flattery

A former professor has flattered me into agreeing to write an 800 word review of a book about gender in the Middle East.
He called me "brilliant."
No, I am not getting paid to read the massive and probably depressing book or to write the very long review that will be published in an acdemic journal that many people love to read and criticize (hence forcing me to write in an agony of self-doubt).
Damnit.
Flattery. It works. Damnit.

And a pitch for an article for a magazine is taking wayyyyy to long to get past the editor. It's not even an accepted pitch and I've spent hours on it. Again, no money!!

I've really got to stop working for free. I work for free at home already (cooking, cleaning, etc).

I write this blog for LOVE. :) And to prove that Hugo can climb stairs.

Although some flattery would help too.

Oh, America, America.

I know, you aren't surprised. I'm not sure why I was.
That I cried during Obama's speech on Tuesday. And that Vita and I both cried, sitting on the floor, Hugo asleep in my lap, the TV glowing like some messianic cloud.
That's what it felt like - revelationary. Hopefully Obama will also be revolutionary.

Unlike those dumbasses who voted against unmarried parents being able to adopt or foster.
And who denied gay people marriages or legal civil unions. And the even dumber asses (worse because they should know better) at the Globe and Mail who subtitled the story about it as a "family values" story:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/freeheadlines/LAC/20081106/ELECTCALIFORNIA06/international/International

No way. Homophobia and meanness are not family values.
Homophobia and mean-spiritedness are how fear, self-doubt, fragility and emotional laziness manifest.

So, Americans are good for electing Obama.
And many of them are horrid for being legal homophobes.

Who is the cutest baby tiger EVER?

gross

I'm writing.
There was a rock slide and I can't go and see my parents this weekend. God. I mean, if there were a God, it would be an irritating one.
And some stupid lady in the pool the other day asked if Hugo's name was "ethnic."
And I answered by rambling on about his name and other lame and not-lame baby names, nervously filling the politely racist air.
In said ramble I noted that "People are all over the Old Testament names these days. Which is so weird."
Stupid racist lady said "My son's name is Zachary. "
I said nothing.
"And I'm 38 weeks pregnant. It's a boy. We're naming it Elijah."
Just so you know, she was in the pool and I couldn't see her pregnant self.

Note to self : when someone says "ethnic," excuse myself for an emergency. Like peeing. Or looking at clouds.
Effers.
I don't want to be mean to pregnant people. Even if they deserve it. Did she deserve it? Am I a meanie?

And Hugo's going to be an awesome stripey tiger tomorrow. I bought his costume. Did not make it. Not at all. Yet another surprise of what kind of Momma I am. Cartoons : sure!!! Store bought costume : yahooo!!!!
At least he's back in cloth diapers. Close brush with the convenience of plastic. Ewww. Plastic. Grody gross grodessy grosssss plastic pee diapers.

Dishevelling Writerly Anxiety Hides Behind Ugly Doll

And may I add that although, in yesterday's late-night-posted-photo, I look like a dishevelled ex-hippie-turned-pseudo-indie twentysomething,
I am actually a dishevelled, actual, PhD student turned mother.
And still a PhD student.

And a happy one. I went to the YM/YWCA last night to swim. I swam for half an hour. I sat in the steam room. I sat in the hot tub.
This was perfect.
Today I went back to the Y with Hugo for Baby Splash Time. Hugo loves the water and he isn't afraid at all. He wants to jump in - he wants to dive into the fountains - he wants to do a backstroke across the kid pool.

I know this is boring. Here's the thing : I think of a lot ineresting things to write, and I have odd interesting moments all day. And they are sometimes disturbing, or provocative, or curious. But I'm scared to write them down. Because then they are real - but they are real only in the way that I write about them. My written record of these important events becomes the thing : the thing is no longer itself. My writing is.
And my writing is not up to the task.

hee hee.
photo booth IS hilarious!

