tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58886892231835238012024-03-05T13:38:13.019-05:00Amy's SayingsAmelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.comBlogger63125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-52117075691578061852012-12-22T12:30:00.001-05:002012-12-23T15:03:48.116-05:00Good morning, bad nightI found a lot to love about life this morning after not finding much to love about life last night. I went to bed early--I didn't go to sleep early, just early to bed. In the comfort of pajamas and warm sheets I lied there thinking about all the things that piss me off and all the awesome things I'll never be.<br />
<br />
Every month Aron and I have unprotected sex, so every month it's broadly possible that I'll get pregnant. Aron thinks that there are so many people in the world that it must be the case that getting pregnant at anytime during the month is possible. I've heard so many couples complain of difficulties conceiving that I feel like there must only be a window of a few minutes each month during which it's possible to get pregnant. The truth undoubtedly lies somewhere between my and Aron's antipodal attitudes about the ease of becoming pregnant.<br />
<br />
Only once since my last period have Aron and I had unprotected sex. Last night I said, "I can't wait to have a beer," and Aron scoffed. He would dispute my claim that the sound he made is properly characterized as a scoff, but this is my blog, and here I choose the words.<br />
<br />
"Why did you scoff?" I asked. "I didn't," he lied. "You know, if guys could get pregnant," I began, feeling powerfully insightful like Gloria Steinem, "there's no way that they would stop drinking beer every time there was a teensy possibility that they might in fact be pregnant." He scoffed again. "Why did you scoff?" I asked. "I didn't," he lied again. "What are you thinking?" I provoked. He replied coolly: "I'm not thinking about the differences between genders. I'm only thinking about you."<br />
<br />
A few minutes passed. I decided I needed to defend my desire to drink a beer. "I'm not going to drink a beer tonight, but if I did, it wouldn't mean I was being selfish. It would mean I was being realistic."<br />
<br />
Realistically, it's silly to assume I'm pregnant. I can't spend my whole fucking life assuming I'm pregnant. For one thing, it's too disappointing every month when it turns out I'm not. For another thing, it's the end of December: until the beginning of January, I am on on vacation. Between semesters is practically the only time I can enjoy a beer without thinking <i>I should be studying instead. </i>It's not reasonable to throw away the opportunity to drink beer guiltlessly just because I had unprotected sex once in the past month.<br />
<i><br /></i>
For lunch two days ago Aron made a giant amount of vegetarian chili, enough to feed both of us lunch and dinner for three days. As we sat at the kitchen table yesterday eating leftovers, Aron said, "What if you found out I made this with real ground beef instead of the soy crumbles?" I thought about it, then I decided I needed more information: "How do I find out? Do you tell me, or do I find the empty ground beef package in the trash?" We finished exploring that hypothetical: I decided that I would be pissed either way but less pissed if Aron had admitted to using ground beef than if I had just discovered the truth on my own. Then I said, "What if I wanted to take the morning after pill?" (I don't know what it's called: RU-remorseful, or something like that.)<br />
<br />
"I would say we don't have enough money," Aron replied. That's the truth. This morning I had to search the house for spare quarters to use to buy some bell peppers. We have barely enough cash to buy gas to make it to our families' houses for Christmas. But in the game of ethical what-if's, the practical response of poverty is not permitted. It's too easy, to clean. The point is to make an ethical mess. "What if we did have enough money?" I pressed him.<br />
<br />
(The night before the conversation was when we had the sort of sex that's most likely to lead to pregnancy.)<br />
<br />
"I don't know," Aron said, clearly uncomfortable. "That would be weird," he said, and that seemed to be all he wanted to say about the matter.<br />
<br />
"Yeah," I agreed, "that would be weird. And I think what our finding it weird indicates is that we are ultimately very much okay with the possibility that we are pregnant again."<br />
<br />
<b>I do not think that we are pregnant again.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Four hours later, we were in the car, driving down the road and I said, "We should just do it again. Sex is fun, and if we don't mind getting pregnant, then we should just get pregnant. We would be excited if we found out we were pregnant, so why don't we just try harder to make it happen?" Aron scoffed. "Why did you scoff?" I asked. "I didn't. It's just that, well, there's a difference between <i>accepting</i> a pregnancy and <i>willing </i>one."<br />
<br />
It makes no difference to my body and to my freedom to drink beer which sort of intentional state leads to my becoming pregnant.<br />
<br />
<b>I seriously do not think we are pregnant again.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Our house is pretty small. The light from our Christmas decorations on the porch shines to the other end of the house, where our bedroom is, at night. While I was in bed last night thinking grumpy thoughts, I could see our new furniture arrangement because of the light coming in through the window overlooking our porch. We recently moved our desk out of the spare bedroom and into our bedroom, which makes me look forward to the approaching spring semester that way getting new school supplies does. Graham only spends an hour or two of each night in his crib. He sleeps best in our bed, and with the desk in our bedroom, Graham can stay asleep in our bed while I am a close, safe distance away studying or completing homework at our desk. If Graham wakes up and rolls over, I will be near enough to hear before he comes close to the edges of our king-sized bed. This will certainly prove simpler and less-time consuming than our old custom of cuddling Graham to sleep and putting him back into his crib five times each night.<br />
<br />
We haven't figured out how to get Graham to go to sleep and stay asleep on his own, but we just recently started to figure out how to arrange our furniture to ensure Graham's safety and our own sanity. We moved a bookcase and our sofa into an arrangement that prevents Graham from entering the kitchen. We put our desk in a functional spot. But I wasn't thinking about these improvements in furniture arrangement last night. Last night I looked at the improved set-up and thought about how, right after we arranged everything to ensure his safety, Graham learned how to climb onto the sofa. Climbing on the sofa is a much more difficult skill to master than the skill of falling off the sofa. Since he managed to master the former, I have no doubt that he will soon prove his ability to master the latter. I'm proud, and I'm afraid.<br />
<br />
If I did get pregnant the other night my due date would be mid-September, toward the beginning of the fall semester. If I did get pregnant the other night, I'll spend the next eight months (a time period that spans the spring semester as well as any and all summer semesters) being permitted to drink only one cup of coffee a day. College without coffee is a painful thing to image, though I of course have done two semesters of it before.<br />
<br />
These are the thoughts I had before falling to sleep last night, and I also thought about how many awesome things I'll never be. I'll never be a runner. I'll never be a doctor. I'll never be a chemist. I'll never be a playwright. I'll never be a landscape architect. I'll never be a poet. I'll never understand foreign affairs. I'll never know how to swim like anything but a frog. I'll never live alone in Amsterdam. I'll never be bilingual.<br />
<br />
But I'll always be a mother. I don't enjoy being saccharine, but I can't help it. The idea of always being a mother, of always having children in the world, delights me. I could have bilingual children. I could birth a future landscape architect. I'm not proud of my eagerness to hoist my dreams onto small and weak beings, but I'll do it anyway.<br />
<br />
When I woke up this morning the same two things that always make me happy were still true: Graham was stretching and yawning in bed next to me, and coffee was in the kitchen waiting to be made.<br />
<br />
The first thing I do each morning is pour eight ounces of milk into a bottle and hand that bottle to Graham. Next, I boil water for my French press. After I've poured boiling water over my coffee, I put a slice of bread for Graham into the toaster and reach into the cupboard for sunflower butter to spread over the toast. The cupboard containing the sunflower butter is high above the stove. I have to stand on my toes to reach it, and as I stretch, my stomach is exposed over the burner that just finished boiling the water for my coffee. For those few seconds, I feel as comfortable as a cat sleeping in the sun. But when I had Graham I sacrificed my chance to have days like a lazy cat. I am always busy. I busily slice bananas and spread sunflower butter. I busily rush with sunflower butter onto the to the sofa after Graham scales it to pick him up and put him back on the ground.<br />
<br />
When Graham is done with breakfast, I wipe his sticky face with a wet paper towel and wash his hands in the sink. He loves putting his hands under the running water. I love it, too.<br />
<br />
Graham knows so much now. He knows where his ears, nose, hair, toes, boobies, bellybutton, and feet are. He knows where his tee-shirt, socks, shoes and pants go. He knows also where to find his owl, his train, his books, and his little rocking chair. He sits through my lap through the length of a not-too-text-heavy storybook. When I finish reading, he often wants me to read it again.<br />
<br />
When I think of having another child, I don't feel any excitement or nostalgia over the newborn stage. Newborns are terrifyingly fragile. When I think of having a child, I don't think primarily of her sweetly swaddled or learning to crawl: I think of building relationships into the future. I think of my and Aron's next child listening as Graham talks about how high school differs from middle school, then about how college differs from high school. And then I imagine them, ages thirty and thirty-three, talking about their respective experiences equally. If one of my children ends up being more responsible than the other(s), she or he will call her or his sibling(s) on the phone and say, "Today is mom's birthday. Don't forget to call her."<br />
<br />
I wish we could adopt. But since I had to collect change from around the house in order to afford to buy produce today, I know we aren't the sort of people anyone would entrust the life of a child to, unless we create the life our child ourselves. So sooner or later, that will have to happen. Or we could wait until a decent-paying job is secured, and then adopt.<br />
<br />
Graham napped long enough for me to type this entire blog entry, but he is waking up now, which means he didn't nap long enough to allow me to proofread. Graham also denied me the opportunity to fully explain myself. If I wrote anything indefensible or insensitive, it's only because I lacked the time to clarify my position. I have excuses but not enough time to give any but one of them: the excuse of not having enough time.Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-74137714276497056552012-12-21T09:58:00.004-05:002012-12-21T10:03:10.203-05:00The second child<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This month I’m not in the mood for another baby. I know
what you’re thinking: “Don’t procreate
on a whim!” This month I certainly agree with you. It’s probably because I’m on
my way to completing an entire book over the course of just two days that I am
suddenly no longer experiencing acute baby fever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As I was waiting to be seen by my midwife at my six-week
postpartum appointment, I picked a book called <i>Your Second Child</i> from the
office library’s single shelf. Graham was napping, so I had a chance to read
the first few pages of the book. The book asked me to consider non-judgmentally
if I might possibly enjoying taking a nap or a shopping trip more than I would enjoy
taking care of a newborn and her older sibling. Yes, but that’s always been
true. (Just kidding. They’re just such disparate pleasures.) <i>Your Second Child</i>
emphasized that a reader who decided she would rather spend an afternoon
shopping than rocking a baby to sleep shouldn’t judge herself harshly. The
important thing is to be honest with oneself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The book I’m on my way to completing today (at my pregnancy
reading pace, a time when I routinely read two, sometimes three books a week)
is Jonathan Franzen’s <i>The Discomfort Zone</i>, which I recently called a memoir but
which he calls “a personal history.” Franzen writes so tenderly about his
family, even about his parents, which surprises me somewhat: I generally expect
artists to harbor deep resentments toward their parents, and Franzen in
particular is famous for being an asshole. But about his mother and father
Franzen is sweet without seeming insincere; he writes: “I was cocooned in cocoons that were
themselves cocooned. I was the late-arriving son to whom my father, who read to
me every weeknight, confided his love of the depressive donkey Eeyore in A. A.
Milne, and to whom my mother, at bedtime, sang a private lullaby that she’d
made up to celebrate my birth.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It moves me in the best way to read a great writer
appreciate her family, and the more children I have, the greater the odds that
one of them will grow up to be an author who writes sweet things about me. And,
of course, I want a girl. I want Graham to have a sister. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s true that the question “To have more children, or to
not?” shouldn’t be answered according to a mood I’m in for an hour or two. But
it also seems true that the question shouldn’t be answered only in accordance with
a longer-felt disposition. Even if I feel convinced for ten consecutive months
of same feeling—that I do want another baby, or that I don’t—there remain at
least two other important questions to ask, ones that have to do neither with my interior state (of
emotional preparedness) nor with external facts (of financial preparedness).
They are questions that have everything to do with Graham:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1. Will Graham want a sibling? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">2. Would Graham be benefited by having a sibling? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I think the answers are:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1. Yes, probably at least occasionally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">2. Yes, almost definitely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Anytime I witness someone being a jerk in public, I
always assume that he is either an only child or rich. I once had a mixed
doubles tennis partner who was such an arrogant winner and such a sore loser
that I could not believe that he WASN’T an only child. If I were saying the
same things about children with siblings, they would probably laugh. But any
only child reading this is probably offended. Only children are like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So I feel motivated to have more children because I think
Graham would benefit, but I also feel motivated in a why-not sense. Why not
have more children? It’s not as if I have any time anymore anyway, and while
Graham is young I don’t plan for that to change in any significant way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But then yesterday it happened: I read one hundred pages of a book. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It may seem that given my uncertainty the obviously best thing to do is wait and keep considering whether having another child is actually something I want. But waiting isn't a wholly unproblematic solution: Graham is almost fourteen-months old, and his starting school right now represents to me my earliest opportunity to have a meaningful existence outside the home. The longer I wait, the more delayed an outside-the-home existence becomes. I'm not so eager for it that I want to throw Graham into daycare right now (an option we can't afford, anyway), but I'm not so content to stay home that I want it to be my reality even when I'm in the middle of, or deep into, my thirties. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I really don’t think there is anything wrong with only
children—not in principle, anyway, but perhaps in practice. I have only children cousins and friends, all of whom are wonderful
people. But Aron and I are so in love with Graham, and we haven’t figured out
how to pretend not to be for the sake of keeping Graham from becoming an
arrogant rotten monster. We actually TELL him: “You’re so cute, Graham,” and “You’re so
funny, Graham,” and “Graham, you have such hot dance moves.” We either have to learn
to temper our utter adoration, or we have to have another kid so that Graham won't grow the overblown confidence characteristic of boys who routinely enter and win handsomeness pageants. (I'm pretty sure handsomeness pageants are real things.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Are these things I actually believe? That you can ruin a child by loving him too much? That you can ruin a child less by forcing him to be a big brother?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In a sense I think <i>Your Second Child </i>is right: I have enjoyed reading over these past two days more than I would enjoy taking care of a brand new human. But that's just one axis of a question comprised of so many different axes. I can't compare the fulfillment Graham brings to me with anything else. It's not as if raising Graham brings me as much joy as reading one hundred good books. Last night Aron and I watched a TV show on Hulu, and there was an advertisement for something (I don't remember what) that featured these super skinny French girls. (They may not have actually been French, but the vibe of the ad was Parisian.) There is no doubt that these girls have elbows and shoulders. If you look at me, it's possible to doubt that I have elbows and shoulders. They are hidden under a thicker layer of skin. I don't want to want to be skinny, but I want to be skinny. Getting pregnant is antithetical to getting skinny. But you can't fairly say that wanting to be skinny cancels out a desire to have a child. I think the would-you-rather game that <i>Your Second Child</i> asks readers to play is perhaps helpful but certainly not conclusively answer-providing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Doesn't it seem like "Saturday Night Live" could have a recurring skit with a couple that is always announcing that they <i>might</i> be pregnant? The man would say, "We have <b>big </b>news!" And the woman would say, "We might've conceived last night!" </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I take from the real-life infrequency of these sorts of announcements that there's something not quite appropriate about them. I both hope and fear every month that I'm pregnant. Aron and I tend to have sex like people who wouldn't mind getting pregnant again, which is the kind of people we in fact are. Because I both hope and fear getting pregnant again, negative pregnancy test results both relieve and disappoint me. I told my oldest sister, Amanda, that I am both relieved and disappointed each month when it turns out that I'm not pregnant. Amanda, the mother of three of my favorite kids in the whole world, told me that I should only ever feel relief. "Those negative pregnancy tests are dodged bullets."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I believe her, and yet ... I kind of want to get shot. Even when I'm not in the mood to be shot I still kind of want to be shot. </span></span></div>
Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-6886894238483498002012-11-20T09:49:00.002-05:002012-11-20T10:06:30.618-05:00MotivationI'm sitting at a computer in the UGA library to address this question:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Kant and Mill offer very different analyses of moral motivation. For
Kant, our motive is the source of moral value, whereas for Mill, motive
matters little or nothing as regards the morality of an action.
