Concerted effort

My favourite Christmas carol is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, because as an alto I can't get up high enough for all the other ones.

I used to sing in choirs. I don't have a particularly good voice, or a particularly strong voice, and I can only stay in tune when surrounded by a group of people also singing the same thing, but I enjoyed it and I can read music decently enough not to go horribly noticeably wrong. I also showed up for practice, which is always a bonus from a director's point of view.

My husband has also sung in choirs for many years. He's much better at it than I am, being what you might call legitimately musical and with a nice voice to boot. He'll even sing alone in front of other people, if you ply him with a drink or three. And it will sound good.

At Christmas, the Messiah is what we should be singing. I sang in the Messiah several times, in school and college and afterwards too. I could probably still get a fairish proportion of the alto line right, if given a score and placed right in the middle of all the other altos. Some day, I'll go to a singalong Messiah and do that, I hope.

For years, the choir concert was part of the beginning of Christmas. Long black skirt, black long-sleeved top, putting on my makeup in the bathrooms in the Science building of UCD, or the ones Dramsoc used in the LGs of the Arts block. Waiting upstairs in the O'Reilly Hall, going through those last few bits where I still went wrong, marking them with a pencil so at least I'd know where to stop singing for two or three notes rather than mess it up. The sound of an orchestra tuning up; it's like the clinking of ropes on masts in the harbour on a breezy summer's day. Sometimes I was in the orchestra instead - third clarinet or something like that. Again, not very good, but a show-er-up.

I love the anticipation, the lights, being on stage, being important but camouflaged as one of many. Not being the one who faints, that's vital; there's always one. Watching the conductor, trying not to giggle, turning pages silently. Looking out for parents, friends, whoever you could strongarm to come along. Smiling keeps you in tune. File out row by row, one by one.

On the whole, I enjoy a concert a lot more when I'm part of it than when I'm just watching. But we should find a concert to go to, because it's not Christmas without one.

Some days are better than others

Some days I am on top of the laundry, and some days the laundry is on top of me.

Some days a blog post comes to me fully formed in the shower. Some days I have to hiccup it out like a cat barfing.

Some days I go for a run or do a whole exercise video and then saute kale for lunch. Some days I stop after five minutes and have a muffin instead.

Some days my children climb trees and run outside and I show them how to make leaf rubbings, and feed them meals that have components from each of the food groups. Some days they sit in front of the TV for too long and get a waffle and five frozen peas for dinner.*

Some days I am fired up with efficiency, and the kitchen is clean and the dentist appointments are scheduled and the new season's clothes are sorted and I am superwoman.

Some days I'm not.


I think the key is not to give up after one - or many in a row - of the off days. Just keep swimming.

*Obviously, I'm talking about Mabel here. For Dash, eating from all the food groups means a peanut-butter sandwich and a juice box.

A singular sensation

A strange thing happened when I came back from BlogHer. I felt very small.

Not that I go around feeling like a great lumbering giant every day, but I usually feel comfortably right-sized in my space. But at the start of last week I found myself looking in the mirror and thinking I was a mere wisp of a thing; that a breath of air would knock me over; that I was lacking weight, significance, heft.

Small in a not-good way, then. Maybe it was the exhaustion that hit me when I got home, a combination of post-excitement, post-travel tiredness and a bit of an extended hangover. Maybe it was because I'd hung out with some women who were taller and bigger than me - but that was by no means the majority. At 5'4 and a US size 8, I'm pretty much average, and certainly not tiny. I am not a wisp.

I think perhaps it was a physical manifestation of the fact that I'd been such a small fish in such a huge pond at the blogging conference. I don't mind not being in the limelight; I don't want to be top of the heap. I have very little ambition, and I'm fine with that. I have no illusions that my blog is secretly a Big Deal. I don't think anyone's going to jump out of the alcove and present me with a trophy for being the biggest little blogger that could, I really don't.

