Harried Homemaker

Coda for my thesis--(Draft)

2011-07-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Coda: The Role of the Player

“The play's the thing”--Hamlet

At the first rehearsal of a recent production of As You Like It, which I had the privilege to observe, the director opened the read-through of the script with the words “Now, it's Good Friday today, so feel free to crucify yourselves.” He meant, of course, that the actors were welcome to approach the script with as much creative gusto as they liked and ought not be too self-conscious about it. A sound piece of advice I thought, and one that I find too often actors need to be reminded of—especially when they approach Shakespeare. The simple reason, I expect, is this: modern actors favour character-focused interpretations over plot-centred ones. Such an approach assumes that Hamlet's value of “that within” is greater than a man's outward actions and that the truth and value of something is dependent upon its inward emotional manifestation. We have already examined the dangers of this approach for the actor. However, we have said little about the quality of the performance it produces.

As a part of the Elizabethan repertory system, plays were produced at frequent intervals. Andrew Gurr notes in The Shakespearean Stage that the players “can have had little time for doing more while studying their parts than the essential learning of the lines”(103). They performed 6 days a week and each day demanded a new play. Gurr observes that, “The Admiral's in their 1594-5 season...offered their audiences a total of thirty-eight plays, of which twenty-one were new to the repertory, added at more or less fortnightly intervals” (103). Such frequent introduction of new plays would hardly have allowed for in-depth character interpretations. As such, players were often type-cast to some degree according to their talents and plays were often tailored with the talents of the particular company in mind. While actors were admired for their versatility, the breadth of their talents rather than the idiosyncrasies of their interpretations were the real attractions.

By contrast, the modern actor is concerned with producing realistic and complex emotions on the stage. The preparatory work of the actor often involves a labour-some psychological background study of his character, including the invention of that character's biographical history. It is an extensive individual creative process. Similarly, in the modern production of Shakespeare plays, the design and direction of the play often involves careful and particular decisions aimed at offering a unique concept and fresh approach to the play. This approach or interpretation is frequently based on a particular message or issue of great personal importance to the director. In other words, the modern theatrical production is not only carefully crafted in its every detail, but is also essentially self-referential.

There is no question that Shakespeare took the purposes of playing very seriously, that his plays offered much more than mere entertainment, and that much of his own personal interests, beliefs and ideas must have gone into his writing. But the concept of a play or of that play's characters could not have been intended to overshadow the scripted play as a whole. The practical and business lives of the company members would have made such detailed artistic refinement impossible.

As such, many of Shakespeare's plays give trouble to modern actors and directors because they must invent non-existent motives and explanations to account for scenes or dialogue, which may have been intended as little more than an entertaining interlude to display the talents of a particular player. Such an idealistic approach to the script can, in a way, be admirably reverential. The assumption behind this approach, I imagine, may be that Shakespeare's genius is such that one must only stare at a play long enough and like a Magic Eye stereographic it will reveal its ultimate unifying truth. All the director needs to do to make sense of the play is figure out the meaning and purpose of anomalous scenes or bits of dialogue.

No doubt this approach is partly symptomatic of the past two hundred years of character-focused criticism, but the expectation that each play should be a consistent unified revelation of truth often leads to the most fantastical interpretations of characters and the creation of ever more bizarre play-concepts. And perhaps more unfortunately, it leads to the alteration of the script in order to aim at such concepts and present a unified play. Such a production is not one of the author's invention, but of the director's and the players'. The play is lost in the concept of the play, the character is lost in the concept of the character and the play, and the humanity of the production is lost in the concept of humanity represented by the production.

Part of this problem, I think, is due to the widely accepted method of characterization first introduced by Constantin Stanislavski, and now taught almost universally as part of an actor's training. Stanislavski invented what is known as “method acting” or “the method.” The basic principles of his approach involve an actor's use of his personal memories or actions on stage to produce convincing emotions. The actor is not performing a fake emotion. He is endeavouring to produce the emotion psychologically through memory or action and to react to it genuinely.

Most actors utilize method principles to some degree and many of today's most lauded and versatile actors are of the method school. Audiences value the believability of an actor's stage performance and there is no question that method principles help bring about some of the most marvellous and complex character interpretations which audiences cannot help but admire for their texture and realism. However, because the actors are looking at themselves and focused on their individual emotions as a way to tell the story, they are too often busy finding the truth of their character's emotions to tell Shakespeare's story instead of their own. The overall value of the play as a whole is often diminished

The loss to the performance is threefold. First, the method-actor whose performance is self-referential, runs the risk of never really performing anybody but himself. There is a sensationally funny scene in David Mamet's State and Main in which an actor is insisting to his director that cuts must be made to the script before they begin shooting. When the director asks his film star why a certain line must be cut the actor responds, “Because he wouldn't say that.” What the actor really means of course is that he himself wouldn't say that. With this attitude, the character is perceived by the actor as just another incarnation of himself under different circumstances and the craft of acting amounts to little less than self-indulgent fantasy.

Secondly, the actor who uses a self-referential form of characterization, while often pulling off brilliantly complex creative performances, also contributes little to the unified effort of the cast of a stage play. Method techniques may work wonderfully in film when one can cut and paste different shots or re-record dialogue to create a certain flow and consistency. But on the stage the players must work together to tell a story in real-time. I recall seeing Paul Gross play Hamlet in Stratford, Ontario several years ago, and while his performance of the character was quite compelling, the play itself was utterly forgettable. None of the actors were really talking to each other—least of all the lead, and the story was again eclipsed by the character.

Third and finally, the actor who is self-referential not only cuts himself off from his fellow actors, making for a disjointed production, but he also cuts himself off from his audience. This approach is easier because it involves looking no further than himself for emotionally stimulating material, but it is also easier because it is safe. While I was observing the rehearsals for As You Like It the actor playing Orlando was struggling with his opening speech and the coach recommended that he try not to allow the energy of his speech to build up in his shoulders, but to come from his gut and be cast into the audience. He tried the speech again in this manner and the result was beautifully engaging. The coach asked him how he felt about it and he replied that it was scary. When I asked him why, he said that throwing his performance out to the audience made him feel as though he was vulnerable and not in control. The actor who plays himself on the stage is effectively playing himself in disguise. The character becomes a barrier between himself and his audience and therefore any real contact with his audience is greatly diminished. The emotions he portrays are all genuine, but since they are not offered to the audience the loss to his performance is great.

In many instances I would argue, especially in the production of Shakespeare for the stage, what this approach amounts to is a disappointingly inconsistent play-experience. Shakespeare clearly felt that a person's actions, as opposed to emotions or intellectual thoughts, to be the determining factors of their character, both on and off the stage, and while there must be a certain amount of preparative thought that preempts a performance, method acting encourages a self-focused, emotive view of the craft which lends little to the talents of the actor, the production of a play, or the experience of an audience.

What Shakespeare seems to promote is an unself-conscious approach to acting which assumes a certain acceptance of one's part in the company. The clown may be free to extemporize but he was not free to play the hero. Nor indeed was the hero free to play the clown. In A Midsummer Night's Dream Shakespeare makes fun of the idea that being an actor proffers complete freedom to choose one's part. Bottom the Weaver repeatedly interrupts the handing out of parts in rehearsal to beg that he might play each one as well as his own, and while the absurdity of his excitement is almost endearing, the clear message is that every man must play his own part or there can be no play. Some men must play the heroes, others the lions, others amount to nothing more than a wall. The play is greater than the parts within it. This principle applies not only to the company of players, but to the world at large. The player's contribution to society is complex and important, but it is nonetheless a humble part to play and appears perfectly ludicrous when it is taken too seriously.

What am doing here? : Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog

2011-03-10T09:22:00.000-08:00

When I was considering what I should write my Honours paper on my first thought was that I was very sad my venerable Children's Lit prof (Kieran Kealy) had retired when I was in Britain because I wanted to do George MacDonald for years and the only Christian professor left with a remote interest in him was too sick to take on an Honours paper. I still had some inhibitions about Shakespeare then because after years of disappointing road blocks to my ambitions I was accustomed to thinking of Shakespearean theatre as inaccessible to me. So my next idea was Connie Willis and I spent a good two months frantically emailing everyone in the English department to see if anyone had heard of her. No one had.

Connie Willis writes Science Fiction, also known as SF by the initiated (as opposed to Sci-Fi). I know this because my Mum is a writer of the same genre and I gather that people who write "SF" actually know what they're doing and happen to be among the more brilliant and unappreciated writers of our particular literary era. This is because the education system functioning in most western countries is invested in teaching students to reject things which are exciting and fantastical as mere entertainment for the plebeian masses. Writing must be dull, depressing, and political to be remotely intelligent and worthy of note. I suspect this is why Connie Willis has remained below the notice of anyone at UBC.

I will openly confess I do not like SF myself and I can give no intelligent reason for this except that in general I prefer magic to science (though they are often indistinguishable) and for some reason most futuristic fiction bores me because it does not appeal to my feminine appetite for frilly fantasy with flowers and songs and long-haired maidens and beautiful elves and quaint hobbits and medieval-style battles. Science offers a backdrop of hard lines and cold technology. I enjoy it on television, but I cannot read it.

However, Connie Willis is one illustrious SF writer who really breaks out of the genre entirely in To Say Nothing of the Dog and some of her other novels and short stories. She is a Science Fiction author for people who don't like Science Fiction. The more I think about it the more I am convinced that only SF writers (and only ones of particular genius like Willis) can integrate so many genres into one piece of writing. To Say Nothing of the Dog is historical fiction, romantic comedy, mystery, and farce as well as SF. It's got something for everyone and, like much Science Fiction, it is also incredibly profound.

To Say Nothing of the Dog is the 3rd time-travel story which takes place in Willis' futuristic Oxford. I know I read it before I went to Britain because I had a very different picture of Oxford in my head the first time I read it and after I had been to Oxford, the book came alive to me in a different way. It is the story of Ned Henry and Verity Kindle, historians and time- travellers whose mission is to discover what happened to the bishop's bird stump and to somehow prevent the space-time continuum from collapsing accidentally.

If this brief description doesn't sell it to you I won't be surprised. I myself had great difficulty reading past the first three chapters. This is because you spend the first three chapters wondering what the heck is going on. Willis drops you right into the story, like one of Oxford's time-travelling historians, with no idea where you are or what is going on and it takes you 3 chapters to figure out that either you or Ned or both of you are suffering time-lag and you haven't a clue where you're both going or what to expect on your mission or indeed what your mission is even about because everyone keeps talking nonsense around you and all your historical and literary preconceptions are muttering in your ear about the role of women in Victorian society and where the fish fork goes and what science fiction novels and literature should be like. And bang!-- you're in the past (probably) and your trying to figure out what time it is and where you are and what the heck you're doing there. You thought you were going on holiday to recover.

It really is a piece of genius that is so rarely appreciated because the reader is often so grounded in the prejudices of his own literary era that he doesn't realise he's being used as a character in the bigger story itself. Instead of seeing where the story will take him and trying to figure out his place in it at large he gives up on the Grand Design-- a victim of our current literary era which emphasises the role of Blind Forces in the shaping of the world and art by extension. Our role in the great tapestry of earth's history is meaningless, nonexistent, which means so are we. This is why we are so completely obsessed with our individual identities and spend our lives (and obscene amounts of money too) in the interest of self-fashioning. We care less about what we do in our lives on a daily basis with others and more about what we can call ourselves to set ourselves apart from the meaningless Blind Forces and give our lives soe significance.

Both Ned and the reader experience the same displacement and it isn't until Ned mistakenly takes up with one of the "contemps" in Victorian Oxford that he begins to realise the gravity of his situation. He is NOT there on holiday. This is NOT about him. He has a very specific mission to perform, but he's too muddled by time-lag to remember what it is, and if he doesn't figure it out the entire space-time continuum could collapse or the Nazis could end up winning World War II--which pretty much amounts to the same thing: the world will tumble into chaos and evil.

Of course Willis does all this very humorously with Ned nearly being run over because it didn't occur to him that the horn he kept hearing wasn't the All-Clear siren of the Battle of Britain, 1940, but a bloody great stream train coming down the railway--which ought to have been obvious because he was standing on the tracks. How often it is that we are amidst the obvious answers to our problems and can't see them because of our ignorant "chronological snobbery" (as Lewis would call it) which enables us to assume that we are much better informed than all our elders. Time and what we now call "education" has really done nothing for the human race but help us to assume that because hindsight is 20/20, we therefore see perfectly clearly in comparison to everyone that came before us. As a matter of fact, all it means is that we have a much bigger muddle of information to sort through and are therefore aware of less of the world. I am sure that the internet has only reinforced this notion.

As Ned floats down the Thames with Terence (the contemp-- ie the Victorian) and Cyril, (his bulldog), he realises that not only is he not supposed to be there on a pleasure cruise, but that missing the details of his role in this historical mission could be disastrous. He knows that the historians in Oxford are researching every last detail of Coventry Cathedral before it was destroyed in the Blitz so that it might be rebuilt in perfect detail by the unstoppable Lady Shrapnell in Christ Church Meadow of all places. He also knows that the hideous piece of Victorian kitsch, referred to as "the bishop's bird stump"-- a cast iron urn of some sort-- is missing somewhere in history because it was not in the cathedral ruins after it was bombed, but it was there only a few days before and they cannot figure out when and where it was taken from the cathedral before the bombing. And though every historian on the project thinks it ugly enough not to bother recovering Lady Shrapnell insists that "God is in the details." This is how Ned ended up with time-lag in the first place-- he was flying all over the past trying to figure out what happened to the damned thing.

The "bishop's bird stump" is the Macguffin-- the thing everyone seems to be voluntarily or involuntarily chasing after, though it seems insignificant in itself-- it drives whole the plot and as a matter of fact serves as the perfect illustration of what we all really are: hideous, presumptuous creations that are neither aesthetically pleasing, nor particularly intelligent, that convey no obvious meaning and are base imitations of whatever fantastical nonsense seems to be popular in our own time. We are "cluttered, artificial, and...mawkishly sentimental." Nevertheless, we are all important details in one great creation that needs to be rebuilt, beyond all odds, because it has been destroyed in spiritual warfare.

This idea that we all have a role, that we are all important details in Creation, so great that we cannot actually perceive our own significance, is the main thing that blew me away about this book. It may be summed up by the often quoted maxim "everything happens for a reason." And this was not exactly news to me when I was at college. I recall years earlier talking about life and eternity with Dad-- I was probably 14 or 15-- and he told me that the history of the world is like a tapestry or painting and that we can't understand it because we can't see the whole thing. I'm not sure what occasioned this conversation but the idea of a Grand Design was not new to me when I read To Say Nothing of the Dog. What was new was the idea that I had an important role in the picture and that the things which happened to me in my life, good or bad, would ultimately be significant details, not only in my life but in everyone else's life too. I could not even begin to imagine how every detail of my life was affecting the lives of those around me.

When the bishop's bird stump goes missing Ned meets Verity, who has unwittingly created her own temporal incongruity by bringing a Victorian cat through to the future-- something they had always thought was scientifically impossible. The "net" or time-travel mechanism would not allow incongruities. They needed to return the cat to Victorian England and find the bishop's bird stump to prevent the space-time continuum from collapsing and of course everything they do to try to "fix" the problem only seems to make it worse. But in the end they find that everything they have done, intelligent or (mostly) otherwise, has been drawing them nearer and nearer to solving the mystery and preventing disaster. Time is altered slightly, the mystery is solved and the detectives go home to find that The Continuum has repaired itself, the Heavens are declaring the glory of God, both in spite of them and because of them.

The pagan notion of an inescapable Fate is redeemed by making the events that befall us in our lives not ultimately about us nor about nothing, but about all of us and everything. This is where Christianity transforms things. Where individual self-sacrifice to the Blind Forces which seem to shape our lives and make us believe in our insignificance becomes the Redeeming Force that changes everything and moulds it into the Grand Design. Christ did not seek out His death, but when the blind men nailed Him to the Cross it changed all of Creation and He allowed it to happen to Him for all of us. It had never occurred to me that accepting my Fate, such as it was, was actually submitting myself into the hands of God and allowing Him to use me in the redemption of His Creation-- if only I could stop looking at the world in hopelessly time-lagged dementia and see God in the details I could save not just me but all those around me.

This has been a hard hard lesson for me to learn and I am still learning it really, on a daily basis. We have the cursed luxury in the modern Western world of believing ourselves in control of our lives and we have all kinds of technology to assist us and reinforce this belief that we are our own. Letting God tell you what you can and can't do because you belong to Him is terrifying. Most of us Christians pretend we have faith in God, but the truth is I only have faith in Him when I already know what's going to happen to me and think I've got things in my life under control. It takes stepping into unfamiliar territory, taking a degree at a secular university, fleeing to a foreign country for two years, stepping into a marriage, opening oneself up to childbearing, throwing oneself into parenthood, going back to college at 28, to realise that we're at God's mercy. We might be insulted, defaced, bombed, revealed as foolish, but God doesn't want us to disappear and He'll seek us out and make sure we're there on the Last Day and in the Age to Come because we are all heroes in His epic Creation.

Keep Pedalling: C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves

2011-03-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

I don't recall precisely the first time I picked up C.S. Lewis' The Four Loves. I read Lewis a lot in first year at UBC because he was a refreshing change from bullshit and something about his beautifully written, often intensely personal, and easily penetrable prose combined with his good common sense was just what I needed. It made me feel safe and a hell of a lot less confused.

I spent a good portion of my first year at UBC in the atrium at Regent College, the non-denominational Christian college. They boasted a terrific bookstore where I rediscovered the George MacDonald of my early childhood as well as entire Lewis and Tolkien sections. That year Lord of the Rings came out in theatres and I'm sure that was another draw at the time, for while Lord of the Rings cannot truly be among the most important books of my life, it was a part of my youth and reminded me forcibly of my parents. It contained a rich world in which Christianity was made almost epic without being explicit, and most importantly it taught me courage in the face of the outside world. Its popularity and Regent's extensive Tolkien (as well as Lewis) section was my access to my past and my future.

The most stunning part of The Screwtape Letters for me was the part where Screwtape reprimands Wormwood for allowing his patient "two real positive Pleasures" because it would "make him feel as though he was coming home, recovering himself." I cannot count how many times this has happened to me. It is always a little uncanny, but not in an unwholesome way. It is disturbing not for what it is in itself, but always because of what I am in myself in comparison to the reminder of the self God wants me to be: the kind of person those real positive Pleasures reveal to us, the people we used to be before our lives were clouded with nonsense and sin.

The Regent College bookstore was a refuge, a safe haven. Plus their cafe had delicious Lenten soups. I read a lot of Lewis that year, but I'm not certain The Four Loves was among them. My earliest memory of reading that book was when I was in Scotland. By then I had abandoned UBC in frustration, and disgust. I'd abandoned poetry in disappointment and Canada in misery. Love was something I needed to read about by then. I had no direction either at UBC or in my personal life. I was young and lost and far far away from home trying to figure out who the hell I was.

Culture shock is agonising. It is best described as waking up in a foreign country and realising you've been operated on by some anonymous, abstract and menacing power and come out of it with a different face. I literally looked in the mirror one day in a cafe loo on North Bridge and did not recognise myself. I cannot stress enough that this was neither because my actual appearance had changed, nor because I hadn't looked in a mirror for a month. It was because the internal me was radically different and somehow that radically new me was staring back in the mirror.

The only explanation I have for this is that we are what we do and what we do is indefinitely determined by who we interact with. We behave in certain ways with certain people. It's kind of like changing masks, like mimesis, but to call it pure imitation is a little too simple I think. There is give and take, and habit is a powerful personality determinant. Sometimes I wonder if this adapting to one's environment, which has a lot to do with one's ability to read social cues, is not only a more North American thing (Britain has more eccentric people per square inch than any place I've been), but also maybe not a particularly healthy thing. I think it must be a natural process--openness to change is a good thing for the soul, but I think it is sometimes considered an end in itself and prevents any real kernel of individuality to stick. The soul must have some stability as well as flexibility. In any case, I was in a country with no one I'd known much longer than I'd been there. Everything I did was new, everything I said was new. Those who knew me at the time will testify I had a bizarre half-Scots accent and I swear it was unconscious. One day I looked in the mirror and there was a flash of who I was and who I had been.

The new me was not a bad me, I should say. It wasn't the same kind of wake up call one gets when one suddenly realises the Enemy has slowly and silently sucked them into sin. But the sudden shock of realising you don't know quite who you are was very similar. I had been through a tough year. Scotland wasn't the half of it. My personal life had seen more ups and downs that year than any other. I had been a student living with her parents, whose church was English speaking and full of people who loved her and thought she was brilliant, whose ambitions were artistic, drama, poetry, art, who was working her brain and heart to outwit the hounds of the secular university, always single and able to picture herself braving the world alone and winning. Suddenly I was lost, ignorant, untalented, weak, working at a picture-framer's--a trade job. I was dating an Orthodox guy who was more opinionated than I was, that I had nothing on because he was cradle AND his dad was a priest, a priest radically different from mine. Church was like the Tower of Babel--different ethnic factions argued openly during the service about which language they should be using. No one thought I was great if they noticed me at all. I couldn't sing on key, I knew nothing about music, and I couldn't read Cyrillic. And no one took communion. Every week I trudged up to the chalice guiltily with the children and a few old ladies. I had no time to write. No idea who I was or what the heck I was doing.

This is a very grim picture of Edinburgh. It was not as bad as that all the time and it was a fairly young parish at the time. It has since grown into a beautiful little community, very different from St. Herman's in Langley, but most places are and I do not regret the growing pains I experienced in that parish. Nevertheless I was at sea within a month of moving there and church compounded the problem.

There was a terrific bookshop on South Bridge near where I was staying briefly on Drummond

Street and they had a boxed set of C.S. Lewis' apologetic works: Screwtape Letters, Miracles, Surprised By Joy, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, and The Four Loves. I had definitely read Screwtape and Surprised by Joy while at UBC, but The Four Loves was, I'm certain, new to me. And for the first time in my life I was actually experiencing love in a real Romantic messy way.

