Did i.

February 14....I love marriage equality

2012-02-14T12:02:00.000-08:00

I wrote this post in 2008. Right before S and I got the paperwork signed to swap over some rights. I only posted it for a couple hours at the time.

Yesterday it became state law that same sex couples in the state of Washington are entitled to all the rights and priveledges and responsibilities afforded by the state that accompany marriage. In Catholic circles this causes quite a lot of drama.

Which is why I added a lovely homily, preached by the rector of St. James Cathedral in Seatle.

S and I are doing the legal shin-dig on Saturday. It's not a huge deal a total of 5 people will be there! But we wanted to support our LGBT brother and sisters by doing the legal part in Massachusetts.

We have been coming up with some vows:

I Rachel, take you Sean, to by my legal partner.
I, Rachel, include you in my insurance policies and healthcare.
I, Rachel, change my tax filing status from single to joint status.
I, Rachel, file joint customs claims when traveling abroad with you.
In the absence of a will I, Rachel, will inherit your assets and determine what to do with them.
Should something terrible happen to one of us:
I, Rachel, give you power of attorney should I be unable to make decisions for myself.
I, Rachel, will visit you in the hospital as your next of kin.
I, Rachel, give you right to make the best decisions about my body when I die.
I, Rachel, will take bereavment leave should that happen.
I, Rachel, will enjoy estate and gift tax benefits

We both think these would be hilarous. I don't think they are what we are actually going to say. But it gets me thinking and reminds me that these are just a couple of the 1400 rights granted to married people in the US. I guess it is obvious to me why I think that same sex persons should be granted these rights. Even if someone thinks their relationship is immoral or intrinsically evil I think that people have the right to have people they love and who love them visit them in the hospital. They have the right to have a couple days off to grieve when people die. They have the right to at least share health insurance (health insurance is a whole other corrupt can of worms to open!)

Ranting paragraph about religion and using it to cloak fear deleted.

Sean and I choose to give them to one another. Sean happens to be a man. I happen to be a woman. So my final words on this divisive topic come not from me but from a governmental body:

Massachusetts Supreme Court Ruling on Marriage

“Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations....Without question; civil marriage enhances the "welfare of the community." It is a "social institution of the highest importance." It is central to the way the Commonwealth identifies individuals, provides for the orderly distribution of property, ensures that children and adults are cared for and supported whenever possible from private rather than public funds, and tracks important epidemiological and demographic data....Marriage also bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family.... Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition....It is undoubtedly for these concrete reasons, as well as for its intimately personal significance, that civil marriage has long been termed a ‘civil right.’”

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Gospel stories like today’s can be so familiar that we’re apt to tune them out – not purposely, of course, but almost automatically. If we do, we lose out on a lot because there’s almost always something new, even surprising, in the gospels if we but take a closer look.

Take today’s story of the healing of the leper. One interesting and, I think, surprising aspect of that story is the rather blatant breaking of the Law that was involved. The leper clearly broke the Law, but so did Jesus.

The Law, when it came to lepers, was clearly set forth in the Book of Leviticus (today’s first reading). Because leprosy was regarded as being highly contagious – not to mention a punishment for sin -- the Law said that lepers were supposed to dwell apart, to stay far away from wherever there were people and, if people happened to come near, lepers were to make their whereabouts known by shouting “unclean!” The leper in today’s gospel story boldly broke that law. He came out of the shadows, walked right up to Jesus, knelt down before him, and even dared to engage him in conversation. It’s not hard to imagine the people’s reaction to this, is it? It must have ranged anywhere from horror to indignation to fear that they might now catch the dread disease.

But the leper was not the only one to break the law. Jesus -- who allowed the leper to come right up to him and who went further by reaching out and touching him -- Jesus also broke the law. He did.

As so often in the gospels, Jesus, who revered the Law, refused to be bound or straight-jacketed by it. Everything he did in this encounter made it clear that the person before him, this poor outcast of a leper, was more important to him than any law. That’s why he allowed the leper approach him. That’s why he engaged in conversation with him. That’s why he did the unthinkable by reaching out to touch him. Jesus knew that this outcast who suffered from a dread disease needed more than words, more even than just physical healing. He knew that he also needed the warmth of a human encounter. That’s why he reached out and touched him. In doing so, he not only gave him healing, he gave him love and acceptance. He welcome back into the community this man who had long been living on the fringes.

But while Jesus broke the law, he didn’t completely ignore it: he actually honored the Law when he told the fellow to go and show himself to the priest and to make the customary offering called for in the Law of Moses. And then, he imposed on him a little ‘law’ of his own when he told him to keep quiet about the healing. Why? We can’t be sure. Perhaps Jesus didn’t want people coming to him for the wrong reasons -- just because of his miraculous healing powers. He wanted people to come to him to hear his gospel, his good news, his liberating word.

Well, the man didn’t observe that ‘law,’ either. Once he was healed, he couldn’t contain himself. He started spreading the story wherever he went. And that brings us to a fascinating little twist in story. The more the news about Jesus’ healing of the leper got around, the more he was swarmed wherever he went. Everyone wanted a piece of him. Everyone wanted his healing touch -- so much so that, as Mark puts it, it became “impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly” and he had to remain outside the towns in deserted places in order to find any peace. I hope you see the twist. Effectively, Jesus is now the one who has to dwell apart. Effectively, Jesus has become the leper!

My friends, this familiar gospel story, like all the gospel stories, lives in the present not just the past. Lepers are still coming to Jesus. They are. And I’m not speaking here of the physical disease of leprosy. No, in a sense, we are all lepers and we call out to Jesus from whatever it is that holds us in its grip -- fear, sin, alienation, self-doubt, self-hatred – it matters not. I’m thinking, too, of those whom society or even the Church have treated like lepers by marginalizing them, or stigmatizing them, misunderstanding them, or even treating them as outcasts. Think, for instance, of gay and lesbian people who struggle so hard for acceptance and understanding, struggle to be respected and loved for who they are. Or think of people who are in marriages that the Church does not recognize and that cannot, for a variety of reasons, be regularized by the Church, yet who hunger to be welcomed and to be given a place at the Table.

In responding to them, the Church can do no better than to look to the Jesus of the gospels, the Jesus of today’s gospel, and to find there the one for whom there are no outcasts whatever: only fellow humans in need of love, human warmth, healing, acceptance.

It is this Jesus whom we now approach in the Eucharist. As with the leper, so with us: Jesus allows us to come close to him, and he lovingly stretches out his hand to touch us, to welcome us, to reassure us, to heal us.

Father Michael G. Ryan
http://stjames-cathedral.org/Main.htm

February 13...I love when I find my parenting groove.

2012-02-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

Junia is still sleeping in a crib and we are going to leave it that way for awhile more. She is sleeping really well, not trying to escape and its working for us. Rule number #1 of parenting- if it is working then don't change it.

The problem is that she has outgrown her blankets. They technically fit over her but only if they aren't bunched or gathered and if she doesn't move. On the other hand a twin blanket is just too much blanket for a crib. So thus, Junia and I went to Jo-Anne's yesterday to buy some fleece for a new blanket.

So there we are in the fleece aisle...getting along perfectly well...and she picked out the Disney princess fleece. I turned around and she said, "I want this one." I exclaimed, "oh no freakin' way." And yes, I exclaimed it. She of course burst into tears at my strong response.

But then I have to give this kid a reason that the Disney princess blanket will not be crossing the threshold of our house (I don't think she even knows a single Disney princess). I picked up my crying kid and here's what I came up with.

"Junia we aren't going to get a blanket with other people's faces on it. We don't want them in our house. Unless we find a blanket with your picture on it we don't get blankets with other people's faces." So we looked for a blanket with her face on it- and ended up with some orange fleece and some ribbon to decorate the edges a bit.

I actually kind of like coming up with explanations like this. Especially when she buys them!

February 12...I love Southern California

2012-02-12T10:53:00.000-08:00

I hadn't ever been until last fall. Southern California was a mysterious place that in my imagination were scenes from 90210 or Baywatch. Superficial. Sunbathed, Beach, Hollywood, Disney, Fake= These are not things I am into whatsoever. But Sean went down to San Diego for work last fall and last spring we were craving some sunshine.

So over the slow course of time I have realized how much I like it. Like every place the stereotypes have some truth. I mean NYorkers are cold at first and Seattlelites are all wearing tan or fleece and kind of downers, and San Franciscans are elitist and zealously liberal---but a cities are full of people with lots of opinions perspectives bodies. Cities are full of neighborhoods, exceptions, chaos, history and culture. So of course, this is true of Southern California.

I had to go down to San Diego for a funeral yesterday. It was work related and of course I would have preferred not to go. But while there I was on a mission to absorb sunshine, gawk at growing things, sight the ocean, and be in a place that I am finding newly charming.

I don't really want to live there...and I confess I'm not sure I LOVE southern California but I have a crush for sure.

February 9....I love PDA

2012-02-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

Today, riding the bus to work, a 40+ year old man dressed in jeans and a collared shirt, looking ever so ordinary boarded. But just before he did a blew a kiss to someone. No hand just puckered lips and eye contact.

Watching him, I felt priveleged to know that he loved someone. And, he loved someone enough to express that love in public. It was pretty cool.

I think the kind of PDA that bothers me is when it is highly sexualized. When people are clearly horn-balls for one another (I get it but I don't like it); or when couples are rude- getting in the way of others, making a scene that kind of stuff.

But when people are gently expressing love.
When they are putting their affection out there in the world.
It can sometimes be charming...and sure sometimes akward but I'm not going to move away from uncomfortable just because love is out on the table.

So thanks man on the bus. I want to hold my beloved's hand right now.

February 6...I love a finished project

2012-02-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

I love a finished project.

Like this one.

This must be why today I finished two quilts.
1 clock.
And made a cute skirt for the toddler on a whim.
It's the high of completion that I love.

Oh, and about this dresser!?

This dresser started out as a $75 craigslist deal. Ikea doesn't even make them anymore. But this one was around $200 when they did. So it felt like a good deal...no going to Ikea, no putting it together, no fighting over instructions. Phew.

With some primer. And three coats of sample paint this has turned into a beaut!

Oh how I love the ombre effect. And that this one has room for toddler clothes and baby clothes.

Here are some steps along the way:

Took off the handles and filled in one of the holes. Then sanded then
Then primed the face and edge of the drawers with Olympic brand primer- the only primer at Lowes that didn't have a pregnant women label.
I actually then did three coats of paint letting each coat dry for at least 10 hours
But since we only have 1 paintbrush the whole thing took over a week.
But it worked out, Junia would go to bed and I could easily spend 10 minutes painting the drawer and then not worry about her touching them in the AM.
The paint colors are valspar. I picked an orange paint sample and asked for 1 sample of each.

Feb 4. I love....how my daughter eats

2012-02-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

Junia is a great eater.

She is sometimes picky.
She sometimes has preferences.
She sometimes gets more calories from milk than meals.

The photo is taken from the restaurant website here: http://www.vijsrangoli.ca/diner/index.html

But, for the most part she is willing to try a lot of things. We are in Vancouver, BC for the night. We had hotel points for a free room and we needed to get away. So tonight we went to our favorite resturant in Vancouver this place: http://www.vijsrangoli.ca/diner/index.html. It's not kid friendly. It's really not toddler friendly. But it's so good.

It's an Indian restaurant: some spicy things, some fruity things, but generally not our American fare. And of course Junia joined along. Eating a relatively spicy dal (and drinking plenty of water), enjoying the saffron rice loaded with vegetables, and getting bits of tandoor chicken with a curry sauce on it stuck in her teeth.

I imagine it is a mix of her personality and the fact that we don't force her to eat but also don't give her options (eat what we are eating or load up on milk) that has made her quite an adventurous eater. It's just so stinkin' cool to see her eat things that I didn't have until I was in my twenties and to enjoy them so thoroughly.

Tomorrow's food adventure? Chinese soup dumplings!

February 3....I love

2012-02-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

Last February I joined this community of bloggers who posted a "I love" series during the month of February. One of my self protective styles is to remember the chaos or to laugh at the sloppy I kind of like the messiness of life. I also think it is good practice for me to periodically embrace the sweetness, beauty and joy that can be at right at the surface of our living as well...even if that isn't the most natural way of being for me.

So today I start with I love Junia's relationship with her sibling.

Sure her sibling is a fetus, that Junia calls "baby sister" (who knows if she is a she), but the relationship that they seem to be starting is already pretty cool.

Last night I had to go back to work after dinner and Junia gave me a hug and kiss goodbye and then she voluntarily gave "baby sister" a hug and kiss goodbye as well. It was pretty cool. And even though they will certianly have a dynamic beginning (especially at first) I think that watching your children become and be siblings is going to be a very cool thingl

Sick of being Sick

2012-02-02T13:57:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday Sean and I picked Junia up from daycare and realized she wasn't breathing very well. So after a quick stop at a grocery store dei we spent ourlovely Tuesday evening at Seattle Children's Hospital urgent care.

They patched her up and sent us home around 11pm. I am convinced that some researcher needs to inquire about the passing of time in healthcare settings. It is somehow altogether different, "quick hurry up and wait."

It seems that Sean and I are constantly living in fear and dread about the next time Junia will be sick. In January alone I had to take 4 sick days. And, in the world of no paid maternity leave this means that each of these days means one less day of leave for baby Deuce. So maybe that makes me thankful that I have been working so many hours on the weekends. Because then, at least it all adds up to be even.

Phew.

At moments I think she is an unusually sick kid. But maybe its just the fine art of being a two year old. Being two, being in daycare= being sick (and yes building up that immune system).

All in all though, I am jonesing for some healthy weeks! Some springtime boost in our immune systems!

Simply 3 hours of alone time.

2012-01-27T10:14:00.000-08:00

Should I hang up bunting? That's how exciting this is!

I have an overnight retreat tonight at work.

This means that I'm going in late.
This also means that we still took Junia to daycare and Sean still went to work because I am still going into work.

So what then is this wierd void? Alone time in my house? Praise the Lord we don't live in community! Or live in a house with 10 other relatives. Or have roommates. Or any of the other sort of mixes that happen in households. Because I am getting some legit alone time here.

Much to my surprise I am happy to leave the pile of laundry on the living room floor.
Or a gift baby quilt on the sewing machine.
or the kitchen piled with dishes.

Rather, I am going to take my journal.
And a novel I am trying to finish reading.
and another book I am working through down to the neighborhood bakery.
I am going to order a latte.
Two pastries.

And I am going to sit until I start to think about other things.

And, wouldn't you know it today is even sunny.

Prayer for Peace- and curiosity

2012-01-26T15:15:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I prayed this prayer at an inter-faith prayer for peace. I was invited explicitly as a Roman Catholic lay minister and was expected/invited to pray from that perspective. I found it deeply challenging to speak from my perspective as a liberal feminist lay Roman Catholic but also I didn't want to add layers of confusion to anyone who wasn't familiar with diversity within the Catholic tradition.

As you can read, or pray, or find, I didn't push at all with gender language or reinterpretation in a challenging way. But I feel like I was authentic and moreover- I really am coming to believe that curiosity about one another might be a real source of bringing people together.

Lord God,

You are ever curious about all people.

As the gospels share,

in your living on earth you were always wanting to take in those around you for who they were.

When you met the sick, or ostracized.

When you met the oppressed or unknown.

When you met minorities or the unwelcome

Even when you met the powerful and elite.

You took the time to sit.
To welcome.

To talk.

To know people.

In the spirit of your curiosity about people of all kinds

May we become like you.

Embracing others out of a deep desire to know them.

To understand.

To move away from our preconceived notions.

And to become people of peace.

In the spirit of taking risks to be with people

May our gathering today inspire future conversations.

Depth of understanding

Richness in friendship.

In the spirit of your living, dying and rising

May we become people

Committed to love.

Prophetic in word.

Authentic in our striving for peace.

We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

-Written by Rachel Doll O'Mahoney

Why the Visitation of Mary isn't working for me...

2012-01-25T19:25:00.000-08:00

In prayer this morning our leader had chosen "the visitation" or where Mary visits Elizabeth to reflect on and frankly it pissed me off.

http://artsandfaith.com/index.php?showtopic=20124

Mary Visits Elizabeth.

During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit,^s cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.^t And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord ^* should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed ^* that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.” (from tnew New American Bible- copied from teh USCCB website http://www.usccb.org/bible/luke/1)

So I've been thinking about this reading today. Thinking about how for a lot of Catholics this is a week filled with zeal about the right to life protests and I got pissed. Maybe I am sick of fetus' having such a loud voice in my tradition when I feel like often women have no voice at all...

http://www.heqigallery.com/gallery/gallery3/pages/3-TheVisitation.html

The person with the most power in the whole story is a fetus, a freakin' fetus. Sure a much beloved and prophetic fetus but hi movement is what validates Elizabeth's words. Let me just tell you- that as I write this, as I have been thinking about this, as I prayed with this, my 27 week old fetus has been "leaping" all over my womb. Because, frankly that is what fetus' do.

I am frustrated that Elizabeth cannot stand on her own authority. That her voice has to be validated by John. I am frustrated because so many women I love and know believe that their voices must be validated by others. I find this heartbreaking...

How many women believe their self worth is validated by men?

Or their proof that they are good parents is their children?

Or their belief in the beauty of their bodies is validated by superficial constructs of beauty?

