Declan's Saturday mantras

"YOU are a scientific FACT!" (Said to me last night.)

"Silly makes you a man!" (Said to his father today.)

And to further prove to me that he's already a ladies' man, the neighbors had a three-year-old girl over for a cookout tonight. Dan spotted her over the fence and took a break from blowing bubbles for Declan to blow a few in her direction.

When Declan found out there was a girl nearby, he started shouting "let me see her! Let me see the little girl!"

Dan held him up to look over the fence.

"SHE'S BEAUTIFUL!" Declan yelled.

We opened up the gates and they ran through both yards like loons, wore each other out, then hugged and said good night.

Mommying, blogging & watching mommies blog

I've been backing off the blog a little lately. Dec's been craving my attention a lot, so doing things like refill the bathtub three times in a row so he can watch water go do down the drain and yell "LOOK MOMMY! IT'S MATTER GOING DOWN A BLACK HOLE!" while telling me exactly where the event horizon is located in the tub so that I won't be spaghettified has kept me from meditating as much on motherhood.

I keep looking at the calendar to make sure he's still two. He is. Just a couple more weeks to go before his third orbit around the sun is complete. When I wait until he's asleep to brush the tangles out of his hair or I have to carry him past a bumblebee to help his father plant a lilac bush, I wonder how we got so close to three so fast.

When I don't feel like writing, I still read blogs by other mothers. And I draw a lot of strength and comfort from their brave and open words.

Meanwhile, mainstream media is still asking questions about whether or not mom bloggers are exploiting their children, rather than more prescient ones, like what networking and a sense of community among moms from everywhere might do for women and motherhood. For the life of me, I can't figure out why people on television insist on treating the Internet like the boogeyman instead of trying to capture our imagination about its possibilities. I guess that's why I spend more time with my computer than the television.

The Today Show did a segment that was mostly okay about mom blogs today. You can watch it here. The news portion was the more informative of its parts, and the live interview with Heather Armstrong of Dooce was great, in spite of Kathy Lee's apparent need to spontaneously ooze that mom bloggers were irresponsible and unconcerned for their children's safety at the end, without giving her any chance to respond. Armstong's answer to the general criticisms of mommy bloggers, which made me cry, and is far more worth reading than the Today Show is worth watching, is here.

Megan of Velveteen Mind has also collected a lot of resources for and about mommybloggers here.

I really look forward to the time when I get a chance to meet some of the women I now know so well by Tweet handle and blog (10-4 good buddies). I had tentative plans to go to BlogHer this year, but SkyBus had to go and fold. Being that I'm one of two people with an uncertain financial future in my household, now is not the time for me to go blowing a big wad of cash on one of the most expensive cities in the country. Oh girls, how I wish I could be there. But maybe I'll go to Startup Weekend here instead.

Revolution - it's easy peasy!

My solution to living under a government that doesn't represent you, age 9 (click to enlarge & read):
While recently helping to clear out a room at my mother's house, we unearthed a trove of my writing and artwork from grades 1 to 11 (I skipped 12). I'm having fun revisiting my pre-adult brain.

Butterflies can't kill you

I keep trying to slot in times of the day or week to clear my schedule and my mind of everything but Declan. I've been worrying a lot about work - existing deadlines and the work of finding more work - which has made me less patient, less present with him. And a boy as open to and curious about what makes the universe tick needs his mommy to be present, if only because she has little prayer of keeping up with him otherwise.

Yesterday, we took him over to the Franklin Park Conservatory just as they were getting ready to release the butterflies that had emerged from cocoons the night before into their rain forest garden. Plenty of others were already swooping around in their awkwardly beautiful way. The place was swarming with children, hands outstretched, hoping for one of the creatures to land on a fingertip or palm. Meanwhile, at least three Blue Morpho butterflies flapped down within inches of Declan's face, and a smaller, yellow and orange one took momentary refuge on the tray of his stroller.

He recoiled, pressing himself as far back in the seat as he could, as though they were there to suck his nectar-y blood. Yet he still talked about them scientifically through a clenched jaw - about how they come out of a chrysalis, about how they eat, about what they were before they were butterflies.

For reasons I'm not sure I completely understand, Declan can unflinchingly consider meteors, black holes, colliding galaxies and the various ways that the earth could meet its end, and yet feel abject terror in the face of bugs. I had thought that butterflies were an exception to this - he runs after them on nature walks to get a better look, and loves to talk about their metamorphosis. He loves to say "metamorphosis" and "chrysalis."

His interest and his fear conflicted visibly on his face. I got him out of the stroller and he clung to me for dear life, even as the crowd and the butterflies were far behind us. He was weepy and uncertain. We left through an emergency exit. He was napping before we got home.

