Nov. 5 Word Count: 14,724

This blog post was kind of a bummer to read about NaNoWriMo. It’s true, but I wish he had written it AFTER the month was over. It just kind of kills the buzz for me.

For a more positive spin on NaNoWriMo, here’s why NaNoWriMo has been such a great thing for me so far:

1.) It’s helped me to realize that I have plenty of time to write, and I make way too many excuses not to. Many people are far busier than I am, and they get it done.

2.) If nothing else, the writing I’m doing provides me with a great outline to work off of. I’m learning that topics I thought would make great chapters aren’t enough for a chapter.

3.) I write more if I feel accountable to others. I signed up to do it, I blogged about doing it, now I feel like I have to do it.

4.) When I put myself first, and my family second, my family ends up doing just fine. The kids help out more, my husband helps out more. Their lives do not collapse without me.

5.) I am a far better mother when I make time to write. I have more patience and rarely raise my voice. I spend more quality time with them.

6.) When I do something for myself, the kids are excited for me.

That’s all for now. Gotta get back to writing!

Nov. 4 Word Count: 12,014

My Evil Children are plotting against my well-hashed plan to wake up at 5:30 every morning to write. Last night I was woken up three times. Twice by one child’s nightmares, and once by Pathetic Congested Baby. I’m so tired I can hardly stand up.

I didn’t do any more writing last night. I was too busy criticizing the 18 remaining dancers of So You Think You Can Dance. Hardly any of my favorite dancers were even in the top 20 this season. The people that remain are very talented, but none of them blow me away like last season. Then I watched the first hour of By the People: The Election of Barack Obama. It was somewhat inspiration, but also quite boring.

This morning, when the babysitter came (yea! a babysitter day!) I was half tempted to walk upstairs and collapse in bed to take a nap. Instead, I packed up my laptop and drove to my local Panera, where I was lucky enough to get one of the two tables by the gas fireplace. (My Panera is a very competitive place to work. In the mornings, it looks like a corporate office.)

I’ve since slapped down another couple thousand words. But I think I’m writing too much, too soon. I’m already losing steam. I’m already starting to burn out.

 

Nov. 3 Word Count: 8,893

I wrote another thousand words last night while the family ate dinner. And some after the kids went to bed. Last night, I slept terribly so I couldn’t force myself up at 5:30 to do more writing. But my husband was off today, so he handled the baby while I knocked out 2,000 more words.

I’d love to get another 1,100 done by the time I go to bed, but I’m already burning out, and it’s only been three days. Crossing that 10,000 word mark might give me a boost of energy, though.

Right now I’m reading Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. It’s kind of dull, but the information is compelling. It’s about how instead of playing out in open fields, our kids spend hours in front of the computer/TV, in organized sports, in piano lessons or other enrichment activities, or doing homework. Some of Louv’s theories are really interesting. He claims that kids in organized sports end up doing less exercise than kids allowed to simply roam in nature. (I have no personal knowledge of this because my kids aren’t currently involved in organized sports.) It links nature-deprivation to children’s inability to concentrate and keep their behavior in check. It claims that playground equipment, which is built in such a fashion to reduce liability, greatly limits kids’ range of motion. There’s also a sizable section on nature as therapy for ADHD.

I’m beginning to better appreciate our suburban neighborhood. Our house backs up to woods. It’s bordered on one side by a stream. In front, across the street, is a small pond. When you look out any window of my house, you see mature trees, wild growth, or water. And though I’ve never considered myself much of an outdoors person, I do know that when I sit at my kitchen table, or in the office, or living room, and I can see the mature trees framing the windows, the bluejays and cardinals racing between tree trunks, the deer crossing carefully in front of our street, I feel a sense of calm come over me. When the kids were younger and not in school all day, I had the time to drive somewhere to get to nature. But now that our time during the week (outside of school) is so short, I’m glad we have some of it right here, surrounding us, where we can step into it any time of day, for hours at a time.

I used to think I would be very happy living in an urban environment. Now, I’m not so sure.

Nov. 2 Word Count: 5,248

My plan this morning to wake up before the house and write was thwarted by a toddler who was up at 4:30. It took my husband and I until 6:30 to get her back to sleep. It seems as if she’s developing the same lousy cold that three of us now have.