Articulate both of their arguments for the source of moral value and
critically examine the relationship between motive and value for both
philosophers, articulating what you take to be the right analysis (it
need not be either Kant’s or Mill’s)."</blockquote>
Aron and Graham left Athens this morning at 7:30 to visit family in Peachtree City, and I stayed behind intending to work on a take-home test, the first question of which is the one above regarding Kant and Mill. I wish I cared to answer the question regarding the disparities between Mill and Kant vis-a-vis moral motivation. I wish I cared. I really wish I did.<br />
<br />
When I think about what has happened in my life during my absence from blogging, three main things occur to me; they are:<br />
<ol>
<li>GRAHAM TURNED ONE AND HAD THE BEST PARTY EVER.</li>
<li>A new semester of school started.</li>
<li>Aron did a sociology project on Honey Boo Boo.</li>
</ol>
I love Graham Lorenzo Hall so much. I feel my love for him in my chest, my head, my hands, my arms. He makes me so happy. When I'm not with him I feel like I should carry around a gallon of milk; at least then my arms wouldn't feel so empty. (Mimi, my only remaining grandparent, my dad's mom, once successfully quit smoking for a week by holding a Bic pen between her fingers instead of a cigarette. She said she felt that her addiction was to the physical feeling of having a cigarette in her hands and not to the chemicals contained in cigarettes. She returned to smoking after that Bic pen week, probably because she didn't <i>want</i> to quit; she <i>wanted to want</i> to quit, like I <i>want to want</i> to work on my take-home test. Mimi seemed to have the capacity to easily quit smoking, but she lacked the motivation. She also probably had access to all the rational reasons in favor of giving up the smoking habit: she knew that smoking is unhealthy, expensive, stinky and an aggravation to others. What she lacked was the internal fact of being motivated to quit.) It occurred to me to carry around a gallon of milk so that the heavy object in my arms could help trick my heart into thinking it isn't lonely for Graham. Carrying around milk wouldn't trick me entirely. I would never mistake Graham for a gallon of milk or a gallon of milk for Graham; however, when I walk without Graham in my arms, I am <i>always </i>actively feeling amiss. I am always feeling the emptiness of my arms. If I didn't feel the emptiness of my arms, I might not always be actively <i>thinking</i> about the reason they're empty. <br />
<br />
It's because Graham is the love of our lives that Aron and I wanted to throw him a big birthday bash. When we shared with family and friends our decision to order an entire keg and an inflatable bounce house for the event, a few people felt the need to point out to us that Graham wouldn't remember his first birthday party. The point, I think, was this: "Why are you spending so much money and going to so much trouble when Graham won't even be able to reference the memory of having had a first birthday party at all?" My reply to the people who felt the need to make this point was that if I live long enough, there may arrive a day that I don't remember the party either. Of course, the possibility of my one day not remembering is just that: a possibility. And even if that day does arrive, I will still have had many years of fondly remembering Graham's first birthday party. Graham, on the other hand, won't have even a single year of fondly remembering his first birthday celebration. The party was less than a month ago, and he's probably already forgotten it. So why did we spend so much money and go to so much trouble when Graham won't be able to reference the memory of having had a first birthday party at all? It's an almost indefensible decision, really. All I can say is that Aron and I wanted, as much as it's possible, to spread the joy that we feel over Graham's birth and life, and we could only come up with two ways of doing that: 1. By letting adults imbibe as much alcohol as they could, and 2. By letting children play in an inflatable bounce house. The bounce house was a bigger hit even for adults than the keg. Practically every adult played in the inflatable bounce house, and few of them partook in the keg. Lessons learned for Graham's next birthday: yes to the bounce house; yes to a <i>pony </i>keg. <br />
<br />
Before Graham turned one, a new semester of school started. This has by far been the easiest semester of my entire, extended college career. My main source of stress is that I am old as fuck and still an undergraduate. I feel like my classmates are closer to Graham's age than they are to mine; that is undeniably untrue (it's not even close to being true), but that feeling represents my subjective state when I'm sitting in classes: all my male classmates look like they are wearing bigger versions of clothes I'd dress Graham in. None of my female classmates seem even close to being motherly. They seem like they still need their mothers. They often complain about their mothers. Really, they do.<br />
<br />
I decided this semester to lower my expectations of myself as a student, and it's really worked out well. Aron hasn't lowered his expectations of himself. He continues to feel stress about projects and papers, and he spends much more time in the library than I do. He can't stand making anything below an A; his dissatisfaction with B's and below is admirable. He sees where he's going next: he's going to graduate school. I see where I'm going next: I'm going to the park (or, during the winter, to the library) with Graham. It's rare for me that I can take the future very seriously. I can't imagine Graham being five: I can't imagine it for him, I can't imagine it for myself. If I were capable of believing that Graham will one day start school, I might raise my expectations of myself as a student. Because when Graham starts school, I'll need either to start working outside the home or to apply to graduate school.<br />
<br />
Aron recently completed a sociology project on Honey Boo Boo. We hadn't previously known anything about her. Aron and I are in general pretty cut off from pop culture: we never know what songs are popular. I have almost nothing to say about Honey Boo Boo. The something I do want to say about her relates to my blog. In one of my more recent blog updates, I posted a picture of Graham taking a nap: it was the day he turned nine months old, and he napped naked on top of me. It's not an unusual event, and because it's one of the sweetest things about my life, I shared a picture of it. There's a feature on my blog that allows me to see what Google searches lead to Amy's Sayings, and when I recently consulted that feature I learned that a search for "naked nine year old" lead to the picture of Graham's naked nap on top of me. So someone who wanted to see a naked nine year old instead saw my naked nine-month old.<br />
<br />
During his Honey Boo Boo research, Aron watched an interview with Honey Boo Boo's mom in which she was asked if she felt guilty for making her daughter into a sex object. The mother of Honey Boo Boo responded that no one should regard a six-year-old sexually and that if someone did regard Honey Boo Boo that way, it is neither Honey Boo Boo nor Honey Boo Boo's mother's fault. I like that answer. I think it makes sense.<br />
<br />
I really ought to stop blogging and start working on my take-home test. It's amazing to me that anyone visits the library to get work done. There are too many books here. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-16429740962485182012012-08-11T12:06:00.000-04:002012-08-14T10:46:12.181-04:00The events leading to the least successful yard sale in the history of yardsAt the beginning of the summer the possibility of life being anything but absurdly difficult ever again seemed so unreal that I
decided to pretend that good times weren't near. But good times actually
weren't too far off at the beginning of the summer, and now, near the end of
summer, they're here. Student loans for the fall semester arrived in our bank
account last week, which means that Graham can finally stop squeezing into 9-month pajamas and
start stretching his limbs in expansive 12-month ones. I bought a dust buster.
We can afford a new shower curtain liner:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>they cost less than three dollars, but at the beginning of summer we
couldn't spare even that. On Wednesday/Thursday, Aron and I treated ourselves to
a date day, lasting a full twenty-four hours, in Atlanta. Graham spent the
night at his Grandma's house, and Aron and I spent the night in a hotel. We went to Laughing Skull's open mic comedy night, which was really
hilarious. Each comedian had five minutes, and of the twenty
that we saw, only two bombed. They were big, awkward bombs. The rest made my face hurt from laughing.<br />
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<br /></div>
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Doing a five-minute
stand-up routine has become a goal of mine:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am sure of my potential to be a big, awkward bomb. I'm
super shy, and my voice shakes even in classrooms—still, I love comedy and
think making a few people in a room full of people laugh at least a few times over the course of a few minutes is a worthwhile goal, one I would feel really proud about
achieving. So sometime within the next two years, when everyone who loves (or
at least likes) me is available to attend the show and be demonstrative in ways
that calm and confidentize me, I'm going to do it. I'm going to be a comic for a few minutes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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It's worth mentioning that during date day Aron and I walked two miles from
our hotel to a vegetarian Chinese restaurant, two miles back to the hotel, and
about three miles round trip between the hotel and comedy club. It's worth
mentioning because I think all that walking on city streets made me remember how much I love
Atlanta. All that walking made me fall in love with the idea of going to
graduate school at Emory. But of course all that walking was done during a time
when I wasn't actively being a parent. Atlanta seems like a more difficult city
to be a graduate student/parent in than Athens—I have no idea what makes it <i>seem</i> that way. Traffic? The fact that going to school in Atlanta would require
<i>moving</i> to Atlanta? So Atlanta seems daunting, but when I'm in Athens I'm not even in the mood to <i>consider</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> attending graduate school. In
Atlanta, I am favorably disposed to the idea. There's something inspiring about
that city. Or maybe there's something inspiring about that city during a daylong vacation.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Leaving Graham for twenty-four hours was extremely
difficult—about once an hour I experienced panicky spells:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>during them I wanted to end date day
and return immediately to my beautiful boy. If I had thought that Graham was
experiencing any similar panic, I would've obeyed my inclination to end date
day. We called to check on Graham every two to three hours and never heard him making anything but
happy sounds. I think he was fine when he was away from us, but he seemed truly thrilled to see us again after date day was over:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when I picked him up he held my face
and smiled at me. And ever since our return from date day, I can't walk away from him without him
crying. Even when he's in Aron's arms, he screams when I leave. I don't want to
say it makes me secretly happy to see him upset about my absence. It's not a
secret:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am openly happy about
his wanting to be attached to me. The feeling is mutual.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I love to indulge. If I have a philosophical affiliation,
it's definitely Epicureanism. I love to eat, drink, read and relax. Parenthood makes impossible certain Epicurean indulgences, so when I took a daylong break from being an
active parent, I indulged where I could:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by noon
I had had a mojito and a half, and by the time date day was over I had eaten a
Cuban meal, a Chinese meal, a bagel, half a pizza, and an omelet with goat
cheese, mushrooms and tomato coulis. (<i>Omelet</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, incidentally, has an interesting etymology.) Eating well is
expensive. I am almost morally opposed to paying for a haircut, so last week I
let Aron cut my hair. (Usually I do the cutting myself, but last time I attempted it I mangled
my locks so profoundly that at least four people felt they needed to point out to me
that my hair needed to be re-cut. Aron did such a swell job that I've received only nice remarks about my hair.) Anyway, the point of the haircut stories is that I don't enjoy spending money even though some of the things I enjoy most in life, like food and fancy booze, cost money. I buy almost all my clothes used, so that helps make our financial expenditures match our ideals. I don't buy used food. Dumpster diving seems like a fine idea, but it's not something that seems worth getting in trouble over, and if I had to pay a babysitter to watched Graham while I dived, we probably wouldn't come out ahead financially. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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I wanted to make back the money that went into my stomach on
date day, so I decided to host a yard sale, which is actually happening right
now. Our yard sale has been so unsuccessful that I have been able to type this
entire blog without once being interrupted by a customer or potential customer. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It rained. Our junk stayed dry on the porch. No one has come. It's a lonely
flop. I've come inside from the porch to lie on the sofa under Graham for his
morning nap, and through the window in the living room I can see the dresses I'm
trying to sell hanging from a line of rope stretching from one end of the porch to the other. I keep momentarily mistaking the dresses for
shoppers. The rainy failure of this yard sale feels like a Raymond Carver short
story. The only difference is I love Raymond Carver short stories. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
School starts Monday. I'm taking four classes:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>two three-hour and two four-hour. Aron
is taking four classes also:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all
three-hours. And he'll be working thirty hours a week. I'm not quite sure how
the fuck we're going to do it, but I anticipate that this semester will involve
anxiety attacks and long breaks from the blogging world. I'm not flattering
myself that you care. If I don't have a chance to blog, I'll miss it. That's
all I'm saying. I asked Aron if he thought it was possible that we would get to the end of the fall semester and say to each other, "Wow, that was easy!" He doesn't think so. But we certainly survived summer!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's only because I find melodrama funny that I'm being so
melodramatic. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Someone's on the porch, and she's not a dress!<o:p></o:p></div>
Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-84038167360164412202012-07-30T19:34:00.000-04:002012-07-31T19:36:36.183-04:00Nine months<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Graham turned nine months old today, and we celebrated by taking a naked nap. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYNzxNSlgj6LIwaPnPhCbN_OWRJOJF5oAca5f1UGFAnzqQUS1HL2sE2sMqLzOGKC7CnqNVWUbwcJO_9WBvjGvLFMnqgNd4yCfqWQtklR2A6wFguoVMNrFweTEVLuCHp2GdqxMcu84-yq8/s1600/IMG_5296.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYNzxNSlgj6LIwaPnPhCbN_OWRJOJF5oAca5f1UGFAnzqQUS1HL2sE2sMqLzOGKC7CnqNVWUbwcJO_9WBvjGvLFMnqgNd4yCfqWQtklR2A6wFguoVMNrFweTEVLuCHp2GdqxMcu84-yq8/s320/IMG_5296.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Graham turns one year old on October 30, and on the Saturday nearest the 30th (the 27th, I think) we're going to throw a costume birthday party, since it's so close to Halloween, and ask attendees to dress as their favorite character from children's literature. I love Elmer the patchwork elephant, but I also love the way Graham looks in his plain birthday suit. Pictures posted three months from now will reveal Graham's costume! </div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-16739083133189316592012-07-29T12:16:00.000-04:002012-07-29T12:30:17.675-04:00Fighting a babyMimi likes to say that her life was "a happening." Without
exactly planning anything, everything turned out nicely for her. She married my
grandfather, who took such complete care of her that it wasn't until after he
died that Mimi realized she didn't know how to put gas into her car—he had