So I don't know why, honestly. It was an odd and unsettling sensation. But I'm happy to say it's wearing off, and I'm feeling pretty much normal again.

Which probably means I should get back to that 30-day shred thing if I want to keep fitting into my size 6 Gap jeans. (Which we all know are just like size 8s anywhere else.)

What I Wore: BlogHer '13

Seriously, it is utterly unimportant what you wear to a BlogHer conference (unless it is). I get it now. There is no dress code. Whatever you wear, there will be people who are more stylishly dressed, more formally dressed, more dressily dressed, more quirky, more queer, more basic, more elaborate, or more schlumpy than you. But people tried to tell me this and I studiously ignored them, because planning my wardrobe for the conference was the one area I could have control over in this whole crazy unknown future.

So I feel a bit embarrassed to even share this post, but I'm doing it anyway, precisely because I'm not a fashion blogger or a style blogger or an arty crafty person or anyone with an agenda about what she wears. When I was searching for guidance on this area before I went, I wanted to know what the regular conference-goers wore, not what the style bloggers were showcasing. I'm not saying I'm particularly representative of anything, but I'd say I didn't stand out as over or underdressed, if that's what you are going for. And I was comfortable and happy about how I looked, which was the aim of the game. 

My one caveat is that it really is COLD in conference centers, and my thin summer cardigans weren't quite up to the job, for me. Next time, whenever, if-ever, I'll bring something a little more substantial. A full-body fleece wouldn't go amiss. Maybe a Snuggie.

************

So this was day one. Apologies for the badly lit bathroom selfie. I think my top looks like a sofa, but I hope in a good way. I usually shy away from prints, but this one is so delicate and pretty that I was happy in it. It's a sleeveless top in a very light chiffony fabric, which would have been perfect in the July weather I was envisaging. In the event, we had an oddly cool few days and I don't think I removed the cardigan at all. I forgot to wear earrings and thus had a short identity crisis during breakfast, but I got over it.

Top: Marshalls. Khakis: Old Navy. Cardigan: Gap, I think. Sandals: Naot.

On Friday night I got dressed up, but you don't need to even do that, depending on what parties you might be attending. Again, some did, some didn't. I didn't feel overdressed but I was chilly waiting for Voices of the Year to get started. (That's a polite understatement. Also, they kept turning up the music because Queen Latifah was stuck in traffic, so I couldn't even chat to my friends without screaming.) The dress looks odd because you can't see the length, but it's just to my knee. Both knees, actually. If you were around for the belt discussion, I asked my roomie for her opinion and went without the belt at the last minute. In hindsight, still not sure about that.

Dress: Nine West from Macy's. Cardigan: Gap, as before. Jewelry: Old Navy. Sandals (not visible, obvs, but I am wearing some): dull gold slingbacks from Softspots with a fairly low heel.

On Saturday morning I was a little hung-over and feeling I'd lived several lifetimes since I'd arrived in Chicago. I already understood about it not mattering what I wore, but I'd packed the clothes so I had to put them on. (See, I didn't even bother with a selfie, so this is that picture of me and Stacey again.)

Saturday: Green cowl t-shirt, Marshall's. Cropped stretch denim trousers, New York & Co. Cardigan: Old Navy. Shoes: Naots again, which are incredibly comfortable and well worth the investment.

These trousers (which you can't see very well) were inexpensive, fit nicely, and are very comfortable thanks to the stretch. I wore this all day, from conference to airport to home at midnight, so I guess it was a good choice. The green and orchid were more vibrant together in real life than they look here, so it wasn't a day for feeling like blending into the background. It's good to wear something a little bright or otherwise distinctive, so that if you're trying to meet up with a stranger you don't have to tell them you're the one on the jeans and the black top.

Now I look at it, I really did have the green and purple theme going throughout, which is only because apparently everything I own is either green or purple. When I got to the airport and realised my suitcase was purple and my carry-on backpack was green, it was not really a proud moment. More of a sigh, really.

