Wonderblog

We almost forgot about the solar eclipse, because we were barely back from our trip when it started.

I tried to look at it, but got spots in my eyes for my trouble. I thought I would walk the dog in the waning light to experience it as best I could.

Me and dog were taking a short walk, and we saw a lot of people trying to get a look at it. I said to everyone I met, “Happy eclipse!”

One man said, “You just missed it! The people over there had special glasses. Go knock on the door, you can take a look.”

After hesitating, I decided to go for it.

Julie answered my knock, and came out with extremely dark cardboard sunglasses. It was so neat to see! It was horned like a crescent moon.

i thanked Julie, and spent a little time getting to know her.

Guess what? Her astronomer husband is from Alaska.

EAGLE RIVER, even. Crazy! I welcomed them to the neighborhood, and said I would come back with some of my alaska stories.

“We come all the way around the world and meet aroudn the block!”

“Claremont is like that, ” she said.

I guess so.

Chris has climbed Mt. Whitney several times. Once, I limbed it with him. it took him a while to convince me to try.

He would say things like, “You climb it, and then you remember the experience and want to do it again. BUt when you are up in the altitude, gray and weak you don’t remember why you wanted to do it.

I am feeling that way about this trip. What were we thinking, to have two nights away from home with Veronica? She does not like being away from home.

Even when she is home, she sleeps abysmally poorly.

There is a woman with a three year old sitting here eating breakfast in the hotel breakfast room. She

ALSO HAS A SIX WEEK OLD

She is perfectly made up. Her children are behaving very well. THe 3 year old sits an eats her fruit. THe six week old has a silent way of crying.

Can i hate her? TOO late. I already am.

Veronica did not cry last night. She just took a very long time to fall asleep. and it took me holding her hand and saying ‘Be sleepy. No kicking your feet, Lay down.” for an hour solid.

that doesn’t count the aproximate 20 minute long shifts Chris and I had been taking to keep her in her bed for the previous two hours.

sigh

Mother of two over there has a very flattering post-pregnancy shirt on that minizes the leftover baby belly.

Veronica went to sleep. But then I couldn’t. I had to listen to some podcasts before i could drift off. I fell asleep about 11:30

The i hear Veronica say “Look! Issa Bird!” Chris pops up and says, “Lay down now.”

IT was 4:30. Chris looks at me and says “It’s your turn. She’s been doing this all night.”

Well. She had been doing it all night. But she was going back to sleep after. NOW, she woke up for good. SHe hadda go pee pee. THen she had to ask if she could go sleep inthe crib, not the cot. THen she wanted to go back in the cot. But no, not this time, she wanted to sleep in the bed with me.

WHICH WOULD BE FINE except she was not sleepin. She was trying to chew on her feet. NObody is sleeping.

Chris left the room, and is sleeping on the pull-out couch.

It was his idea to let her go back into the crib.  Maybe I should embrace the fact that he never reads this blog and talk smack about him.

HE was the one who gave her the MP3 player that she wanted to hold instread of letting it play the sleepy music on the shelf. HE was the one who gives her whatever she wants regardless.

He said “Let her go back in the crib. She keeps asking for it.”

Three year olds ask for all kinds of things that are not good for them. AND she asked to leave almost as soon as she got in it, because it’s too small for her

Anyway, I get her back in the cot-bed. i Get her to lay down. SHe continues to wiggle her feet against the interesting cloth of the cot to make scritchy-squeaky sounds.

i think she kept doing that even when she was asleep. But it did eventually become clear she was asleep.

A bout an hour and a half later.

And I woke up about 7:30. I tried to sleep some more, but with both rooms beign full of tenuously sleeping fmaily members, I left to get the free breakfast.

And blog about it.

I think we need to find an overnight babysitter and leave on our own.

this night was without tears.

ThAnk GOD.

She slept through the night, and I did too, but I woke up at 6:30. I betook myself to have the hotel breakfast and let daddy and daughter sleep.

THEY got up about 8. THen it was zoo, and lunch. We left for lunch, and I wanted a nicer place to eat. But we coulnd’t make up our minds, she was starting to be sleepy, and so it was del taco in the hotel room.