I want Elizabeth to say..."Mary my sister and friend who is visiting me...you are blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb." And then I want them to sit down as pregnant women do an gripe about being uncomfortable and swoon about the work that their bodies are doing. I want Elizabeth to share with Mary that since her arrival the baby has been moving at the sound of her voice...and how profound that seems to her.

But I want Elizabeth's voice to be one of strength. I dream that for her.

Bishops get your hands out of Legal Marriage..

2012-01-24T21:45:00.000-08:00

Catholic marriage is an official sacrament. Which means that somehow Catholics believe that marriage connects people to God in a unique and powerful way.

Legal marriage is a swapping of rights. Who gets to make decisions for who...

Catholic marriage is about creating life from love.

Legal marriage is not about creating...umm...tax revenue??

Catholic marriage is about finding God in the ordinary of sharing life with another.

Legal marriage is about who gets to keep the ordinary when someone dies...

A picture from my favorite wedding!
http://eplightphotography.com/home.html

Here in Washington the state legislature is debating and voting on whether or not gay marriage should be legal. I am of the opinion that someday we will look at this argument as ridiculous. That 100 years from now our great grandchildren will laugh at us and say that only bigots would say that gays should not be married. Just as people two hundred years ago were arguing about slavery...and we look back and think they were fools...

The thing for me is that as a Catholic the Catholic Church doesn't understand marriage in the same way that the state of Washington does. So I just wish they would stay out of the state debate. And since I don't feel threatened at all by my gay brothers and sisters being legally married (in fact I feel the opposite) I can't quite fathom why the church does as well. I just want to shout out, "if you really believe in the sacrament of marriage- and its meaning then just let the state be."

If Catholics want to change the church's position on who can and cannot receive the sacrament of marriage it's not a flip of a switch or a law- it involves reconstruction of our understanding of sex, gender, sperm, scripture...and a couple other major things. It is the work of a generation of theologians and taking St. Thomas Aquinas in his context rather than in ours...the whole thing ain't gonna happen that fast.

So relax Archbishops you should be scared about a whole lot of other stuff- in the meantime wash your hands of the state and take care of your sacraments.

Seriously this was a great wedding.
http://eplightphotography.com/home.html

You aren't welcome...

2012-01-23T20:52:00.000-08:00

Am I nesting?

Picture Credit: http://listsoplenty.com/pix/the-unwelcome-mat

Probably not. I think I am in New Year's mode. But our guestroom is a freakin' disaster right now. It's not dirty as much as just messy. There are bins of winter clothes half emptied, bins of clothes that don't fit me and I don't care to look at until after this baby is born. There are bins of swaddling blankets and baby crap. An old dresser, a desk we don't want anymore, piles of folded clean sheets, towels, and various assundry of such things that haven't made it into the closet, a twin bed set on its side.

Oh, not to mention all the other things that usually belong in a guestroom.

The big project that is underway is the repainting of a dresser we scored in the neighborhood. Big enough for two kids stuff. So seven drawers have been primed, three have been painted, and all are hanging out in the guestroom.

We are trying to figure out some good systems for organizing toys. Right now our best system is taking a load of stuff to goodwill every week!

So all in all, I think with a couple days notice we could offer hospitality but if you show up right now we could feed you but you'll have to sleep with the dog!

Baby Quilt- Auction item

2012-01-22T14:10:00.000-08:00

Does having a skill always mean that you know how inadequate your skill is? My professional work isn't very "skills" based and for the most part parenting and relationships aren't "skills" based either. But sewing, is some intuition and feeling but it is also mostly just skill...

I finished my third quilt last night. This one is for our the St. Mary's No-Waste Auction. It feel pretty different to me that people are going to spend money on this. It's not a gift for someone or something to have around the house...this is something that someone is going to buy...and so I am VERY aware of its inadequacies.

I think anyone who makes things has an ongoing list of mistakes that this project contains. When I am giving something away or it is just for us that doesn't really matter to me...but giving it as a product feels different.

And my fear is that someone who really knows how to sew and quilt will be at the auction and will see what a shoddy job it is. Hopefully they will also say to themselves, "I guess I should have donated something?!"

And, even though I am more experienced and better trained at making clothing (esp for children) it's hard to donate a wardrobe to an auction or even an item because kids are so many different sizes.

But off it goes. Probably (hopefully) to be added to whole kit of baby stuff.

What to do with a toddler? Snowed in and functional...

2012-01-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

Do I seem bitter over the past couple of days? Perhaps if you are a facebook friend and a blog reader the answer is yes. I have found being snowed-in painful. Figuring out what to do with myself and a two year old for 10+ hours a day has been a challenge for me. In fact, two of the mornings I went online (during Sesame Street of course) and from that made lists of things I thought we could do together....That at least made me feel like TV wasn't my only back-up.

Well, I hope that my challenge is your amusement...Here's a collection of our fun and no so fun projects. Because even if I haven't been having a great week of snow days we have still been keeping busy.

So in no particular order here is what we have been doing on our Mama/Junia snow days:

Trying to go outside- only for it to end in tears and several pairs of gloves.
And, no she isn't bleeding from her lip it is chocolate from 3 hours before.

Building forts.
"Thanks Mama." She says.
15 minutes later after every toy has been put under the sheet she says,
"I don't like this."

Fighting it out.
"I want my Papa."
"I want your Papa too."

Start working on painting the dresser drawers to a new dresser.
So far all I have done is patch the handle holes of three of the drawers. Yeah, this project isn't going very well.

Cleaning up messes.
Of toys.
Of food.
Of toys again.
Of crap the dog took out of the trashcan and chewed on.
Of snow clothes
Cleaning up many many many messes.
Does our house look clean?
No.

Making pie crust.
Making pie.
Making Quiche.
Eating Quiche.
Eating Pie.
Wash a ton of dishes.

Painting. We paint a lot around here.

Making Valentines.
Step 1- Paint some cardstock using red paints.
Step 2: Let it dry.
Step 3. Cut out hearts
Step 4: have toddler glue pieces of red paper to another piece of paper.
Step 5: Glue large piece- covered with red pieces of paper- over the heart hole.

Staring at each other.
Or negotiating for someone to use the potty.
Or to put on pants.
Or to play something independently.
Or to pick on the dog not me.

Paint again.

Cut pieces of paper into shapes. This one was called "Papa."
yesterday we did "Mama" But mama was the shape of a fish.
What does that mean?

Celebrating early?
We took a painting project- because I hadn't slyly thrown it away during nap time- and cut it into squares. Wrote on the squares and sewed them together.
Clearly I was distracted it says, "Happy Birthday Papp." Who the hell is Papp?

Cutting hearts. From the leftover red paper from making Valentines. Junia told me what order to sew them onto the string. Hang string in front window.

I read two novels over the weekend. I should have read much slower. Because this week my reading has been too much of this. I am pretty sick of all of our books.

We've been adding stains to the couch. One after another. This is some of the chocolate that was coming out of her mouth during the snow meltdown. She spit it onto the couch when she didn't like it.

Yeah- and all of this was like 2 hours. That's the problem.

How to irritate me...lessons learned from a two year old

2012-01-19T18:24:00.000-08:00

I seriously melted down this morning when Sean left for work. Today is a snow day. My work is closed. Junia's daycare is closed. But Sean's work never closes. Ever. Seriously like 7 people in Seattle go to work when it snows and they all work for the local news.

With how much Junia has been sick in the past couple of weeks and Sean's insane work schedule I am feeling pretty done with this parenting all day everyday from home thing. I don't know why I find it so hard but I just don't know what to do with myself or rather, I don't know what to do with her. I don't need freakin' craft ideas...I need the sanity of being with someone who is rational, fun, and can share.

So here is my list of things that are irritating about being with a toddler all day. Stuck in the house. Not able to leave. Or go outside.

-the constant cycle of clean up- destroy- clean up- destroy
-Setting up a project like painting. 15 minutes to set up. 5 minutes of fun. 15 minutes of clean up.
-"Yay thanks for doing X" one minute- next minute , "I don't like this."
-Negotiating. Its like dealing with Iran around here. -irrational, explosive, foolish...
-Can a nap EVER be long enough that the sound of waking up doesn't make me disappointed?
-Sure lets go outside and play in the snow. 25 minutes to get ready. Go outside. 3 minutes until tears. Return to the house- toddler saying, "I want Papa." Mama saying, "Believe me, I do too."
-Must you stand on the edge of a couch while the metal toolbox is below you and take of your pants?
-I'll play when I am done doing X means I will play when I am done doing X. So leave me alone until then.
-

All in all we are making it through these snow days, but my romantic image of snow days is quickly dissolving into slush.

I am a racist

2012-01-16T21:00:00.000-08:00

Does anyone actually think they are a racist?

Except I am willing to admit by fact of my upbringing, my own color, and the society that I live in that I am a racist.

I didn't actually grow up with people of color around me. Except for one family here and there. There was nothing normal about diversity. There were no racist slurs in my family. There was no discussion of diversity at all. So I picked up everything that society showed me.

I feared east St. Louis...because everyone who lived there must be violent and carry a gun. And never once heard a discussion of systematic oppression, poverty, lack of opportunity.

I only knew that black people could be middle class because of the one or two families in town and the Cosby show.

I had no models of people of color being in positions of power.

Jesus, God, Mary, all of 'em they were all white. Just like me. In my initial imagination they still are.

When I encounter a group of young black men on the street...I confess be being guarded and cautious. I would be with white young men too. But, it is different. Undoubtedly different. I constantly am talking myself out of my preconceived notions.

I have privileges afforded to me that without recognizing the advantages I innately posses.

I could go on. I really could.
But I think on MLK day it is important for me to recognize that I contribute to my own societies problems. And while, I actively talk about color read about race issues (discussions lead by people of color) and am inspired by the work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I am reminded by him that I too am a contributor of my societies problems.

And while I am not Newt Gingrich in my racism. Nor am I any worse than most of my white brothers and sisters I think its important for white people to name this about ourselves.

And that part of the work of Christians is to own this. And to work against it.

First snowtime fun

2012-01-15T18:16:00.000-08:00

It snowed in Seattle today as it is not something that happens every winter today was probably Junia's first experience of playing in snow. Last year during our 1 snowstorm we went to "play" in the snow and Junia took off her mitten discovered that the white stuff was cold and screamed the whole way back.

I think she found it hard to walk in the snow. She kept saying, "I getting tired."

If you

Sledding was a bit iffy. Fun but a tad out of control. The other kids on the hill I think helped to convince her that she should be having fun.

And, it would be a shame if I didn't include a photo of our snow loving dog. She chases sledders, snowballs, and whatever else is moving!

So now in year two snow is way more fun especially when it is 32 degrees and not very treacherous.

Sibling love

2012-01-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

I am scared shitless of having a second baby.

Everyone around me is saying only negative things,
                              "are you ready to give up sleep again?"
                              "whoa what are you going to do about childcare."
Or even more benign things,
                              "Congrats, are you going to keep working?"
                              "Why would you prefer a girl you already have one?"
In my head I'm thinking:
                               "What the shit life finally feels balanced again."
                               "We cannot afford this."

"We really should stop having sex."

"Oh gosh not- more breastfeeding."

The fact of the matter is that I am dreading the lack fo sleep, anxious about childcare, I will keep working and don't tell me that having two daughters is like having two of the same person. I've realized that there are no voices in my life telling me that having two kids is wonderful, or exciting, or that it is fun to see them together or any of that stuff. For someone like me who starts with, "what is the worst case scenario of this event..." this is kind of a bad place to be.

It's also kinda bad because I don't like random people giving me advice or pladitudes. They have to be people I respect and love and who also feel the same about me. (be aware of this before you offer an advice laden comment :)

I'm sure it'll grow on me. After all, I'm still in worst case scenario mode.

But wait, that is not why I started typing this post. I was thinking about siblings, and even though I am scared about having a baby, I am really grateful that Junia will have a sibling. (I actually think that only children are great so I'm not knocking them or their 'rents). I don't mean that I'm grateful she will have a playmate or someone to share childhood with- sure that will come what I am grateful for is that she will not have to deal with Sean and I by herself.

My sister and I.

Our getting old, being loopy, and giving her some baggage is inevitable. And, at some point when she and another person want to process that or plan our funerals or whatever I want there to be a sibling there for her and she for another.

I couldn't find a picture with just my siblings- so here is us- and our partners and offspring.

In my own regard, I am vastly different from some of my siblings, but the process of losing my Dad and the fallout of all of that is a set of memories I am grateful I share with my siblings. Knowing that someone else shares some of the same memories of my childhood is meaningful. Calling my sister to discuss finances is different than anyone else because she knows the money baggage I have from childhood. Or asking my brother Jake for a favor is okay because he's my brother...on and on. The fact is that most my siblings and I aren't really that close- but there is a closeness that we have that I don't share with anyone else simply because they are my siblings. And this, is a wish I have for my children.

My Greek Ancestor

2012-01-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of this pregnancy I have learned that I am a carrier for thalessemia trait. Which means I have thalessemia minor. Minor really captures the it! It doesn't really mean that much for me. I will probably always have low iron- as it impacts how my body takes in iron- but other than that it isn't a big deal for me.

This is a genetic trait which means that I received it from one of my parents but not both or I would have thalasemia major- which is a big freaking deal and can be horrible. I'm not really going there right now though since Sean isn't a carrier it doesn't really affect our children unless one of them is a carrier and reproduces with another carrier (even then the likelyhood of thalessemia is low).

Why I am blogging about this though is that this diseasse is a risk factor for people who are from Africa, Asia or the mediterreanean. But alas, my family is insanely German and Irish. In fact, I have never heard ancestory from anywhere else.

So somewhere along the line someone snuck in. I wonder is it an ancient trait that I carry- some Visi-goth brought and Italian back to Germany? Were my Irish ancestors hooking up with someone from a Spanish shipwreck? Is it more modern like there is a secret African American in the family that we don't talk about? Who knows? Maybe it's a random fluke.

But all in all, I am fascinated by the way that my family history is playing out in my genetics. It makes me feel connected to a story. A story that has mystery and unknown curves, personalities, and yes perhaps diseases.

From Packaging to Pasture

2012-01-12T07:42:00.000-08:00

So Junia got this for Christmas. She loves the instruments but the box isn't exactly a storage box.

From Amazon.com- Melissa and Doug brand

So the instruments are all getting used and stored elsewhere. But, the moment I saw the opened gift I was secretly lusting after the box. I knew it would make a perfect pasture for Junia's little people farm animals. As a child growing up in Seattle she is probably slightly less aware of animals need for pasture than I was growing up in Southern Illinois. But I took the box in this state:

And then took the only paint that we had around- namely finger paint and added this:

And now, it is a very packed place for animals. But at least they all don't have to squeeze into the barn.

Epiphany Prayer

2012-01-06T15:35:00.000-08:00

Epiphany is Sunday- or that is when we are celebrating it. Epiphany is when the Wise folks showed up. Just an FYI- there weren't necessarily three of them. We don't know how many there were but they seemed to have brought 3 gifts. That's where we get three from.

I'm not convinced they were all men. Or kings.
But here's a prayer. Appropriate for the season.
And an Icon- appropriate for my theology!

from: http://www.bridgebuilding.com/narr/jmepi.html

May this holy season be for each of us

A time of moving beyond what is “reasonable”

And toward the star of wonder;

Moving beyond grasping tight to what we have

To unclenching our hands and letting go,

Following the Light where it leads:

Moving beyond competition towards cooperation,

Seeing that all humans are sisters and brothers.

Moving beyond the anxiety of small concerns

Towards the joys of justice and peace.

May the transforming acceptance of Mary and Joseph

The imagination of the shepherds

And the presence of the wise*

Guide us as we seek the Truth.

Always moving toward the divine promise

Always aware God can be hidden in the frailest among us.

Always open to the unexpected flash of Grace

To showing forth that Love that embraces all.

Adapted by J.M. Deren from Blessing and benedictions by W.L Wallace in Shrine on, Star of Bethlehem, CAFOD, 2004.

*Men omitted.

Baby Boy or Baby Girl- Both!

2012-01-05T19:48:00.000-08:00

No not twins.

We have been told by one ultrasound tech, "I'm 75% sure that is a boy." We have been told by another ultrasound tech, "I'm 80% sure that is a girl."

Huh. Those percentages are throwing me off.
So without much shock and awe, I don't know what gender our fetus is. (or perhaps it has dual sex characteristics?)

We will be having another ultrasound but I think at this point in the game I kind of like not knowing. We tried. It was apparently difficult based on Duece's position and stuff. So I think we are just going to let it go. You know?

I just thought ya'll might be wondering.
The real question is - how are we ever going to find a name we like as much as we like Junia's name? (for either gender)

Cousins. Niecews. Joy.

2012-01-02T21:15:00.000-08:00

We've come back from family visits with a pretty hardcore virus. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get it, but Junia and I have more than shared straws so we will see what becomes of this weekend.

I'm not writing this post though to lament sharing illnesses. I wanted to share a delight that I discovered over the past week. Cousins. Not my cousins. Though I have a great many cousins (50+) and don't think I actually had friends until 2nd grade because I had enough cousins to cover my basis. I discovered the joy of watching your child with their cousins.

I didn't know how amazing it could be to see my sisters children really enjoy Junia and vice versa. These kids all of whom I am connected to genetically and emotionally- when they are together: laughing, playing or even fighting and stealing eachother's lollipops I guess I just didn't know how cool it was to witness the relationship of my niecews and my child.

