Slow Blogging, Airport Style

I'm sitting in the airport, en route to a small summer conference, having missed my connection due to air traffic control. Despite a valiant run through a crowded concourse (I'm faster than a slowed-by-crowds airport cart!), I missed my connection and ended up with a five hour layover, long enough for what we might characterize as apples (a black and white cookie, some good coffee, some good pizza, some good beer, time so skype with Politica and Curious Girl) and onions (a sobbing Curious Girl who just wants me home, and a very, very expensive beer, and a rescheduled flight that itself now seems to be slightly delayed, and a missed meal at what was reputed to be a very fine restaurant in conference city). So I'm tired, and feeling working mother guilt. But hey! I'm also blogging.

What am I blogging about? Just musing on some things I've been tossing about in my head this summer, which has been surprisingly stressful. The academic year ended for most faculty, effectively, in May, the month in which finals ended, the month in which the union contract ends and thus faculty disappear. We're not paid in june and July, and most faculty are nowhere near campus here. It's like a ghost town in the main academic building--much more so than any other campus I've ever worked on. They all slow down in the summer, yes, but there are usually more faculty around, sometimes, than there are here.

May for me, though, was chock full of workshops, and then June was full of administrivia--important administrivia, like figuring out how to do my first annual report for my new program, hosting a consultant, and working out a major bureaucratic shift of a related unit into my small unit. That's an unbloggable shift, and doesn't really increase the functional size of my little unit, but it protects the time of my most important colleague and hands-on ally. So lots of political learning going on, and lots of memo-generating. On the home front, lots going on with the house--painting, contractors working on converting a dysfunctional greenhouse into a workable extension of our bedroom, my 25th college reunion, new camps for Curious Girl every week. So lots of transition. (And my office keys: lost. Now that I've blogged you, lost keys, feel free to show up, ok? No hard feelings.)

So I've been stressed: less patient than I usually am, less creative with Curious Girl's emotions than I usually am, and I'm realizing that I've developed some habits I'm not proud of. I often respond to requests from Politica or Curious Girl with "sure, just as soon as I finish X." Now, sometimes I probably do need to finish X before starting whatever they want me to help them with or join in with, but a lot of the time I don't. And I don't want to be that person who's always too busy to pay attention to other people. And I don't think I've been a very good listener around the house of late. I'm hearing myself reflected back in some of CG's tantrums, and it's not pretty. It's good, if humbling, to realize one's own flaws; I'm working on some changes, to get back to being the person I want to be. It's not all bad--I've had plenty of good times making jam and pickles this season (even if my bread isn't quite behaving as I want it to). But it's not quite right.

I'll write more about self-help books when I finish this career-renewal workshop that I'm helping to run tomorrow. In some respects, given the introspection I just described, I feel like the last person who should be facilitating a career renewal worskhop: I feel badly in need of renewal myself. But then, a good faciliator learns by faciliating, too, so I think tomorrow will be good for me, too.

I still love my views of mountains and water: this place I live sustains me, even in a somewhat sad, somewhat stressed out state. I'm looking forward to vacations soon. When I get back from this conference we're headed out into the country to stay with some former neighbors whose family have a summer house in our new neck of the woods, and then we're heading further north to visit with other friends to do some kid-friendly touring. Then a week at home, and a week away, just the three of us. I'm looking forward to that break, to spending time with just the three of us, time away from our home and work routines. Curious Girl has been emotional, but I realized (again!) that with enough sleep, enough food, enough advance warning of routines, enough YES! with the limits, that she's a delightful girl. I want to bring more YES! into my adult relationships too. More YES! all around.

Such are the thoughts swirling around these days.....and now, off to the gate. Thanks for reading and listening. Even when I'm slow blogging, I'm aware of this space, and aware of you, and grateful for you.

Haiku is more fun than Houses

House indecision reigns (buy now, or wait a bit and risk losing what we kind of like now? buy a smaller house where we could ski/snowshoe from the back door and walk to the center of Cute Little Town?) , so what better than haiku? (via pilgrim/heretic, and you can get your own)

went to sleep planning
to dream about living with
her and i love the

series with the girls
they are not uncommon i
feel closer to joyce

i love cg's teachers
they knew cg was born always
saying we don't

next can't you see
shouted piglet haven't
you got eyes look at

what to do that is
truly at home and somehow
i think the movie

Holidays for the Inner Child

So I've been back in touch with my inner child lately, which is to say I'm spending too much time feeling too sensitive about things that really shouldn't be that big a deal. I realize that there are far bigger actual problems in the world, and I have the emotional wherewithal to rise about all this. But still. It's not always so easy.

