laundry maybe four times because the diapers just weren’t holding the diarrhea. And I was right by his side, I’d like to believe, but I was so stunned at how good he was at being a father that I couldn’t think of much else. (We’re using disposables for this sick period; the cloth diapers were worse!)
And through all this I’m learning something about love, an aspect of it that I hadn’t known before. As we each had dinner by ourselves so the other could hold and rock the baby, as we looked to each other for encouragement or so we didn’t lose the moment to frustration, I believe we learned something about love as duty. It is different. It’s entirely different, for instance, from the selfish love we felt when we were first married. It’s also entirely different from our usual romantic love, although it sure feeds directly into it. I guess you could say when I feel now raising our kids together is a mixture of admiration and pride in our little but growing family. And I can’t help but also feel humbled and grateful to have it and be a part of it.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Another Attempt at TV goes Awry
I absolutely do not mean to suggest here that I don't watch television - I have my Hulu and we watch a select few shows that I can tolerate that don't have obvious ideology associated with them. (Are there any left? Thank God!) For example, I enjoy a good dose of House, The Biggest Loser, Fringe and other select shows. But today I made the mistake of being adventurous and looking for "something else." Ha.
I came upon Eastwick.
It was a pilot for a new series on ABC. Boy oh boy... where do I start? It begins with a widow screaming at an old man (wearing a veteran-like uniform, nonetheless!) inquiring about if he's going to stop staring her breasts and buy something from her stall. I imagine it's some sort of a fair in a little New England village. The woman's daughter then enters the scene concerned about her mother and she's dismissed as "worrying too much" and told to "go rebel; chase after boys or something" while the Merry Widow's much younger boyfriend (who looks like he's her daughter's age, really!) enters the scene and plants a deep smack on her lips. "We're not doing anything wrong," he reaffirms.
The second of the three women is a brilliant writer who believes she will never get ahead at her job no matter how good she is because her boss is a chauvinist. Yeah, right. But even SHE owns a vibrator. Hint, hint. Just because she's clumsy doesn't mean she's not liberated. Yeah.
The third is perhaps the favorite of the feminist group: the poor little thing that "gives so much and does so much for everyone else" that she is left wishing "someone else would take care of [her] for a change." Oh, please. Are the screenwriters so out of lines that they're having to look at daytime talk shows for help now? Or are we just so brain-dead that we don't see this for the obvious crap it is?
I had to turn it off. And I wasn't any more than ten minutes into a pilot episode of a new series. I know, I know... it's based on a novel. But John Updike was too good of a writer to have come up with platitudes like these. The witches of Eastwick were man-less but nowhere in the novel do we find the obvious and overt hatred of men that came across loud and clear in the first ten minutes of this show. And why Witches of Eastwick and not Terrorist, a more relevant novel by the same author on all counts?
Television has gotten so out of whack with reality, the willing suspension of my disbelief is no longer something I can muster without serious brain surgery. I'd rather have my brain, thank you.
I came upon Eastwick.
It was a pilot for a new series on ABC. Boy oh boy... where do I start? It begins with a widow screaming at an old man (wearing a veteran-like uniform, nonetheless!) inquiring about if he's going to stop staring her breasts and buy something from her stall. I imagine it's some sort of a fair in a little New England village. The woman's daughter then enters the scene concerned about her mother and she's dismissed as "worrying too much" and told to "go rebel; chase after boys or something" while the Merry Widow's much younger boyfriend (who looks like he's her daughter's age, really!) enters the scene and plants a deep smack on her lips. "We're not doing anything wrong," he reaffirms.
The second of the three women is a brilliant writer who believes she will never get ahead at her job no matter how good she is because her boss is a chauvinist. Yeah, right. But even SHE owns a vibrator. Hint, hint. Just because she's clumsy doesn't mean she's not liberated. Yeah.
The third is perhaps the favorite of the feminist group: the poor little thing that "gives so much and does so much for everyone else" that she is left wishing "someone else would take care of [her] for a change." Oh, please. Are the screenwriters so out of lines that they're having to look at daytime talk shows for help now? Or are we just so brain-dead that we don't see this for the obvious crap it is?
I had to turn it off. And I wasn't any more than ten minutes into a pilot episode of a new series. I know, I know... it's based on a novel. But John Updike was too good of a writer to have come up with platitudes like these. The witches of Eastwick were man-less but nowhere in the novel do we find the obvious and overt hatred of men that came across loud and clear in the first ten minutes of this show. And why Witches of Eastwick and not Terrorist, a more relevant novel by the same author on all counts?
