septemberist

Oh, man, y'all. Audrey hasn't eaten dinner in five nights. We're in the midst of a dinnertime power struggle. No matter what is set in front of her, she takes two bites and that's it. Then she cries. Tonight, though, was worse.

The tantrums began when she wanted to pull out all of her toys. We asked then told her to pick up the toys she had out before she played with anything else--mainly because she wasn't playing with anything. For her, the fun has been just dumping out the drawers and tubs, then moving on to the next drawer or tub. So I sat her down on her boppy pillow and told her that was it. And the wailing and rolling and kicking began, continuing until I asked her if she wanted some macaroni and cheese and veggies. Two bites later, and she was done. And crying.

I'm tired. I've only tomorrow left at the current job, but my freakin' boss keeps piling more work on my desk. And has there been any acknowledgement from him or the higher ups of the years I've consistently done my job very well and a lot of extra work, besides? Of course not. I suppose that there is tomorrow, but let's not hold our breaths, shall we? I wouldn't want anyone to pass out.

I'm sad and angry, too. Marshall hasn't done anything at work during his last week, and today, he took a two-and-a-half-hour lunch with a girl I've never met. Even better, he seemingly has no idea why this would bother me. I wonder if it would if a friend of mine hadn't just found out her husband has been cheating on her? Of course, I'm certain Marshall wouldn't cheat on me, but the complete inappropriateness of the whole situation makes me want to throw things. I did throw my cell phone across my office today when I found out where he'd been when I'd called his cell phone without answer. Supposedly, it didn't ring on his end. Either time I called (and hating as I do the repeated-call bullshit he does when I can't answer right away, I spaced my calls an hour apart).

To be honest, the lunch isn't bothering me so much any longer. What is bothering me is that, once again, if I want to discuss it, I'll have to bring it up, which turns me into the shrew.

So yes, I'm tired. I want to run off, stop living this life, if only for a while.

Posted by erica at 08:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was born in a lighthouse
my mother was the sea ...

Actually, I was born in west New Mexico (moved when I was 2), lived three years in Colorado (8-11), and spent the rest of my life in Texas. My mother is from southeastern Oklahoma, though she went to high school in Roswell, N.M. Dad is primarily from Texas' Hill Country, though he was born in Washington and also lived in Arkansas and east Texas.

All of this is apropos the colloquialism survey goin' around. I caught it from Erin.

A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks.
a creek

What the thing you push around the grocery store is called.
a cart

A metal container to carry a meal in.
lunchbox

The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in.
frying pan

The piece of furniture that seats three people.
couch

The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof.
gutter

The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening.
porch

Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages.
soda

A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup.
pancake

A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself.
po'boy or sub

The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach.
trunks

Shoes worn for sports.
tennis shoes (or tennies)

Putting a room in order.
straightening up

A flying insect that glows in the dark.
firefly

The little insect that curls up into a ball.
roly-poly

The children's playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down.
teeter-totter

How do you eat your pizza?
with my hands, point to crust

What's it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
garage sale

What's the evening meal?
supper

The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
basement

What word(s) do you use to address a group of two or more people?
y'all, or if I'm feeling sophisticated, you all.

Would you say "Are you coming with?" as a full sentence, to mean "Are you coming with us?"
No.

Would you say "where are you at?" to mean "where are you?"
No way. Huge pet peeve of mine. If asked where something is "at," I invariably answer, "Between the a and the t." Thanks, Mom.

Modals are words like "can," "could," "might," "ought to," and so on. Can you use more than one modal at a time? (e.g., "I might could do that" to mean "I might be able to do that"; or "I used to could do that" to mean "I used to be able to do that")
Well, one shouldn't, but I seem to recall hearing such things from myself--especially, "I used to could."

What do you call the area of grass between the sidewalk and the road?
grass.

What do you call the area of grass that occurs in the middle of some streets?
Median

What do you call the long narrow place in the middle of a divided highway?
divider? center shoulder? If it's designed for turning, then it's the suicide lane. If it's so marked, then it's the crossover.