She took a long nap,  though, and everyone rested during the afternoon. We decided to act like civilized people and not do anything strenuous. We all love shopping, so we went to a mall with plans to eat at a sit-down restaurant for dinner.

The mall was fun, and they were home to a Red Robin burger joint. We went in, and sat down in full view of a carousel horse that was part of the decor.

A horsey! A wooden horsey with a saddle to ride and everything! We visited teh horsey several times throughout our stay. i had to repeat that it was for looking at, not for riding.

When i was able to sit down, I told Chris that there was a Red Robin in Anchorage.

“It was a spot that the churchy people would go to. A hangout spot for young adults and in particular the singles group.”
“We had one near Fullerton when I was going to university too. I avoided it,”

“Well…I remember not being very fond of the one in Anchorage either…Did you have a time like that? When you were discovering what kind of places you would like to go to as an adult?”

I didn’t really like Red Robin. I never understood the appeal. If it were up to me, I would have gone to the Java Joint (oh I wish it were still there…) or to a 24 hour diner. THe 24 hour places never felt like they had to entertain you or be anything other than open.

Open was enough. Give me some food, and all the coffee refills I can drink until past midnight, and that’s what I want.

Until, of course, I got old enough to be more sophisticated and have some FAHNCY restaurant choices.

Tonight, fancy was sitting down and having a waiter bring the food. So Red Robin was perfect.

BUt Veronica didn’t like sitting still. We had to visit the horsey AND the bathroom multiple times.

THe last time we went pee-pee, we emerged to wash our hands with some very decked out teenage girls.

THese poor teenage girls at Red Robin.

I felt pretty frumpy. But still…THey were VERY decked out and made up.

“What’s the occasion, ladies?” I asked, while leanign over Veronica to assist with the washing of hands.

“PROM!” they all said, slightly embarrassed.

Oh my. This was as time to be supporting and admiring of their efforts.

“You look lovely,” I said. THen i turned around to give Veronica her paper towel for the completion of hand-washing. It occurred to me to take it a step further.

“Look, Veronica! There are princesses here in the bathroom.”

She looked up at them with big eyes. They giggled a little bit. And because I was stuck between teenage glamour and three-year-old values, I said “Princesses have to go to the bathroom too. Everybody poops.”

While they laughed a little harded, Veronica repeated the statement with great seriousnes,

“everybody poops.”

“she’s so cute!” the princesses said.

“Okay, Veronica…Let’s go tell Daddy you saw princesses. Say bye-bye Princesses!”

I’m up to october 2009

It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I don’t want to read it. It’s the part that makes you cry in the movie…the part where you know it’s going to make you cry, and then it makes you not want to watch that movie.

But the movie is a really good movie. And you are glad that you watched it.

But you don’t want to watch that one part. That one part. But that one part is part of the movie.

I think i’ll just leave that part alone for a while.

…

One entry in my blog talked about Gut-ese, or learning to understand what my gut is telling me and listening.

My gut right now is telling me that it is going to get better at an undetermined time in the near future. I know that it has gotten better already.

But.

Experience tells me that bad S happens. That i have tried to call the bad stuff that has been happening ‘the new normal’ and make it okay.

It wasnt okay.

But it’s getting better now. It is. It’s been a stable better for weeks.

But my faith is very ragged. I have to have faith and keep my eyes on the prize.

And maybe that means not reading this blog for a little bit. I’ll finish it later.

It’s not like we didn’t plan. And it’s not like she is the worst kid ever.

But we are spending two days away from home with Veronica,and this first night already sucks.

sobbing uncontrollably for 45 minutes straight.

from 6:30 to 10, varying forms of sobbing. Chris just emerged from the bedroom (we got a suite) to say she is asleep and that he does not relish the idea of a second night of this.

Thing is, she is too big for the hotel provided crib. So we bought a cot for her. She couldn;t deal with the cot. So we called for the crib after all. That HELPED, but she can’t lie straight in the crib. Poor thing.

I woke up at 6;30. Later than my usual wakeup time. I should be witty and funny, but I”m not.

So I’m up to the part in my blog where I went back to work after Veronica was born. I’m NOT to the part where she had to be hospitalized for not growing.

