Mother’s Log: 04.09.12

Haven’t been posting for a little while. Here’s some stuff that’s happened since the last log, in no particular order:

1. Planted a garden with tomatoes and basil and stuff
2. Found a dead tarantula on our front steps
3. Taken up karate with the kids (as another karate mom told me, “this was not on my bucket list, but here i am”
4. Came down with a raging case of poison oak after thinking I could just pull out those weird little saplings and dispose of them while in short sleeves. (thanks to oral steroids, doxycycline, and the wonderful staff at Urgent Care at Avery Ranch, I am feeling much better.)
5. Swimming in April is most excellent
6. Have gained and lost 4 pounds 4 times
7. Started swimming again for exercise, got sidelined due to poison oak
8. Had fun with my parents during their visit
9. Was very happy to see some friends traveling through for SXSW
10. Have discovered the awesomeness of Bob Schneider
11. Reading Sharon Salzberg and listening to her meditation cds. I can feel the metta, and it is good.
12. Remembered something funny i used to say to the kids (which i now imagine a comedian using in their act) when they were little and would take a mostly harmless tumble. I’d look at them like Bobby Knight and say, “crawl it off.”
13. let my hair grow out, on my head
14. marveling at how my kids have adjusted and how well they are doing
15. knit 2 baby blankets
16. nursed 3 flus
17. discovered Hill Country Water Gardens off of 183
14. found a cool recipe for an egg in a ham cup baked in a muffin tin

life in texas

My 6 year old: “Hey mom, there’s a dead tarantula on the front steps.” Me: “Oh Honey, I’m sure it’s just a dead leaf or crumpled up…OH MY GOD. Erik, Eriiiik, honey…….”

The Fair-Weather Wife

Back in 2009, a newspaper reporter emailed me from London. She wanted to talk to me about a blog post I had written for my husband’s blog, Please Feed the Animals, which I’d plainly titled, Unemployment and Marriage. She was working on a piece about how the current state of unemployment was effecting relationships and marriages. She had stumbled on my post and wanted to discuss.

So we discussed. Among other things, she asked me if I had ever considered divorcing my husband due to the strain of unemployment. My reply was, no. I hadn’t. I explained that this was my second marriage, and that I took my vows very seriously. Better or worse, richer or poorer, right? Well, this was it. This was marriage. And if I was gonna flip out and leave now, then the whole ceremony and commitment thing becomes kind of a joke.

When I told Erik about the conversation I had had with the reporter, he asked, well, have you ever considered it? Considered what? I asked. Divorce, he said. Again, the truth I replied was, no. And after all was seriously said, we ended up joking about it – and I ended up recalling a Twilight Zone episode (something I often do when life becomes confusing) where a man wakes up one day and realizes he can read everyone’s mind. The scene I recalled, was at a bank. He sees an older kindly-looking employee, at the end of the day, slowly pushing a cart full of cash into the big bank vault. He reads the employee’s mind and discovers that he’s plotting to steal the cash. So the dude flips out. “He’s gonna steal your cash! He’s plotting to steel all of the money!” There’s a kerfuffle and lot’s of crazy-eyed ranting (your standard Twilight Zone stuff)….then when it all calms down, the employee’s like, “Duh, I think about stealing that money everyday, but I’m not gonna do it. I just think about it.”

At which point Erik and I confessed our make-believe divorce contingency plans. (which, I totally differentiate from actual divorce plans) In his plan, he would move out and I would keep the house. He would live in the new condos down by the train station, where all the young cool people live and commute into the city. (Boston at the time) He’d be close to the kids, and we’d get to move on with our lives. Him, going to bars on the weekends with scores and scores of cute young women – me home with the kids, baking cookies. Ironically, my fantasy was quite similar. Only, the cute young girls in my scene didn’t find the fact that he had an ex-wife and 2 kids all that attractive. And I didn’t just stay home and bake cookies….I also drank wine, and watched HGTV on Sunday afternoons.

