An old love...

I am so bad at this blogging thing. Mostly, I think, because I have had so little to say and yet my life has been so full.

But one thing I wanted to share is that I seem to have found my reading mojo again. It has been gone since Sproglette was born over 4 years ago. Gone in a bad way.

See, I used to read constantly. Ever since I learned to read I have always had a book with me. They were my friends when no one else wanted to be. Yes, I was the little girl with the horrible buck teeth (then braces) and the thick, thick coke-bottle bottomed glasses that were always a big heavy plastic frame to hold the weight of the lenses. So to escape from playground ridicule, I read books. My grandmother was a librarian, and I don't even remember getting my first library card, but I have had one ever since, wherever I have lived.

Up until I had kids, I would go to the library once a week, check out 3-5 books, read them and return them the next week. Rinse repeat. Almost always novels. I love science fiction and fantasy, classics, contemporary stuff, well, really, all of it. I have a BA in English with a minor in Comparative Literature. In college I would sometimes be reading 4-5 novels at once.

After Sproglette was born, I delved into parenting books like it was nobody's business and then I just stopped. I couldn't read the way I liked to read anymore - there were too many other demands on my time. I could no longer stay up until 4 am finishing a book. I couldn't stay awake when I got in the bed to even try a chapter a night. There are so many great books I started and then just couldn't continue with because I couldn't remember what I had read the night or 3 nights before (Hello, Neal Stephenson? I love you, and I own the entirety of The Baroque Cycle, but I just can't do it right now. Maybe when the Widget goes to kindergarten I will be able to give you the attention you deserve).

So I have started reading again finally. And I didn't start with anything too long, or too complicated. And I am not rereading something I have read in the past either. And they are novels and they lovely, and somehow I am managing to read them fast enough to finish them.

So for my own purposes, I am going to keep track of books finished in my sidebar. November is the beginning of Novels again for me.

Hello old friend!

Book Review

Have you read The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein? I always thought, as a child, that it was a lovely lesson in giving and being selfless. We read it to kids at summer camp as councilors to teach about sharing and as a parable of Christ's sacrifice for humanity.

I pulled out my old ratty copy the other night to read to the Sproglette. As I turned the pages I grew more and more horrified. That poor tree. Just kept giving and giving while the boy kept taking and taking. Eventually the tree is only a stump and yet is so proud to be able to give the old man (that stole her apples, her leaves, branches, limbs and trunk for his own selfish gains) a place to sit his tired, selfish ass down.

Funny, now I don't see this as a parable of god's love for his children anymore. It really rings as misogynistic - how a man can take and take from his wife or mother and never have to give anything back. The ideal woman would be happy just to have sacrificed everything for her man/child.

Not this woman. Not this tree. I'm going to teach my kids that we don't use people for our own personal gain. That we take care of ourselves. That the best friendships and relationships are full of giving and taking. That we don't expect something for nothing. That even when we are given gifts we are gracious and say thank you and are appreciative. That we never take the wonderful people we have present in our lives for granted. We say "I love you" to each other everyday, many times a day.

And The Giving Tree? Not so sure what to do with it now. I don't want to give it away in case it might infect someone...

More Politics...

This is hysterical...

What ICU Nurses Think About...

teeny school rant...

OK, what responsible adult thinks that putting a sharp, real, metal paring knife in the hand of my just-turned-four year old is a good idea?

Fortunately, the pediatrician said she didn't need stitches in the flap of skin she cut off while cutting veggies for soup at school today.

That's right. School.

Now I admit to knowing about the knives, but I was assured that the knives were for the "older" children in the class and only with very careful supervision and teaching.

Um, yeah. Somehow, I don't think my child (who is chronologically the youngest kid in her class of 4-6 year olds) was really ready for knife work.

Obviously!

teeny work rant...

So I am in the Intensive Care Unit float pool at work. That means that on a given day I go to whichever ICU or stepdown unit needs me. As of today, I also may be called upon to work in the Emergency Department (ED). As I am getting paid an insane amount of money (in nursing standards) to do this, I am trying to go with the flow.

But as I toured the ED here all I could think was how crowded, disorganized, messy and dirty it seemed. I am going to hate it. Plus I don't take care of children. Just. Don't. Do. It. Makes me cry. AND I don't do acute psych either. And there are lock down rooms there. It is a state university hospital with a psych ward and everything. I understand they had to call 6 security guards in last week to take down a guy in paper jammies who tried to hang himself with a bedsheet in a room with rubber furniture and when the nurse INTERRUPTED HIM, he cold-cocked the nurse in the eye. Yeah. I am excited.

Plus my anal retentive qualities that make me an excellent ICU nurse are probably not going to feel very happy in the "focused assessment" world of the ED.

Happy, happy, joy, joy!

It is just 12 hours at a time though, right?

Musings on Mothering part 1

You know those women that seem born to be a mother? My sister in law is one. Four kids. When the twins were born, their older sister was almost 11 months old, and their older brother had just turned three. I know now that I have a 4 year old and a 2 year old that I would not have survived it. Folks, I would have dropped my basket for real. There is no way, no how, that I would have been able to have 4 kids under the age of 4 in my house and made it work without killing myself or my husband. I think I would have probably held it together enough not to kill the kids, but there is a good possibility that I would have hit the road and not looked back.

My sister-in-law was always a baby person. She always was a babysitter. She was the one at weddings or family gatherings that was down on the floor playing with the babies. And I admire her so much for what seems to be second nature to her.

Because it is not natural for me. I have never thought of myself as a "kid person". I mean, I always knew that once they hit the age of reason, or first grade or so, that I would be ok. And I hoped that the fact that children that were my own would be easier than other people's kids. And they are.

But it is a struggle. A daily struggle to be the mother I want to be. To be the mother I want my children to have. And I wonder if the fact that I know it is a struggle makes me work a little harder to say the right thing. To apologize when I know I haven't been the greatest mom. To research the mother shit to death trying to make informed decisions about how to raise my kids to be well adjusted, happy productive members of society that care about their fellow man and aren't a fascist, or a serial killer, or (gulp) a republican.