My courtship with Greg is not something I look back on with nostalgic longing. It was hard. It was hard like things that are real are hard. I'm fond of telling people I was only in love with him for two weeks: after that it was work. And it was harder because we'd been "set up" and prompted to expect that we would be great together. Discovering that we drove each other nuts within a couple of weeks was not fun. But we had many important things in common. The night things got complicated was the same night he told me he thought he might like to marry me, but it wasn't the early use of the "m" word that complicated things. I was shocked to discover that I felt the same way even though I told myself it was crazy. What followed was a year of me figuring out who I was while Greg tolerated, begrudgingly, his foreign girlfriend's dramatic mood swings and battle with culture shock. I don't believe in "taking a break" from marriage. But before marriage I think it is a really healthy thing to do and I'm sure if I hadn't left Greg in Edinburgh for 6 months to move to Oxford I never would have figured myself out and we would most definitely not be married.

What does all this have to do with C.S. Lewis and The Four Loves? Well I picked it up during the phase of my life that I was figuring myself out. The book describes four distinct forms of love. The first three, Affection, Friendship, and Eros (romantic love) are earthly, natural loves, and I was experiencing them all intensely in ways I hadn't before.

Affection for Lewis was partly need-love (ie the kind of love that one needs from others) but what it often needs is to give love. It is the domestic love and the love which develops in unlikely places through familiarity. I was near nothing familiar and desperate for Affection. Sometimes people land in strange places and immediately find family. People take you in. Affection was something I needed. I didn't find it till I got to Oxford over a year later.

Friendship is the ideal love for the medieval man-- the love that develops out of common interest. It also has needs. It happens when two people realise that they are doing something together that they like, be it as dull as collecting stamps, and form an attachment over it, over a meeting of minds. Greg and I had nothing in common. He liked riding bikes at a billion miles an hour down mountains and skillfully building picture frames and music. I liked music but by his standards I was a plebeian and he made no secret that he thought so. He was a high school drop-out too. We had led two very different lives before we met. He was smarter than me and more talented and I was good at nothing which interested him. I was a writer, a university student, a poet and a theatre person. I was from a vastly different Orthodox tradition. Sometimes I wonder what the heck we talked about for those first few weeks. I had no other friends in Edinburgh to talk to. Not really. I was busy trying to make myself a "friend" and adopt a passion for his interests.

Then there was Eros. Ah Eros. It fuelled a good two weeks and no it was not about you-know-what. Lewis calls that "Venus" and I will not deny it had its place in our early relationship, as befits a chaste, unmarried Orthodox couple, but Eros is quite different. And for a good two weeks that's what it was about. In love. Soaring, tumbling, stumbling, where-am-I? in love.

One night we had THE TALK. The one where it's not just about the two of you now, but who you have been all of this time and who you want to be: the big step, where you go from enjoying each other to really knowing each other, which includes filling in the gaps, even the ones we'd rather forget. It was uncomfortable, it was painful. Oh dear God, you're not an angel! That was when it got messy.

It got messy because after that we were people, and people, generally, SUCK. After that our relationship had to be about something else. It couldn't be about Affection-- we hadn't been together long enough. It couldn't be about Friendship. I'm not sure it's ever been about Friendship and I'm not sure it ever will be. And Eros can only take you so far. As Lewis points out, all earthly forms of love, if we treat them as gods, they become demons. All love eventually becomes hatred if it is not guarded by the divine form of love: Charity.

I think the majority of my relationship with Greg has been about Charity, the self-sacrificial love. The kind Christ had for us. I say this observing that it has been thus for both sides, because I would not like anyone to think that it has been hard for only one of us the whole way. But our sinful halves have been fighting it tooth and nail and the figuring-out-who-we-really- are has played its part as we struggled with our earthly expectations of Friendship and Affection and lasting romance: our needs, our demands, for affirmation. For when left unchecked by Charity, these demands were vicious, towering, abusive assertions of independence and authority. Charity means letting yourself be nailed to the cross.

Lewis' book put me in my place and reminded me who I was and who I belonged to. When Greg came to Oxford to visit me for a weekend, I knew he was the right one because he spent his afternoon reading it the day before he proposed-- and not at my recommendation.

The night before we signed the papers in Leith I couldn't sleep but I had the most truly spiritual experience I'd ever had before or since. I knew the saints were there and they were telling me to do it. Flying down Leith Walk towards the registrar on the tandem bicycle in our wedding clothes, a fight broke out. We were going too fasting, I felt like I was falling and stopped pedalling. Greg barked at me to pedal and stop trying to counterbalance. It's been like that the whole way, me leaning one way and him the other, him flying on ahead, me screaming at him to slow down. Charity keeps the bike from falling into traffic, but it's a scary unpleasant ride sometimes and all you can do is hang on and keep pedalling. But when you get there, you get to do the nearest thing to a free act you've ever done. "Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say 'I am what I do.'"

Return to Modesty: Sex, Feminism and the Domesticity Debate

2011-03-04T17:09:00.000-08:00

I picked up a book of G.K. Chesterton's for the first time the other day because I am writing a term paper on rebellion against traditional forms of domesticity in the the inter-war period. I know: gripping. Chesterton was an outspoken advocate for the traditional family at a time when the Victorian ideal was under attack. The First World War left an entire generation shattered not only physically (through war wounds), but psychologically, politically, and socially. Chesterton felt that the attack on family values exacerbated the fractured psychological state of many Europeans and was detrimental politically as well. National identity was beginning to replace social identity and the casualties were both men and women, but most importantly children. Born into a world in which the home has no boundaries to separate them from the assault of capitalism, socialism, feminism, materialism, and atheism, children were given a more than daunting, perhaps even impossible, task of making sense of their world-- a job women were leaving for the State to manage.

This topic greatly interests me at the moment because I am currently trying to figure out precisely how to reconcile my responsibilities as a mother with my ambition to do more in my life than parent and keep a house. On the one hand, I do not think that mothers should abandon their children to "the State" for the sake of having a "fulfilling" career. Children need their mothers as much as possible, and while I understand perfectly how difficult it is to spend all day, every day even with one's own children, I do not think one's career ambitions should be a higher priority. If they are, maybe think twice about having kids. The procreation of children isn't a right and while some mothers have no choice but to put their kids in full-time daycare, it is not ideal and we should not behave as though parenthood should come without any sacrifices of our time and energy.

On the other hand, I think that many women of my generation have be raised in a world where they are expected and encouraged to pursue careers before having children. I think this is a good thing. Women have varied intellectual needs, the same as men, and not all women can feel satisfied with with a purely domestic life. God gave us other faculties that we ought to be able to use if we can. And I firmly believe that it does children a lot of good to know that Mummy's life isn't all about them all the time. Otherwise they will never appreciate the sacrifices she makes for them, however glad she may be to make them anyway.

These issues were becoming quite serious during the inter-war period and they remain pertinent today and especially for me at the moment as I try to juggle school, a possible forthcoming career, my marriage, my current two children, and my hopes for more children down the road. Feminism vs. Christian ideals are suddenly of interest to me again.

When I first began my Arts degree in 2000 I quickly discovered that most studies in the Humanities were really about two topics: Sex and Feminism. No matter what great poetry or works of literature we read, the only issues pertinent to our class lectures were these two. And I found myself severely outnumbered and up against some pretty tricky stuff that I hadn't had to deal with in high school. In high school, topics on the ethics of abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, pre-marital sex, and drug or alcohol use floated around the school among the students. I was a well brought up Christian whose parents never ever refused to engage me in discussion about these issues or treated me condescendingly if I happened to express a less than Christian view-point. They merely asked me to think very carefully about why I was saying what I was saying and pointed out respectfully why they thought I was wrong. I remember these discussions as early at 10 years old. But I'd never seen anything like the attack on my long-held Christian principles than what I got in first year university. It was good for me, but it was a struggle.

The biggest struggle by far was the issue of sex. All kinds-- for there are many you see, and even pedophilia was raised as something that our culture ought to think about accepting, because of course sex, is the true expression of who we are (to these people) and so should therefore be as free as possible. We were reading Nabokov's Lolita, which tells the story of pedophile Humbert Humbert and his sexual exploitation of Lolita--12 years old. The first half of the book was pretty hard to get through and I was appalled by Vanity Fair's quibble on the front that the book was "The most convincing love story of our time." Sadly, I think Vanity Fair may have been right, but I think that was ultimately Nabokov's point-- to criticise or at least openly display the selfish, exploitive nature or modern relationships in a world where the social constructs, which used to divide children from adults, men from women, mothers from fathers, have all been torn down. Moral duty is almost meaningless without them. Whether Vanity Fair meant "romantic" and "ideal" is not certain, but the post-modernists tend to prefer and idealise "convincing" stuff rather than that which is truly uplifting, beautiful, or traditionally ideal. We pretend it's beautiful because it makes it easier for us to be ugly people.

But pedophilia was not the only or major issue. Homosexuality was also a big one. Or even boring old adultery and sexual promiscuity were exciting topics of choice. Now I was

single and modest and all this talk about sex made me very uncomfortable, particularly because we never ever talked about normal marital sex: ie the kind almost everybody is having. One would almost think that normal domestic life was as gone as Pompeii: nothing but tragic plaster-cast statues of emptiness signifying destruction. All that was left was depravity. Let's pretend it's great.

This was certainly the attitude many took to traditional values after the First World War. In a way, time stopped for a whole generation and those who survived lived in an obliterated social landscape, no rank, no role in society, nothing but empty holes in the shape of a dying race. And yet they were free to do whatever they wanted with their dearly bought freedom. Instead of rebuild and repair, a great many of them tore down all the last remaining fragments of the old world and did their very best to build up everything in utter mockery of it, as though the old world were to blame for the destruction in the first place.

What I was trying to figure out that year was why the old world was worth preserving. I knew it should be preserved. I was Orthodox. We go in for tradition, and good thing too because it is very silly to tear down something when you don't actually know what it's for-- as Chesterton would say. That is when I discovered Wendy Shalit's Return to Modesty.

Return to Modesty was Shalit's final thesis for her philosophy degree (I believe) though probably heavily revised for publication I imagine. It is a very methodical, and yet humorous and readable argument for the virtue of sexual modesty-- incredibly well researched too. She was Jewish, which in many ways can be much closer to Orthodoxy, when it comes to lifestyle, than other Christian denominations. And the real selling point: she was basically a feminist. Her argument was (in a nutshell) that women are worth everything that the feminists say they are, which is why sex before marriage is an affront to their dignity and honour as equal members of the human race. We risk almost everything when we say yes to sex. Men ought to do us the courtesy of offering us everything before they ask us for it. It had never occurred to me that feminist ideals (which I was tempted to in many ways) were also justifiable Christian ideals: that Christianity was, in a sense, a great feminist religion. Except for God Himself, our greatest saint is a female, and a mother.

This idea has carried me through a lot of rubbish I had to deal with in university and led me to understand that much of what we do as Christians (particularly Orthodox Christians) is a transfiguration and enlightenment of a lot of originally good modern concepts. We do not say black is white or evil is good. But we are not what we seem either. While appearing (to the modern) to be sexist with our male-only clergy and our masculine god, we actually honour women more highly than men by our saints and our lifestyles. While appearing to be prudish and oppressive with our fasting and our sexual ethics that forbid extra-marital and gay sex, we actually nurture a healthful freedom that allows things to grow and flourish in good soil, not be choked by the thorns of lust and appetite. We could be feminists, real feminists, and we could be free -lovers too-- real lovers.

I had always assumed that Christianity was right about it's various rules and religious laws as being the best thing to strive for. I had also assumed everyone else who argued otherwise was just stupid. What had never occurred to me was that I could speak to non-Christians on their own grounds as equals. I could speak as one feminist to another and not be accused of narrow-mindedness and ignorance at the hands of my religion. I could engage in discussion with homosexuals and not be accused of hatred and homophobia. I didn't have to say they were all right, but I could say that I understood them. That I wasn't shutting my eyes to them or standing above them, superior.

This was a huge leap for me, for I confess I spent a good portion of my high school years in complete confidence of my superiority to all my silly little school mates who believed everything the telly fed them. When I got to university I had to stop being a snob and actually use my brain because there were far more intelligent people, far better educated, and far nicer than I was, who were going to accuse me of bigotry if I couldn't come up with anything to justify myself to them through my lifestyle.

The old ways, the traditional social constructs (and I will acknowledge them as constructs while arguing that this does not indicate they ought to be torn down or that they reflect anything false in them) needed to be justified to me in a language that I could then use to engage others without condescension. Wendy Shalit opened that door for me. What has since occurred to me is that what I was always missing, what might have brought me to this without her help, was what Lewis called "Charity" in his book The Four Loves. This will make up the review in my next post.

Genuineness and the Immortal Poet: My Love of Keats

2011-02-26T08:14:00.000-08:00

The other night our lodger (who was suffering puke flu courtesy of my children) picked out my Bright Star DVD to console himself. Bringing him up some ginger tea, I remarked "Oh Bright Star-- I can't watch that."

For those of you who don't know, Bright Star is a film about John Keats and his romance with one Fanny Brawne, cut short by the poet's tragic demise from consumption at the age of just 25. My parents picked out this DVD for my birthday present last year because for years and years I have been saying that someone (preferably me) ought to make a film about it. (This harks back to my days when I thought film-acting was the career for me). Had I been the one to produce such a film, it may have affected a kind of catharsis.

I discovered John Keats quite by chance one summer. Mum offered to buy each of us a book to take on our summer holiday. Browsing the classics section (already in love with Shakespeare), I picked out a 2-dollar Dover Classics volume of John Keats' Lyric Poems. I think, looking back, that the initial appeal of this volume was the attractive light blue cover and the name of the poet which conjured up some image of a wise old poet with a white beard. I opened it and read the first few lines of "I stood tip-toe." I felt immediately overwhelmed with deja-vu--instantly transported in that experience we call sublime. It felt uncannily familiar (and yet not so uncanny), as though it were almost written by me. I flipped to the back and read the brief biography detailing his short, tragic life. Sold. (What can I say? I was 16 or so-- tragedy had a special appeal to me.) I was immediately infatuated.

What began that summer, (probably the first summer in which there was a Shakespeare-shaped hole because I had gotten too old to participate in Bard on the Beach's Young Shakespeareans Program), was a romance with John Keats that has produced a delicious, enduring ache. An ache I don't have time for and need to avoid for the sake of being a useful, sensible human being.

Keats' was instrumental in my switch from Theatre to English Literature as a post-secondary focus. At first his tragic life story merely aroused a sort of longing and pity of the sort that can only be manifested in the hormonal tempest of a 16 year-old female, and encourages infatuation. But when that settled, and I was able to take a more sober and educated approach to his poetry, it was his relative innocence and optimism, and most importantly his genuineness which held lasting appeal. His "philosophy" was unpolished and his verse somewhat immature (and occasionally just plain cheesy). But I liked this better than the appalling self-importance and sophistication of the other Romantic poets. Here was a man laying himself open completely to you in all his imperfection and asking you to love him.

Anyone who has done a degree in English Literature will tell you that genuineness is not what we do. We play at philosophy and psychology, at theory and politics (all of which are sometimes indistinguishable), but genuineness is right out like "5" in Monty Python's Book of Armaments. I shall count myself worthy of my time at college if I can say confidently at the end of it that I had lobbed my academic work (The Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch) at the Foe, who being Naughty in His Sight, shall snuff it.

I did have two excellent and very different profs for Romantics. One was a (now old-fashioned) traditional academic type in his 50s. He taught from the text and his secondary sources were mostly contemporary-- if he brought up any. And he was a badass Anglican. The other was a young academic, an atheist (almost certainly), who taught from mostly modern critical sources, (Freud, Benjamin, Zizek, Lacan), and then applied his theories to the poems I had loved for years. His idealism was endearing and he was much more engaging in a classroom. He had himself, and allowed his students, some measure of genuineness, but he marked you higher if his genuineness was compati

ble with yours. And being an atheist, he never agreed with me of course. What these two profs had in common was a passion for the philosophical theory that comes as part of studying post-enlightenment literature, which always went against the grain for me.

For me, the value of Keats' poetry was not in the philosophy behind it (of which there certainly was some), but in the man who produced the poems and so came to life in them. Whereas with Shakespeare the appeal of the poetry was about the people it created (and allowed me to create on stage), with Keats, it was about the man who created the poetry and who the poetry recreated for me. Keats, unlike his Romantic predecessors and peers, talked philosophically now and then but he loved practically.

Now, by 'practically' I mean simply 'realistically' and 'in practice' as opposed to 'idealistically' since idealism seems to be characteristic of much modern philosophy (that I have come across). Philosophers of this kind spout all kinds of nonsense about how no one is really 'free,' by which they mean that no one is free to be a scoundrel without consequence-- as if this were some great and shocking revelation. And their idealism is really a sort of fatalism which imagines happiness and joy to be an aesthetic pleasure derived from pretending we like this vale of tears--cuz it's the only thing we got and we ain't gonna change or get out of it-- except by aesthetic snobbery or rebellion.

'Freedom' in the mind of any sensible human being, means freedom of creativity--that is to say, we count it as an unjust restriction of our freedom when our creative faculties (physical, verbal, artistic, or spiritual) are limited. The modern philosopher tends to rely on these kinds of restrictions (while pointing out their inescapability) to manage their idealistic approaches to modern life-- which often involves a kind of intellectual snobbery (often called aesthetics).

Keats played at such philosophy like his contemporaries, but he was not such a fool as to become its slave. In the end, he loved Fanny (and everything else which claimed his affection) far beyond his poetry and not a bit because it fit in with any of his Romantic ideals-- or because he could indicate a high and mighty reason or explanation for it. Ultimately he was not really concerned with anything's idealistic virtue of the kind men like to philosophise about. Just its simple, homely, domestic genuineness.

Now, Keats' genuineness (and affection for genuineness) has, for me, kept alive that ache which I first felt on opening that 2-dollar Dover Classic. It has led me to his house in London more than twice and all the way to Rome and to his grave. It has survived the dreadful theorising and philosophising of my academic studies and encouraged me in my own pursuits, both domestic and artistic. That ache, an absence of that man himself-- or more accurately what his genuine humanity revealed, has been my quiet companion through many years.

I cannot relive the pain of his untimely death through film more than once because it will turn me into a sighing adolescent, unable to let go of the delicious tragedy of it all. I have mourned him from the moment I knew him in his poetry because he is gone and he was genuine and his genuineness made him familiar to me. The loss is keen because there always seemed more of him to lose. But mourning must have an end--as Freud observed so insightfully. Otherwise it becomes melancholy and in Hamlet's poor case, madness.

His poems I can come back to time and again because they are the man himself alive and whole, unpolished and imperfect. To me he has achieved that immortality of spirit which his contemporaries so desired, and he came by it honestly, by real love, by genuineness, as do all the saints.

Playing Dress-up with Shakespeare

2010-09-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I remember my sister getting Dress n Dazzle for some birthday or other and feeling rather envious. Dress n Dazzle were these very fancy dress-up clothes for little girls (not slutty I might add, which was a plus). Perhaps this is what made me realise the pretend games we played were WAY more fun if we looked the parts. Or maybe it just began an obsession with clothing. They may be two sides of the same coin. But somewhere around the age of 7 or 8 I found that pretending was not enough-- there had to be tangible evidence involved to make it somewhat real.

Around the same age I also saw my first Shakespeare play-- Mel Gibson's "Hamlet." I don't believe the two experiences were at all connected and I remember my dad explaining much of it to me so I don't believe it was this particular film which led to the very odd habit I developed of dressing up in costume as often as I could get away with. And I don't mean Halloween-type dressing up like a ghost or a witch-- I mean painstakingly designing and sewing costumes by hand. Period and fantasy-style costumes. And this habit lasted until after I returned from the UK and found it much too hot to wear frocks on my bike all summer. Nursing has forced me to wear slightly more practical clothing anyway. But part of me still very much misses my big dresses and they are lovingly tucked away in my closet despite being rather threadbare.

You might assume that, like all kids, I was merely imitating what I saw on tv. Most of the time watching television is really like window shopping at home. Almost everything you watch is telling you what to be and how to dress. It's the most effective consumer training-tool and social engineering program out there. So you might imagine my dress-up habit was a result of television's power of suggestion, and I just happened to be nerdier than your average kid in what I watched. Except, unlike the kids watching YTV and dressing like Blossom, my motive for this kind of dress-up was the opposite. Not intentionally. I didn't say to myself, "Gee everyone looks like Blossom this year, I think I'll go be Juliet instead..." I had my just-like-Blossom phases the way everyone else did and eagerly awaited the paper on Wednesday and Friday so I could get my dose of the "oo gimme gimmes" from the flyers. Being Juliet was different. It meant nothing to anyone else and everything to me. It was not about being like the rest of the world or rebelling against it; it had no reference to this world at all in fact--it was entirely about creating a different one.

Having gotten through Hamlet at age 7 I felt perfectly capable of handling Romeo and Juliet at age 10. I remember phoning one of my wee school friends after and telling her all about it in raptures and realising that she's only listening politely and wasn't at all interested. That year I asked my teacher if, instead of doing my research project on an animal, I could maybe do it on Shakespeare-- the man himself. I even went down to the library and read all about Elizabethan England and took tons of notes, before my teacher decided I really needed to just do an animal like everyone else in the 4th grade. Thanks a bunch public school education. But the interest stuck and grew stronger because of my indignation and some time around 12 I found the sonnets. Mom had a terrific old fashioned volume of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, with a deep blue, gold embossed cover that was all scuffed and fading, with yellowed pages. To me it looked Elizabethan. I used to carry it around as part of "the look." And it was from this that I learned Shakespeare wasn't just fancy, old fashioned theatre. It was poetry. The holiness taught me by George MacDonald now had a language.

Then my parents took me to a real play. Needless to say I dressed the part when I went, in my aunt's old hippy dress which on me (because I was still quite small and short) looked nearly medieval. The experience of a real play completely changed my life, and if the "oo gimme gimme's," and the "just-like-so-and-so's" hadn't turned my ambitions from Shakespeare's stage to Hollywood's meat market then, well I wouldn't have wasted so much damn time.

The play was Romeo and Juliet-- which is not really one of my favourite plays at all, but the particular play was not the important part. The important part was the dynamic experience of the theatre, the collective play acting which happened not only on stage between the actors but between actors and audience. We were ALL in the play. It was magic. It was like church.

