31

Happy birthday to me!

Nothing

I got nothing. Last night of November, last night of Nablopomo. It really wasn’t much of a pain until tonight.

I heart December.

100 things about me (part 4)

Part 1, 2, 3. Because really, only 70 things about me would just not have been enough.

71. I still find it hard to believe that I can do work I believe in AND have a family.

72. I still can’t believe I have a family of my own.

73. I can’t believe how much I love them.

74. I’m particularly amazed at my committment to a being I’ve only known for four months.

75. I used to worry that I would think my baby was ugly.

76. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

77. I’m scared to parent others because I can’t imagine loving them as much as I love this one.

78. Parenting a black man is a challenge I hope I can rise to.

79. There is so much to protect him from.

81. I hope that as a white mama I can prepare him to deal with racism.

82. I believe that feminists have a responsibility to raise gentle, feminist boys.

83. I don’t worry that my child doesn’t have a dad who is actively parenting him.

84. I do worry about making sure we have enough men in our lives who are good models for him.

85. It pisses me off when people who are raising their children in all-white environments ask me what I’m going to do to make sure my child has male role models.

86. Being an anti-racist seems like one of the most important things I can do for my family.

87. I might still want to get pregnant someday.

88. I don’t care about having a biological connection to my kid but I would like to find out what it’s like to grow one.

89. I don’t want Roo to be the only non-white person in the family.

90. If I could create my personal heaven it would include sea kayaks.

91. I think in a former life I was a sea creature. One that lived in cold water.

92. I fall asleep on my way to the pillow every single night.

93. I’m really proud of myself for breastfeeding Roo.

94. I’ve been a bookworm my whole life.

95. Mostly I read fiction and sociology books.

96. And cookbooks.

97. I drank diet coke every day until I was 26.

98. When my Dad was in the hospital I lost my taste for it and haven’t had one since.

99. I switched to coffee.

100. I couldn’t live without coffee.

Home

No time to write. I have a wife to kiss, a baby to hand off to my co-parent, cats to snuggle, and a pillow to hit.

I’m so glad we’re home.

Thanksgiving

Belated thanksgiving…

I am infinitely grateful that I am not a single parent. Infinitely. Single parents, I kiss your feet. You are even more amazing than I previously thought. And that’s saying a lot.

I am also thankful for the “sliver” approach to pumpkin pie. It means that the sliver sisters - me, my mother, my aunt, and my great-aunt - were able to attack two-thirds of a pumpkin pie tonight in itty bitty tiny pieces. No one actually ate a piece but somehow miraculously at the end of 6 minutes there it was, gone!

I feel ill.

Sigh

Have handed Roo off to my Dad and fled for a few minutes from parenting. Thank you, dad.

Thirty-one people at dinner today. Ten of them under the age of 6. At any moment, someone getting a diaper changed, someone crying, someone in a ballerina outfit, someone jumping off the coffee table.

Bedlam and too much turkey.

Goodnight, all.

Spotted today

Baby wearing a t-shirt that said “Please don’t give my parents any unsolicited advice.”

I must have one for Roo. The closest thing I could find was this. Any ideas?

100 things about me (part 3)

I promise I’m going to get to all those questions you asked me… sometime soon when I’m feeling a little less brainless. For now, I’m continuing with the way-more-than-you-ever-wanted-to-know series…

50.  One piece of my culturally Jewish inheritance is that I don’t know how to take care of people without feeding them.

51. I think I’m a good cook.

52. I’d like to be a great cook.

53. In a parallel universe I would be a chef.

54.  Food makes me very happy.

55. Especially garlic.

56. And dark chocolate.

57. And tomatoes. The heirloom ones from our CSA.

58. The CSA is one of my favorite things about the warm months around here.

59. I love supporting local farmers and getting to stuff my face with incredible food in the process.

60. Occasionally, when I freeze corn and make sauerkraut it also allows me to feel like a farmer instead of a die-hard urbanite.

61. I’m kind of a foodie except I won’t eat mushrooms, eggplant, beef, or pork. This dulls the tarnish on my foodie badge a little.

