‘Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free

I kept waiting for it to happen today: to see some item sopping wet and caked with mud and to finally burst into tears.  But you know what?  All this talk about things just being things and the focus being on life is not just on the surface.  I believe those things, and I live them.  It is amazing to know that they’re there viscerally and that a crisis confirms that I have accomplished personally what I have been working on for years.  I am not devastated.  We have a place to live and we are safe.  Our friends and family are helping us (and my God are they ever helping us!).  There is so much peace.

So it may sound funny when I thank all of you who visited the registry for the STUFF you sent!  It IS nice to know that I we will be able to eat from real dishes instead of paper plates and that we can dry ourselves with real towels.  If you visited the registry and found everything bought up (incredible–I am stunned at everyone’s generosity…) I added some more items tonight.  We have been through the upstairs and I know now what we are working with.  Attic Man saved A LOT, like all of our pots and pans and most of our small appliances, including our vacuum cleaner, microwave, toaster oven, and crock pot.  If I missed you and you still want the information, please give me your email address and I’d be happy to send it.

Home.

We signed the lease for Apt. #1 today.  We were handed the keys and can move in immediately.  Such a relief.

Miracle of miracles: the second floor, though the water came up to the roof, was untouched on the inside.  We will be able to salvage our bed, computer, baby clothes, appliances, etc.  The stuff on the first floor is completely destroyed.

Tomorrow is salvage.  I’m headed to bed in what I hope will be our last night in a studio.

Ethical Mourning

is not to say, “I don’t deserve this.”  It’s to acknowledge that many people live in one-room second-floor studio apartments with roaches and no laundry with a toddler who must sleep in the kitchen on a regular basis, and that I am not different because I am living that way only temporary.

You’re only a flood away from “those people.”

Very little battery time left.  Quick: parenting is different along class lines, necessarily; middle class parenting values have more to do with circumstances that moral superiority (as I’m learning first-hand; I cannot “just leave the dishes and focus on your kid!” in this apartment); we’re all OK, just cramped but adjusting; apt hunting to begin ASAP; back online tomorrow night; still haven’t seen our house but assume we’re flooded up to the floor of the attic based on flood heights.

Thank you for all your good wishes!  It makes a difference. 

Hope you all are well.  We are.

Thankfulness, continued

I’m thankful that the Snapper and I were already on vacation and have everything we need to live for a few days, that we can stay at my brother’s house tomorrow night and also do laundry there, that my SIL has offered me a bottle of baby shampoo to take, that our family is already maintaining an apartment in another town due to Attic Man’s summer internship and we will not have to stay in a hotel, that I have no non-dissertation job that I will have to call in for, that we have money in the bank, that the levee will probably hold but if it doesn’t, that we are not overly attached to our things.

Mama Bear, Papa Bear, Baby Bear, puppies, and Mama Bear’s violin are safe from floodwaters.

We are lucky, we are blessed.

Now to go live in a studio apartment with a toddler in a Pack n Play and an inflatable bed.  I’ll be mostly offline.

For Connie

And anyone else who has wondered where the heck I’ve been.  Well, here actually–this is what I do.  I get going on something and other thing fall to the wayside.  Then the energy for the something wanes and the wayside stuff gets attention.  That’s why boomerific is kind of feast-or-famine-ish.

So what are the shiny objects taking up headspace?

1.  The Snapper and I went on a whirlwind tour of the PA homesteads and picked up a wedding on the way (a lovely, lovely wedding, I might add).  The Snapper is now suddenly talking up a storm.  It may be that unlike our boring house the grandparents have bunnies!  And rice bins to dig in!  And graham crackers! (he spend most of the time at my parents’ pleading for “crack.”)

2. Quaker stuff.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m searching for a new faith tradition, and I am quite seriously considering joining the Religious Society of Friends.  To that end I’ve attended two different Meetings (or churches), one rural meeting and one in Iowa City.  They are equidistant from our house but the IC one has some children in attendance so there will be opportunities for First Day School (Sunday School) in the fall.  It’s also slightly larger (as in, fifteen people meeting instead of three).  But that’s all boring logistical stuff.  Soon I will write a longer post about what I am liking so far.  I’m reading Friends for 350 Years, which is history and theology rolled into one, and despite the title, it’s an exciting read.  OK, it’s exciting for ME, because I keep saying, “yes, yes, yes!”

3.  Future adoption plans are very in flux.  We’ve had a few sobering conversations in which we realize that we may not be able to pull off an adoption financially for quite some time, even after law school.  We will both be starting new jobs, too, and you just can’t say, “I’d like a child on May 16th so we can work on attachment before the new school year.”  I’m just now and then thinking about the different types of adoption and how they might work and getting a little depressed about it.