I wrote a bit about our Thanksgiving. I realized, later, that part of my problem that weekend was that I was doing some very particular things that I wanted my parents' approval and endorsement for, and they weren't giving it. Last winter, when my parents were moving out of their New York apartment, I took a box of old family photos and offered to put them into an album, telling my mother it would be a kind of album like I made from our adoption travels (a scrapbook format, with things pasted to the page, all archival-quality materials). I never got around to making the album, and last spring when we went to Florida, I took the photos, and my mom and I organized them by topics and family groups, and she identified people for me. I still didn't have time to do the album, but I thought over Thanksgiving, we'd have time to sit together and put the pages together, and I planned to give Mom some journalling boxes so she could write captions for the photos. It wouldn't be fancy, but it would get everything in a book.

When we sat down to do the album, though, my Dad walked over and said, "but what if you wnat to take the pictures out? Or give some to Other Daughter?" So they decided no, they didn't want the album. Which is fine, but it also means they weren't listening when I had offered to make the album, and it also means I had acquired a bunch of album supplies I didn't need. And my inner child heard all this as "You don't matter." Which I realize is all the product of my inner child's insecurity schtick which my inner child has processed in therapy and I thought had gotten over. But apparently not.

So I went to a photo store and got drop-in archival photo sleeves and a binder to put them in, and we put the photos in pages, with some paper for writing captions, and Mom was happy. Then she wanted to pay me for the materials. Which my inner child also perceived as a huge slight, because I had wanted the picture-organizing to be a gift for them. I tried to say, no, no, it's a gift, but they insisted.

In the meantime, my mother was trying to tell me six ways from Sunday how much she enjoyed all the food I had cooked over the weekend--which is really a pretty big deal as my parents are not vegetarians, and are pretty suspicious of vegetarian cooking. All those compliments didn't really make a big impression, because my inner child was moaning so much about the failure of the photo project.

So really, my mother and I were talking at cross purposes: I am sure that she meant her food compliments to convey her appreciation for all we did to organize the Thanksgiving weekend. I am also sure she has no idea what the photo-organizing project meant to me. And I don't know why I can't, having come to this analysis, just take in the compliments for what she intended and leave the photos behind.

************************************

I have been on the phone with my sister several times today. We're going to her house the day after Christmas, for the Granola family Christmas celebration. Curious Girl, who in years past has been pretty darn terrified of Santa, has this year started to explore a little bit of Santa enthusiasm (she is scared of real Santas dressed up but has been having hysterical conversations with rooftop Santas we've seen around the neighborhood). We've always been rather reserved about the Santa mythology (a topic Dani has had some interesting thoughts about lately), in part because neither Politica nor I are really comfortable with actively building up a story I know to be false (most of our pretend games are driven by CG's imagination, but the Santa story is one we would need to feed to her), in part because we're not celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday even though we do love our Norsk Jul with Politica's father and my family-of-origin celebrates Christmas religiously; in part because we are always on the road. We are the People who Travel to the rest of the family.

But, Santa brings presents for my nieces , and last year, when we were there on Christmas morning, we had a Santa present for CG, too. (I think the year before, I hadn't thought about this at all, and my sister had a spare Santa present for CG. So last year, we organized for Santa, and this year, we had planned to ship a present to my sister's for CG). All fine. Except that UPS isn't cooperating. Our gifts for Politica's dad have arrived, but not our package to my sister's.

So why not just have Santa arrive at Politica's father's, you may be wondering? Well, because CG, in her Santa narratives this year, has been saying to anyone and everyone, "Santa is coming to my cousin's house." And we've just been nodding in agreement. It was a lovely narrative--we got to hitch onto my sister's family's rather extensive Santa mythology without having to do much ourselves to support it. But UPS isn't going to arrive until 12/27, we discovered today. So I suggested that Santa could leave a note saying he'd swing back around on the 27th for CG (we can reallocate some gifts and have a present that was going to be from Politica's dad come from Santa instead, so we'll have it with us when we arrive.) No, my sister says, that won't fit with where her kids think Santa will be on the 27th (at the North Pole). Just have Santa come at Politica's dad's, she says.