always done it for her. She says that she went directly from her parents' care
into her husband's. (Almost immediately after marrying my grandfather, as they drove away from the wedding together, Mimi asked, "Bill, what am
I going to do if I find someone I like better than you?" And he replied coolly
that he would work very hard to make sure that didn't happen.) When Mimi says
that her life was "a happening," she means that she never calculated its events or outcomes. They just happened.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Feeling a lack of responsibility for—or a lack of control
over—your own life is a hallmark, I think, of depression. But Mimi is not
depressed. Feeling that your life has made itself without your active, planned
input might amount to a sort of ontological humility: it's difficult to resist regarding yourself as the center of the
universe—although I have heard that our first-person mode of being/thinking is
a construct, I truly can't imagine it any other way—but maybe being the center
of things just means that influences are pressing in on you from every direction all the time. If
you're satisfied with the result of the pressing, I guess you could be called
humble. Maybe Mimi is satisfied; maybe Mimi is humble. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Before Eva was born, Aron and I went to lunch with Ashley
and Paul, and during that lunch Paul asked something about putting a baby on a
schedule—I don't remember what he said exactly, but I think it was a
suggestion-disguised-as-a-question, like, <i>Isn't it a good idea to start your
baby on a schedule early so that she can develop at least a small sense of
self-sufficiency by recognizing that there are times that are for you and the
baby together and times that are for you and the baby separately. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Aron and I essentially said that you don't impose a
schedule on a baby; a baby imposes a schedule on you. A baby is a whole
universe of influences. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-style: normal;">But ...</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did some research on Google a few nights ago and became convinced
that Graham has been experiencing night terrors. (I am not <i>entirely </i>convinced that he has ever truly had a night terror, and no one I've mentioned his "night terrors" to has been even <i>slightly</i> convinced that he's ever had one. I think the consensus is that I'm being a dramatic, panicky mother.) Within thirty minutes of
putting Graham to bed each night, he wakes up screaming and is, for up to two
minutes, inconsolable. (Night terrors can last fifteen minutes or more, so if
Graham has in fact had night terrors, I am grateful that they are the brief
kind.) What I learned when reading about night terrors is that babies who have
them are actually asleep during the episodes even when they appear—because of
open eyes and thrashing—to be awake. I also learned that a sleep-deprived baby
is more at risk of having night terrors, so for the past four days I have been
<i>forcing</i> Graham to take at least two naps, together totaling at least three hours, each
day. A couple of weeks ago Graham started fighting his morning nap so hard that I thought he must no longer need to take one, but reading about the connection between night terrors and sleep deprivation has convinced me that his need for significant periods of daytime sleep remains. So I have, like I said, <i>forced </i>Graham to continue taking his morning nap.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which means <i>I did something</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Did I exert a strong maternal influence? Did Graham have no other option than to submit to my napping commands? Well, only kind of. What does it mean to </span><i>force </i>a baby to nap? It means being as patient as possible through whiny, flailing protestations. It means giving up at least thirty minutes in struggling to calm a baby who is attempting to rub his sleepy eyes and crawl simultaneously, and then it means giving up another hour to be the mattress for the baby once he has been successfully subdued. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Ensuring that Graham gets more sleep during the day is necessary for his wellbeing. He needs sleep, so I fight him for him. He is happening to me much more than I am happening to him. I would like to claim credit for the fact that Graham almost never pees on me during diaper changes anymore, but I don't think I had much to do with that either. It has just happened to work out that way.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-12464685107629952652012-07-24T12:48:00.001-04:002012-11-05T15:56:00.310-05:00Feeling healed at the Farmer's MarketI went to bed Thursday night after reading an article in The
New York Times about a man in his mid-30s who has been in prison since he
murdered both his parents at age fourteen. The article covered his efforts to
earn early release from prison, which a judge agreed to grant—partly because of
strong support among prison officials for the inmate's early release—as long as
the murderer's family didn't object. One aunt, the murdered mother's sister,
objected, so the murderer must serve the remainder of his prison sentence
before, ten years from now, being released. After reading the article, I went
to bed but, feeling deeply disturbed by the story, didn't sleep very well.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And when I returned to The New York Times homepage Friday morning,
during Graham's nap, I saw the news about the massacre in Aurora, Colorado. It
is profoundly, inexpressibly sad to imagine the pain and fear of the
victims—those killed, those wounded, witnesses, and all their family members
and friends. Following the shooting, Adam Gopnik wrote
an article for The New Yorker called "One More Massacre." (I have been begging
everyone I know to read it, and I'll continue to beg: please read <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/07/aurora-movie-shooting-one-more-massacre.html" target="_blank">the article</a>.) Gopnik
reiterates in his article on Aurora what he regarded as <i>THE </i><span style="font-style: normal;">horrific
afterimage of the rampage at Virginia Tech in 2007: on the Virginia Tech campus, cellphones
rang from the pockets of dead students as their worried parents
called. I won't pretend to know how painful it is to lose a child, but I'm certain that parents and other relatives of the victims, as well as the victims' friends, are
feeling so much sorrow. I've been thinking about these people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I've also, selfishly but naturally, been thinking about
Graham, who has already showed interest in leaving my arms and will eventually,
undoubtedly make and realize plans to leave our home, which seems—coffeetable
corners, electrical outlets, blankets and all—much safer than the world
outside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the article I read Thursday night I learned that one
feature common to the lives of children who commit parricide (as noted by
psychologists) is that they (the children) are shut in by family and cut off
from a larger, non-familial social network. I'm not worried about figuring out
a way to raise Graham that doesn't involve his murdering me. I don't anticipate
that being a challenge. I'm not meaning to be flippant. Being killed by Graham
just truly isn't a concern I have; however, what psychologists have said about
children who commit parricide has made me take seriously the possibility that my
reclusive tendencies could be inimical to Graham's development. I wouldn't want
him, for example, to become antisocial. I don't want to impart my
social anxieties to him. He shouldn't be afraid of the world, but if he takes
too many of his cues from me, he might grow up awkward, shy and frightened.
(Two things I'd like to note: 1. I
understand that I may be overestimating my influence on Graham, who is his own
person and has his own personality; and 2. You can invite me parties—I'm not
exactly a weirdo: my anxiety is
mostly internal, and beer is a very effective treatment for it.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it's true that I fear the world. I'm afraid of violence,
car accidents, racism, guns going off accidentally, apathy, desensitization to
the pain of others, contagious illnesses. I'm afraid when
anyone—<i>anyone</i>—allows Graham to chew on her fingers. Strangers' fingers and
viral rashes are just two of the things that can be avoided simply by staying
home. But staying home won't help Graham know the world in a real, experiential way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I want to talk about is the beautiful time Graham
and I had at the Athens' Farmer’s Market on Saturday. It was tremendously
restorative emotionally. We arrived just after 10:00am and stayed until nearly
noon, doing little more than watch families shop and play and listen to Kyshona
Armstrong's gorgeous voice and guitar, live. (Please check out <a href="http://www.kyshona.com/media.html" target="_blank">her website</a>. She will
blow your mind gently.) Graham and I bought an eggplant and purple okra, but
the okra's purple, as you can see in the picture below, didn't survive steaming.</div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgci8GpMtSOakOBorG9vOmIfbbNsFxfBa4QPjLcJMdBBkV_cnTGIv2Djb1DFlngwNov8P6LVnRZ8iw53r28j7uyyw2igWQTZUFDJ8xZfeW55r9WU_7fO6yhj8eI_euytBgS3Z3qfY6Vel4/s1600/photo-177.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgci8GpMtSOakOBorG9vOmIfbbNsFxfBa4QPjLcJMdBBkV_cnTGIv2Djb1DFlngwNov8P6LVnRZ8iw53r28j7uyyw2igWQTZUFDJ8xZfeW55r9WU_7fO6yhj8eI_euytBgS3Z3qfY6Vel4/s200/photo-177.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">purple potatoes, edamame, okra, spinah/arugala salad with kiwi, mango and almond slivers</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because I drink at least three liters of water each day, I
make extremely frequent bathroom visits, and because I very rarely put Graham
in a stroller (he's almost always in my arms and propped on a hip), my public
bathroom visits are always challenging. Wearing a dress simplifies things: I can get my underwear down with one
hand and hold Graham in the air while I pee so he doesn't get toilet seat germs
on his feet. And then, somehow, I wipe. This is an unconvincing rendition of just how skilled I am at peeing in public with Graham. I feel incapable of relating all the maneuvers involved (I myself am unsure how exactly it happens),
but I want you to know that I am without fail very adept at going pee while
holding Graham, which I had to do during our trip to the Farmer's Market.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One hand washes the other, unless you're a mother holding
your child at the sink, in which case one hand washes itself while the other
hand, attached to the arm holding the baby, awaits its turn to wash itself.
That's how hand-washing after peeing with Graham normally happens:
one hand at a time. But at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, another
mother, with a child in a stroller, offered to hold Graham after she washed her
hands so that I could afterward wash mine. I said, "Gosh, where were you when I
was awkwardly pulling my panties down?!" Just kidding. I said, "Thank you." I
said it three times: once for the
act itself and twice for her recognizing that someone needed help and instantly
offering to be that help. I am so glad this woman exists. I am sure she makes
lots of lives happy. She's such a mother.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It drizzled lightly for most of the time that Graham and I
were at the market, and although the rain was soft, it fell so steadily that the
ground was soaked. I saw several mothers sit themselves on the wet ground and
be the dry seat for their children as they ate snacks and listened to the live
music. So many moms not minding getting wet since it meant that their kids
could stay mostly dry. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are pie, pastry and coffee booths at the Farmer's
Market, and next week I plan to bring a stroller so that Graham can sit while I
indulge in coffee and a treat. I am so surprised each time I use a stroller by how nice it feels to
<i>not</i> have a sore back and sore shoulders. It's an unfamiliar feeling, but usually feeling sore is worth the closeness of having Graham in my arms. We like being close, and we love the Farmer's Market.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I whispered "patty cake" into Graham's ear at the end of a performed song, he could clap. And he will next week, too.</div>
Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-91715362298889053612012-07-21T15:53:00.002-04:002012-07-21T17:21:10.596-04:00Alphabet Pal and other bad influences<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD1Xlq8ir25-bsDQ9HMN8ynmxIlVl_CmpXXrHoX-B6w21iqmU5Ekj5WzJydAsoBWjRNVqW6GfuxZQKXkvFBdzCmmhs5mXcqJsZNYwkPQjXhqMMFDKfpj8KdGHWhDyC2AUdwvb1DoD9gd0/s1600/IMG_4631.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD1Xlq8ir25-bsDQ9HMN8ynmxIlVl_CmpXXrHoX-B6w21iqmU5Ekj5WzJydAsoBWjRNVqW6GfuxZQKXkvFBdzCmmhs5mXcqJsZNYwkPQjXhqMMFDKfpj8KdGHWhDyC2AUdwvb1DoD9gd0/s320/IMG_4631.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before Graham was born Aron and I planned to forbid
battery-operated toys in our house. Aron and I both have nieces and nephews who
play with toys that yell at them in unintelligible mechanical voices and sing
songs that sound like a car breaking down. Finding those sounds insufferably
aggravating as an aunt made me worry about my maternal prospects. I worried that feeling overwhelmed at times by all things children—the way they
enjoy being tossed onto a pile of pillows for hours; the way they like shows like <i>Veggie Tales</i>; the way they whine and are indefatigable—was a clear indicator of my parental unfitness. Anyway, we all know that beggars
can't be choosers, and neither, evidently, can acceptors. Aron and I have
accepted lots of battery-operated toys from generous (and disobedient) family
members. They haven't threatened our sanity as I expected. The noises that amuse Graham don't annoy me at all. And although I get
physically tired from chasing and emotionally tired from caring, it's never an overwhelming drag to crawl on the floor with Graham. Graham's good moods are so contagious. Because he likes his noisy toys, I like them too. But I still worry that singy,
blinky toys encourage passivity—I don't know whether that's a reasonable worry,
but it's an intuition I have. And I also worry that Graham will learn to repeat
silly toy sentences, and a certain noisy toy called Alphabet Pal makes me think that's a valid worry,
because Alphabet Pal, featured above with Graham, has been designed to avoid
certain words.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alphabet Pal is a plastic caterpillar with, yep, alphabet
letters running along both sides of its body. The toy has a few different settings: one makes Alphabet Pal sing the
alphabet, one makes Alphabet Pal say the alphabet, and one gives the phonetics of
each letter (so A is "ah.") If Alphabet Pal is on the phonetic setting, it
won't play the S-sound if the P-, E-, -N-, and I-sounds are hit first;
instead, Alphabet Pal giggles and exclaims, "That tickles!" I don't know if a giggly "That tickles!" is the best response the toy could give after a user nearly touches <i>penis</i>. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know that Alphabet Pal is ticklish because my husband I
have the curiosity of children and the dirty minds of pre-teens. With
each other's help, Aron and I got Alphabet Pal to pronounce <i>handjob</i><span style="font-style: normal;">—cooperation was necessary because </span><i>handjob</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> is a longish word and its letters are spaced far
from one another along Alphabet Pal's body. We were going to try </span><i>cunnilingus </i>after having success with <i>handjob</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, but I think some sort of parenting task got in
the way of our figuring out the sequencing. "Okay, I'll get the C, I, L, and G
if you can hit the U's and the N's." Timing is the real challenge. I'm determined to try again soon: does cunnilingus tickle Alphabet Pal? I've never seen </span><i>Veggie
Tales</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, but I know the show stars a penis and a vagina disguised as a cucumber
and a tomato, so I didn't start the fire. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Graham isn't allowed to watch TV until he's three (for real), at which point he'll be restricted to high-quality, slow-paced, non-violent films, like … I don't
know. Is there a director who combines the slow, meditative cinematography of
Terrence Malick and (pre-<i>Pineapple Express</i>) David Gordon Green with the tenderly dark humor of Robert Altman's family dramas? It's fine if he's bored.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Graham reads neither my blog nor my thoughts, and he hasn't yet repeated anything Alphabet Pal has happened or been made to say. I hardly