See what I mean?

Notes on re-entry

O'Hare airport, Saturday afternoon.


I feel as if when I get back to my kids, they might have aged ten years in my absence. I can’t be sure time was passing at the same rate where they were. It probably wasn’t.

Talking to the kids on the phone is a disembodied experience. Their voices don’t even sound the same, and they don’t know what to say to me and they nod or shrug and forget that I can’t tell. Talking to them on Skype is even odder because I can see them, but only in two dimensions. My children are a 360-degree experience, a full-body contact sport, an assault on all the senses. Being at a remove changes them and I don’t know who they are, those flat noisy beings who flit in and out of view.

On our first Skype call, on Thursday, Mabel looked at me and said, “I’m thirsty.” She clearly expected me to do something about it.

I am a woman with children, almost always. Can’t you tell by looking at me? Isn’t it obvious? Don’t I have it tattooed on my face (in lines) and streaked through my hair (in grey) and written in braille all over my body? Apparently not; I couldn’t tell whether anyone else at BlogHer was a mother just by looking at her (unless she had a baby with her, as some did). We were all singular. 

I am at a remove from them, not just physically, but mentally too. Not simply that I’m not thinking about them, but that I’m some other version of myself who leads a parallel life without children. How can they exist if I’m not there with them? It’s a little lonely, but I don’t feel a void. If I think about them a lot, if I tried to, or if I see other children the right age, I could miss them plenty bad. But mostly they are existing in their universe and I in mine. Our universes will align again and return to their rightful place soon. I’m not ready for more time in this one yet, but it was interesting to visit.

Of course, nothing exists if when I’m not there in it, observing it, with it. It all leaps into being from its flat-pack life as I walk into the room, as my train approaches the station, or my plane flies over the pop-up trees and houses, as we slowly round the curve of the globe. Isn’t that true for you too? Isn’t that how life works?

I trusted, and my trust has not been misplaced. I had faith that they would be returned to me in the condition I left them, plus or minus a few meals, a few ice creams, a few squabbles and scraps and scrapes; and they will be. I believe it. I believe in them. I didn’t invent them; though I did conjure them into being, once upon a time.

Too old

Lately, I've found myself saying to people that I'm too old for that.

It's a good thing.

I'm not telling them I'm too old to dye my hair pink (should I so desire) or bungee jump off the Sydney Harbour Bridge (sure!) or wear a short skirt or exercise or eat dessert or read teen fiction or have lilac toenails. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I'm too old to spend time worrying about what other people think, because I trust my own judgement.

I'm too old to care about what other people are wearing, because I'll wear what I feel good in.

I'm too old to bother with fake tan, because I'm finally learning to love my fair skin.

I'm too old to worry about what the bitchy girls are saying.

I'm too old to even take the time to figure out who the bitchy girls are.

You don't have to wait till you reach the illustrious age of 40 to embrace this liberating mantra. You can be too old for all that at 20, or 30, or even 16, if you're really ahead of the game. But I have to say it seems to come more easily as the years go on.

Inter-

We went to the theatre a while ago, my husband and I. Say it the posh way, thee-ate-er. We left the children in the capable hands of a babysitter and took our cue to pretentiously discuss Beckett and Joyce on the metro into town. We even had a drink before the show. We'd never have had the audacity to book ourselves tickets for something like that - a real play, at night, in the city, no less - but we'd won the tickets so we had to go.

It's been so long since I've been to a live production of anything other than a tantrum being thrown that I'd forgotten all the things that make theatre such a different experience from a movie, even though on the face of it you might think they're much the same. This was a great example, though: a very intimate production, in the round, so that watching the audience opposite us react was as much part of the play as watching the actors. And being so close to the protagonists that you could reach out and touch them as they went by (if you wanted to; of course, I would never do such a thing) and admiring the grace and speed with which the actors moved the sets and props around between scenes, like a dance.