What do you call the drink made with milk and ice cream?
milkshake

What do you call the miniature lobster that one finds in lakes and streams for example (a crustacean of the family Astacidae)?
crawdad

What do you call the kind of spider (or spider-like creature) that has an oval-shaped body and extremely long legs?
daddy long-legs

What nicknames do/did you use for your maternal grandmother?
Grandma. Boring, but we had two maternal great-grandmothers called Nanny and Granny.

What about your paternal grandmother (is there a distinction?)
Grandma

What do/did you call your maternal grandfather?
Grandpa

Paternal grandfather?
Nothing. Never knew him.

What do you call the big clumps of dust that gather under furniture and in corners?
dust bunnies (my dad calls them "grungies")

What term do you use to refer to something that is across both streets from you at an intersection (or diagonally across from you in general)?
catty-cornered

What do you call the activity of driving around in circles in a car?
doin' doughnuts--unless you're talking about cruising, which I've never done, but I have seen American Grafitti!

What do you call paper that has already been used for something or is otherwise imperfect?
scratch paper

What is your *general* term for a big road that you drive relatively fast on?
highway

What do you call it when rain falls while the sun is shining?
I say, "Oh, look! the devil's beating his wife."

When you are cold, and little points of skin begin to come on your arms and legs, you have-
goosebumps

What do you call the gooey or dry matter that collects in the corners of your eyes, especially while you are sleeping?
sleep

What do you call an easy course?
no-brainer or slack-class

What do you call a traffic situation in which several roads meet in a circle and you have to get off at a certain point?
roundabout

What is the thing that women use to tie their hair?
ponytail holder

Do you use the word cruller?
nope

Do you use the term "bear claw" for a kind of pastry?
Yes, but, but I use sweetbun more often

What do you call someone who is the opposite of pigeon-toed (i.e. when they walk their feet point outwards)?
slough-footed (pronounced "sloo") or duck-footed

Can you call coleslaw "slaw"?
no

What do you call the box you bury a dead person in?
coffin

Do you say "vinegar and oil" or "oil and vinegar" for the type of salad dressing?
oil and vinegar

What do you call it when a driver changes over one or more lanes way too quickly?
I pretty much say that. Or, that s/he is cutting people off.

When you stand outside with a long line of people waiting to get in somewhere, are you standing "in line" or "on line" (as in, "I stood ___ in the cold for two hours before they opened the doors")?
in line

Do you say "frosting" or "icing" for the sweet spread one puts on a cake?
icing

What is "the City"?
Huh. I usually call it "Town." As in, "going into Town." It's the closest large city. For me, going into Town would be going to downtown Dallas.

What is the distinction between dinner and supper?
Dinner is the midday meal, and supper is the evening meal. Supper is a European custom, though, occurring later than 6:00 pm. Thus, dinner became lunch, and supper became dinner.

Do you cut or mow the lawn or grass?
Mow the lawn

Do you pass in homework or hand in homework?
hand or turn in

What do you call the insect that looks like a large thin spider and skitters along the top of water?
cool. or, waterbug

What do you call the thing from which you might drink water in a school?
water fountain

What do you call a public railway system (normally underground)?
subway

What do you call the act of covering a house or area in front of a house with toilet paper?
tee-pee-ing or wrapping

What do you call a traffic jam caused by drivers slowing down to look at an accident or other diversion on the side of the road?
rubber-necking

What vowel do you use in bag?
short-a, as in Dad or snag.

What do you call the paper container in which you might bring home items you bought at the store?
grocery sack

What do you call the night before Halloween?
nothing. October 30?

What do you call the end of a loaf of bread?
the heel

How do you pronounce the word for the type of drug that acts as central nervous system depressant and is used as a sedative or hypnotic? (Please do not look up the word in a dictionary before answering this question.)
Train-kwill-i (long "i," as in "die")-zer ]

What do you call a point that is purely academic, or that cannot be settled and isn't worth discussing further? Moot or academic

How do you pronounce the -sp- sequence in "thespian" (the word meaning "actor")?
s-p--thes-pian

What do you call a drive-through liquor store?
"drive-through liquor store" or by its name

What do you call food that you buy at a restaurant but then eat at home?
to-go or take out

What do you say when you want to lay claim to the front seat of a car?
shotgun!