ever utter bad words in front of him, and Aron's teaching him Italian, and the
occasions that I attempt to read him Latin are the ones when I, out of frustration, let bad words slip. "Tantum religio potuit, ummm, sadere, oops, shit, suadere
malorum. That's why you can't watch Veggie Tales. Because Lucretius said
so." </div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-18521338037886715532012-07-19T12:28:00.001-04:002012-07-19T15:03:24.397-04:00The inventory of easiness<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLwyqlNxOh7kdMbMKYMdn520y8GdGo3wrxIA0RV4APbPudU3weE7ZLrkFXQeZoVHGFn8HkLBCTXD6VH-GV4ZSKYZbZGNIfuZ-zvaS-NuG1KQk-ymulrNywkEXy8lPkpgb-JgqUwGdywac/s1600/IMG_4611.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLwyqlNxOh7kdMbMKYMdn520y8GdGo3wrxIA0RV4APbPudU3weE7ZLrkFXQeZoVHGFn8HkLBCTXD6VH-GV4ZSKYZbZGNIfuZ-zvaS-NuG1KQk-ymulrNywkEXy8lPkpgb-JgqUwGdywac/s320/IMG_4611.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graham at eight and a half months</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Aron and I went with Graham to the video store a few weeks
ago and caught ourselves in an interesting lie. For the last two months of her
pregnancy, we had been telling Ashley (Aron's sister) and Paul, her husband, to
take as many naps and watch as many movies as possible before Eva was born. (Eva is now one month and one day old.) We had been warning them that once Eva arrived their napping and movie-watching
opportunities would surely depart. But as we perused the new release section at
the video store a few weeks ago, Aron and I kept coming across movies we had seen since Graham's birth. In total we counted four new release movies that we had rented and watched, but I also remember a week
of watching only Woody Allen movies on Netflix (my favorite: <i>Hannah and Her Sisters</i>)—so between
Graham's first and third month, Aron and I watched eight movies. It was strange
to both of us to realize that. We had both felt certain that we hadn't seen a
movie since I was pregnant, but in fact we've seen several.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During our video store visit (which, before making the new release discovery, we thought was Graham's first time in a video rental store), we rented
<i>Carnage</i> and <i>Shame</i>. We were able to watch <i>Carnage</i> over the course of three days, with the
volume very low and the subtitles on, as Graham slept on top of me. I was too
afraid to watch <i>Shame</i> around Graham. Even if it were on mute and Graham's eyes
were closed, and even if his head were facing the other direction—even if he
were deaf and blind. I shouldn't have rented a movie that we can't watch around Graham's eyes or ears, because we are never far from Graham or his component parts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Graham doesn't nap alone. If he did, I don't know what I'd
do, so unused am I to not being a mom mattress. And I <i>love </i>being a mom mattress. But I guess if I weren't Graham's bed I'd be able to watch a movie during the day while he slept in his crib. Watching movies has gotten more difficult, impossible even, because we don't want Graham to even peek at moving images or hear dialogue in
his sleep. But movies are probably the only regression we've experienced since Graham's early babyhood. Everything else about life with him has gotten so much easier. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember on the first day of one of my classes last
semester everyone having to introduce herself to the rest of the class: every student had to say his or her name, major and
why she signed up for the class. I said my name, my major and that my new baby
was the reason for every one of life's "whys." And then I was asked how old my
baby was, and I remember saying, "Ten weeks." And I remember the class gasping collectively. 10 weeks felt old to me then, and now, of course, it seems so young. Later in the semester, a student doing a presentation asked his
classmates to raise our hands if we had (or didn't have, I don't remember
which) a smart phone, and I whispered to the kid sitting in front of me, "What's a smart phone?" and all the students sitting near me looked at me like I was an oddball for not knowing. I thought a smart phone was a brand of phones, like a Blackberry or
something, not just a type. Later in the semester the word <i>colostrum</i> came up,
and I enjoyed seeing my classmates look confused about it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyway! Ten weeks. Graham was ten weeks old when my most recent semester of school started. (Since I didn't take a semester off, Graham was
only two weeks when I returned to school the very first time, but there were only a couple of weeks remaining in the semester before winter break.) When Eva was born she
had skinny legs that I marveled at. I honestly didn't remember Graham’s legs
being as skinny, but just two weeks ago I saw a picture of his legs at seven days
old: they were just as thin as
Eva's, maybe thinner. Sometimes I think I don't remember a thing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yesterday Graham and I went to Publix for asparagus and
granola, and Aron stayed home to work on his Italian homework. When Graham and I returned to the house, I put the granola on top of the refrigerator while I was holding
Graham with one arm: his legs were wrapped around my hip, and he was holding my chin and
smiling as I made it and his hands move up and down, and he started to laugh,
and then I started to laugh, and I said, "I miss you." And Aron, who was
sitting at the kitchen table watching Graham and me interact, said, "Why do you
miss him?" I didn't know why. I was holding him that moment, and I hadn't been away from him all day. But I did have a <i>missing him </i>sensation, and I
realized that Graham is growing so fast, and developing so many capabilities over such short amounts of time, that I sometimes don't recognize him as my baby. My baby, for
example, couldn't pull himself up on the coffee table. Graham can. My baby didn't try to eat my flip flops. Graham does. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Making an inventory of things that have gotten easier and more impressive about Graham helps me realize that his growing up is as good for me as it is for him. Here's what the easy inventory looks like:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<ul>
<li>SLEEP!: Although he doesn't nap alone, Graham has grown into a stellar sleeper! During the first month, Aron and I got (or felt like we were getting) fewer than four hours of sleep each night. (I always found it difficult to follow the "sleep while the baby sleeps" advice during the day. When Graham took daytime naps, I wanted to wash dishes and fold laundry. Clutter makes me crazy.) These days Graham usually sleeps the first four hours of the night in his crib alone. After those first few hours, he wakes up and needs to be cuddled back to sleep, and I tend to keep him in bed next to me for the rest of the night, which feels easier than risking his waking up by lying him back down in his crib. I rarely get fewer than eight hours of sleep each night.</li>
<li>Eating: The past month has been the only time in Graham's life that I have felt confident that he's eating enough. (The pediatrician has never doubted that Graham was getting enough food, but I still worried.) Graham eats about thirty ounces of formula a day and six to eight ounces of solids, including stage thee meals like minestrone and ratatouille! He also takes excellent poopies.</li>
<li>Sleeping/eating: Because Graham eats so well during the day, he has started to sleep through his former nighttime feedings. Sometimes he gets hungry around 4:00am, but for the most part he sleeps from 8:00pm (minus a frantic waking or two when he needs some snuggles) until 7:00am. </li>
<li>Laughter: Graham makes me laugh. I make Graham laugh. Graham makes himself laugh, which makes me laugh. We live in a funny house!</li>
<li>Mobility: Parents of crawlers and amblers used to tell Aron and me to enjoy having a non-crawling baby. They told us that a crawling baby is an exhausting baby. That's true, but a crawling baby is also an impressive baby. And although I am halfway heartbroken each time Graham wants to get out of my arms and onto the floor to play, I am also discovery that it's nice to be able to use my hands for something other than holding Graham. The openness of our house allows me to cook in the kitchen and still be able see Graham's adventures in the living room. And our house is small, so he's never closer to true danger than I am to him. And I'm quick, quicker than he is, for now.</li>
<li>Reading: Graham doesn't enjoy being read to as much as I enjoy reading to him, but as he's crawling around contentedly it's easy for me to sneak some poetry into his ears without him becoming a restless audience member. </li>
<li>Cognizance: Graham is increasingly aware of the world around him. He waves to the birds he hears chirping in the trees. He waves at strangers on the street. I think he attempts to sing along when I start the the "A B C" song (though it's true that I have optimistic mom ears). In August we are going to take him to the aquarium. I am so excited to see his eyes see all the animals stolen from the sea for a profit. I'll work on developing his moral cognizance when he's a little older. </li>
<li>Games: I try to relax and allow Graham to explore the house without constantly hovering over and redirecting him, but there are certain spots that are dangerous, and he just doesn't get it. Graham is very interested, for instance, in Aron's bike, which we keep in the hallway. I am, for Graham's sake, very afraid of Aron's bike, but there really isn't anywhere else we can keep it. Graham seems aware of the fact that he's not permitted to play near Aron's bike, because as he crawls toward it and I come from behind to redirect him, he looks over his shoulder and laughs before speeding up in pursuit of its pedals. And when I get on the ground to crawl with Graham, we take turns chasing each other. My saying, "I'm going to get you! always makes him laugh.</li>
<li>Robust stuff: Graham spends the day standing and falling, usually on his butt but infrequently he'll bump his head. He almost never cries about it. He just pulls himself up again.</li>
</ul>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTwQp9RFOpYUn81RsIE8p-Wg95ho70X09YvwWV6Uvpr_f804Yy7f3r0VnFBkxMrd_MnReD_Zf9M1NJOgBFWXCH2Hi1GCrO5EdSvzliB9BZO92tNs-1m6u7jsJwiGAvW7qUqr57D-innFI/s1600/IMG_0313.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTwQp9RFOpYUn81RsIE8p-Wg95ho70X09YvwWV6Uvpr_f804Yy7f3r0VnFBkxMrd_MnReD_Zf9M1NJOgBFWXCH2Hi1GCrO5EdSvzliB9BZO92tNs-1m6u7jsJwiGAvW7qUqr57D-innFI/s200/IMG_0313.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">But I do sometimes miss the baby we brought home from the hospital, even if he didn't let us sleep.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-68796138482930582312012-07-16T18:54:00.001-04:002012-07-16T19:03:56.199-04:00My boobsWhen I'm clothed the right one is imperceptibly larger than
the left, and when I'm naked the difference is noticeable. That could've stayed
a secret between me and the shower curtain, but I figured that the declaration
that my boobs are wonky would allow me to discuss them without it seeming as if
I'm eroticizing them. Normally I wouldn't presume that my boobs have any erotic
potential, wonky or not. I don't ever have to turn down advances: I'm never advanced upon. I'm not
hideously ineffable (I know what <i>ineffable</i> actually means, but it also sounds
like it could be a synonym for unfuckable), but I think my aura is insecure and
asexual, and I don't tend to inspire flirtation or earn stares. But today I wore a dress that pushed my boobs together and left a
cleavage-y area exposed, and I received an unusual amount of attention. My boobs are on my mind for that reason.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Aron and I went downtown to do some chores: he took Graham with him to pay our
water bill, and I went to the post office right across the street by myself to
ship a book that I recently sold on Amazon. As I walked on the sidewalk toward the post office entrance, an older gentleman passed me. He nodded his head in a
friendly way, but it took me a moment to notice, and by the time I caught onto his friendly gesture and sought eye contact to give him a friendly nod back,
his eyes were undeniably on my boobs. He was not a casual gawker. And then
after I shipped my book a young Aryan frat boy held the door open for me at the post office exit. Frat boys aren't considerate people. (I know that's a
generalization, but so is <i>Cars have tires</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.
There may be cars without tires, but that doesn't mean that I have to use
qualifiers like "most" or "usually." But I can use those qualifiers, lest I
offend anyone: Most frat boys
aren't considerate people usually. They don't even throw away their own beer cans.
They have landscapers.) I don't want to personally attack the Aryan frat boy from the post office, who might've been a car without tires, but I also
didn't want to accept a "favor" from him, so instead of directly
exiting the post office, once I noticed him looking at me while propping the door open, I stopped and peered into a trashcan until he lost
patience. It didn't take long. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I recognize that I may have felt looked at today because I
wasn't carrying Graham with me:
maybe our being separated disrupted my emotions and made me a less
reliable perceiver of reality. Or it could've been that the man looked at my boob area because he was surprised there wasn't a baby there. And maybe the frat boy opened the door because I looked as lonely and vulnerable without Graham as I feel without him. But it's also true that my boobs were on display
today. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm not offended or frightened when someone looks at my
boobs. But that's just such a dumb place to start. As I have mentioned many
times before, my boobs are broken. They didn't produce breastmilk. Looking at
my boobs is like dreaming of owning a used Buick. I distrust the taste of
anyone who looks at my boobs, unless it's a woman, in which case I imagine that
she sees them and also sees instantly that I'm a mother, and even if she
notices that my boobs are wonkily different sizes, she'll still think they're beautiful, and then she'd imagine that my stomach is home to gorgeous pudge, unless this woman is a typical sorority girl, in which case she might not think so generously.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-29504375094993279352012-07-14T13:08:00.001-04:002012-07-15T08:30:04.272-04:00The newspaper, part 3: tender and viciousMimi, my only remaining grandparent, is a widow who has a
dog named Rosie. On the phone with Mimi this morning she told me that two
nights ago she became overwhelmed by loneliness and looked to Rosie for comfort. I take notes during our
conversations, because Mimi says funny, fascinating, awful,
shocking and sweet things all the time. Because I take notes and because Mimi has a slow southern accent (it's elegant-sounding, not backwoodsy), this should be verbatim: "I felt suddenly that there was no life
left in the world. Rosie sleeps on the floor in the summer. I said, 'Rosie, get
into bed with me,' but she didn't, so I said, 'Rosie, <i>please </i><span style="font-style: normal;">get into bed with me.' She has a big belly, and I
just, you know, put my hand on it and felt her breathing. I've never felt that
way before. I don't like to feel that way."</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have a bad habit of feeling sorry for people—it's bad for
a lot of reasons but primarily because it's useless and condescending. The last
time Aron and I were in Atlanta I saw a blind lady stepping off a curb and into
the street, and I imagined that her life must be so difficult, and then I cried about it.
The idea of the woman ever being insecure or afraid is deeply distressing to
me. But those feelings seem to imply something unkind: I must think she's too weak to
deal with the same emotions that everyone else deals with, and I'm sure, upon reflection, that that isn't
true—and if it were true that she was weak, then I should help her instead of feeling depressed about
it. Anyway, I mention my tendency to feel (uselessly and condescendingly) sorry
for people so that you'll know when I say that I don't feel sorry for Mimi, not even slightly, that it's not because of a general inability to
feel sorry for people. Mimi doesn't let you feel sorry for her. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(At some point the difference between sympathy and empathy
started to be discussed by everyone. Sympathy and empathy really shook up the
culture. Maybe it was around the same time that the song "Ironic" came out and
everyone liked to boast knowing that the song doesn't use the word right.
