I said yesterday that Motherhood is discovering every day the capacity to do more work, like a long protracted endless boot camp. But that's only one half of motherhood. The other half of motherhood, assuming that you can divide motherhood into two halves and why wouldn't you, is that as soon as you've figured something out and gotten good at it, the child undergoes some kind of radical change and you are faced with new unknown territory. The rule is,... Read more
When Matt and I got married we settled into the early marriage meme that he would be the disciplined one who accomplished stuff and kept a regular schedule, and I would be the loosie goosie one who wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning, who would terrifyingly and horrifically procrastinate on all important work, and who would, you know, be “creative” or something. So then we had some kids–I know this comes up a lot on this blog,... Read more
I was messing around on facebook last week, or maybe it was the week before, not doing something I should have been doing, and I stumbled upon Jenny's update about how her stick system was working. How totally intriguing, I thought, and then was launched into reading Bearing Blog's original idea, (if the link doesn't work, which I kind of think it won't, search for Token Economy) and then all the subsequent posts (this link probably won't work either) about... Read more
I’m always trying to arrive at the Perfect Schedule, just like I am in a life long search for the Perfect Handbag. If you have the right handbag, you can pretty well cope with anything that comes your way, or so I have always, in my heart, believed. So also with the Perfect Schedule. If I could just, you know, juggle things just a little this way or a little that way, we would arrive at a perfect arrangements of... Read more
For the first time in forever (is that from a song?) I’m super happy about the snow plunking down out of the sky. It really just seems like someone with a massive bucket it flinging it down from way up there. Don’t worry, I know that not how it works, even though I’m not “sciencey”. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes! I’m genuinely happy about the snow because I, like a blithering idiot, made a big pronouncement on Friday that... Read more
Meant all week to keep carefullish notes but was interrupted every time I sat down to do them and then finally just gave up towards the end of the week. Really good week on the whole. We've gotten past the half way mark in history, done much much better in spelling and advanced really well in math. For one thing, in a moment of sheer providence, our piano teacher asked to only do three kids on Wednesday and then come... Read more
Occasionally life ticks along In a regular way without crisis or incident and you find that some of the things you are trying to do are having the results you hoped they would have. This doesn't happen very often in the clutter of my mind. I try lots of stuff and find that only a small portion of it carries on in usefulness and satisfaction. This might be such a brief moment I should probably document it. So here are... Read more
Marriage is supposed to happen in equal measures, I'm pretty sure. But this morning, I mean, just now, when I leaned over to pour milk out of the little pitcher into my cup, and found that there was none, I realized how very unequal it is. I've probably said before, but for the last thirteen and a half years, except for very rare occasions of Matt going off to a conference or meeting or something, I have woken to the... Read more
There are two kinds of meat pie as far as I am concerned. There is the larger italianish Meat Pie done in a full pie tin, with a variation of smaller tins–crust on top and bottom–and then there's the smaller hand held Meat Pie with curry powder, no pie tin, just meat in crust that you hold in your hand and devour hoping that no one is really watching you. The crust is exactly the same in both cases. And... Read more
The Snowpacalypse didn't really hit Binghamton. It looks like we maybe got an inch, if that. It's been a real pleasure to get onto the Internet this morning and look at pictures of other people's snow. Oh Look! It's the northeast! It snowed in winter! If I were a person who made lists of things to be grateful about rather than lists of things to do, I would put on the list that January hasn't been That Bad. A dusting... Read more
Preventing Grace
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