Hobbies

Clearly I need to do more with my life than not get dressed, not clean my kitchen, and not fold my laundry. But I need to take this slowly--I don't want to get all excited about a hobby idea, do a bunch of research online and convince myself a) my life will never be complete without this hobby and b) this will make my family's existence so much better they'll start praying to me and maybe even build me a shrine whereat they leave me daily offerings of ice cream as though I were some sort of Indian cobra goddess. (People leave out bowls of milk for snake gods, right? I'm not making that up?)

So, this has to be a hobby that requires

1. little-to-no monetary expenditure, unless I can justify it as being for the household, like furniture reupholstery, or HGTV-watching, or extreme couponing (I do enjoy cutting paper with scissors...);
2. little-to-no regular sleep--no operating heavy machinery...except cars carrying small children, large appliances operating near small children, and doors blocked by small children mid-tantrum;
3. little-to-no space--I have no craft room, no desk, no attic, no basement, no crawl space, no closet space, no shelf space, and very little mental space. (The hobby is kinda supposed to fix that last one.)

I've already considered and discarded many excellent ideas--writing, reading, needlework, photography, coloring, singing in the shower, getting dressed, cleaning my kitchen, folding my laundry (into origami), and Zen Buddhist meditation. Plenty of options that cover bettering my environment, clearing out my brain, avoiding my brain at all costs, being more active, being less active, or being completely inactive. I could just pick one of these and go with it...but then what do I do when I get bored with it next week?

New hobby idea: Watch Cars every day. It fits all my numbered criteria, requires no special preparation--and I can do it regardless of state of dress, health, or mental awareness. I'll learn more via observation about the intricacies of digital animation, feature-length film plotting, and literary character development. I'll memorize all the words to Sheryl Crow's "Get Gone" and James Taylor's "Our Town." I'll be able to list each of Luigi's tire offers to McQueen--so far, the one thing I know is that they actually get progressively worse each time (I can feel you getting more impressed with me already). 

This may take some convincing of Stephen--currently he only wants to watch it about 5 times a week. I'll just have to employ my sparkling powers of preschooler persuasion (they're vampire powers). It's important not to let your personal interests be neglected, even--especially--if that means your children don't get what they want all the time, so they aren't spoiled and you aren't burned out. Priorities.

Real Housewives of Anne Arundel County

Eat it, "Bethenny" Frankel. I have my priorities straight. No plastic surgery, no ghostwritten book. I also know how to spell. And all those Marthas on Pinterest who make ice cream and pinwheels and silk screen scarves with their clean, smiling children--is it fun taking all morning to prep, spending most of the activity making the kids hold still so you can get good pictures, and then cleaning up after they've melted into a puddle of tantrum in a puddle of ice cream and silk dye?

Like I said, priorities:

• Priority 1: Keep Children Alive. 
• Priority 2: Make Dinner. 
• Priority 3: ...It depends. Some days, Get Dressed. Others, Do Laundry. Sometimes even Don't Yell At Stephen For Being A 3-Year-Old. I like to mix it up. You gotta keep things fresh. 

Regardless of the status of Priority 3, to be a successful working mom-on-the-sit I always focus on my goal and I never make myself feel guilty for neglecting those specialty tasks other mothers use to try to impress each other.

Like kitchen hygiene.

Or decorating.

Or bed-making.

Or showering.

(I do, however, make love to the camera.)

My goal? Don't leave the house. It makes everyone tired and hungry, I spend too much money at Target, and I start getting wild ideas about being informed while listening to NPR on the car radio. Dangerous. So far I've got a 98% success rate. (The internet really helps here, if I find myself at loose ends.)

Why waste time and energy trying to keep up with the Frankel, or Martha? I'll only end up rich, famous, and thinking that 41-year-old me should be played by Mila Kunis in the movie of my life, or making brownies with Snoop Dogg. Actually that last one might be kinda cool.

Most importantly, in the pursuit of my goal I will spend time with my kids, which is the greatest gift a mother can give her children. That, or check Hyperbole and a Half for a new post. It's been a while.