People still seem to enjoy talking about that. Anyway, I'm too afraid of being reprimanded to use
<i>sympathy</i> or <i>empathy.</i> Maybe the whole point of the lexical uproar was that
people who feel pity shouldn't mistake that feeling for either of the more
noble emotions of empathy or sympathy. Isn't it ironic that I just now came to
understand what all that talk was about?)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mimi is very matter-of-fact when it comes to expressing
emotions that may make her appear vulnerable. When she says that she felt so
lonely that she had to feel her dog breathe to reassure her that life remained
in the world, she says it like she's reading the ingredients of a frozen
dinner: in bed, felt lonely,
called dog, watched the up and down of lungs. All logos, no pathos. But she delivered, during
our conversation this morning, a passionate diatribe about President Obama, who wants the
government to own everyone's life, who is un-American, who wants children to
grow up with parents who are on welfare and have no work ethic, who is changing
the way this nation has been for two hundred years. All pathos, no logos. "He's
a socialist," she said, "and I despise him." And I said, "He's doing better,
but he's certainly no Socialist yet." Mimi didn't agree that he's doing better. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mimi thinks that how a person treats children and animals
determines the quality of her character. I agree, but I would add to that how a
person treats waitstaff. Mimi thinks that once you have a child, you never stop
thinking about that child. I agree, but as I may have mentioned before, Mimi
hasn't said "I love you" to my dad in years. You don't want to be there after he says it to her. It's awkward.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I guess it's because my parents have been divorced for so
long that I tend to separate my family into poles: my dad's side, my mom's side. Neither side is
particularly demonstrative. Graham and I are touching, or close enough to
touch, each other at least twenty hours a day. He might grow out of it, but I
won't. My mom's mom, actually, was very affectionate. I remember sitting on her
lap and holding hands, at the same time. During my conversation with Mimi, she said, "Your grandmother
Zelma always had a garden." Sometimes she'd ask me to pick tomatoes before
dinner. Mimi also grows tomatoes, and I've also picked them. She grew bell peppers this year too. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don't understand anything. In epistemology there's a group
of people known as process reliabilists who maintain that if a process that
produces a belief a reliable, then that belief is justified. Reliability is justification-conferring. But it's a problem for reliabilists to articulate in
a coherent and determinate way just how reliable a process has to be in order
for the beliefs it produces to be justified. A comparable problem exists in
ethics regarding the ascription of virtues. Like, how honest does an honest person have to be? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The newspaper Aron brought home Wednesday featured an
interview with a man, Matthew, whose truck every Athens resident recognizes.
The truck is so recognizable because huge confederate flags attached to poles in the
truck bed fly behind the truck as Matthew is driving. Through the course of the interview readers
learn that Matthew is shy, lives with his elderly mother and enjoys knitting. Maybe morality needs an algorithm. There should be a band called The Algorhythms. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ascribing moral virtues and failings shouldn't be a challenge for me. It
shouldn't be anything. I shouldn't do it. I should leave it to the
professionals, like Nancy Grace. But I often find myself in extremely judgmental moods about my family members, and I'm not satisfied to regard them
dispassionately and simply call them complicated. I was thinking today that
listening to Mimi talk about politics is kind of like watching a dog have a
dream. I'm enraptured by Jeffery's dreams, and I don't know why. But I don't
judge him for his dreams. Maybe that's the lesson. But what am I going to tell Graham? </div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-64516146294684534742012-07-13T22:36:00.004-04:002012-07-14T08:47:35.433-04:00The newspaper, continuedI dreamed the plot of a mystery novel last night but
couldn't put the dream or the plot pieces back together after waking up, and I'm sure that isn't as tragically unfortunate as it feels since the jokes I
dream—even the ones that make me laugh in my sleep—are never funny once I'm
awake. They're not even <i>unfunny </i>once I wake up—they're non-jokes. They're
declarative sentences, like, "We have to deposit your paycheck before the bank closes." What I dreamed probably wasn't even a mystery story—probably the plot of my
dream was that I MapQuested directions to a funeral. I remember being in a
modern mausoleum in my dream, and I vaguely remember being cognizant of a twist—maybe the
dream was from my point of view and I (here's the twist) ended up being the dead one. But that
wouldn't be a <i>mystery</i> plot—that's supernatural, and that's silly.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's interesting to
me that mystery novels—or detective novels, I'm not sure what the distinction
is (a dick, maybe?)—contain murder(s) without being scary; they're suspenseful without making
you frightened the way a horror story does. I guess it's because logic overlays
the mystery plot whereas horror stories have inexplicable nemeses, like monsters. Aron won't watch "Dexter" with me—not because the writing and acting are bad but because the
violence is too conceivable, which I guess is evidence that shoots in the other direction. Aron watches horror movies without feeling afraid
for even a second. I think motherhood has made me too sensitive to horror movies. I don't enjoy being merely afraid—it's like hot sauce without flavor: a bland burn. If
I'm going to be exposed to a fictional dead body, there had better be an interesting,
intelligible reason for it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because I couldn't extract my story-that's-probably-not-a-story from dreamland, instead of writing a mystery novel during Graham's nap today I returned to the newspaper, the same one Aron brought
home Wednesday. Minga's still there, killing me with her
cuteness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The newspaper contains its own mysteries. They're mysteries in the
same sense that Graham's growth is a mystery: it's not unknowable, but I certainly don't understand it.
Each morning as I undress him and change his diaper, I hold his feet in my
hands and behold his legs with my eyes:
they're so long and thick and straight, and they used to be short and
skinny and curved. I don't know when his womb legs left, but they're undeniably, irretrievably gone. And I wonder, because I don't know any better, where this length and the
flesh that covers it come from. Does Similac turn into skin? The thought that
Graham's foods make him grow and become his skin makes me especially depressed about
not having been able to feed him food from my body. But like I said, his growth is not
mysterious. I don't understand how there is more of Graham today than there was yesterday, but that
doesn't mean it's a secret: it
means I need to read a biology textbook or a Wikipedia page. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But instead I read the paper. I read about a support group
called "Emotions Anonymous" that takes place at a church. I'm thinking about
renaming my blog Emotions Anonymous. I once posted a secret to a version of
Post Secret that some UGA women's studies students set up. What was my secret? I'll
never tell, although it was cryptic enough to not be incriminating in any context. Emotions
Anonymous is free and open to anyone who would like to be "emotionally well." Is emotional wellness a state? Is it boredom? Is it happiness? I want to go to Emotions Anonymous. Not too long ago—but certainly before I was pregnant—I tried to sit in on jury
selection (which I thought was public) instead of going to my German class, but
a bailiff told me I wasn't allowed to, so I skipped German in a coffee shop
instead. (I don't think I’m unique in any way other than this one: I <i>want</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to be on a jury, badly.) I want a story. Emotions Anonymous may not contain a story,
but it must contain some characters, and I'd like to eye them. I probably don't want to shake their hands.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The real appeal of the newspaper is that it contains story
parts—not complete stories, and probably not even short stories, but story
parts. Here's a story part that I heard for the first time just yesterday: my grandmother and grandfather were so
poor when my aunt Sandra was born that they paid the doctor with a donkey
instead of money. Imagining the beginning of that story is all the fun you need
for an hour.<o:p></o:p></div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-62642433189977506842012-07-12T22:24:00.001-04:002012-07-12T22:42:11.250-04:00Some jokey lines on anxietyI know you think the world's a jungle gym<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
And you're right—it is: a gym of dangers</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A tangle of potential injuries</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You're safe, go play, avoid the sun and sticks</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Playing is traveling toward happiness</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And how fingers are lost in an instant</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You're mobile:
I'm so proud and full of fear</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The world awaits your mind and eyes—watch out!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>That pillow won't smother me, you will<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the things you might say if you could</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And you can, if you keep your mouth intact</div>
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With both legs you can leave me: <i>Mommy, bye.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm not somewhat worried, I'm worried a lot<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may think the world's a nice, safe place, but—<o:p></o:p></div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-25983500961658938012012-07-12T14:13:00.000-04:002012-07-12T14:20:50.079-04:00The newspaperAron brought home the newspaper yesterday, and it reminded
me that there's a world out there. I fell asleep last night thinking about taco
shells, or maybe I was thinking about my old job, where I both sold tacos and
fried taco shells. When someone ordered a taco I'd have to ask, "Would you like
your taco hard or soft?" Surprisingly often a customer would respond, "I don't
care," to which I'd say, "Me either. But a soft taco costs
thirty cents more than a hard one." It was an awful but interesting
job—interesting to experience, not to talk about, so I shouldn't talk about it.
But I fell asleep vividly recalling the sensations of taking customers' orders,
which I did for two years, starting shortly after moving to Athens and ending
when I was seven months pregnant, when my hormones were at such a rolling boil
that I told a customer who asked the most popular menu item that I was a
cashier, not a statistician.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Graham and I listen to The Economist radio program most
mornings, another piece of evidence in support of the notion that things exist
outside this house. We also often sit on the porch. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the newspaper I saw an ad listed for a part-time position
for something called a "program director." It's eighteen hours a week at ten dollars
at hour. I can email writing samples and a résumé to the company. I could
squeeze eighteen hours out of a week. It would look like the occasional pieces
of spaghetti that poke through the colander holes. But my eighteen hours are at
awkward times: late night, early
morning. And I have no idea what a writing sample is. "Upon an island hard to
reach, the east beast sits upon his beach. Upon the west beach sits the west
beast. Each beach beast thinks his beach is best." That's
a writing sample: it's a sample of
Dr. Seuss' writing. The only reason I was drawn to the "program director" listing is because I doubt that it's serious but am confident that it <i>sounds</i> serious. Maybe on my résumé I can write that for two years I was the program director of taco shells.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The newspaper also had an ad imploring me to adopt a cat,
which I have been wanting to do for as long as I've been alive. When I was
pregnant, we were too afraid to get a cat. When Graham was a newborn, we were too
afraid to get a cat. But I think we are all now prepared to invite Minga, who is "fine with kids," into our home. Aron is never going to bring me the paper again.<br />
<br />
I realize that this post was about nothing. But it's my 50th post.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-10595590726298732002012-07-12T00:02:00.000-04:002012-07-16T18:12:51.583-04:00a Graham poemA lonely mother is in love with you<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Long blinks are a good sign sleep is near<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She cooks meals that take teeth to eat<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Long blinks mean that sleep and dreams are both near<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She constructs her dreams from daily things: baths<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He sleeps on both sides, rolling this way, that<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A lonely mother needs her son near her<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She may hear him need her, sleeping deeply<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A mother may be lonely for her son<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At night she might fret, want to wake him up<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nearness, distance:
a crib is not a home<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So she'll watch his breathing, be its witness<o:p></o:p></div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-34393746715291638532012-07-11T16:10:00.002-04:002012-07-13T11:00:42.393-04:00ConfessionThis morning I told Graham that it's cooler today than it has been for the past two weeks, and then I asked him, "Is there anything more
boring than the weather that I could tell you about?" And right after that,
these dull cramps that I've been getting intermittently in my legs returned,
and, thinking they might be growing pains, I asked Graham, "Do you think I'm still growing?" He didn't answer either
question, but this post will answer the first one: Yes, I can discuss something more boring than the weather. I
can discuss motherhood ad infinitum. I can probably discuss motherhood ad
nauseam. Maybe I have already discussed motherhood ad your nauseam. I have nearly discussed it ad my nauseam. Here's a ginger ale picture:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixdRiqaDh4vv7XZGin9f5qAddDN2oA_aYd5pRVdqOtp96sMhPoEsu_CJZbLbkDtot14r0v64RGMHKNZi6WPpjWr_bR0eT8OAky_sB-EfatYuxVYBAqAEt95Sle06VCLImEtwy3YNGd5b0/s1600/IMG_4496.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixdRiqaDh4vv7XZGin9f5qAddDN2oA_aYd5pRVdqOtp96sMhPoEsu_CJZbLbkDtot14r0v64RGMHKNZi6WPpjWr_bR0eT8OAky_sB-EfatYuxVYBAqAEt95Sle06VCLImEtwy3YNGd5b0/s200/IMG_4496.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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As you know, I have a full-time mom-job, and it's the kind of job that
required no experience, qualifications or references to secure, and it's a job that's almost impossible to be fired from—this is an incredibly fortunate situation
for me to be in, because the truth is that I'm vocationally unmotivated. If I
had nothing but intermittent cramps in my legs, that would be a bad reason for
me to first not finish school and next not job-hunt. But I have a good reason for not yet having finished school. Kind of.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My grandmother complains about her nephew, Matthew, who is my second cousin and whom I've never met—my dad's side of the family is like
that: strangers with my last name.