Now don't get me wrong, much as I love Shakespeare, I'm not suggesting that the theatre is "worship"-- or at least when it is, it is very bad theatre, just as church which is too like the theatre is really very bad church. But the English theatre has it's roots in liturgical practice and much of what we do in church, however solemn, is really play-acting. I don't say this to suggest that it isn't real or true-- precisely the opposite in fact.

What we do, physically, makes us who we are. We make it real by doing it. I don't mean this simply in a religious sense and this is not a discussion of good works versus faith. I mean everyday we make choices which make us more who we are. We are co-Creators and our life's work is ourselves. We are continually becoming who we are eternally. That is the essence of free will. And I cannot help but think this impulse to "play dress-up" is actually a universal aspect of our natures manifesting our creative relationship to God. But it has been perverted from a temporal process to an end in itself. Which is not only dangerous for the soul, but disastrous on a socio-economic level too. We change clothes, jobs, houses, relationships as fast as the trends demand of us, consuming as we go instead of creating anything lasting for others to share in.

My paper, as far as I have thought about it, is about Shakespeare and Mimesis--mimesis being not only that process which an actor goes through as he becomes his character, or Richard III goes through as he puts on a mask of evil, but something we ALL do everyday of our lives without being aware of it. Every time we pick out what to wear, every time we post a status on Facebook, every time we say something to make the person next to us on the bus laugh: we are creating who we want to be for those around us. This is not a lie, but it can be a dangerous game. If we are not careful, we can objectify the mask, give it meaning of its own beyond ourselves and then it will have power over us. This is the nature of sin.

I think Shakespeare understood this deeply. As a man of the stage his life's work was in wearing masks and he certainly knew very well how deeply disturbing it can be for an actor not to know where his character ends and he begins. Hamlet, Richard III and many others, all put on a mask which overcame them and ultimately destroyed them. Now, their masks were different from the ones which slowly creep into our hearts and strangle us from within. For a start, Hamlet was aware of his mask and voluntarily, consciously, put it on as a means to some other end. But the power was no less potent because its end was not in creation but in destruction. In control, not freedom. And while our own sinful masks are much more subtle in their method their objective, whether we are aware of it or not, is the same as Richard's and Hamlet's: death.

But I think Shakespeare knew the solution. I think he knew how to control the mask-- master it, and use it for salvation instead. I think the secret is in the dynamic of the theatre, the collective making of a play in which we all plays parts together, parts written for us by Someone Else, but which are ultimately and uniquely our own as well.

Now I just need to do the research to see if I'm right ;)

Brief Update

2010-09-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay it's been a while. I kept meaning to pick up this thread again, but shortly after I posted my last I realised that I had a LOT of studying to do because I had decided to go back to school and finish up my degree, which meant re-learning Latin 100-- or rather teaching it to myself-- over the summer, since I took it 8 years ago and would not have a clue where I was in Latin 200 if I didn't.

So for anyone who isn't aware via the continual panic-stream that has been my facebook status for the last two months: I am getting a degree in Honours English. That is, literature. Lucky me! I love literature! I have only my final year to do (though I will be taking 2 years to do it so I can actually SEE my kids and not spend triple my tuition on daycare). Also it's been a while and though I am only technically taking 2 classes (Latin and an Honours Theory seminar) I am already busy doing homework every.single.minute. Yelling at Georgie to get off the table whilst I translate "Me neca!" And pausing for the billionth time in my reading of Zizek to take the knitting needles off Theo so he doesn't end up poking Georgie in the eye.

So what am I doing now? Well I'm preparing to do homework actually. But before I embark on my next post I felt I needed to explain why I hadn't continued with this particular blog thread. I will continue with it now-- as part of my homework. You see, in addition to my seminar and my Latin I am also writing my Honours graduating essay. This is a 40-50 page research paper which the Honours students write before graduation. I could do it next year but I want to finish it up this year so that next fall it's just classes and I actually have a hope of graduating by the end of 2011. (11 years ain't so bad for finishing and undergrad is it?). Also I have been rather looking forward to this project because I get to pick the topic. It's pretty intense-- like the undergrad version of a Master's thesis. But I'm still looking forward to writing on something I really care about.

This actually ties in with my blog thread too because, as it happens, I will be writing on Shakespeare. My prospectus is due in a couple of weeks and I am planning to write a rough draft this weekend so I thought I'd kick off the weekend (since I'm stuck at home anyway) enjoying some wine and blogging about Shakespeare-- to get my brain moving.

SO here I go...

The Princess and the Goblin-- a baptised imagination, a thread for a guide

2010-05-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Those who know their CS Lewis will know that there was one book, which he picked up by chance, that had a remarkable, life-changing effect on him, and was pivotal in his conversion to Christianity. That book was Phantastes, a sort of adult fairy tale novel by George MacDonald. Lewis later said in Surprised by Joy-- the autobiographical account of his conversion--that as he read the haunting tale of Anodos "That night, [his] imagination was, in a certain sense, baptised." For the "bright shadow, that rested on the travels of Anodos" --holiness-- was something he had never come across or experienced before. And he found it was not a quality confined to the world of fantasy but that it rather came "out of the book into the real world and [rested] there, transforming all common things and yet itself unchanged." In other words it coloured his perception of the real world and endowed all things in it with a kind of greatness-- almost super-reality.

It does not cease to amaze me that the same author who changed Lewis' life was also pivotal in my own. The Princess and the Goblin is of course a children's novel but it has the same quality about it-- the "bright shadow." And while I was completely unaware of it at the time it too baptised my imagination. I do not recall how old I was when my parents read it to me-- young enough I did not read it myself at least. But it was not until I was in my early twenties that I rediscovered it and was surprised by how important it had been in my life.

The story is that of young Princess Irene who lives with her nurse and servants in a castle on the mountain while her King-papa is about his business in the country. One very dull day she gets lost in the house and discovers a secret stair that leads her to a tower in which her great-great grandmother dwells unbeknownst to anyone else in the house. Her grandmother spins a ball of spider silk thread to which she fastens a ring--once belonging to Irene's mother. She tells Irene that if she is ever frightened she must take off her ring, put it under her pillow and follow the thread with her finger until it leads her back to her grandmother. The mountain below is full of goblins who hatch an evil plot to carry off the Princess for a bride to their Prince Harelip and it is with the help of Curdie, a miner's son, and her great-great grandmother's thread that Princess Irene escapes them and they defeat the goblins.

The story is full of Christian symbolism. The great grandmother is endowed with more than one trinitarian quality. In some scenes she is the Spirit, appearing as a dove come to frighten away the darkness, or a fire of roses which transforms the quality of all things. Other times she is like the Father or the Son. It is difficult to describe as it is not so obvious or complete a parallel as Narnia's Aslan. The characters of the Princess and Curdie, the king-papa, the goblins, and even Curdie's mother all have archetypal qualities. And the same quality of holiness colours the tale as the Princess and Curdie learn to trust her grandmother to bring them safely through the darkness and defeat the goblins.

I did not appreciate the symbolism until I was an adult of course. But the the images of the tale and the "bright shadow" that coloured them, the fire of roses, the bath of stars, the globe of light, the thread of spider silk, the heirloom ring, the beautiful grandmother both young and old, all of them remained with me and changed the way I saw things in the real world, shaped my perceptions and well, baptised my imagination.

Of course I didn't know it at the time. It was not until I was in my early twenties, suffering from a multitude of fears myself and having got quite lost just like Princess Irene did the day she found her grandmother's secret stair, that I did a little research on myself. I picked up some of my favourite childhood books again. I'd quite forgotten the the story till then. In Lewis' Screwtape Letters Wormwood is properly told off by his uncle Screwtape for making the very lamentable blunder of allowing his "patient" the pleasure of reading a book he really enjoys because it would make him feel that he was "recovering himself." And that is just what happened when I reread The Princess and the Goblin in the midst of my fears and confusion. I recovered myself at once and suddenly began to understand where I came from again and who I was and to Whom.

The realisation was an important one. Until then I had been living in a sort of romantic fantasy world in which I was "submerged in self-pity for imaginary distresses." One true encounter with that "bright shadow" and I could see quite clearly just what was nonsense and what was real. I'd found the thread and it led me out.

Books That Shaped My Life

2010-04-16T19:08:00.000-07:00

It's funny how pivotal our exposure to literature is and how it shapes our lives and influences who we become from a very young age. How powerful words are! We never think about it. And yet St. John tells us "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." He then tells us "All things were made through Him." The WORD made us. The word creates. And it has been going through my mind lately just what particular words created me.

I should clarify that I am not among those sorts of people who are merely pagans worshipping the god "Art." And I do not mean to imply that the literature which shaped my life was my true creator. I am only drawing a parallel between the power of God to create the cosmos and the power of words to reflect His nature and influence the way in which we come to understand Him. If that makes sense.

There have been many books which have had little important influences on me throughout my life. If I wanted to be extremely thorough and long-winded I would even say that certain nursery books like "Close Your Eyes" and "Goodnight Moon" were important in one way or another. But then I believe the power of the written word and how it plays on one's imagination will have some noteworthy effect--if only to clarify for the reader that he thinks such-and-such a writer is a complete git and has no notion of natural human feeling. (Yes, I've read a few of those). If one really examines their reactions to any piece of literature (or art or drama) I suspect they will discover something, however small, about themselves. But I will only mention here the books that I think have been the most important to me in my life. So far.

I have to confess that I feel remarkably conceited to think anyone should care two pins about my little autobiography in literature. I do not think I am really particularly interesting and aside from the birth of my two beautiful children I have accomplished relatively nothing. But I should be interested to know if anyone else reading this can relate to or has a similar story about their own experience with literature. And for some reason, I am so very suddenly surprised to realise how completely these books have made me who I am, that I feel compelled to relate it to anyone who cares to hear it.

In any case I shall write a little review and discussion of each book over the next few days (or weeks--or months) so that it will form a little thread on my blog for anyone who cares to read and comment.

They are, in more or less chronological order, "The Princess and the Goblin," by George MacDonald, "Shakespeare's Sonnets," "John Keats, Lyric Poems," Wendy Shalit's "A Return to Modesty," Connie Willis' "To Say Nothing of the Dog" CS Lewis' "The Four Loves" and "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon.

It is very odd collection of books. The first, naturally, was a children's fantasy written by a Victorian Scotsman. The next two were the works of two poets, each important in different ways. The next a treatise advocating sexual modesty. Then a comical-historical Science Fiction novel followed by a popular discussion of Christian love. And finally, bizarrely, a cookbook.

I hope my little discussions about each will be vaguely interesting.

ONE YEAR!!!

2010-04-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

WOW. SO Georgie's one...One year old...how did that happen? We had this crazy start with a birth defect and a colicky baby and surgery and now she's one.

I don't remember much about when Theo turned one or what he could do but because Georgie's 2 years behind him I'm paying special attention to when she acquires skills he already has--because she's that much closer to being able to play with him and leave me alone for goodness sake.

Her birthday passed rather uneventfully (unlike Theo's which was a full scale party with games and costumes). I had her to myself all day and we went to the nursery to buy some flowers for the garden where she was awarded a pink balloon when the lady behind the counter discovered it was her birthday.

At present she can walk, though she'd rather crawl as she still lacks the confidence to do what her legs can do --and will do-- if she's not paying attention.

She has just enough hair for me to put up into what Greg refers to as "mousetails."

Her eyes will quite definitely be blue (unlike Theo's which had turned hazel by age one).

She can say: "Dada," "uh-oh," "bye-bye," "hug," "down," "upside-down," and shake her head "no"

She can also clap her hands, wave goodbye, play peekaboo, and blow a kiss.

She cannot sleep through the night.

She has a funny looking "umbilicus" which Greg refers to as "The Mouth of Sauron" and her heart is still quite visible pumping away just under her sternum, but apart from that, you never know there was a birth defect.

She's the strongest willed little monkey I ever met and will stare down pretty much anyone. She'll be a heck of a teenager.

But she's a mama's girl-- unless Daddy has food he's willing to share and she loves her brother and I'm definitely looking forward to year 2-- especially the part where I presumably get a full night's sleep.

3 years old

2010-03-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

Theo is 3 today!!! Very hard for me to believe.

Here are some amazing things he learned to do this year:

Name and identify all the letters in the alphabet, both upper and lower case-- and in different fonts.

Name and identify numbers 1-10 (and we've nearly got 11 and 12 down now too)

Name most of the shapes--the plus sign is a cross of course

Identify all the colours of the rainbow as wells as pink and black and white

Sing "Christ is Risen" almost perfectly on key

Name at least 6 of the icons in our icon corner and ALL the ones on the iconostasis at church.

and my favourite: Tell you that Beer begins with "B"

He is also (Hurrah!!) potty trained (at 2 1/2-- and much earlier than I dared to hope); he gave up the dummy on his own this year, grew to over 3 feet, learned to spit out the tooth paste (among other things), started sleeping in a loft bed, and behaving himself in the car and the stroller.

His favourite thing to do is put on the Star Wars or Batman soundtrack and dance--which he is remarkably good at (very expressive)--and BBC Big Band is his next favourite music followed swiftly by church music because he knows half the words by heart.

His favourite food is probably maple syrup (good canadian kid) but he also loves sushi, olives, sharp cheddar cheese, squash, all kinds of fruit, and yes, you guessed it, beer.

My favourite moment is hard to pick but a close one is the morning he came to my bedside after going into the fridge and presented me with a bottle of beer which he thought he would like for his breakfast. (He's allowed an ounce in a shot glass at dinner if we're having it...)

I wonder what insane and amazing things will happen in year four...

More Spacious

2009-12-18T23:28:00.000-08:00

On Christmas "The Virgin is more spacious than the Heavens!"

I've given birth to two children and I have never felt so spacious, my mind and heart have always been so cluttered with the cares of the world. I cannot imagine being more spacious than the heavens.

Perhaps this is why people are so driven to acquire things--especially this time of year. Why even my new 4 bedroom house feels small sometimes. We're so full, so crowded with these earthly cares. we don't know how to declutter. To make room for God.

Ups and downs

2009-11-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

Been reflecting on this year. Hard to believe it's nearly over and Christmas season is upon us. I have been resisting the temptation to get caught up in it because we are about to move house and will have a lot of things to do before nativity.

There's no question this has been a tough year. Three deaths, including one in the parish, the funeral for which was probably the most memorable, and strangely uplifting thing to occur this year. We had a tough start financially and we were surprised to find money trouble to be so trying for our marriage. And speaking of marriages we saw several friends end theirs. My beautiful girl was born with a birth defect that required a miserable stay in hospital over Holy Week and a very stressful weekend while they corrected it. She was also colicky making the sleep deprived months after her birth very difficult for us especially as we worked out which of us was really responsible for minding the children and when.

But we've also been surprised with incredible blessings. Several friends have started having babies (or started having them again). Against the odds Georgie's birth defect was incredibly minor. Most children born with the same defect also have many other defects in their internal organs that require extensive surgeries--if they can be fixed at all. The death of our dear parishioner brought our little community even closer together, boosted the confidence and morale of the choir (and it's hard working director) and gave us all a sense of peace--knowing we had such friends to bury us.

Greg's job continues to be a blessing to us and in spite of having resigned ourselves to living in our little trailer for as many years as it took for us to manage to get into the housing market we can now look forward to becoming home owners before Christmas. And the best part is that we will be moving into the familiar house I grew up in so it will already be home when we get there.

And in spite of all the chaos of having a colicky baby and a terrible two year old, the kids really are beautiful. I am very close to enjoying the freedom of a potty trained toddler and an increasingly independent baby. Not to mention the joy and relief of being able to really settle somewhere after years of having to pack up and move every other year.

Lots of ups and downs but over all a totally amazing and wonderful year.

Porridge

2009-10-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

That's what my brain feels like most days. But while Georgie has moved from colic to teething, things are generally easier in the Gascoigne house and I've managed to carve out a wee moment to actually make a blog entry! This is partly because Georgie, while more sensitive than Theo, and, as I discovered, far more reliant on a consistent nap schedule, is actually much more independent than he was during her waking hours. At not even 6 months yet she is crawling (more or less--and a good four months earlier than Theo did) and I find that if I baby proof the floor I can usually leave her there to play for most of the morning by herself.

It is also for that reason that I've felt free to experiment with cooking again. This recipe for porridge is one I got from my Nourishing Traditions cookbook, which focuses on traditional methods of food preparation as opposed to processed "food products" and so-called healthy recipes that cut out the fat-- and all the other things that are actually good for you. This recipe requires a little forethought but is worth planning ahead for. I'm not a carbs-for-breakfast person usually but since everyone at my house likes this so much, and it is also among the cheaper ways to eat a filling breakfast, I thought it was worth posting. Plus it's adaptable for fasting.

You'll need:

A cup of rolled oats (not quick oats)

2 cups of warm water

1 tbsp of full fat probiotic balkan style yogurt, or lemon juice

a pinch of sea salt

pinch of cinnamon (optional)

The night before (or the morning before) add one cup of warm water to the oats. Add the yogurt or lemon juice and stir. Cover them with a towel and leave at room temperature overnight. The water and the acids from the lemon juice or the whey in the yogurt will soften and sort of predigest the oats while they soak, making them quicker to cook in the morning and also easier to digest (plus yummy). In the morning add the other cup of water and the pinches of salt and cinnamon, and cook the oats for 5 minutes or so until done.

Now the best part is really how you serve this and with what. We are in the habit of pouring a few tablespoons of cream (either cereal cream or whipping cream--single cream for those in Britain) and topping it with maple flakes (dried maple syrup) and raisins. But you can add anything you like. Fruit, nuts, flax seed, syrup-- you name it. If it is a fast day simply prepare the recipe with lemon juice instead of yogurt and instead of adding cream use coconut milk. Viola! The yummiest porridge ever.

Adventures with two

2009-06-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

I thought I was brilliant at kid juggling--two is a whole new level. I should have expected that. After a seriously difficult first few weeks we finally began to settle down and deal with the unique challenges posed by a second, very different child.

Firstly, my days of coffee chugging are indefinitely postponed. What I tried and failed to give up in Lent I have been forced to give up after Georgie's birth. Georgie began to appear colicky by three weeks and by five weeks I was so fed up I told my midwife about it. She suggested I give up my coffee habit. I was rather skeptical that coffee was the cause since it never seemed to bother Theo, but even one day off coffee brought miraculous silence to the evenings.

Turns out my little princess is of the fairy tale variety--delicate enough to feel a pea under her many mattresses. She's incredibly sensitive. A change in light, position, noise will easily wake her. We can't put the stopper in the kettle without waking her. And very sharp or loud noises make her burst into tears. She's also very sensitive to our moods. If we're stressed or frustrated she instantly begins to fuss.

She is so different than Theo was that I feel like I'm starting from scratch-- except this time I have a rambunctious toddler creating chaos ever time my back is turned. Georgie is not only far more sensitive than Theo was but none of the things that used to calm him work for her. We've had a terrible time introducing dummies. Of the plethora of infant size dummies I have tried she likes exactly one and I haven't a clue where to get one the same shape since it was given me by a friend. However, whereas Theo hated the swing, Georgie generally loves it.

She also hates sleeping on her back which has presented me with a serious dilemma. For those out-of-the-loop it is now considered a great parenting sin to put a baby to bed on her tummy since it is believed that this is a risk factor for SIDS. (When I was babysitting infants as a teen it was considered wrong to put them to sleep on their backs lest they should spit up and choke.) Theo was easily comforted by swaddling so it was never a problem. I swaddle him and put him on his back and go to sleep with an easy conscience. Georgie likes to be swaddled too (thank God) but it is rare that swaddling will keep her settled enough to sleep on her back. So do I follow the rules and risk killing her in a sleep-deprived rage or let her sleep on her tummy the way she wants to and risk SIDS?

My very wise midwife is convinced that tummy sleeping has nothing to do with SIDS, but rather the chemicals and fire retardants in commercial mattresses which a child inhales more of in their sleep if they are on their tummy. Scientists say that babies sleep more deeply on their tummies and if they are prone to sleep apnea (where they forget to breathe for a minute or two) they may completely forget to breathe and die as a result. Therefore we should keep our children as badly rested as we are--just in case. I'm finding I put her on her tummy a lot though I will try her on her back if she seems really out of it. I console myself with the fact that she actually sleeps in our room and very often right next to me in our bed so I am likely to notice if something is wrong.

Adding to the chaos around here is the introduction of the bunk bed as Theo's new place to sleep at night. We had half-heartedly tried to get him to sleep there at nap times for a while and only ever put him down in it if he was already asleep but he'd been so traumatised when we took the side of the crib off that we were reluctant to put him in the bunk bed at night. Given enough time in the crib he always fell asleep on his own-- but it's been a battle with the bed, At first he was scared if he woke up there. Then just scared if he went to bed there. Now he's perfectly happy to get out of bed, switch the light on and run out into the kitchen with a money grin and a giggle. He knows better though and if we ignore him long enough he will occasionally go back to be on his own. But he falls asleep late as a result.

We're also trying to potty train him which is proving a laborious task.He seemed a little interested at first, but quickly discovered how boring it was. The trouble is that my husband has now completely lost patience with dirty diapers since the one or two initial successes and got very angry when Theo refused to sit on the potty and then pooed in his pyjamas the minute our back was turned so now he seems to think going poo is bad and he isn't allowed to do it. We'll be lucky if we make any progress at all in that department this year.

It's partlyfor that reason and partly because Georgie is so sensitive that I've begun something I had heard about before and thought was completely nuts: Elimination Communication, or EC--also known as infant potty training. I was utterly gobsmacked by how easy it is. I thought it would be a pointless, messy, waste of time. But it's not like that at all. The theory behind it is that infants are born with an awareness of their elimination needs and have the instinct not to soil themselves-- they do not have much control over it however, and communicate using various signals that they need to go. They squirm or grunt or fuss or wake suddenly from a nap. So you pop them on the potty when you think they might need to go and cue them with a "pssss" noise and believe it or not-- it works! As they grow they retain their awareness of their elimination needs and soon associate the cueing noise and the position you place them in with the sensation of going to the bathroom. They wait for it. And soon they are old enough to learn the sign language to tell you they need to go--voila! Children who are conventionally potty trained however, lose their bodily awareness some time in the first year making potty training ridiculously difficult. We end up with Theo, completely unaware he's going-- and far too busy playing to care anyway.