4.  I’m running, though you wouldn’t know it from the past week and a half.  It is hard to get motivated after a trip, even if you run all through the trip.  At any rate, I love my new legs.  Running is awesome.

We’re all happy, healthy, and aside from dreading a summer of tornadoes, quite content.  I promise I’ll write more.

…

I am emotionally preoccupied with this terrible story from our backyard.

Fitness Instead!

Attic Man went out and bought a stationary bike last night and I rode it this morning (between work shifts!) for thirty minutes.  While I was riding I was thinking that because I’m not focusing on losing weight I need another way to track my progress toward health.  And to NOT fall into the weight trap, I have committed to staying off the scale.  No weigh-ins.  So instead I think I’m going to choose a few fitness indicators to track to keep motivated.  It will be helpful to have measurable progress so that when I feel like throwing in the (sweaty) towel I have a way of seeing how far I’ve come.  The last time I was able to exercise continuously for one year I was keeping an exercise journal.  Since this is kind of my journal now and because a few of you might be interested in joining me (and it would be much more fun if you did!) I am going to keep records here.

Now the question is, what indicators should I track?  Here are a few I’m thinking of including for once-a-week check-in:

-Resting heart rate

-Number of minutes cardio

-Total weight lifted

-On a scale of one to ten, how I’m feeling physically

Any others you can think of?

While it’s cold and the sidewalks are treacherous I’m going to do the bike and the free weights we have in our basement, and when it’s warm I’m going to try running again and this time follow Doctor Mama’s invective to start off slower than I think I need to.

Like I said, I’d love to have some fitness sisters.  The rules would be really, really simple: commit to staying off the scale and keep track of the indicators we’ve chosen weekly.  That’s it.  Anybody game?

Damn.

Obama had this to say, which was nice. Guess I’m officially on his wagon now.

Clothing help, please!

Ok! I need clothing. For a winter wardrobe, if you can call it that, I have two pairs of jeans, several very old t-shirts and two nice (ahem) sweatshirts. That is all. Motherhood has blown all of my good sweaters out of circulation. I was happy with my summer wardrobe of two nice skirts, two button-downs and one pretty top. That was all and it’s all I need: just some basics, and not too many because we’ll be into spring soon. Now that I have child care (yay!) I’ll be going down to Iowa City twice a week and I want to look presentable.

I’m planning to do consignment but I would like to get some basic staples that will last a few years. I’m trying very hard to do fair trade/organic but getting very frustrated. I’m almost through CoopAmerica’s Green Pages Online and I’m stuck between the drawstring yoga pants I can afford and the nice structured pants and good-quality tops that I can’t. Anybody have a favorite, affordable place to shop for fair trade clothing online?

Oh, and I am an hourglass type with short legs so the hippie-dippie stuff I so adore is out.  Classic styles are best.

Why I Dislike Edwards the Least

First off, if you’re running for president you’re almost automatically an ethically compromised person, at least in terms of what you probably set out to do at the beginning of your career (if, indeed, you started out with ideals and not just the oil lobby suggesting it might be nice if you ran).  Politicians need money to run and need support from powerful people–nobody gets elected without compromising on this and that, on both piddly and serious issues. So none of these candidates is the second coming as far as I’m concerned.  That’s why I did nothing more than shrug when learning that Edwards received campaign contributions from members of a hedge fund that had him on the payroll.  I read the Washington Post’s article about it and ended up saying, “eh.”  The guy’s a capitalist.  I’m an anti-capitalist but there’s nobody viable (and in Iowa that’s more than an adjective) who is one, too.

I like Edwards’ anti-poverty platform, and I like his health-care plan (especially that he plans to pay for it by repealing the tax cut for those earning over $200, 000).  I like that he spent his pre-political years as a trial lawyer getting justice for people wronged by corporations.  I don’t care if he made a lot of money doing it.  As far as I’m concerned his work constitutes a tax on the wealthy, and he should get a piece of that action.  I like that his background is working-class and that he hasn’t seemed to forget that despite his acquired wealth.  I especially don’t care how much he spends on haircuts.

I really, really like that he wants to bring the troops home in a years’ time, deploying only enough troops to make sure the equipment and personnel get out, and leaving on enough personnel to man the embassies.

Look, Obama’s alright and believe me, he’s a close second.  But he’s a lot less anti-corporate than Edwards and I don’t think he’d stand up to special interests with the same conviction and backbone.  (If you have your Harper’s article on Obama lying around read it again; and if you don’t, check it out of the library.  I think it came out some time last year?)

As for Clinton, well, Frances Kissling at Salon says it best.

I hate politics.