Rampage of Cute

Hello friends.
Hugo is asleep. Vita is asleep.
I'm awake and I'm not tired - yahooo!!!
Hugo and I went on a long walk - inspired by autumn, which is my favourite season, and by an interview in the weekend Globe and Mail by a doctor who prescribes things like "drink more water," "get one more hour of sleep a day," or "go for walks." It works. People get better!
And so I feel great after walking with Hugo for a few hours. I did some errands and we went to the playground at the Mission Creek greenway. It's one of my favourite playgrounds.
There are always tons of kids and parents and dogs there, and Hugo likes people and pet watching.
And I am, despitecertain troubles with my family, pretty happy. Life is alright. I have a lot of love, a lot of goodness around me.
I mean, stress is always there, right?
Unless we are lobotomized by TV, scrapbooking or money. Even then, CSI is scary, fancy paper is ridiculous and money : bah!
Hugo's hilarious, and I'm attaching two photos. I'm not that good at blog formatting, so who knows where the pictures will end up. But they are both autumn pictures. One is curious Hugo, sweet and standing up with his cousins. One is Hugo rampaging through our house. A rampage of cute.

Homework

OK, Mikara gave us homework.
My happy list:
-snuggling wuth Hugo
-seeing Hugo happy
-going for long walks, especially in the fall and spring
-running
-reading great books
-getting published
-friends
-relaxing with Vita
-paying off debt
-eating lots of vegetables


I know, you may not believe me on the vegetable one. But really!! mmm. A big bowl of tasty veggies just makes me happy in my body and mind.
Getting published is probably one of the more difficult items on the list. Hugo is easy to make happy, relaxing is easy, eating veggies is easy, paying off debt is irritating but not complicated.
Friends are the best.
Wow. How could we get by without one another?

Scared : And this is a picture of one of Edmonton's Prettier Spots

I started to write a long post complaining about what is bugging me.
But I think it made everything worse.
In any case, I'm sure I'll be cheerier by, say 10 pm. Bedtime.

I'm scared of school. Scared that it is too hard, that I am not smart enough, that I don't have enough time. That if I don't find a babysitter NOW I will be way too behind to ever catch up.
Gotta go.

mongolian trim

School is back.
Um. I had a meeting with my supervisor.
She just got back from riding a wild horse with a wooden saddle across the Ghobi Desert.
I am not even kidding.
She was, she described, fairly humbled by the experience.
She said that "the transcendentalist" in her head was messed with : everything is land, horizon is endless, and now sitting at her desk writing emails is just plain odd.

I have bangs.
A haircut may not be a horse ride in Mongolia, but it's pretty damn exciting in my life.

In the photo I am showing you how fantastic I would look with a facelift.

Appreciate or Else

The summer is over. I know because our summer guest has left.
She got, the day before leaving, "traveller's fever." She told me this so as to explain her sudden diet of dry bread, garlic broth and strange cups of tea.
She put chunks of ginger, two mint tea bags, and sugar cubes into one of those big Starbucks coffee cups. The soupbowl sized cups. And then drank it, cold, all day. The tea looked greasy and green. Apparently that is also how she looked at the airport. Eva doesn't like travelling.
I'm talking about Eva, the mother of the father of my child. My mother-in-law, but I don't really like that title. It's too accurate. And Eva, or as I call her in the privacy of my mind, "She Who Communicates in Mysterious Mutterings," is never an accurate communicator.
She did do a lot of housework. The house SHONE. Hugo ate off the floor a few times and it was cleaner than the table is now that she's gone.
And she loves her grandson. She spent a solid month playing with him, trying to teach him Czech, fretting about his bumps, farts, rashes, poops, naps. I'm glad he has so much love.
And there is nothing like really getting to know your in-laws to really get to know your spouse. Holy Insight.
I appreciate Vita a lot.
And I love my baby.

Drool to Be Happy

Every time I think I am losing any academic competence, something good happens.
I mean, something like a scholarship or a nice email from a smart and scary professor happens. This time around something even better happened - I finally understood Deleuze.
Deleuze is a dead French philosopher. Ah, Gilles Deleuze.
Gil, I call him, for short.
I've been reading and writing about Gil for 4 years now.
I think that everything I wrote about Gil, up to this past week, was wrong.