What joy.

How to travel when my kid gets motion sickness. The lessons I've learned in 2.5 years.

2012-01-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

My child is a vomiter. This means this is one of our particular struggles with her. I'm not complaining. Some kids are anxious, or super drooley, some are renegade climbers or asthmatics others are prone to ear infections. Our struggle is vomit.

As I write this, in fact, I am surrounded by the wafting smell of vomit in the air. Is it from my shoes? Perhaps from when she threw up on the skybridge last night just as we had gotten off the airplane. Or is it that I write this in the car and her carseat has witnessed countless vomiting episodes and one is slowly drying from last nights in flight service?

This is the story of our lessons learned from having a daughter who is a "vomiter." And since we travel a lot I thought I would put together the lessons I've learned.

When your kid has motion sickness:

-Before you get on the airplane/in car try to get your kid to eat a tums (we've had some sucess with this but you never know when your kid isn't sick) or ginger candy or ale or maybe even some pressure point bracelets or baby Dramamine??
-We are very pro bringing the carseat on the airplane. Our kid knows how to sit in it, sleep in it, and be in it. It's a pain to haul around but we think it is worth it. It also adds a nice buffer between the airplane upholstery and vomit.
-Pack two more outfits for transit than you think you'll need.-Layer your clothes. You are unlikely to have enough arms for a lot of carry on luggage and a child so bringing a bag with your stuff ain't gonna happen. But if you have on two layers you can at least clean yourself up after the first one and be careful for the second one.
-Whatever you do don't stop the crying with food. If you must feed the tears do not bring out a bottle and juice. I beg you!
-Once you think your kid is done with the whole feeling like crap thing (this would be hours after the initial episode- like if you have a whole day of travel) let them have a small drink of water ever 10 minutes (like a couple tablespoons)
-Watering mouth is a sign of throwing up in young and old alike.
-If you are flying- after the throwing up ask a flight attendant for two plastic bags. 1 to put the vomit covered clothes in and the second one to line the carseat with.
-Whatever you do don't think about how gross it is to strip your child down and give them a sponge bath in whatever place you are having to do that. Just do it.
-Take a full pack of wipes. Note the travel size. The whole 100+ refill pack. No hippy-dippy homemade wipes either. Use generously.
-Resign yourself to smelling like vomit sometimes. No one died of smelling bad.

A photo from the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum.

Holy Family- pehaps larger than you have imagined!

2011-12-23T12:48:00.000-08:00

The halls are quiet here, most people have gone home for the holidays.
I decided to work today- saving all the vacation that I can for maternity leave.
We will need some income. So one more paid day of leave is better for everyone.
Unpaid maternity leave is a sin.

Why do we idealize Mary so much? Really do we think she looked like this woman?

If we were all more like the idealized image of Mary we wouldn't need an social support or net. She after all, is the hero of the holy family. She has got her shit together. Every meal is planned out, every dollar well budgeted, every temper tantrum dealt with, every moment is bliss. If this is who Mary was than everyone else in the holy family is secondary.

You can guess that's not my image of Mary.

Jesus birth is only one of a series of miracles when you consider that he lived through infancy, or that he made it to adolescence let alone adulthood.

I'm not talking, "raising a child is hard."

I'm talking, raising a child in a place without clean drinking water or basic sanitation is hard.

I'm talking no antibiotics when Jesus got pnemonia or infection when you cut yourself.

I'm talking basic diarrhea can be deadly in the wrong environment.

I'm talking no chemotherapy or radiation when Mary got breast cancer.

I'm talking no therapy, no medical support when Joseph had a stroke.

These thoughts for me beg the question- what was the support of the holy family when life was tough?

So I am taking this time in Advent to spend some energy thinking about the largess of the holy family. Who were Jesus' aunts and uncles, his cousins, his grandparents (on both sides)? Who were the neighbors and friends? Who did he stay with as his father died a slow painful death? Who held his mother in grief when he finally died? What aunties scolded him for silly things when they were actually frustrated at their spouses for serious things? What uncles did he listen to talk about serious fears? Who did he get woken up by in the middle of the night to the sounds of love making (lets be honest there weren't too many bedrooms back in the day)?

We so often think of the Holy Family as 3 people. (Perhaps, if we know our tradition well, we consider Joachim and Anna who are considered by tradition Mary's parents- so 5 people) But what if we consider the holy family larger like 35 people?

If, perhaps we can consider the largess of this family then we can allow for the chaos of holidays with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and random extra guests part of the story of where Jesus comes from. Not from a silent night. And not from a solidary life- but from a mixed bag of stories, struggles, triumphs, mystics, mental illness and all the things that family is.

That is part of the celebration that is Christmas. Another baby joins a family. A blessed and chaotic family.

I don't have answers to all or really any of these questions. Except that I think posing them is as important as anything.

Papa, I found it!

2011-12-20T21:11:00.000-08:00

This is S...

We have had 24 hours of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

So late last night I realized that my cell phone and work keys were both lost. I need to be reached by my students at all hours of the night. So it's a tad more than inconvenient to lose my phone. I kinda...freaked out. I made two different pajama'd trips to the car. . .I looked in various asundry of bags. I discussed all the points of my day that I interacted with my phone.

It was nowhere to be found.

I used Rachel's phone to call my students and tell them how to get a hold of me.
And I went to bed grumpy.

Then after work I realized my work keys were not on my office and not hiding in Rachel's work bag. So now my phone and my work keys are missing. Work keys. You know the kind of keys that you get when you have responsibility. The kind of keys you get when you are going into places that are supposed to be locked.

We came home. I canceled cooking dinner and started turning upside down the whole house, looking under beds, behind cushions, twice going through the recycling and car. I double checked every place Rachel told me she looked. We put Junia on the hunt. I looked everywhere. And then, I gave up. R did her best to tell me its ok, you're human. She did the "what's the worst possible outcome?" game. And talked me off the ledge.

Right at the moment when I finally let go Junia picked her doll up from the stroller and picked up the jingle of keys, "Papa, I found it!" holding my work keys.

and my phone.

Turns out our little person had stashed they keys and phone in her play stroller yesterday after her fun adventure sorting through baskets on our bookshelf. Yeah, you found it J--you lost it too--but you found it. We laughed. More deeply and freely than we usually laugh.

This evening went from anxiety-filled and frustrating to wonderful and ridiculous in a flash. I wouldn't choose this evening again. But there is something that is such gift about it too.

Who are the men that you admire...

2011-12-18T12:10:00.000-08:00

Think for a minute. Just think with me.

Who are the men that you admire?

Think.

Seriously come up with some names.

Did you think of any women?

Probably not because because I said, "men."

Except that people who argue for gender exclusive language say that men is an inclusive word. Except that you probably didn't think of it in that way.

It is inherently exclusive in 99.9% of language.

That's why it is so important for my daughter to be surrounded by various gendered language for God and gender exclusive language.

Along with that, we've got our fair share of Christmas books making their way into Junia's evening reading. As with many things Christmas they are amazingly good reminding my daughter that as a girl/woman her only part in the Christmas story is her reproductive capacity and her mildness.

I beg to differ, believing that God is bigger than this, and so am choosing to (hopefully) little by little push her imagination larger.

So a couple of modifications from just one book:

From: "Man" and beasts.
To: "people" and beasts"

From: "His" mother.
to: "the" mother.

From: "His Son"
To: "The incarnate one"

From: "Shepherds"
To: "Shepherdesses" (not sure if I like that one as it is just adding 'esses' which drives me nuts)

From: "Wise men"
To: "The Wise"
we haven't taken the sharpie to it but we almost always say "newborn king" to "newborn kin"

From "Mother Mild"
to "mother wild"- but really we almost always read it as "parents wild"

Have you taken any sharpies to your books?

'Tis the season for craftiness- or not!

2011-12-16T15:21:00.000-08:00

That is unless you are 4 months pregnant and spent all of fall being too tired to scratch your nose and are just now coming out of this state only to discover that your adorable toddler has turned into a nay-saying, tantrum throwing, danger causing independent little monster.

And so all this means that you spent your months of Christmas inspiration trying to survive and are now spending the month of Christmas trying not to murder.

So what this means is that our Christmas spending has leaned too heavily on this month. Our Christmas creativity has been mostly limited to some cookies and making wrapping paper and being survivors.

Maybe its all the crafty/creative blogs I read of people who have more time and patience than I do. Or it's that they all write about their sucess and not their failure. Perhaps it is that I really like Pinterest- which is, like many things on the internet, both inspiring and deadening. Or maybe its that we haven't had a single magical snow day in Seattle and that somehow snow days equal creativity. Or even more, it's because we haven't had a weekend off together (and at home) since the middle of November.

So, I guess this is my attempt at creating excuses. But maybe some reader out their needs to know that they aren't alone. Christmas is the season for crafter guilt.

Vocation to parenthood- and no support.

2011-12-09T12:11:00.001-08:00

My vocation is marriage and also parenthood (not that everyone whose married is called to parenthood).

If you aren't catholic you might not realize how much energy our catholic leaders (namely bishops and priests) are putting into praying for and supporting our vocations. That is our vocations to celibate ordained priesthood. The Tablet, a Catholic newspaper out of the UK, printed yesterday a story about the workload of priests in light of fewer and fewer priests. They also put out an article about a bishop who claims that parents have failed to pass down Christian teaching to our children (church leaders take credit- parents take the blame).

For the past two nights Junia has been sick. Awake almost hourly without any ability to put herself back to sleep. She has been struggling with a cough and is just in poor spirits. In the midst of this Sean and I both end up awake (its not like you can just say I'll sit here and listen to her cry you sleep.). It sucks. We are exhausted, grumpy, and trying our darndest to be good to our girl and good to some houseguests that we have in town this weekend.

In the meantime I'm 20 weeks pregnant. Sean is juggling a ton of leadership at work and we trying to minister to our communities- as this is our profession as well as vocation.

I am feeling pretty pissed at the world of priests griping our their workload. The homilies they have write, the wedding they have to preside at, the liturgical commissions they lead. If our church really believed that parenthood was vocation there would be support. No just church teaching but real support.

So you reader will you brainstorm with me- What would that real- authentic support look like in an institution as large and powerful as the Catholic church?

Making salt dough ornaments nearly complete...

2011-12-08T12:09:00.001-08:00

Our salt dough ornaments have been painted, and now some have been glittered and even placed on the Christmas tree.

Glittery salt dough snowflake

Toddler painted heart ornament

Last night we did glue and glitter together while Sean tackled a gross project in the basement. I was pretty restrictive with the glitter using what had fallen off other ornaments to sprinkle on other ones. Because, you know once you have unleashed glitter in your life their is no turning back. You will be finding sparkles forever.

Then this morning while finishing up a tulle tutu for Junia I forgot that she didn't have the same agenda with glitter as I did.

Two glitter containers, newly opened the night before were spread all over the dining room. Well now sparkles are everywhere but a funnel and a vacuum did the heavy work. And Junia's newest ornaments are pretty fun!

Before Jesus was His Mother

2011-12-07T15:28:00.001-08:00

Oh how I am enjoying this monthly womens/Mamas faith sharing group that I am a part of. We met last night and did some sharing, reflecting and praying on Mary. I thought I would share one of our readings.

Before Jesus
was his mother.

Before supper
in the upper room,
breakfast in the barn.

Before the Passover Feast,
a feeding trough.
And here, the altar
of Earth, fair linens
of hay and seed.

Before his cry,
her cry.
Before his sweat
of blood,
her bleeding
and tears.
Before his offering,
hers.

Before the breaking
of bread and death,
the breaking of her
body in birth.

Before the offering
of the cup,
the offering of her
breast.

Before his blood,
her blood.
And by her body and blood
alone, his body and blood
and whole human being.

The wise ones knelt
to hear the woman’s word
in wonder.
Holding up her sacred child,
her God in the form of a babe,
she said: “Receive and let
your hearts be healed
and your lives be filled
with love, for
This is my body,
This is my blood.”

Alla Renée Bozarth
From Life Prayers

Homemade ornaments- Toddler fun Advent style

2011-12-04T17:11:00.001-08:00

I am not a classy Christmas tree person. I don't suppose that's a shock to any of my regular blog readers. I like it when ornaments and such have a story, history or some kind of meaning. That's probably why I am pretty into making ornaments with Junia this year!

So this weekend, amid work and taking care of a bunch of crap that had to be taken care of, we also started making some holiday treats and whipped up some salt dough.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
3/4 cups water

Combine ingredients and knead dough for 15 to 20 minutes. Roll out, cut into shapes with cookie cutters or whatever make sure you put a hole in them, if you intent on hanging them from a Christmas tree and then bake for 20 minutes. When don't cooking they'll look like this:

Then I handed them over the Junia and let her paint them with watercolors. They needed to dry but looked pretty fun. The Santa is actually her handprint. I am going to try to Modge-Podge a couple of them and see if they get shiny?

All in all, I am delighted in these. We'll write Junia 2011 on the back and maybe a couple will last for 10 or 15 years.

Counting down- Advent Calendar

2011-12-03T14:33:00.001-08:00

This year our Advent calendar is an old soda bottle box. I bought it on etsy.com for 15.00 with 8.00 shipping. I figured with 4 rows with 6 slots in each row it will work for most years. After all, we don't really get advent stuff together until a bit after Advent already starts...

Last year I made one that was very functional- felt with a pocket for each day. But it was lacking in aesthetic qualities. It was kind of ugly and boring. The year before we tried babyfood jars. The lid was nailed to a board but the lids kept coming off the board, the jars were everywhere and it just didn't work. The year before was cups with paper glued to the top and then you "punched" them open. But this years pepsi box is working great.

How i made it:

Cut paper to size of square holes. Glue to the top or side to create a "door." Wrap up each of our nativity figurines and some bells in purple paper and cloth set them inside the doors once they have dried. Finally, I painted a number on each of the doors to keep track.

What I hope for. Advent 2011

2011-12-01T11:27:00.001-08:00

Sean got me a camera for Christmas. One that is supposed to be very durable. He is giving it to me early so I can take pictures. It is amazing how much not having pictures impacts my desire to blog.

But, I am ready to get back on the blogwagon. I am also very much into Advent this year (starting 4 Sundays before Christmas). So up until Christmas I'm going to try to post some Advent reflections as a way of getting back into my group.

Things I hope for

That whatever the childcare/work situation becomes next year that I can type a reflection a year from now about how good it feels.
2 dear friends of ours can swoon over their babies when they are born.
To call teach my little one about racism, sexism, homopobia and a trillion other isms and the micro-agressions all over her world- so that she can spot them.
To become a person more centered on love.
To grow in particular relationship that really sucks right now.

I started a list of hopes for the word and quickly became overhwelmed by it. So I changed it to be a list of places I hope for more love

Love of each other
Love of uniqueness
Less bullshitty love for colonial systems, powers, peoples
Love for the natural world and our own animal-ness

That's my start.
What are some of the things you put your hope-energy toward?

Super parent skill

2011-11-23T15:17:00.001-08:00

How many times in my life have I wished that I could disappear from one place and reappear in another.

Maybe not too many times but enough that I have played out the fantasy in my head. Never have I wanted it more than when I am sitting in a room with my child who is almost asleep or just barely asleep.

What I wouldn't give to be able to just disappear and then reappear elsewhere. It would make escape so much easier.

What super-hero skill would you add to your parenting toolkit.

Eulogy for the unfinished project

2011-11-21T18:42:00.001-08:00

How long do you let projects sit on your table before you finally dump them?

I don't mean projects that must be done like paying the bills or work projects that someone will call you out ont. I mean projects like: that recipe I want to make but it takes so long, or the half primed piece of furniture, or the scrapbook that your children (and technology) have already outgrown.

I have pieces of a shirt for myself that has been sitting on my sewing table for over a year. I deconstructed another (too small) shirt to make this one but then I ran out of fabric for the neck and decided to use a coordinating fabric. Which I never cut; thus I have been hanging onto the original neck of the original shirt since then.

Seriously, do you see how bad the camera is working! Grr.

I have pattern pieces, I have the fabric cut and I just don't care. Except that I started it and it seems so wasteful to throw away. Or, moreover, I feel like it is a failure to just stop without even attempting to finish and being disappointed with the results.

So I've decided to kill this project. I'm going to let it die. Send it to the scrap bin and let it be. My reasons?

The fabric was from goodwill, so not expensive
and I don't even like it anymore.

It has been the source of my pile up of crap on the sewing table which resides in our dining room.
Eyesore needs to be eased.

I can repurpose the bigger pieces into a pants or a hoodie for Junia or Deuce (nickname for baby 2).

I remember deconstructing the other shirt, drawing out the patterns from that and then cutting this fabric and thinking, "I need to remember exactly how this was put together." But that's the only memory I have of it.

I'm trying be be mindful of ways to simplify our lives which means letting things go. This feels somehow connected to that.

And so, as a person who always has 7 or 35 different creative projects in the works it is time to bring that number down by one. Kind of a failure. Kind of a blow-out. Kind of a purgatory good-bye. Mostly, a relief.

First quilt

2011-11-20T21:24:00.001-08:00

I made my first quilt- ever. It is for a friend and a new baby. It has lots of mistakes but babies don't mind.

Sadly, I don't even know where my crappy camera is. You know the one broken with sand...So I don't even have a lousy picture of it.

