socialization

i cannot separate who i am really from what i have been socialized to be.

in highschool i made a point of not shaving my armpits (which were remarkably hairy) but have since gotten that hair removed by laser - a great barter for a couple of hours of babysitting.

sellout.

i like using old spice deodorant because i like the smell
but maybe more so because i know it is not meant for me to wear

i like driving my husband's truck, drinking whiskey and being good at math - all the more because i'm not supposed to.

i don't dress like a "lady" but only because i find it unbearably uncomfortable.
i love the way high heels draw attention to the arch of the foot, the curve of the calf; strong but somehow delicate.

no, i cannot separate who i am from who i am supposed to be.

life is a beach

i have a lot of anxiety
about not finishing things that i start
or about not trying things i think about trying
but on a daily basis its about not doing something in the most efficient manner that it could have or should have been done

and sometimes that anxiety is self-deprecating or even paralyzing.
all the "if"s or "if only"s make me feel somewhat helpless rather than pushing me toward action

i was recently recalling a time only a few years ago when i was out doing a training run in preparation for a marathon on one of my favorite beaches in the world.
so i ran down the beach for 6 miles or so, but before i got to turn around, a storm had begun.

and without any time to have anticipated and worried, it was there:
thunder and lightening
and no one but me on the beach, six miles away from shelter.
and i remember feeling like i was trying to outrun the lightening (which is impossible for many reasons and trying impossible things can also give you anxiety) but it was only a moment before i suddenly felt a relief and a total sense of peace
relief in the fact that i knew i could not in fact outrun the lightening, and so the best i could do was enjoy that i had this whole beautiful island to myself for that time and that i was alone with the ocean and the big busy sky .

sometimes instead of fighting a current, you have to ride the wave.

how long?

i got back from a weekend away from m last night

while i was away wondering about every little thing she was doing or not doing i also wondered how long it would take for her to not remember who i was.

surely after those three days she would still remember, but what about three weeks? three months? she is not yet a year old so even though she has a very clear idea of who i am now, her "lifetime" is short, so all time is relative to that.

everyone assured me she would never forget. that even if she forgot, she would then somehow remember.  and while i believe that in part to be true (that even the things we dont remember from our past are somehow kept somewhere deep in our brains in a place that we may not always be able to access completely or clearly) i also still wondered, how long until she would look at me blankly and wonder "who is that person?"

while she did indeed remember me when i came back from the weekend, she did have a funny reaction to seeing me. she went from smiling (something she does for everyone she sees in case she can get one in return) to a look of almost fear. she then looked over at her dad as if to ask for confirmation of something.

for the rest of the evening she preferred her dad over me and i thought "how nice for both of them"

as much as i love being an important person in m's life i enjoy watching her develop other relationships, most especially that one, even more. they are lucky to have each other. i am lucky to have them both.

improv - dance- life

in school i loved improvising but found it to be terrifying at times. there was something so vulnerable about putting yourself out there, unrehearsed.

the other day i took little m to a improvisational dance workshop. and again, i was terrified:

1. to be improvising again after so much time away from it 

2. to have no guarantees about how it would go (with m as a spectator). 

at first, all the things i could have imagined going wrong did. we got there late because i had written down the wrong address and don't have a smart phone to quickly look anything up. when we finally did arrive, the group was deep into a quiet and meditative warm up - everyone with their eyes closed and the second i put m's car seat down she started screaming. 

whoops. 

there was a lot of whining and crying during that first half of the class as i made attempts to participate in the various exercises. finally at one point m suddenly suspended her separation anxiety complex and got interested in exploring the space and checking out the people. i was finally free to fully participate in the class' culminating exercise: a group improvisation. 

this group format i find most scary because there is no way of anticipating what will happen; you are forced to be very much in the moment. and of course, this is the dance/life/child rearing lesson - the most valuable moments are happening in the present. you just have to show up, pay attention, tell the truth and be open to the outcome. it's scary and rewarding. 