Last week I was laying bed, Hugo drooling to sleep on my tummy, and as I drifted to sleep myself I thought, "Damnit, Gilles Deleuze might just be total nonsense. Maybe it is all baloney he just made up and nobody really understands it. Maybe Gil is the snuffalufagus of post-post-structuralism."
And at that blessed (I mean blessed in a strictly immanent, atheist sense) it kicked in.
I saw in my sleepy mind an image of a herd of elk.
And I recalled Gil's passage about nomadism and deterritorialization.
And the elk, smelling a bit like horses and a lot like dust, deterritorialized as they ran, as they moved, loud and warm, as one.
Which means I finally figured it out.

In no way does this mean I can explain it to anyone yet.
Wait another 3 years for that.

Inexplicably happy, I am now writing about it all. About pine beetles, lodgepole pines, the Chilcotin, MacBlo, moose, elk, trappers, loggers, tourists and trains.

And Hugo is still drooling. Happily.

bestestest

We went to Enderby to see M and A and A and M's Dad and significant other.
It was really really purty there.
The river is cool and wide and fresh, and the trees were tall and leafy and shady.
Hugo was happy the entire time and he slept the whole way there and back.
Mucho happiness.

Friends are the bestest.

kakakakamamamamdadadada

Ah yes, time flitters by and my baby gets cuter while I get more shrivelled looking.
"It's all worth it! I had 32 years of solipsism! Who needs to look good? Who needs to ever wear jewellery again? Who needs to remember to wear deodorant?"
Except for the last item, I'm cool with the changes parenting brings.
Hugo is so damn cool. Last week I let him play with a potato. He yelled his super-happy yell and hoisted that sucker all around the house.
And he tries out new expressions every day. Today he was closing his eyes - squinting them - when he smiled. Kind of like a fake-smile with a laugh.
One day last week he said two new words in one day, both at the right time for the words to actually mean what they mean. Both were Czech, and both words now mean either water, poo, duplo, dollie, boob, bunny, book or parent. I think, basically, Hugo has moved from Chomsky's structuralist notion of language aquisition to a more Derridean deconstruction of supposed static semantics. Boy genius.
Plus he poops in his potty.

Love Bug

Hugo is asleep. OK, I should let you know that "Hugo is Asleep" is an exclamation. Always.

This past week it has taken between 2 and 3 hours to get Hugo from the sleepy eye-rubbing stage to the totally asleep in bed stage. By which time I am exhausted and cranky and cry just looking at the dishes and laundry waiting for me. Well, I don't really cry. I just swear a lot. At the dishes.

Tonight it went much better - it's apparently all about having a routine! Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a routine-friendly person. Nor is Vita, Hugo's Daddy. We regularly forget what day it is, how old we are, and when we were married.
But we both agree that this, indeed, is worth a routine : Hugo sleeping means Mummy sleeping means Daddy sleeping means a lot more happiness and a lot less crabbiness.

Today was day two of the new routine: dinner in the high chair, short playtime, bath or shower, little massage and pjs, then a few books and a cuddle with blanky, and then bedtime.

Hugo is coming around to it. He is pretty darn smart, so I'm sure he'll figure this one out.

This is a photo of Hugo with Asa. Hugo's got a lot of great friends - Asa, Noah, Rasa, Abi, and Keighley are his main pals these days. Such a social, curious, determined fellow. A chubby, exuberant love bug.

happy yell!

This is actually Hugo's third activist t-shirt. The first two had more singular messages; he has moved on to slightly ironic messages now that he is 6 months old.

As with the Pettman household, Sick has moved in.
And there are only two of us to coddle Sick! Yet . . .

i start to get better, and then some todddler wipes snot on hugo at playgroup and then hugo sneezes and then i sneeze and then he is sick and then he is better and then i am sick and then . . . i have been healthy for approximately 5 days since hugo's birth.