I love those moments when they're between selves; they're not quite in character yet, but they're about to be. The curtain call is the same, of course: it's the actors, not the characters, who are bowing to our applause. I strained to see if I could hear them speak as they went by, because the play was done with British accents and I'm sure the actors were American - but I didn't catch any hint of their real selves' voices to lift the veil a little further. I think this is why I love the blooper reels on a DVD so much: it's not just because they're funny, but because we see the actors being themselves just for a moment.

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I am between selves at the moment, I think. With the kids in camp for six hours a day, parenting is not the immersive experience it has been and will be for the rest of the summer, but I'm not quite sure what else it is I do; other than rush around getting last-minute things I might need for BlogHer. Once I'm there, I'll be a new self, or an old self - a new old self, perhaps. A professional amateur blogger, doing whatever it is such people do, in the company of many many others. A writer among writers, or a mommy-on-vacation. A woman among women (and some men, but not many, I'd say), without children.

Just me, Sheryl Sandberg, the Pioneer Woman, thousands of other women, and Queen Latifah too.

I think I'm going with the pale lilac toenails

So far so good with summer camp, though Mabel objects to having to stay quiet for rest time after lunch, and I didn't send any money with Dash on his field trip so he was subjected to the huge injustice of not being able to buy anything in the gift shop at the Baltimore aquarium yesterday. As for me, I'm having a lovely time.

Yesterday I went to the mall and spent more than an hour shopping, unhurriedly and in a focused manner, alone. I don't think I've done that since I had children, and it was excellent. First I bought a bra from the proper place to buy bras, so that everything else I tried on would look better. Then I found exactly the trousers I was looking for in the first place I looked for them, and on sale too. (Making up for the bra. When you breastfeed for seven years, your double-Ds turn into something more like double-Fs, and there are no cheap bras.)

I bought some posh moisturizer and had some good lunch and tried on some dresses that were almost but not quite what I wanted. I resisted the Nordstrom lady's hard sell on the blue dress (which was really cute but would clash with my shoes and need alterations and was a little dressier than I wanted) and at the last minute found the perfect thing in Macy's, on clearance, no alterations needed, just dressy enough, and works with the shoes I already have. Score.

Yes, a lot of this shopping is inspired by the upcoming blogging conference. No, you don't have to go and buy new things or take up an exercise regime to go to a conference. But I like motivators, and inspiration, and finding excuses to do things I might not otherwise do.

Let me put it like this:

How would I like people to look at a blogging conference?

a) Fat
b) Thin
c) Friendly

How do I think people should dress at a blogging conference?

a) Preppy
b) Sloppy
c) In something comfortable that makes you feel like your (best) self

Option c) all the way. That's all.

Personally, however, I do have a few other requirements: not being too hot or too cold, not feeling like I have to stand up straight and suck my gut in all the time, not worrying about sweat stains if I've been shuttling between conference venues in Chicago summer heat, and not clashing with my orange bag. And, vitally, wearing shoes I can walk in. All of the above will help me feel like myself and meet new people with a genuine smile.

I'm not going to pretend that BlogHer isn't a big deal for me. It is. I've never left my children overnight before, I've been out of the professional workplace for seven years, and I'm only just starting to call myself a blogger out loud. Sometimes. So while dressing for a fairly casual conference and hopping on a plane without emergency diapers and goldfish crackers might be a regular occurence for many attendees there, for me it's a giant leap out of my everyday life and back (or forwards) into another.

As far as I know, there's only going to be one other person there who I've actually met (though she knows several others). Quite a few of the bloggers I love to read regularly, and who I know have gone in the past, don't seem to be going this year. I'm fairly interested in some of the sessions and of course I want to see the keynote speakers and the Voices of the Year presentations, but mostly I'm going for the Experience. I want to meet people who are dorks like me.

Are you going to be there? Leave me a comment, and maybe we could try to meet up.