It's sort of like how if I lived in an apartment complex called River Mill in Athens
that wouldn't mean that I know the people who live in an apartment complex
called River Mill in Birmingham. And if we met we might only have ten seconds' worth of anything to talk about. "Oh, that's interesting, I live in a River
Mill apartment complex, too." But Matthew and I might have more to talk about
than the fact that his last name is Laney and my last name used to be that. Matthew and I also have in common that we've been in college long enough to earn
two degrees without even earning one. That's what Mimi's Matthew complaints are
about, and when she complains about Matthew, I know she's really complaining
about me. I wonder whether it's amusing or aggravating to Mimi when I agree that Matthew is a bum who needs to get his act together, graduate and get paid for something, anything.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Having a baby does not, unfortunately, excuse my life
retroactively. It's not as if it's acceptable that I graduated from high school
with a 2.2 GPA because I had a baby six years later. And I had already been in
school for five or six years (I've lost count)—minus two semesters off—when Graham was born, and four
years is more than long enough to earn a degree. But I do recognize the favor that
Graham does for me simply by being mine and my responsibility: he's why driving is scary, but he's
also why my family can't criticize me directly. He's why we have to talk about Matthew the slacker instead of Amy the slacker.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It seemed necessary to confess that motherhood is not the inconvenient barrier to my dreams that I have sometimes made it out to be. I've called motherhood a rut. I've complained that it prevents me from cultivating my other interests. But because I am afraid of the real world and having a career, motherhood is actually more like cinder blocks tied around the ankles of a murdered body to make it sink. Mimi is the inevitable buoyancy of the human body. Graham is laughter and sunshine. I am bad at metaphors. I am grateful in a million ways for my baby boy, the most adorable excuse I've ever had for my slowness in building an adult life.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-63566484807471594502012-07-10T13:50:00.002-04:002012-07-10T14:07:50.460-04:00The community of good mothersA mom-friend on Facebook recently wrote a status update
asking parents for advice about how to deal with a picky eater. One of her
friends linked a blog entry on the topic of picky eating written by a
mom-blogger ("One Fierce Mama") who describes herself as "unapologetic,
uncensored, opinionated." I read One Fierce Mama's picky eater entry, although
I wasn't looking for advice on the matter since, so far, Graham has eagerly
eaten everything we've fed him (and has even tried, with some success, to eat
dust and dog hair). One Fierce Mama doubts that children are ever actually
picky eaters—she thinks "picky eater" is a persona we project onto a child as
soon as a new food makes her face crinkle.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wasn't home the first time Graham ate plums. Aron
introduced the two and reported to me that the plum feeding didn't go
well. "Graham made such a sour face," Aron informed, concluding that Graham
must not like plums. The next day there was still half a jar of plums in the refrigerator, so I decided to try again. Graham didn't make a sour face, and
he ate the remainder of the first jar and more than half of a second. I concluded that
Graham likes plums. What One Fierce Mama wrote about picky eating corresponded
pretty well with my experiences, so I kept reading her blog, starting with her
(then) most recent blog entry, "How not to raise a little racist." </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One Fierce Mama is thoughtful and engaging and, like she says, opinionated. She's a fucking
cool mom who uses the f-word. She's militantly opposed to circumcision. Graham
isn't circumcised, because the procedure is (generally) medically unnecessary
and (invariably) painful, which are two of many more reasons supporting One
Fierce Mama's circumcision opposition. I liked reading One Fierce Mama's blog, and then, in an entry that
discussed breastfeeding, she alienated me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She alienated me from the community of good mothers. She
wrote about breastfeeding the way many write and think about breastfeeding—it's
the right way to feed your baby, and it may require work, but the vast majority of
mothers make milk. (She also wrote that if a mother has "honest to God" production problems, she should look into procuring milk from human milk
banks, which aren't exactly on every corner. And, incidentally, human milk is insanely expensive. I want repeat the Brecht adage:
morality is for those who can afford it. But whether to formula feed or
breastfeed is simply not the moral issue that some mothers make it out to be. Formula feeding, even if by choice, is not immoral.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'm pretty sensitive about breastfeeding. But I suspect that
most mothers feel pretty sensitive about something. And when motherhood—in the
blogging world, in magazines, in mommy-baby groups—is elevated to the level of
competition, I figure every mother at some point feels like a loser. I feel like a loser all the time. You'd think it's a hobby. But it's not. It's
the worst feeling. Nothing is as important to me as Graham, so if I'm made to
feel like I'm failing him in any way, I'm failing in the worst way possible. On October 13th, my birthday, three years ago, the professor of my 19<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">th</span> century philosophy class passed out essays she had just finished grading, and I
got an F, along with some helpful and some unduly nasty criticism. It makes me
laugh now to think how anguished I was about a failing grade on an essay. But I think I'll be
unendingly unhappy about failing to produce breastmilk, and the more militant
faction of the "breast is best" army doesn't make recovering from the emotional
disappointment any easier.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do I make another mother feel alienated from the community
of good mothers when I write about Graham being uncircumcised? I hope I don't.
I often write like there's an award for Most Anxious Mommy and like I want to
win it. For the first month of his life I dragged
Graham's bassinet into the bathroom every time I peed. I practically brag that I'm afraid of blankets. And now maybe I'm
writing like I want an award for Least Competitive. I want an award for something, for sure.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I <i>am</i> competitive. Last time Graham and I visited my mom I wanted to show off to her that Graham
can patty-cake, but when I started to sing the song, Graham's cousin, who is
four months older than he, started to patty-cake waaay better than Graham, and
he didn't stop and look perplexed when it came time to "roll it" the way Graham
does—and I was pissed about Graham getting shown up! (Never play air hockey with me: I'm not threatening that I'm good—it's just that I am a true
jerk about it, and I don't want anyone to see me in that state. Really. This is
not a joke. Air hockey makes me a mean person. Aron was once beating my badly in a game of it, and I threatened to divorce him.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Motherhood makes me an insecure person, because it means so
much to me. It doesn't mean everything to me. I do have other
interests. There are things I would rather do than be a militant mother, strictly barricading the community of good mothers and relishing as I deny entry to
formula-feeding, circumcising, and epidural-having mothers. I am in love with
Graham, and I want to do everything I can to help him be emotionally and
physically healthy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I also dream of one day making a brief return to my old life,
where I would make an F on a paper and then go directly from class to a bar, order a drink, sit outside with it and read
for fun. Maybe I'd read this: </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEjgcXfSpGmpS4i1LsRIlyeh3ewkzi9I91iYQ52xU106AQTIftbJjL8Q9mvGDZ5YZAB0UpGUiIw-ZTKemhcd5CRqVr-p78je9jjWXXXDcgRXIMmc9esfNpupaqMySPXPSxh5yKpzad-FU/s1600/Philosophy_for_Militants_cover_website.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEjgcXfSpGmpS4i1LsRIlyeh3ewkzi9I91iYQ52xU106AQTIftbJjL8Q9mvGDZ5YZAB0UpGUiIw-ZTKemhcd5CRqVr-p78je9jjWXXXDcgRXIMmc9esfNpupaqMySPXPSxh5yKpzad-FU/s200/Philosophy_for_Militants_cover_website.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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I wouldn't understand it, but I'd enjoy it, because it's easy to enjoy something that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I don't understand philosophy. People whose job it is to understand philosophy understand it. But I'm the one whose job it is to raise Graham, and it's a job I take very seriously. I think most mothers take the job of mothering pretty seriously—it's why they write blogs about it and why they can't enjoy going to a party and why they are offended when someone takes issue with the way they do their mothering. I'm in love with Graham. I will do the same inane thing repeatedly and for as long as his laughter about it lasts. Last night when Graham was having his bath, I dunked my head under water and then pulled it back out dramatically, my wet and heavy hair splashing everything around me. It made Graham laugh. So I did it again. And again. And again. So many times that I had to take Tylenol this morning because my neck was sore. Motherhood is ridiculous. I know it's important, but I don't like feeling bad about it. Graham is just going to grow into an adolescent who resents me and then an adult human who doesn't really care about me. Graham will never love me as much as I love him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What's the point of this long blog? I don't know. I'd rather read and drink than criticize or be criticized for mom stuff.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-47489337068102610712012-07-05T12:39:00.002-04:002012-07-05T16:10:52.790-04:00Fourth of July, housewife styleAron had the Fourth of July totally off—no work, no school—so we
started the day with a family trip to Starbucks, where Aron works, to get
coffee, coffee for free. And then we sat on a blanket on the grassy part of
campus and tried, successfully, to keep Graham from eating bugs and leaves.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At Starbucks I ordered a grande iced coffee with two shots
of espresso, which partly explains the cleaning frenzy I embarked on once
we returned home from our morning outing. The other part of the cleaning frenzy
explanation is that Aron's being home meant that he could lie down with Graham
for his morning nap. I generally enjoy being immobilized by a sleeping baby. Nearly
every blog I write is typed with one hand while Graham naps on top of me—that's
how this one is being composed right now, but it'll be edited only once I have the opportunity to sit upright, a position from which I am better able to detect errors,
which there are invariably many of when I type with one hand while reclined. Yesterday, Aron was the one immobilized by a napping Graham. While Graham napped, Aron watched the
beginning of an Italian movie, and I cleaned the bathroom.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Aron is the least lazy man I've ever known. He's not just
<i>not lazy</i>—he is almost hyperactive domestically. He enjoys cooking, and he even enjoys cleaning
up after the meals he prepares. He is practically the sole laundry folder of
the house. We have a fairly large backyard but no lawnmower, so Aron uses a
weedwacker to cut the grass, a task that takes about three hours. I wanted to
mention Aron's willing, uncomplaining domesticity in case the
fact that he watched a movie while I cleaned our bathroom made it sound as if I was suggesting that he's bummy. Graham has to
have a nap buddy, and Aron gave me a very welcome break from being that buddy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I spent that break cleaning the toilet. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When you're pregnant, parent-people like to tell you
uplifting things about shit, like that your baby's won't gross you out. They're
not lying. It stinks and is sticky and will surely make it onto your shirt one day, but there's something magically neutral about your own child's
poo. I can't explain it. When I take Jeffery to the dog park and have to clean
up after him, I gag and retch and feel sometimes on the verge of crying—that's
how grossed out I am about poopy. But Graham's poo has more than once somehow gotten under my
fingernails—I wasn't pleased about it, but I wasn't horrified. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How I feel about cleaning a toilet more closely resembles
the way I feel about Jeffery's poo than the way I feel about Graham's. Cleaning
a toilet is a horrific experience. Ray Bradbury has a line of writerly wisdom
that I repeat to myself during my rare attempts to create a story out of words;
Bradbury advises writers thus: "Don't think—just write. Thinking is the enemy of creativity." The line
can be modified to apply equally well to housewife chores. "Don't think—just
clean. Thinking is the enemy of cleaning." </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was important to avoid thinking as I cleaned the bathroom
not only because the reasons the toilet gets dirty make me want to yak—it was also important to
banish rational thoughts because they would've prevented me from sweeping the floor and the
corners of the bathroom, where spiders have built homes. As I've mentioned
before—I’ve mentioned it twice before, and this makes three times—we live with
spiders. I don't know why I keep bringing it up. It's relevant to the story of
cleaning the bathroom, but it's also an avoidable detail: I could've said that the bathroom was dusty
without explaining that the dust in the bathroom is the sort that spiders make
as they build themselves home. Maybe I keep mentioning the spiders we live with because if you care enough
about me and my family to read my blog, then you may also care enough to one
day visit our home, and I don't want you to be alarmed upon your arrival to
catch sight of cobwebs in the corner, and I also don't want you to think it's
because I've been negligent in my housewife duties that the webs are there. The
webs are there because they are the homes of harmless critters. A family of hornets has stationed itself on the right end of
our porch, and many family visitors have offered to return with spray on their
next visit so that we overwhelm the hornets with poison. We don't do that. We just use
the other side of the porch. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But for aesthetics' sake, because I was sick of seeing a mess of webs, I swept the floor and lower
corners of our bathroom yesterday, and in the process I destroyed some spider
homes. Aron thinks they'll have no trouble rebuilding, and I hope both that he's right and that they'll rebuild in the upper corners, which are higher than my eyes have the habit of looking. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Friends, I'm not only a housewife—I am also an entrepreneur. I am the
proprietor of an Amazon account that I call Hall's Books. When Aron and I moved
into together we had several of the same books, so we donated the duplicates to a
local bookstore that has since, and sadly, gone out of business. We've also donated a few dozen books to thrift stores. It's rare that we feel willing to get rid of a book, because it's often that I think of a line from a book and feel strongly compelled to return to
the book in question and reread, at the very least, many pages ahead of and behind the line. If I no
longer had the book, I feel sure that some sort of panic would set it. But like I said,
we have been known to give books away. During this most financially desperate summer
of my adult life, however, I have turned to selling books on Amazon. In the last week I
have sold two books, earning close to thirty dollars. (The books we sold are
both sociology anthologies—we aren't wild about anthologies for some reason,
and sociology, Aron's second major, doesn't thrill me either. I am particularly
unconvinced by the latent/manifest content duality.) Anyway, it's because Hall's
Book made thirty dollars that Aron and I allowed ourselves a bottle of
wine for the Fourth of July. And that's the Fourth of July housewife
style: cleaning and wine-drinking. </div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-72074812375479796782012-07-04T12:34:00.000-04:002012-07-04T13:11:37.947-04:00ViolenceI was having a telephone conversation with Person-X (that's
an anonymizing nickname—I don't know anyone actually named Person-X) yesterday,
and Person-X told me about a violent impulse Person-X has, and I blame that bit
of the conversation (not Person-X, because I'm magnanimous like that) for a
very bad dream I had last night. There's nothing as boring as another person's
dream, but I have to sometimes treat this blog like a personal journal—where
I'd unreluctantly recount my dreams—or I risk losing all writing motivation.