But I have never been happier!!

hugo has his Fifth tooth coming in! i can't believe it. a mouthful of sharp little chiclets.

and with my home delivered Settlers of Catan came the world's cutest stuffed owl.

thanks. :). hugo really really likes it. he grabs the stubby wings, stares at its owly eyes and yells.
happy yells!!!

snax

i know, i'm a posting fiend.

my brain is all fuzzy so i can't quite deal with my school work. i can post though!!

i have hyperthyroiditis.

the good part is that basically, anything i screw up from now on, for the rest of my life, i'm going to blame on my thyroid . . .

convenient!!

and it explains why i currently eat more than any other human i know, have lost weight for the past month, my hair is falling out, my brain is fuzzy, and i get all dizzy.

it's easy to treat, so that's awesome.

kind of really good to know what is going on. i'll know more next week, too, once i see a specialist. the health care here is pretty darn good!!!

ok, i 'm off to snack. i snack a lot.

what i meant to say last post was this.

I haven't had time to write posts, but I did need to get the cutest pictures ever up for your pleasure.
And it's hard to know what to write about.
Perhaps:
1. Weather - total ass. the weather is the ass of ass. minus 28 and then a mean prairie windchill.
2. Health - mine, not so good. going to the doc tomorrow to find out what is happening. hopefully she just hands me some horse sized vitamins and tells me to get some more sleep. hah.
3. Love - I love my baby. Seriously, he is so cool. He laughs, he babbles, he LOVES it when i play guitar for him. He found his knees recently.
4. Travel - I'm flying to Kelowna in a few weeks, so if anyone is around there, please come and hang out with me and le bebe. And then in the summer Hugo's Czech granny is coming out for an entire month. She doesn't speak any English, so it'll be tons o' fun hanging out on the beach and at Orchard Park Mall. We'll be in Kelowna.
5. Reading - about the Cariboo Chilcotin.

I like my peeps and miss you all. :)

Go Hugo!

Hugo, yes, is oddly co-ordinated beyond belief in this picture.
He's awesome.

ouch

Teething.

Poor poor baby!! Two dagger-like teeth digging up into his gums.

I dream of sleep

Ok, the first thing I'm going to write about here is a bit gross.

I thought that since I haven't been pregnant for four months, things woul dbe normal-ish with the bod.

But now I am enjoying post-partum hair loss.

Kind of ewww.

My hair comes out in creepy piles.

Like a runaway pet.

Apparently it'll stop falling out soon.

Hugo is awesome, and he's pretty close to crawling. I mean, I really don' t know, never having done this before . . . but he does scrunhc his knees up under his legs and then push like crazy.

It turns out I'm going to stay in school - hurray! My other option was living with my parents, so, yeah, it's good.

My supervisor is cool. She asked me if I have much time for work, and I said, well, about an hour.

An hour a week.

She seemed fine with me working at this pace, and I'm glad she is proving to be a feminist in action, not just words.

I'm tired. Will I ever get enough sleep?

I was thinking of what I would do if I could do anything I wanted for, say, four hours.

I would sleep.

Everything is Better with Baby

Baby and I had a great time in B.C.

I especially liked: playing board games; hanging out at the house of M, K, A, and A or M.A.K.A., I like to call them; looking at the blue blue sky of the cariboo; eating My Mum's mincemeat tarts (we call them mincemeat farts); visiting my awesome Uncle in Kelowna at his palatial house with huge leather furniture, Persian carpets and enough food and movies to wait out the apocalypse; having a lovely visit with Hugo's Daddy and seeing them bond lots and fall in love with each ; other, and generally seeing Hugo see B.C.

Everything is better with baby.

Even Alberta isn't so bad.

We're going to a "parenting" class tomorrow. Yes, I am suspicious. Yes, I signed up for it of my volition. Perhaps just to cruelly mock it, perhaps to eagerly seek a Mum friend, perhaps in hopes of free things. Perhaps to learn something.

I will report back.

Here is what Hugo can do now:

smile, laugh, kick, google, coo, perform Deleuzian rhizomatic analysis, almost roll over, and hold his head up.

He rules.