So anyway,  it was such a provocative question she had asked. It really got me thinking. Maybe if she’d been a therapist probing into the trenches of my brain, or perhaps if it had been in complete confidence, (which would be the exact opposite of a public newspaper) then perhaps, I would have said that it had crossed the abyss of my brain, not the frontal lobe; and never something that would’ve moved me into executive action. Leaving was not an option.

There’s a big difference between playing things out in your mind and being in a place where you’re actually considering it.  And I felt I couldn’t explain that subtlety as I briefly talked the reporter.  All I could picture was telling my husband, “Hey, I got quoted in a paper!”  Then him reading it and saying, “Holy Crap! You want to divorce me?”

I was thinking about this today, because Erik and I had a casual talk about the “state of things.” Indeed, there’s been a lot of stuff that’s happened since then. Erik finished a documentary called, Lemonade. There’ve been plenty of freelance gigs to keep us in the clear. (and enough available credit) There’ve also been lots of possibilities: book, employment site, directing, interviews, blogging, presentations…some coming to fruition / some not. We’ve relocated to Texas, for a couple of reasons, but mostly because the cost of living is so much easier. But that’s the gig isn’t it? If you’re gonna try something new, you gotta make a lot of attempts and see what sticks. And what’s sticking right now is a film he’s working on called Lemonade Detroit. But as any documentary filmmaker knows, it isn’t easy. Funding, working, family, it’s all a lot to balance, if it can be balanced at all.

So, here we are again, in-between gigs. It stresses me out and yet at the same time, his film Lemonade Detroit is really coming together, and it’s beautiful. See, Erik’s high tolerance for risk is only out-matched by my high intolerance for risk. So instead of being a source of boundless support and energy, I turn inward. I worry. Just when Erik needs a cheerleader, I become a hand-wringer. I told him I didn’t want to be such a fair-weather wife. And he said, “you should write about it”. So, I am.

He also told me, “There’s a lot of good stuff happening right now. I know you’ll stop worrying once the money is sorted out and the pendulum swings back up; you’ll be positive and full of support, but when I need it – is right now.” Oh, shit. He’s right. And wow, that sure sucks of me. All my previous talk of for better or worse goes right out the window when you look at it that way. So for a reality check, I watched what some of the Lemonade Detroit Producers are saying. If they have faith, if they believe, and if they know it’s a story worth telling – maybe I could too.

But I’m on the other side of it, and this is what happens. I’m human, I’m a doubter and a worrier. And if all that doubt creeps back in, well, as Sharon Salzberg says about meditation, “Even if you have to restart a million times…that is the practice.”

In my post on Unemployment and Marriage I talked about how much talking about it all helped  -  an open dialogue. That’s what Erik and I had this morning. Fears, reality, consideration….hope, faith, trust.  I re-read that post today. I can hear the conviction in my tone, and the fear. It’s up and down. But the sense I remember as I wrote that post was…..I’m kinda scared, but I know this is gonna be ok.

Time to begin, again.

more about shopping in Texas: Grocery

I am still stunned and amazed at the size of the stores in Texas. And here’s what I love about the grocery situations: wine and beer and many many choices. Only one stop and you’re done. But there is one choice, one huge section of the store that has been freaking me out. The meat aisle. Or, as I’ve been referring to it lately, the morgue. See, it’s vast and there’s this one section of low open freezers that contain nothing but ribs. Racks and racks and rows and rows of them. Then there’s the ground beef in big tubes. It’s like ground Jimmy Dean sausage but bigger and beef, and there are piles of those, too.

Here’s the thing. I am not a vegetarian. I like juicy sloppy burgers, I like sausage with onions, I like bacon, and I’m certainly not saying that I didn’t try to braise some very disappointing short-ribs. But sometimes when I’m standing there, looking at the aisles of parts, and ground meat, I just can’t deny the Food.Inc-ness of it. The Forks Over Knives-ness of it. It’s the volume. And suddenly, it’s not just about me enjoying my little plate of cooked flesh and bones….It’s about many many plates of cooked flesh and…well, you get the idea.