Teaching Good Sex from Nytimes

2011-11-17T08:39:00.001-08:00

I think this is a great article. Moreover, I think that sex education and conversation needs to happen honestly, openly and realistically.

By: Laurie Abraham
Editor: Ilena Silverman
A version of this article appeared in print on November 20, 2011, on page MM36 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline:

WHAT IF OUR KIDS REALLY BELIEVED WE WANTED THEM TO HAVE GREAT SEX?’..

“First base, second base, third base, home run,” Al Vernacchio ticked off the classic baseball terms for sex acts. His goal was to prompt the students in Sexuality and Society — an elective for seniors at the private Friends’ Central School on Philadelphia’s affluent Main Line — to examine the assumptions buried in the venerable metaphor. “Give me some more,” urged the fast-talking 47-year-old, who teaches 9th- and 12th-grade English as well as human sexuality. Arrayed before Vernacchio was a circle of small desks occupied by 22 teenagers, six male and the rest female — a blur of sweatshirts and Ugg boots and form-fitting leggings.

“Grand slam,” called out a boy (who’d later tell me with disarming matter-of-factness that “the one thing Mr. V. talked about that made me feel really good was that penis size doesn’t matter”).
“Now, ‘grand slam’ has a bunch of different meanings,” replied Vernacchio, who has a master’s degree in human sexuality. “Some people say it’s an orgy, some people say grand slam is a one-night stand. Other stuff?”
“Grass,” a girl, a cheerleader, offered.
“If there’s grass on the field, play ball, right, right,” Vernacchio agreed, “which is interesting in this rather hair-phobic society where a lot of people are shaving their pubic hair — ”
“You know there’s grass, and then it got mowed, a landing strip,” one boy deadpanned, instigating a round of laughter. While these kids will sit poker-faced as Vernacchio expounds on quite graphic matters, class discussions are a spirited call and response, punctuated with guffaws, jokey patter and whispered asides, which Vernacchio tolerates, to a point.

Vernacchio explained that sex as baseball implies that it’s a game; that one party is the aggressor (almost always the boy), while the other is defending herself; that there is a strict order of play, and you can’t stop until you finish. “If you’re playing baseball,” he elaborated, “you can’t just say, ‘I’m really happy at second base.’ ”

A boy who was the leader of the Young Conservatives Club asked, “But what if it’s just more pleasure getting to home base?” Although this student is a fan of Vernacchio’s, he likes to challenge him about his tendency to empathize with the female perspective.

“Well, we’ve talked about how a huge percentage of women aren’t orgasming through vaginal intercourse,” Vernacchio responded, “so if that’s what you call a home run, there’s a lot of women saying” — his voice dropped to a dull monotone — ‘O.K., but this is not doing it for me.’ ”

In its breadth, depth and frank embrace of sexuality as, what Vernacchio calls, a “force for good” — even for teenagers — this sex-ed class may well be the only one of its kind in the United States. “There is abstinence-only sex education, and there’s abstinence-based sex ed,” said Leslie Kantor, vice president of education for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “There’s almost nothing else left in public schools.”

Across the country, the approach ranges from abstinence until marriage is the only acceptable choice, contraceptives don’t work and premarital sex is physically and emotionally harmful, to abstinence is usually best, but if you must have sex, here are some ways to protect yourself from pregnancy and disease. The latter has been called “disaster prevention” education by sex educators who wish they could teach more; a dramatic example of the former comes in a video called “No Second Chances,” which has been used in abstinence-only courses. In it, a student asks a school nurse, “What if I want to have sex before I get married?” To which the nurse replies, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to be prepared to die.”

In settings outside schools, the constraints typically aren’t as tight. Bill Taverner, director of the Center for Family Life Education for Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey, said that his 11 educators are usually given the most freedom with so-called high-risk youth, those in juvenile detention, or who live in poor neighborhoods with high teen-pregnancy rates. “I wish I could say it was for positive reasons,” he said, “but it’s almost as if society has just kind of thrown up their hands and said, ‘Well, these kids are going to have sex anyway, so you might as well not hide anything from them.’ ”

Sex education in America was invented by Progressive Era reformers like Sears, Roebuck’s president, Julius Rosenwald, and Charles Eliot, the president of Harvard University. Eliot, according to Kristin Luker, author of the book “When Sex Goes to School,” concluded that sex education was so important that he turned down Woodrow Wilson’s offer of the ambassadorship to Britain to join the first national group devoted to promoting the subject. Eliot was one of the so-called social hygienists who thought that teaching people about the “proper uses of sexuality” would help stamp out venereal disease and the sexual double-standard that kept women from achieving full equality. Proper sex meant sex between husband and wife (prostitution was then seen as regrettable but necessary because of men and their “needs”), so educators preached about both the rewards of carnal contact within marriage and the hazards outside of it.

It wasn’t until the 1960s and 1970s that the pill, feminism and generational rebellion smashed the cultural consensus that sex should be confined to marriage. And for a “brief, fragile period” in the 1970s and early 1980s, writes Luker, a professor of sociology and of law at U.C. Berkeley, “opinion leaders of almost every stripe believed sex education was the best response to the twin problems of teenage pregnancy and H.I.V. AIDS.” It was around this time that the Unitarian Universalist Association started its famously sex-positive curriculum, About Your Sexuality, with details about masturbation and orgasms and slide shows of couples touching one another’s genitals. (The classes are still going strong, though in the late 1990s, the program was replaced with another one without explicit images called Our Whole Lives, a joint project of the U.U.A. and the United Church of Christ.)

Back then, even public schools taught what came to be called “comprehensive sex education,” nonjudgmental instruction on bodies, birth control, disease prevention and “healthy relationships” — all geared to helping teenagers make responsible choices, one of which might be choosing to become sexually intimate with someone. But by the end of the 1980s, sex ed had taken its place in the basket of wedge issues dividing the right and left. This created the opening for abstinence instruction (the word “abstinence” wasn’t part of the sex-ed vernacular until the 1980s) to bulldoze any curriculum that didn’t treat sex as forbidden for teenagers. But Kantor and many others in the field remain “comprehensive sex ed” believers. To them, the license Vernacchio has to roam the sexual landscape is almost unimaginable.

Sitting in the conference room at Friends’, a tall, striking girl told me after class one day last winter that she was on the verge of getting involved with someone she really liked but was hesitating because she knew he had a reputation for juggling multiple girlfriends. The girl, who’d had sex twice in 11th grade with a boy she later discovered was sleeping around, wanted to be monogamous with the new guy but didn’t know how to broach it with him. (She was one of 17 students in Sexuality and Society who spoke to me privately; while Vernacchio is happy to discuss any personal information the kids bring up, he doesn’t seek it.)

Another young woman, who tended to treat her tiny desk in Vernacchio’s class as a lounger, flinging her legs out toward the center of the room, told me that she enjoyed sex for its own sake — the way guys do, as she put it. While she could express this with some bravado now, she came into Sexuality and Society in the beginning of the year uneasy about this aspect of herself, she said. A third girl, who called herself a “really anxious person,” still got choked up discussing a false rumor someone wrote on Facebook last fall: that she’d drunkenly offered oral sex to a boy at a party, who, as it happened, also was enrolled in Sexuality and Society. That young man, who didn’t post the lie and was predictably unfazed by it, had fallen for another classmate. That girl was equally besotted, but because they were in “sex class,” the couple always positioned themselves across the room from each other, never side by side; otherwise, they told me, they’d feel like animals in a zoo. Not that the pair weren’t still on display. With the exception of Vernacchio, everyone knew their status and found it impossible not to notice them locking eyes periodically, smiling briefly, before she’d duck her head, push her long, shiny hair behind her ears and turn her gaze back to her teacher.

Mr. V. takes every question seriously,” another girl, the student-council vice president, told me. “You never feel like it’s the wise sexuality master preaching to the young.” Yet Vernacchio also doesn’t give off the vibe that he wants to be young, or imagines that he still is. His attire every day for the two weeks I attended the class in February was a sweater vest over a button-down shirt and tie, except for Valentine’s Day, when he shed the vest for a ruby red shirt and a tie decorated with hearts. That day Vernacchio gave all of his students brightly colored origami hearts he made himself; the members of Sexuality and Society reciprocated by sending him a singing Valentine (a “Glee”-worthy rendition of “Everytime We Touch,” by the boys’ barbershop choir).

Vernacchio is nothing so much as a mensch. Gay, with a partner of 17 years, he has ruddy cheeks, a quick smile and a plane of brown hair overhanging his brow, from which he must regularly wipe away sweat during intense discussions. He lectures with plainspoken authority while also conveying a deep curiosity about his subject — the consummate sex scholar.

During a lesson about recognizing your “crumble lines” — comments that play to your vulnerability and may make you “act against your values” — Vernacchio, a self-described “short, round, hairy guy” who struggles with body-image issues, revealed his own tendency to fall for anybody who compliments his appearance: “You say you think I’m pretty. I’ll do anything for you.” He was exaggerating a bit for effect, but the poignancy of the self-disclosure wasn’t lost on the class.

Friends’ Central, a Quaker prep school that prides itself on both its academic rigor and its ethic of social responsibility, is tucked away in the bucolic hills of suburban Philadelphia. Vernacchio joined the school’s English department in 1998, and when, three years later, he asked to start Sexuality and Society, administrators were delighted. “He teaches at the very highest level,” said David Felsen, who in June retired as headmaster of the school after 23 years. Because Vernacchio was such a gifted instructor, Felsen said, he didn’t worry about parents’ reactions. And in fact, Vernacchio says that no one has ever complained or even voiced reservations about something he discussed in class.

The parents I spoke to — ranging from a father who said he loves his son “to pieces” but wishes he knew him better to a mom who gets frequent updates from her daughter now in college — seemed grateful for the class. “My daughter is sometimes private,” another mother said, “and I appreciate that there was another place she could go to get good, healthy information.” Early in the year, Vernacchio gives an assignment asking students to interview a parent about how he or she learned about sex, and the father said his son handled it with aplomb: “He was very natural, and I’m the one thinking, This is embarrassing. He was a lot more mature about the conversation than I was.”

Sexuality and Society begins in the fall with a discussion of how to recognize and form your own values, then moves through topics like sexual orientation (occasionally students identify as gay or transgender, Vernacchio said, but in this particular class none did); safer sex; relationships; sexual health; and the emotional and physical terrain of sexual activity. (The standard public-school curriculum sticks to S.T.I.’s and contraceptive methods, and it can go by in a blink; in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, two-thirds of principals said that the subject was covered in just several class periods.) Vernacchio also teaches a mandatory six-session sexuality course for ninth graders that covers some of the same material presented to the older kids, though less fully.

The lessons that tend to raise eyebrows outside the school, according to Vernacchio, are a medical research video he shows of a woman ejaculating — students are allowed to excuse themselves if they prefer not to watch — and a couple of dozen up-close photographs of vulvas and penises. The photos, Vernacchio said, are intended to show his charges the broad range of what’s out there. “It’s really a process of desensitizing them to what real genitals look like so they’ll be less freaked out by their own and, one day, their partner’s,” he said. What’s interesting, he added, is that both the boys and girls receive the photographs of the penises rather placidly but often insist that the vulvas don’t look “normal.” “They have no point of reference for what a normal, healthy vulva looks like, even their own,” Vernacchio said. The female student-council vice president agreed: “When we did the biology unit, I probably would’ve been able to label just as many of the boys’ body parts as the girls’, which is sad. I mean, you should know about the names of your own body.”

Vernacchio is aware that his utter lack of self-consciousness in conversing about sexual matters is unusual. “When God was passing out talents,” he likes to say, “I got ease in talking about sex.” But any plan of God’s, whom Vernacchio, a practicing Catholic, often references, was nudged along by two earthly happenings. “As a little kid,” Vernacchio said, “I got pegged as a good public speaker, so I started narrating all the school plays and reading at church; I got over the fear of speaking really early.” Then, around age 12, he started to research sex, having known from kindergarten that he was different in a “way that had to do with boys and girls.” He looked up homosexuality in the family dictionary, then took to going to libraries and planting himself in the sexuality section of the stacks. “I used to have the Dewey-decimal number for homosexuality memorized.” He was entirely on his own. There was no discussion of being gay at Vernacchio’s all-boys school; none from his parish priest, who at the end of sermons offered a prayer for “veterans of foreign wars, people who live near nuclear power plants and homosexuals”; and not from his parents, either, even after he came out to them at 19. Indeed, one night several years later, his mom was doing dinner dishes at the sink and his dad was plopped on the couch a few feet away in their tiny South Philly house, and Vernacchio mustered the courage to tell them that he was happily dating someone. “My mom never turned around, never reacted in any way, and my dad turned to me, didn’t miss a beat and said, ‘Whatever happened to the metric system?’ ”

It was drummed into him as a human-sexuality master’s student, Vernacchio said, to never be explicit merely for the sake of being explicit: have a rationale for every last thing you say. Which occurred to me one day listening to him answer an anonymous question — there’s a box on the bookshelf where students can drop them — about whether a girl’s urge to urinate during intercourse might be a precursor to female ejaculation. He laid out a plethora of explanations for the feeling, everything from anxiety about having sex to a bladder infection to the possibility that the young woman was getting “some really good G-spot stimulation” and in fact verging on ejaculation.

“If kids are starting to use their bodies sexually, they should know about their potentialities,” Vernacchio told me later. “It’s O.K. that boys ejaculate, that’s totally normalized” — wet dreams have been standard fare for middle-school health class for decades — “but girls, gross! Girls will think they’re peeing themselves, and it’s really shameful.”

“I just love this class — you can ask anything,” a member of the girls’ basketball team told me one day in February. She wears her long blond hair in two braids and shyly divulged that she was in love with her boyfriend of eight months. “You may not be able to get the best information on the Internet, but you can ask Mr. V., and he’ll either know it or ask his sex-ed friends,” she said, referring to a sex-educators’ e-mail list that Vernacchio consults.

Two boys who told me they’d been masturbating to Internet porn since middle school said they found themselves disoriented at the real-life encounters they had with girls, but Vernacchio helped them grasp the disjuncture. Pornography “gives boys the impression that the girl is there to do any position you want, or to please you, or to, you know, role-play to your liking,” one of them said. “But yesterday, when Mr. V. said there is no romanticism or intimacy in porn, porn is strictly sexual — I’d never thought about that.”

One young man in the class told me he had intercourse with 10 girls, but he was a relative outlier. While most of the students had had intercourse — 70 percent of teenagers do so by their 19th birthday, according to the Guttmacher Institute — only 4 of the 17 I spoke with reported having three or more partners; 10 had had one or two; the other three were virgins.

But the numbers fail to capture the variation within the sexual histories. Of the two girls with more than two partners, one was the girl who appreciated purely sexual encounters. The other told me that during the summer before ninth grade, she was raped one night on a beach by a stranger. She told no one, she said, and she subsequently got together with a number of boys in what she now saw as a misguided effort to “take control” of her sexuality.

As to whether his class encourages teenagers to have sex — a protest perennially lodged against even basic sex ed (though pretty firmly disproved by research) — Vernacchio said that he portrays sex in all its glory and complications. “As much as I say, ‘This is how orgasms work, and they’re really cool,’ I say there’s a lot of work to being in a relationship and having sex. I don’t think I have the power to make sex sound so enticing that kids are going to break through their self-esteem issues or body stuff or parental pressures or whatever to just go do it.” And anyway, Vernacchio went on, “I don’t necessarily see the decision to become sexually active when you’re 17 as an unhealthy one.” His goal is for young people to know their own minds, be clear about what they do and don’t want and use their self-knowledge to make choices.

To that end, he spends one class leading the students through a kind of cost-benefit analysis of various types of relationships, from friendship to old-school dating to hookups. When he asked his students about the benefits of hookups, the kids volunteered: “No expected commitment,” “Sexual pleasure” and “Guarding emotions,” meaning you can enjoy yourself without the messiness of attachment.

“Yep,” Vernacchio said, “sometimes a hookup is all you want.” Then he pressed them for drawbacks.

“You may not be able to control your emotions,” someone called out.

“O.K.,” Vernacchio said approvingly. “What else?”

“It’s confusing,” said the student-council vice president.

“Yeah,” Vernacchio said, explaining that two people may have different ideas about what it means to hook up, which is why communication is so important. (“If you can’t talk about it, you probably shouldn’t be doing it,” he says.)

“People saying, ‘Oh, she’s a slut,’ ‘Oh, he’s a man-whore,’ ” floated a boy who described himself to me as a “lonesome outcast” until 11th grade, when he finally started to make friends. “I guess for women it’s usually seen as more of a bad thing.”

“Right,” Vernacchio agreed, “but there’s pressure on guys too. Guys get the, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s a player,’ but what if you’re really not? And then you feel pressure to maintain that.”

Vernacchio rarely misses a chance to ask his students to examine gender bias in their sexual attitudes or behavior. The girl who “admitted” to liking sex as much as boys did said that Vernacchio’s consistent affirmation of the variety of sexual preferences (“Guys aren’t necessarily naturally hornier than girls — there’s a huge social piece of this,” he told the class) helped her shake her sense of deviance and shame. In fact, she felt confident enough to debate her point of view in class with the girl who was nervous about embarking on a relationship with the guy known to be promiscuous. That young woman told me she’d been moved by the exchange: “I’m like, ‘That is nasty to hook up with someone for one night.’ She was like, ‘Well, I don’t care, sometimes I don’t want a relationship.’ We were going back and forth, but then I had to respect her. Before I took this class, I probably would’ve thought she was a whore, but she knows what she wants. That’s not something I want, but it doesn’t make her wrong, it doesn’t make me wrong.”