Politica and I confer. We like sticking to the CG-generated narrative about Santa coming to the cousins. So I call back. We'll have Santa deliver the present at my parents' house, which is where we'll actually be staying. No, that won't do, because my sister and her kids will be over at my parents' before we arrive, and they will know there is no Santa gift there. So that won't do. Just have Santa come at Politica's dad's, she says again.

My sister also says, "you sound upset at me," and I lie and say I'm not. She presses me, and I continue to lie. This is my deal with my family--I do not like to show my emotions in front of them because I am afraid that they will ignore them. And my sister's continuous suggestions about how we can manage Santa anywhere but near her house are certainly feeding that fear. I had called her a few weeks ago, actually, to talk about Christmas stockings. I'm knitting one for CG now. She's never had one, although my nieces, sister, and brother-in-law all have stockings I knit for them. Last year, CG was in tears on Christmas day because her cousins had a couple of little matching items--hairbows, I think--that had come in their stockings, and she wanted one, too. She didn't really care about the stockings, she just wanted to match her cousins. So I asked my sister if she could pick up three of anything she was getting two of for her girls. I wasn't asking her to fill the stocking, just enable a little matching, I told her. She was surprised. "I thought you'd do the stockings at Politica's dad's," she said. Politica points out now that this was a big hint that she didn't really want our Christmas stuff at her house. We had an awkward conversation that night, and I called her the next day to say not to worry, we'd do the stocking on our own time.

At the moment, Politica and I are both livid. I guess we'll have Santa's gift arrive on Christmas morning, which has the advantage of giving us one more thing to do with Politica's dad in the assisted living facility that morning. There's not going to be a lot of hoopla--our traditional Norsk Jul isn't really possible given that we don't have a kitchen. We're going for Christmas Eve dinner to Graduate School Friends' house, which will be wonderful, joining them for their tradition, which is tamales. Christmas Day we'll be eating at the assisted living facility, and we won't really be able to make the traditional rice pudding (which Politica doesn't like, anyway). So having a stocking and a morning gift will make a little more hoopla, and that will be nice with Politica's dad.

But still, I'm livid. Yes, my sister says, if we had ordered the gift a week earlier it would have been there. Yes, if we had called my sister a week earlier she would have picked something up for us (although my efforts at early coordination didn't really pay off on the stocking). But when you are the People Who Travel, it is hard to craft holiday traditions, and I would think that the People Who Don't Travel would cut us a little slack and help manipulate the narratives to make our lives a little easier. Instead, my sister has all kinds of ideas about how we can change the story we've been telling Curious Girl so that she doesn't have to change a darn thing in her own narrative.

And this bugs me. I know I should be able to let it go. But it's not fading easily. And I wish my inner child weren't so up in arms about this. I've had enough therapy to see the patterns, to understand why all this happens. I don't understand why it's suddenly so hard to react in a more healthy fashion.

Bah, humbug.

But hugs to anyone who's reading my rant: my inner child is happy for supportive readers!

Very Light Blogging

• Dental angst, the holiday weekend, and a quick turnaround time on an important task I'd never done before have made me tired.
• Curious Girl has a friend over now. They're getting married, which involves lots of dress up clothes, a very large stuffed bear (who I think is actually the partner, since one of the girls seems to be a newborn baby), fancy music (Vivaldi), and money for the trip to the store after the wedding. CG loves to play getting married, and I am mightily amused by the things she seems to think people do immediately after the ceremony. In the tub, she often wants to play that she's just gotten married, and is now at the gym working out. Her partner is invariably unavailable (usually having been hurt in a car crash and thus needing hospital treatment, although sometimes merely at home because of a cold). It's all about the long dress.
• My medical phobias are really bizarre. Saying calming thoughts to myself makes my stomach hurt. I know this is irrational. But knowing it is irrational does little to address it, which is unlike how the rest of my life works, where rationality reigns.
• A favorite observation of one of my college friends was "there are few situations in life that can't be improved with either a nap or a good sandwich." Looking at a fresh loaf of whole wheat bread cooling on the stove, I have to agree (even with an angsty stomach ache).