That was such a scary, shaky shuddery time, it’s hard to read about. But I wrote some good turns of phrases.

I write.

Looking forward to finishing the blog. Or to be more accurate, reading up to the current place.

One of my favorite podcasts is Radiolab. This episode starts out by describing how archeologists dug into the traditional trash pit of an Egyptian site and pulled up a bunch of papyrus.

The findings were amazing. Hundreds of boxes of papyrus with earlier versions of the Bible than anybody had ever seen, just for starters. Scientists have been carefully cleaning the scraps–which are described as a bunch of cornflakes–and piecing them back together to read the messages they left.

They have been working on this for more than a hundred years.

HOLY CRAP! I am imagining what a huge amount of information we are capturing and storing right now, on YouTube alone.

Of course, as I am finishing off re-reading my ten years of blog, I found this piece of history. Right before Veronica was born, I was waiting.

On January 18, 2009, I preserved for history that I SLEPT FOR ELEVEN HOURS.

My daughter is three years old. I have not slept that much for any day of her life. I don’t think it will happen again for years and years.

This could be the last recorded time in my life that I got a good night’s sleep. A really good night’s sleep.

The Wall Street Journal had an article about women in the workplace this month.

Here are some excerpts:

You would think the problem would be solved by now…”Almost nine in 10 CEOs agree that tapping female talent is important to ‘getting the best brains’ and competing in markets where women now make most of the purchasing decisions.”

…Companies are still bleeding female talent at an alarming rate…”

One executive they interviewed urges women:

“For God’s sake, nominate yourself for promotions. You’re holding yourself back.”

What are we waiting for, ladies? Corner offices, benefits and high pay are just begging for us to take them.

Right? Why on earth are we not jumping at these goodies?

Deep in the story, after we had to flip to page B9, they go on to say:

There is evidence that the U.S. is losing ground. Women are making huge strides in emerging economies such as India and China.

What could possibly be different between America and India and China?

You can wipe off the sarcasm I am dripping all over this post and see the answer here.

All the commenters mention childcare, or dependent care as the big reason to opt out.

I am pretty sure that China and India have a better system for providing childcare than America does. Maybe it is cheaper, maybe it is easier to obtain, maybe there is a greater social acceptance for an educated mama giving the children to the care of another person, but I am pretty sure that most of the reason “Companies are still bleeding female talent” is the very very female concern of the children.

There was mention of male executives having to learn to listen to female voices during meetings. However, there was no mention of the more obvious problem of how to adjust the workload to better accommodate female childcare concerns.

If we are in such demand, come where we live and figure out how to make it worth our while to run your companies

I was describing recently, my last job. How when I arrived, the users were very skeptical of the conferencing technology i was serving up. But after I straightened it out, the heads of the firm were expanding their usage of the stuff and requesting me specifically.

I said, we came to the point where the people who used to say “THis never works!” would say, “Oh, ignore that little hiccup. This stuff works great.:”

The tipping point was when people stopped looking at a working model and seeking flaws and began looking at a flawed model and seeing that it worked. That makes all the difference.

But it is true in so many other things. Faith. Trust. Hang-in-there-itude.

This is true for relationships too. When I am friends with someone, and they are flawed as all people are. I have a good friend right now who is ignoring my email requests for us to get together. But that’s okay. I trust him. I know he is my friend and that he does indeed want to get together.

But there are times, sad times, when I have had to take a relationship over the tipping point and cut it off. Not enough benefit to the parties involved. When after a series of “Oh, she couldn’t have meant it that way” remarks. Or when there just isn’t reciprocation. Or a number of thing.

The tipping point heads it off into looking for reasons to find good instead of excuses covering the bad.

The Bible says love covers a multitude of sins. That’s what I mean. if you love something or somebody, the flaws are almost invisible. But in this life, it is possible to make enough withdrawals from the love bank to run a deficit.

When it goes into the red, and the 30-60-90 day grace period runs out. Then it takes a lot of deposits to get back over into the grace zone.

this is the part where my writing falls off a cliff.

The blog is about to record my parenthood.

I’m dreading how I will be.

Maybe I’ll still have things to say.

Regardless, i guess I have things to say now.