Still, after we got her back to sleep, and got my 7-year old off to school, I started writing. It’s 8:40 am, and I already have over 2,000 words written. My 5-year old is home from school but entertaining herself. I’m going to stop now and jump in the shower while the baby is still asleep. Maybe I can squeeze in another 1,000 words by the end of the day today.

By the way, Halloween here was awful. It rained the whole day. Thankfully, it only drizzled during trick-or-treating, but I think the weather is the reason we’re all now coming down with something. Sunday? One of the prettiest days I’ve ever seen!

Nov. 1 — 3,020 words

A few days ago, I talked myself out of NaNoWriMo (well, for me it’s NaMeWriMo). Then I read Sue’s blog (can’t find the post where she says she’s doing it) and GeekyMom’s blog — and promptly borrowed some of their enthusiasm. And then I remembered Amy mustering through the month last year, and how brave I thought she was for even attempting it. (And Amy finished!) And this rah-rah post really got me motivated.

So I talked myself out of talking myself out of it. Then I decided that I was going to make myself write 2,000 words a day. Except I’ll skip Thanksgiving and the day of my daughter’s birthday party save a few more days off for when one of us is sick.

This morning I got up before anyone else, and wrote for an hour. By the end of an hour I had about 800 words. While my husband made pancakes, I wrote down another 400 words. And while the baby sat on my lap with play-dough, I wrote another 200. While the kids ate breakfast, I got to word # 2,007, and the end of a chapter, so I stopped.

I was hoping to get a reasonable outline together before starting, but that didn’t happen. I was also hoping that the baby’s new nap time was just a farce, and that she would go back to napping around 1:00 as opposed to 2:00. (The problem now being that she falls asleep only thirty minutes before my other two walk in the door from school.)

The good news is, is that our new babysitter (who is awesome, by the way) will be watching the baby for 3 hours, two mornings a week. On those days when I have some childcare, I know I can get to 2,000 words. The bad news is that the baby still couldn’t care less about watching TV for the days I don’t have childcare. (Believe me, I tried.) The other good news is that my knee started bothering me again so much, that I had to put a hold on my gym membership. No working out means more time to write.

The first 2,000 words came easily to me. There’s something incredibly liberating about writing without the limitations of revising or editing. I can write irresponsibly and not care. But I know it will get harder. Also, I’m forcing myself to do all fresh pages — I’m not allowed to use any of the 20ish pages I have in my book proposal.

Since it’s only the beginning, the ideas are plentiful, the writing is invigorating. This afternoon, while the baby was napping and the older two watched a movie, I wrote another 1,000 words. I’m wondering whether I should try to write 3,000 words a day for the first 10 days, while I have the energy and the adrenaline going. But my 5-year old now has a fever and will be home from school tomorrow. I’ll just have to see how it goes.

Bring on the caffeine and the Halloween chocolate. Only 47,000ish words to go.

Just Another Smart Alec

I’m hoping news of the Baby Einstein refund, as well as the admission that these annoying videos actually didn’t do crap for our kids’ intellect, squashes the entire “educational” toy industry. I never bought Baby Einstein or any other educational videos for my kids. When they started regularly watching television, the very first thing I ordered were the Classic Mickey Mouse DVDs. You know, the shows we grew up watching — where Goofy is going skiing and slams into the side of a mountaintop. Violent, violent stuff, but even at age 36, I still laugh my ass off at them.

Revolutionary Road

We seemed to have started a mini-movement in our neighborhood. Most days afterschool, my oldest gets on her bike and rides around until she finds kids to play with. Some days, she has to do this two or three times, because the older kids have hours upon hours of homework, or are at lessons of some sort.

But ultimately, my daughter is successful in gathering a decent-sized posse of kids who then play hopscotch on the driveway, roll down the hill in the backyard, or bike back and forth through the neighborhood.

Before my 7-year old was allowed to ride her bike around the neighborhood by herself, many of these kids never, ever came out to play on a weekday. Now, they’ll come around anytime the weather is decent.

Here’s something totally unrelated that I need your advice for.

What do you say when children who are not your own, make comments about their own weight? Like what if one girl said, “My ballet teacher makes us do jumping jacks so we lose weight,” — when this very child is not only thin but extremely fit? Or what if a child says, after you’ve offered her some food, “Oh, I exercised today, so I’ll allow myself to eat some.” Or, what if a child says the most shocking thing of all (when a child is already thin)– that her mom or dad says she needs to lose weight?

