A Fresh Start

Watching Australia v Germany. The Aussies are outmatched. Sigh.

It's been a rough day. B is feverish and miserable. Hardly ate. Napped twice. Passed out at 6.45pm. He crawled into 'Bennett cama' (Bennett's bed) of his own choosing at noon and asked to watch cartoons there, so that's what we did. It was sweet. All the business items I'd planned to do will have to wait until after football. I can probably quote Kung Fu Panda line for line.

Poor little guy.

I started reading Barbara Kingsolver's 'Animal, Vegetable, Miracle' but I'm not feeling it. I think I've just read too much food writing: I'm the choir to her preaching, and I don't garden.

Leffe brown Belgian beer is really good. As are my mashed potatoes. I discovered the secret: butter FIRST, then milk.

B and I have been down with colds since Sunday evening. We're both doing better, but today has been a very hard day to be Bennett. Super fussy, tantrums, not hungry, super clingy, wants to nurse all day, and he keeps waking up every 20 minutes crying in his sleep. Poor guy.

Since I've been home on the couch for three days I've read all of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. So not worth it. The first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was great. The writing is very utilitarian - all telling, no showing - no subtlety at all, very little nuance or description, but the main female character is fascinating, I love the 'polyamorous' relationships, and the feminist angle. The second book was alright, but the third? Basically, the first part of book three should have been included with book two. It feels like an editor made an arbitrary decision to cut the books in half. Book one was stand alone; book three will make no sense if you don't read book two. The most disappointing part of the book is that Salander (awesome possibly Auspergers female character) plays hardly any role in book three. In 743 pages she hardly does anything but has shit happen to her. And why spend hundreds of pages on intricate build up only to need a mere handful of pages to tear it all down in the court scene? Sigh. What a let down.

Lil' B said fuck tonight, and in context too. Oops.

I'm barely cognizant of what is going on in British politics. What I do know is thanks to Facebook updates. How sad is that?

Come 5.30pm I am downright knackered. I've got a brief second wind, but I suspect I've got only 20 minutes left.

Bennett is growing so fast. New words every few hours. And the hitting. Oh my lord, the hitting. It's mostly just me. I'll take it. At least he's not hitting other kids.

B loves to tells stories. He loves to tell the one about when he and I were at our favorite cafe and the owner's baby A--- knocked over a glass of water. It goes like this: 'A---. Knock. Aga.' (That's how he says agua, water in Spanish) Points to the floor. He also tells me the story of how one day he and Adam and I were in the cemetery. I left and he cried and was sad and ran around with Adam. Every single time we go through the cemetery he tells it (which is at least once every day). That story looks like this: I'm pushing him down the hill in the pushchair. At the same place every time, he waves good bye in front of him. 'Mama'. He looks at me. He makes his sad sound and sign and points to the field on our right. 'Papa.' If it weren't so cute and such a fascinating developmental leap, I'd be driven mad by the repetition.

I keep forgetting to make vegetables for dinner. It's been very meat and carb heavy around here.

I'm reading way too many things at once. Mentally I feel like I have too many loose ends. They're all non-fiction items. I'm super close to finishing one book. When I do, I'm starting a novel.

Ok. I'm fading. I give myself 10 more minutes before I turn into mush.

This last week has been so odd. I have crashed after more than a week of high energy, focus, and massive amounts of reading. I now can barely bring myself to string a coherent thought together. At the beginning of the week Bennett started a new trend of waking up at 5.30 am. At first I thought his was great: I was fed, dressed, checked in, exercised, etc all before 8am! Win! But it's been every morning this week. Doesn't matter what time he goes to bed, he is up with the birds. It hits me right in the middle of a dream cycle and I spend the beginning of the day somewhere in the spaces between dreaming and awake. It's unsettling. It is also difficult because he's waking up demanding boo-boos and crying when it doesn't happen RIGHTNOW. Being followed around by a whining, crying toddler whilst trying to pee and feed the now also whining cats at that hour of the morning is too much for me.

Yesterday was the worst day yet. I decided to take advantage of the early start and work on my paper. I need to add a section about suffering. I went to my cafe of choice and bought a coffee (which I rarely do). I had already had a cup of tea at home. Later in the morning a friend came by and bought me more tea and then.... it hit me. I had had WAY too much caffeine on far too little food and by 11 am I was CRACKED OUT. It was incredibly uncomfortable and I couldn't think. My mind was racing. Then I crashed in the late afternoon and felt ill. Whee.

So today, I'm wrecked. Up again at 5.30. But the house is clean(ish), the laundry hung. I made huevos rancheros. And then Bennett dumped all the cat litter out of the box and onto the floor.

Seriously, gypsies? I'm offering a special: I'll pay YOU to take him.

Bennett knows the word 'man.' He'll see a picture of one or a man on the street and say 'man!' This morning while getting dressed he was saying the word and listing some of his favorite characters. I said 'Sokka is a man. Papa is a man. Mama is a woman. And Bennett is a boy, who will become a man.' He shook his head. I said 'You don't want to be a man?' He shook his head. 'Do you want to be a woman?' He nodded his head vigorously.

