I'm off on the Amtrack tomorrow, going to visit the rich non-relatives. Should be a good time. I'm packing my bikini, my electro gadgets, some work, and some prezzies. I'm gonna swim in some lakes and hike up some mountains and I'm not even going to complain while I'm doing it!
I'm also gonna see my mother too, and perhaps my second oldest aunt in 'frisco.
First we (my twin sister, Kosuke and me) went to HOLLYWOOD to watch WALL-E at the El Capitain, yeah baby! There were a bunch of impersonators out for the fourth of July crowd. Slash looked pretty hot in his big black hat and black clothes, but then Capt. Jack Sparrow really looked uncomfortable in his many layers. Then I saw Darth Vader and his big black shiny plastic helmet seriously looked torturous. Marilyn Monroe was definitely dressed more for the weather. She was eating a burrito taking a break when I saw her.
We ate some pizza. My slice of pizza was as big as an actual whole pizza in Japan. I don't think I need another pizza for awhile.
So here's my feet in the waves.
Having seen tonight's episode, I want to know where I can get my own. Could I get him to regenerate through, say, the two hunky doctors off tv to improve him even more, or perhaps with Colin Firth?
Our house sits in the middle of a plot, with a gate separating the front garden from the back. The back garden is big enough, and although a swing and a slide (ok, and definitely a table and some chairs and maybe a barbecue, too) are all that’s missing from making it perfect, still the boys LONG to be allowed into the front garden. More specifically, they long to be allowed to play out in the street like the other kids, but since they know that’s not likely, they’re willing to settle for the front garden.
Finally yesterday I relaxed the rules and let them play ‘unsupervised’ in the front garden, on the proviso that they didn’t go beyond the garden fence. In fact I watched them all the time from the front window, not ready to let them play beyond my line of sight, but still feeling stupid for squandering my new-found me-time by spying on them. I remembered a recent conversation about how many adults recall their favourite childhood memories as involving being outdoors, and without adults present, and that tugs at my guts but the over-protective city-dweller in me is way too neurotic to listen to that. I’m incredulous that 4 and 5 year olds stream in and out of my house, torn between concern that whoever looks after them is way too naive, and concern that I’m way too uptight for this town. Whichever it is, I’m just not willing to take the risk I’d need to take in order to work that out, so for now, they don’t go out of my sight, and that’s the way it is, though that approach already earns me tuts and strops and the immortal line ‘It’s not faaaair, Mum.’
It makes me feel like such a MOTHER, this stage. It forces me to make rules and lay down the law, and appear assertive and confident of the boundaries, when in truth I can hardly believe I’ve been entrusted in charge of these scrumptious little souls. They look to me to explain everything from why the clouds are moving to why they aren’t allowed to play in the street, and I search desperately for the right kind of encyclopaedia because I don’t know anything, and feel so ill-equipped to be the super-power that their twinkly eyes tell me I am. I remember recoiling in horror when the first midwife I ever saw referred to me throughout the appointment as ‘Mum.’ At 12 weeks into my first pregnancy I just wasn’t ready to think of myself in those terms, and I definitely wasn’t ready to be called that by someone whose mother I was not. But now that’s me, and it feels both strangely alien and deliciously fitting.
So I watched them play in the front garden. Something about their distance from me, and their pretend-independence on the other side of the glass made me suddenly see them differently, as so very much distinct from me. So I often I find myself thinking of them as appendages of me, because they spend their every waking minute with me, more or less, and it was exhilarating to see them as their proper tiny selves. Dwarfed by the fruit trees, which are no taller than me, they looked suddenly tiny and unbearably cute. Little men, picking berries from every branch they could reach, nibbling them to find out which ones might be tasty, and then running inside to consult the fount of all knowledge (moi) as to whether “this one could be good to eat, or might be yucky and give me a sort tummy?”
When his friends come in to play his accent changes beyond all recognition, and he takes on a breathy, confident air, full of elaborate expressions and hand gestures. The little one holds his own, jabbering away in an unmistakable parroting of the local dialect, making kids bend down to try to understand him, only ever answering ‘uh-huuuuh’ instead of yes.