The other vacation

This is what I wrote last night:

Tomorrow, my vacation begins.

I mean, the one where the kids both go to camp from 8:45 to 3:30 every day for two weeks, and culminating in my three days away at the BlogHer conference in Chicago.

I'm still feeling a little I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it about the whole thing, really. Mabel has never been away from me for full days like that, and she's not the lover of organized activities her brother is, as well as being fairly clingy at the moment, what with the Four And A Half Thing. Camp is meant to be fun, so if she's really not having fun I'll see if they can refund me the difference and go with the half day instead. Eight forty-five to noon is still 45 minutes longer than her school day has been all year. It wouldn't be quite as intoxicatingly freedom-y as no kids all day, but I'd still take it.

---------------------

This morning began with a moan from D's bedroom. Since he's a happy cheery morning person (didn't get that from me), a moan is never exactly a harbinger of good.

"My tummy hurts. And my forehead feels funny."

Of course. Of course it does. What else would it do? Sigh. I know he's not faking because he's the one who really wants to go to camp. His sister, on the other hand, was fine until about ten minutes before we had to leave the house, when she started telling me how maybe she didn't really want to go to camp after all and maybe she'd much rather stay at home and how it wasn't fair that Dash got to be sick so he didn't have to go.

Oh, the injustice.

----------------------

I brought Mabel to camp and made it out the door again alone. She was happy to see a friend from school and - more importantly - a large pink doll house WITH PONIES. She looked a bit wobbly when I left but was holding it together.

Dash is now perfectly fine, after three pieces of toast. He's been making things out of duct tape and making movies of himself fighting/dancing with my old camera. I am going to bring him down for lunch and the afternoon half of today's camp, because if I don't he'll drive me demented and use up all my computer space with uploaded crap.

Luckily for you, I couldn't get the movie to upload, so you just get a photo

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I brought him to camp. He was immediately hailed by at least two kids in the room, and slotted right in to his group with a grin. I dropped by Mabel's building without seeing her and inquired of a counsellor how she was doing. She's fine. Totes fine. (They're not in the same camp, but are based about a minute away from each other.) I went to Old Navy and Safeway and did some shopping.

It's awfully quiet around here. I wonder what I'll do next. When's pickup time again?

Things to do before I turn 40: a very short list

Happily, I didn't have any set-in-stone plans for things I had to do before my thirties - those halcyon days, how I have enjoyed them - ended. I wonder what I might accomplish in the time I have left...

• Finish reading this book. [unlikely; I'm only halfway through]
• Go to bed early [one more chance for that]
• Buy ingredients for something to bring to tomorrow's party [which is not mine, but I will be there, so I can appropriate it a little]
• Make pizza for dinner
• Buy a bottle of wine [ooh, ambitious]
• Break up numerous sibling battles
• Use emotional blackmail on the children to get them to bed on time for a change, just because it's my birthday tomorrow [how likely is that to work, really?]

A whole new decade. It'll be interesting.

Windows to my soul

So far, my planning for BlogHer has mostly centred around what colour my toenails are going to be.

This is a vital consideration. One's toenails, in sandal weather, are an extension of one's very being, a porthole into one's personality, and an ever-present accessory. I don't want to spread pedicure paranoia or anything, but as far as I'm concerned the shade of my toenails says a lot.

I also have a problem with purple at the moment. My problem used to be with green, and I sort of declared an embargo on green things to deal with that. But apparently I moved to purple and now I'm in great danger of matchy-matchyness, which just won't do at all.

Let me run through the shades of nail polish I have at my disposal, and the messages they convey, at least in my head, and probably not in anyone else's.

• None: A classic option for the natural beauty. Groomed nails with no polish say that I'm above all that. Or that I didn't get a chance to paint them. Or that it's winter and I'm wearing socks and what, you brought your x-ray specs, Superman?