62. The fact that 12 of my 100 things are about food should tell you a lot about me.

63. I haven’t earned a dollar in my adult life that hasn’t been from a non-profit organization.

64. I hope that doesn’t change.

65. Non-profits are dysfunctional, but in a way that feels like home.

66. I can’t imagine doing a job I don’t like.

67. I’d be a much meaner person.

68. I have a much better quality of life than I ever thought I could have when my salary comes from work I believe in.

69. My first job was of the weekday + weekend + nights variety, and I thought (wrongly) that I could keep up that pace for the rest of my life because I loved the work so much.

70. It was the first time I knew that I could actually get paid to do what I used to do for fun.

100 things about me (part 2)

22. My grandmother disowned me for about an hour and a half when I told her that we were adopting Roo, who is biracial.

23. I’ve always wanted to be an adoptive parent.

24. I never thought I would adopt a white baby.

25. I figured my babies would have a dad.

26. Instead they will have 3 moms and a dad.

27. I met my wife at a party.

28. The first conversation we ever had was about how on earth anyone ever meets anyone at a party.

29. We got married 4 years later.

30. I’m not a huge believer in marriage.

31. I do believe in rights, though.

32. I also believe in our relationship.

33. Every single day.

34. We had a little ceremony all by ourselves with no witnesses and then had a wedding 3 months later.

35. I’m glad we did it this way.

36. I loved our wedding.

37. I would never plan another wedding in a million years.

38. One of my favorite things about our wedding was having our whole community-by-choice there.

39. My life is pretty much defined by a constant search for community.

40. For about a year when I was 22 I had exactly the kind of community I wanted.

41. I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since.

42. I think it has something to do with being an only child.

43. I would never (by choice) have only one child.

44. Five years ago my father almost died.

45. When he was sick I couldn’t believe how small my family felt.

46. He almost died because he’s an alcoholic.

47. We didn’t know it until then.

48. I have a great relationship with him still, but a different kind than we had before that.

49. I have a great relationship with my mom too, but it’s more complicated in that mother-daughter kind of complicated way.

Why I live where I live

I like this Q and A thing. It gives me some good blog fodder. I’m looking for more. I got about 6 posts worth from the last time I solicited questions but hey - if they wanted to hear less from me hey should have made NaBloPoMo February. So if you have more questions, ask away, ‘k?

Anyway, Laura asked:

Do you think you’ll live where you are for the rest of your life? If not, what other states are appealing to you and your family?

Today seems like a good day to ask that question because this week’s hometown politics freakin’ ROCKED.  We elected a democratic governor - and (at least from what we can see) a progressive. When I went to vote on Tuesday I looked at the ballot and realized I could safely vote for green party candidates for practically every statewide office to prove a point without worrying about being a spoiler.

Yesterday I wrote to my rep and senator about opposing the proposed ban on same-sex marriage and realized that BOTH of them already do - no convincing necessary.

Blah, blah, blah. After growing up among the Dixiecrats, it’s hard for me to resist this kind of political atmosphere. Dude. We have RIGHTS.

I’m 1100 miles from my family. That sucks. But that’s what airplanes and Amtrak are for. And I married a woman whose family is all within an hour of us, and there are compelling reasons to stay close - potential nieces and nephews, a degenerative illness, etc.

The better things get for us here the less we can see ourselves leaving.

There are only two other places that have felt like home to me - meaning that they have what I need, not that they feel like here - Vancouver and Seattle.  I need good politics. I need high standards for food. I need water, preferably an ocean. I need people who care about things like sustainable living and kayaking and locally owned bookstores and public transportation and making eye contact with strangers on the street (okay that last one is missing here at home but you can’t have everything). Vancouver and Seattle both could fit the bill well, I think. We even have rights in Vancouver. But it’s a fantasy only for now.

Okay, here’s a story about how strangers treat each other: After we got married we took ourselves off to Newfoundland for two weeks, which was phenomenal and amazing and stunning. We went white water rafting one day and had a great conversation with our guide, a native Newfie, about how nice people are there. She told us first about a conversation she’d had with someone in town about locking their doors, and how her neighbor had been concerned that if he locked his door and someone got stranded in a snowstorm they wouldn’t be able to get into his house.  Then she went on to tell us that she had liked Toronto when she was there visiting a friend, but that people didn’t say hi on the streets. I guess, she concluded, there are too many people there for that - you’d have to go around all day saying hi! hi! hi! hi! hi! and you could never have an uninterrupted thought.

Yeah, New Englanders are friendly like that too.

What about you? Where would you live if you packed up and went?