Television has gotten so out of whack with reality, the willing suspension of my disbelief is no longer something I can muster without serious brain surgery. I'd rather have my brain, thank you.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Life without Television
When I was a teenager I always thought it would be a good idea not to have television in the house. Yes, I know, it's hard to believe that a teenager would come up with such an idea, but I did. It may have had something to do with the fact that my mom liked to watch those horrible soap operas on the hindi cable channels. If you've been saved from them, count your blessings. They're an endless diatribe (usually how life sucks for women) with many actors taking the role of one character when - you know - someone goes on maternity leave or dies. I hope I've made my distaste for them very clear.
So I thought it would be better to be without that drivel. Unfortunately when I moved here, television was just a fact of life. Until just recently when we've had to make some drastic financial decisions and let go of cable television. What a blessing it has been! It seems like I had always known in my heart that in some way television programs more than just the news and the shows, it programs your mind and if there are kids in the home it should be off. Well, I got my wish.
The results have been fantastic. I am calmer, less irritable, find more creative ways to entertain myself and - surprise, surprise - read a lot more. In fact, would you believe that in the past three weeks I have read more than six whole books cover to cover? Yup. That's right.
And then today I thought we'd watch a movie we borrowed from the library. What's a little harmless entertainment? So I picked out "About a Boy" with Hugh Grant. And the messages that came through shocked me. Now that I've not become deadened to the programming, the messages were loud and clear. The movie was all about fitting in. The bachelor and the kid in the movie all find ways to "be part of the crowd." The kid is laughed at in school because he's different and made fun of, so what does he do? Starts listening to rap music. Yuck. And oh yeah, buys new sneakers. The rich bachelor who's told his life makes no sense because he wants to live by himself and has no kids finds a way to get along and spend Christmas with other people. The point at which I turned it off was when the kid wants to give him lessons in "being a man."
Seriously, give me a break. And this is supposedly an innocent comedy. Now it's easy to say I'm thinking too much, but have you thought that maybe too many people are thinking too little? It's easy to be lulled into complacence in a dark theater, being told a nice colorful story, but no thank you. If that's what fitting in is, I'd rather not. I understand that by saying so I'm already not one of the crowd and that suits me just fine.
I'm glad we got rid of cable. Our family can do just fine without all that drivel.
So I thought it would be better to be without that drivel. Unfortunately when I moved here, television was just a fact of life. Until just recently when we've had to make some drastic financial decisions and let go of cable television. What a blessing it has been! It seems like I had always known in my heart that in some way television programs more than just the news and the shows, it programs your mind and if there are kids in the home it should be off. Well, I got my wish.
The results have been fantastic. I am calmer, less irritable, find more creative ways to entertain myself and - surprise, surprise - read a lot more. In fact, would you believe that in the past three weeks I have read more than six whole books cover to cover? Yup. That's right.
And then today I thought we'd watch a movie we borrowed from the library. What's a little harmless entertainment? So I picked out "About a Boy" with Hugh Grant. And the messages that came through shocked me. Now that I've not become deadened to the programming, the messages were loud and clear. The movie was all about fitting in. The bachelor and the kid in the movie all find ways to "be part of the crowd." The kid is laughed at in school because he's different and made fun of, so what does he do? Starts listening to rap music. Yuck. And oh yeah, buys new sneakers. The rich bachelor who's told his life makes no sense because he wants to live by himself and has no kids finds a way to get along and spend Christmas with other people. The point at which I turned it off was when the kid wants to give him lessons in "being a man."
Seriously, give me a break. And this is supposedly an innocent comedy. Now it's easy to say I'm thinking too much, but have you thought that maybe too many people are thinking too little? It's easy to be lulled into complacence in a dark theater, being told a nice colorful story, but no thank you. If that's what fitting in is, I'd rather not. I understand that by saying so I'm already not one of the crowd and that suits me just fine.
I'm glad we got rid of cable. Our family can do just fine without all that drivel.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Blubberface, That's Me
A few days ago a friend of mine who is pregnant for the first time and I were sharing pregnancy stories (of course, now that I'm in this a second time, I get to be the know-it-all!) and she mentioned that she was very emotional and cried at commercials. I laughed and said, Thank God, this time it's different.
And then we watched - of all things - Evan Almighty. Does anyone even know this movie? It's where this would-be senator who wants to change the world is visited by God and told to build an ark. OMG. I got all choked up each time there's a reference to the family spending more time together. I know.
So from now on, call me blubberface.
And then we watched - of all things - Evan Almighty. Does anyone even know this movie? It's where this would-be senator who wants to change the world is visited by God and told to build an ark. OMG. I got all choked up each time there's a reference to the family spending more time together. I know.
So from now on, call me blubberface.
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