Above all else, what Vernacchio can do that his colleagues envy is to simply assume the pleasure of sex and directly address it with unharried ease. During one class, he handed out a worksheet with the five senses printed along the top and asked the students to try and list sexual activities that optimized each. (There were examples to prod their thinking: under hearing, for instance, was “listening to your partner read an erotic story.”) While Vernacchio knew the exercise would be a challenge for the kids — and he didn’t expect them to share their answers — its purpose was to open their minds to a broader sexuality.

Regarding the statistic that Vernacchio alluded to earlier — that 70 percent of women do not orgasm through vaginal penetration alone — one boy exclaimed when we talked, “That shocked me, a lot.” The other boys also told me they’d been in the dark about the mysteries of female sexual satisfaction. “I think I sort of knew where the clitoris was, but I didn’t know it was, like, under something,” one said. Another declared, “It’s almost like a wake-up call.” He paused. “To not just please yourself.”

The female students were nearly equally surprised. “I always thought, Is it weird that I don’t get an orgasm from, you know, just like vaginal penetration?” said a girl who’d had intercourse with one boy, though she’d had orgasms before that from being touched genitally. “It was comforting to hear that for most people it doesn’t happen. I mean, I’d heard it, but it was nice hearing it from Mr. V., who knows so much about it, and other people saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s right.’ ”

Not that information was always power for these young women. One girl said that while she could advise her boyfriend on how to increase her pleasure, she wouldn’t, because he’s “very insecure” about his lack of experience. Another estimated she’d had only two orgasms with her boyfriend of longstanding, each during intercourse, though she climaxes on her own through masturbation. Somehow, when she and her boyfriend “do anything, we just end up having sex,” she said, seeming both a little perplexed by the situation, and a little afraid to make waves.

Who gives oral sex to whom is common fodder for Vernacchio’s gender-parity conversations. All but one of the students told me they’d had it, but sometimes only once or twice, and the vast majority within monogamous relationships.

Although Vernacchio encourages students to think about fairness, he certainly doesn’t encourage a direct quid pro quo for oral sex — and the girls, the main givers, were not terribly enthused about being the recipients. “[My boyfriend] completely offered, and I did not want that,” one said. Another agreed: “It just creeps me out.” None were thrilled about performing it, either, and they seemed to be wrestling — in thought and deed — with why they continued to do so. “I do think girls like to take care of people,” the student-council V.P. mused, “and I know that just sounds horrible, like you should send me right back to the ’50s, but my mom is like the most liberal woman I know and still is so happy to make food for people. To some extent, women are just more people-pleasers than men.” One girl said she’d come up with “tricks” to make giving oral sex more enjoyable for her, and that she’d set “strict rules” for herself: “I only do it if they do something on me first, and it has to be below the belt.” And another said she doesn’t enjoy cunnilingus, but taking the personal is political to heart, she asked her boyfriend to do it anyway: if she was expected to service him orally, he should have to return the favor.

All the boys said that Vernacchio had increased their sensitivity to the girls. One recounted how in an effort to consider his girlfriend’s feelings he’d asked her if she was willing to give him oral sex — none of that pushing her head down in the heat of the moment — and she’d considered it for an excruciating hour. Or maybe it just felt like that. “Do you have to think about it this long?” he finally pleaded. Eventually, she agreed.

Pleasure in sex ed was a major topic last November at one of the largest sex-education conferences in the country, sponsored by the education arm of Planned Parenthood of Greater Northern New Jersey. “Porn is the model for today’s middle-school and high-school students,” Paul Joannides said in the keynote speech. “And none of us is offering an alternative that’s even remotely appealing.”

Joannides, who is 58, made sex education his life’s work following the success of his sex manual for older teenagers and adults called, “The Guide to Getting It On.” Lauded for its voluminous accuracy and wit, the 900-plus-page paperback took him 15 years to research and write. Joannides argues that pornography can be used as a teaching tool, not a bogeyman, as is apparent in a short Web video he made called “5 Things to Learn About Lovemaking From Porn.” “In porn,” he affably lectures, “sex happens instantly: camera, action, crotch. . . . In real life, the willingness to ask and learn from your partner is often what separates the good lovers from those who are totally forgettable.” (Another of Joannides’s assertions is that the best way to reach heterosexual boys — who he believes are the most neglected in the current environment — is to play to their desire for “mastery,” because by middle school, they’ve thoroughly absorbed that to be a man is to be a stud.)

One of sex educators’ big problems, Joannides told the New Jersey audience, is that they define their role as the “messengers of all the things that can go wrong with sex.” The attention paid to S.T.I.’s, pregnancy, rape and discrimination based on sexual orientation, while understandable, comes at a cost, he says. “We’re worrying about which bathrooms transgender students should use while teens are worrying whether they should shave all the way or leave a landing strip,” he said. “They’re worrying if someone special will find them sexually attractive, whether they will be able to do it as well as porn, whether others have the same kind of sexual feelings they do.”

In other words, as much as Joannides criticizes his opponents on the right, he also tweaks the orthodoxies of his friends on the left, hoping to spur them to contemplate how they themselves dismiss pleasure. His main premise is that young people will tune out educators if their real concerns are left in the shadows. And practically speaking, pleasure is so braided through sex that if you can’t mention it, you miss chances to teach about safe sex in a way that young people can really use.

For instance, in addition to pulling condoms over bananas — which has become a de rigueur contraception lesson among “liberal” educators — young people need to hear specifics about making the method work for them. “We don’t tell them: ‘Look, there are different shapes of condoms. Get sampler packs, experiment.’ That would be entering pleasure into the conversation, and we don’t want that.”

While the conference attendees couldn’t have agreed more with Joannides about what should be taught in schools, much of the crowd thought he was deluded to imagine they could ever get away with it. Back in 1988, Michelle Fine, a professor of social psychology at the City University of New York, wrote an article in The Harvard Educational Review called “Sexuality, Schooling and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire.” In it, she included the comments of a teacher who discouraged community advocates from lobbying for change in the formal curriculum. If outsiders actually discovered the liberties some teachers take, Fine was told, they’d be shut down.

More than two decades later, at the conference, an educator from Pennsylvania told me that one school asked her to teach a sex-ed class but forbade her to use the words “sex, ” “sexy” or “tampon.” (She declined.) A chipper young Unitarian sex educator from Brooklyn, Kirsten deFur, who led a workshop titled “Don’t Forget the Good Stuff,” gave tips on how her colleagues could avoid uttering the words “pleasure” and “orgasm.” “Ask open-ended questions about what feels good,” deFur recommended. And, she added, the P-word might even be acceptable in the proper context: “If you have healthy sex, it’ll be more pleasurable,” an instructor might dare to say.

That more expansive sex education has to be done in code was something I came across repeatedly. A veteran advocate in the field gave me a short list of teachers to contact who might be willing to talk to me but then warned, “I don’t know if any of them are going to want to have what they’re doing out there.”

“What if our kids really believed we wanted them to have great sex?” Vernacchio asked near the end of an evening talk he gave in January primarily for parents of ninth graders who would attend his sex-ed minicourse. “What if they really believed that we want them to be so passionately in love with someone that they can’t keep their hands off them? What if they really believed we want them to know their own bodies?”

Vernacchio didn’t imagine that his audience, who gave him an enthusiastic ovation when his presentation ended, wanted their 14- and 15-year-olds to go out tomorrow and jump into bed or the backseat. Sex education, he and others point out, is one of the few classes where it’s not understood that young people are being prepared for the future.

Sex, of course, can come with emotional confusion and pain, and be enmeshed with violence, which Michelle Fine knows well. She said that what all adolescents crave is a “safe space” to pull apart and ponder the stew of relationships and sexual activity — including intimacy and desire and betrayal and coercion.

Vernacchio’s classroom is such a setting. Owing partly to his devotion to his job, partly to the individual relationships he starts developing with students in ninth grade as their English or sex-ed instructor or adviser, he looks out at a roomful of people whom he really knows, and who depend on him for discerning and generous counsel. This was especially true for the young woman who was raped — she told Vernacchio about the assault before anyone else at Friends’ — as well as the girl who was undone by her scorching on Facebook. She relied on Vernacchio all year for support, she said.
For every single question that Vernacchio pulls out of his anonymous question box about female ejaculation, there are 10 like these: How do you handle your insecurities in a relationship? How do you stop worrying about being cheated on? How do you know when it’s time to break up? How do I talk to my partner about wanting to spend more time together without being annoying? Watching how closely the students attended to Vernacchio’s often lengthy answers was a moving reminder of how young 17- and 18-year-olds are.
“As a society, we always tell kids, ‘Work hard, just focus on school, don’t think about girls or guys — you can worry about that stuff later, that stuff will work itself out,’ but the thing is, it doesn’t,” said a boy who had told me he had a disconcerting one-nighter with a girl he’d talked to only electronically. The class taught him to be more cautious about choosing the right time with the right person, he said, with a forcefulness that didn’t quite cover the hurt in his eyes. “You learn about the psychological after-effects that could happen to you.”
The girl who was contemplating getting serious with a boy, but only if they could be exclusive, told me she finally figured out how to approach the guy after Vernacchio talked in class about the difference between “nagging” and asking for what you want. “I never thought of saying to him, ‘You know, just tell me if you’re having sex with someone else.’ I don’t want to pressure him, but I feel like it would make me comfortable.” This seems like pretty simple stuff, especially for someone who repeatedly called herself “strong,” but somehow it wasn’t until Vernacchio said that it was O.K. to make such forthright requests that she could conceive of it.
“The campaign for abstinence in the schools and communities may seem trivial, an ideological nuisance,” Michelle Fine and Sara McClelland wrote in a 2006 study in The Harvard Educational Review, “but at its core it is . . . a betrayal of our next generation, which is desperately in need of knowledge, conversation and resources to negotiate the delicious and treacherous terrain of sexuality in the 21st century.”

It’s axiomatic, however, that parents who support richer sex education don’t make the same ruckus with school officials as those who oppose it. “We need to be there at the school boards and say: ‘Guess where kids are getting their messages about sex from? They’re getting it from porn,’ ” Joannides exhorted. “All we’re talking about is just being able to acknowledge that sex is a good thing in the right circumstances, that it’s a normal thing.”
Of course, sex isn’t all pleasure or all peril, it’s both (and sometimes both at once, though that lesson may have to wait for grad school). Vernacchio has a way of getting at its positive potential without ignoring the fact that, however good sex may feel, it’s sometimes best left off the menu. “So let’s think about pizza,” Vernacchio said to his students after they’d deconstructed baseball. The class for that day was just about over. “Why do you have pizza?”
“You’re hungry,” a cross-country runner said.

“Because you want to,” Vernacchio affirmed. “It starts with desire, an internal sense — not an external ‘I got a game today, I have to do it.’ And wouldn’t it be great if our sexual activity started with a real sense of wanting, whether your desire is for intimacy, pleasure or orgasms. . . . And you can be hungry for pizza and still decide, No thanks, I’m dieting. It’s not the healthiest thing for me now.
“If you’re gonna have pizza with someone else, what do you have to do?” he continued. “You gotta talk about what you want. Even if you’re going to have the same pizza you always have, you say, ‘We getting the usual?’ Just a check in. And square, round, thick, thin, stuffed crust, pepperoni, stromboli, pineapple — none of those are wrong; variety in the pizza model doesn’t come with judgment,” Vernacchio hurried on. “So ideally when the pizza arrives, it smells good, looks good, it’s mouthwatering. Wouldn’t it be great if we had that kind of anticipation before sexual activity, if it stimulated all our senses, not just our genitals but this whole-body experience.” By this time, he was really moving fast; he’d had to cram his pizza metaphor into the last five minutes. “And what’s the goal of eating pizza? To be full, to be satisfied. That might be different for different people; it might be different for you on different occasions. Nobody’s like ‘You failed, you didn’t eat the whole pizza.’

“So again, what if our goal, quote, unquote, wasn’t necessarily to finish the bases?” The students were gathering their papers, preparing to go. “What if it just was, ‘Wow, I feel like I had enough. That was really good.’ ”

Does being a stay at home mom mandate gender role in household duties?

2011-11-15T10:40:00.001-08:00

Let me just start with a question-

Does being a stay-at-home-woman-parent pretty much cause a division of gender roles in the household?

One of the cool things about being Sean and I, and both working is that we share household duties equally. Seriously, I do not work a full time job and come home and do my other job. I do work a full time job and come home and my partner and I keep our household going. Sure we sort out some duties by preference and some by necessity but we really share.

We have grown to deeply value this for our family. It is an expression of how much we value sharing in this and also giving our child(ren) an imagination that is not gender specific. (It's also pretty handy that acts of service is a primary love language for me.)

But it is feasible that we might be able to afford for me to stay at home in a year or two. It also is a possiblity that as child #2 comes along, priorities, needs, and wants might shift in our family as well.

So as Sean and I start to do some discerning about our future...what do you think---

Does being a stay-at-home-woman-parent pretty much cause a division of gender roles? (even if you personally don't mind gender roles- what do'ya think)

Good family time.

2011-11-14T16:27:00.001-08:00

I know I'm not the only one who finds family visits somewhat stress inducing. They are for the visitors, hosts, and everyone in-between. And, having parents in your home can be sticky at best.

BUT,we just had a lovely weekend with my Mom and a friend of hers (just friend not an allusion to something else). I think some of what made it such a nice weekend was actually that we got out of our house and headed to a rental house someplace beautiful (what isn't Seattle beautiful enough?).

It worked great to have quality conversation time in the car while we travelled, to find a neutral house that we are all pretty much equally invested or uninvested in, and to go somewhere that feels like we are having a chance to get away in addition to our guests.

It is also fun to see my Mom and Junia get to know each other and for Junia to learn how to trust her. After we said goodbye at the airport Junia snuggled up into my arms and said, "I feel sad. More Buddy." (Buddy is our family name for my Mom.

As with great family visits it felt too short. My experience is that those are the best.

And I don't have any pictures because my camera has been ruined by sand.

6 passenger car- that's right I said car!

2011-11-08T16:22:00.000-08:00

It is a good thing we didn't buy a house last year while we were discerning and house hunting. After the anxiety and struggle with buying a car I am not ready to deal with buying a house. It feels wierd to blog about buying a car except that it was a big deal for us, and when I mentioned it on facebook like 8 people wrote "what car seats 7 and isn't an SUV or a van." Seems like the world needs some info:

We hadn't exactly planned on buying a car this weekend. We knew that car buying was coming our way, our car has turned into a sight for sore eyes. More than being a beast that was growing wings (literally part of it was sticking out of the side) we are outgrowing it fast. We realized that once we have baby #2 we will not be able to even take our poor dog to the dog park let along welcome a family member by greeting them at the airport.

from autobytel.com

So we started to do our research. Living in a city (thus lots of parrallel parking) and having a budget meant that we didn't want a minivan. But having a growing family meant needing more space. So we put on our international brains and starting researching cars that hold more than 5 people (with car seats 5 people isn't quite true anyway). We discovered the Mazda 5 and the Kia Rondo; each are cars with a third row of back seats.

So once we knew what we narrowed that we started sorting out prices online and stuff. And then, on our way to the dog park on Sunday we passed a Kia/Mazda Dealership and poof it became the project of the weekend.

Sunday was spent looking at some cars and then doing our share of internet research and discussing and then monday was spent at two different dealerships. It sucked actaully: it took forever, Junia was with us, I don't like negotiating and their wasn't a woman employee in sight and again it just took forever! Really, I had no idea it would take that long- the one high point in the day was learning that Sean is a really awesome negotiator (who knew!)

from newmazdainfo.com

So now we have a car: a car payment, airbags that will probably work, and a warranty for awhile. We also have enough seats for us, the future baby (current fetus), and guests. We won't be paying more in gas milage, and we can still paralell park on our street. It is our biggest purchase to date and feels like it.

As part of all of this we are asking ourselves questions about ethics, privelege, and being part of our culture while keeping other parts as counter cultural, big purchases have a way of making us very reflective.

Fingerpaint in the bathtub

2011-10-29T19:44:00.001-07:00

Amid a basket load of totally petty frustrations I thought I would post something that made life with a toddler sound ideally and all dreamlike.

I love for Junia to have chances to get totally sloppy messy. I don't love the clean up. That is until last night. Fingerpaint in the tub!!! This was an idea I got from Pinterest.com by the end of our venture Junia was totally painted as was the tub. Clearly these photos were from the first 5 minutes. All in all she probably spent about 25-30 minutes at this one activity. Impressive for her!

Clean up was a shower and a washcloth. It was awesome!

The week after vacation.

2011-10-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else find that the week following vacation is desperately long. It has been Friday in my head since Wednesday. Now that it is finally friday I'm not sure what I'll do with myself!

It is brutal to come back from vacation. With minimial groceries and no plans (that and two tragic events at work) our meals have been scraped together at take out places and freezer leftovers.

I also had to work 2 night and Sean 1 night. So that means we haven't actually had an evening together as a family since vacation. No wonder we needed it so badly.

Have I shared here how bad daycare drop off has been lately. Yes. Just brutal. Junia has been screaming like a monster. The last two days were less bad than the previous three weeks so hopefully we are on the better end of this. But, it never ceases to be heartbreaking. And when she says, "Mama, go home play, no work." It breaks my heart. Except, I keep saying to her, (because its true) I like my work Junia. And, I am a more patient and engaged Mama because I go to work sometimes. And that is so true.

