sock goodness
Monday 30 May, 2005
Check out these beauties.
Soo long and sooo stripy. No, they aren't my legs - this is a picture from a pattern on the fabulous knitty site. You too, could knit these babes. And if you decide you want to, there is a blog entirely dedicated to long-stripy-sock-knitters! That's right, an online stripy sock community! Who knew? Thanks so much to Esther for alerting me to this sock fiesta.
Posted on 30 May, 2005 | 4:32pm | 0 comments |
help me
Thursday 26 May, 2005
Isn't she sweet, this bunny? So demure, so girly, so 60s. She is Made In Japan. I love the way the little wheel on her cart is a blue flower. In my strange aesthetic, she represents an important part of pop-culture history. Here, in this little Japanese knick-knack I see the beginnings of the 'cute' oeuvre that spawned "Hello Kitty". Her hyper-femininity has an ironic riot-grrrrl appeal. Is my admiration for her ironic? Well, partly...but I also genuinely think she is charming. So I bought her. She cost not-very-much.
I've enjoyed her for a couple of weeks, sitting prettily beside my computer. Now I'm going to sell her.
I'm saving for a digital camera. I need about $500. So, I'm selling stuff over on trademe. This is where you can help.
Why not stick it on my credit card? Because I am trying to live within my means, these days, and get back into that old-fashioned system of saving the money first.
Why would you bother supporting one random person's desire for a consumer durable? Well, why not? The camera would make me smile, I could do so much arty stuff with it, the sock gallery would actually get updated from time to time, I could stop mithering my friends for a lend of their camera...plus, I'm not asking for donations as such...you will get something for your cash. Some weird op-shop item from Helen-land. Plus, this is a test of "ask and the universe will provide."
Think of it as your "not so much random, as orchestrated act of kindness" for the week.
Check out my stall. (If for some reason the link doesn't work, go to Search - Members. I'm 'day-glo'.) I'll be putting new items up every week until I've made my $500.
Bunny will be for sale soon. I'm just trying to work out what category she falls into. Vintage homewares? Collectables? Toys? She transcends these lowly categories. She is Super-Kitsch-60s-Japanese-Bunny, pop-culture icon and pretty objet d'art and provider of digital camera funds... and there's just no category for that.
Posted on 26 May, 2005 | 4:31pm | 0 comments |
deep
Wednesday 25 May, 2005
I've been reading a bit of zen literature. I went along to the 'zens' for a while, but found the severe and austere style a bit much. (Then there is the story of how I badly sprained my foot at a zen meditation session, but I'll save that for another day.) One thing I do like about the zen way is the non-dualistic approach. In zen, things aren't wrong or right, they just are.
I want to work on becoming less dualistic. I think it would really help with the at-home mother thing too.
I was thinking about the 'statistical/factual me' versus the 'me as I am in my own mind'.
The facts about me are: I am a married, mother-of-two kids under five, living in a not-so-flash suburb of Palmerston North (a rather dull city.) I look after my kids at home and do some tutoring at the local university.
Dull dull dull...I'm putting myself to sleep here.
In my mind I am so many things. I am a buddhist punk feminist hippy recently-vegetarian writer arty-type herb gardener passionate-journaller lover mother prone-to-melancholy-also-euphoria-and-giddy-childlike-joy woman who still feels like a child a lot of the time.
Where are the spaces on the census form for all that?
I'm messy. I get things wrong. I'm a terrible procrastinator. I'm both vulnerable and strong. Physically, I have a high pain threshold, emotionally, I am wounded easily and take a long time to heal. I am not afraid of earnestness in the name of truth and connection. I also know there is no 'truth'.
I get sad about masks and 'shoulds' and persistent 'grown-up' behaviour that results in joylessness and no sense of play.
I spend a lot of time feeling scared. I think everyone does.
Despite my values, I'm a hypocrite. So are you.
That's (non-dualistic) life.