Originally i chose to start EC with Georgie as a means to spark Theo's interest, but now I've started it I actually prefer to using diapers most of the time. Of course I still keep her in diapers-- I just pop her on the potty when I think she needs to go and she almost always does. There are exceptions. I don't get up at night to take her to the potty (I'm not crazy) and when we are out and about I just let her go in her nappy and make the cueing noise in her ear if she does. But while we are at home I try to pay attention to her signals and use the potty frequently. It's bizarrely gratifying to watch her on the little blue potty grunting away.

I've had some scathing criticism about it. Namely that infant potty training is really just training the parent-- which is utterly ridiculous. As if responding to my daughter's need to use the toilet is letting her train me.First of all-- she's two months old and has no concept of manipulation and therefore cannot "train" me. Secondly, I feed my daughter when she is hungry and change her when she is dirty and burp her when she has gas--why is responding to her need for the toilet any different? I don't mean to imply that those who use diapers are somehow neglectful of their child's needs-- we do what we can. It's a busy modern world and plenty of people haven't the time or energy. I personally won't get out of bed at night for it. Diapers are just fine. But having a clean bottom is still a basic hygenic need and whether you choose to fulfill that need by changing your baby's nappy or putting her on the potty is really up to you.

So the chaos has increased in my life. All kinds of new adventures...

Triumphal Entry, Passion Week, Resurrection--How Georgie arrived

2009-05-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

Less than a month after my last post I gave birth at home to a lovely baby girl who we named Georgina Frances (Georgie for short). The labour and delivery were so miraculously perfect and predictable that we were entirely unprepared for what followed and I'm still sort of trying to work out how I feel about it.

I went into labour before my due date this time (I was late with Theo) but almost exactly when I expected to. I had a feeling the baby was going to be early by a few days and that I would be bringing her to Pascha so it didn't surprise me at all when I started having contractions on Sunday afternoon. By one am on Monday morning there was no denying the pain and I called my midwife who came to check and be certain. I was only two centimeters so we weren't in a rush, and the contractions weren't all that bad. My midwife wasn't convinced I would even have the baby that day. We had Theo picked up by his grandparents just in case and partly because I was fairly certain that delivery was imminent. I then rang my best friend and my doula and told them to come over.

At 11:30 am my midwife recommended I go for a walk to get the contractions going-- something I was reluctant to do because I had either forgotten how painful they could be or I was just too out of it while I was in labour with Theo to notice. But I went anyway. We got the mail and bought some chips at the corner store. When we got back my midwife said she still wasn't sure I would have the baby that day. By 1 pm I was on the bed pushing Georgie out, and she was born at quarter past. I think I was pushing for maybe 10 minutes. The other midwife barely made it in time to help catch.

It all happened so fast and so beautifully, the way I had hoped, sun streaming in the bedroom window on Holy Monday afternoon, that I was completely unprepared for what happened next. The moment Georgie was born it was clear that something was alarming the midwives. Instead of giving her to me they were asking each other questions and I heard one ask "Was that on the ultrasound?" Eventually they put a very purple screaming baby on my chest, but as I looked down I noticed that my midwife's hand was firmly pressing down on the baby's belly. At this point I didn't even know the sex of the infant bawling on my chest and everyone was so distracted with whatever the trouble was that it took a couple of minutes for someone to tell me it was a girl.

I caught sight of what my midwife was clearly concerned about-- a large protrusion on the baby's belly. I had seen and heard about umbilical hernias before so I wasn't too shocked or worried at that point--I knew they weren't meant to be cause for much concern, but the midwives clearly thought it was necessary to call the ambulance. I was assured by my midwife at that point that she didn't think it would be a problem since there was skin covering it and that it certainly wasn't life threatening. Nonetheless, there was enough of an upset that it took until after the ambulance arrived for us to worry about the placenta delivery and none of the usual measurements and exams were done until we got to the hospital.

The pediatrician at the hospital examined her and determined that the doctors and surgeons at BC Children's Hospital would want to examine and possibly operate on her before we would be allowed to take her home but that nothing very serious was likely to be wrong. We were transferred to BC Children's Hospital where it took 2 and a half days for the various doctors to determine that there was nothing wrong and the muscles in her abdomen had simply failed to grow together.

In the mean time Greg and I were set up with a family room in the neonatal unit where we were left almost no information from doctors and at best conflicting if not downright useless information from the nurses. Georgie was hooked up to monitors and a sugar IV and left in an incubator with a dummy in her mouth. After 12 hours they had determined she was safe to breastfeed and after 24 hours they finally told me I could breastfeed. It was practically impossible though because she was hooked up to so much equipment that I couldn't cuddle her or swaddle her to settle her long enough and of course she wasn't all that hungry because of the IV--which the nurses refused to remove because my milk hadn't come in. How my milk was going to come in when she wasn't hungry enough to nurse was beyond me.

I was stunned by how ignorant some of the nurses were about breastfeeding, but of course there is little you can do to argue with them. One nurse asked, when I was unsuccessful getting Georgie to nurse from me, if she could give her formula in the night. I drew the line at formula feeding and frankly told the nurse that if the baby was really hungry then she would eat breastmilk and that there was no danger of her starving if she was being shot up with sugar-water. I was furious. And course I was busy with using a breast pump to bring my milk in quicker --something that would have been entirely unnecessary if they'd been sensible enough to remove the gratuitous IV in the first place.

The second day at the hospital we were finally informed that the results from her heart ultrasound showed everything in perfect working order so we felt relaxed enough to leave the hospital and have a somewhat celebratory lunch at a sushi place. But we hadn't seen anyone all day and they were still testing things we knew nothing about. Nursing wasn't going well and by that night we were both so upset with the lack of news and the waiting in our pokey room and the bullshit being fed to us by the ignorant nurses that were decided we REALLY wanted to get out of there. The plan started out as coffee and quickly turned to beer (good for nursing right?) but since it was so late at night already nothing was open and we were so desperate to DO something that we drove all the way home to Langley to raid our own fridge. At least we felt like we were accomplishing something.

By the third day we finally caught the surgeons doing their rounds. They were able to enlighten us as to everything that was going on and finally put our minds at ease. Up until then we had only had short, highly uninformative exchanges with various doctors who were ordering different tests. We knew they were looking for other birth defects, namely heart, lung, and intestinal defects. The cardiologist had briefly mentioned, as he passed right by us without looking at Georgie, that her heart ultrasound came back fine-- as though this explained everything. But since we were completely uncertain exactly what they thought what might be wrong in the first place we'd been left to imagine and fear the worst.

Turned out, according to the surgeons, that Georgie's birth defect was exactly what it looked like--just a gap between her abdominal muscles. There was nothing else the matter and the final ultrasound was being done that morning to determine if there was a hole in her diaphram which the heart may have slipped through. If there was a hole however, it wouldn't pose any threat to her, simply delay any possible surgery since they would want to wait until she was older to ensure her heart would have enough room to grow before they put it back where it belonged.

In fact almost all of the tests they had ordered were simply to determine the best time and method for surgery rather than if there was anything likely to threaten her life or leave her with a disability. After they had found that her heart and intestines were whole and functioning (which they had confirmed within the first 24 hours) all the other blood tests and scans were largely just gratuitous routine monitoring or else simply to help them decide when or if to schedule surgery and precisely how they were going to do it. If we had known that at the time we would have felt a lot less panicked and frustrated. And I would have insisted they remove her IV and allow me to dress her and take the other monitors off. Instead we were left for another whole day to wonder and worry.

We were so relieved to hear that she was fine and were told that we would be able to take her home that day--even though our previous night's trip to Langley saw us packed for several more nights at the hospital. They performed their few gratuitous blood tests while we went to get breakfast. My midwife turned up at the hospital and thankfully managed to corner the doctor who was to discharge her and got the whole scoop--as well as the job of post-partum care. We finally felt ready to relax and celebrate. Friends turned up to visit at the hospital and we were able to tell them the good news.

We brought her home that night and were told to take her in to the local hospital for one more test the next day. She was slightly jaundiced. But we weren't concerned and were happy to show her off the people turning up at church for Holy Week services. Theo finally came home and met his new sister and the first thing he did was give her a kiss.

The next two days we tried to adjust to the new situation. People visited, Greg did paperwork. We tried to get Theo settled down. He was completely out of routine and a bit short tempered and uncooperative. Meanwhile nursing was proving a bit of a challenge, though she was gaining weight. And the pediatrician was rather unhappy with her bilirubin levels. By Friday afternoon all hope of getting things back to normal had vanished and we were told we would have to take her back to hospital to treat her jaundice and perform MORE blood tests. At this point we were so depressed. Theo was completely beside himself with all the upset and we were far too exhausted to be patient with him.

The idiot nurse at LMH informed me we would be giving Georgie formula and was less than impressed when I indicated it would be over my dead body. Later the pediatrician told me we would have to "top her up" with formula only to make sure she was over-hydrated so the bilirubin would be flushed out more quickly, but in the mean time I was welcome to use the pump and bottle feed her whatever breast milk I could. I called my midwife in a panic and she wisely told me to just comply for now and get the heck out of the hospital--and out of their control--as quickly as I could.

To my delight, Georgie was almost completely uninterested in formula. My breast milk was almost always enough and she didn't like using the bottle much either. She nursed quickly enough for me to be able to take her out and feed her directly from the breast a few times, which was encouraging. But Greg wasn't allowed to stay with me in hospital this time and the doctor was not forthcoming as to how long we would be there. We weren't sure if we could even make it to Pascha.

To add to things, my body was quickly returning to pre-pregnancy shape and while it was nice to sleep on my almost flat tummy and have my cramps and varicose veins rapidly disappear, I was beginning to feel like the whole pregnancy had never even happened. Like I'd fasted for all of Lent and had to miss Pascha. Here I was, stuck in hospital, alone with a baby I wasn't allowed to bond with and had no idea when I could take her home.

Of course, as my dad AND my midwife reminded me-- it was Holy Friday. And of course I knew it wasn't the end of the world. Plenty of kids have jaundice. Greg and I both had it. And we were incredibly lucky that Georgie's hernia was covered with skin. My midwife had a client whose baby didn't have skin covering the gap in his abdomen and it was the grace of God that saved his life. The mother had been planning a home birth and she was lucky my midwife had been uncertain enough about the baby's position to order an ultrasound at 34 weeks. The scan revealed that all of the baby's organs were outside his body. She was flown to BC Womens and given a c-section, the baby was operated on immediately and her little boy was perfectly fine. But, like me, her 18 week scan had shown no irregularity in the baby's abdominal wall. And, like me, she had been planning a home birth. If my midwife hadn't double-checked the baby's position, her baby might have died. So I knew that in spite of the misery I was experiencing, God had been taking care of us.

But I couldn't understand why God wanted me to experience this challenge. I'm still not sure. Perhaps it was to help me appreciate the true reality of Holy Week, or perhaps it was to show me that He was taking care of me even when it felt like He wasn't. Or perhaps His purpose had nothing to do with us at all. I'll probably never know. But all I could think of at the time was that for some reason God didn't want us to go to church or be at Pascha-- and that was the hardest part to figure out. There could be any number of reasons for allowing us to experience the doubts and fears every parent goes through when their child is in hospital, but why keep us from the only thing that might help us to get through it?

As it happened, we DID get to bring our little girl to Pascha after all. My midwife--also Orthodox--arranged with the pediatrician to have us temporarily discharged so that we could bring Georgie to church for the midnight Pascha service. We returned to the hospital at 4am after the Paschal liturgy and later that morning she was permanently discharged as her bilirubin levels were back to normal.

We came away from the whole thing with a very unique experience of Holy Week that few could relate t0-- a true triumphal entry followed by a week of fear, doubt, disappointment and darkness, only to have everything restored to us in the end. It did not feel like we had really been given our daughter until Pascha. And maybe that's what God wanted for us-- to be able to welcome our daughter with Him. I don't know. But He resurrected our joy with Himself this year.

Sunday morning shut-in

2009-03-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

The beauty of living next to church is that you get to experiment with how to wrangle your toddler and manage to make it to all the services with comparative ease-- a luxury that most of my mum-friends don't have.

But with that comes the temptation to feel that you can and SHOULD make it to every service. After all, it only takes me two minutes to walk to church. And that's made it rather difficult for me to accept the idea of taking my 40-day break from church after the baby arrives.

For those of you who don't know, the Orthodox church prescribes a 40-day fast from church, as it were, for women who have just given birth. This is not because, as some might think, that the church thinks of childbirth as an unclean thing. It is not a banishment, but rather a sort of recommended holiday or permitted absence from church to allow new mothers time to bond with their babies.

I know I am not alone, however, in feeling resentful about this particular requirement. It's hard not to feel banished and I know a lot of women simply choose to ignore this rule, however common-sense it might be. Parenting is incredibly isolating at times so it can be a hard rule to accept.

And because my baby is due the week before Pascha this year, I have been determined to go to every service I possibly could regardless of whether it conflicted with Theo's bed time or I had the energy to go. My mother told me to just admit defeat and stay home and I guess she was right because after Presanctified Liturgy on Friday poor Theo started throwing up and hasn't stopped. It's all been too much for him. So this Sunday I sit at home watching Wallace and Gromit for the millionth time while the service is going on 50 feet from my door.

It's difficult for me to remember or accept perhaps that sometimes taking it easy is the least selfish thing I can do and I think that applies to a lot of modern women. We don't like to admit that kids just mean less freedom for us--even if we want to use that freedom for something like going to church.

So perhaps that's what God wants me to learn this Lent: to accept that parenting is the way God wants me to serve Him--even if it means I have less freedom to go to church or opportunities for fellowship with other parishioners. I need to learn that mothering is it's own form of Christian fellowship.

A Journey of Obedience

2009-03-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking a lot about fasting as you know, and my husband said something that really made me think about it from a different perspective-- one which I think makes a lot of sense. He said that he wouldn't be giving up anything for Lent that wasn't required-- that he was just going to do his best to be obedient to the existing rules, and that to try to be better was setting himself up for frustration and disappointment.

Now, it has occurred to me recently that as Orthodox we are very blessed to have these rules, rather than to have the burden of choosing our own discipline, like our Protestant brothers do. That's because, as a pregnant woman, I simply can't follow the traditional rules, and have felt that I must choose something else instead. But while discussing the dilemma with some of my Protestant friends, I have come to realise that fasting, the way it was meant to be, is not really an exercise in self-discipline so much as an obedience. And I think that is because we are less likely to feel proud of our success in giving up meat if everyone at church did too. We are all on the same journey, united in Christ and walking together to joy of His Pascha.

Since I have come to understand this, I've realised why it has been so difficult for me to choose something to fast from: my part in this obedience, as a pregnant woman, is NOT to give up meat and dairy. And while this may seem like a freebee to my fellow Orthodox travellers, the reality is that it is much harder in some ways. First, my husband is fasting, so we are not making this journey the same way. (Also, I have to cook for both of us.) And second, it is much harder to experience the joy of the feast if one has not fasted at all-- it can be very isolating.

A good analogy is that we are all on the road to Pascha and must travel in the simplest manner possible, allowing more time for prayer, reflection, and fellowship. We have to use our bodies to search for God. In others words, we have to walk. I, on the other hand, am already allowing God to use my body for the creation of life. I have to take a cab. And while that might seem like the more desirable way to travel for those whose feet are already sore after one week, the reality is that I don't get to walk with the rest of you. I have to watch you as I drive past alone in the cab--no one but me and the baby. God is driving (I think) but I'm not good at conversation.

Luckily for me, the cab stops and lets me out at all the pubs and rest stops along the road where I can meet the rest of you for communion and fellowship (ie church). But in the mean time the journey can be rather lonely, which is why I kept trying to come up with things to fast from so that I feel included.

But I think I've been looking at it all wrong really. Realistically I'm still on the same road as the rest of my fellow Orthodox, so there should be no reason to feel left out on the day we arrive at the feast--IF I am following the spirit of the fast. It is not about the things we give up, but the spirit in which we choose to avoid them that matters. We are not avoiding certain foods to punish our bodies anymore than we choose to walk in order to develop blisters. We avoid certain foods because they take time and energy to prepare and digest that is better spent in fellowship at church or in our prayer corners. We walk in order to go there together. In other words, "feasting" means fussing in the kitchen, separated from each other and distracted by the cares of the world, like Martha. Fasting is sitting at God's feet like Mary and the rest of the faithful. And I can sit at God's feet (or walk at His side, or ride in His cab), cheese or no cheese.

I have said in other posts that what I want to do, and think all of us should try to do, is fast from stress during Lent. So what I have chosen to do is keep the non-fasting items I must eat as simple as possible--adding cheese to my plate of Lenten pasta or something--the aim of my meal plans being to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible.

Of course, for most of us in the western world, we're so blessed with abundance that for us SIMPLE meals are almost always non-Lenten ones. We're not used to eating things without meat and cheese, so the fast presents us with quite a challenge sometimes. But the path is wide. Some people walk right in the middle on the hardest part of the road (I think these people follow the "no oil" rule), some people walk on the turf next to it, and a few of us give up and catch the bus.

The point is that we all go the same direction on the path that God has laid for us. And if we catch the bus occasionally and meet up with everyone else at the pub along the way, then we won't be able to stray too far.

In the meantime, my job is to rest in the car, let God control my body, let Him bring life from it, and learn to love communion with my baby and with God.

There goes the bandwagon--and my butt hurts!!

2009-03-05T13:59:00.000-08:00

Oh I am soooo pathetic. I give up TWO things for Lent: Facebook (so far a BIG relief) and coffee (except church coffee which, come on guys, really doesn't count). Today is day four of Lent and I couldn't handle it anymore. Tea just wasn't cuttin' it. My mother takes Theo on Thursday mornings for music class and I get the morning off and the only way I was going to avoid the housework itch was if I went out and the easiest place was Starbucks. And I'm just not going to have TEA.

But on the plus side my husband works from home and since his day's work involved mostly searching for client contact details online, he could come with me and bring the lap top. We had a lovely time. He worked while I scribbled in my journal. We had a REAL conversation for a change instead of the kind you have at the end of the day when you're too tired to be articulate or else you end up arguing over nothing.

So I figured if I get quality time with my husband out of my coffee obsession then it really doesn't count as falling off the bandwagon right?

Fasting from stress.

2009-03-03T16:35:00.000-08:00

There are two ways we can anticipate something as big and beautiful as having a baby. One is to watch the clock, count the minutes, run around frantically trying to ready the nest, pack the bags a week before the due date, go the hospital at the very first tweak of abdominal cramping-- basically be as stressed out and over-excited as possible. Or we can wait quietly, continue to enjoy life at a moderate pace, make no big plans, set no specific goals and let the baby come when it comes.

When I was pregnant with Theo I was smart enough (or lucky enough) to try the latter approach in preparation for the birth. My mom was two weeks overdue with both my sister and me and her labour took two days nearly so I considered myself as likely to be on baby death-row for at least that amount of time. (Baby death-row being perhaps not the best way of describing the feeling a pregnant woman has when she is overdue and waiting for her sentence to be carried out already.)

So when I started having contractions only a week after my due date I really wasn't sure that I was in labour at all. So I went about my business, did grocery shopping, stopped at the employment office to do my papers, had a bath, had a nap, watched a movie. It wasn't till my water broke that I figured I actually was in labour after all. And even then I expected I would be be busy with it for hours and hours so I tried to take a nap. In the end my labour lasted only five hours and I can't help thinking that my relaxed attitude contributed to the ease and briefness of my labour and delivery. (I acknowledge that I am also just genetically lucky to have had so little pain.) The result was a beautiful birth experience that left me feeling completely invigorated and overwhelmed with the kind of joy I've only ever known at Pascha.

Now that it is Lent I'm faced with the challenge of fasting and all the stress we Orthodox tend to associate with it. A friend of mine remarked that it wasn't the change in diet that was so hard for her, but having to drastically reduce the AMOUNT of food she ate. She said there was no point in trading steak and potatoes for lentil soup if you ate 4 helpings of it just to feel full. And she had a good point. What's the point of changing your diet so you can feast on perogies? The point is that we aren't feasting. However, in her mind, I think she felt that the opposite of feasting is starving-- fasting was meant to be difficult after all.

But that got me thinking about how easy it is for us as Orthodox to approach the fast as being either a different kind of feast (of the ethnic vegan food variety) or as a sort of self-punishing famine. I tend towards the latter habit and I think most convert Orthodox do too-- especially when they come from Protestant backgrounds where they had the burden of choosing their own discipline instead of simply being obedient to tradition. It is easy to think that giving up feasting means giving up things we like and thereby feeling guilty if we continue to eat something we enjoy or do something we think of as a luxury--even if they aren't a part of the traditionally restricted food items.

But I do not believe for a moment that the traditional fasting rules were designed as self- punishment, nor do I believe that God wants us all to walk around half-starved, feeling light-headed and ill. After all, our bodies are His temple and we are not meant to abuse them by walking around hungry and incapable of concentrating. (Think how dangerous it would be for truck drivers or surgeons to be Orthodox if that were the case).

So I wonder if perhaps the real purpose behind the traditional fasting rules is to require us to slow our pace of life and reduce our stress so we have more energy for church and prayer. A friend commented to me that she was planning to rest more during Lent--even though it didn't sound like a good Lenten discipline. But I think as a matter of fact she is doing what we should ALL be doing during Lent. That the traditional fasting rules make no sense at all if we aren't actively trying to rest and relax as well. Our lives are ridiculously full and overwhelmingly busy most of the time that we have no time and energy for God. We're all buzzing about like Martha, readying the feast that we are missing the better part.

Of course I'm a stay-at-home mom and I make my own hours-- mostly. But I do tend to set unrealistic goals for myself and add to my list of daily challenges by planning complicated meals that take a lot of organising. I invite people round and try to play hostess even when I'm too tired.

So for my son's second birthday I felt terribly guilty that I hadn't planned anything or made any kind of effort to host a party or a dinner because I was far too tired. But in the end we had the best kind of Orthodox party there is-- the spontaneous shin dig. We invited whoever was free to stop by and hang out for ice cream cake after church on Sunday. I didn't cook, I didn't clean, I just enjoyed the fellowship and so did Theo. He opened his presents and blew out his two candles and enjoyed the attention of all his parents' familiar church friends.