crying, training and sleeping in that order

i have always been a disaster around tears. i fall apart completely when i see someone else cry. sympathy tears i guess

so imagine how me, cry baby mcgee, could possibly endure little m getting "sleep trained". first of all the name "sleep training" sounds so dumb.  is she getting ready for the sleeping olympics?
she knows how to sleep, she's just not great at starting sometimes...

i remember having the opinion that sleep training (and let me clarify: there are different forms of "sleep-training" and most of them involve letting your baby cry it out) was fine for other parents. i had nothing against this practice in general, it just wasn't for me. like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. i think they are gross, but i don't usually say that aloud because i don't want to yuck anyone's else's yum. if other people wanted to sleep train their babies and eat pb&js, that was fine by me, i just, personally, wasn't interested in either endeavor.

anyway,  half of our collective families believed sleep training was the way to go; had let their kids cry for hours for a couple of nights and then voila! the babies could go to bed solo with no tears. the other half of the family thought sleep-training was barbaric and awful. no matter how we managed we would be going against someone's preferred method...which is fine, except that everyone loves to share their opinion of what poor choices you are making as a new parent, whether or not you ask for their input.

part of the idea of sleep-training is that a baby learns to "sooth itself" rather than let you sooth them. again i remember thinking, "why does my baby need to sooth herself? she doesn't feed herself, she doesn't walk around by herself...she does NOTHING by herself and i am asking her to do something that quite frankly i wouldn't want to do either" (if given the option of having help when i'm upset or just crying myself to sleep, i would choose getting help with whatever is upsetting me, and i'm a sucker for mimitos...no good translation for this spanish word)

but all of these thoughts and feelings came before a couple of developments in little m's life and our relationship. #1 was riding in the car, #2 was me unsuccessfully "soothing" her to sleep for 3 hours one night.

when m was itty bitty she would just sleep in the car. we drove from philly to north carolina when she was six weeks old and for 7 hours she slept like a rock (there and back). she was a champ. but then as she got older, the car didn't magically put her to sleep. in fact, for a about a week it magically made her cry hysterically. it didn't matter if i stopped to feed her, tried to put her to sleep before getting into the car etc. for that week, she would scream for whatever duration we were in the car for. which made my hatred of driving everywhere even more wonderful...

as awful as having to listen to her cry and be completely unable to help her was, it also trained me to not freak out and fall apart. this of course was after one particularly bad car ride after a particularly long day when i finally yelled "no llores más, carajo!" (loosely translated to "stop fucking crying already!") which made me feel like an awful asshole mom. who screams at a little baby for crying? answer: lots of parents who are human. it forced me to learn to tolerate/block out the sounds of her cries; for the good of both of us...

the other educational moment? one night when i was trying to help little m go to bed for forever; rubbing her back, rocking the crib, picking her up, putting her down. there were moments of calm but it took three hours of crying off and on, and of course one moment of me yelling at a little baby to realize that maybe this wasn't the right method for us. this was clarified and reinforced when one night she stopped crying when i stopped helping her and left the room.

what i'm saying is, you might think you hate pb&j and then wake up one day to realize, maybe its not so bad, especially if you use a certain kind of jelly, or maybe almond butter in place of peanut butter. or just let your baby cry for ten minutes at a time instead of for hours cold turkey.

i've learned that part of doing the "right thing" is discovering there is no right thing, we all just do what we can/what works for us.  like everything else...it's a work-in-progress.

lbh

i don't like to show it when something upsets me - despite my pizazz for crying in front of anyone at anytime.

i don't like accepting the fact that my mood can be so dependent on the state of someone else's.

it's hard to remember to not take things personally.

also hard to remember that maybe without knowing it, i AM in fact contributing to the problem i think has nothing to do with me.

it's helpful to remember that if someone is upsetting me, it's probably because we care a great deal about each other - and that's an important piece to keep in perspective

hard head

after taking dance class for months at koresh i went in for class last week and was stopped at the front desk.

