I’ve made choices (some good, some bad, some questionable) that have made it so that I’m alone at 47. Except for some fleeting lonely moments I’m okay with that. Truly. It was maybe a self fulfilling prophecy but I always had a sense I would spend my life without a partner. (Please, no, “there’s still time! Don’t rule anything out!” I’m not. If someone great came by tomorrow I’d say hello but I’m also not actively looking and have no intention on actively looking any time soon.)
That said, there are times when I wish I had someone to share the mental and emotional task of making decisions. Like buying a place, for example. All the forms. All the uncertainty of whether I’m making a good decision. All the homework on top of work and raising a child.
It’s a lot. It would be nice to have someone to turn to and just say, can you deal with it? I’m tired of thinking.
Thankfully these moments pass. Once we’re moved and unpacked I’ll be back to my usual self who likes being able to make all the decisions based solely on my preferences without worrying about having to consider someone else’s thoughts or opinions.
Well, there’s the kiddo obviously - although I think I’m a few years away from her caring too much about whether I put the utensils in the drawer closest to the stove or the one near the sink.
One of the things I’m looking forward to in the new place is moving the kiddo to her own room. The AAP recommends that children sleep in the same room as their parents for the first year. Easy enough as those first few months required being close for the multiple night time feedings and it helped to ease my anxiety about SIDS. By the time she was sleeping through the night around the 8 month, I started thinking I’d move her to her own room for her first birthday.
But as that date drew closer I realized that one of my anxieties was uh just a tad irrational. Our apartment is on the ground floor, see. And the bedrooms are on opposite ends of the apartment. So my thought process went like this, “If I put her aalllll the way over there I won’t hear if someone breaks in and steals my baby!”
Yeah. I know. Trust me.
So here she is almost 20 months and she’s still in my room. It’s not much of a problem except if I have to get up in the middle of the night. If she happens to be awake she thinks, “yay! It’s time to get up! Wait, where are you going? Get me out! Yes, it’s 3 am but I’m ready to be up! Don’t mind my yawning! Let’s go! Okay well now you have to listen to me cry because you won’t play with me!” Oooph.
No matter how many times my brain has told me to stop being silly I haven’t been able to move her into her own room.
So when I started looking for a place I knew a ground floor apartment was a deal breaker. It’s just easier to buy a condo that’s not on the ground floor than do the emotional work of getting rid of irrational anxieties apparently. You gotta know your limitations I always say! Heh.
The description for this book seemed cute. The hen is sometimes forgetful and makes mistakes but she apologizes to the chicks and they forgive her, learning that even parents make mistakes. Sounds nice, I thought, and it looks so pretty.
I read it to Isabela for the first and last time yesterday. The hen is forgetful and clumsy and isn’t the greatest mom sometimes. So after the third time she neglects her chicks she tells them she’s giving them up for adoption because surely someone else can care for them better. But the chicks beg her not to and tell her that even if she’s forgetful she cares for them best. So she decides to keep them.
What the ever loving fuck is this bullshit?
Even if my sweet girl weren’t adopted what a ridiculous way to try to teach grace and forgiveness for someone’s flaws to small children. But I especially cannot read her this story. Having her understand her adoption story will be complex enough without me adding to it with nonsense like this.
I’m so annoyed I didn’t look at this book a week ago because the return window is closed and I hate the story so much I don’t even want to donate the book and send this nonsense out into the world where someone may pick it up.
I was never really taught to cook. Not really. Unless we count that one quarter in 7th grade Home Ec where I mistook salt for sugar and made the nastiest pie ever imagined. Maybe that’s why I don’t like pie? Regardless, let’s not count that quarter because other than the awful pie I don’t remember a single other thing I was taught.
And so I’ve stumbled along in the kitchen, at once wishing I were more comfortable there but also not having a tremendous desire to get better. Until a year ago.
Once the baby entered my life it seemed like a good time to get comfortable in the kitchen. One, because I’m told feeding babies is looked upon as a good thing and two, joking aside, I would like to pass on a better relationship to food to her. And that, in my head, meant that I needed to get serious about cooking - I certainly have no illusions about this task. I hardly have visions of being Julia Child. I just need enough dishes in the rotation to not have anyone groan and say, “We had that three days this week!”
I’m 47 years old so, yes, I have spent time in the kitchen but let me put it this way, at no point have I ever considered inviting anyone over for dinner or have volunteered to make anything for a potluck. I don’t think people should suffer what normally passes as dinner fare in my place. My cooking is to put it kindly - serviceable. More often than not whatever I make is well done because I lose interest or just forget.
But that’s the past. We are living in the now. And in this ever changing world, the present includes me making chicken soup - almost like they make it back home in El Salvador.