What word do you use for gawking at someone in a lustful way?
leering, or, in mixed company, checking 'em out.

Do you say "expecially", or "especially"?
adamantly, especially--but if I'm speaking too quickly, I have been know to say "bidness" in place of "business."

Posted by erica at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I keep wanting to start a topic over at MATH+1 on working and mom-hood, but that's only because the folks who post there are intelligent and witty and funny and not likely to take everything so seriously (ParentsPlace messageboards, I'm lookng at you). I'm not even entirely sure what I'd want to pontificate about, exactly. I've been a mother for 20 months, and I've worked for all but 10 weeks of them. The daycare people see my daughter more than I do. This is always present, always up front in the brain. Yet, I want to work. I feel all trapped and smothered by the molasses routine of babyhood and toddlers. Still, I love my child. Why is this still so freaking hard?

I just started receiving a subscription to Working Mother, a welcome alternative to some of the other parenting magazines I've received, in that, well, it doesn't take the view that mothers work only because they have to. Its very existence as a publication is a testament to the fact that there are other mothers who love their children like mad but who work outside the home because they want to. And believe me, this is in stark contrast to my norm.

We spent the afternoon at the pediatrician's office yesterday, trying to ease Audrey's breathing (she's started remaining overly congested after a cold virus). I was the only parent in the waiting room in work clothes. Two co-workers have quit to become stay-at-home moms. The position I'm filling at the new job was recently vacated by a mom who felt she had to go back to work but then couldn't stand being away from her kids.

In my current job, I work 45-hour weeks. I travelled 20 days this past year. I wrote a thesis and studied for exams. Did I miss anything? Certainly. I missed my daughter's first snow-fall. As she won't remember it, though, we can build memories of it through the photos, through Marshall's narrative of the event. And I can tell her about being stuck in the Las Vegas airport, in a tiny terminal area, the omnipresent slot machines pinging in the background, thinking only of getting home to her and her dad. Are these memories less valuable because they weren't experienced together?

Working and mothering are not, I'd say, mutually exclusive. Wanting to work isn't wrong, nor are the guilt felt when I drop my daughter off in the mornings and the joy at seeing her at the end of the day. I don't know any other way; I can't imagine how I could be good for her if I stayed home. I see myself as my mother--depressed, smothered, cigarette in one hand (always), romance novel in the other, inane soap opera on the television. I can't function like that.

Which doesn't mean I'm not concerned with the same issues stay-at-home moms are: How to successfully breastfeed. How to instill values. How to teach self-control. How to win the power-struggles without crushing her spirit. How to create memories and lessons. In a way, though, I'm lucky. Though I don't have extended family near enough by to help, I do have a daycare with loving providers who are as concerned as I that my daughter is considerate, loving, playful, imaginative, challenged and cuddled. And that can't be all bad; can it?

Posted by erica at 04:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A lot of thoughts and such are buzzing around in my head, but I'm not sure why. Nor am I altogether sure how to articulate them. I've realized, off and on, how my political views have evolved with the different stages of my life -- which is only natural, of course.

During my mid-adolescence, I fancied myself pretty conservative. Only, I wasn't really. What I suffered from was an infatuation of Ayn Rand, who was conservative, to put it mildly. With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that what appealed to me in the protagonists of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead was their strong sense of individual purpose, the potential of undiluted will. In fact, Dagny Taggart and Howard Roark are impossible, flat stereotypes (archetypes, perhaps) whose drive is outside of politics. At least, Roark's is. Taggart, I suppose, is a product, a progeny of sorts, if Roark's rape of Dominique Francon had resulted in a pregnancy. Taggart also is a student of crass capitalism; she is transformed, via physically and emotionally violent relationships with arguably "stronger" men, into a shadow of the mythical John Galt. And thus, she is dismissable as an individual power. Instead, she is a thin veil not for individual will, as Rand would have the reader believe, but for capitalism. So let's leave her out of it.