I think this is the sort of approach we should all have to fasting. To avoid not simply the feasting but all the stresses that come with preparing a feast. Cook simple meals, avoid too many extra social engagements and make more time for rest and for church, so that our minds as well as our hearts and bodies are prepared for the Great Feast.

Frivolity!

2009-02-25T20:35:00.000-08:00

Okay so Lent is coming and so are the last few weeks of this brutally long pregnancy. (Well, it feels long anyway-- as far as I know it will end at the usual time of 40-ish weeks. Thank God I'm not an elephant, even if I feel like one). And I've been thinking a lot about what I can really give up for Lent since fasting is almost completely impossible.

But the trouble is that I don't really want to give anything up-- or if I must, I don't want to give up the things I probably should because I can. The fasting rules, as far as I know, were set up not just because meat, fish, and dairy are yummy, but because people ate them at feasts and celebrations as special luxuries-- and we aren't doing that during Lent. There are plenty of things we have now in the 21st century that might be called little luxuries (or big ones) that the fasting rules don't necessarily apply to. For example: coffee. Okay, not everyone loves it as much as I do, granted, but it's not cheap and for me it's my special little morning indulgence (especially since I'm pregnant and it's not exactly healthy). Also, sugary things like candy and dark chocolate and tasty cakes and cookies-- not usually my vice, but I do have friends that regularly strike them from the list of allowable foods, even if they are technically fasting-friendly. And that's because they aren't necessary for proper nutrition at all (like coffee, they're actually the opposite of healthy) and they are beloved indulgences--even if they are regularly indulged in. They feel special and they make us feel special.

So I'm having this problem because I know that it really doesn't matter how I feel, that being a Christian is a duty, not a choice, but I really don't want to give up the little luxuries that make me feel special because I'm 7 1/2 months pregnant and waddling around like a penguin!

I went to see Confessions of a Shopaholic last night with a girlfriend as a special sort of girly night out. It was terrific fun (for me anyway-- I imagine my husband would have wanted to gouge his eyes out 2 mins in if I'd been mean enough to drag him along). The main character was ridiculously fun to watch because she completely sums up what I think a lot of us do in our lives --except that she really has no ability to moderate herself (which is why she's so funny). She treats herself to material things to make herself feel special.

And I have to say I rather identify with her. I'm not saying I'd be quite happy to rack up stupid amounts of debt on every credit card I could get, buying sparkly shoes and scarves from designer shops. But I understand how wonderful it is to buy something new for yourself or to indulge in little (or big) luxuries-- like the pedicure I insisted on for my birthday. Did I need that? Well no, not really. Not physically I guess. Emotionally? Maybe...and I can't help thinking that there is something wrong with that. Yet, on the other hand-- didn't God want us to enjoy ourselves? Is it bad that I enjoy frivolous things now and then? Or things that are not healthy-- like coffee?

And because I am waddling about with a bowling ball in my pelvis, and because the discomfort will be immediately replaced by serious sleep deprivation when the baby is born, I feel really reluctant to give up the little luxuries I indulge in so often. And where does is stop? Like for me, getting a shower and doing my hair and make up is a REAL luxury. Should I give that up? Are bubble baths right out? And what if I'm overdue and going nuts waiting and I want to go have my nails done? Not cheap, arguably a waste of money, clearly a luxury--is it wrong that it will probably make me feel much better than prayer? I guess so, but I also have a hard time believing that God doesn't want us to take joy in things other than Himself.

But then again, I also remember how hard the first Pascha after Theo was. Not only had I not fasted, but Theo's birth was like a Pascha of its own. It felt the same way Pascha did, and not celebrating because it was Lent really felt wrong, so we'd been feasting for all of Lent and it really made Pascha a bit of a let down. This time around I don't even know if I'll make it to Pascha because the baby is due in Holy Week, but then, the baby will be a Pascha of its own-- one I SHOULD prepare for by cutting out unhealthy luxuries like coffee and upping my prayer rule.

But then, I've been fasting in my own way-- for nine months!!-- by virtue of being pregnant and hormonal. I can't have sushi and alcohol. I have to watch my sugar and caffeine. I threw up for four months, and now I'm waddling all over the place. I've got swollen feet and varicose veins and someone's feet in my ribs half the day. Does that count enough to allow some other little luxuries-- or comforts? Or is the joy of my new baby the Pascha to my Lenten pregnancy and the joy of Christ must be prepared for separately in some other way?

I don't have any answers. But I bet if I asked, God would tell me to stop worrying about the details already, be grateful, enjoy life, and just pray. Which doesn't exclude whatever fasting I end up doing.

Holiday Reflections

2009-02-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

For the last several months I've been fighting off depression and trying to stay positive while feeling completely overwhelmed by the business of being "Mom," so when my family asked what I wanted for my birthday, there was no question about what was at the top of my list--TIME OFF!!!

I think I've had very little of it compared most of my mom-friends (at least the overnight or all -day kind), partly because I was lucky enough to have no troubles with breast-feeding whatsoever, so Theo was hooked on boobies until he was past age one. And partly because I honestly feel quite guilty (irrationally so) and really miss him when I pawn him off on other people. He was so easy to haul around with me everywhere for the first year, and so mellow. Now he's two and quite the hassle on some outings. Plus he's eating proper food now and has to be kept on a fairly consistent routine with meals and naps. And toddlers are just totally OCD about everything too. And since I'm pretty much the only one who knows all his little quirks and obsessions and I can understand his badly-pronounced words and how to get him to cooperate I often feel like I have to write a novel about how to deal with him when I leave him with people for more than a couple of hours.

But with the new baby coming in two months and me likely to have no sleep--never mind time off-- I was desperate to fit in a little parenting holiday before more chaos descends on me. So that's what I asked for and my family generously obliged and took him overnight so that I had a whole 24 hours to recall what it was like before Theo was the center of my existence.

Of course I had very big plans lined up for how I was going to spend all this spare time-- dinner out for my birthday, a pedicure etc. And my husband and I had a terrific time. We drove way out to a lake we'd never explored and had a lovely kid-free day. But standing in our kitchen in the morning-- the only morning we'd woken up in our own beds without the noise of a kid in two years--we couldn't help but wonder just what the heck we used to DO with all our spare time before the kids arrived. We stayed in bed till 9:30-- which felt stupidly lazy, but it was nothing compared to how late we USED to sleep in on weekends. And we took like an hour over breakfast and actually got to eat it together and it just felt ODD.

And of course half the conversation we had while enjoying our freedom was all about Theo and what we wanted to do with him in the summer and how cute he would look paddling a canoe. We went shopping for outdoor gear and the only thing we bought was a set of woolies for him. More than once I had to fight the temptation to call my parents and find out if he was behaving and whether or not he missed us.

It's funny how quickly you become "Mama" and "Dadda" even in your own minds after the kids arrive. I remember my dad telling Greg and I, while we were still engaged, that soon we'd have trouble recalling what it was like to be single, and that after the kids arrived it would be even harder to remember what marriage was like without them. He was so right. Of course I remember the freedom of marriage before kids, but it feels like it happened to someone else kind of. And I guess, in some sense, it did. I'm not the person I used to be before Theo came along, and in spite of stress and pressure (greatly enhanced by pregnancy hormones) I really don't miss it. :)

Positive Discipline

2009-01-23T14:33:00.000-08:00

So, I came across a book in Chapters today that I'm really interested in reading called "Positive Discipline for the Preschooler." Or something like that. Now I realise I'm proving to be more and more of what my friend calls a hippie-granola mom, but most people I know at least respect me for planning to properly and strictly discipline my kid. And because Theo is generally very very well behaved and good-natured (so far), people tend to attribute this to my brilliant disciplinary parenting skills. But to be honest, much as I would like to take the credit for Theo's good behaviour, I really can't say it has anything to do with me. He's just kinda like that. And I have a bad feeling he won't be like that for long.

So I've been toying on and off with the idea of positive disciplinary practices-- as opposed to punitive ones. Now for most people (including myself until recently) this translates into "parent opposed to spanking." And we all roll our eyes and privately nod to each other and think "HER kids are going to be a nightmare." And realistically I'm not against spanking at all. I haven't had to use it yet and my kid is still very young so the jury is out on how awful he'll be-- especially when minibaby arrives.

But the reason a lot of people react this way (I'm guessing) is that they turned out fine (and their parents spanked them) and their kids turned out well behaved (and they used spanking). Plus a lot of parents who don't spank really do turn out the most awful children, who have no respect for anyone, least of all their parents.

Also if parents choose to use spanking to discipline it's hard not to feel judged by a parent who avoids it. In fact, choosing to take any different approach to parenting than another person is sure to illicit defensiveness. Trouble is that there IS a lot of research proving that spanking is NOT the best disciplinary method, even if it works for some kids. It's not an exact formula. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" isn't necessarily the rule for every misbehaving kid. Some kids misbehave WORSE when spanking is used. Besides-- "the rod" itself doesn't necessarily mean a literal instrument of punishment.

I have found, so far, that this method seems to really fail on Theo. Of course it's a bit early to tell. We've only had occasion to swat his little hands once or twice, but every time it illicited screaming and crying and utter misery and I'm not completely sure he even learned his lesson. What he DID learn was that Mummy and Daddy might hit him if he doesn't do what they want and while that might seem like a good thing (ie he knows there are boundaries) I think ultimately it just made him lose trust in us and taught him to hit when people don't do what you want. Of course it's quite easy to gain a toddler's trust back, they're so understanding. But that's all the more reason why I wouldn't want to risk breaking it again--otherwise what seems to me like a good disciplinary practice is really just teaching him to be afraid of me-- and that's when I might find that he starts lying to me or something worse.

Obviously all of this is really just specualtive on my part since my kid is still pretty little and generally good-natured, so I'm not making sweeping judgements about people's disciplinary practices or defining what works best. All I know is my kid and I'm definitely a fan of the "do-what makes-you-sane" approach to anything regarding parenting.

The reason I'm interested in at least trying positive discipline is that it is not, like some people might assume, some fancy way of just being permissive to your kid and letting them be bratty so you can go about your business and ignore their bad behaviour. You know-- go be zen and praise your kid's destructive behaviour for being "assertive" or "creative" or some bullshit. As a matter of fact it's quite the opposite. It stresses being very interactive with your kid and learning to communicate with them in a way they understand-- which, sadly, takes a hell of a lot of patience and work-- something most of us just dinnae got time for. Especially when we're sleep deprived.

It also requires that parents treat their kids with respect and behave themselves too, which I think is a really good approach, but rather difficult for grown ups to accept. We expect kids to behave for us and treat us with politeness, but almost never teach by example. God knows, when Theo is getting in my way before dinner and trying to climb up my leg or "help" with dishes or something, my first reaction is to yell in frustration or say something that, to an adult, would be shockingly rude. Like "Theo! Can you just PISS OFF!!?? I'm trying to get dinner made!!" Needless to say this reaction never illicits a compliant response. He usually gets more and more frantic and upset and frustrated-- and so do I--until we're both at our wit's end.

I learned very quickly that if I took the time and inconvenience to show Theo the appropriate way to help with dishes (that is to say, how to help by not getting in my way) that he would be a lot happier and we could do things together without a fight. After all, it's not unreasonable for him to want to help out-- just inconvenient.

Of course some things are more dangerous than others. He can't really help with cooking or he might get burned. But the idea of a form of discipline that requires the parents to be disciplined and well-behaved themselves (as opposed to assuming that kids act out just because they're bad) definitely appeals to me. At least, I'm hoping if I try it, it might increase my ability to handle difficult situations without freaking out or dissolving into tears of frustration too.

Food for Thought

2009-01-22T16:11:00.000-08:00

Lately we've developed great hopes of buying our own place, so we've been trying to stick to what is turning out to be a pretty modest grocery budget of $400/month-- including things like nappies and hand cream and shampoo and cleaning supplies. And while it might see like a lot of money to stretch between three and a half people it really is turning out to be rather tricky. I had no idea we were spending quite so much on food until I tried to set a limit and discovered that we really weren't being very careful at all.

Now I'm kinda torn about this because I really do want to make healthy eating a big priority in our lives-- mostly because I'm quite picky and I like what I eat to be delicious, varied, and filling, as well adding up to all various requirements a pregnant woman needs. I'm also rather concerned about making things from scratch with natural and healthy foods as opposed to highly processed substitutes (you know, butter vs margarine, home made soup vs tinned, tomato and cheese sauces from scratch) . But I discovered that even when I cut things down to the very barest of necessities--minimal meats and fish, plain cheeses (nothing but cheddar), and only the absolute staples in fruits and veg and grains--I am STILL having trouble keeping things under budget. And the very frustrating part is that, as a housewife, the only really creative job that I get to do on a daily basis is cook, so it kinda sucks when we have to limit my materials.

But the other problem is that I really would like to buy local and organic for reasons of health and social responsibility. Organic oranges aren't really all that necessary for our health because you peel them, but if you buy organic you're supporting farms that don't dump chemicals on the heads of their workers. Or we could skip oranges altogether because they come from too far away and bringing them out to the west coast of Canada is bad for the environment. But then HOW are we going to make sure we get enough vitamin C??

There are SO many issues involved in food choices these days. We're both blessed and cursed with the abundance we have in the western world. We have so much, and yet we don't even know where half of it comes from and if we tried to make both healthy and ethical choices it would be prohibitively expensive. And if we COULD afford it-- the question would be where did we get OUR money from and why aren't we giving more of it to charity. It's a vicious cycle.

I have already done everything in my power to keep us under budget. This includes not only giving up organic food and cutting our meat consumption down to a minimum. I also meticulously plan my menus a week in advance, with separate meal plans for Theo in case he won't eat what we're eating. On top of this, I buy in bulk, build leftovers into the week, and never ever experiment with new recipes lest I have to buy a lot of things I don't normally keep in the house or I mess it up and end up wasting things. I ration everything and strictly regulate what's permitted for snacking on. I probably spend over 3 hours hours every week on planning and working out the menu-- not counting the time it takes me to prepare the food. And if I don't keep strictly to the rules I've made for myself we'll go over our budget in a heartbeat. I don't even know what Lent is going to be like.

Now the Bible clearly states that it is what comes out of our mouths, not what goes in, that defiles a man. And with all this rigid planning I already feel like I care way too much about food to even TRY to shop in a healthier, more ethical fashion. Lent is approaching and it brings it's own set of cooking and budgeting challenges. And being pregnant puts another spanner in the works. I often feel that Orthodox Christians can be caught up in food ethics, not just when it comes to fasting, but also when it comes to buying and eating in a socially responsible way. We can so easily be tricked into caring far more about food than we should.

So while I think it's important for us to keep these social and ethical concerns in mind when we go out to the shops, personally, for the coming fast, I'm going to do my best to just be grateful for the abundance this world offers me and try not to over eat. God knows it can be harder to just be grateful for the gifts I have.

People who inspire me

2009-01-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

Okay, Facebook has this annoying new Tri-cyclen-lo advert on about "Who Inspires Us??" --for those of you who don't know, Tri-cyclen-lo is a birth control pill. I find this kind of advertising really annoying because it implies that people who choose to wait or to never have kids (through use of this new and freedom-enhancing drug!) are making their choice because they're so inspired! The subtext is that women who don't live the freedom-enhanced lives of the young and sexually unshackled (my phrase) are somehow boring uninspired people, which is why they could think of nothing better to do wth their lives than have kids.

Now it's funny, because how ever pro-family the Orthodox church might be, one cannot deny that the majority of well known saints out there-- both male and female--are ones who chose not to have children, given that a heck of a lot of them were monastic or, my favourite, got married and chose to "live as brother and sister" when they converted to Christianity. It's not surprising that a lot of non-Christians out there seem to think that we have this mortification with sexuality. The married saints (and there are quite a few) don't get nearly as much press.

However, the BIGGEST saint in the church IS a mother. Now granted, she perhaps gets a little less credit for this than she deserves, probably because she was a virgin and according to church tradition she remained a virgin. But all the celibacy and chastity in the world didn't do her any good because she was still informed she was going to have a baby-- that the birth control failed. And she chose to deal with the consequences anyway. She could have told Gabriel "No WAY am I doing that! I've got plans!!" but she didn't and instead she risked everything and took on one of the hardest jobs a woman can do-- motherhood. And she was willing to do it whether she had to do it alone or not.

Now maybe people don't think that's a fair comparison to your average mum because after all, her son was GOD. But I don't believe for a second that she didn't have to deal with dirty, leaking swaddling clothes, or humous on the walls, or many many sleepless nights. The Bible even tells us that she was pretty darn exasperated to find that her 12 year-old had stayed behind in the temple without telling them so he could preach. And she probably had to deal with it without the help and support and sympathy of her fellow mothers because, after all, she conceived out of wedlock and was therefore to be shunned. And she still managed to keep it together and say "Let it be to me according to Your word?" That's inspiring!

In fact all the people I find most inspiring are either parents or have parental qualities that I can't ever hope to achieve in this life. My Dad-- father not only to my sister and I but to a whole parish of people that he has nurtured for the last 20+ years and continues to do. Try being daddy to 100 kids at once-- and they keep coming! But he pulls it off with patience and diligence. It's his whole life. I've never know someone to more self-sacrificing.

My mother, who has managed to be the most patient and caring wife and mother that I can imagine, not only to us, but to the parish as well. Her job is a lonely one, having to share her husband with so many people, and be a model of propriety for all the women in our parish. Besides my dad she has no close friends here because she cannot simultaneously be both mother and friend to the people in the parish. She must bear her worries and trials almost alone with only my father to confide in. And yet she manages to pull it off with grace and peace. Plus she put up with me at 13 which says a lot.

My mother in-law. 1o children and not crazy yet-- seriously. How does one DO that??? In spite of her many children and rather itinerant life she's still a gracious, patient and self-sacrificing woman.

My closest most inspiring friends, who's names I'll omit lest anyone feel left out, are not mothers, yet, but they possess qualities that are nurturing, loving and show a depth of kindness and patience that I admire and wish I could hope to emmulate some day. One is not only a loving patient friend, but also works at a daycare and knows very well how trying it can be to raise kids. The other, while inexperienced with actual children has always been a model of kindness, patience and forgiveness to all her friends and family, cheerfully nurturing many of us through the toughest times in spite of her own personal trials.

These are the people I find inspiring-- the women (and man) who impress me. Not the people who chose to skip having children because they were inspired by Hilary Clinton or whoever, but because they possess qualities of patience, kindness, love, and self-sacrifice.

My Shameless Brag-list About Theo

2009-01-13T09:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, I seriously have the CUTEST kid ever, and if I don't write down just how awesome he is then before I know it he'll be ten and making bombs in our garage and I'll have completely forgotten how rad he was as a baby.

So here's the awesome things I can remember at the moment.

He's an angel in church. He's almost always quiet and he will generally let someone hold him for the whole service. And if he wants to run around, he runs circles around me. You might not think that's very good church behaviour, but for a two year-old kid that spends an average of 2 1/2 hours in a service that you're supposed to stand through and listen to (unless you sing) every week, it's pretty darn good.

He goes to bed with hardly any fuss. Really. I don't have to stick to a SUPER strict schedule at all. Any time between 7 and 9 pm and he more or less goes down without a fuss. He might not go to sleep right away and we can often hear little protests coming from the direction of his room because he feels left out, but they don't last long and eventually he cuddles down on his own.

He has so many hilarious words and ways of viewing the world. My favourite so far: we take him up to Manning Park for a romp in the snow (which turned out to be higher than him, so not the best idea), and he spots a wee patch of yellow snow where someone's dog had been. What does he say ?? "Egg!!!"

He's usually very gentle and cautious, which I think is pretty rare for a two year old. He actually knows what I mean when I say "gently" which means I don't need to worry too much about him getting over excited and smashing something in his enthusiasm. He prefers to carefully inspect things. Like my mother in-law gave him a sort of racket with a plastic center that said "Sonic Smash!" on it and a spoon to whack it with while we were visiting. He enjoyed banging it for a little while and then he stopped and began to very gently touch the spoon on the racket to see why it made that drum-like noise. As though if he did it really slow he could figure out the secret of how it worked. His cautious approach to exploration is pretty convenient too for when we visit people with animals. He loves them and makes this hilarious high-pitched noise of delight when he sees animals, but he's very careful about getting too close or grabbing. Same with other babies.

He hasn't got many words, but he LOVES to talk and since his favourite words are all sound effects (choo-choo, mmmmmooo, bok-bok! etc) his sentences, which can go on and on, are punctuated with all kinds of hilarious sound effects.

He loves to read with us. Seriously, he can quite happily sit on our laps for hours reading and re-reading every book on his shelf. And he has the attention span for books well beyond his age which is nice because one gets really sick of "There's a Wocket in my Pocket!" after a few renditions. The great thing is that it isn't just the pictures he loves either. He really does understand simple story lines. He brought me a copy of "I Have to GO!!" by Robert Munsch and said "Pssss"--which is his word for potty or peeing.

He regularly uses his signs for "please" and "thank-you" without fuss, which is not only great for showing off in front of other parents, but it means that if he's fussing and whining about wanting something that isn't unreasonable I can actually give it to him and make him happy if he stops whining long enough to ask nicely. This is rad because he won't get the idea that whining is what got his needs met, but using the right words instead. It doesn't mean that he doesn't whine and scream plenty. He IS two-ish. But it does mean I can start laying the ground work for better behaviour now instead of when he's old enough to actually say the right words and understnad why they're important.

Oh there's lots of other stuff. Like the fact that he likes olives, and bawls his eyes out when Daddy leaves for work (which is really cute actually), and he knows all his body parts, and barnyard animal noises and I think he knows some of his colours too. Too many cool things that probably aren't out of the ordinary for your average two year-old, but they're impressive to me because I'm his Mama. :)

WTF???

2009-01-08T18:32:00.000-08:00

Okay--is there like an institution for jerks? Did they lose their funding? Or go on a field trip to the mall today??

Random lady in RW--"Um can you move your buggy so I can browse too??"

Random other lady at Starbucks--"Can you not park your stroller there??" I smile graciously, apologise and then move my stroller to the opposite side of the table. Then I bend over to get into the diaper bag in the cargo rack to retrieve a sippy cup. Same random lady again--"Your entire butt is in my face when you bend over like that!" I laugh and say "Yes it's bigger than normal these days." Random lady "It's not that-- it's just I turned and like it's right there!" WELL IT BLOODY WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN IF YOU DIDN'T MAKE ME MOVE MY STROLLER!!!! Why, oh why didn't I think of something really cheeky to say like "I know-- it's hotter than yours too!" Or "you just looked the type that might appreciate it."