On Monday I decided I wanted soup but, of course, didn’t have the necessary ingredients so we made a quick trip to the store. By the time we got home, however, it was too late to start the soup and have it in time for the kiddo’s dinner. So I put it off to the next day. The next day I discovered I’d forgotten several of the vegetables. I could have still made it but it just wouldn’t have been the same. Given that we’re still living through a pandemic, another trip out wasn’t in the cards so I placed a grocery delivery order. Finally, Wednesday we had soup. I know this happens to everyone at some time or other but in my head all the missteps just add to my feeling of not being adept in the kitchen.
So along with my cooking skills needing to get better, my self-perception will have to change as well. Why is everything work??
Thursday, on a whim, I decided to make pupusas. This is noteworthy for me because when I’m going to make something it usually entails so much thought. Can I do it? Do I want to? Let’s look at the 100th YouTube video to make sure I know what I’m doing.
But I’ve attempted pupusas enough that the process is pretty clear in my head. The technique still needs work but at least I’m realistic enough to know that even getting to good is going to require some effort. Skilled and consistently delicious? Well, let’s keep that dream on the back burner for now.
The pupusas came out pretty good. Probably the best batch I’ve made so far. It’s progress that I consistently think each batch is better than the one before.
So, in my basic cookbook, we have chicken soup and pupusas (let’s count the curtido as a separate thing, shall we?). It’s not enough to open a restaurant but it’s a solid start. If I keep this up, by the time she’s ten I’ll have 20 whole dishes down! Exciting.
When I set up my first “real” blog aka hosted on my own domain, using a content management system I had installed, I took the time to develop a commenting policy. I remember spending time on that, wanting it to be fair but also clear in that I wouldn’t allow people to get out of line. The amusing thing about this, now and then, is that no one knew I was setting up a blog. I told very few people I knew offline (or as we used to say back then, ‘in real life’.) But I wanted to be ready when the comments started rolling in. Even at my blogging peak, comments rarely rolled in. At best they trickled. Once spammers got good at their craft the comments were more often spam than an actual response to anything I’d written.
I’m reminded of that as I work on the back end of the site; again I’ve told few people I’ve restarted the blog and I haven’t set up a way to track web traffic so I’ve no clue if anyone is stopping by. The spam, however, is hitting every day. So I’ve been playing around with ways to block that annoyance. I briefly considered turning on the CAPTCHA option but opted to not do it when I read the disclaimer in the EE manual about how CAPTCHAs can be hard for folks with visibility issues. I have no true expectation to be getting many comments. I have no idea if anyone who does stop by to comment will have issues using the CAPTCHA and yet - on the chance that someone wants to contribute a response it seems unwelcoming to put up barriers.
This is the way my brain works. As people have often told me, I over think things. I do. I can’t even say I would want it to be any different. Under thinking things doesn’t seem terribly appealing actually.
So, the comments are open albeit through moderation. An annoying compromise.
I have been trying to get through The Brothers Karamazov for probably two decades now. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve started it. I do know that one time I read about a third of the book before I lost it in a move. (I lost a whole box of some of my favorite books during the same move; a fact that still causes me pain to this day but that’s not the point of the post.)
People ask me why I keep trying to finish this book; they tell me life is too short to force oneself to read books, even if the book is a classic. I had a doctor once tell me, when she saw the book in my hand, “I am Russian and I am telling you, do not read that. He was crazy.” The thing is, I do like the story. I do like the writing. It’s just dense. That magical time when I read about a third of the book, I still had no clue who killed the father. I am not giving anything away here. You learn early on that one of the three brothers kills the father. Three hundred some pages in and not one clue! How is that possible?! I have read Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Idiot and found both to be great reads. I’m not sure what the difference between the three books is - maybe it’s just that as I’ve gotten older my attention span has shortened and dense reads make for really, really slow going.
It’s been so long since I last picked up the book that I’m realizing I will have to start over from page one. I don’t mind - as I said, I do l like the book. But I am awfully tired of having it get the better of me so I’ve resolved that this will be the year it is finally finished. So with this entry I announce my intentions - every day I will read at least three pages. If the mood and time permits I can read more but it has to be at least three pages a day. This means it will potentially take me all year to finish the book, if I only read the minimum but we’re all about manageable goals this year so that’s okay.
So, periodically I will provide updates. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?
Maintaining a personal website, as with anything, has its pros and cons. The desire to have an online presence hasn’t changed since those early days in 2000. I like having the space to write, experiment with coding, post photos, etc. But liking something and actually doing it are different beasts. Over the years I have to admit that I wasn’t diligent about keeping Expression Engine, which is the software that powers the website, up to date. This means that when the hosting company made some changes to the way it handles files some months ago, my outdated copies of EE just stopped working.
I didn’t worry too much about it for several reasons:
I wasn’t using the site much; the only section that was getting regular updates was the weekly game
I (mistakenly) assumed that updating things would be simple.
I didn’t properly anticipate how little interest and energy I would have during a pandemic to making the needed changes.