I thought about how much alike we can be - how hungry for information we are, and how no amount of research or discussion can guarantee any certain reaction when we come face-to-face with the thing we thought we understood.

When he woke up, I stayed faithfully his for most of the evening while his father was in class. We played one of his favorite games, where we put books in a circle, he spins a bowling pin in the center and then we read them one by one. Then we watched Sesame Street (I tape it on the DVR), where Elmo's segment was devoted entirely to... bugs. Declan watched it, beaming.

The helix smooch

Here's a demonstration of the "Helix smooch."

If you ever wondered what it would be like to be kissed by a planetary nebula (or maybe any old helix), it's apparently a sloppy ordeal delivered with a lot of enthusiasm.

Last night, I prepared corn on the cob for the grill, pulling out the silk and laying it on a newspaper on the counter. Declan looked at the white-gold strands with their brown ends and asked "what is this sad grass?"

After dinner, he informed me that he was going to Mars to "check on the polar ice cap" but that he would be back before bedtime. And he was. By his estimation, the ice cap "was white and it has some ice and there was some melting space."

In case you were wondering.

Estrogen, euphony and domestic ennui

I have been slowly dragging music off my CD shelves and into my iPod for the past couple of weeks. Between my past (and future) life as a music reviewer and Dan's history as a music promoter, this process is bound to take awhile.

As I made tall stacks of favorite CDs yesterday, I began to realize that the percentage of recordings I grabbed made by women was significantly smaller than I imagined. That's strange because I think we listen to more music by women in this house than many families do. It's also strange because for the years that I regularly wrote CD reviews, I was one of the only female music writers in town, and assigned a disproportionate number of albums by women. I didn't mind this for two reasons - I felt it was important that a wider number of female musicians got some press exposure, and it just so happens that solid, worthwhile female songwriters and performers have been coming out of the woodwork for the last 15 years.

As I listen, I'm amazed that while some of these women are still thriving (or struggling) in the music game, a few have fallen off the map entirely. I've scraped together a few links of songs I find worthwhile by the critically acclaimed and the obscure for your listening and viewing pleasure. There are 30 second samples on iTunes, full videos on YouTube and a free little playlist with the same title as this post that I may grow as I can (although getting my first song choice isn't always feasible). The process has made me consider podcasting, but we'll see.

My rule as a reviewer has always been to listen to a recording three times. Sometimes I've fallen in love with records I hated the first time through, other times things that I liked on the first listen bored me to tears by the third. I hope you enjoy these:

Sam Phillips
One of my favorite songwriters and performers, period. Although her lighter stuff had its ultimate life on the TV show "The Gilmore Girls," her records are dark, Gothic and gorgeous.
A Boot and a Shoe, "Reflecting Light": (Or "I Need Love" on YouTube)

Amy Rigby
Known as the "Mod Housewife" with pigtail braids and striped stockings back in the when, a lot of her songs are domestic ennui personified. She's now living in France.
Diary of a Mod Housewife, "We're Stronger Than That":

Angela McCluskey
I just like this woman's voice. She has also apparently expatriated to France, where she sings with a band called Telepopmusik.
The Things We Do, "It's Been Done": YouTube video,


Caitlin Cary
A member of alt country band Whiskeytown, her bandmate Ryan Adams went on to bigger fame, while she's cut a few fairly well-received records.
I'm Staying Out, "Empty Rooms":

Rosanne Cash
I realize that she's part of a major musical dynasty, but the emotional catharses she she shared on Rules of Travel and Black Cadillac about life, illness and death are just timeless.
Rules of Travel, "Beautiful Pain":
(Or, from the same record, the haunting duet with her father, "September When It Comes" on YouTube.)

Iris DeMent
I didn't like her old-timey voice at first, but it grew on me and I love her songwriting.
The Way I Should, "The Way I Should":
(Or DeMent's video on YouTube of Let the Mystery Be.)

And here is a woman who was in alt country band The Blood Oranges and had a solo record called "The Northeast Kingdom" that I adore, but it's nowhere on iTunes or any playlist I can find. Sadly (for us anyway, probably happily for her), I understand that she's making soap and raising flowers in New England, far from the turmoil of the music industry. Her name is Cheri Knight:




Here's another woman who did some interesting things by blending music and slam poetry. She went for some easy laughs, but when I saw her live, I found her to be better than a novelty. She's dropped of the map, but of you ever watched MTV when they actually played music, you may remember this video: Maggie Estep's "Hey Baby".

And here's the playlist, with the songs I could find from these and some other artists:

What female artists do you love or feel haven't gotten enough exposure?