So this, is one of those posts with no point...or maybe with 5 different points. And somehow, that seems right for how our week has been.

14 week secret

2011-10-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

I've been drinking gallons of water.
I have tiny little zits all over my body.
I would like to sleep more than anything. Ever.
I am losing wieght.
The thought of a tomato makes me throw up.
I am growing a new organ.
Sean is being very generous.

And the cat is coming out of the bag.

That's right, I'm pregnant. We are pregnant as a little family.
Due April 22 we are staring to the sorting process of healthcare, childcare, birth plan, you know that kind of stuff.

And since we had an ultrasound this week and the little thing has a heartbeat and all of the right organs (or as many as they can see through all the layers) I thought I would share.

I don't like sharing ultrasound photos- they are all blobs.
So I'll share photos of the post-fetus.

I don't get Halloween

2011-10-23T15:32:00.000-07:00

I just don't get it.

I don't get the internet obsession with Halloween. I follow a bunch of craft blogs and Mormon mom blogs and I just read lots of random blogs that aren't either of those veins and it just seems like way more people are into Halloween than I am.

I like dressing up and/or getting Junia dressed up for trick or treading and I can enjoy the creativity and playfulness of Halloween..but really how many Halloween parties do you get invited to? How much do you really like candy corn? How much do you dress for this "season"?

Fire hydrant costume little one- Oct. 2010

Can someone explain to me why the universe is spending so much energy on a holiday that seems to lack any real values? Or share with me the values that I have not picked up on?

What are people celebrating (no not historically but really)?
What is the point?

Do we like it so much because it is an extension of the lives we already lead on facebook and online and stuff?

Being in Mexico.

2011-10-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

I am having some thoughts while here in Ensenada Mexico. They are not orderly, scholarly, or even well thought out.

1. I feel safe. I'm not suprised, but people kept giving us warnings or funny looks that we were going to Mexico. Orlando is way more dangerous than Ensenada Mexico.

2. Guacamole from fresh avacados how I love you.

3. There is too much talk in the US about Mexicans as "other." As I haven't traveled as much internationally in my late twenties as in my early I have been slowly brainwashed by US media and the treatment of Mexicans as "other." Some conversation around US policy and their impact on Mexican economic development and a nice reminder that most people a. don't leave Mexico and b. don't want to leave their homes even when they feel like they have to.

4. Junia's blonde hair is a radical novelty in the world.

5. How can we make ore of life more like vacation? Quiet, stillness, love making, eating good (cheap) food, book reading, listening to music that pleases, and laughter from all of us as we run through the ocean.

Still enjoying. So much. But not taking very many pictures. I just want to be present.

Blessed Be- vacation

2011-10-21T18:37:00.000-07:00

Blessed be. My collegues are all in a rough patch at work, the past 6 weeks has been a freakin' marathon and Sean and I magically planned this trip to Mexico with Junia. Really, it is feeling magical that amid the chaos and as the clouds have set over Seattle that this is our view for the next several days.

For some reason this fall has been screaming gratitude at me. Or maybe I've been waking up to the wonderful things to be grateful for that are all around me. Tomarrow I think we'll have some fish tacos, time on the beach, perhaps a sunburn (though it's fairly chilly), and more swooning over my beloveds!

I think she looks good in them actually!

look closely and you'll see an elephant.

LIving in Graditude- for all we have.

2011-10-16T15:10:00.000-07:00

All over my life from various communities I'm surrounded by I have been hearing sad, horrible, heartwrenching stories: of loss, of predicted loss, of struggle beyond belief, of decline, of heartbreak.
I have been trying to use these stories to live into the graditude that for this moment in my life, and the life of my family, we are not struggling with loss, or decline, no heartbreak or grief. We are so fortunate for our health, our futures, and our togetherness.

This article, which I found today, I thought was beautiful.

This is from the NYtimes from October 15, 2011.

Notes from a Dragon Mom
Emily Rapp is the author of “Poster Child: A Memoir,” and a professor of creative writing at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.
Santa Fe, N.M.
MY son, Ronan, looks at me and raises one eyebrow. His eyes are bright and focused. Ronan means “little seal” in Irish and it suits him.
I want to stop here, before the dreadful hitch: my son is 18 months old and will likely die before his third birthday. Ronan was born with Tay-Sachs, a rare genetic disorder. He is slowly regressing into a vegetative state. He’ll become paralyzed, experience seizures, lose all of his senses before he dies. There is no treatment and no cure.
How do you parent without a net, without a future, knowing that you will lose your child, bit by torturous bit?
Depressing? Sure. But not without wisdom, not without a profound understanding of the human experience or without hard-won lessons, forged through grief and helplessness and deeply committed love about how to be not just a mother or a father but how to be human.
Parenting advice is, by its nature, future-directed. I know. I read all the parenting magazines. During my pregnancy, I devoured every parenting guide I could find. My husband and I thought about a lot of questions they raised: will breast-feeding enhance his brain function? Will music class improve his cognitive skills? Will the right preschool help him get into the right college? I made lists. I planned and plotted and hoped. Future, future, future.
We never thought about how we might parent a child for whom there is no future. The prenatal test I took for Tay-Sachs was negative; our genetic counselor didn’t think I needed the test, since I’m not Jewish and Tay-Sachs is thought to be a greater risk among Ashkenazi Jews. Being somewhat obsessive about such matters, I had it done anyway, twice. Both times the results were negative.
Our parenting plans, our lists, the advice I read before Ronan’s birth make little sense now. No matter what we do for Ronan — choose organic or non-organic food; cloth diapers or disposable; attachment parenting or sleep training — he will die. All the decisions that once mattered so much, don’t.
All parents want their children to prosper, to matter. We enroll our children in music class or take them to Mommy and Me swim class because we hope they will manifest some fabulous talent that will set them — and therefore us, the proud parents — apart. Traditional parenting naturally presumes a future where the child outlives the parent and ideally becomes successful, perhaps even achieves something spectacular. Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” is only the latest handbook for parents hoping to guide their children along this path. It’s animated by the idea that good, careful investments in your children will pay off in the form of happy endings, rich futures.
But I have abandoned the future, and with it any visions of Ronan’s scoring a perfect SAT or sprinting across a stage with a Harvard diploma in his hand. We’re not waiting for Ronan to make us proud. We don’t expect future returns on our investment. We’ve chucked the graphs of developmental milestones and we avoid parenting magazines at the pediatrician’s office. Ronan has given us a terrible freedom from expectations, a magical world where there are no goals, no prizes to win, no outcomes to monitor, discuss, compare.
But the day-to-day is often peaceful, even blissful. This was my day with my son: cuddling, feedings, naps. He can watch television if he wants to; he can have pudding and cheesecake for every meal. We are a very permissive household. We do our best for our kid, feed him fresh food, brush his teeth, make sure he’s clean and warm and well rested and ... healthy? Well, no. The only task here is to love, and we tell him we love him, not caring that he doesn’t understand the words. We encourage him to do what he can, though unlike us he is without ego or ambition.
Ronan won’t prosper or succeed in the way we have come to understand this term in our culture; he will never walk or say “Mama,” and I will never be a tiger mom. The mothers and fathers of terminally ill children are something else entirely. Our goals are simple and terrible: to help our children live with minimal discomfort and maximum dignity. We will not launch our children into a bright and promising future, but see them into early graves. We will prepare to lose them and then, impossibly, to live on after that gutting loss. This requires a new ferocity, a new way of thinking, a new animal. We are dragon parents: fierce and loyal and loving as hell. Our experiences have taught us how to parent for the here and now, for the sake of parenting, for the humanity implicit in the act itself, though this runs counter to traditional wisdom and advice.
NOBODY asks dragon parents for advice; we’re too scary. Our grief is primal and unwieldy and embarrassing. The certainties that most parents face are irrelevant to us, and frankly, kind of silly. Our narratives are grisly, the stakes impossibly high. Conversations about which seizure medication is most effective or how to feed children who have trouble swallowing are tantamount to breathing fire at a dinner party or on the playground. Like Dr. Spock suddenly possessed by Al Gore, we offer inconvenient truths and foretell disaster.
And there’s this: parents who, particularly in this country, are expected to be superhuman, to raise children who outpace all their peers, don’t want to see what we see. The long truth about their children, about themselves: that none of it is forever.
I would walk through a tunnel of fire if it would save my son. I would take my chances on a stripped battlefield with a sling and a rock à la David and Goliath if it would make a difference. But it won’t. I can roar all I want about the unfairness of this ridiculous disease, but the facts remain. What I can do is protect my son from as much pain as possible, and then finally do the hardest thing of all, a thing most parents will thankfully never have to do: I will love him to the end of his life, and then I will let him go.
But today Ronan is alive and his breath smells like sweet rice. I can see my reflection in his greenish-gold eyes. I am a reflection of him and not the other way around, and this is, I believe, as it should be. This is a love story, and like all great love stories, it is a story of loss. Parenting, I’ve come to understand, is about loving my child today. Now. In fact, for any parent, anywhere, that’s all there is.

Summer 2011 Garden officially done.

2011-10-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure I haven't done any real gardening since mid-August. On good weeks I've ventured out to pick veggies and stuff but I haven't really taken care of anything. I've been too distracted by work and too exhausted in my body.

But as of yesterday the tomatoes have been uprooted, the squash has been picked off the vines and the vines sent to the compost bin, the corn that never did anything has been removed and things are looking cleared off.

Sadly though, when the rain sets in in Seattle, the grass grows again. So yesterday Sean, Junia and I ventured outside to bale our grass. Okay, Sean weedwacked the whole thing and I pulled up plants and picked squash. A lot of our fall veggies look great- the arugula is delicious, the brusell sprouts are likely to do something, the chard is abundant and the kale- is a prolific as it has been all summer. It's fun to be closing up parts of the garden and putting some compost on them for the winter while other parts are still producing. Honestly, things still look like a garden not like last winters dead patch.

On of the highlights of this years garden has been artichokes! We grew two artichoke plants and one of them produced three artichokes. We wouldn't have bought them from the store, but they made seriously delicious snacks! What a treat!

Well, that's the jist of our summer garden. Hopefully, we have have some updates this winter as well!

"No worries"

2011-10-13T14:45:00.001-07:00

Last night I had an anxiety dream that I went onto my blog and I only had 16 followers, "Oh no! I lost one!" What a wierd source of anxiety.

It has nothing to do with this post.

Okay, but the reason I sat down to type this post. Is that I was walking somewhere public and came fairly close to another person reaching the point that an "excuse me" was appropriate. The response was, "oh no worries." That actually seems appropriate. It's like saying, "oh it's fine that you were strangely close to me and making me uncomfortable."

I won't worry now because I have been freed to relax about being awkward.

But then, moments later someone graciously held the door for me. "Thank you," I said. Again the door helper said, "Oh no worries."

I just wonder, what is so wrong with "your welcome."

Saying, "no worries," implies that I am worried about how I might have impacted them when the held the door. Except that I wasn't worried. I was just grateful. Because I didn't ask them to hold the door for me. I am capable of taking care of the door myself. So why the need to say, "no worries."? I kind of feel like people steal my politeness when they say, "no worries."

I am not worried. I am just trying to thank you.

What do you think of this phrase?

Ministry to/with GLBT friends

2011-10-12T07:53:00.000-07:00

I don't talk about work a lot on this blog. It just doesn't always seem like a great idea, but sometimes things are going in ways that intersect my personal life. Last week, was a week of exciting and meaningful ministry for me. I thought I would share...

Last week at work I hosted an event by hosting a gay catholic priest theologian to give a lecture and answer questions. I had spoken with him several times over the summer and then was able to welcome him, introduce him and had the pleasure of attending the lecture and Q&A session. We had an unbelievable number of people in attendance. The questions were of tremendous quality and depth! It was great! He was funny and interesting, faithful to the nature of grace but pushing the tradition to accept science.

Sorry Jesus is so white on this cross, it drives me nuts too.

Then, later last week was my first session with a small group that is exploring sexuality and spirituality and how they intersect in our lives. Many of the issues that are likely to come up have to do with sexual orientation and the spiritual struggles that underly some of that.

One of the ways that I see my own ministry coming into fruition here is that I am slowly starting to begin conversations with GLBT people who often assume that ministers want nothing to do with them, or that their issues are beyond the scope of ministry. When in fact, many GLBT people suffer tremendously at the hands of church leaders and I, as a minister, want to listen, support, and fight against the oppression with my GLBT brothers and sisters. Understandably though there is high level of mistrust that circles around.

All in all, I am feeling tremendous growth within my ministry in terms of the people I am forming relationships with but also in the ways that I am growing and being challenged. What an exciting time.

Applepicking, Applesauce and breaking the family rule.

2011-10-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

We went to Portland this weekend. I'm not sure the exact reason, except that on Thursday evening the idea just appealed to both S and I. Our friends Liz and Mike were free and off we went. Saturday AM we met up with them and went apple picking. No we didn't go on a hayride or walk through a maze or pick large orange squash we just picked apples! Probably about two bushels.

We had a quick lunch and then spent the afternoon chatting and making applesauce- okay we also did a bit of childcare (mostly Sean), burned a batch of apples, lost some jars, found some jars, enjoyed some guacamole, and went on a very funny walk around the block.

The pace was slow, easy and, if you know me you know I enjoyed the productivity part that went with that. Espeically since finding my productivity groove lately has been a real challenge for me. Perhaps the most groundbreaking of all things that happened this weekend was that I added cinnamon to the applesauce. This is of the great offenses in Doll's Orchard Applesauce makers! Cinnamon is the great ruiner of applesauce. Well, I'm over it. Just because my beloved Father and his father didn't like cinnamon doesn't mean I don't have to.

Well, more than 12 quarts later the delicious stuff should get us through the winter.

Going deeper and finding community

2011-10-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know this is going to shock you all, but sometimes in parentland playground talk drives me bonkers. You know, hanging out with other parents and kids discussing our kids. Never discussing our perspectives on current events or deeper beliefs and only if you are very comfortable or with another edgy parent you might be honest about the ways that your kid is going nuts. But, that is at least on topic of kids.

Don't get me wrong, I like talking about Junia. I like sharing ideas about things and getting perspectives on parenthood, kids, tools, tips. But then, like all things I get maxed out.

To be honest, in the three years since Sean and I moved here, we have found ourselves, at times, a bit lonely. We have each had pretty good community at work, but have struggled to build community in our personal life, faith life, home life, family life. In Boston, we knew a lot of people. Here, that wasn't the case. And, even though having a child lands you with a set of people and a shared topic it sure isn't very fulfilling sometimes!

But now, I am happy to report, that things have been slowly changing for us. Last winter an acquiantance from church started a faith sharing group and several of the people who also go to that faith sharing group have turned into friends, and are even in a similar place in life as us.

We recently become really good friends with neighbors (who also go to our church) who live just a block from us. They have a kid Junia's age and we've been swapping meals, a lot! About once a week one family will host a meal for the other family. It has been a great way to share some responsibility, and also have some quality friendship time for the friends and kids alike!

Last, night I went to a Mama's faith sharing group for the first time. It was a lovely gathering of 12 women. A handful that I knew and most I did not. This gathering of mostly Catholic women with young children felt so quality. We shared, laughed, and sort of hashed out what our vision of the group we would like. All in all, it felt rich. And, I left feeling deeply grateful for some of the gifts in our life and at the very least the health of our families.

It seems like we have also just had more and more chances to join people for shared meals, invite others into our home and, little by little we are finding our home here.

How my Catholic education didn't teach me to pray

2011-10-04T12:41:00.000-07:00

Today is the Feast of St. Francis. A noteworthy day for me. St. Francis has been one of my inspirations in life, as a man who seriously asked the question "how do I live the Gospel in my life?" I am feeling more and more a spirit within me to delve deeper into Franciscan spirituality and to reinterpret it for the chaotic life that is the life of a lay person in a family rather than a religious community.

I am also feeling pretty frustrated with many of the prayer strategies I have been handed in my religious formation. It seems to me that almost all of my spiritual mentors advocated for retreats, contemplative prayer, and time away. The life of a parent, partner, and employee don't lend themselves adequately to those types of connection with the sacred. And yet, despite the fact that most people are not in religious life (priests and nuns) doesn't seem to impact the esteem that these types of prayer carry.

So I am at this point, where I want to try out forms of prayer as a partner and parent that work for us, in our life, right now. Prayer that doesn't require a babysitter or a day off but moves and breathes in our day with us. I also don't mean mindfulness. I do think this is prayer of one form or another but I want to discover ways to pray not just ways to wake up.

I also wonder if this is the role that music as worship in protestant (particularly evangelical) traditions functions, because you can bring music into your home quite easily...hmmm??

We'll happy feast of St. Francis ya'll.
Don't go blessing animals and crap like that.
Ask yourself- how do I live the gospel in my life?

Peace and all good.

Nun Habit- we not a post about halloween!

2011-09-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

In most of my daily life I don't want to be a monk or a nun. Sure I have fantasies of living in community having prayer time mandated for me. But all in all that is part of my unrealistic desires.

But lately there is one part of religious life I have been craving more and more. The habit. You know the nun and priest uniform. Dont' get me wrong, even if I was a religious sister I would not have joined a community that wore a habit ,but I am jonesing for a simplicity of dress.