So, after months of trying to cobble time here and there to get things back the way they once were (except with updated guts) I had to admit that setting things up exactly the way I wanted just was not going to happen. So I simplified the idea. The game and the blog, which used to live on their own domains, are back under the main URL. Something that hasn’t happened since the mid-2000s I think. What’s old is new again, I suppose.
I tried out different content management systems in my attempts to put things back together but I just don’t have the bandwidth that I used to have to learn new things. Gone are the days when I would spend hours, whole weekends, teaching myself how to make my site do what I wanted. Now those are hours are spent taking care of a incredibly cute, curious and very mobile toddler. And when that’s not happening I’m vegging out in front of the TV or in a book, trying to steal a little rest from work and childcare.
But I do still want to have a space to write so here we are. It’s bare bones, using the default EE templates. I have this thought that I’ll spruce things up a bit but we’ll see. I’m trying to remind myself that what matters most is just getting back into the habit of writing. A bare bones, simple site facilitates that just as well as something with more bells and whistles, right?
A year ago, while volunteering, I checked my email during the dinner break. That’s when I saw that I had received an email from the adoption agency asking if I had time to talk the following day. I stared at the message trying to understand what it meant. It seems simple enough, I know but when you’ve wanted something for a long time when it might finally be happening the brain can’t quite process it. At least not my brain.
I thought back to the other messages I had received from the agency. Some were blast emails, others, while only for me were very clear on what was needed of me - a form updated, payment needed, etc. This request to talk could only mean one thing, right? But why not say it?
I responded that I was available to talk any time the following day.
I put that email out of my head for the rest of the class so that I could focus on the kids.
But once I got in the car to drive home my thoughts went right back to the email. Is this it?
In the way in to the apartment I remember distinctly thinking, half excited and half afraid, “Shit. This is it. Am I ready?!?”
The home study is almost done. I had the last of the three visits with the social worker almost two weeks ago. Friends have shared with me that they’ve spoken with her and that she seems to like me. Which is nice; obviously it’s a good sign when the person writing a report that can put a halt to the entire proceedings seems to think you’d make a good parent.
Now that I’m closer to actually starting the placement process I’m experiencing moments of hope and excitement. But, because this can be a long process, I keep pushing those feelings back. I keep thinking, “there are a ton of positive, good adoption stories. Why couldn’t one of those be yours?” And I think about the odds, which makes me wish I had been better at math. That’s not really how it works, though is it?
There’s no amount of logic that will make this go faster, that will ensure that if and when I get a child that I get to keep the child. When you spend your whole life hoping for the best but planning (and expecting) the worst, allowing the seed of hope to flower is a dangerous, potentially painful thing.
Still, all those words aside, I ordered this today.
Throughout the years I’ve stitched a number of birth announcements for other people. This would be the first time I’ve made one that I intend to keep. In the past, dong something like this has taken up to a year and since this process can take up to 2 years, I clearly may have more than enough time. I always say that I’m not superstitious but there is a part of me that worries this might be jinxing things. Still, after doing birth announcements for friends’ babies, I can’t imagine not having one for my own and once I have a child there’s no way I’ll have the time (or energy). It’s essentially now or never. I’ll just have to make sure I manage the feelings. That there will be feelings is a given. I just have to make sure I let the good ones have equal or more time than the scary, anxious ones.
Around August of last year I realized that it was probably time to start looking for a new job. I’m a perceptive person and while I couldn’t quite put a finger on why the winds had changed, change they had.
Have you ever looked at someone at work, someone who keeps slamming their head against a concrete wall convinced that eventually they’ll break through, and wonder why in the world they do that to themselves? In my almost 30 years of being in the workforce I’ve seen this more times than I can recall.
I’ve always wondered why someone would put themselves through that. I pride myself in doing good work. Hell, there are even times when I’ll easily say that I’ve done great work. I’m not perfect, of course, but I care; I care about doing my best. I have been known to say, “I know there are people who could do my job better, there are certainly people who could do it worse but I do it to the best of my abilities.” A mistake perhaps to say that to your bosses but it’s the truth.
My best stopped being good enough at some point last summer. I tried to figure out why. I tried to do better but after some months of experiencing unacceptable levels of anxiety I decided it was time to let someone else try to do better. While I don’t feel comfortable going into too many details let me just say that by the time that I sent out my first job application in October things were pretty uncomfortable. I’m the kind of person who, even as she’s signing the offer letter is already wondering, “What’s next?” so I’d wondered what the next job would be like but in that wondering I always figured I’d leave this job sad but satisfied my contributions to the cause would be remembered well. Based on the feedback I received on my way out, I’m not sure that’s the case.
I’d been wanting to get back to Virginia for years but I was, if not always happy at the job, at least satisfied enough that I kept putting off the move, feeling that I was still learning and growing. But the needed change last fall was a good opportunity to get back home, where I’d be closer to family which would be nice if