Everybody Drink Chai!

I knew chai was delicious and suspected it was nutritious. It also seemed to help me lose weight when I drank it regularly. Now, info revealing chai is in fact a wonder tea! Those Indians know a thing or two about consumables (cf any Indian restaurant lunch buffet).

Links regarding the health benefits of...

• black pepper: http://www.indepthinfo.com/pepper/health.shtml
• cinnamon: http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/cinnamonbenefit.htm
• ginger: http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/10-health-benefits-of-ginger.html
• cardamom: http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/cardamom.html
• cloves: http://www.indepthinfo.com/cloves/health.shtml
• anise: http://themodernherbal.com/2010/12/star-anise-health-benefits/

I'll let you look up the benefits of black tea and honey (if you add it to your chai) your own dang self. 

I guess I'll be living forever now. Pardon me while I go brew another cup.

It's Not Writer's Block

I realize it's been about a year since I last posted. An eventful year it's been (but aren't they all). But it's not writer's block. It's more like writer's anxiety. Or writer's terror.

My problem with blogging is that I craft a piece of writing (literary value TBD), and then I just throw it out into the vast, anonymous interwebs. No control over how it will be received or interpreted. The context in which the ideas are created is utterly divorced from the context in which it is read. That's really not how I roll. I am a reader of atmosphere--how I interact with those around me is greatly dependent upon who is where and why. Without all those touch points, I'm lost.

Which me should I be when I blog? The me who loves South Park and the greatness of 90s rock? The me with a husband and a kid-and-a-half and a house to clean? The me who takes two hours to do her nails? The me who is a project management editor? Perhaps you can see not only my confusion but also the high likelihood that I will bore and confuse the reader. Cuz if I'm not writing a housekeeping blog, nobody wants to hear about my stain-laundering procedures. And at that point, my primary reason to write becomes something along the lines of "right now I'm really excited about myself I bet people will think I'm cool if I write about this like this!" Tedious.

This is an age-old dilemma: why should anyone listen to you? (Right now, for one person, I have the age-old response of "because I said so." We all know that won't last for long.) Traditionally compelling reasons include "because I am the expert" and "because I am awesome" (or something like that--Plato may have said it better).

So, expertise. . . . Well, my son, who is a "late-talker" but suddenly acquired a decent little vocabulary last month, suddenly decided yesterday he will only say "oh no!" in any and all circumstances. I could tell you all about that. (Just did, in fact. . . .) Expertise. . . . Ellipses are three conjoined points, which should not break over the end of a line, and the "fourth point" is really just a period; in quoted material, this period should be closed against the text if it's the end of the sentence and separated from the text by a character space if it's not the end of the quoted sentence. That's Chicago style, anyway. Hm . . . Don't let kids play with sharp things or drink bath water (good luck) or eat cotton balls. (At least that was useful.)

This blog will be big one day--I can feel it. Just gotta change this diaper first.

If anyone got to the end of this wondering why they bothered, just know that it's all Sara's fault.

On Taking a Sick Day

No onwe will read this--but that's fine! I just want to write. And that way I don't have to feel guilty about not providing any details of my year-long blog absence. (Blogsence?) Or thew extra ww my dying iBook G4 likes to throw in at random moments, just to let me know it's still got a little something special.

Yesterday afternoon I went home sick. I had one of those deep, clotted coughs that clogs your vocal chords and alerts those miles away to your presence. Coversations were difficult, since I could only make myself heard for half of them (and who could predict which half?), and laughing hurt my chestal cavity (there's a lot of laughing at my office--restrained, cubical-appropriate laughter about erudite topics and literary masterworks like Butterflies in Heat). I became a pariah, a roving health hazawrd. If I wandered from my cube, Laura would look at me like she thought any moment I might turn myself inside out, phlegmy organs wriggling, and touch her. Michael pointed and laughed, knowing his weeks-old immunity from this office-wide epidemic would keep him safe. When I handed anyone paperwork, they would first pull on hazmat gloves and use lead tongs to take it from me before spraying it down with disinfectant. In my defense, I always wwwashed my hands before printing anything out to give to someone.