Posted on 25 May, 2005 | 4:29pm | 0 comments |
vegetarian again (the sausage nightmare)
Sunday 22 May, 2005
I decided last Friday night to become 100% vegetarian again.
We only eat meat once a week anyway, but the cows and chickens we're eating can't take much comfort from that pathetic excuse, can they? I've been vegetarian on and off (mostly on) since I was a 14 year old animal rights activist. (I got suspended from high school in fourth form for protesting outside the science lab when my classmates were cutting up frogs and rats.) But I've been eating meat since having Willoughby. I had low-iron during that pregnancy and my midwife advised me to eat meat until the baby was born. Well, somehow it carried on and now he's nearly five.
People always assume I'm vegetarian, so I've had to mumble "No, I eat meat" a lot over the past five years and it's never felt very good. I always feel ashamed. So why have I kept eating meat? Some non-noble combination of laziness, inertia and avoidance. As well as the ethical, environmental and health reasons, there is now a spiritual dimension to the meat-thing for me in that most buddhists are vegetarian. (That buddha guy was against killing any creature needlessly, bless his sweet Indian soul.)
One of my absolute top ten pet hates is meat-eaters who call themselves 'vegetarians' because they "only eat fish". Yeah, bullshit, mate. Fish is meat. It's like that Nirvana lyric: "It's okay to eat fish, because they don't have any feelings." So if I go veg, I'm going to have to go all the way, lest I turn into one of those faux-vegos! Hee hee...
What sealed the decision for me was a nightmare that I had last Thursday night. (I know people talking about their dreams is incredibly boring, but hell, what is a blog but a vent for self-indulgent ramblings?) Not much happened - I was at the table, we were eating sausages. I cut my sausage open and the round cross-section of sausage before me was a hellish vision of oozing fat and weird white entrails. There were bits of bone and flecks of blood. There were white entrails that had tubes off them and looked like bits of bowel and anus and scabby gristle. Ugh. Argh. I'm shuddering as I write. It was very very scary.
It was the evil sausage from hell.
Now I can't look at meat without remembering the dream. I think maybe that the dream was my subconcious screaming "Hello??...stop being lazy and give up meat again!" So here I go. I'm writing about it here to help my resolve. I might wobble off the wagon, but I'm going to do my absolute best. Luckily, my current most favourite dinner is steam-fried bok-choy and not milk-fed veal!
Only faceless, tailess, fin-less, bloodless food for me from now on. Four days in, it's feeling good. Pass the tofu. Burp!
Posted on 22 May, 2005 | 4:28pm | 0 comments |
sunday walk
Saturday 21 May, 2005
What a weekend.
I cried three times and also laughed until my stomach hurt. On Friday night I ate bok choy steamed in ginger and chilli sauce for dinner. On Saturday, dinner was a Kit Kat chunky bar and a glass of Sav Blanc. As usual, I didn't sleep much, yet the weekend passed by in a dream.
Other props from the weekend include Magnus's first mouthfuls of baby rice, a pile of disgruntled emails from unhappy students (someone remind me why I try to teach creative writing?) and a pregnancy test. (Negative - thank the lord, buddha and anyone else who is listening.) It was grey and stormy all weekend and I got an email from my ayurvedic doctor in India telling me that I need to get out in the sun every day because my constitution gets depressed without sunlight. (C'mon, who doesn't get a bit depressed in the winter, Dr. Bhargava?)
But at least we got out for our weekly Sunday walk. (That's us up there, this morning, walking along the river track.)
Posted on 21 May, 2005 | 4:28pm | 0 comments |
pink cups
Wednesday 18 May, 2005
Just got home from a most happy, walking in the sun with contented sleeping baby op-shop session. I got the sweetest little chinese vase with a pink chrysanthenum on it, a funky grey cardigan (I hear you thinking, can a grey cardigan be funky? well, yes, amazingly), some cute jade cotton overalls for Magnus and a pink and orange 60s tablecloth. Total $? A Fiver!