....no seriously. What the hell is wrong with people???

I swear I'm like a jerk magnet these days. Like the other week when a lady in a Jeep honked irately at me for not waddling fast enough onto the ice rink of a sidewalk so that her stupid gas guzzler could take up the whole road at 50 clicks in the snow.

Did someone dump essence of bitch in the water supply or something? Or is it just some cosmic joke that world's biggest jerks seem to find as many pregnant women as they can to give a hard time to?

At least the bus driver was nice for a change...

Parenting Priorities

2009-01-05T12:14:00.000-08:00

I have a low tolerance for criticism these days because I'm tired and pregnant and not enjoying it as much as last time. But I've also noticed that a lot of my other mother friends have been experiencing similar frustration. They're being criticised, often publicly, not just by strangers or friends without kids, but by other mothers!!

I'm trying to get my head around why this is such a common complaint-- maybe it always was a complaint. The nagging mother in-law who thinks you can't do anything right is generally a pretty universal parenting problem (though in my case not, my mother in-law is great). But it seems like more and more these days we're getting a lot of criticism not just from parents and grandparents but from our peers as well.

As far as I can tell there are two kinds of mothers. Mums who think parenting ought to be all- consuming and mums who like their kids but would like to have a life too. These ideals aren't restricted to parents either. Non-parents will often adhere to one school of thought or the other. And neither group is willing to cut the other any slack, leaving most mums-- who tend to fall somewhere in between the two groups in practice, feeling unappreciated for how hard they ARE trying and also that they really aren't trying hard enough.

For example, some mums want to work whether they have to or not. Maybe they love their job, maybe they just like the opportunity to get out of the house, maybe all their friends are at work, maybe they just need to feel appreciated for something other than their boobs. Other mothers want to stay home, whether it's financially easy or not. Maybe they don't have a good job to go back to, maybe cloth diapers and organic home-cooked food is a HUGE priority for them, maybe they aren't ready to give up the control over what their kid learns and who their kid interacts with to someone else yet. The working-mum group gets accused of being selfish and vain and the stay-at-home mum gets accused of being a control freak or a hippy. And neither groups cuts the other group any slack.

To add to the problem, mums have strangers and non-parent friends imposing their parenting standards on them. Case in point: when I was pregnant with Theo I was told by a customer that I was absolutely insane (translate reckless and selfish) to have chosen a midwife instead of a doctor. And I have been told the same by non-parent friends. I've also had random grocery clerks tell me to absolutely NOT share a room with my baby or he wouldn't be independent (translate: he would be spoiled). Some mothers take what worked for them and apply it as a rule to parenting in general and this is something I am guilty of myself. We work really hard to find a solution to whatever problem we have and when we are victorious we tell everyone about how clever we were to have figured out the secret of getting our kid to sleep through the night-- or whatever the problem was.

We also count it as a victory if our kid doesn't have a particularly inconvenient habit we've noticed in other kids, whether our brilliant parenting was the reason or just our kid's personality. For example, I have a friend with twins (bless her!) who's got her kitchen entirely locked down-- the whole house in fact--because the kids get into everything. It would be tempting to think that I'm such a great parent because my kid listens when I say don't touch and knows what he's allowed to play with, but realistically, I only have one kid to wrangle-- not two, (who encourage each other in their exploratory pursuits no less). She's doing what works for HER sanity and it's just as valid as what I do for my own.

Some people get very worried about the mess Theo makes with my pots and pans and containers in the kitchen when they come to visit. They try to be helpful by way of telling him "no, no!! Don't get into that!!" They're baffled when I say it's no bother. "What do you mean?" they say, shocked. "You don't care that he's taking all the cutlery out of the drawer and throwing it on the floor? I would!! I don't want to clean it up!!" Privately they're thinking-- MY kids will hear the word "no." But from my perspective, he can't hurt himself on the stuff he gets into and the poor kid already has so many boundaries he can't cross because he's little and because I don't get out often enough to let him run around. I'm picking my battles. If I say no to everything that's inconvenient as well as everything that's dangerous, I'm going to make a lot more work for myself and my kid is going to feel completely oppressed. Besides, I don't want to spend every minute of every day saying "no! don't touch that!" and trying to keep my house spotless or I'll go crazy.

Most parents set up HUGE standards for themselves long before they have kids and discover very shortly after their kids arrive just which things are big priorities for their sanity and which things aren't. They then take the priorities they do have and tell all the other parents they know about why their priorities are the most important ones and then justify not making other things priorities by criticising parents who do. For example, I use cloth diapers because I like em and their better for the environment etc. Some cloth using parents scornfully criticise women who don't for being lazy and irresponsible, while mothers who don't use em scornfully criticise women who do for letting their kids needs completely control them and take over their lives. No one says-- look, just go do what you want! We all need to feel the way we're doing things is the BEST way to do things and since kids don't usually appreciate the job we're doing we have to get our approval from our peers and from other parents.

But no two kids are alike and no two parents are alike and we all have different needs, so that approval is really hard to get. I don't know what the solution is, but it would sure be nice if everyone just relaxed and did their best and stopped criticising each other for what is more often than not, just a difference in priorities, not a real lack in parenting ability.

Sunday Morning Snow Reflections

2008-12-21T09:08:00.000-08:00

Ahhhhhh. The snow is beautiful. And I can't help enjoying it even though it's bloody freezing out there and I don't have a coat that buttons over my HUGE belly (well rounder than usual--I shouldn't say huge now, because I've got 4 months to go and if I start thinking of myself as huge now then I'll be really miserable by the end).

Trouble is that it's Sunday. So lots of people will try but probably fail to make it to church. When I was younger (not that much younger) I used to pray to St. Nicholas for snow--partly because one year it really worked. But obviously Dad hates snow because attendance at church is down--which is fair enough really. Must be hard for him to get out of bed on Sunday morning thinking he's going to be one of a very few people.

Today my husband picked him up because he was snowed in. We spent our Christmas money on snow tires--which at the time made me really mad, but now I'm quite thankful. When you think of it, considering the conditions (which were pretty unlikely) they were the best Christmas present we could have given ourselves. It's hard to tell because the Weather Network people are such Indian givers (oo sorry ethnic slur --I'm told Welsh givers works too) but it looks like we really are going to have a White Christmas--pretty rare for this part of the world. And if that's the case, snow tires are the best gift we could get. Not because we need to drive to church or because we have to travel very far at all really. Nope, it means my husband can play taxi-man and pick up as many people who need a lift on Christmas as he can reach. After all, the more the merrier on Christmas morning-- at church I mean.

I'm still in my PJs sipping coffee because I've decided to skip my pre-Liturgy shower while Theo is at Matins--who wants to go out with wet hair (especially if you lost your only hat)? But it's early still and I just want to sit and enjoy the peacefulness of the trailer. Usually the traffic screams by at all hours. When the snow comes it's nice and quiet for a change.

But I can't help feeling a twinge of guilt about the whole snow thing and I'm not sure how to work it out in my head. I suppose when it comes down to it no one can control the weather so I shouldn't really feel guilty about the excitement and happiness I feel when it snows. It's not MY fault it's freezing and people are snowed in away from family or getting in car accidents. But then it IS sort of my fault that people are out freezing their asses off because they're homeless right? I mean not directly my fault. It's everyone's fault really. The main reason snow is so delightful is that I have a home and a warm coat and a bright shiny red kettle to make me hot cocoa. I can sit and watch the snow and enjoy the coziness of the house and the satisfaction of hearing the furnace kick in again. I can dress my kid up in woolies and force his mittens on and let him play outside and not worry about him freezing to death. Must be really hard to enjoy creation when you're poor and homeless.

What does that say about people who don't enjoy creation for what it is when they DO have a home and hearth? People who rail against the weather because it keeps the mall attendance down and profits bad. People who insist their employees turn up on a snow day because otherwise the company won't make as much-- even if the employees have to bus it in the freezing cold? Or leave their children without babysitters because the schools and daycares close, but the malls never do? (Ahem, can you tell I've been scarred by retail...?) It would be nice if, when it snowed like this, everything closed except churches and community halls and people's homes. Don't go to work-- stay home and make soup for the people freezing outside your door. That should be our FIRST job really. Our on call job. You know--in an ideal world.

Anyway, I've been blessed with a house and clothes and snow tires. So I'm going to enjoy what I've been given and at least pray for everyone out there who isn't enjoying it--whatever the reason, hearts too small or shoes too tight (or non-existent).

More things I'm Grateful for

2008-12-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

I'm on a roll now.

1)Theo is napping and I didn't have to put him down-- Grandpa did!!
2)We found the perfect train set
3)my shopping is done!!! (Except for groceries)
4)Mini-baby is kicking me in the bladder, which might seem like a weird thing to be happy about but seriously, there's nothing like a foot in the bladder to make you feel all warm--especially if you pee your pants
5)I don't get hairier with pregnancy! But my hair looks full and lovely...
6)Surgery for varicose veins is covered by medical (I'm told)
7)Mom gave me some lovely table linens for Christmas
8)The Hartleys gave us some lovely fancy gold and white china for our wedding years ago which we'd forgotten all about and never needed till now because we're hosting Christmas! (Bless them)
9)We might have snow for Christmas
10)Buying a new phone was actually cheaper than keeping the old one (yay Fido Dollars!)
11)Two Christmas hampers means more and bigger knitting storage baskets!
12)How the Grinch Stole Christmas is still fun to watch even if I've see/heard it a million times this month
13) Ditto Charlie Brown Christmas
14)My kid is cute making it hard to be mad at him for long (I know, how crap a mother would I be for an ugly kid right? I'm ashamed)
15) The choir sounds terrific at church and Greg is really really enjoying it!

There are more. I thought of them yesterday and had no paper to write them down. But it works a treat. I feel so much better!

Things I am Grateful For

2008-12-15T14:27:00.000-08:00

Okay I'm having a crappy couple of weeks. When Charlie Brown says "Everything I touch gets ruined"-- I really really sympathise. The dress I spent hours sewing to wear for Christmas is probably not going to fit because I'm expanding too quickly; we're completely skint after our two day holiday from Theo (because we couldn't face taking the bus and decided to pay to bring the car on the ferry at the last minute) and as a result I had to return half the presents we bought; work is going to be scarce over the holiday because the office is shut down between Christmas and Theopany; I lost my only winter hat--just in time for the freezing weather; my coat doesn't fit over my massive belly; and the lovely snow we were all excited about (especially me) made the tiny crack in our windshield into a HUGE crack and now we have to spend $200 to replace it. Oh and I burned my hand making breakfast yesterday.

So I'm trying really hard not to be negative and spend the week crying and ruining everyone's Christmas spirit because it isn't their fault I'm having some really bad luck. But being positive in the face of misfortune is really not a pregnant woman's forte. So I thought I would make a list of things I'm grateful for and see if that helps.

1)Christmas is STILL Christmas
2) WE are still married, even though many people we know called it quits this year
3)We have a terrific family that will keep us from freezing and starving
4)-- neither of which we are close to doing
5)The above people are also not sick or dying or injured
6)--and they're paying for Christmas dinner
7) We've agreed that we will make an exception to our "no visa purchases rule" to get Theo a present
8)We've also agreed that a tree is a necessary purchase
9)I haven't taken a hammer to my sewing machine yet
10) --Or the car
11)I made some very pretty gifts, even though I couldn't afford to buy them for people
12)We have our own place with no one above, below or next door to object to Theo's prospective Christmas present of bells from his grandparents.
13) I do not object to bells from his grandparents
14)If I DO object to bells they can live with his grandparents and said grandparents will not be offended (they promised)
15)My Christmas decorations don't suck
16)One glass of wine on Christmas day is perfectly acceptable even though I'm pregnant
17)I don't suck at cooking (which is really good if you're too skint to buy meat very often)
18)I also don't mind going vegetarian if we have to
19)I don't think we pay the gas bill, which is good because it's damn hard keeping the trailer warm
20)I can bake cookies today
21) I might not have a pretty dress to wear but I don't have to wear sweat pants either
22)I have fuzzy pink slippers
23) Non-alcoholic beer doesn't suck
24)--and we might be able to afford it...for Christmas anyway
25)My husband works outside his home office on Fridays which means I can still play my new Loreena McKennitt cd at least once a week

There are so many more, those are just the things that came to mind right now-- not necessarily in order of importance. Hm. I DO feel better. Well--better enough to get up and make another cup of tea and start thinking about those cookies...

Politi-what?

2008-12-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm feeling fairly miffed and confused about the state of Canada's government right now. And annoyed by everyone's reactions to what going on.

I should explain that I'm not political. I don't get it. I'm apathetic. I don't have television, I quit listening to the radio (because Radio 2 changed their entire weekday program to nix most of the classical music!!) and I don't read newspapers because who wants to spend that money? So I'm fairly uninformed. And I don't care. Maybe I'm evil. Whatever.

But I do feel I have to do my civic duty and go vote (after all it's a right that not a lot of people in the world have and I felt it would be ungrateful not to) so I was bloody annoyed when I heard through friends that we're going to have to vote on the federal government AGAIN. Seriously? Didn't we JUST all vote like last month? And then we had to worry our heads about the US election too, and the municiple elections just finished and I think the provincial ones are coming up again and I'm just fed right up! Leave me alone government!!

Well it turns out we're NOT voting yet. We either vote next year (probably unless some wheels get seriously greased, and from what I can tell those wheels are damn stubborn and don't seem to want to move no matter what.) Or we get to have a coalition of the smaller opposition parties that as far as I know have nothing in common ideologically except that they hate the party currently forming the government. Great. That sounds stable. Oh and they want to spend lots of money we don't have in stimulus packages to help people suffering from the financial crisis--which has so far done absolutely nothing to help our biggest trading partner. Meanwhile, the ruling party's solution is to suspend parliament (lest they lose power because they won't budge on THEIR stance)-- which means absolutely nothing gets done for two months straight while we're in the middle of an economic crisis. Brilliant.

Now I will be honest. I voted for the Conservatives. Not because I am conservative. I already said I don't get politics at all. But I had no respect for the Liberals after 13 years of lies, broken promises, and scandal and their new leader (who didn't seem to speak English) wasn't doing anything to restore their credibility as far as I was concerned. And plus they wanted to raise taxes for "helping the environment" or something. Cuz that's the big issue.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not some hick with a petrol guzzling 4x4 on stilts that thinks global warming is a lot of hooey. As a matter of fact, I live a fairly environmentally responsible lifestyle. I use cloth diapers, we drive a tiny, super fuel-efficient Honda Fit (and we only have ONE car). I walk where I can and when I can't walk I use the bus. I wash my dishes and my laundry in environmentally safe detergent. I don't waste paper. I use power-saving lightbulbs. I buy local and organic groceries when I can and I cook things from scratch rather than use processed pre-made "food products" that are not only unhealthy but also create a lot more waste. Why do I have time to do all this? Because I'm a stay at home mom. Why can I afford to stay at home? Because we cram everything we own into a tiny two bedroom trailer which we plan to fill with as many kids as we can fit bunk beds for and because the current government party sends me a check for $100 a month (per child under 6)--which is what pays for the slightly more expensive groceries, and environmentally safe lightbulbs and laundy soap and organic milk from a local dairy. My husband does not make a lot. In fact if you divide his wage between us (imagining that we're BOTH working) we make about 9 bucks an hour. Which is a buck more than minimum wage. Not really enough.

Now I COULD go back to work (like a responsible woman of the world) and actually try to provide the north American standard for my children (their own rooms in a big house with a big yard and all the toys and opportunities for sports and extra cirricular activities they could possibly imagine). But we'd have to buy another car, and I would have spend half my wage on daycare and we'd never have time to eat as a family so it would be instant meals all the way and processed lunch meat (bring on the listeriosis) and low quality snack foods and disposble diapers (daycares don't do cloth) and meanwhile my kids would never see me, my husband would never see me, family unity would go out the window, and all those environmentally friendly things we can manage because I stay at home and bother to do them would be gone.

We'll never own a house-- or at least not while we're in our current situation. But I failed to see how raising taxes would actually help the environment when the problem, to me, seems to be a social one-- which is that both parents have to work to survive. If one parent chooses to stay at home to take on these things that INDIVIDUALS ought to be responsible for (not the government), then we can make a much bigger difference to the world not just environmentally, but socially speaking as well. Think of all the kids who will have better relationships with their families-- and marriages that will benefit from more frequent communication and time spent together at home? Think of how much better people would be fed--how much better children would learn if they weren't consuming sugar and processed crap all day because Mom (or Dad) haven't got time to make you anything else?

And politically, the only party I saw supporting families with one spouse at home to care for the children and keep house was the Conservatives. No one will convince me that taxing us further to provide more government subsidised child care programs will actually help things that are wrong in this country. Plus the Liberal government's track record for a)doing what they said they would and b)using our money wisely (instead of lining their already heavy pockets) is pretty shady. Green solution my ass.

So I voted to the right. Not because I call myself conservative-- I dunno anything about politics. Ideologically I don't really understand how one party differs from the next. But I know what I value-- which is family life. And it seems to me that a lot of the left leaning parties, who talk a lot about union rights and the environment and government subsidised programs, seem to value the same things I do, but their solutions for change make no sense to me because they all assume that work is life instead of the thing we do in order to support and enjoy other parts of our life- like family. Why would a woman WANT to stay home and care for her family? Is she backwards? Mentally deficient? Did she miss that year at school where we drilled into them importance of having a career? Of putting herself forward and being a USEFUL member of society????

Well I dunno but the "education" never stuck with me.

Plus all that talk about union rights and stuff always gets my goat because, ahem, we would LOVE to have a union job-- you actually make some money if you work for a union--ever worked retail? No? Then stop bitching. Those people don't make enough to pay rent when they work 60 hours a week. They get shitty hours, deal with shitty people (and smile while doing it), they are always underpaid, understaffed, over-worked, they don't get proper breaks or holidays (two weeks?? Are you kidding??--half an hour's unpaid break, maybe, out of eight, to wolf down a disgusting meal from the food court?) and they don't earn enough money to manage even a small rent half the time, let alone pay for a car or school or decent food or raise kids. Who represents them? Uhuh, no one. People who work for unions have it made compared to the rest of us. People who work for unions are the ones shopping on Sundays (people need the right to shop weekends you know) and making the poor sales assistants tear their hair out.

Okay that last bit was fairly irrelevant and bitter so jsut disregard it, but personally I'm fed up. I don't want to vote again. I just want everyone in Ottawa to grow up and stop talking shite!! And that goes for the lot of them!!

Who's in Mama's tum?!

2008-11-26T10:13:00.001-08:00

So we had the ultrasound on Monday and got the results Tuesday morning-- which struck me as pretty quick. Good thing too. I was pretty choked that they charged me 10$ for those lame computer print-out photos and made me go to the bank for cash to pay. Plus they spelled my name wrong. But the point is that the baby is perfect and the placenta and uterus and fluids are all normal which is a nice relief.

Not that I expected anything to be wrong. It's just good news to have. And to be honest, I've felt fairly detached from this baby and pregnancy. When I got pregnant with Theo I felt like I knew him right away. I was sure he was a boy and just felt some sort of connection to him. This time is totally different. We had a little more trouble getting pregnant and were under a lot more pressure this time around (financially and just generally), so when I found out I was pregnant, it really didn't feel real. I half expected to miscarry or something because I just didn't feel like the baby was really there and this was really happening all over again. Even when I started to feel the kicking (much earlier this time) I still didn't feel pregnant. Just tired.

That's partly why I wanted to find out the sex. I think I wanted to have something to picture-- like me cradling a girl in her pink outfit, or sorting through all the old baby boy clothes to pick which ones I wanted to dress him in when he was born. I was so excited to be pregnant with Theo, and so sure I already knew who he was that I sort of wanted to wait to find out the sex-- save something for a surprise. But this time I just feel so unexcited (and guilty about it--irrationally) that I wanted something to imagine that I could get excited about.

Greg was not on board with finding out the sex however, because, and I quote: "There's no point coming to the birth if I already know the sex!" Now this might sound like a horrible, shallow, scoundrel-y thing to say to your pregnant wife, but I sort of see his point.

See, unlike so many sensitive, loving, and "enlightened" husbands (read my sarcasm) Greg really really feels reluctant to be at the birth. And most modern people would shout "What a bastard!" But I think that lots of men feel the same way and are too ashamed to admit it. Think about it: men are pretty much useless in the birthing room-- at least by their standards. They like to help, especially with physically demanding stuff (like lifting and opening jars and stuff). It makes them feel manly. In the birthing room they can't really do anything but "be there for you" which is kind of a role reversal if you think about it. MOMMIES hold your hand and say sweet comforting things when you hurt. It's gotta suck not being able to help much with the pain and try to be the sensitive loving one who knows exactly what to say to make you feel supported. Some guys are better at it than others, but it's quite a challenge for lots of guys.

Also, birth is gross. I'm sorry, people who say it's magical and amazing are full of it. There's blood and screaming and slippery slimy stuff and fluids leaking. It's not pretty. Plus new babies aren't much to look at. They're like lizards or purple aliens. And guys can be really squeamish. I don't blame them. When they offered me that mirror to see the head I was like "NO WAY JOSE!! Gro-oss!!!" I'll do the pushing, but I don't want to look at it. So I don't expect Greg to want to either.

Now of course he DID come to the birth and averted his eyes as much as he could. What else was he going to do? He thought-- I know! I'll wait in the hall! Until of course my midwife pointed out that it could be hours and hours and he couldn't just hang out in the hospital hallway forever. I think she was a little scandalised that didn't want to be there. But he wasn't about to go mountain biking or play video games and wait for a phone call. So he was stuck. And he was the announcer for the event, phoning everyone to say I was in labour and then to say that the baby was coming NOW and then to tell everyone it's a boy!! He must have spent half the night on the phone. And he kicked people out when I wanted him to, which was helpful. So he didn't do nothing, but I bet it didn't feel very useful for him.