Let the gender games begin!

I think living in Wales is killing my LJ habit. There's just not much to write about. Life is peaceful, delicious, green, and utterly magical in its sheer ordinariness. The days blur: reading, laughing, eating, walking, playing outside. Bennett thrives. He is night weaned and is sleeping through the night. His language skills leap every day. In fact, for some words and concepts he seems to be functioning only in Spanish. Crazy. He knows colors in Spanish, English and Welsh. And he's nearing two. When he's tired - hoo boy: tears and gnashing of teeth, I tell you.

Over the weekend I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. It's an easy, quick read and pretty enjoyable. What makes him enjoyable is also what makes him downright annoying to me. Just stick with a damn story and I don't need three examples of cultural miscommunication to get your point, thank you. However, I greatly appreciate his dismantling of the American success myths: being self-made, talent and genius being innate, etc. I've never bought into the first. I've long understood how one's context, environment, access to opportunity, etc can help or hinder a person's chances of success. Gladwell talks a lot about class being a factor in educational success but I think it's more of one's cultural class than just monetary class. He has several examples that point to this, without being explicit about it. This idea led to some personal reflection.

My family definitely had upper middle class values but was very, very working class (until I was in solidly in my teens). My father hasn't moved much out of the working class mind set - call him retired and he bristles (he's busy growing his own food and building the houses he lives in), call him wealthy and well.... I wouldn't say that to his face, even though he and my mother split their time between two continents. I see how my parents' value on education helped me pursue my academic desires. They may not understand the content of my studies, but they very much respect that I am pursuing these degrees. Fitting with the more working class idea of kids doing their own things, I was left to cultivate myself. I'm grateful for this because I think kids need to ample time to play and do nothing and learn about being bored. But this is easy to say because I have always been self-directed and one to take the initiative in my interests, which my parents would then try to facilitate. But we never went to the theatre or to hear live music, or all those other 'townie' things that I wished I could have done. It's amazing that I started singing at all.

Which leads me to another reflection: I completely bought into the 'genius is innate' idea. I started singing thinking I had some natural ability, which I do, but I think I've always thought that if I was really talented it wouldn't be so hard and so fraught with angst. But that's not true. The people who get to be great singers and performers are people who didn't let the angst and hard work stop them, people who had opportunities, who loved the process and worked hard, all the time. I can't say that I did those things, or at least, not very consistently. This 'talent is innate, so if it doesn't come easily then what's the use' idea is sadly ingrained in me. I see it crop up in many other areas of my life. I think it was easy to believe because some things have come absurdly easy to me: reading and most school. I didn't have to work hard to get a respectable B+. A smidge of effort and I'd get an A. (Except math, but that's another story for another day.) Reading and words are like breathing to me, so I think I just assumed that's how everything was. But what I didn't take into consideration is that my mother read to me from an early age (I don't remember this at all), that the house was filled with books, that I saw my parents read all the time, that I was allowed to spend entire days engrossed in a book. Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes about 10,000 hours to become a master at something. I'm pretty sure I've more than logged my 10,000 hours reading.

Interesting stuff.

Firstly, LJ is being weird so I can't access my friends page. Hurrumph.

We watch a lot of Avatar: the Last Airbender in this house. It's B's favorite thing ever. After mama and papa his next most used words are: Appa (Aang's giant flying bison), Momo (Aang's lemur bat), Aang (the Avatar). I've seen every episode multiple times. Believe it or not, I'm not sick of it. It holds up. I've only noticed one inconsistency (season one, episode 3: Iroh says that his favorite tea is ginseng, but ep 2 and later on it is jasmine). For quite a while I've been thinking that a person could write a little book called 'Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Avatar.' So I'm going to start it.

Here are your lessons, in order, as I re-watch them with Bennett:
Season One - Water
Ep 1: Running away from your problems and duties only makes them worse.

Ep 2: Sometimes what you're looking for doesn't arrive in the form you expected.

Ep 3: Always remember your basics.
Mercy and compassion look like weakness but are always honorable.

So..... we did get to see the moon tonight. That's because a little boy slept for an hour and hasn't been back to sleep. Ai yi yi. I keep telling him the books, the boobies, the cats.... all asleep. It's half twelve. It is rather a romantic, bewitching scene: a little boy in fuzzy footy pajamas making a mess by candle light.

It's only Sunday afternoon but it's been a great weekend. I took Friday off studying and spent it with B and Adam. I can't really remember what we did, but I know the pacing was perfect. We received a new sweater each from MM, which made me feel glamorous. Adam bought some wine in a spirit of generosity.

But the best part has got to be making friends with the neighborhood boys. A group of boys play football/soccer in the little yard between our house and the cemetery. Their goal is the wall of our house. Bennett loves to hear them play so Friday afternoon I took him out to watch. The boys, about 5 of them, aged 10, asked B to play. B was in heaven. He just chased after the boys, laughing, falling down and getting filthy muddy. For the last two days the boys have knocked on our door and asked if Bennett wanted to come out and play with them. The boys are really nice kids.

And to think that we were warned that this neighborhood was 'rough.'