They even inquired about you

Earth Day: Five flowers I love and why

Roman Chamomile
Not the bastardized version that every cosmetic company now synthesizes and manufactures into dish soaps and shampoos, but the real, beautiful, soothing, medicinal thing. (And not German or Wild Chamomile, either - Roman!) The name means "ground apple" because of its sweet, fruity scent, and it had been used medicinally for everything from childbirth to malaria. The true essential oil costs an arm and a leg, but a dropper's worth can be put into a few ounces of a cheaper base oil like sweet almond or jojoba and after a week or two, the whole bottle will have the scent. I like to grow the plant in the summertime, somewhere near a doorway, and brush my hands over it as I come and go.

Lavender
If your child has the "evil eye," and is constantly invading the thoughts of others with his or her mind, lavender can clear that affliction right up! (So say the mythology books.) Another herb that I like to grow in high traffic areas so I can touch it regularly, and to which no fabric softener version can compare, the calming properties of lavender aren't a myth in my book. It's also the first flower I remember, growing along the side of my childhood house.

Hyacinth
Hyacinth was a young man beloved by the Greek god Apollo, who inadvertently killed him with a poorly thrown discus. I love the flower because it grows from a bulb, and, save some the challenge of keeping critters from digging them up for lunch, bulbs are the easiest things in the world to plant. They are also among the few bulb-grown flowers that are truly fragrant. Declan and I planted about a dozen bulbs last fall, and we've been enjoying their scent in the kitchen this week. (I cut them and bring them in when they get tall enough to start bending over.)

Delphinium
In the garden I always think I want, I'm surrounded by blue flowers - a bit of sky on earth, or water on land. There are creeping vines of morning glory, blankets of phlox, lean irises and tall sprays of delphinium, which can have several shades of blue on a single stem. Each petal looks like a mini-horizon. The name derives from the Greek word for dolphin, because of the diving shape of the blossoms.

Dandelions
I never had much use for these beyond the fun of blowing the fluffy ones apart when I was a kid. But these days, my son likes to pick flowers for me. Because we try to be good citizens who don't pillage the gardens of city parks or our neighbors, Dan steers him toward dandelions and other little weeds. They usually come to me in little bouquets, tied with a stem and accompanied by kisses.

But the blooms wither quickly, which upsets Declan, because he wants his gifts to last. So we've taken to putting them in water.


Happy Earth ("Earf") Day.

Nothing rhymes with orange

Windows of distraction

Jen over at one plus two listed seven windows of her soul and asked us for our own. It was just the distraction I needed this morning to clear some of my writing cobwebs, so I thought I'd share my answer here, and add a couple for good measure. Go visit her and share yours too.

1. The swing set, marshes, bulrushes and our little dock on a cul-de-sac that opened into an expanse of water - the view from my bedroom in my childhood home in Oceanport, New Jersey.

2. The view from the guest bedroom at my grandparents house. There was a gigantic hill we liked to roll ourselves sick down in summer, where neighborhood teenagers came to sled on winter weekend nights until my grandfather played Taps out the window on his trumpet to get them to leave.

3. The windows of the giant, obnoxiously purple bus that first took us up the Santorini cliffside. I mistook my nausea for anxiety about it tipping over, when it was mostly the early stages of morning sickness. (Not that a giant purple bus making hairpin turns on cliff sides didn't turn more stomachs than my own...)

4. The lilting frame the locust tree leaves and branches make around a piece of sky on our back deck when we lie down on our built-in bench. And the small, second-story window where Declan often looks for the rising moon.

5. The view of Mount Norwottuck outside my campus apartment in Massachusetts - it made all of Hampshire's ugly 1970s architecture go away. So did my enchanted pine forest there. There's one so much like it in Yellow Springs, Ohio. All pine forests feel like rooms.

6. The door that opened up to a hammock, rocks, then the sea on Isla Mujeres on our honeymoon.

7. The windows of a beach house in Rhode Island we used to visit in the summertime after we moved to Ohio. Not because of what I could see, but what I could hear, and how very well I slept.

More people are taking part in this writing prompt, courtesy of Jessica at Oh, the Joys. Here is a list you can snag to put at the bottom of your post. If you join in, let me know and I'll add you to the list:

jen with seven windows of my soul
Jessica with Eleven Windows
Tracy from Tiny Mantras
Defiant Muse from Musings
LSM with Windows
Mrs. Prufrock
Sugarplum's Mom
jakelliesmom
Arwen
Kaliroz with windows
BarrenAlbion with seven windows of my soul
Arwen with windows to my soul
Somewhere in the suburbs with windows
Karen with eight windows
Jennifer with Seven views