Runaway October

Finally.

I have a ten­dency to get in trou­ble with swaps. The fear of my part­ner not lik­ing what I make liter­rally freezes me up until the last minute. Then it’s a mad rush.

This time it was dif­fer­ent. I knew what I wanted to do, but my pay­check was late, so I com­pletely missed the dead­line. But it’s been wrapped, boxed and shipped as of last night! Go me! Only what… 8 days late?

Back Tack 4 was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the ope­ness of the cen­tral theme: Gold Frank­in­cense and Myrrh

This time there are no colour, size, or mate­r­ial restric­tions, all we ask is that you take the theme and run with it, and make 3 items accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual out­lines below.

The first item is some­thing that sparkles [the Gold part]- cards, dec­o­ra­tions, calenders.….see where your imag­i­na­tion will take you. [It doesn’t need to be gold]

The sec­ond item is some­thing which has some sort of sen­sory aspect to it [the Frank­in­cense part] — either smell or taste. Baked goods? Short­bread? Choco­late, soaps, the mind can run free here, but be mind­ful of cus­toms reg­u­la­tions in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Sealed food stuffs are gen­er­ally ok, but check with your part­ner before send­ing anything.

The third item is a small gift for your part­ner for Christ­mas [the Myrrh part] Per­haps a small item for the tree, or mantle­piece. Quiz your part­ner to see what their them­ing is for this Christ­mas, and tie in your gift! or make them some­thing they might like to use through the year — a cal­en­der, a purse, a scarf.

Here’s a sneak peak. When my part­ner gets her pack­age I’ll post more photos.

 In the  mean­time, check out the Back Tack Flickr pool. Lots of gor­geous good­ies! And my part­ner, Kristin’s, beau­ti­ful blog: Kleas.

Still try­ing to decide if all 3 of these would work well together. Flow­ers and Stripes is City GIrl by Berna­tex and Giraffe print is Happy Trails by Bernatex.

We’d love to have you join the fun. Check out Tamara’s blog 1/4 of an inch for info!

So last night as the two kid­dos and I crammed into the tub (scary thought, huh?) for a leisurely soak, I real­ized that I say some really stu­pid things.

Don’t make your lit­tle brother angry!!

• Why not? Is he going to turn into an ax-wielding mon­ster. The thought makes me laugh. Those two teeth of his would fit per­fectly into the face of a psy­chopath. Will he turn into the Incred­i­ble Hulk? If he was green maybe peo­ple would stop touch­ing his head. I could tell them he has a con­ta­gious dis­ease. Take that nosy old ladies at the supermarket!

Do you under­stand me?

• Does it mat­ter? Even if the under­stood they’re not going to lis­ten. They can bob their lit­tle heads and say ‘Under­t­snad’, but the point is they don’t care what I say.

Don’t you dare!

• Again, what am I going to do? Put them in a time­out? Big Whoop. Time­out is the same as play time, you just have to face a wall for a cou­ple seconds.

What were you thinking?

• Again, it doesn’t mat­ter. With a lim­ited vocab­u­lary it’s really hard to express that you thought stick­ing your fore­skin in the vac­uum cleaner tube and then clos­ing it would be fun. It’s also hard to explain that cov­er­ing your­self in per­fume, includ­ing open wounds, seemed like a good idea until you feel off the bath­room counter. And even if mama did under­stand you, she’d still be mad. A blank “pity me” stare works better.

Boys! Be nice!

• “We are” is typ­i­cally what I hear. I guess when you’re under 3 run­ning the baby’s foot over with a wooden truck is nice.

What things do you find your­self say­ing as a par­ent that make you won­der why you bother to say it at all?

I read alot of blogs. Alot. I think there’s over 100 in my RSS reader last time I checked. Most of them I just scroll through unless some­thing catches my eye, except for the crafty ones that have to do with fam­ily, kids and such. I’m in love with the ideal that they por­tray — happy lit­tle fam­i­lies who eat organ­i­cally, spend their nights play­ing board games in an immac­u­late and orga­nized house and mom still has time to whip out beau­ti­fully crafted projects every day.

I think it all con­tributes to how shitty I’ve felt about myself lately. I always thought that being a stay at home mom would the the be-all-end-all, but it’s really just a façade for hell. The day I quit my job was the day I turned into everyone’s bitch. All day long peo­ple demand things from me:

• If they’re under 1 year demands are com­mu­ni­cated in ear-shattering, heart-wrenching squalls.
• Between 2 and 18 demands are pro­duced in the form of nerve-grinding whines at the most inop­pur­tune times.
• Over 18 and demands are best dis­guised as guilt or worded in such as way that they make me feel like a total fail­ure for not antic­i­pat­ing the demand sooner. 