For him the pay-off was that he got to find out the sex. It's a little like opening presents on Christmas morning. It's not as much of a delight if you already know what you're getting. Small consolation for feeling useless while your wife screams her lungs out and swears at you (not me though) and shoots out all this disgusting stuff, not excluding this creature of reptilian appearance that you're supposed to greet with tears of joy. If the sex is a surprise then at least that's something he can look forward to. After all-- the only thing that's immediately obvious about who your kid is when it comes out is the sex. Other than that it's pretty much just this revolting, writhing, slimy, screaming purple thing.

And in spite of my irrational idea that I might feel closer to the baby if I know the sex in advance (and I really want a girl so it would be nice to know if it's a boy ahead of time to avoid disappointment) I think I get where Greg is coming from. It really IS a bit like peaking at your present before Christmas Day. I might be glad in the end that Greg made me wait.

Having said that, we still have the information available to us. My midwife knows the sex because we asked for it on the requisition form. She's carefully hidden the answer in an envelope so we can change our minds if we want. I might die of curiosity before the birth and have to ask. But I'll at least wait until much closer to the due date so I can keep it a secret and Greg can still have his pay-off...

Digging through the messes

2008-11-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

So now that we have more or less organized Greg's "office"--aka our bedroom--I'm all keen to reorganise my desk. My desk is this really wide combination of desk and massive square book case with 16 square shelves (4x4). The bookcase makes up one side of the desk so I can sit at the desk and reach into my little cubby-holes and pull out my laptop or my sewing machine or my notes--whatever I feel like working on. Very efficient.

For a long time I've been dying to have a proper sewing desk-- or just a desk that isn't covered with papers and books and computer software. Having a laptop instead of a desktop has actually made it possible for me to close up the computer and put it far from temptation so I can actually get some work done on my four million projects.

However, I discovered we have a serious paper infestation. My desk has been the house dumping ground since we moved in here. Home for scrap paper, burned cds and recorded cassettes with various kinds of Orthodox music that people just keep giving us for some reason, boxes of card stock, mail that isn't ours, boxes for software and hardware that belong to computers we no longer have, burned copies of Windows 97 (we own Macs now), pens that died years ago, mini screw drivers probably designed for putting together model cars or something, old cell phones, old cards we can't bring ourselves to throw out, and pretty much anything else kicking about that didn't have an obvious home.

I like the idea of double duty furniture--if it truly is efficiently double duty furniture. But quadruple, quintuple and whatever it is for six-fold (sounds like something dirty) is never efficient and that's what my desk has been from the second we set it up. Which means I never get anything done because it would be hazardous to my health to even try to dig out my sewing from the nest of God-knows-what that's taken up residence there.

It's a difficult, often dangerous, thing to go weeding through one's accumulated messes. Even after considering carefully how to organise things once you've got all the wheat separated from the chaff, you still have the daunting task of physically moving things out of the way and picking what qualifies as wheat. And you have no idea how stable the foundations are or if things will actually fit where you've planned to put them. For example, halfway through turning the wall shelf above my desk into the "media area" I discover that the brackets were screwed very tightly to the wall, the shelf, however was not screwed to the brackets. The whole shelf-- including all the massive piles and boxes of cds came crashing down on my head. If my computer wasn't shut it would have been broken. And luckily I hadn't put the cd player up there yet so all that was hurt was a few cd cases. But it could have been a very expensive disaster.

Yesterday I had a bad pregnant day combined with a bad marriage day. Greg and I have been really busy the last few weeks. We've had parties and visitors and every evening and weekend has been taken up with having friends just pop round to hang out, or some helpful service Greg has offered to people, or church, or Greg's music projects he's been working on for months now. Yesterday was no exception. After a week of feeling stuck at home all day without grownups and then stuck at home all evening while Greg was preoccupied with some obligation or other, I found that his weekend was committed to going out mountain biking with the youth group. ALL WEEKEND. He was exploring the trails with the leaders on Saturday until Vespers and biking all afternoon on Sunday. Which means I get to spend my weekend like I spent my week. Handling our toddler by myself and trying to keep the houseowrk under control. No day off for me.

His phone was off, it was dark. I was already fuming because I felt like a single mom or a housemaid all week and it was past six and I still didn't know when he'd be home for dinner. When I discovered he'd stopped to have hot chocolate with friends on the way home and hadn't even bothered to ring and inform me he'd be late I just flipped out.

A week's worth of frustration, annoyance, and lack of communication is a lot like a pile of accumulated junk on one's desk. The longer it sits there, the less you get done, the more things accumulate and become not only useless but slightly dangerous to start digging through. You never know when something might come sliding down on you and cause lot of damage. But then if you don't clean it out, you stop using the space altogether and (ahem) start thinking about OTHER places you might be able to do stuff--which seems to be a pattern developing around here. People looking for other places to get satisfaction out of their lives-- if you get me.

A friend, who recently has had some serious marriage problems, dropped by just when I was getting the phone call from the youth leader to explain where they were. He got the full brunt of my pregnant-lady irrational fury after I hung up the phone and asked, quite seriously, how Greg and I solve these problems. I really didn't know to be honest. Every marriage has its dumping ground that accumulates stuff you'll regret not finding a place for I guess. And you chuck things there out of habit-- even if you know, you've been told a million times, that your spouse hates it. Take the dryer-- I NEVER remember to clean the lint trap and it drives Greg nuts. So we have a wee argument and I say "Yeah, yeah, I'll do it" then after a couple of hits, I start missing again until next time he complains about the ball of lint.

Eventually you change your habits, or you develop a way of communicating about it that doesn't lead to a fight. For instance-- I get a ball of lint in the face now and then when I 've forgotten to clean it too many times. He's teasing me and bugging me and at the same time reinforcing the message that I need to bloody remember to clean the damn lint trap. We keep a sense of humor and move on.

We haven't yet developed a mode of communication for the "forgetting-to-inform-wifey-when -I'm- running-late" issue or the "I'm-too-busy-with-other-people-to-give-you-a-break" issue, so I just end up with smoke coming out of my nostrils when I've had enough. I blow up and he feels persecuted (naturally) so it ends in a big yelling match and the shelves some crashing down (not literally).

Luckily, it actually didn't end that way because I didn't have to tell him personally how mad I was. I told our friend the youth leader that I was mad and to pass on the bloody message. I don't think Greg actually understood what I was so pissed off about exactly, but he knew he was in trouble and that I needed to be placated because he turned up with flowers-- really pretty pink potted cyclamens, and he was instantly forgiven. We later had a wee chat about it but no one was feeling furious or persecuted so it worked out rather well.

What do you do when you don't have a handy (also married) youth leader to relay the message though? I dunno. But I think that one thing is sure: if you're married, you really need to be part of a community of other married couples that you can confide in, roll your eyes with, or occasionally reorganise the shelves with. They're less likely to come crashing down if you've got a few more pairs of hands to hold up the wobbly ends with. And sometimes you can swap ideas on communicating with those aliens we're married to.

SUPER-MOM PEROGIES

2008-11-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

Okay I had one of those days where I pretty much didn't get a break and was ready to eat someone's face off by the time I got home--literally and figurtively. I was THAT hungry and pissed off. Lucky for Greg he had to hive off to Vespers so he escaped. Anyway I had to come up with something filling, that had veggies and protein and calcium (for Theo and me). So I whipped up what I'm calling "Super-Mom Perogies" because it took me no more than 15 minutes to prepare and it was fantastic. It's not Lenten, but it includes my two Lenten staples: shrimp and perogies. Perogies are one of few convenience food items that I have to stock. They're starchy and they probably have a lot more additives in them than I'd like to believe, but I can't imagine tofu being any better for you really and these puppies fill you up quick. I can't do Lent without them. Especially on days when my original plans go awry and I really just need to get food on the table fast. And it can be easily adapted for fasting parents (unless they're label-readers) and non-fasting kiddies. If you're that hardcore. Also very yummy in Cheesefare week.

SUPER-MOM PEROGIES

--5-10 non-cheesy, non-meaty perogies per person (10 for big men, 5 for kids, toddlers can manage maybe two...)
--2-3 cups of broccoli (for a family of say 4)
--1/2 to 1 cup of frozen shrimp
--1-2 tbsp butter
--1/2 tsp garlic salt
--pepper to taste
--1-2 tsp dill
--1-2 tsp flour
--1/4 cup milk
--1/4-1/2 c of cheddar, shredded

Put on a pot of boiling water. Add broccoli and cook 5 minutes. Add perogies and cook another five minutes.

While the perogies and broccoli are boiling melt butter in a skillet on medium heat. Add shrimp and fry a couple of minutes until they are thawed and warming up. Add garlic salt and pepper and dill.

At this point if parents are fasting and kiddies aren't, remove and cover the adult portion of shrimp (it'll be nice and juicy even without the tasty sauce).

Then add a wee bit more butter to the pan and melt it. Add the flour, (and you have to be quick about this) dive in with a spatula in one hand and the milk in the other and mix it really quick so that the flour doesn't get lumpy in the milk, (you're basically making a white sauce). When it's nicely mixed and the consistency of a light cream sauce (not too runny) add the cheese and stir it in till it's melted.

At this point, the perogies and broccoli should be cooked to perfection. Turn off all the heat and strain the broccoli and perogies in a colander. Serve the perogies and broccoli on the plates first and add to each a few spoonfuls of the shrimp and juicy or creamy sauce. Voila! The yummiest perogies ever! In 15 minutes. Yay for Super-mom!

Advent week one-- and already I've OD'd on caffeine

2008-11-21T15:31:00.000-08:00

It's so dark out already and it's only 3:30 pm. It makes me all tingly with excitement. I can't wait for it to snow (because in my heart I'm really just 6 years old) and I would count my first week of Advent a pretty fair success. I have cheese now and then and eggs for breakfast, but the opportunity to make yummy and inventive Lenten dinners wins over any impulse to have meat. But then, it's only week one.

Tonight is cabbage rolls, which I've never made before, and I had to invent my own vegetarian recipe because every one I found online was either stupidly complicated with a million ingredients no one would ever carry in their cupboards (unless they made these cabbage rolls all the time) or else they included tofu-meat. I have to say I actually don't dislike tofu "ground beef" but I shudder to think of what's in them. Tofu itself is highly processed, to say nothing of tofu that has a million weird ingredients to make it taste and feel like meat. In the end it's probably a lot worse for us than hamburger meat regardless of its being low in fat. Anyway, my cabbage rolls are only sort of vegan. I had to include an egg in the rice mixture to make it stick, but I reckon if you wanted stickier, creamier rice, and you didn't mind something more exotic, you could add some coconut milk and a bit of chili instead. Different taste though. If they turn out yummy I'll put the recipe up.

I'm starting to feel really overwhelmed by how much I have to get done before Christmas. I have 8 Christmas related sewing projects (plus some other odd sewing jobs). Next week is my ultrasound and my Christmas cards will be arriving so I'll need to get those sent off (we ordered photo-cards from Mac). And a week from tomorrow I'm having a big cookie bake-off-- and I want all mine baked in advance because oven time will be at a premium. That means I have to bake 3 huge batches of cookies before Saturday, and I have to go shopping for cookie decorating supplies as well. I'm trying to remember how I got stuck with all this and then I remember-oh yeah, I LIKE preparing things for Christmas. I also have to make a trip to the island to visit friends and get some special woolies for Theo and I can't believe November is 3/4 gone already!! December is always too busy and the last thing I want to do is find myself up to my ears in last minute sewing and preparation on December 21st. I want half my sewing DONE by the time December gets here. Which gives me a week. Yikes.

It's not that easy though. I like to sew but I have to do it when Theo is asleep-- and when I don't have other housework to do. Like make cabbage rolls while he's napping. And I only have so much energy to focus on sewing after Theo goes to bed. I love my sewing machine and I really do enjoy sewing, but nothing turns me into a shrieking demon faster than screwing up on my machine. I need to do the sewing when I'm calm and relaxed and not over tired or worried about anything or else one minor little hitch and I might breathe my own face off.

But the household organisation is really starting to come together. I feel like I've been living out of boxes for three years. We never really had enough space in our old flat and Greg isn't bothered by the presence of piles of unstored, unorganised boxes of stuff. Our storage problems only got worse when we moved because not only did we lose our garage space but we also needed to turn our bedroom into a working office for Greg's job. So for six months we've been sitting in boxes of papers and bike gear and old clothes. Oh yeah-- that's another thing. Only one of our bedrooms has a closet. But things are finally coming together and for the first time since we go married we can actually get out on either side of the bed and still reach all our clothes without turning sideways. Greg rearranged the room and put up tons of shelving and for once there's actually no boxes on the floor. It's incredibly relieving.

I also bought Theo his Christmas PJs. He keeps getting bigger dammit! Trouble is that he actually has fairly short little legs. He's only just started to grow out of pants he's had since he was 6 months old. But he keeps growing in the torso so his PJs stop fitting after like 2 months-- even though the legs are really baggy. Same with dungarees (overalls). We still have to roll them up two inches in the legs when the crotch snaps start popping oven on their own. Oh well. Excuse to buy really cute red and white striped Christmas jammies. And more dungarees.

So it's all getting busy busy busy, and while part of me is starting to tremble in terror at the thought of how much I have to do, the other half is knocking back another (peppermint mocha twist) coffee and saying "Bring it on!!"

Toys for Toddlers

2008-11-18T15:56:00.001-08:00

Okay, I'm wondering if this is normal for parents. When it comes to toys for toddlers I have a lot of preferences--or I should say rules. Not about where he plays with them or when or how-- or what he chooses to make into a toy. Although my computer and a few other sensitive pieces of equipment are off limits as toys. But most other things that I don't put out of reach are completely available for him to play with (unless I happen to be using them at the time). And I don't mind him scattering toys (or wooden spoons) all over the house either. Kids do have to have boundaries, I'll grant you, but he has a lot of them already because he's just small, so as long as he's not breaking anything or hurting himself I don't really care what kind of a mess he makes. He's going to make a mess one way or the other so there's really no point in fighting it or dealing with it until after he goes to bed.

But when it comes to BUYING toys for him I'm really picky and I'm wondering if this is some kind of control issue that I have. Now don't get me wrong, I would never throw out a toy someone thoughtfully bought for him. And I probably wouldn't return or exchange it either. I might strategically forget it at the grandparents' house--especially if it makes electronic noises. And I've been known to hide really inane books behind the sofa to avoid having to read them a million times. But I probably wouldn't intentionally get rid of a toy that I thought was awful. But then I only have one kid so far and he doesn't have that many toys.

Space is at a premium in our little trailer and it's bad enough trying to keep from tripping over the stuff he does play with so if people ask me what to get him I give fairly picky answers, which can come across as very controlling and ungrateful. But my reasons are these:

First-- I know what he needs, what he likes, and what he will enjoy playing with. There's no point buying him more of the same stuff he has or stuff he won't know what to do with when I know exactly what he'll enjoy because I live with him and notice how he likes play.

Second, his toys are also my toys. I have to teach him to play with them-- meaning I have to play with them too. I have to listen to him play with them, and I have to watch him play with them. So if I hate toys that make electronic noises or happen to be really boring because they can only be used one way (and he doesn't want to use them for that) then they'll be nothing more than clutter or nuisance.

Third, I have to care for the toys. I have to clean them up and tidy them away. Some toys are easier than others. And toys that don't last long because they're made of rubbish or have lots of crevices that you'll be cleaning sweet potato out of three times a day, or have four million pieces you have to go chasing all over the house after are just no good.

Fourth, I have to think ahead about what we'll want to teach him to appreciate when he's older. And we haven't got a lot of money to spend on toys so I'm inclined to go for things that are timeless-- classic wooden blocks, cars, push carts, simple wooden train sets, wooden puzzles, play food--that sort of stuff. Stuff that you can turn into anything or imagine any game with--which is why they never go out of style.

For these reasons I'm absolutely allergic to anything licensed. Some might think me crazy for asking people not to buy him Thomas the Tank Engine, and they really aren't bad little toy trains at all (personally I find toys with faces that aren't actually dolls or animals just creepy but Greg assures me that that's just my own weird little hang-up). The trouble isn't the trains themselves. It's that they aren't just trains--they're logos. And that logo comes on everything from toddler beds to dish sets to change purses, even candy packets. People hear he loves his Thomas trains so they buy him Thomas pjs and bed spreads etc. Then my other children want the same- they all want Thomas dishes and bed sheets and table lamps and they fight over who gets what. They can all play with the Thomas trains but they can't all wear the Thomas pjs unless they all have a pair. Then of course we can't go into any store without someone asking for Thomas band aids or toothbrushes. I have to say no ten million times a day to each of my kids.

Now I realise that the kids will fight over toys whether they have Thomas on them or not. And likewise they will whine about wanting toys we pass in the mall or grocery store no matter what. And of course a day will come when they will realise that all their friends have Thomas and they don't and they'll want to get in on the action like everyone else. However, for the first few years at least, I should be able to go down the tooth paste aisle in Shoppers and avoid the requests for a new tootbrush because it has Thomas on it.

The trouble with lisenced stuff is that it's on everything. No aisle is safe. If his toys are plain and simple and logo-free he won't recognise the logo so quickly as other boys his age-- (especially because we haven't got cable). Also (and this is just a theory, but I think it's worth trying) having played with very few toys that didn't require some kind of imagination or creativity on his part, he will be less attracted by things that aren't really toys but appear to be because they carry toy logos on them. To be sure, bandaids with trains on will be more desirable than bandaids without, but, in theory, he won't spot the train-logo and instantly think--"ooh toy!"

Like I said, I only have one kid so far, so I'm bound to be proven wrong or find my big plans thwarted or come to nothing, but in the mean time at least I can enjoy not living in Thomas-land-- or Winnie-the-Pooh-ville, or Dora-and-Diego-town.

Lentil and Bell Pepper Soup

2008-11-18T13:22:00.000-08:00

When I was at UBC I used to eat my lunch at Regent College's "The Well Cafe" and they had these terrific vegan soups (which was awesome during Lent). My favourite was their lentil and bell pepper soup. Usually when I'm making a lentil soup its really a red lentil dahl with lots of cumin and tumeric. But I've had these brown lentils kicking around for a while so I thought I'd try to recreate my old favourite. I looked everywhere online for a recipe but it seems that most people think lentils and bell peppers don't go together-- or at least not in vegan soups. So I was forced to improvise and what I ended up doing was adapting a recipe for "Winter Lentil Soup" (which had sweet potato and leeks and no peppers obviously). It was fantastic!! So here it is-probably not the same recipe as The Well Cafe's but pretty darn good anyway.

LENTIL AND BELL PEPPER SOUP

4 tbsps olive oil
1-2 small yellow onions, diced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
3 small tomatoes, diced (or one tin of diced)
8 cups of water
1 cup of brown lentils
2-3 cups of kale, chopped small with stems off
2 small potatoes, diced
salt, pepper, and powdered coriander to taste
1 small yellow bell pepper, chopped

Heat olive oil in soup pot. Add onions and garlic, stirring for 2-3 minutes. Add tomatoes and fry another 3-4 minutes until everything is softened. Add water and bring to a boil. Add lentils, kale, and potato and boil. Add salt, pepper, and coriander. Turn heat to low and cover. Simmer for at least an hour. Add the peppers. Simmer for another 20 minutes or until peppers are soft. Serve with bread and butter.

Serves 6 ( I think--but if you want to make sure you have a lot of leftovers for lunch the following day, better double the recipe)

My Week's Lenten Menu

2008-11-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

Okay I'm actually having trouble finding ideas already and I'm not even properly fasting. Also, Greg and I have been farting something nasty since Friday. And I have to arrange for every meal to be somewhat adaptable for Theo. So I'm going to put up my menu for the week. Let me know if you have any good ideas.

Monday:

Dinner-
butternut squash whole wheat ravioli (no cheese, I checked)
roasted butternut squash (I know, redundant, but Greg asked for it)
vegetarian dolmades
avocadoes
olives
pita and humous
smoked mussels ( lot of deli stuff tonight)

Tuesday:

Lunch-
Soup-- either borscht or lentil and bell pepper

Dinner-
Soup again
Curried rice with shrimp
carrot and raisin salad
steamed greens

(Theo will need cheese on his salad, sour cream in his soup, and yogurt for dessert.)

Wednesday:

Lunch-
Soup again
Pita and humous

Dinner-
Sockeye salmon
yam fries
steamed greens

Thursday:

Lunch-
Leftover salmon
pita and humous

Dinner-
Eggplant lasagne (this'll have cheese, but Theo and I will need it and I figure one cheesy meal a week for a family with only one person who can fast properly is pretty good)
salad with pomegranate, onion, and avocado

Friday:

Lunch-
Soup--(either Lentil and Bell Pepper or Borscht)

Dinner-
Soup again
Jacket Potatoes with baked beans and sweet corn

Saturday:

Lunch-
Soup again
pita and humous

Dinner-
Veggie curry
coconut rice
yam fries

There you go-- as far as I got. I hope it gave people good ideas.

Caved in

2008-11-17T12:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, I caved. The peer pressure was too much and I started decorating 2 weeks earlier than I intended to. It's pretty hard to do your Christmas shopping and order Christmas cards and make lists when you can't actually enjoy the non-work side of the season. Or at least that's my excuse. Besides, I know for a fact that I'm definitely not the first person to start buying decorations. Even the church already has the Advent wreath hanging up--and even if it's meant to be an Advent wreath, as opposed a Christmas wreath, it's looks pretty darn festive to me. So I hung up my fir garlands and put up a string of lights.

Now I have a bigger house I feel the need to buy more decorations to fill the place, which is probably not the right spirit. But I won't be putting my tree up till Christmas Eve so I think that makes up for it a bit. Also I'm incredibly picky about about my decorations so I won't be tempted by any old Christmas kitsch. Fir garlands aren't cheap--or easy to put up, so I won't be indulging in any more of those this year. I think. But a few more lights would be nice, especially since half the house is unlit mostly, except for a small table lamp and floor lamp. Also I'm hosting Christmas this year so I feel the need to make it as festive as I can, without going overboard. As it is my decorations are very restrained. Just a couple of fir garlands and some ribbons and bows. That's not too much right? That plus the tree with ornaments I've been collecting year after year as a St. Nicholas Day present from my parents since I was born.

I already bought Theo his ornament for his St. Nicholas day-- actually I bought two and I'm debating which one to give him. Starbucks did the cutest wee corduroy reindeer with button-on legs, but I had already bought a knitted cat ornament--wearing scarf and checkered jumper. I'm such a sucker. Boh are fairly unbreakable, though if he wanted to pull bits off the cat he probably could. I shall have to ask Greg's opinion. Probably he'll think both of them are worthy of vomiting on.

