Jitterbug Perfume

"They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.

"Compared calender page against calender page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes--and you'll never catch February in stocking feet--it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose.

"However more abbreviated than its cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behaviour that grows quickly old."

Tom Robbins.


... I am still without a convenient computer to blog on.
My thrush is on the mend, but still lingering.

Lastly, an on going thought; I used to talk to myself, and in a way I still do, but now instead I blog in my head. Sometimes I write those blogs, other times they pass and fade, as momentary thoughts. I think blogging for me is very much a way to knit together my lose strings. It becomes more obvious as days pass when I don't write any blogs, and my thoughts pile up and then move on. I start talking to myself again.
I appreciate my brain's way of using different mediums to calm itself. With one, I do not need the other, but it lingers in my pathways just in case.... the internet dies.

When did you choose to be straight?

Ah ha ha ha. Smiles. I am loving this video. Reblogged from one of the blogs that I follow; Unreasonable Faith. I love anything that illuminates.

It had me thinking about myself. The point is made; many straight people go along with their lives, assuming gay people must choose to be that way, while never connecting that assumption to their own sexuality. Interestingly enough, I think I have thought about it. I probably would answer just like a lot of those folks "I think its part choice, part nature", but when asked when I chose to be straight I would not be befuddled. I would answer "well I assumed I was straight, then I realised maybe I wasn't, but now I choose to be".

Of course its not that simple. All I mean is that I choose to live a straight lifestyle. 

I have always been very conscious of my sexuality. I am straight because I choose men who I am attracted to. I also choose how to react to and enact my sexuality. But, its clear to me that this is possibly unique to my person. I CHOOSE my sexual orientation, but maybe others don't. Actually its obvious that others dont, whether straight or gay. 

Also maybe I wont always live in a way that I would so simply describe as straight.

This is so important to me. Even uncomfortable. I feel kinship with queer people. Probably more accurately solidarity. Regardless of how I wrangle in my sexuality, pinning it down for a moment. I would hate to live in a world where I couldn't make a choice, where I felt I had no choice.

Yule

I celebrate christmas out of tradition. It is what it is, what we all grew up with here. Wonderful and fun. I love it. Mostly though I love the season, and coincidentally or not it falls at the perfect time of year, the moment after a long stretch of darkness; I am waiting for the solstice. For light in minutes of minutes per day. Just as I count into it, I will count out. 15 days.

I'm confused about how to celebrate. I feel saturated with christmas traditions. CHRISTMAS, which in one way I love, but at the same time christmas feels phony to me. As I am not celebrating the birth of christ, and although we give, I think that presents aren't the prize. I feel slightly insulted by the idea of taking christian holidays such as christmas and easter, and secularizing them, as if I, not believing in god, all of a sudden don't have my own things to celebrate. We have to steal a holiday, REALLY? This makes me sad. Without the Christ aspect, isn't it just presents? When you are weighed with the materialism of this season, it can be a strain. I think it is for a lot of people. For those with an eye in god, there is something else to celebrate, but for those of us without...? I've struggled with this idea for a while. What am I celebrating? What can I call it? Christmas is wrong, and Holiday is politically correct. Barf.
I feel free of objects, and free of god, and since I've been able to just enjoy what there is; a time of year. The effect of the sun on a planet which spins on an axis. I can celebrate that. A Winter Solstice. Oh my. A hippie at heart.
I wait for the light.

Snow!

I am that person, that one, who loves the snow. I don't mind the winter much either. I like the bundling. The resting trees. Greg woke up yesterday with a "fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck." I can empathize with him. Its tough waking up to bike for 9 hours, you don't really need to add snow and ice and slippery roads, not just that day, but for the hundred days that follow, to make it hard work. But, I am not sympathetic. I love it. Don't get me wrong. I wake up on the grey side too, but still, I just dont want to dread a third of the year, a third of my life. This is a time and place where if your not happy (with the weather) you can pack up your complaining on go somewhere sunny. I'll put my boots on and be cozy, after this...

Challenging Myself

I like to apply restrictions to myself. I don't know why or where it comes from, and there are definitely others who get along in life without such a defining, annoying, habit. Anyways, I am sure you have noticed. This is a neurosis that I try to enjoy rather than letting it be a burden, although it sometimes is.
Well I'm still in the 'A's of our record collection, but getting through them nice and alphabetically. I don't drink coffee everyday anymore. I probably have about half a cup when I do. Less headaches, more yum, and hot chocolate! Also the past 3 weeks I haven't been allowing myself to watch any television, which was productive, and enlightening. I was going to go all of October, but I'm done with it, and have learned what I wanted.
On to the next thought captain ADD!

Civil Rights

An Interview with Maj Margaret Witt, a nurse in the American Air Force, who must be reinstated to her post by the ruling of a federal court judge, after being suspended and discharged in 2006 for being gay.

This is great. And amazing. I sometimes cannot believe that this is still an issue; being gay. Why is this ever an issue? I really have hope that as Olive grows up this will be changed, all over the world, and she'll look at me and say something like "What do you mean gay people couldn't get married when you were growing up? That's absurd."

But this ruling is good.

Remaking the Way We Make Things

A quote from the book I am reading, Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart:

"As long as human beings are regarded as 'bad', zero is a good goal. But to be less bad is to accept things as they are, to believe that poorly designed, dishonorable, destructive systems are the best humans can do. This is the ultimate failure of the 'be less bad' approach: a failure of the imagination. From our perspective, this is a depressing vision of our species role in the world.
What about an entirely different model? What would it mean to be 100 percent good?"