• Clear: Not much point, really. If you're painting your toenails, paint your toenails.
• Darkish tomato red: Fun, but not really me. A little too bright and clashes with most of my clothes.
• Dark sparkly red: Classic with a twist. Goes with almost everything, but doesn't say a lot about the purple/green-loving person I am deep down inside.
• Dark bronze: Very me (I'm an autumn, you know), goes with everything. But a little too much like the colour of my sandals themselves. Too safe, maybe; doesn't say "I take risks in blogging!"
• Palest lilac: Lovely, very summery; has the unfortunate side-effect of making my pale feet look as if they belong to a corpse. Pity about that. If I have to spend several conference sessions with my toenails in my line of sight, I don't want to be wondering whether or not I'm still alive.
• Brighter lilac/orchid: Also very summery, not quite so corpse-like. The problem is that I have too many t-shirts the exact same colour, not to mention my two orchid dresses and my purple/berry bag.
• Dark sparkly purple(not pictured): I just got a pedicure in this shade, and will probably never be able to find it again. It's very nice, though. On the other hand, it's exactly the same as my glasses frames. (See what I mean about the embargo?)
• Metallic teal: Last year's purchase - gorgeous colour but doesn't suit my skintone at all, and clashes with almost all my greens, which are more on the yellow side of green than the blue. Great with the bronze sandals, mind you.

Some might say I should choose my clothes for the conference first and take my cue from there. But then I'd be denied all this very engrossing and important contemplation. I probably need to invest in a few more options. Now taking suggestions.

I'll let you know what I finally decide.

Things I may be doing tomorrow

• Panicking, because Wednesday is Mabel's last day of school and Friday is Dash's.
• Going to Target and panic-buying ALL THE THINGS.
• Doing all my grocery shopping for the summer so that I don't have to bring two children to the supermarket twice a week.
• Painting my toenails.
• Paying someone else to paint my toenails while I relax. 
• Not being able to relax while someone else paints my toenails because of all the other things I could be doing with this very precious morning.
• Giving myself a home a facial and dying my hair, which sorely needs it.
• Cleaning the house, which sorely needs it.
• Reading a book, because when else will I get the chance?
• Writing a bunch of blog posts and scheduling them in advance so that you don't all wander off and leave me during the summer when posting dips below acceptable levels.
• Surfing the Internet.
• Telling Facebook how it's my second-last morning of freedom.
• Telling Twitter ditto.
• Compiling lists of things we can do during the summer.
• Compiling lists of things I should do but won't get done till September.
• Going to the post office to mail my mother's birthday present.
• (I should probably definitely do that last one. Remind me in the morning, 'kay?)

Exposition

So what happens nowadays (by which I mean this week, probably; my memory is short and constantly renewing itself) is that every few mornings I put on my sexxay workout gear and I flit around the house doing the normal before-school morning things like eating cereal and making Dash's lunch and nagging people to get dressed and checking my Facebook in case something important happened on the Internet overnight. The children are slightly confused: "What are those jeans?" Dash asked me this morning.

And then I bring Mabel to school and then sometimes I actually do something like exercise and other times I have what my cousins taught me is called a French workout, when you dress for the gym but don't go. And they should know, because they live in California where you have to at least pretend to go to the gym.

The something like exercise I'm tending towards at the moment is a 20-minute "extreme burn" pilates workout DVD. It doesn't sound like much, especially when you realise that extreme burn is an extreme exaggeration (except for my abs, which, ouch), but it's more than nothing and I think that's the point.

I've also been known to take a bike ride or even just a brisk evening walk lately, since my Stupid Toe won't let me run any more. (It's much better. I don't even notice it, unless I try to run half a mile or so, and then I start limping, which is unpleasant and makes me grumpy and despondent.) I loved the yoga class I went to a few times in the new year, but it takes too much of a chunk out of my brief, brief window of morning. By the time I'd got home and showered it was time to go straight back down and pick up Mabel, because she's all done with formal education at 11.30 every morning. And formal education has about had it with her by then too.