Anyway I'm a big pathetic sucker. Make me feel guilty. Taunt me about my materialistic, non-Orthodox, commercial Christmas addiction. BUT at least I do not decorate my house with the following:

Dancing, rockstar Santas
Nasty cartoon window decals of snowmen or trees with faces
Penguins on ice skates
The colours pink or purple
light-up lawn ornaments
blow-up lawn ornaments, that also move
psychadelic flashing fiber-optic trees
Anything that makes "music" of it's own accord
Elves
Anything fuzzy

I'm sure I'll think of more scary Christmas kitsch as the season goes on. Heck I'll probably see it. Willowbrook Mall changed their decoration the second year I worked there over Christmas to nasty 80's purple and red. And they installed tvs in the pillars of Santa's purple-and-red palace so kids could watch Christmas specials while they waited to have their pictures taken. *Shudder*

I'm pretty old-fashioned about my decorating tastes I suppose (I don't even like tinsel garlands really) but in my mind decorations are for making your surroundings more homey and cozy and festive-- not give you impression that you just took some really scary drugs. If it looks like it could be part of an acid trip then maybe give it a miss huh?

Of course there is a part of me that finds really really nasty cheesy tree ornaments appealing-- but only as something to show people for a laugh...

CHICK PEA FRY-UP

2008-11-14T13:00:00.000-08:00

This recipe is my new Lenten favourite. I discovered quite recently, to my surprise, that Theo likes chick peas. I was never really sure about them to be honest because they have sort of a dry-ish texture. I like them in salads and sauces but I never felt I really knew what to do with them. Then I found this great recipe which I modified very slightly and it serves as a very tasty side dish or a small lunch.

CHICK PEA FRY-UP

1-2 cans of chick peas, rinsed and drained
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 red onion, chopped
1-2 medium tomatoes, chopped
salt
pepper
pinch of cayenne
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

Heat oil in frying pan on medium heat. Add chick peas, red onion, salt and pepper (to taste). Gently fry for 3-5 minutes until chick peas start to brown. Add tomatoes and fry 2-3 minutes more. Remove from heat. Add a VERY small pinch of cayenne and the cilantro. Stir in and serve!

I think this would also be pretty yummy served cold as a salad or with and added clove of garlic and a tsp of pesto. Grate some cheddar on for toddlers, chidlren and folk who ain't fasting.

Tantrum!!!!

2008-11-14T10:11:00.000-08:00

I think my kid is pretty well behaved. He says please and thank-you (in sign language) regularly and without prompting; he will often play quietly on his own; he's good about bed times and almost always goes down quietly on his own; and compared to a lot of kids he's beautifully well behaved in church, especially considering he goes to church twice as often as most kids his age.

Like most toddlers under two, he can be a bit impatient about getting some treat you promised him, and he doesn't like being stuck indoors or in the stroller or car seat all day. He gets easily frustrated when he has trouble performing a task that he doesn't quite have the agility to do properly. But he rarely cries unless Daddy walks past him to go to the loo and won't let him come with, or some visiting friend goes home and leaves him behind. And those little spats are easily calmed with a cuddle and an offer of a story.

He's affectionate and usually co-operative, except at meal times when he'd rather be playing with his toys. But my patience with his meal-time antics varies depending on how hungry and tired I am. He isn't really ever naughty because he's not quite old enough to understand that no means no, so he's not really defying me or purposely testing my patience. Just being 1.5 years old.

However, this morning, for the second time in his life, he had a tantrum which lasted half an hour that was just torture to sit through. Probably it lasted that long because I really had no clue what he wanted or was upset about. All I did was offer him his juice and he flew into a temper. On reflection I think the trouble was that he wanted the cup with a lid and a straw instead of a spout. That, and he went to bed far too late last night. Which was my fault really. But the more I tried to do to calm him the more hysterical he got and since I hadn't any idea what was wrong I quite lost my temper myself and that only made things worse.

I realised afterward, to my slight unease, that I was making excuses for his behaviour the minute he calmed down, and worried that I was going to turn into one of those parents with a horrible five year old throwing fits in public. The kind of parent who seems to think their child's ill behaviour is justified because it really isn't fair that they can't have that toy.

Discipline is one of those things where I think a lot of people make decisions based on what other people will think of them as parents if they don't DO something already. Before I was a parent, if I saw a kid--even of Theo's age--throwing a fit like that I would have privately thought--"Kid needs a smack and sent to bed." But as a parent I really can't help seeing both sides. It must be horribly frustrating not to be able to communicate what it is that you want to a parent who keeps asking you question after question that you can't answer. Especially when you're tired and hungry and you're butt itches because you just crapped your pants. And, except for the lack of ability to communicate, all of those things are MY fault. I didn't put him to bed on time. I didn't change him right away. I didn't get up early enough to feed him before he was beside himself.

Now admittedly, I have to choose my actions carefully in the morning. Sometimes if I take him straight to the change table he gets very upset because he's too hungry to lie on his back while I invade his diaper with a cold wet wipe. Other times he's too excited that I'm up to want to sit still in his chair to eat and would rather play for a bit while I get things ready. So I really can't win.

But it's hard to know exactly what to do with a situation like this. Ignore the screaming? Try to distract him with toys or telly or some electronic device he likes to mess with? Offer candy? No bad idea. After a few minutes he's not even sure what he wants or why he's freaking out even.

Spank him? I can't. He won't even know why I'm hurting him. He'll just feel more alienated. He's not old enough to put together that his behaviour is what is illiciting my sudden violent betrayal. He'll only feel confused and afraid. Same goes for yelling at him- which is pretty much what I did after 20 minutes of trying everything I could think of-- mainly so I wouldn't be tempted to hit him.

Send him to his room? Bad idea. He'll only associate his room with punishment if I do that. Ditto being sent to bed and he's so beautifully cooperative about bed time, I don't want to ruin it.

In the end I think I galloped up and down the porch giving him a horsey ride on my hip-- not the most comfortable thing for a woman who's five-months pregnant, but it was that or lock myself in my room so I could chew my hair in terror until the screaming stopped. He was distracted by the bouncing long enough to forget he was grumpy. We then watched a few videos on you tube and messed about with the photo booth on the computer and he was his old self again and I was able to get some breakfast into him.

But I'm still kind of stuck as to what the right course of action is. I don't want him to go through childhood thinking that tantrums are an acceptable way to blow off steam, nor do I want to give him the idea that he'll get a treat or get what he wants if he spazzes long enough. At this stage it's not an issue but the older he gets and the more he learns to communicate the more it WILL be an issue. And I can't start using solitary confinement in his room or his crib as punishment or he'll never think of them as anything BUT punishment.

I have a lot more sympathy for parents of ill behaved kids than I used to. Discipline really isn't an exact science and you can't just do what makes you feel better or other people satisfied that you're a good disciplinary parent.

Advent and non-alcoholic beverages

2008-11-12T09:19:00.000-08:00

I can hardly wait for Advent to start. As per my "Christmas in November" post I sort of feel like the beginning of Advent is also the beginning of Christmas fun and anticipation. Well, it is really. As Orthodox we start preparing for feasts even EARLIER than most people. We just prepare by fasting rather than decorating and shopping.

I will restrain my decorating impulses until the cookie-bake off at the end of the month though. Some things are worth waiting for. Anyway we don't put our tree up until Christmas Eve.

And truthfully it's not just decorating and cookie-baking and shopping that I'm anticipating with delight but actually fasting. Unlike my pregnancy with Theo, I actually don't want to eat meat all that much. I couldn't get enough pepperoni when I was pregnant with Theo, but this time I'm actually after fish and vegetables a lot. And cheese. I've gained a lot of weight already--far more than I'd like. But luckily fasting is not off-limits for pregnant women completely. Mother Anna's advice was just to eat what I crave because I probably need it. Since I haven't really been craving meat much I think I can at least sort of adhere to the fasting rules and I'm looking forward to the challenge of finding yummy vegetarian recipes.

I plan to cut back my consumption of cheese to include only cheddar which I can turn into cheese sauce or grate on pasta or salad for a little extra protein and calcium. And eggs and fish will have to be quite frequently on the menu to ensure I get enough protein. But I'm actually looking forward to beans and peas and lentils quite a bit.

One thing I am going to miss this year is mulled wine. I discovered (to my great delight!) that non-alcoholic beer is really not as gross as it sounds and satisfies the beer craving very well. Plus it's full of vitamins that are actually very good for pregnant and nursing mothers. As far as I've read (and a beer junkie like me has read a lot on the subject) it's not the beer itself that's good for mothers (obviously alcohol is not good for babies, at least not in large or regular amounts) but the hops in beer is helpful for production of certain milk-producing hormones. I imagine the alcohol might be good for calming the nerves of a sleep-deprived nursing mum though!

Red wine too has some very beneficial effects, though the alcohol should be kept to a minimum. In fact most Europeans continue to drink wine with dinner right through their pregnancies with no ill effects. Having said that, I don't know how comfortable I am with making mulled wine. The sugar in mulled wine will get you drunk much quicker than a regular glass of wine would and I don't know if I ought to risk it. So I am curious to know if de-alcoholized red wine is as disgusting as it sounds. It might be worth the experiment.

In any case, mulled wine or no, I'm looking forward to Advent and everything it brings with it. Tomorrow is the last meat day before the fast and I can hardly wait for it to be over. I have a large pot roast in the fridge for a pre-Advent meat-feast (to satisfy the husband really) and an array of fancy cheeses that I plan to give up for Advent. Saturday is Christmas shopping and Sunday I plan to start baking!

Remembering

2008-11-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

So, Remembrance Day. Another free shopping day before the season really starts. A extra day off school before midterms and/or finals. November's public holiday--gotta have a day off once a month.

It occurred to me that I tend to take this attitude every year. We're not really fighting a war so most of us find that nothing is so easy as forgetting what this day is about. Since I finished highschool there's really been nothing to remind me. No school assemblies, no crap school jazz band playing John Lennon's "Imagine" for the 50 billionth time. No documentary films of WWI soldiers in the trenches or D-Day soldiers getting blown up. We are DAMN LUCKY that we can forget and spend the day at the mall-which by the way is the 2nd worst day of the year to work in retail after Dec. 27th.

This year neither of us are working retail (glory to God!). Instead we're helping a friend move out of his house and start his life over. He has his own battle wounds--the kind you get from a broken marriage--also something we're lucky to have avoided so far.

At 11 o'clock my husband's phone alarm goes off and I had totally forgot about the time. There we were cleaning out the debris of 4 sad years and his alarm starts beeping and I had no idea what it was for. My husband isn't sentimental at all, but yesterday when I mentioned that I felt we ought to do something about Remembrance Day to mark it properly, he took it to heart and set an alarm so we could stop what we were doing. We dropped our chores, faced east (no icons in the house anymore) and said prayers and sang Memory Eternal- right there on ground zero of someone's crumbled marriage. I teared up because I'm a pregnant and everything makes me tear up. But I feel like like we set a good tradition.

Sometimes moving on is the opposite of forgetting.

MAPLE GINGER SALMON

2008-11-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

Okay so this is the world's most yummy salmon recipe EVER!! And for those of you looking for something fancier to make on Sundays in Advent I highly recommend this. It's not at all difficult, nor does it have a plethora of obscure ingredients that you'll use once and never again. It's the perfect Advent meal.

All recipes will be in purple and italic by the way--unless I get crazy and decide to colour code them for fasting friendliness or something...

For 1-2 minutes fry in a skillet

-1/4 cup (or a bit less) olive oil
-2 garlic cloves, chopped
-1" of fresh ginger, chopped

Add to above:

-1-2 tbsps lime juice (lemon works too)
-3 tbsps soy sauce
-3 tbsps maple syrup (proper pure stuff, no Aunt Jemima rubbish or weird blends)

Stir it about for a few minutes, then remove from heat and add to a roasting tin in which you will cook the salmon. I usually get the fillets (sockeye is not only better for you, but more flavourful than farmed Atlantic stuff) that aren't divided into single serving portions. However, if you want to marinate the salmon and cook it in separate portions that's okay too. Coat the salmon on all sides, then turn flesh side down (in the marinade) and refridgarate for at least an hour but up to six hours--heck you could probably make it in the morning and leave it in the marinade all day.

When you come to cook it, heat the oven to 375 F, then pop the fish in for about 30-40 minutes, flesh side up. If you want to do the fillets separately you can sear them, flesh side down for 2-3 minutes in a skillet (cast iron is best) and then pop them in the oven, flesh side up, at 500 F for about 10 minutes. But make sure you add enough of the ginger and garlic to the fish and pour on plenty of the marinade if you plan to transfer it to a skillet and put it in the oven-- otheriwse it'll dry out quickly.

This dish is great with a salad that includes fruit of some kind. Also good with mashed potatoes that are 2/3 some other vegetable-- squash, sweet potato, yam, or cauliflower are great to add to mash. Also healthier and more vitamins.

Choir Party Dinner

2008-11-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

So we're hosting our first choir party tonight since Greg became the new choir director at church. He's been working on music for us to sing (for fun) for weeks now and we have a pretty neat little repertoire of Renaissance, Orthodox, Baroque, and even Negro Spiritual. It's going to be great.

As always I'm thinking about the food. Since getting pregnant I've been little miss hostess trying to invent new and fancier dinners. We had my in-laws over last night and I tried this new recipe for peppery maple chicken and then did my usual vegetable mash with a few steamed greens. I also had a red lentil soup and a cheese platter for dessert.

The maple chicken was so successful I decided to try a recipe for Ginger Maple Salmon tonight. As it is a Friday we're supposed to be fasting. We've bent the rules a wee bit because we're celebrating but I actually like the challenge of inventing fast-friendly meals. I will hopefully be able to put up some really fun and tasty recipes soon.

Christmas in November

2008-11-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

Okay so it's November and according to the retail world it's officially Christmas Season. When I worked in retail (shudder) I HATED this mentality and I think MOST people feel that November 1st is still a little too early to start putting up Christmas lights and listening to Sinatra. But by the end of the month there are plenty of people hosting early Christmas parties and getting on with their shopping. That's because December is so ridiculously busy for most people and contrary to the original tradition, the western world thinks Christmas ENDS on the 26th of December. Given how much preparation the holiday takes these days, with decorations, shopping, visitors, parties, and events, and considering the fact that most of us are not just housewives anymore, it's not really surprising that people start the holiday fun earlier and earlier. Why put that much work into the holiday if you're not actually going to have time to enjoy it?

When I was in retail that was exactly WHY I hated the early Christmas season. I was so busy pricing and stocking and selling our merchandise that I just couldn't enjoy the anticipation of the season. Plus, as an Orthodox Christian, I was fasting, not partying and feasting, and I always felt it was rather unfair that I couldn't join in the fun. I knew the minute the feast arrived, and I finally had permission to be excited about it and enjoy it, everyone else would be yelling at me to turn the Christmas music off already and start taking down those decorations.

This year is different. I'm not in retail and I have an energetic toddler who is only just starting to appreciate the idea of Christmas, so not only am I excited to show him everything, but I don't have to feel that the holiday season is just a drag, another excuse for my company to overwork us. Also for the first time since I've been married we actually live in our own little house above ground where I can appreciate the weather changes and get excited about snow.

However, standing in my way is the fact that, for sensible ADULT people, who are good Orthodox Christians, and NOT materialistic, Christmas excitement shouldn't start for another month and a half. And while I can see their point and would prefer not to start decorating until at least December I really can't help resenting the idea that early starters to the Christmas season are just materialistic, secular people who have no idea what the feast is really about and want to spend as much of their time partying and being consumers as is socially acceptable at that time of year.

I will come clean. I WANT to get excited about Christmas the minute the weather turns cold near the end of September. That first really cold, dark, wet day brings back all the old memories of staying up late writing stories by the fireside with my cup of cocoa and the Nutcracker Suite playing on the record player until 2am. Life has gotten in the way since then. I grew up, I went to university--which can be just as bad as retail for destroying your excited anticipation of the season. Then I went abroad and started working, got married, lived in a basement where you never notice the cold blowing in because you can't see the weather from your windows. Christmas became about more work, more deadlines, more crappy customers, more people who really DON'T understand that Christmas isn't about presents, and the whole thing was just ruined.

I mean let's face it, some time in our teens we all realise that the "magic" of the season just isn't what it used to be when we were kids. I think that's partly because we're old enough to understand the stress of giving (and getting) the right presents, and as we get older, of making the food and decorations just right, and, when we have our own kids, making sure that THEY don't miss out on the "magic" and get lots of presents and opportunities for Christmas fun. It must be even harder for people whose parents told them Santa was real. I can't imagine the let down when kids find out that Christmas isn't magical. If you aren't religious it must be hard to work out what the point is.

Of course, I grew up Orthodox and I was never able to separate the holiday from the actual feast. Also my parents never lied to me about Santa, much to my grandmother's distaste, but for which I will always be grateful. Oh we heard about Santa. How could we not? But when we were old enough to ask if he was real we got the truth: no he's not, but it's a fun game isn't it? Precisely. Instead we learned about the REAL St. Nicholas, who is infinitely more interesting and who gave presents to the poor.

But it's the part about it being a fun game that I can't give up. Even though I grew to find the conventional coca-cola Santa Claus rather annoying, or even just bland, the whole Christmas spirit IS a fun game.

I know Christmas isn't about drinking cocoa and listening to Christmas records. I know it's not about presents and decorations and an excuse to dress really pretty. I know it's not about carols and cookies and snow. I know and have always known (and I'm tearing up as I write this) that it's about the Incarnation of GOD. It's HOLY and AWESOME-- in the real sense of the word. And that is definitely too much to handle for two months straight--at least if you're unholy like me. Neither should it disappear the moment the clock strikes midnight on December 25th. But all that secular stuff-- that's not what Christmas is about-- but it IS a fun game isn't it?

I can't help feeling excited about it and I have to curb the impulse to start planning it in August or September. That first blustery day just fills me with excitement and I feel 8 years old again. Aren't we able to come closer to God when we come to Him like children? I'll never forget the St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6th) that I prayed for snow and was answered the next morning with a perfect snowfall. I feel as though telling myself it's wrong to be excited about Christmas is somehow curbing an impulse that is good and natural--the impulse to be delighted by God's creation and celebrate it by recalling our own personal traditions-- like getting cozy with cocoa and listening to the Nutcracker. I realise that's something we ought to do all year round, but at no other time of year is it easier to remember who we are/were before all the world's concerns came pressing in on us. Christmas time, for a lot of us, is when we first remember being able to feel awe and wonder.

So I feel sympathy and sort of understand why secular people start the hype as soon as possible. I don't think they all do it out of pure materialism or trite notions about family togetherness. I think a lot of people miss that wonder they felt as children and when the only tradition they have is Christmas tradition (instead of Christian tradition) the draw of that tradition must be pretty powerful. I'm sure a lot of people don't understand it and are probably spending every penny they have or can borrow in an effort to capture that feeling they used to know as children. The more they spend the more it eludes them and so on in a vicious cycle that drives the poor retail workers to distraction. You have to feel sorry for them because they'll never know the REAL meaning of Christmas and never really have their efforts satisfied with the real joy of the feast.

So let 'em start the hype early, and for that matter, let me start the hype early. At least I know what it's about.

Getting it together

2008-11-04T08:20:00.000-08:00

My kid is 20 months old. Or if you don't speak Parentese he's just over a year and a half. His name is Theo and the little blighter has decided 6 am is a much more civilised time to wake up than say 8 o'clock.

I'm pregnant-- 17 weeks actually--and very grateful that he's decided to change his wake up time AFTER I'm over the barf-your-guts-out-before-breakfast stage. But I'm still not thrilled.

First thing I thought when I heard his morning wind-up noise was "Crap" and the second thing I thought was "What are we going to eat today??"

My housekeeping has taking a nose dive the last few months because of my serious inability to decide what sounds like puke-on-a-plate vs. yummier-than-strawberries-and-cream. And worth getting fat on. Also I've been finding my 10 minutes walks to the grocery store worthy of a nap afterwards, making my motivation to prepare meals fairly sub-par. However, the husband's motivation is even less and of it were up to him he'd make lamb every night. And I don't mean he'd prepare a nice set of lamb chops with mint sauce and fancy veg side-dish. I mean he'd stick a leg of lamb in the oven, maybe remember to season it, and then dig out some 3 day-old salad greens and dump them next to it. So I have to cook or I won't want to eat.

I'm mostly over the puke stage though and getting my energy back-- which means I'm getting out of the house and not planning my day so that I have time to cook. But I can't do pasta again and of course I have to worry about getting the right kind of food into my son as well as myself. So today's project is pea soup, peppery maple chicken breast (saw a great recipe in Chatelaine) and bok choi/brussels sprouts. Not much dairy in that arrangement mind you and my son won't drink milk so I'll have to make sure he gets yogurt for desert and cheese at lunch.

One of the challenges I'm dealing with (besides making food that is actually appetising) is finding recipes that are inexpensive, easy to prepare, don't require too many ingredients, and fit into my weird notion of what is actually good for you. You see, I don't believe that processed food is good for you. And that goes for breakfast cereals, salad dressings, sauces, gravies, pancakes, and other prepared things that most people wouldn't count as processed. I believe that natural fats like lard and butter are better than margarine and canola oil, and I don't think dairy was meant to eaten skimmed and reduced of fat. Everyone has something they like to make from scratch which most people buy processed. But I like to try making everything from scratch. Which I don't think is actually cheaper, just better tasting and healthier. Like pizza dough, or mac and cheese. If I knew how to make homemade pasta and had the time to bake bread I would. These days it's hard to find recipes that don't call for margarine or shortening or require lots of refined flour or sugar. Most people are onto the fact that whole wheat is better for you, but try to find a recipe for whole wheat baked goods that don't expect you to use oil or shortening. Or try to find cheesy recipes that don't call for low fat cheese and skimmed milk.

So I have to try to keep one step ahead and develop a routine for making things from scratch that don't take too much time and attention because I'm pregnant, exhausted, and I have a very demanding toddler who likes to follow me to the bathroom and say "achoo!" as I barf my guts out and then proceeds to shove "Mr. Brown Can Moo" at me for the billionth time.