The honesty impulse is strong, hopefully less strong than Person-X's
violence impulse, which disturbs me deeply.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my dream, a family member intentionally made me enter the
belief state that Graham was injured. It was an evil aunt who did it—I don't
have an evil aunt, but dreams inexplicably make the most outlandish things feel
real. The evil aunt of my dream wasn't a permanent fixture of my family—she was
like a witch who'd visit the family, do damage, cause panic and leave. She was
like a headache. You didn't know when to expect her. She was also like a
silverfish. She couldn't bite or sting you, but she could startle you into
jumping and stubbing your toe. And I think in the world of my dream it was totally normal to have an evil aunt; they were just a nasty fact of the world. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The evil aunt found a spot on Graham's head and opened the
skin there, and he bled heavily from the opening. It was a terrifying sight,
but his health wasn't in jeopardy. The blood was basically like paint. But the
evil aunt was counting on me to panic and rush him to the hospital, and she
expected that I could get clumsy and actually bump and injure his head in the
panicked process of rushing him to the hospital. It was a truly terrifying dream. Graham
sleeps in the bed between Aron and me, but after waking up from the scary dream, I felt like even when his back was curled against my stomach he still
wasn't close enough. So I made him sleep on top of me. He didn't mind. He's a very snuggly bunny.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I love that little tomato so much, and that's why the evil
aunt's evil deeds are so effective. I feel like the evil aunt is as real as
wind, because the dream is still haunting my thoughts today. But the truth is that I'm an incredibly anxious parent-person even on
days that follow nights of peaceful sleep.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's not, incidentally, because I'm anxious that Graham
sleeps in the bed with us. I sleep much more soundly when he's in his crib, safely away from sheets and our massive bodies. But he'll sleep as eleven consecutive hours
in bed next to us and no more than two in his crib before waking up and needing
to be cuddled back to sleep. We sleep-share (to use the Sears' word for it) because it offers all of us the most hours of sleep. Graham sometimes sleeps the first five hours of the night in his crib. I think he will grow into an independent sleeper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It's not just because of the Person-X conversation and my
nightmare that I'm thinking about violence—violence is on my mind also because
it's the Fourth of July, a holiday that makes me think of fireworks (which are
violent), war (which is violent), and, although it's less clear to me why, <i>Legends of
the Fall</i>, which was my favorite movie as a child because of Brad Pitt (to whom
I wrote love letters that very much resembled my love letters to Gavin
Rossdale). About two years ago I rewatched <i>Legends of the Fall</i>, and I was
disappointed, violently, in the movie. Violent disappointment—that's the connection.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are plenty of smart people who aren't pacifists, and
that, along with a big pile of other facts, makes me think that my pacifist
inclinations reflect an inability to understand the complexities of
relations between nations. Would I kill the evil aunt of my nightmare if she
were realer than the wind? I wouldn't be able to call the
cops on her, because she's sly like a witch, sort of like Uganda. My internet homepage is the New York Times homepage, but I'm only allowed to read 10 free articles a month, and so I end up reading the ones that have to do with parenting, women's issues, or a book I like instead of the ones that relate to anything internationally significant. For 99 cents a week I could, for four weeks, get unlimited access to the New York Times online, but Graham only takes so many naps a day. Three. He takes three naps a day. That's close to three hours a day that I could use to learn why violence is necessary. I don't know that that's how I'd like to spend my "free" time.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-1594752311483998262012-07-02T13:12:00.003-04:002012-07-03T08:50:07.437-04:00A chip on my shoulder<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">My friend Caroline
recently wrote a very thought-provoking post about being a feminist and a
housewife, and I think you should <a href="http://www.davidandcarolineparker.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-can-you-be-feminist-and-housewife.html"><span style="color: #001ee6;">read it</span></a>. Caroline got a lot of
encouraging comments for her post, and many of the comments were as
thought-provoking as the post itself. One comment in
particular has ruffled me and made me reflective. Here's the comment:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"Great post. I
am a feminist housewife. I have a masters in English literature and a minor in
women's studies. I love staying at home with my kids. My only beef is the idea
that we stay at home moms are underpaid/deserve a salary, as though money
equals intrinsic value. I think it is a great luxury to be able to stay at home
with my children and my husband and I have made a great deal of sacrifices to
ensure we can. I understand some people are stay at home due to lay offs, etc,
but, for the most part, we stay at home parents choose. We should not have a chip
on our shoulder because we feel society does not value our contribution. Our
identity needs to be internal, rather than external. This is true with all
occupations, not just stay at home parents."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And this is the post
where I'll try to figure out what ruffles me about that comment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I have suggested
before—or have come close to suggesting—that I deserve a salary for the
human-raising that I devote my life to, but it's a suggestion I've made in
frustrated jest, which is not to say that I think stay-at-home parents are
undeserving of a salary. Full-time parents' deservedness of pay is not my
issue, but I imagine I could be compelled by an argument made in favor of it.
It just seems like the kind of thing I would be pretty sympathetic to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">As Caroline points
out in her post, staying at home with a child is a job, and as I've mentioned
before, it's the kind of job where you might not get a lunch break. Anne-Marie
Slaughter, in a fairly lengthy <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-can-8217-t-have-it-all/9020/"><span style="color: #001ee6;">Atlantic article</span></a> called "Why Women
Still Can't Have it All" (which I recommend reading if you have a
spare hour, which I had over the course of a few days), presents an interesting
thought experiment:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"Consider the
following proposition: An employer has two equally productive and
talented employees. One trains for and runs marathons when he's not working.
The other takes care of two children. What assumptions is the employer likely
to make about the marathon runner? That he gets up in the dark every day and
logs an hour or two running before even coming into the office. ... That he is
ferociously disciplined and willing to push himself through distraction,
exhaustion, and days when nothing seems to go right in the service of a goal
far in the distance."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Slaughter asks us to
"be honest" when we consider whether we suppose that the employer
would make the same assumptions about the parent. Caroline noted in her blog
that childcare workers often earn meager wages, which is telling of how much—or
how little—we value their work. (Of course childcare isn't the only difficult
job with an inadequate wage attached to it.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Caroline's post and
Slaughter's article make me feel that I'm in good company when I doubt that the
difficulty of being a stay-at-home parent is fully appreciated. (Slaughter's
article pertains to mothers who work outside the home, but she makes a number
of points about societal attitudes about parenting in general, which of course
has implications for stay-at-homers too.) Parents themselves seem at a loss to
explain just how difficult it is to have a child . It's not just about time or
chores, although I always feel like I have no time and endlessly many chores.
But it's more than that. It has been said that having a child is like having
your heart walk around outside your body. That's the situation of parenthood in
words, but the situation of parenthood in feelings—stress, hope, joy,
exhaustion, worry, pride, astonishment—is really incommunicable. </span><br />
<br />
You may be more
impressed to meet a marathon runner than a mother. But the assumption that a
marathon runner works harder than a mother isn't the only fact that intimates a
broader underappreciation of parenthood. Stay-at-home parents work, but
stay-at-home parents don't get paid. I'm not arguing that they <i>should</i> get paid, but to point out that they <i>don't</i> doesn't mean that I have entitlement
issues. It means that I've noticed that other people who work as hard as I
do—or less hard than I do—get paid, and I wonder where the difference lies.</div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Maybe children are
like lawns: I don't get paid to mow my lawn, even though mowing the lawn is work, because my lawn is my responsibility. But I would pay my neighbor to
mow my grass because he'd be doing work that isn't his responsibility. Maybe
that explains why, insofar as analogies explain, I don't get paid for raising
Graham and why I would pay whomever I might temporarily delegate that duty to
(like a daycare or a nanny). But of course lawns aren't citizens, and even
lawns in rainy regions probably don't need to be cut more than three times a
week, and if a lawn isn't read to and cuddled it'll still be a fine lawn, and
no one cares if a lawn learns empathy or the alphabet. I didn't introduce the
lawn analogy just to point out what about it doesn't work. It seems to offer a
conceptual correspondence that I find personally useful: Graham is my
responsibility, and that might be why I don't get paid for raising him. And
it's not like I have a contract with the nation to procreate. The United States
didn't ask me to get pregnant. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But I still have a
chip on my shoulder, and it feels heaviest when people suggest that it
shouldn't be there at all. It's fine to not get paid; it's a little less fine
to hear anyone adamantly reject the idea that what stay-at-home parents
do <i>deserves</i> pay (which isn't exactly what the comment I originally quoted was maintaining).
I wouldn't mind hearing that I don't get paid because American citizens already
feel too heavily taxed. It wouldn't upset me much to hear that the majority of Americans
would prefer keeping more of their paychecks over easing the financial
hardships of a family with only one parent whose work earns a paycheck. I
already assume that's true. If what I hear on Facebook, in family
conversations, and in class is representative of America, people would rather
keep more of their paychecks than have the option of food stamps available to
poor families. No one says, "Poor people don't deserve to eat." They say, "I don't deserve to have money taken out of my paycheck so that poor people can eat." There's a difference, it just may not be a very morally significant difference. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear that people don't want my family stealing from their paychecks to pay for my choice to have a baby even though
we're poor. That's saying something different than saying parents don't
deserve pay, period.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I'm not even really
addressing or taking issue with the comment I originally quoted. Like the
commenter and her husband, Aron and I have chosen to keep Graham at home rather
than in daycare. It's true that we couldn't afford daycare on our own, but it's
also true that the state provides daycare assistance so that mothers can work
out of the home and earn an income. And I agree with the commenter that the
value of raising children is intrinsic, but of course joy and pride over a
child's accomplishments don't buy bread, which is why Aron and I have had to be
on WIC. (And anyway, plenty of people who work for monetary pay remark that
they enjoy their job—that doesn't mean they stop getting a paycheck.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The welfare mother
is one of the most hated cultural figures. There's Arab terrorists and the
welfare queen. You can say that stay-at-home parents don't deserve pay, but in
the same paragraph of your mind where that belief lies I would hope there also
exist thoughts that make you cringe over the fact that the Walton children are
millionaires. I hate to put the words <i>American</i> and <i>dream </i>next to each other, because I think it sounds
cheesy, but it's worse than cheesy: it's misleading, and it may even be
untrue. But people do—in classes, on television, in general conversation—talk
about the American dream: hard work pays off, in a financial sense.
Stay-at-home parenting is hard work that doesn't pay off in a financial sense.
Being a stay-at-home parent—a job that is immensely and endlessly fulfilling
emotionally—has put my family in a financially precarious situation, one where
we have required vouchers from WIC to pay for groceries. Maybe stay-at-home
parents don't deserve a wage, but not earning a wage for my work has meant that
we've been reliant on welfare, and that means that the condemnation of an
American dream-driven culture has been heaped upon me. When people complain
about welfare recipients, they're complaining about me. It can't be that I both
don't deserve a wage <i>and</i>
don't deserve groceries. It reminds me of when I hear the same Republicans who
complain about lack of jobs also complain about food stamps. Well, if it's true
that there aren't jobs, how's it a bad thing that there are also more food
stamp recipients? Isn't that a necessary combination of facts, morally
speaking? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">None of this has had
much to do with feminism. I'm an aspiring feminist. I read more books by men
than women, more of my favorite authors are men, I've only taken two women's
studies classes, I've never protested for a specifically women's issue: those
are some of the reasons I'm reluctant to call myself anything more than <i>an
aspiring</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> feminist. I wouldn't
call myself a vegetarian if I ate meat but had an emotional aversion to chicken
farms and slaughterhouses. I feel limited in the home but also feel that it's
not as if working outside the home would make me more involved or persuasive in
women's issues. I'm planning to raise my son to be a very good man, and that
is, I think, a feminist project. I'd like more of them, but I just don't have
the time. If I worked outside the home, I likely would still lack the time.
Maybe we just need more time, all of us. Maybe I'm a blabby pants. Maybe I want
an occasional five-day weekend, but that would only feel like a break if it
meant that Aron would be able to be home to help me.</span><br />
<br />
I don't have a chip: I have chips.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-38164451061719551192012-06-30T09:57:00.001-04:002012-07-01T08:49:33.171-04:00I think, therefore I spamFiguring it might be an acronym, I entered "spam definition" into the Google search box and was resulted with the following: "A canned meat product made mainly from
ham." That is a beautiful definition—heavily alliterative, iambic
pentameter-ish—of an ugly thing. But I hadn't meant to search for the food
definition of spam, so I modified my search to "spam definition computer," and
the first result provided by Google was this: "Spam is most often considered to be electronic junk mail or
junk newsgroup postings." These definitional investigations were done in an effort
to determine whether my post title makes sense (and, like I mentioned, to see
if spam was an acronym), and since I'm going to be writing about internet
advertisements generally—and not about junk emails—the answer my inquiries
provide is no, my post title doesn't make sense. I know that. I admit
it. It makes no sense in a lot of ways.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But maybe the food definition of spam relates in some small
way to advertisements online, since one of the most frequent ads displayed to
me when I log into Facebook is for McDonalds. And that's just senseless. I've heard
that Facebook has access to everyone's profile information (it would be more
surprising if Facebook didn't have such access), and I don't know what about me
makes me seem like a good target for McDonalds advertisements. I'm a college
student who likes Margaret Atwood and pop music that isn't popular (and that's
just senseless also)—I'm obviously, or at least probably, a vegetarian. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This morning I opened a message in my Gmail account (the
only kind of message I tend to receive:
the kind I send myself), and I saw at the bottom of the email an
advertisement for Dodge truck floormats:
an entire set for one hundred and something dollars. I'm flattered that
Gmail thinks that I own a car, even if it's a Dodge Gmail thinks I own, but I'm
also pretty perplexed. Luckily, Gmail provides little links—next to the products it pushes on you—that say, "Why this ad?" I was already half wondering about the
floormat ad, so I clicked "Why this ad?" and was greeted with this eerie
explanation: "These ads are based
on emails from your mailbox." Spies! Gmail has been reading the emails I write
to myself about car accessories. Some are erotic, part of a series I call <i>50 Shades of, Hey, Where'd You Get that Clutch?</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I want to avoid ads on Facebook or Gmail—or if I take issue
with the invasiveness of advertising—the solution is simply to stop using
Facebook and Gmail. But Gmail is a nice email service, and I need a Gmail
account to access this blog, and I need this blog like I need a new set of
Dodge floormats. Maybe now that I've complained while logged in my Gmail
account about ads on Gmail I'll start getting advertisements targeted at individuals who are tired of or irked by advertisements. Maybe I need to divulge that I
drive a Camry. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hulu sometimes asks viewers to choose which "ad experience" they want. Last night Aron and I watched "The Daily Show" and were given the
chance to choose which of three (brace yourselves, this is exciting!) Buick (yes, BUICK!) advertisements to watch (obviously Hulu didn't get the message from Gmail about my Dodge), but we chose not
to choose and instead waited 10 or 12 seconds for a random one to start. I
don't know why we won't simply choose an ad when given the chance—and I don't
know what we'd base our selection on if we made one. Aron and I are indignant about not
choosing, as if we're proving a point to Hulu about ad experiences. I don't think dreams even qualify as
experiences proper, so any ordinary ad probably doesn't either. But an
extraordinary ad …</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Facebook has also shown me advertisements for Samsung phones
and Swiffer Sweepers, both of which make a little more sense than the McDonlads
ads. I could conceivably be swayed to buy a cell phone (and I'm probably at a
cell phone-y age), and I certainly belong to a group of women known and expected to sweep.
Sometimes Facebook shows me ads for products that my friends have "liked," which really makes me want to tell my friends to stop "liking"—in the Facebook
sense of the word—things. My cousin likes Always maxipads. I, too, bleed from
the vagina, so Facebook has sponsored ads to me from Always, which probably wouldn't happen if I hadn't told Facebook that I'm a lady. Facebook has
recommended that I might like the NRA, which I like as much as McDonalds.
Facebook has suggested that I might want to be a sonographer. Facebook is right. I might.</div>
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The only advertisements that I am knowingly moved by
are for alcohol. If there were a commercial for a Swiffer Sweeper drinking a
Bacardi and Coke I might buy one—a Swiffer sweeper that is, but I would only use
it if I had already had two or more Bacardi and Cokes). The only alcohol ads that
don't move me are the ones that talk in any way about calories. It's not like
alcohol ads before Miller 64 had a bunch of fatties in them. Sexy, skinny
people drink tequila—why would they need to go on a drinking diet? I remember
going to Midtown Arts Cinema and seeing beautiful and clever Stella Artois ads.