The prospect of going to BlogHer bang smack in the middle of the summer is actually more of a motivator than the idea of the local swimming pool opening up at the end of this month. My swimsuit, after all, is stretchy, and I've basically got into the habit of switching off all my mortification circuits on entry, as a self-defence mechanism. Anyway, all the other people I run into there are similarly uncovered, and we're mostly all imperfect one way or another.

But BlogHer is another story: I'll be meeting a whole passel of new people, mostly women, all of us trying to make the best first impression possible but look like we didn't have to try very hard because we always look this way. I won't lie - it's a scary notion. But in reality it will probably end up much like the swimming pool - we're all imperfect, and we'll all focus on the pretty, whether it's someone else's shoes or their necklace or their smile that lights up the room.

I'm really quite excited about BlogHer, you know. Apart from giving me a little more impetus to get fit(ter) and a rock solid excuse to buy some new clothes, I have a cool and lovely roomie whom I'm looking forward to getting to know a bit better, and for the first time since I've had children, I'm going to be doing something that's just for me. For three whole days.

It's a milestone of sorts. I don't know exactly what I expect to get out of it - I'm not fired up about any particular conference session, though I may learn great things or hear great people at whatever ones I end up attending. I'm not dying to get spectacularly drunk at any of the parties (though it may happen). I'm just looking to expand my blogging network a bit, meet some new people who like the same sort of things I do, get some new readers, and - most of all - take a step towards establishing who I am when I'm not being someone's mom.

It's been a long time coming. It's going to be good.

Disappearing pizza and itchy fingers

I'm starting to get itchy fingers. I think I'm at one of those Points In My Life.

See, here I am churning out acres of verbiage - garb(i)age verbiage perhaps, but still - every day, and I seem to have a surprising amount of time to do it in, once I ignore the siren songs of cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming the playroom and paying attention to my quite self-sufficient younger child; which is hard but, you know, I love you all so I do it.

However. I can't help thinking all this energy in my fingertips could be put into something more, well, I hate to be crass, but lucrative. Or meaningful or fulfilling or something. Not that this isn't... oh, you know what I mean. If some of the time I did something I was paid for, then I could pay someone else to clean the house now and then, and then I could continue to ignore the housework with impunity. It's a glorious tiny circle of capitalism.

Yesterday (this seems like a detour but bear with me, it'll get relevant), my dinner plans went a little off kilter, and B offered to pick up pizza on his way home. Which was lovely, except that when I tried to order online from our local pizzeria, it had disappeared from the Internet. It had also disappeared from the phone network, as the number listed brought me to the next town over's Domino's, and then the man on the other end couldn't hear me anyway. 

Fine, I said snottily, and made carbonara, which is what I should have done to begin with.

And then when I was asking local friends where our Domino's had gone, someone humorously suggested that I should rent the now-empty location and start a cafe from which I could sell my home-baked goods.

It is indicative of my state of mind that I almost considered considering it seriously.

In one way, it's lovely. I mean, the idea that yes, I could do this, that even though I'm not the entrepreneur "type" and that I've never considered being a small-business owner, I could probably do it in real life. My life is not over just because I've had kids. I never opened the second-hand bookstore/coffee shop I've been musing about since I was twenty before I had childrnen, but that doesn't mean I can't do it afterwards. Maybe it's something to do with the headlights of the oncoming forty that makes me so cavalier in my assumptions, but I do actually think I could.

But there's plenty of time for that, and right now it's not actually what I want to do. I think if I had to bake for a job rather than enjoyment, I'd very soon get sick of churning out the goods. Not to mention all the headaches that go with owning a small business. Not at the moment, thank you, though I won't write it off forever.