Thoughts on Daycare.

I am not really one to judge other families. I try not to at least. For one thing I know that I can, and will be judged, but also because I try to adhere to the thought that what's good for me (and mine) is not necessarily what works for others. But I have been thinking  a lot over the past few days about parenting, and families, and structures and what works; what doesn't. Maybe really I have been thinking about it over the past year and half, or maybe my whole life, but specifically this week.
I am a stay at home mom. That's my intended "profession" for the foreseeable future. It's me because I have the boob, but that's not a hard line rule in our house. Greg and I have discussed when a time may come where he stays at home and I provide for us, and I see that as a very happy and possible future as well. It will all depend on what turns out to be best for us, but as it stands right now I would only ever get a job if I felt the basic needs of my family could not be met.
what I am getting at is that I feel this way because I think putting your children in daycare is insane. It does not make sense to me. Its so clear when you have kids that they not only desire but need a close bond. They need to be held, and touched, they need someone who understands their coos, and smiles, they need a one-on-one, because they NEED to be with someone they trust all the time. And this bond doesn't create children who are spoiled and dependent, it creates children who feel safe. That's just not a possible scenario when a baby is spending most of their time with daycare attendants who watch several kids, and you all come home to spend maybe 3 or 4 hours before bedtime, and isn't the whole family exhausted by then?
There is a feminist perspective here that yells in my head that maybe its just not fair. Keep your career right, because you earned it, and deserve its rewards. But then I know, from this experience of having a little one, that if you cannot sacrifice at least a year of your career (your life!) for the peace of your child, then there will be many many many things you just cannot give up. (Like your body, your breast, smoking, alone time, beer, coffee, gaping out on the Internet, being anywhere on time, etc...). Just don't have kids.
I think you should know, Greg and I live on less than 2000$ a month. More often its probably more like 1700$, and half thats our rent. We get by, we're not deprived. We buy records, eat out, go to shows, pay for bike parts, gas, coffee, teas, and cookies; just in A LOT more moderation than our pre-Olive days. Kids dont need money, they need love. Isn't that obvious?

I would appreciate any feedback on this ramble because this is partially an unfinished thought even though I seem to have my feet pretty grounded on my side of this fence.

EDIT:
There are just some things I was thinking over, as I slept on this post. I think I come across completely against daycare. I am not. I just get disturbed when I hear of 2 month olds with nannies. There is a critical period in the first year of life where babies need that safety I was talking about. Wouldn't it be fabulous if ALL kids got to spend their time with their parents? It would, but I do see how sometimes, that's just not possible. I think more I want my life to show as an example, to those who feel a pressure to have money while raising their families, that there are other options.

Almost 5 months.

I've been thinking about how I really celebrate every step in Olive's growing, but for a moment tonight  I mourned her infancy. When we brought her home this winter, I would bundle her in clothes so big, some of them I could just not ever imagine fitting, and most of those have already been packed away at the back of our closet for another baby to come. She fit, a tiny spoon to my big spoon, right into my side as we slept together, and now we wrestle for space at night as her legs trail on. She just doesn't fit in the tiny spot anymore. She fits differently.
But as I said, I really am proud as she studies her hands. Figuring them out. Entertains herself on the kitchen floor as I sew, or in the laundry pile as I clean. Its crazy that she can speak to us, not with words, but her own gestures and faces and sounds. If she wakes up from a nap, and I am not in the room, most often she wont cry. I'll hear her call me "phllllahh pla phla plaaaaaaaah!", I will come, she knows I will, and find her staring up examining our room, waiting patiently. Its truly amazing. She's just not a newborn anymore.
And oh I so love her!

St-Henri

I love our neighbourhood. I remember when we were living in Hochelaga, we came down here for our friends garage sale, they live 2 blocks over form our place now, and even on that day walking the streets of st-Henri I felt very much at home.
Its coming alive with the weather. Tonight I saw people on benches enjoying summer beers. People on their porches (one caught me picking my nose, always a wonderfully humbling experience). A woman walking her dog, singing to her headphone music. Cats in windows, longing for their daytime adventuring. A kid on what must have been the quietest scooter. Electric maybe? It frightened me none-the-less creeping around the corner.
My favourite sight was a man on a motorcycle pulling up on the notre-dame corner, he met eyes with the corners hooker, she smiled like he was an old friend, they'd met many times before, in that exact same place. They chatted, and then she hopped on the back, and they drove off into the horizon, or to a local alleyway. It was very endearing. Mostly I cringe when I see hookers jump in cars, but they actually seemed like friends.
There was also a man biking with his very shaggy shitsu sitting in a basket on the back of his bike. So many wonderful sights. People's happiness is radiating with the heat. Olive fell asleep on my chest, and I put her to bed when we got home.

Things to be done.

A while back, probably around the new year, I wrote down a list of accomplishments I wanted to work on for this year. I forgot it on my desktop, and did not look at it again. Until today, and to my surprise I'm on my way with almost every bullet-point. Its all very overwhelming life type goals. Things I cannot expect to change or receive overnight. I wanted to eat home cooked meals more often. Pay of debts. My biggest goal is to make sewing a realistic source of income for our family. There are only one or two things I can place a check mark to, but still I am very pleased with my progress. Onward and Upward.