It's always impossible for me to not want a Stella (Stella!!!), but it's even
impossibler after seeing a gorgeous ad. I'm so swayable. I am not opposed to
spending. There are
things I buy. There are things I want.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-60233073890567658352012-06-28T14:32:00.001-04:002012-06-28T17:34:46.646-04:00"I believe in sweetness and light."I once heard that it's a trick of psychics to tell their
customers, "You would like to write a novel." It's a trick because practically
everyone wants, at least in some vague and occasional way, to write a novel. If
someone guesses that you'd like to write a novel, she isn't seeing into your
soul: she's seeing into your
ordinariness. It's like guessing that someone who's wearing gloves has
cuticles.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
"I believe in sweetness and light," is part of novelist Kate
Christensen's response to the question, "Are you optimistic or pessimistic
about the future of America?" The question was asked of forty-one American
writers and thinkers. In a few of the responses I read, the respondents noted
that pessimism and optimism are emotional dispositions that may not relate to
objective realities: to be
optimistic doesn't mean that America's prospects are objectively good and to be
pessimistic doesn't mean that America's prospects are bad—an optimistic
attitude likely reveals more about the individual who has it than about the world
that individual inhabits. Christensen, one of my favorite writers, begins her response by saying, "I am an
optimist by nature, and a comic writer; all my novels, dark as they are, end
with an uplift." She believes in sweetness and light, "but," she writes, "there
are some very good reasons to be direly pessimistic about the future of this
country, which has come to feel like an amalgam of corporatocracy, fascist
police state, and mini-mall." I think that today, the day the Supreme Court upheld
the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Kate Christensen can go
on believing in some sweetness and light.</div>
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Some people are pissed about the Affordable Care Act,
pissed, curiously enough, at the President and not at the Chief Justice. (I'm
sure there isn't a thing in the world that we're all unanimously happy about,
probably not even sweetness and light.) Here's a Facebook status update that
showed up on my newsfeed today: "Can't wait until November to get this dumbass out of the White House
and get someone who is really going to fight for what is right in our
country!!!" The person who wrote this is a real friend, not merely a Facebook
acquaintance. She and her partner bought my family a giant box of diapers after
Graham was born. My Facebook friend list got significantly smaller after
Trayvon Martin died. A lot of white people showed up on my newsfeed claiming
that either racism doesn't exist (that a white person is presumptuous enough to
declare the death of racism seems more than a bit racist to me) or that white
people are the real victims of racism. I unfriended people who made claims like
this, and unfriending urges swell inside me today as I read status updates from
those who oppose Obamacare. Once I hear that someone opposes making healthcare
accessible to more people—including poor people like me and Graham—part of me
feels like we have nothing else to talk about. I don't (usually) want to argue, but it
feels meaningless to agree in beer taste if we disagree about something much
more fundamental. But I can't stop associating with people who oppose the
Affordable Care Act, because those people are my mom, her husband,
possibly my dad (we don't talk often), definitely his mother, my husband's
father, and a handful of friends, all of whom have likely become a bit more
pessimistic about the future of America at the same time I've become more
optimistic. And maybe it's good that Facebook exposes me to opinions I'm at odds with, that way I can maintain a healthy level of pessimism.</div>
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Almost all of us have cuticles and health problems, and if
someone doesn't have cuticles it might be because of a health problem, and I
don't know what about a person without cuticles would make her morally unworthy
of having her health attended to. </div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-70515291217017773072012-06-26T23:28:00.004-04:002012-06-26T23:37:30.348-04:00Can I put "grumpy mother" on my résumé?Hi, I'm Amy. I'm a mother, a wife, a perpetual undergrad, a
gin enthusiast, a cheese aficionado, a book lover and, occasionally, a cranky
lady. This is a web of facts about me, and any movement in one part of the web
makes a wave that moves the other parts of the web, and I know this because, as
I've mentioned before, we live with spiders. We live with a lot of spiders.
During an especially stressful two-week period near the end of the spring
semester I more than a few times sobbingly said, "No one can help me!" Infrequently I feel overwhelmed, depressed and horrified, but generally the equanimity of the web
mood reigns. In my web mood I feel like being a fan of books has everything to do with being a mother
and that, furthermore, being a fan of books <i>helps</i> me be a mother and being a
mother gives meaning to being a book fan. But sometimes the web is elusive
and—this isn't exactly awesome to admit—all the facts of my life feel dead
end-ish. I'm not in the middle of a moody moment right now. If I were I
probably wouldn't be able to describe how it feels, but at this happy distance description feels possible. My bad moods have almost everything to do
with being a mother. It's not Graham's fault that I'm a mother. He makes
motherhood great, fulfilling, joyful. And it's certainly not Graham's fault
that I'm a stay-at-home mother. He has never asked me not to put him in daycare,
and it's not his fault that I am emotionally incapable of being more than a
room away from him for more than an hour at a time, although his being an
adorable, funny and entertaining love sponge doesn't make it easy to leave him.
But he's also not blameworthy for being an adorable, funny and entertaining
love sponge. That's just who he is, and it is truly the happiest privilege I have
ever personally known or ever heard of to be able to watch Graham learn and grow and hug him whenever I want. But I am also
<i>responsible</i> for Graham. I don't want to <i>not</i> be responsible for him. I am glad—thrilled, elated—that being his mom is my job. Aron and I never had a conversation where we mutually decided that I would be
the one to stay home with Graham. I guess it was a given that one of us would
have to stay home with him (since we can't afford daycare), but it's surprising
to me now to realize that it was also evidently a given that that person would be me. I
am going to stop interrupting myself after this one last assertion: I'm
glad I'm the one who stays home with Graham, and anytime Graham and I are apart I get awful stomach aches, so I wouldn't survive emotionally if I had to leave Graham for long periods each day, or any day. It certainly makes sense
economically that I stay home: Aron makes a little
over eleven dollars an hour plus tips, and when I was working I made minimum
wage plus tips, and it's not like being a knocked up perpetual undergrad made
me suddenly eligible for a better paying job. Sometimes Aron asks where I want
to go to graduate school, and even in my good web moods I respond with something like, "Why would I go to graduate school?" This isn't self-pity; it's pragmatism. I
like books, but I have nothing to say about books. I'm a mother, and it's a personal rut
that can't envision myself getting out of. Not a rut. But a rut. (Confusion is
my part-time job.) When Aron asks where I want to go to graduate school, I feel
like it's as practical of a question as, "Amy, who do you want to play Nick and
Nora Charles in the remake of <i>The Thin Man</i> you're going to write and direct?" Edward Norton and Marion Cotillard, of course. If motherhood is a rut, it's a
temporary one. In five years Graham will start school, which means that, unless
I get pregnant again, in five years I will start spending my days doing
something other than raising him, and I will at that point be out of practice
in terms of focusing on what I want beyond motherhood. My bad moods arise from perspective problems. I
simply cannot see where there is to get to. I haven't found full-time, stay-at-home
motherhood to be the type of job that allows me to cultivate any of my other
interests. It's no one's fault that I am evidently incapable of
compartmentalizing. I don't even think it's my own fault. But I guess it's up
to me to get better at it, and I'll be the one left wondering what to do in five years if I don't manage to improve my compartmentalization skills. It's tricky: my happy moods result from the very connectedness
that in my bad moods overwhelms me. They're just moods, and everything is fine.Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-13397830222650610122012-06-25T17:33:00.003-04:002012-06-25T17:39:11.300-04:00Getting really pissed about tennisI enjoy tennis:
playing it, watching it, talking about it. But maybe I'm changing,
because Wimbledon is aggravating me in a major way. I can't watch, without
groaning and rolling my eyes, grown men and women have ball boys and girls (who
are just that: boys and girls)
thanklessly fetch and deliver tennis balls and sweat towels. In the past I have
told myself that it's unreasonable to expect tennis players to thank the boys
and girls who fetch their balls and towels each time the fetching is done. But
saying <i>thank you</i> takes less time than it takes to first grab a towel, second
wipe your face with it, and then finally toss the towel back to she from whom
you originally snatched the towel—the thanking and sweat-wiping could be done concurrently. Maybe you're not the snatching type, in
which case you're also not a professional tennis player. I have formerly
exempted players from being considerate on the grounds that athletes are in
some sort of hyper-focused "zone"—but if the players are concentrating so
intently on the match that they can't appreciatively acknowledge the individual
who brings them a towel soaked with sweat, then that level of concentration
should also keep the players from noticing that sweat is collecting on their
brow in the first place.<br />
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It's not as if the ball boys and girls are innocent orphans,
although perhaps it would be better if they were—the ball boys and girls are
young tennis players, and they likely aspire to become professional
players of the sport themselves. And if they realize their aspirations, the ball boys and
girls can become men and women who abuse younger versions of themselves. Not
expressing gratitude is probably not actually abusive, but it is certainly
annoying. I very rarely see restaurant or bar scenes on television or in movies
that feature patrons who acknowledge the service they receive. And I see ingratitude in
real life when I visit Aron at Starbucks. And I lived it when I worked at Taco
Stand. </div>
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It occurs to me that several responses could invalidate my
complaint about the ingratitude of professional tennis players (which is not to
say that there's a shortage of examples of professional tennis players being
extremely, shockingly ingracious—there is an abundance of bad examples). Perhaps so many nations are represented in
professional tennis that it's at best simplistic (maybe it's even stupid) of me to suggest that all players
should say <i>thank you</i> to the people who ensure the efficiency and fairness of
a match—maybe there are cultural differences that would make another expression
of appreciation more appropriate, not that I ever see anything resembling a
gracious display (except the all too frequent nod to the sky, where God, who
helped craft the greatness of the skywardly-effusive player, lives). Another
possible response to my ingracious player complaint: there may be rules in place at tennis tournaments that
prohibit players from acting like self-sufficient adults. Maybe tournament
rules specifically dictate that players <i>not</i> perform the simplest tasks—walking
towards and picking up their own sweat towels—for themselves. If that's the
case, then I'm disappointed in the sport and not just whoever happens to play it, and
that still wouldn't explain the absence of appreciative displays. And finally,
tennis players, like (practically all) other professional athletes are
sponsored by companies (e.g. Nike) that make massive profits largely because
their products are assembled in sweatshops by workers earning woefully inadequate
wages, so can I reasonably expect participants to say <i>thank you</i>, and even if
they did, would that really solve any of the true problems of the sport?</div>
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I heard Maria Sharapova—in one of those segments that ESPN
orchestrates where a player's interview responses are made to seem profound
because intense string instrument music plays behind them—say that everyone
knows how much Wimbledon means to her. Because everyone is thinking about Maria
Sharapova's thoughts.</div>
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We don't watch TV because we don't want Graham to watch TV, but Aron usually takes an hour nap with Graham when he gets home from school and/or work, and their hour in bed is what I refer to as <i>my only hour</i>. Sometimes I waste <i>my only hour</i> doing dishes, sometimes I waste it writing, and sometimes I spend it reading: today I wasted it watching tennis and getting pissed. I've heard that <i>getting pissed</i> is slang for getting drunk, and I wish that were what I meant. It's for the sake of Graham's brain that we don't let him watch TV. It's for the sake of his decency that I won't let him watch professional tennis, or collegiate tennis for that matter.</div>
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Maybe it's silly to think that this is a tennis problem. I
think Roland Barthes has a book about sports. If he thinks they're terrific I
will change my mind accordingly. I really want Graham to want to play baseball.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5888689223183523801.post-23360347982972633862012-06-22T19:34:00.003-04:002012-06-22T19:41:10.882-04:00I didn't deserve a migraineI woke up this morning with a migraine, and it was the first
time I've been sick in any debilitating way since having Graham. I felt the
migraine coming on all night (starting in my neck, crawling up the back of my
head, eventually settling in my right eyebrow, the right side of my nose, and
in my teeth), but each time I woke up in pain I would force myself back to
sleep, hoping that the migraine would subside by morning. It didn't, and I
spent the first hour of the day squinting to keep as much light out of my eyes
as possible and beginning Graham not to pinch me. Graham is working on his fine
motor skills, and the first time he pinched my arm this morning it was
uncomfortable, but I let him pinch two more times because I thought it might be a diversion from the migraine pain,
which peaked about an hour after waking up—I yakked during the peak, and then
the pain began to dissipate during Graham's nap, which immediately followed the
yakking. So it really all worked out pretty well. Graham's pinching was not at
all diversionary, as I hoped: it
just added to the overall pain, making my net pain even greater. Pain is so
strange—it's so in the moment, so in the moment that it doesn’t even feel real
anymore than I was ever experiencing it.<br />
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I didn't deserve to have a migraine today. I deserved one a
few months ago. When Graham was four months old, I started claiming that I had
become so comfortable and confident with babies that anyone could at anytime
drop a newborn into my arms, say, "Take care of this thing," and I would have
no fear about it. But Graham's beautiful cousin Eva was born Monday morning, and when I
was offered the opportunity to hold her, my muscles suddenly felt like pudding,
and I thought: "Hold her tight, Amy! But not too tight! Well, what's the right level of tightness?! Shouldn’t I
practice with an equally fragile doll first?" But while I was thinking that, my
mouth said, "Let me sit down," and after I sat, I held her with a good degree of squeeze. </div>
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On Tuesday Graham had a bath-meriting poop (very exciting
for a mother with constant constipation concerns), and when I put him in the
tub he reached for the faucet and banged his head against the side of the bath.
He cried, and I felt awful.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
I truly deserved a migraine a day from the time Graham was
four months old until Eva was born Monday, and then I somewhat deserved a
migraine until Graham hit his head in the bathtub on Tuesday. But since Tuesday
I have abandoned my toss-me-any-infant cockiness, so I didn't deserve a
migraine Wednesday, Thursday or today. And after today I think I never deserve
one again, because I was terrified by how incapable I felt of taking care of
Graham while at the same time needing to take care of myself. And as I squinted
my eyes to keep the light out and grimaced each time my eyebrow throbbed,
Graham looked at me like he was terrified too. I'm sure it was an ugly face I
made. And I'm sure it was imprudent to ever regard any human, and especially a
newborn, as easy to take care of. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"You deserve a migraine." I think that'd be a pretty cool
way to rebuke someone.<br />
<br />
***I'm feeling very emotional about Eva and Ashley, and about babies and their mothers in general, and I would like to write a post explaining all the love I feel for them, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to. I've been crying about five times a day thinking about babies and their mothers, and about Eva and Ashley in particular, but I can't really say why. They're beautiful and loving and giving, and each seems to mean everything to the other, but they're so much more to it than that, and I can't quite explain what that "so much more" is. I might try, but I might just get overwhelmed with feeling and go cry instead.</div>Amelia Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07420941642605398310noreply@blogger.com0