But! Best score of the day was getting home moments ago and checking the email to find that I won this auction on trademe! (Excuse the bad photo.) How cute are these? And they're bakelite! They'll look so cool on the tablecloth I just bought! I definitely think our house needs a pink injection. Too many smelly boys by far.
Yaay for post-purchase-euphoria!
Posted on 18 May, 2005 | 4:25pm | 0 comments |
birthday wishes
Tuesday 17 May, 2005
Posted on 17 May, 2005 | 4:26pm | 0 comments |
developmental milestones
Monday 16 May, 2005
Recently there have been some impressive developmental milestones occurring in this house:
Magnus, 4 months-
First tooth emerging, can almost roll over, can now reach out and grab things with intent, can rub his eyes when tired in a heart-breakingly cute fashion.
Willoughby, 4 years-
Has an obsession with making jewellery (see him modelling some of his jewels above), can now fix himself a "butter sandwich" (a holey slice of bread with some thick gobbits of butter. Looks gross, but he likes it!) and last night learned to hop. He's been hopping since.
Helen, 32 years-
Has recently learned to have sliced fruit on her porridge instead of brown sugar, can now run for twenty minutes without stopping to clutch a lamp-post, is having refresher driving lessons after 'taking a break' from driving for over ten years and is no longer scared of open wardrobes. (Too much 'The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe' as a kid.)
Posted on 16 May, 2005 | 4:23pm | 0 comments |
happy, excited, giddy
Sunday 15 May, 2005
A while ago (8 April) on Keri Smith's site she wrote a list of "What makes me crazy and happy and giddy?"
I liked the idea, but it's taken me a while to write up my own. I wrote most of the things below intially, but then felt like they weren't exciting enough to meet the words crazy, giddy, happy. The list I've ended up with is quite mild-mannered...maybe I'm easier to please than I thought. Or perhaps joyous things get smaller and quieter when you lead a predominantly domestic life? Whatever. Here it is:
WHAT MAKES ME CRAZY AND HAPPY AND GIDDY?
The boys in my life: Fraser, Willoughby, Magnus.
good coffee and good conversation in a busy, vibrant cafe
new stripy socks
sending and receiving delightful snail mail packages
picking and eating vegetables that I've grown myself
taking photographs
cups of tea - from big, strapping mugs of gumboot tea to delicate china cups of chamomile
long, hot baths (I don't get many of these due to the fact we don't have a bath in our house - this seems terribly unjust.)
journaling - keeps me sane, makes me feel like I'm writing even when I'm not doing anything else
ginger biscuits/ginger beer/ginger sweets/ginger ale/ginger cake/vegetables steamed in root ginger/ginger tea/sugared ginger/green ginger wine
diminutive tiny tiny tiny things
live music, especially of the obscure, the heartfelt, the challenging, the local variety
visiting cities - exploring new cafes/collecting free postcards and flyers/people-watching/absorbing the urban vibe
solitude. I mean quality solitude - being able to have some time to myself with no expectations of how I might fill it or what time to return by. (Basically, this never happens if you are a breastfeeding mother, which is why is seems like such an exciting idea right now.)
writing this blog. It's possible no one is reading it, but writing it is making me very happy...
Now I'll giddily go and make myself a cup of tea.
Posted on 15 May, 2005 | 4:23pm | 0 comments |
To love is to risk
Saturday 14 May, 2005
I don't know who this quotation is by, but I think of it often when I look at my children. How my heart would break if anything bad happened to either of them. It is hard to imagine how parents go on living when their children suffer pain or die. It is also a good way of staying present, appreciating NOW.
I worry that it seems like I spend a lot of time on here compaining about the challenges of having children. I'm torn between the desire to be honest about my experiences and the need to be seen as a good and grateful mother. All mothers know that if they dare, for the briefest moment, to indulge in complaining about their children...then something bad will strike their children down and they will spend the rest of their lives steeped in guilt and regret. (I'm exaggerating...sort of...)