The character Roark, written first, is not a character at all, but a name put to a warped desire to force the natural world to meet individual (read: human) desires. Rand has suggested that Roark is based on Frank Lloyd Wright. Impossible. Roark is based on Wright as Rand interprets him. Which could spark a long discussion of the nature of biography and the lies it tells, that, while fascinating to me, is nonetheless entirely off topic.

Back to my misguided youth. What I saw in Rand's writing was the determination and triumph of the individual will. What aspiring poet wouldn't find harbor in such? Still, I was reared in a conservative Christian environment by staunchly right-leaning parents. My family had benefitted from Reagan-omics. Who was I to question the right of upper middle class folks from holding on to their money? They had worked for it, after all; shouldn't they keep it? And damn the rest.

So went the reasoning of a privileged suburban kid. Once I hit college, the bastion of liberal (and by that, I mean left-leaning) thought, the hollow men, Roark and Taggart, blew apart, and I was left with my natural inclinations and leanings. I say natural because I was distinctly apolitical in college. I was much more concerned about how to score alcohol on Thursday nights than what was going on in government houses. Even when beer lost ranking to coffee, post-colonial criticism was more relevant to my daily comings and goings than debates on national healthcare or the state of the forests--US or rain forest.

Still, though I lent little conscious thought to the matter, my political leanings were developing. Where once my heart beat libertarian in time with The Girl Who Owned a City, it now escorted girls from their cars, past the protestors, to the door of the only clinic in town where abortions were performed. I hosted sex ed "programs" in my residence hall (I was an RA), where condoms were handed out as prizes. I eschewed meat and products tested on animals (and for a summer, refused any food or toiletry containing animal by-products). I stopped shaving my legs (not just in winter, either!).

In grad school, I evened out a bit. Found my center (as opposed to the center). And I discovered that while certainly not a hippy, I was, firmly, a liberal.

Grad school was years ago. I'm now a professional editor, student-loan-paying, two car-payment making individual, wife, and mother. And I'm still awfully left-leaning. I'm still very much pro-choice, though I do believe that counseling and perhaps even a 24-hour waiting period are advisable. I use birth control and am a strong supporter of sex education and the ready availablity of condoms. I hope that national healthcare is something I'll see (in this country) before I die. I'm appalled that the national minimum wage has held steady for so long. I believe in global warming. I oppose wars based on oil and vengeance. I support aid for dependent children and WIC programs. I fear the eventual and long-term effects of recent tax-cuts (and am well aware, Mr. Bush, that while my family has benefitted a bit now, that they were not intended to aid folks like me but to keep lined the pockets of your peers).

On the other hand, I've given into many of the stresses of getting through each day as a working mom and faltered. I eat meat--and not organic meat, either. I use far too many convenience items, such as paper towels and disposable diapers. We do recycle our plastics, glass, newspaper, and aluminum, but we buy tons of packaged, processed, convenience food. I breastfed, but wasn't able to make it a full year, and thus lent support to one of the worldwide scourges, the formula companies. In short, I've chosen momentary conveniences (and succumbed to consumerism) without giving adequate thougth to the far-reaching consequences.

I'm stuck. There are some things I cannot give up (disposable diapers. Our daycare won't deal with cloth, and I won't switch to another daycare). There are many things I can change and will strive to. Our first obstacle? To disentangle ourselves from the lure of Everyday Low Prices. But what's the alternative? Are Tom Thumb, Kroger and Albertson's any better? Should I try to find the time and money to hike out to Whole Foods? And how to convince Marshall that Boca burgers are just as good?

Speaking of consumerism, we finally purchased a dinette set this evening. A nearby unfinished furniture store was having a sale, and we bought a 36-inch diameter round pedestal table with four chairs. Marshall is going to stain them this next week. We're getting so grown up!

Bottom of table and pedestal


Table top


Four chairs, stacked


Chairs, stacked, with cats (Left-Howard; Right-Gene)


Random Audrey, in sunglasses

Posted by erica at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)