My protests of "it's better than it sounds" meant nothing. Some could only think, "Thanks for saving the worst part for me to listen to all dayww." For others, weach cough was as a death knell--eventually they, too, would be stricken, and they, too, would have to work through voicelessness, wheezing, and choked bronchial tubes. No one appreciated my heroic stance, working my infected, sanitizer-gelled fingers to the bone as I typed out cover copy after cover copy. No one wanted to be within ten yards of me. But that, sadly, is the lot of a hero--unappreciated in her time, mourned only after she is gone. So basically I'd need to do something really awesome, so that everyone would miss me when I went to run errands at lunch time.

However, before lunch time--I got sicker. I started getting chills--not too strange, since the heater wasn't working that well. Then I started getting dizzy--stranger, since I assume no one was releasing gasses into the building. Then my whole body started to ache. And then I began to consider finishing up the day with some sick time.

And here I am now, at the end of a second sick day, better rested and with a far less interesting cough. Tomorrow I shall merely annoy my cube mates, rather than toll the bell.

Quick! What's 40 times 1?

Sooooo obviously my whole "regular blogging" thing hasn't worked out so far...and there's no start in sight now that My Little Man has entered the world and desires my undivided attention. (What he doesn't know is...sometimes I think about ice cream! Ha ha! Take that, task master! You can't control me!) But MLM is currently on an outing with the rest of the household--one I am missing because of (hopefully) passing stomach grossness. So here, ladies and gents (can I say that? do multiple males peruse my scanty posts?), are a few recent thoughts.

...abouuuuut Lent! Surprise! Nobody else is writing about that, I know. So unique. But I'm going to do the coolest Lenten meditation blog of all: I will say nothing original, only flotsam I've gathered from other sites (primarily Women for Faith & Family), perhaps with a little comment.

Item 1. The word "lent" comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "lencten" which refers to the lengthening days of Spring. Oh those Anglo-Saxon--they have a word for everything. "Lent" may sound dreary and dark, and draw up images of aceticism, sackcloth and ashes, and foregoing ice cream for a whole 40-day period. But actually it means that light and warmth are ever increasing, that each day the sun dawns earlier and burns longer for us. It also means that the days of regular trips to Rita's are fast approaching. (Can I get a shout-out for March 6?!)

Item 2. The 40 days of Lent especially commemorate Christ's 40 days of fasting, prayer, and temptation in the desert, in preparation for His earthly ministry. Personally, I can't think of anything that induces temptation like fasting (except maybe perpetual indulgence...one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenarios, life...). And then on top of that, Jesus has to deal with a social call from Lucifer. And what does Our Lord say? Not "well maybe if the stones turned into ice cream..." which would have been perfectly understandable, especially as I am led to believe it was a very hot day. No, he whoops de Debil all up and down with some very apt Scriptural quoths. Good egg--and in a "famished" state (says so, right in the Gospel According to St. Matthew). Usually my famished mood leans toward the petulant. But I guess Lent is supposed to whoop me up and down a bit, so I learn not to follow "I'm famished" with "so give me whatever I want"...but perhaps something a little more charitable.

Item 3. Lent prepares us for the commemoration of the Passion and the 50-day-long hoorah of the Easter season. Idn't that just like the Almighty Father? "Now you're going to spend a little time learning about love. Then, as a special treat, I'm going to sacrifice my only Son for you, give you eternal life and peace, and throw you a big party! Sound good?"

Item 4. Some other Biblical periods of 40, for your consideration: the rainy days of Noah's flood (after 120 years--40 times 3--of ark-building and preaching); the years the Israelites wandered in the desert between the Exodus and arriving in the Promised Land; Elijah's fast on Mount Horeb before the visit of the still, small voice; the peroid of clemency in Jonah's prophecy of the destruction of Ninevah. Think about the themes these stories protray, and you'll find practicing Lent an excellent way to live out the life of the 40: purification, waiting on God's faithfulness and redemption, close communion with God, seeking Him out, His awaiting our response to His call to repentence, and of course our repeated returnings to Him (however grand or small)--what RC folks call "continuing conversion".