Now that I have had children, my heart is a bigger, fuller but also more raw, more vulnerable. Sometimes I feel this so tangibly it literally hurts my chest.
I want to declare my absolute, imperfect, confused, wobbly LOVE for the marvel that is Magnus and the wonder that is Willoughby.
Posted on 14 May, 2005 | 4:21pm | 0 comments |
exposure
Thursday 12 May, 2005
Unlucky for some, but lucky for me! Stripy Sock Studio has a mention over on the fabulous Micheal Nobbs blog today! I was both thrilled and weirdly terrified to see this when I did my daily check in over on Micheal's site.
My first thought was "Yaay!", hastily followed by "Argh! This is too scary! My blog isn't good enough. I have nothing deep or interesting to say. Can I cope with my favourite bloggers reading my blog?"
But then I spotted this quotation that I stuck to my wall for moments such as this, moments when I'm suffering from the 'not good-enoughs' and the 'all my writing is crap' bug...
It's by writer Jean Rhys, during an interview with the Paris Review:
"Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Then there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter - the lake matters. We must all keep feeding the lake."
I guess I'll keep on trickling.
Posted on 12 May, 2005 | 4:20pm | 0 comments |
where does a week go?
Tuesday 10 May, 2005
When I started this blog, my intention was to write every day. I seem to be in some weird time sphere where weeks go by in a blink, yet the hours between 2pm and 5pm (when Fraser gets home from work and helps me out with the kids) feel like a million years every day!
More on feijoas - just when I thought that I'd discovered the most divine way to eat feijoas in the world (feijoa, banana and purple grape 'salad'), last night I discovered the following combination! Feijoa, nashi pear and strawberry. Bloomin' hell - this blows your taste buds into a state of euphoria! My wee strawberry patch is still offering up a few strawberries a day, which is how I am able to have this autumn/summer crossover food without breaking the bank. Try it - it's absolutely divine.
A friend asked me if this blog was the sort of thing that I write in my 'real' paper journal. It is and it isn't. Of course this is written in the knowledge that others will be reading it, whereas my paper journal is just for me. Often the writing in my paper journal is repetitive, boring, self-pitious or else tooth-achingly optimistic and sweet. Also I tend to rant in there. With stripy sock studio I try to have some (often tenuous) point to what I write...you know, something to share.
There is a place for a good rant though. Here are a couple of examples:
I love to trawl the internet for inspiring words and art. I adore this person's weird drawing style. Take a look at the drawing 'Leaving the past behind'. (I can't copy it here for copyright reasons.) This drawing really affected me. I've been realising lately that I'm not so good at leaving the past behind, and that I carry a lot of weird old crap around with me that I need to let go of. (I'm talking on material, spiritual and emotional levels here.)
I printed out a copy of the drawing, stuck it in my journal and wrote, stream-of-consciousness style around it:
Leaving the past behind, leaving it all behind, do not claim your baggage from the baggage claim area, leave light, unencumbered, you are who you are right now, here with these dying cells and the taste of bad coffee in your mouth, reborn and recreated each day, old selves fall away like clothes in a stinky heap on the bathroom floor, they didn't exist for more than a moment anyway, a moment is all you ever have, so spend it here, leave it all behind, do not collect your baggage, stay where you are scared and thrilled and a little on edge, do not be safe, do not go home.
So, what is all that about? Hell, I don't know. It's what I wrote with a leaky biro in three minutes yesterday after glue-sticking the picture into my journal between hanging out laundry and making Willo a vegemite sandwich. See? This is why it's better for me not to put my real journal stuff on this blog...
Here is another rant that I wrote on a day where I'd been trying to get to my journal all day and then when I did my brain was so fried and I felt so harrased and shell-like that this is what I wrote:
food clean dirty dust food feed wipe wipe and hang scrub sort piles and piles and piles and piles drawers cupboards plans daydreams wipe list snot toast cold tea toast again cheese slices wipe scrub poo cough dust sneeze grease giggle hide washing fold washing grate cheese pour milk feed milk breast milk pick flowers weed the zucchini open rejection letter change nappy push pram breast feed stand sit phone call backache sit wipe toast.