I’ve wondered lately what makes mothers keep on breeding. Something about some of the ones I’ve met makes me feel uncomfortable. As they prepare to hatch again I presume they must be in love with motherhood, and yet I watch them with their kids and wonder why they seem so aloof, detached almost. I suppose the 3rd, 4th and 5th time mothers must excel at parenting, feel some kind of calling to the role of Mum, and yet their eyes glaze over when I turn the conversation round to what it’s like to raise a child. At first I thought they just found it so instinctive that they felt no need to dissect the details, but now I wonder if it’s just that they’re not really interested. I suspect it’s less about the children and more about something to do with the worth that being pregnant and giving birth gives to them. I’ve even wondered if my own occasional pondering about another child is actually a desire to replay the experiences all over again, wishing for a chance to do it all again so that I might savour it this time, as everyone always tells you to, even though you can’t know what they mean until you feel like you’ve already let the moment slip. Nostalgia doesn’t strike me as a good enough reason to create another human being, but it pulls me up straight, looks me in the eye and urges me to hold these very moments as if they were made of gold. Because they are, and because now I know how much I’ll miss those pudgy toddler toes, and the visible innocence of beautiful little hands that I could pick out from ten thousand other pairs.
We walked on the beach before tea-time and I breathed in deep, soothed to the point of deep relaxation by the sea. It pulls me back to myself, blows away the cobwebs and calms my soul. I can’t imagine ever leaving the coast now, I’d have to be dragged kicking and screaming. We swam (in the pool, we’ve yet to do that in the sea so far this summer) this morning and the little one astonished me with his fish-like instincts. There’s a word for it, I think, the physicality of a boy who seems to have been born knowing how to kick a football, and with a natural urge to swim, but it’s so very different from his brother, who’d rather invent elaborate water games while clinging to his Dada. One’s all about his limbs and the other’s all about his words. Their differences only serve to make me appreciate all the more each element of who they are.
A whole new phenomenon is overtaking our house.
It hit me like a ton of bricks at lunch time, as I found myself unexpectedly alone at the kitchen table. Suddenly without company except for a pile of sandwich crusts evenly divided between 2 abandoned, brightly-coloured plastic plates.
They’d run off to play, desperate to reinstate whatever elaborate scheme they’d reluctantly interrupted for just long enough to refuel. They’d disappeared, without me even noticing, until I looked up and realised I was alone, and that this heralded a new season in their growing. It wasn’t lost on me that this is a picture of so much to come.
It happened again this morning. I made our family’s staple weekend brunch: stack pancakes with bacon and maple syrup. “It’s so nice to be just us four,” said Dada, pulling up a chair. “Yum,” said The Boy, earnestly, mopping syrup from his plate with his pancake, and then, “My favourite. Thank you for making this for us, Mum.” Beside me Little Brother (SO not a baby anymore) ran his index finger through a pool of syrup on his plate and held it aloft shouting in delight “Look at ‘im!” before sucking his finger clean and going back for more. I’d put a candle on the table and put on a CD, small markers of family time. The Boy remarked on these small details, noting everything, missing nothing, and said “It’s so nice to have music, too.” I can’t remember why but they made us laugh, dragon noises maybe, and I thought to myself that when family time is good, it’s about the most satisfying thing I know. I always miss our friends when we have pancakes, though. It was a weekly tradition to gather round plates piled high. I loved standing in the kitchen listening to the banter while I cooked, and being told in no uncertain terms to leave the washing up and come and sit and join in with the sacred space of being friends and family together. My guts ache when I think about those friends, or when I recall the ease with which my parents could arrange a visit. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, that’s for sure, and while I wouldn’t trade this place or space even for easier access to the ones we love, their distance still adds a little bitter note to all the sweetness that we have.
Anyway... there we were, trying to snatch a few moments for an important exchange of information about some admin stuff, when they started banging forks on the table and screeching for attention. “This is what it’s like,” I said, above the din, trying to explain how much they demand my full attention, and how sometimes even telling them to be quiet while I focus on something else ends up being all about them. “This is because we’re trying to talk, and it’s why I can’t ever get a moment to think.” And then, as we were flicking through the calendar and plotting summer trips and sleeping arrangements for our visitors, I realised we were alone again. “Look!” I said, incredulous, and in a whispered tone, as if pointing out something like a butterfly that might take wing if we disturbed it with too quick a turn of the head. They’d got down from the table by themselves and were engaged in earnest play together in the living room. We drained our coffee cups, and talked uninterrupted, both delighted and bemused by the sudden moment to ourselves.