So it’s the notably titanic nature of our local meat aisle that has given me pause. I’m not saying I’m going to go vegetarian, either. I’m not saying I wouldn’t eat a brisket that my husband had smoked all day. But I have started thinking about my meat sources.

When we were living in Massachusetts, we used to order grass-fed beef from a small farm in Vermont. It was high-quality, responsible, and delicious. It was part of a co-op and it just felt like, ok, if we’re gonna eat meat…this is about the best way we can do it, short of hunting or raising the animals ourselves.

So the other day when my son requested tacos, I stood in front of the ground meat section to make the call. I ambled over to the Angus Section and asked the butcher if they had any grass-fed. He did. In one teeny section there were 1lb packets. It was a little more expensive to buy, but somehow it made me feel better. I felt like, if I was going to make the choice, at least it was informed and hopefully better for us and the environment. (Note: there are smaller markets that carry organic, local, and whole-food items. They’re just a little further out.) Good peeps have shown me the way.

Now, there’s only one question left, what about the chicken nuggets?

Texas Friday Night Fun

Local HS football was an amazing night

Flora

The plants here sure look wicked different. And wicked awesome.

Acclimatization

I haven’t been posting for a while for several reasons. First, and obviously, I’m helping my family get settled. Second, and more likely the first reason, my computer’s not hooked up. I’m blogging from my iphone, which can be done, but kinda feels like using toenail clippers to cut up a chicken.

My report on Texas so far: Heat bad / Not having to put everyone in snow pants, boots, coats, and hats good. Also, not having to chip 2″ thick ice off my windshield good.

People are wicked nice.

The school is great.

My kids, despite a few sad moments, are totally on-board and having fun.

The shopping situation is of particular interest to me. We lived in NYC for a couple of years where everything is minature size. The grocery stores have tiny aisles, and you get a tiny cart that looks like a fun-size kiddie cart. That was an adjustment. There’s an adjustment here as well…the stores are HUGE.

I really kinda got lost in Target the other day. I was thinking I was back in my old Target, then all the sudden I was in a grocery section, then there was booze on the shelves (folks from NE know how weird that is) and I got confused. I called my husband and he’s like, “Um, where are you and whadda you doin’?” I asked him what time it was…turns out, I had been wandering around this olympic mega-store for close to 2 hours. It felt like that scene from Contact…when Ellie goes through the machine, and she’s gone for like 18 hours, but special relativity means that she was only gone for a few seconds of earth time, and everyone thinks she’s nuts; but she swears she was on a fantastical voyage seeing new galaxies and communing with an alien disguised as her father. It was just like that. Only (for the purposes of this post) the space-time continuum was in reverse.

So here I am; a midwestern girl who comes from average size stuff, via NYC with tiny size stuff, to Texas with giant size stuff.

I gotta say, I could get used to this. When my closet’s bigger than my daughter’s old bedroom, and my bathtub could be used as a koi pond….you won’t catch me complaining.

So, I’ll take the heat….if that also means there’s a giant mac in my future.

Should be sleeping, or unpacking, or cleaning

After some songs and cuddles, the kids are asleep. They’re understandably scared. They’ve been troopers during the day, but at night the nerves start to show. It’s like that for me too. When I start to fret, I should know enough to go to bed.

I like to stay up for a little while though. As any parent can attest, those few hours of quiet at night are blissful.

The house will take some time to get organized. Funny, I keep thinking about painting and changes – but we’re renting and I realize that I might not want to invest all that work and time into something we’re just borrowing for a while.

Our stuff looks strange against a new backdrop. All my antiquey things looked normal in a 1910 colonial. Here, against a white wall and clean carpet, they all look a little dusty.

Some of our stuff got dinged up in the highway jostling, but that’s what happens. The journey leaves it’s marks. And the marks and scars are what tell the story.

I’m all over map with my blogging tonight. I’m tired and I’m big enough to tell myself to go to bed.

note: Thanks for these songs that help my kids sleep. We’re gonna be friends, Yellow submarine, Go to sleep my zoodle, and Hush little baby (The sweet version from the children’s book.)

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Texas

My new closet is bigger than my daughter’s old bedroom.