Why:

I just don't like having to sort out what to wear every morning.
I have been through 4 different sizes since J was born so choosing a pair of black pants might mean pulling out two pairs that don't fit very well anymore.
I don't like knowing that people are assessing what I wear to work (and I work at a very style conscious place). When we all know if I wore jeans it would be better.
I don't like how I get sick of my clothes and then I want to buy more. This equals a horrible feeling of consumerism and the dread of spending money we don't have.
It has also been a pain that my office is always cold. I have never had a work day where I was comfortable with my temperature. So even if I look nice, it gets covered up by a frumpy fleece. (or I have to wear blazers but skirts and dresses are totally out.
Anything that is light in color almost universally has a stain.
The reality is that I almost never feel like I look nice.

I just don't want to have to think about it or decide or anything. I want to get up in the morning and put on something that is socially acceptable. Or even says, "I'm not buying into your consumerist meaning making based on clothing and outward appearance."

The problem is I am not a nun. I am a lay person. My vocation is to live in society and wrestle, critique, hate, and love it from within not from outside of it. But this week, I just want to wear the same thing. Every. Single. Day.

Upcycled men's shirt ideas?

2011-09-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Many of Sean's work clothes need to head to the grave. The crease on the collar is frayed, their is some stain, or they just need to die for a series of small but mountingly important reasons. With his pants, for them mostly it is that the hem of his pants are irreparable without making them laughingly short.

So what then to do with some gorgeous shirt fabric in my sewing imagination? There are several tutorials to turn a shirt into a girls dress. The problem is 1. that my patience is slim these days for following a detailed tutorial. 2. The dresses would be thin and the weather won't be warm enough for a child wear a dress as thin as a dress shirt until next July, and 3. I already have 2 such shirts stowed away for when Junia is bigger and my patience is thicker.

So here is what I am thinking after some googling. Perhaps a painting, cooking, doing dishes apron.


http://onecharmingparty.com/tag/eco-friendly-artist-party/

There is also this. . .but I don't have any infant girls in my life. Do I? Tights would keep it warm enough.

http://www.handmadebabyclothes.org/handmade-baby-clothes/infant-girl-clothes-the-cuff-skirt-tutorial

Too bad Sean and I aren't closer in size. Their are options for making it woman friendly too.
So be it.

I resign myself to Autumn

2011-09-26T08:05:00.000-07:00

I've resigned myself to autumn. What really happened was that when I was in Illinois for my grandmother's funeral their was a day that was 90+ degrees then a cool front went through and was 60 degrees and clear. It sort of put me in the mood for fall...the browning corn stalks rustling in the wind, the crickets. It all felt so autumnal. And, it felt okay.

In the meantime the students are back and things are fully underway. So it really must be autumn. Autumn for me means, sweaters and sweatshirts, putting away shorts and t-shirts, drinking loads and loads of tea, lighting candles in the evening, savoring warm days when they show up, enjoying the rain after months of dry (It doesn't rain in Seattle in the summer), and enjoying soup again.

So even though the trees aren't as vibrant as New England (oh I miss it), and their aren't crickets and cornfields like their are in Illinois, I'll stop resisting.

What are your autumn rituals?

I don't like it when kids clothes have words.

2011-09-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not in a very good mood this morning. In fact, no one in my family is in a very good mood this morning. If only we wouldn't have had to interact. It might have been better for all of us. But alas, we are all doing our separately.

In light of my lousy mood I thought I might share one of my complaints. When illiterate people wear clothing with words on it. Usually this means kids wearing clothing with words and phrases but it isn't limited to just kids.

Exhibit A: Emotional Expression
There are lots of categories of annoying kids shirts with words. One such annoying category is sharing emotions which the child may or may not have. Putting an emotion on a t-shirt doesn't let the kid have their own experience.

Really, cuz what if the kid wearing this shirt is having one of those really contented days?

Exhibit B: Sexualizing children

The other thread of annoying shirts adults have children wear is the shirt with sexualized phrases. Babies wearing shirts that say "boob man." or imposing sexuality on them that is not yet part of their consciousness. It makes me wholly uncomfortable when we impose sexualized ideas on our kids.

Both of these shirt are sexual but also have an undertone of sexual violence. Yikes.

Exhibit C: Politicizing Children

Bibs are especially bad in the annoying writing front. Usually in regard to food. But, politics rear their ugly head by slathering opinions on a fairly unpolitical (albeit quite divisive) crowd. My discomfort really in this is the idea that the children "in training" don't have choice and aren't being formed to develop their own opinions. Both of these could just say, "being brainwashed by parents."

Exhibit D: Status in life- princess, champ, queen, winner

And then, the most common of all shirts that illiterate people wear are the ones with labels about who they are. It's sort of like, "please don't let me do the work of my own identity formation, i'll just tell you who I am."

I guess, the root of all of my discomfort is that I think it shapes our imagination around kids if their shirts have words all over them. If I see a kid wearing a shirt that says princess vs. bull rider I'm going to treat that kid differently. Or even their parents, because it's as reflection of their parents beliefs about something.

And all in all, I don't think that is fair to parents or kids.

And here are the websites for the t-shirts. All from etsy.

Grandma:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/69564741/thats-it-im-going-to-grandmas-kids-shirt?ref=sr_gallery_19&ga_search_query=kids+shirts+&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade

Handcuffs:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/60858785/lock-up-your-daughters-kids-shirts-and?ref=sr_gallery_10&ga_search_query=kids+shirts+&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_page=3&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade

Backrub
http://www.etsy.com/listing/61238519/all-mommy-wanted-was-a-back-rub-boys-and?ref=sr_gallery_11&ga_search_query=kids+shirts+&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_page=2&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade

Repub bib:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/61238519/all-mommy-wanted-was-a-back-rub-boys-and?ref=sr_gallery_11&ga_search_query=kids+shirts+&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_page=2&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade

Democ. ONsie:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/74049163/future-democrat-onesiet-shirt?ref=sr_gallery_7&ga_search_query=democrat+baby&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade
Princess:
http://www.etsy.com/search/handmade?q=boys+shirt&view_type=gallery&ship_to=US&page=3

Bull:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/79235754/future-bull-rider-rodeo-applique?ref=sr_gallery_11&ga_search_query=boys+shirt&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_page=3&ga_search_type=handmade&ga_facet=handmade

It must be hard being a republican some days.

2011-09-18T15:15:00.000-07:00

I might on good days be open to listening to both sides But to be honest I was born and raised a die hard fox news loving republican and over the course of time have become a fairly die hard Jon Stewart watching democrat.

But lately, I've been feeling bad for SOME republicans. Like the compassionate ones. Like republicans who take seriously their call to be brothers and sisters to their fellow human beings. Surely you have seen the footage in the republican debate where the crowd cheers over the execution of over 200 prison inmates Watch here.

Or worse yet, the scenario of a 30 year old in a coma "should society just let him die" and people cheer yes. Ron Paul doesn't think so, but yikes. Where is the compassion in that? watch here.

I could go nuts about both of these issues. How plagued with racism and poverty the social justice system is. I could even sympathize with fiscal conservatives about the terrible expense of putting people to death. In regards to the 30 year old in a coma. The reality is that most people don't choose to not buy heath insurance. They can't afford it. They are choosing between health insurance and other greater needs.

So my republican brothers and sisters. I will do my best not to lump all of you into one uncompassionate non caring lump. Because, I have to think better of humanity and that we really can care and not count the cost.

Sudden travel

2011-09-11T20:19:00.000-07:00

After a week on pretty much blogging hiatus, I forsee another such week. I'm headed home. My grandmother died on Friday. She was 86 and had severe dimentia. This summer gone into a nursing home and was quite unhappy. To be honest, she has said for years that she feels ready to go. She went.

More than anything the stress of being on a weekend away with students, sorting out the high price of airline tickets, getting work informed and up to date, and imagining myself traveling alone with a toddler have all been the sources of frustration. So tomarrow, before bright but very early Junia and I will head to Chicago and then get on a train for southern illinois. We should arrive after about 13 hours of travel. I am sure I don't have enough toys packed.

Send me patience.

So now I am 30.

2011-09-09T09:07:00.000-07:00

I turned 30 this week. I'm not feeling sentimental about it really, except that everyone around me seems to be thinking that I should be. The thing is, I really did my twenties very well! I fell in love a handful of times, I lived in a foreign country, backpacked in several foreign countries, fell out of love once or twice, got lots of education, had at least 8 different jobs, drank too much sometimes, skinny dipped a lot, moved at least 6 times, walked thousands of miles, bought sexy shoes, bought comfortable shoes, experimented with style, body, relationships, among other experiments. I married. I had a baby. I worked for people in need in prison, in Haiti, in my various work. I got swallowed by a cave of grief and worked my way through discovering another path out of the cave. I got on facebook and started a blog. I bought a digital camera. I learned how to fight better and how to love better.

So I don't mind turning 30 at all. Because it seems that I really did my 20's very very well. There is little else to do with them. Figuring how to live the values that stem from my 20's into my 30's seems like a pretty great idea. I am sure that when I write similar words at 40 they will be consumed with child raising and growing and being challenged in that. I'm okay to let that be a new place/stage.

Canning Tomatoes and Peaches

2011-09-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

After a week of no productivity, mind you I pride myself on productivity, we turned our 50lbs of peeled and frozen tomatoes into lots and lots of tomato sauce and several cans of whole tomatoes. Half of the sauce was a basil balsamic sauce and the other half was sage. Both herbs were right from the yard so that was handy.

We have 25lbs of peaches peeled and frozen in the freezer for some winter cobblers and crisps but we bought another 25lb box and canned half of that today. I wanted to just have some peaches to eat right out of the jar when the winter rain gets so old that I start to believe it will never be warm again (next June??) Last year I only did three jars. Two with cardamom and 1 with clove. The cardamom were amazing and the clove was good for a couple bites- that is until my mouth went numb.

Did you know that clove has a magic natural orajelness to it? Me either.

So this year, I wanted to repeat the goodness and avoid the orajel. So 11 jars filled with peaches infused with simple syrup, cardamom, or cinnamon, or star anise! It makes me dread our winter less.

So that productivity was fun and all. But I'm done. I think we are going for a swim this afternoon! Yay!

Here's where we get our produce! Because we haven't gotten too many tomatoes and peaches don't even grow on this side of the mountains.

September Garden in Seattle

2011-09-03T15:27:00.000-07:00

I forgot, again this year, that September is still a glorious month for Seattle gardens! Our tomatoes are coming into their own. Don't get me wrong, it's not like tomatoes in California or the south or even just parts of the country that get really stinkin' hot but, I picket enough tomatoes to cover the bottom of one of my harvesting baskets. This is pretty exciting!

Tonight for dinner? Tomato Pie!

I picked the Walla Walla onions which are small but oh so sweet! And we have a bounty of Zucchini. Okay, it's not a bounty really, but one or two a week is just fine for us.

Check out this Summers garden growth! Yay!

Taken September 3, Take note of the very dead grass.

Busy Busy

2011-09-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

It is that time of year. Chaos becomes reality.

This the is the danger of working in education. This is the only weekend in September I don't have work related events. That sucks. But then I remember that in October we are going to Mexico. That makes me feel better.

Perhaps knowing that is the impetus behind my lack of showering and getting dressed today. I just can't get myself to do it. Though I am plenty motivated to put away laundry, thin out the beet seedings, pick up poop in the back yard and an plethora of other mundane activities that cannot be done in the hectic days of getting student life going.

Delightfully Indian summer is upon us. Sean was noting yesterday that in Seattle June is a wash but September is glorious. I concur.

I'm trying to get some thought together to make a cohesive post. But it just ain't happenin' right now. Give me a day to get some theme.

I'll be back.

Stop talking about autumn!

2011-08-28T08:34:00.000-07:00

Lets not talk about it. That has been my defacto perspective on the reality that it is nearly autumn. But friends are starting to mention things on facebook, blogs and in conversation. it seems that everyone who lives anywhere in North America other than Seatttle is okay with the autumn arriving.

I just find it depressing.

WE have finally had a week where temps were in the 80's and it was sunny. We got FINALLY got some ripe tomatoes. Some swimming in Lake Washington, some nights sleeping under a sheet instead of a duvet. But, it seems that by the end of this week we will be back in the 60's. It is coming whether I like it or not huh?

It seems like time slips by whether I like it or not.

The only hope I have been putting into fall this year then is that I have been planting some fall/winter veggies. Brussels sprouts, beets, (our kale is still having a heyday), more broccoli, arugula, spinach...that kind of stuff. I am also hoping to plant onions or leeks and garlic. We'll see.

I suppose that the other hope is that as a new school year begins I am not starting of with a new group of people I have to get to know. My second year at a job is a really exciting thing!

What are you doing to prepare yourself for autumn?

Are you excited for it?

Healing after birth

2011-08-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

Y'all have been leaving a lot of comments in the last couple of days. Thanks! I love comments.

Junia's second birthday was yesterday. We had a lovely evening with Manon, Ian and William, our neighbors up the hill who we meal swap with once a week (and who we also celebrated J's birthday with last year at their house) and one of Junia's Godmothers came for pizza, cake, and wine.

It was a lovely night, and not so much because it was Junia's birthday but because we had wonderful friends with us and it was enough to feel supported and celebratory but not enough that it felt like having guests over for a party.

I've been seeing a therapist this summer. Did you know that? Sean and I together have been processing the birth experience of laboring for so many days and things going array. We've processed together the challenge of everthing that occured. The challenge of laboring for days and days, the disappointment of having a c-section, the horror of being thereatened by a pediatrician that they would take her away. I've dealt very honestly with the pain of being obese in a medical system that demonizes obesity and frankly obese people. Perhaps in another post I'll write more about that.

All in all though, we have been doing some hard work and slowly regaining some of my dignity. Sean, some of his freedom to not have rescued me from the pain. And this all means that when Junia's birthday was approaching and yesterday on her birthday I was aware of "what I was doing 2 years ago today" but it wasn't haunting me in the same way. I wasn't grieving it. I, because of some of the work we have done, am more free to let that history be part of a deeply hard and dark aprt of my past but also let Junia's birthday be about celebrating the gifts she brings to our life and our commitment to seek to love her well.

And that, two years later, is the healing after birth.

Making our own wrapping paper

2011-08-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

I don't really think that birthdays need to be a big deal but they are fun. Junia is getting a couple things she picked out at Goodwill a couple of months ago and a tricycle to grow into. But, we of course have to wrap these goodies.

We aren't much for expensive and thin rolls of wrapping paper and we are all about reusing goods and making projects that we can do with Junia.

Need I explain more.

Brown paper bags, butcher paper, paint, paintbrushes- by the time we were done it was just feet rather than paint brushes!

What fun.

Someone is having a birthday tomorrow.

Love's suprises

2011-08-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

I didn't see it coming. What is it? That over our course (thus far) of being married how proud I could be of Sean.

A lot of our summer visits with friends involve the question, "so how is your summer going." We answer and Sean answers honestly that he has a had a busy, kinda overwhelming but good summer. He usually half explains why it was all those things. And then stops.

At that point I feel the need to explain about all the emotional tax that goes into his work. All the care, concern, and kindness he shows his students. How he is growing to be more bold every day! And we laugh about the time this summer I told his supervisor I wanted his brain to come home in the evenings.

I don't know if my parents weren't proud of each other or if they didn't show it. I can't think of couples that express their pride in one another very obviously. But my beloved makes me so proud. He was a phenomenal man when I met, decided to love, and married him. And still now he is phenomenal in the same and in new ways too.

What parts of marriage surprise you?

What did you not see coming?

Stop calling women girls and dressing girls as women.

2011-08-19T11:44:00.001-07:00

Does anyone else think of lingerie when they think of lace.

So when I got this "deal" for lacey kids pants in my email from Very Jane I was pretty uncomfortable.

I think my one piece of lingerie is exactly that pink material.

Yuck. I don't want to put my daughter in anything that leads her to be sexualized.
Yuck yuck.

On the other hand lace and children do not have to be separate entities.
This little skirt is adorable without being sexual.

And, btw when I typed "lace girl dress" it only came up with pictures of women. It so grosses me out that people think that women and girls are synonyms.

Which btw- leads me to think about how girls are sexualized. This is a great article. Just click on the previous sentence.

Cool photos from Nytimes- Where Children sleep

2011-08-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

This is cool.

A photograph series on where children sleep from the NYTimes. Which is exactly where these photos were taken. Take a look at it.

I like it a lot.

Our worst selves. When you are angry with your kid...

2011-08-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, when my sister and her family was here, was a terrible day. It had nothing to do with my sister and her family and everything to do with Junia and her very tired Mama.

She was driving me nuts. Everything she did was crazy making! Touching EVERYTHING, fussing about EVERYTHING, needing to move ALL THE TIME. I was going bonkers! There were probably a couple elements that might have ACTUALLY been making it worse.
A- She has molars coming in.
B- We have guests in our house and in our space. She is wondering what the heck is going on.
C- She senses that her Mama is exhausted- and thinks "lets see if I can push this."

I don't know about C.

Lunch was rough. We were out, which is always harder, and she wanted to be everywhere. On the way back she fell asleep. But did not lay down for her nap. I really, seriously, desperately needed a nap. 10 hours in 2 nights just isn't enough for me. I have always been a sleeper.