But as ever, I’m left baffled by the changes, baffled at how only days ago I couldn’t get 2 minutes space to write a birthday card, and now suddenly I’m free to linger over coffee and flick through the paper, all the while feeling like I’m wasting time. While this new-found freedom is intoxicating it also makes me feel all at sea. I don’t know what to do with myself. I wonder how long it will last, and so I linger in the doorway, make another cup of coffee, twiddle my thumbs. I’ve craved this sort of independence, the chance to be with them but without somehow being entirely consumed by their apparent need of me every single minute of the day. And now it’s like they’ve finally discovered what being brothers mean, and I’m the odd one out, hovering awkwardly in the doorway, wondering what my role is now.
The other day a friend’s son played all by himself for hours in our house, despite the presence of 4 other kids for company. He’s just like that, but I was incredulous. Meanwhile mine badgered the other kids to the point of harassment, desperate for a more engaged kind of interaction. His Mum laughed and confessed to worrying about it; why won’t he interact, she wonders, while I fret over how much mine seem to need stimulation and attention. We saw the ironies, that no matter what ‘type’ of kid you have you still worry about the possible apparent deficits in who they are, compared to who they’re not. It must be normal, something to do with the enormity of responsibility that falls with us as Mums, the sense that who they are somehow reflects on us.
In the past I’ve wondered if I’ve made them this way, so demanding, so not inclined to play alone and so eager for company and stimulation. When other kids’ Mums were relaxed about tots watching TV watching I was reading books or strapping them into the buggy for endless outdoor adventures – have I made them dependent on me because of how much of my attention I gave them when they were littler? Who knows and never mind anyway, because it’s all changing. I’ve noticed it in subtler ways too. Usually insistent on clutching my hand, The Boy suddenly drops me like a hot potato if he spies a potential friend, and likewise he can go from cuddling his beloved dressie to throwing it at me in disgust, declaring “I don’t need this, Mum,” when we’re within sight of his friend’s house. Our Boy, he’s growing up, and I’m so proud it hurts.
Obviously I have the golden ticket to get into corporate hospitality, but unfortunately than doesn't bypass the rain or traffic.
In honor [sic] of Independence Day, show us something patriotic.
Oh another lovely and not at all targeted solely at American users QoTD! Yay, go team vox! Every independance day I like nothing better than to circulate posters of George Washington saying Wanted for High Treason, bill Bostonians for wasting all of that tea and petition parliament to revoke The Treaty of Paris. If it's a really wild party I like to phone the admiralty and demand they send the fleet to tug the colonials back into line. Up the British! God save the King!
my flat is filled with too much crap. so much so that the walls have appeared to move inwards. i thought at first that is what had happened, that some guy stuck those goddam indiana jones inwardly moving walls in my flat but without the spikes. but its not that - just the slow inevitable collection of stuff. you see this is what a house really is. its a means to start buying books and other unnecessary things. before you had a house you would say 'but where am i going to put that?' before you bought something, you imagined yourself walking the earth with that thing on your back but now you just accumulate. i have only ever lived in top floor flats. really just by fluke. but i dont like the idea of someone living above me. i want to be highest. anyway living on the top floor makes the accumulation of crap all the worse. you drag the crap up four flights and when youre moving out you drag all the crap back down four flights. half the reason i havent moved is so i dont have to drag all this crap downstairs. and the thing is that even if you only bring a little shit into your nest every day, after a couple of years thats piles and piles of shit.
virus killer companies must have some wee guy in a room looking up everything on the internet so he can catch all the new viruses, then they can find a cure for them. he must go on all the grottiest wee sites and apply for all the daftest stuff and open all the dodgy emails.
I just got out of an hour long shower and I feel amazing. I had this need to pamper myself. I never get a day off. It's either a sick day or I have errands to run. Today was a day I owed to no one but myself, oh and my country too but me is more important. I have nothing but LUSH products here at Justin's. Totally not complaining.
My treatment:
1. Start with face/body mask. I used cupcake on my face and mask of magnaminty on my body: upper arms, back, and other locations in need of toning and exfoliation. Let dry for 20 minutes.
2. Shower off masks in circular motion.
3. Wash hair with big followed by veganese conditioner. Let conditioner soak while washing body with a ring of roses.
4. Rinse hair (clip up) while exfoliating face and body with ocean salt.
5. Shave.
6. For extremely smooth skin seal in with running to the embassy all over body.
7. Finish with lotion of choice.
What can I say? I'm a broke LUSH whore. :-)
I feel . . . I feel . . . what's the word? Good? No. Luxurious. Yes. I feel luxurious and so does my skin.
You simply must try it, or somethling like it.
Happy 4th!