Which is a weirdly accurate sum up of a typical "at home with two children" sort of day.
But enough of weird ranting. Here is a fabulous rant by a friend of mine, IJM. She wrote it for an 'Activism ABC'. Say it to yourself - it sounds great read aloud. It's the freshest and most exciting feminist text I've encountered since the last Le Tigre album! (A word of caution to the faint-hearted - it contains muchos swear words.) I think crazed, thoughtful girls ranting and ranting to make sense of their lives is pretty damn sexy. Go out there and RANT, people!
F is for Feminism
"Feminism is the absolute in @nti-authority brilliantly belittling the bully-boy bigwigs, critiquing the cocksure capitalists, defying the dickheads deadset on determinedly defending the destruction and devestation of energy, exhilaration, excitement and ecstasy. Feminists fuck. Feminists fight. Feminists fuck for freedom and fight for freedom. From guerrilla gardeners to go-go girls, from harried harlots to half-broke housewives, from insecure individuals to joyful jump-ropers, from joyless jailbirds to kinky kissers to kindly kindy teachers, feminists fantasise a freedom far from the lifeless, listless, loveless limits of monotous (it's so dreary dearies) money, far from the nullifying, numbing, nasty neutralisation of neoliberal nuttism. Feminists fantasise opulence, orgasm, passion, the quivering, the queer or the quintessential relationship revolving 'round respect and satisfying sex, self-determination, sometimes the sweet and scolded upon singledom. Feminists fantasise about telling the truth, tearing apart the terrible un-truths treacherously told by the tits and thighs in / Tatler / , or the titillating tit-bits in /The Truth (/and the lies in the lads' lifestyle mags) telling us our universal vulnerability to (phallocentric, patriarchal, patronising, penis-centred) women-hating wankery.
Feminists fantasise a whole wide world where what women want is what women get. From Wellington to Warkworth, from Xanadu to Yarmouth. from Zurich to Zanzibar to Zaire feminists fight for freedom from fear, for freedom from fuckwittery, for freedom."
Hell yeah.
Posted on 10 May, 2005 | 4:16pm | 1 comments |
lately I'm loving...
Tuesday 3 May, 2005
making golden autumnal food - like, rocket salads with pumpkin cubes, yellow cherry tomatoes, shavings of parmesan and orange nastursium petals...
badges - I still have my Duran Duran one from 1986 and it's been getting a bit of wear lately, also my green Anglia one and my little Korean bunnie badges
friends having babies
mini-muffin trays - so cute, so kid-friendly
new "ruby-star" lipstick that is both deeply red and deeply sparkly
having a 'personal feijoa pusher' - a massive supermarket bag full each fortnight! (Thanks, Ally!)
making bead necklaceswith Willoughby - so far he's made them for all four grandparents, me and Fraser, Magnus, his best friend, and his teddy. I've made two (two lucky people with receive theirs in the mail soon!)
the art at this is heavenly
flashbacks on C4 - one hour of pure 80s cheese every week, with occassional heart-tugging gorgeousness, for example, I finally saw the video to Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love' recently! I'll be watching this week and next because I emailed James Coleman a greasy request for the video for 'Don't talk to me about love' by Altered Images....please, please play it, Jamesy!
and every day, getting better at leaving the past behind.!
What's rocking your world right now?
Posted on 03 May, 2005 | 4:15pm | 1 comments |
fun with sleep deprivation
Monday 2 May, 2005
Today, more illumination about why I am so deranged lately...giddy and joyful half of the time and psychotic and dark the rest of the time...
In this month's Homebirth Association Newsletter was a fantastic article on sleep deprivation. Everyone expects to be tired when they have children, but this article examined research into the long term effects of sleep-deprivation and gave what I've been feeling some gravitas. It made me feel a whole lot better.