I thought every­thing would be per­fect and it’s not even close. There’s a least 10 loads of laun­dry stuffed on the couch that I have no inten­tion of fold­ing. My mom or Declan is more likely to fold it than Matt is. I’ve man­aged two din­ners this week, burnt one and have no plans for any­thing tonight. Mom is want­ing me to start feed­ing Rowan solid food but I know that just trans­lates into more work for me because Matt has never fed Rowan once. I keep get­ting told that I’m not chal­leng­ing Declan enough but I can barely keep the kids in dry pants and full bel­lies. To get time to do some sewing basi­cally means that I put the baby­gate up in the kitchen and ignore every­thing. I’m so so slow that every­thing takes for­ever, If I rush stuff well… the qual­ity goes down.

I have no friends, other than long dis­tance or inter­net ones. I don’t know where I’m even going with this. I need a vaca­tion, but I don’t think I could leave the kids. Nor do I want to, I just want to stop being the 24/7 mom for awhile. But there’s mil­lions of moms in the world and they all seem to be fine. What’s wrong with me? I’m I just super lazy? Do I have to be will­ing to just shut my brain, hopes, wants and per­son­al­ity off for good (because heaven knows the older lit­tle boys get the more they demand)? What hap­pened to Me? When did it become a require­ment that I’m no longer con­sid­ered a per­son, just because I have chil­dren? I feel like a ser­vant and a poorly treated one at that.

Well, I’ve already sent a not so nice email to Matt so I guess I might as well post this too. I’m done wal­low­ing, maybe.

I need to get my thy­roid checked.

I can’t say that I’m not a fan, because I’m not even sure if I’ve heard any of her music. But I came across an inter­view of her and I have to say I’m a fan now even if I haven’t heard her music.

When asked how moth­er­hood has changed how she views the world:

“Being a mom seems to have changed the way the world sees me more than the other way around. Being preg­nant really shifts your rela­tion­ship to soci­ety, and then walk­ing around with a baby shifts it again. I love the feel­ing that I get from other par­ents — women in par­tic­u­lar — of being a part of the club. Club Sac­ri­fice, you might call it. It’s cool to have cama­raderie, warmth, and open­ness with strangers. I wish that dynamic was more preva­lent in gen­eral, but I am grate­ful to have it now.”

When asked if she would have a home­birth again:

“I would def­i­nitely choose a home­birth again despite the fear mon­ger­ing of this patri­ar­chal soci­ety, which con­vinces women that they are inca­pable of hav­ing babies with­out the inter­ven­tion of men and their machines. I look at soci­eties where women are mar­gin­al­ized and oppressed their whole lives (even cov­ered head to toe in tarps!) but are still in con­trol of birthing prac­tice, in a whole new way now. I mean, who is really more advanced? To take birthing out of women’s hands and deny us the con­tin­uüm of eons of wis­dom and expe­ri­ence is to eject us from the very seat of our power. I believe that women in hos­pi­tals are pre­vented from being able to have nor­mal, healthy birthing expe­ri­ences because of the intim­i­da­tion of being on the clock, being pres­sured to take drugs to make it quicker, being inhib­ited in their move­ment and activ­i­ties, and alien­ated by a ster­ile, flu­o­res­cent lit, feet-in-the-air type envi­ron­ment. You know the clas­sic “per­for­mance anx­i­ety” of not being able to pee or poo because somebody’s watch­ing you? Mul­ti­ply that by a mil­lion! A cervix is a sphinc­ter after all! Then to add tragic insult to injury women are numbed through their great moment of rev­e­la­tion. I believe the act of giv­ing birth to be the sin­gle most mirac­u­lous thing a human being can do and it is surely the moment when a lot of women finally under­stand the depth of their power and con­nec­tion to all of nature. You think it can’t pos­si­bly be done, you think you can’t pos­si­bly take the pain, and then you do — and after­ward you look at your­self in a whole new way. If you can do that, you can do any­thing. Check out the books on this sub­ject by Ina May Gaskin. She’s one of my great heroes. P.S. I was in labor for 43 hours. Pushed for five hours. It was bru­tal and scary and pro­longed, and if I was in a hos­pi­tal, they would have def­i­nitely cut the baby out of me. I thank the god­desses that I was at home with patient mid­wives who knew how to go the dis­tance. The mem­ory of pain always recedes. The mem­ory of tri­umph does not.”

I just love that last quote. So true.

I’m not gonna get on my high horse or any­thing, but I really wish that more women would think about birth choices and the effect that it has on every sin­gle per­son in this soci­ety. Too often do I talk to moth­ers who don’t even know that there are choices. Life in Amer­ica is all about the choices ladies! Please ask what they are.

Via [Celebrity Baby Blog]