"you are 15 minutes late... we're not supposed to let you in after ten past"
"really?! i didn't know that"
"well...ugh...do you need to change or can you go right in?
"i can go right in!" (i can change in the corner of the room)
"ok but hurry up because we're not supposed to let you in...go fast! go!"

this was after months of always arriving at least 10 minutes late to class. i get out of work at six, and class starts at six...so i've never been on time

during class i apologized to the teacher for being late. she said,
"no big deal"
"oh, because the people at the front desk gave me a really hard time"
"oh, don't worry about it! it's fine"

fast forward to yesterday. it was raining, so i drove to work/class. parked right outside the studio for $5 to get there as quickly as possible. i had two classes left on my ten-class-card that was due to expire that very same day. i was considering the idea of staying for two classes just to make good use of the card - but the truth was that i was exhausted and my body hurt from work done over the weekend. one class would be enough.

when i walked through the front door at 6:13 i was reminded that i was late
"you can't go in, class already started"
"oh, i asked the teacher and she said she didn't mind"
"who?"
"the teacher"
"well, it's our policy that you can't come in once the class is ten minutes in - and last time i was just being nice so... i can't let you in"
"but it's my last day to use my class card"
"well if i let you in then i have to let everyone in"
that's a dumb and not true (didn't say it, just thought it)
after a bit more of the same the lady at the front desk suggested that i go out and have dinner and take the later class. even though i had considered taking that class, and even though i had just seconds before paid for parking anyway, and even though i could never again use the two classes i had left on the card...i was so annoyed and thought the policy to be so stupid and unfair that on principle i left. and i'm pretty sure i will never go back.

having a dog

i never had a dog until recently, but to be honest, i think i was always "a dog person".

only now that i have chloe...

... can i pinpoint what it is that draws me to these smelly, shedding beasts. we have some essential characteristics in common

they love affection;
both the giving and receiving of affection is the highlight of a dog's day. how sweet.

they love to go outside;
there is so much appreciation of fresh air. i can see it in the way chloe begs me to go out and then trots down the street when we do; her nose pointed in every direction, squinting into the sun. she lives in the moment, and her favorite moments are outside
(like a true nature-lover she is only happy when surrounded by greenery...
....and what i mean by that is that she wont go to the bathroom before she is standing on green).

they love to nap;
amen.

photogrpahy

i can't find the battery charger to my camera battery. 

i miss taking pictures

capturing moments 

and finding perspectives

uptown

 set

encounter

align

(still) life

 

ask courtney

 

shorts

ciao

sesame place

after spending a couple of hours going on several slides, climbing up structures and getting soaked, i found myself on line for a ride that involved none of these things. more like a free-fall for kids, this ride requires you only to sit while you get lifted and dropped, along with your stomach that follows a couple seconds after the rest of your body.
like every other line at sesame place this one was half an hour long; enough time to observe all the other people on line. i spotted one woman in a wheelchair with a young child sitting on her lap. once i saw her i couldn't stop looking at her.
it took me a moment to realize that the girl was not sitting on the woman's lap because the woman didn't have a lap. her body ended under her rib cage. i kept looking again and again to make sure i had it right. it was difficult to tell where the limits of her body were because the lower-most part of her was wrapped in some kind of pocket. i imagined what kinds of things a person would need in such a pocket. what things her body could and couldn't do on its own (what kinds of bags and tubes must have been attached to her some way underneath her ribs).
the most impressive moment was when a towel fell off my sister's stroller and no one else was around to grab it. the woman reached for it from her chair, but was unable to get it. so she hopped out of her chair, scooped up the towel, returned it to the stroller again, and hopped back up to her seat. i use the word impressive because until that moment, there was this illusion of her body being complete. the position she was seated in made it appear that there was a lower half to her upper half. but when she got out of her chair, and you could see her entire body as a stump - that her arms were the only thing that could propel her, it left an impression.