So she was screaming, playing, pooping, fussing. I was rocking, laying on her floor, leaving, coming, changing diaper. You know the scene.

This went on for 2.5 hours. I felt like a terrible parent. Not because she wasn't sleeping but because I was so angry at her. And because her cries made me feel like I was hurting her. But going in there to soothe those cries just made me more escalated.

Oh how I hate who I am when I am out of control angry.

Finally, my sister went in and rocked her to sleep. It took her 5 minutes.
I took a nap.
Finally.

So all of this is just the reality of parenthood. Nothing in there isn't the life of about 3 million Mom bloggers. Except do any of them admit how furious they got at there kid? Or how rotten and gross that fury made them feel as a person.

Maybe they don't all get furious. But when I am tired, and stressed, and have guests, its hard. So when Junia wasn't napping, I was contributing with fury. Anger. Rage. She made me feel so unfree. Unfree to be with my sister. To nap like I needed. To keep my promise with my nephew to play a game. I was fuming. I just wanted to shake her, hit her, take her insides out through her nose.

Then someone that evening said to me, "you are a great parent, at least you didn't hit her." Except that seems to also say, "if you hit her you aren't a great parent." I don't want to hit Junia and I am avoiding it as much as I can but it isn't an impossibility. Most parents don't plan on doing such things. And if it happens, I'll think about it, apologize, and do my best to avoid it again, but yikes, to have my good/bad parenting be contingent on one action that feels so close!

I guess my question is this. What is your worst self? (not just as a parent!)

My sister confessed (is this okay Amy) that when she is overbaked on the parenting front she just checks out. Like she turns into Mom robot.

And beyond that...what are your triggers for your worst self?

My first one is lack of sleep. That is huge for me. Which is why having a newborn sucked so bad. I was tired. So that meant I was always angry, and I don't like the feeling of being angry.

And finally, why? Why do you hate that part of you? What does it make you feel?

Garden

2011-08-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

We are seeing the benefits of our garden lately.

With lettuce, basil, broccoli, kale, chard and greenbeans we are fairing our mild summer very well. I don't think we'll get more than a few handfuls of tomatoes. But year after year I keep planting them, because surely we'll have a warm summer one of these years!

I put in some Brussels sprouts, beets, and spinach hoping for some fall/winter veggies. I haven't ever done that successfully so I am hoping this year it'll work out.

Wonderful relationships!

2011-08-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

When I was an adolescent I really wanted a great relationship with my sister. I didn't know how to have it. I don't think I could have. But our lives have been dynamic, dramatic and honest enough that a great relationship has been forged. Big sister trusting that little sister is an equal and little sister trusting that big sister is human too.

Her and her family visited from Wednesday to this afternoon. And we had a truly wonderful time. It felt like too short of a visit and that we all live too far away from one another.

And, my sister and her family just bought a new camera!

Bad sleep..two year old pattern?

2011-08-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

This is a day for coffee. But, of course, there was no coffee in the house and I left my wallet at home. Darn. I am now trying to figure out who at work owes me a cuppa coffee.

J was awake last night from around 1am until 3:30am or so. I think she had a night terror and couldn't calm down. That is until around 2:15 or so. After 30 minutes of rocking, laying her in her bed, and standing in her room singing ABC I left. She noticed and screamed bloody murder for 15 minutes.

Too painful.

She joined us in bed for 20 minutes but it didn't work and so S moved a mattress into her room on the floor. She was wide awake with all the movement going on. When Sean tried to sneak back into our bed it was again terrifying.

We really don't want to start patterns of her being in our bed or us not being together. Sleeping in the same bed is a huge priority for us as a couple. But it's almost impossible to figure out what to do in the middle of the night when your entire body is screaming SLEEP!

And even now, while my entire body is screaming COFFEE, I am not sure what we should have done differently. It just sucked. I hope that we don't have a pattern forming. That's the real fear. I don't care about last night as long as we don't have to repeat it for upcoming weeks.

It's one night like last night and days like today that I remember how traumatizing the lack of sleep with infant Junia was. Wow, that was a rough time for us.

All in all, I am pretty glad to leave June-bug at daycare today. My patience was thin and I wake up with a grudge.

Paisley Pillowcase dress.

2011-08-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

I think the toddler in the house has scratched up the lens of the camera. It seems not be able to take clear and in-focus pictures. It is kind of irritating, it's also just a camera. Hmm which of these dueling responses in me should I allow to be the loudest?

One of my frustrations with online free sewing tutorials for girls is almost everything is short sleeved. It's really annoying considering how often our weather is chilly in the pacific northwest. Finally we are having warm sunny weather; my inspiration woke up this morning and I put together a pillowcase dress for Junia.

Less than 30 minutes of work, a 99cents pillowcase thread and notions and here is a pretty stinkin' cute dress. Here is a link that reminded me I could make one quite easily.

Now if I could get her to keep her diaper on or get potty trained- one or the other really!

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

2011-08-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Have I written about our exemplary sketchy neighbor. His drug dealing drives us nuts, and his friends are downright offensive. But he, lets call him Mr. Sandwich has showed us kindness lately. And this, I think, a big inroad.

The greatest gift in this is Maggie.

Mr. Sandwich, since he moved in, has shared his bones with Maggie. Literally, he tosses chicken bones and the like over the fence for her. I've got no problems with dogs eating bones so Maggie now adores Mr. Sandwich. When she goes out on a walk or we are putting her in the car she always runs up to Mr. Sandwich's gate to greet him with her lick and a wagging tail.

During the summer we sometimes leave Maggie outside when we are gone for just an hour or so. And our formerly hesitatnt and fearful dog has become confident and fearless and has turned herself into a digger. One evening, She dug her way out under the fence. We came home one evening of reports of how Maggie had been parading all over the neighborhood. In the conviencne store, visiting people, eat roadkill. Our neighbors, as high as they were, kept putting her in our yard. They moved our trashcans to block her exit route. But still Maggie wouldn't be caged in. After and hour of frantic searching, and asking every pedestrian if they had seen her we found Maggie. Happy, tired and being her very social self.

We felt extremely grateful to Mr. Sandwich for trying so hard to contain her. He aparnetly put her back in our yard 7 or 8 times. Finally I think he just got frustrated that it wasn't working, but Mr. Sandwich and friends were intentional about not letting her run towards the busy street.

We fixed the fence- mostly but Maggie is a smart dog and so yesterday Maggie snuck out of the house. Or rather, figuring out how to open the window guard and then jump out the window. And rather than digging she forced the fence away from the 2x8 it is/was attached to: out again. Mr. Sandwich was the the convienance store and Maggie came and visisted him..

This time Mr. Sandwich came into our yard fixed the fence a bit and I think gave Maggie a good talking to.

When we got home, he checked in with us about what had happened and how we fixed it. Today, we left Maggie inside with the windows closed. And, as I type this I am nervous about what she might be up to. However, I stared this post to pause for a moment to appreciate Mr. Sandwich. He is really fond of Maggie and her ability to love him and show affection softens some part of him and has allowed us to forge a relationship.

So true he is a drug dealer. And true, his friends are sketch balls but Maggie is a reminder of giong deeper into his humanity, his ability to love and connect, and even a demand that we love our neighbors.

I like being a working mom and thoughts on vocation

2011-08-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

I was home for much of last week with Junia. It was lovely. We spent mornings with friends, went to a farm, picked berries, took maggie for walks, went to parks. It was a week that I really enjoyed being with her. Savoring each of those days. The hard moments were fewer than the good ones.

And now, the reverse, I am glad to be at work for three days this week. I took Junia to daycare, which she was a little emotional but mostly fine when I left and was thrilled to have my routine and her routine back for a couple of days. Walking my mile to work up the hill then back down and seeing the Seattle skyline was lovely. When Junia was very young I lamented going to work (at 6 weeks I had to go back because even Catholics don't offer paid maternity leave!) but slowly a shift has begun in me. I like being a working parent. This morning on my lovely walk, I started tallying for my own self some of the things I love about being a working parent.

Because even though there are many days that I wish I were at home with her. There is something that is really right for me and us right now about me working too.

1. I savor my time with my people.

2. I feel connected to the world outside of my family. For me, as a homebody, I think that if I stayed at home I would have a hard time meeting people outside the context of parenting.

3. I meet people who don't know that I have a child and sometimes feel like I am playing hooky. It's kind of a freeing place.

4. I am intellectually stimulated, and pretty easily. It is hard work to stay intellectually stimulated by a toddler. Although, on my best days I think that it can happen. But working is stimulating for me.

5. Income. Ultimately, we both work because we cannot afford not do. When she was an infant that was tremendously painful, but now I don't really mind.

6. Ambivalence. I think that early one I am being forced to know that I cannot be everything for Junia. That is okay. It sucks. It's great. It's ambivalent. But it is part of the gray reality of life.

7. I really like my job and the people I work with and work for. I feel in some way that Junia contributes to this. There are days where I try to thank her for her support of me working.

I've been thinking about how often vocation and priesthood or being a nun are used in the same sentence or how people might talk about vocation and a job. More and more, I believe that vocation is living authentically, serving the poor (poverty can be need for a great many things not just money), and growing deeper and deeper into love. And, right now, these three areas are growing. At different rates, but growing nonetheless.

The form of my vocation includes job, life, house, family, dog, money etc changes and flexes but the mission underneath I think is longer lasting.

Somersaults

2011-08-01T15:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish my blog had 75 readers or some higher number.

But then it would be wierd to post videos of my daughter learning skills.

Here are three movies taken all in 15 minutes while Junia learned how to do somersaults by watching some kind of gymnast kid genius. I only type that because the last movie has me saying, "you can do it like him. Not as good as him though." Which one one hand is true and I mostly said it because I was trying not to insult the kid. But I also feel bad for not giving her enough credit. Because, as you can see the final somersault really was fabulous!

Using Mint #2 Mint/Lime Popsicles

2011-08-01T13:49:00.001-07:00

Sean and I are fairly good sharers. We often choose foods at restaurants that each of us want to try and then we share plates. I have lots of exceptions to this rule. Sean on the other hand has 1 exception to this rule. Popsicles. All popsicles have this limitation but Paletas (mexican popsicles are his favorite).

When I saw a review of this book I knew I had to get it for him as a special summer treat. After all, he is the man who spent well over an hour driving around LA looking for a particular Paletaria because he heard there was one around.

Paletas aren't hard to make and for that reason this book might have been unnecessary except that the motivation to make our own (wonderful) Popsicles might be worth it.

So here is a recipe for Mint Lime Paletas. The original is just the lime but I love the Mint with it!

2 C water

2/3 Cup sugar

3 (1 inch) strips of lime Zest

3/4 C Lime juice

4 or 5 sprigs of mint

Or really, use as many or as few as you want!

Combine water and sugar in a saucepan over heat until the sugar dissolves. Then add the lime zest and the mint. Let cool. When cooled at lime juice and strain. Then put into popsicle molds (or shot glasses or whatever ya got) and let freeze until (really do I have to say it) frozen.

Enjoy.

User Friendly baby books- without pressure.

2011-07-30T16:23:00.001-07:00

Image from Amazon.com

In high school and for awhile in college I was uber sentimental. I sort of grew out of it, or for me I got secure enough to grow out of it. But still, the 4th child in me laments that there aren't many pictures of me or stories about my babyhood. I think my parents were so bombarded by children that they just didn't remember who went with what stories.

Sadly the couple that remain are embarassing. Let's just say I was as emotional a child as I am an adult...without the tools to really deal with those emotions.

This is all just leading up to the point of this post is to tell you about Junia's baby book. Of course she's an only child so she has attention, our memories, tons of picture etc. But our lives are still crazy and I don't want to sit down an scrapbook her life. Nor do I want to have to fill out a series of questions that may or may not be important to me.

What clothes did you come home wearing?

What did you eat at your first christmas?

What Brand of Diaper did you wear?

You know questions like that. I just don't care, and I don't want someone else saying what should be important.

I do want her to know when she got teeth, started crawling, what her cute phrases were, you know some little tokens that mean/meant something to Sean and I.

This book has been perfect. Once a month or even once every couple of months Sean and I write down some random quips about what Junia has been doing, what's going on in our lives, what is hard that kind of thing. The pages are unlined, simple, and perfect for our style.

I love poetry and my daughter

2011-07-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

Watch the first three minutes of this...or read it.
If I should have a daughter, instead of Mom, she's gonna call me Point B, because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands, so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, "Oh, I know that like the back of my hand." And she's going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt here that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn't coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I've tried. "And, baby," I'll tell her, don't keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place, to see if you can change him." But I know she will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix. Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix. But that's what the rain boots are for. Because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my mom taught me. That there'll be days like this. ♫ There'll be days like this, my momma said. ♫ When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's swept away. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. "Baby," I'll tell her, "remember, your momma is a worrier, and your poppa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more." Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things. And always apologize when you've done something wrong. But don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street-corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.

By Sarah Kay

How do you hang out with your toddler?

2011-07-25T12:50:00.001-07:00

It's raining.

I haven't heard thunder in Seattle in months. It's a rare thing here. And today, it is raining. We were supposed to have a photographer (former student of mine) do a shoot with us today. Sadly, we are going to have to reschedule. All this after Sean took a half day off of work anyway.

Feeling all motivated this morning Junia, Maggie and I walked to the park this morning. We were there for a good 10 minutes when it started raining. 5 minutes later it was pouring. Junia walked for awhile and then wanted to be carried. "No way," I said. "You can either walk or ride in the stroller." She didn't want either. So in the stroller she went. With her new found stick. Then she poked herself in the mouth.

All this in the pouring rain.

But then the question, what to do at home. I love the kid but her range of activities I don't find very fun. We sat down for 5 minutes or so and painted. Then it got old for her. So she started playing with the spool of thread on the table. Tell me...what am I supposed to do to engage her? I can only handle reading so many books. It seems like my best attempts at being really present to her are kind of a waste.

Wrestle, read, snuggle, and eat. Those are the moments she'll stay focused. Other than that we are kind of just hanging out in the same space. Sometimes I can sit with her and play, but the amount of energy it takes for me to 1. Be present. 2. No too directive. 3. and Enjoy. Is kind of a lot.

Grrr on the rain.

How to Stay at home parents do this?

18 hours and 48 minutes.

2011-07-23T20:22:00.000-07:00

What tempereture means summer to you?

How warm does it need to be to be called a summer day.

If you say 75. Then in Seattle we've only had 18 hours and 48 minutes of it.

If you are more like a 80 degrees kind of person. We are talking 78 minutes.

That's right. 78 freakin' minutes.

We'll I don't think today topped 75 or 80 but the sun was warm and we decided to savor every moment of it. So we opened the baby pool. And someone in our family loved it. There were meltdowns every time she had to get out.

Who knew you could have so much fun in 6" of water.

Ah yes, someone who finds fun in everything would know that.

And this, what is summer without a popsicle!?

Camera found! Projects underway!

2011-07-23T14:55:00.000-07:00

Finally, the camera was found in Junia's "church bag." The bag of random toys and books that she only plays with once a week at church, that way they stay fun because they are rarely seen.

Anyway, that means I snapped some photos of things going on today. I wish I could say this past week, but work has been lousy and busy. Lots and lots of extroverted performance(y) things. So to be honest, even if I had the camera this week I don't remember what I would have taken pictures of.

So here is a duvet cover I am working on. Twin size, theme alphabet and numbers. I'm planning to sell it on etsy.

These are the pieces that I hope to make into another duvet cover this week. The theme being stripes...in case you could't tell.

And, despite the clouds and cool weather the garden keeps on growing. The birds however, keep eating. I need to put some ribbons around to distract them. They ate our first round of broccoli!

I have pictures to take

2011-07-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

but my camera is lost. I know that I picked it up on sunday, carried it around the house. And now, it is now where to be seen.

Darn.

St. Anthony. Help me out bro!

Travels to Central Washington and back again.

2011-07-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

We love weekend adventures in the summer. It is pretty much how we do relaxation and travel.

I know that the rest of the northern hemisphere has been slow roasting this summer, but the Pacific Northwest has been downright chilly. Highs in the upper 60's, cloudy, general yuck. It's been so miserable I'm starting to wish that it were 104 degrees with 93% humidity. Okay, not a lot. But at moments.

In addition to the lousy weather S and I have had kind of stressful weeks. My work has involved a lot of extroversion and his a lot of...everything...and all of it personal. So this weekend we decided to cross the cascades (the mountains to the east of Seattle) and head into the high desert of Washington where it's sunny 300 days of the year.

We went to a train museum, because Junia is into trains, and well, so is Sean!

For some reason, people don't talk about how beautiful rural Washington is, and even if it isn't as culturally rich as Seattle the landscape is amazing! And the Mexican food is as good as Mexico (courtesy of the immigrant community in the Yakima valley). And the produce is unreal. So of course, we bought 16lbs of Rainier, Bing and Pie Cherries for 1.50lb. Yeah. That's right! We went to Thompson U-Pick farm. It was good. They were really chill about us having Maggie with us and all the different types of Cherry Trees were mixed up together. Kind of nice to just wander the orchard.

After the trains and Cherries we went to a winery, bought a bottle of wine and sat in the grass for two hours. It was glorious. Wineries are amazingly child-friendly. Something we keep in our back pocket!

On our way back we drove through Chinook Pass (rather than Snoqualmie) it was so beautiful! Mind blowingly beautiful!

And the best part? Junia slept for most of it!