That’s what you get
January 19th, 2008
I have a list of things I have in my head that I intend to blog about:
1) questions about the trade-offs of community and friendship because the way my family’s life is structured now it feels like we have a richer sense of community than we’ve ever had but less time we’re investing in individual friendships.
Which leads to the related question I’ve been pondering,
1a) whether the price of participation is conformity, and if that’s true for a community (suggested by Jennifer Niesslein) if it’s more true for a friendship…
Related to blog topic
1b) the changing nature of friendship in my life and how people I have never or seldom interacted with face-to-face can be as dear to me as they are,
The completely unrelated,
2) wondering if I can draw a line of when I became an adult as the day I was finally able to separate my parents as people from my parents as the institution of parenthood, (though admittedly, it still blurs a little.)
And in what I’ve held off writing because I worry about it becoming a rant,
3) how hard it is for me to be out in public spaces where parents are interacting with their kids in voices pitched to be overheard by everyone around, using the exact scripts of encouragement and psychologically correct lingo current in the most progressive parenting magazines, because I find myself wondering when parenting became performance art and what is wrong with me that instead of being really happy that these people care and try I suspect “trying too hard” and “hypocritical.” And maybe this goes back to the first blog topics, and how I keep stumbling across random blogs detailing the playdate from hell and how parenting is so hard enough as it is without spending a lot of effort in erecting this potemkin village facade of being some sort of perfect parent. I want a parenting community that is honest about the struggles involved as well as committed to striving for being better parents.
Anyway, that’s what I would be blogging about if my brain weren’t fried from being the solo parent four days this week, wrestling against three-year-old will until I have no strength left, wondering if the nine year old throwing up last night is a sign of something about to hit the rest of the family and what I ought to be doing to prepare if it is, and trying to reconnect with my husband after living in entirely different realities for a week. I am so grateful for a three day weekend, and imagine the next time I sit down to blog there will be something I NEED to write about that isn’t any of the above.
January 19th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Allen Taylor
January 19th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
Yes, I hear those performance parents too.. and I’m worried that occasionally I slip into it myself. Ugh. Note to self: careful.
January 20th, 2008 at 12:49 am
So many things to say/ask, so little brain with which to organize them…only that I love migas, and I’m sorry your little one barfed (not necessarily in that order….). And, um, I think I have a tiny problem with quilt fabric addiction; and I used my lightbox this morning, desperately, for the first time since moving here; and, the cat has just today taken to sharpening her claws on my thrift-store Calvins–is she angry, or just ignorant of the fact that I’m inside them?
By “today” of course I mean yesterday in technical terms, since it’s 2 am, the Brujo snores peaceably in the next room, and I feel absolutely barking MAD. What, my dear, in the WORLD is this food called aebleskivers?!?
January 20th, 2008 at 9:50 am
So I showed Allen Taylor’s comment to Raven, all “Look! How nice! And a stranger!” and then we look at where he’s coming from and it’s all “Personal investing” and I had to say “I got spammed, didn’t I?” And this is how sweet my husband is, “Hey! Your blog is popular enough to get spammed! There are people out there who wish for spam! And it’s nice spam so you can leave it up.” So I will.
As far as performance parenting, it definitely has uses, and there have been days when I have taken my kids out because I know in public I won’t give in to the impulse to yell or say ugly things to them that I might at home, and I do know that when other people are getting on my nerves it is probably me reacting to something about myself.
No one else has thrown up, aebelskivers are pancake balls featured not too long ago on cafemama.com, and light is good, and cat love can hurt.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I’m sorry, I could have sworn you just said, “pancake balls….”
Yay for popularity spam and for non-throwing up! and for my part, for painful catlove and for the Brujo, with whom I am about to have a hot date. Maybe we should go out in public–