Now the only question is how to keep up even the smallest acts of Lenten devotion for 40 whole days. I'd appreciate any practical tips you've got for that. On this, my third awareness of the Lenten season--I won't say "observance" because I can't pretend I even got past week 1 with any consistency--I find a pleasant familiarity with its rhythms; ironic, as that familiarity is itself a new feeling...but I'd really like to make some actual progress this year. You know, something beyond feeling guilty every Sunday as I am reminded it's Lent for the first time in a week by the seasonal markers in Mass, and promptly forgetting again Monday morning. I've got that down. I'm up for something new.

Joyeux fasting!

Relationships at work

How do you know you know a person? Usually we can tell when we really know someone, or when we don't know them--or at least, we've felt the rude smack of realization that this person we thought we had figured out is in fact someone else entirely. Then in other relationships, we keep trying to know the person but a vague sense pervades that some vital component of their person is hidden to you. This may be somewhat intentional on their part--if they have something to hide, or they don't trust you enough to open themselves to you. Or it may keep happening in a relationship no matter how hard both of you try to reveal self and understand other: somehow, the two of you are different in such a way that there are parts of each (sometimes substantial parts) that can't be communicated to the other. Who knows why. It may be variations in how you each perceive the world, or stage in life, or in values or thought processes or even just taste or style. Whatever it is, it's there. Similar differences may have no bearing on other relationships, but somehow it matters to these.

That makes me wonder even more about the relationships that do work. The ones that don't tend to stick in our craw and we try to figure them out. The relationships that work best offer us a place of respite and comfort, a place where we can take communion for granted, in the very best sense. They become those rare and treasured spaces in life where we know this is how life is supposed to be. Trying to figure out why they work might jinx them.

I think though, really, we're just as clueless about why those work as about why others don't. It's like asking a happily married person how they knew their spouse was "The One" (assuming they believe in soul mates). They almost always give the highly unsatisfying answer, "you just know" or "it just works." Thanks guys, really helpful, thinks the single friend. That does nothing to help me know whether the way my girlfriend and I relate "works."

Currently being a person who dispenses such an answer, I'm sorry. But that's all I've got. Yeah, shared values and goals are important, bringing out the best in each other, and similar backgrounds can be helpful. But I didn't even know some of what the best of me was until I was dating my husband. Some of my values evolved through or simultaneous with my initial friendship with him. You never really know yourself or another person completely, so how do you even know why exactly you relate the way you do?

A friend once advised me, back when I was a single lass trying to make a final decision about a relationship I wanted but couldn't seem to get functioning smoothly. She told me, "You know the relationship will work when in the midst of problems, you know you will crawl through anything to get that person back." She said that not discounting the above-mentioned factors, as well as things like maturity and just liking each other (which often falls surprisingly low on people's list of priorities). But she wanted to highlight that almost irresistible love which flows naturally in good relationships and must flow most strongly in a marriage.

Two things to say about that idea. One, in pondering that idea I came to discover the limits of my love for that particular gent--in certain situations, I knew I would do the crawling if I had to, but not because I wanted to. The natural limits of the love I had for him reflected the limits of our relationship. Later, when I dated my husband, I discovered within myself an unlimited love that reflected the "it just works" nature of our relationship. Don't ask me to explain why, cuz I have no idea. But that's how it worked.

Two, while my friend gave that advice as a description of a relationship "just working", it can also be read as a prescription for how to keep moving forward in any relationship, regardless of its natural functionality. That's really what love is, in its essence--sacrifice of self for another. Being willing to crawl even when you don't want to, being willing to sacrifice both your petty demands and your real rights, being willing to wrap your efforts as a free gift to another person--that is love. That is the divine life in your everyday experience. "To love another person is to see the face of God," as they sing in Les Miserables. And the best part is that divine love is always an option for us. Whether or not a relationship clicks is irrelevant. Everyone I know can be loved, and with the grace of God I can be the one loving.