Because I suffer terrible insomnia in later pregnancy, I calculate that I've had on average five hours sleep (often less, seldom more) for the past six months, and nearly five years before that with Willoughby. Although he began sleeping through the night at about one and a half years old, he has always been an early riser, waking between 5 a.m and 6 a.m each morning. (Try doing a 5 a.m start after a New Years Eve party and experience a new type of hell.)
The article said that people suffering long term sleep deprivation:
-have significantly less ability to cope with unforeseen changes
-find it difficult to find the right word to say, often speaking slowly, stuttering or having slurred speech
-have more rigid thinking and limited access to long-term memory
-have impaired ability to make decisions
-have lower brain metabolic activity
-have decreased core temperature and immune system function
-have higher levels of stress, anxiety and depression
-are significantly more likely to have accidents
The article also said that these effects of sleep-deprivation are often misdiagnosed as post-natal depression.
It seems to me that mothers are 'allowed' to be tired while their babies are tiny, but after that sympathy wanes. The child-free have no understanding of how it feels to be constantly tired and often those with grown children are simply too removed from the experience to remember accurately.
On to more important things...my hair.
I washed my hair last night for the first time after getting it cut and discovered to my horror that I've wound up with one of those haircuts that looks adorable when the funky young hair-guy has spent twenty minutes fiddling with it, but shite straight out of the shower and even more shite after my amateurish attempts to style it. I've ended up with "H.M.H" (high-maintenance hair). Eeeek! How did I let this happen? I looked so cute on Saturday. Today I look like a deranged porcupine.
Finally, I watched a moving and inspiring interview with Taranaki artist Dale Copeland on the new TV arts show recently. She was wonderfully eccentric with her chewed off hair and collection of broken dolls heads and scary things in formaldahyde...anyway, at the end of the interview she was talking about how difficult life is and how much grief she has suffered in her life, then she smiled a big, macabre, grey-toothed grin and said
"That's life. Shit happens. All you can do is make art."
Nice one, Dale. Here's to all those crazed, sleep-deprived mamas out there...trying to make art because of it all and in spite of it all.
Posted on 02 May, 2005 | 4:14pm | 1 comments |
Indulgence
Sunday 1 May, 2005
What a difference a day makes! Well, two days. Two days of (as life coaches call it) "extreme self-care". Buddha is back in the building.
On Friday night I had a two hour facial and aromatherapy back massage, with complimentary lash tint (who knew how cool lash tints are - my eyes look dramatic even at six in morning). Fraser bought me a voucher for Christmas and I booked it ages ago. On Friday, I was in such a foul mood I nearly cancelled it. I'm so glad I didn't. I came out with skin like a baby's butt and a twinkle in my eye.
Saturday - fabulous haircut with super-cute new hairdresser called Jimi. He actually listened to what I wanted, didn't hassle me about cutting my own hair or my bad home-done half-henna, half-dye job and didn't "push product" on me. My new hair is messy and cute and I feel all pretty. (blush)...
Yesterday I had writing group and we sat around and discussed poetry and for one afternoon, at least, I felt like a writer again.
This morning I took Magnus and me to the osteopath. Apparently his birth had "traumatised" both of our craniums and I also had a twisted hip. "You should be taller" she said - how exciting! One hour and lots of linament later I feel taller, straighter and sore in that good way where you know healing is going on. She hopes to have cured Magnus's constant puking as well.
In the past I haven't been very good at looking after myself as well as I might. I've put off going to the doctor, the dentist, felt a bit silly and selfish about seeking help. But now, with two children to look after and also, I guess, a higher self-esteem than I had in my twenties I'm getting better at it all the time.
Friday I felt murderous and dark and everything was seriously out of perspective. Today I feel refreshed, light and sparkly.
Do I feel self-indulgent? Not a bit. I deserved it.
Posted on 01 May, 2005 | 4:14pm | 0 comments |