What if these kids are only 9 years old?

Usually, I exclaim a little too loudly, “What? But you ARE thin and strong and so great at running/biking/dancing!”

But should I say something else? And what do I tell my own daughter, after these kids go home. Do I initiate a discussion about weight and body consciousness? She’s not quite 8 years old. How do I talk to her about what her friends say about their own weight?

New Beginning

Friday I received the weekly e-newsletter from my children’s elementary school. I’ve been in a good mood since. Why?

Our school will begin the school year TWO WEEKS LATER next August. Instead of starting at the beginning of the month, in the middle of summer, we will be beginning at the end of the month! That’s two weeks more of swimming at the pool, two weeks less of my children roasting on un-airconditioned school buses in the afternoon, two weeks more of our summer break corresponding with my friends’ and families’ kids’ summer breaks — which gives us more opportunities to spend time with them. I can actually plan a vacation in August, instead of trying to get my kids to fall asleep at night when there are still two more hours of bright daylight.

I’m beyond thrilled, can you tell?

The county was looking at ways to cut costs, and I guess they finally realized that since August is by far the hottest month of the year, starting school later will reduce costs for air-conditioning. (Though one would wonder why they didn’t push the start back until after Labor Day and end in early June –  since early June is still moderate.)

This morning I read this piece by Peggy Orenstein in the NYT. Here’s a quote:

I’m not wishing the Internet away. It has become so integral to my work — to my life — that I honestly can’t recall what I did without it. But it has allowed us to reflexively indulge every passing interest, to expect answers to every fleeting question, to believe that if we search long enough, surf a little further, we can hit the dry land of knowing “everything that happens” and that such knowledge is both possible and desirable.

I couldn’t agree more. I almost never read gossip magazines (People, US Weekly, etc.), but now if I hear someone say something about a celebrity, I Google it to find out more. (Like Jon Gosselin. I know way too much about that fellow.) I spend a lot of time on it because it’s there. What about you?

*   *    *

Read my next piece at skirt!, because I said so.

Cheaper than Therapy

Last night the ladies of my book club were at the house ’til almost 11:30.

There is nothing more cleansing than a really hard, loud laugh. And we do this regularly at book club. There are also sad, tender moments for which we all sympathize with and then process together. And whether we talk about the book or not (last night, only one person finished it and the rest of us found it too boring to finish), each gathering nourishes my soul. I’m so thankful for this camaraderie.

I know I said I was never going to look for a babysitter again, but over the weekend, I logged onto SitterCity and decided to look through the caregivers in my area code just one more time. And, voila! Multiple sitters, very close by, were generated. I found three college students — two of whom are majoring in early childhood education. All three returned my email promptly, and were out at the house within three days for interviews. They all seemed wonderful.

I’m  so relieved at the prospect of having help if I need it. There are upcoming events at the girls’ school, that I’d really like to help out with — and I can’t really bring the baby. And maybe one of these nights, my husband and I can take in a movie.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Photorealism

My parents did not have much when I was really young, but what they did have was an enormous library of National Geographic magazines. Their subscription dates back to the 1970s. I can remember the covers of those magazines for different periods of my life. Our coffee table was flooded with bright yellow bindings. The particle board bookshelf in our office had rows of them.

There’s a story behind why my mom wanted a subscription so badly. When she was a child, her teacher at school showed the class a copy of a National Geographic magazine. My mother was in awe of the photographs. Afterward, she asked her teacher how she might be able to get a magazine. Her teacher dismissed her completely, “Oh, these are for teachers. Not for kids like you.” The teacher could have meant anything by her comment, but given her particularly vitriolic tone, it’s most likely she meant poor Hispanic children like you.

My mother’s revenge? A lifetime subscription as soon as she could afford it.

A few years ago, my mom decided it was time to give some of the very old copies away. She found a place to donate them to. But still, there were many more that remained. When she heard about how empty the bookshelves were in our living room, she said she had just the thing. On the next visit, she brought by some of her National Geographics. My kids laid on the floor for hours flipping through them.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me to get our own subscription. Maybe it’s time we got one.