On the other hand, it seems like I do have a little time on hand and maybe I could actually do something else with it. I could start small and look for some freelance editing work. What I'd really like is for someone to pay me to write, but then I'd have to work out what it was I was going to write, or write things other people tell me to, and I'm not certain how to do either of those. I do want to capital-W Write Something, but I can't do that while Mabel's flitting around the house begging every five minutes to watch My Little Pony on my computer or actually putting on Sesame Street in the background. That particular project will have to keep growing at the snail's pace it's coming along at, for the moment, if I want it to be any good.

----

And then I had to go and, you know, actually parent or something, and make dinner and take in the laundry, and in between I checked my LinkedIn profile to make sure it didn't have any misspellings and then I put out the word on Facebook and Twitter that I am, in fact, in the market for some freelance proofreading, copy editing, taking words and making them prettier/clearer/correcter*. 

Sure, what's the worst that can happen? I'm deluged with offers and have to turn people down? Or nothing at all. I think I can cope with both eventualities, but something in between would be ideal.

*Not actually a word. I do know that, don't worry.

And/or

What a relief! Summer went away and it's nice and cool and rainy today. I'm sure there are people out there complaining about it - and I'm sure I'll be one of them this afternoon when the children are all cabin-fevery and/or then I have to take Dash to baseball practice in the rain/mud - but right now my brain has switched back on and I can inhale deeply and I'm wearing my jeans and socks and it's good. All that sunshine was giving me a headache.

And I let Mabel's feet get sunburnt yesterday because I slathered her up nicely with sunscreen on arms and legs and face and neck but forgot that she would inevitably ditch her new purple sandals after ten minutes on the playground and leave her lily-white hoofers in the direct glare of the midday sun. Bad mother. (It's okay, they're not lobstered. Just a little extra pink.)

The pink and purple blossoms look positively luminous in the rain, too. It's very April-showery.

A little bloggy PSA and self-publicizing now. As you might recall, I'm going to the BlogHer conference this summer, which is very exciting/terrifying, and because I'm paying more attention to my e-mails from BlogHer I noticed that they are now accepting submissions for Voices of the Year, which is a way they recognise some of the best blog posts from the past year. Even though I always assumed the people who won these things were the "big bloggers," I thought what the heck, and submitted two of my favourite posts, because why not, and who else is going to ever notice your best work if you don't tell them where to look?

The main awards are decided on by a panel of readers, which is fair and means that the blogs with the big readerships don't scoop everything just because they have more people to vote for them; but there's also a reader's choice prize, and if you happen to be also a member of BlogHer, I'd be really delighted if you'd like to take a moment to go and vote for either or both of my nominations, if you like them. (You can still vote for everyone else as well if you feel that would be fairer.)

The page to vote for the first one is here, and the second is here. You can click through to the posts themselves from each of those pages.

And if you have a blog and are a BlogHer member, go and nominate your own favourite posts too and then tell me about it. (You can join BlogHer just to do it.) Share the love.

Bipedal

I went to the doctor this morning and came away with the deeply unsexy diagnosis of "hammer toe". Unlike hammer time, this is not even arguably a good thing.

First, the nurse saw my Kindle and carried on an entertaining 15-minute monologue about how she found a book in the library that had streetnames she recognised and it turned out to be written by a girl she knew from her neighbourhood in Philly, and she called her up and said "Did you do all that stuff? Because if you did, you nasty," and the girl said, "Just don't read my other books." Which was all a bit surreal.

Then she asked about my foot, which was why I had come, and I showed her where it hurts and she considered it critically and then said,

"You have a pedicure recently?"
I wasn't sure where she was going with this.
"Does it look like I had a pedicure recently? If I'd had a pedicure and my foot looked like this I'd be asking for my money back."

She said she's seen a lot of pedicures gone bad lately, from old black ladies (her words) who start getting their feet done every two weeks and all the skin comes off.

I'm not an old black lady, nor do I play one on TV. Also, I haven't had a pedicure since last summer. So obviously I could not have a pedicure gone bad.

Then the doctor came and looked at my foot. I confessed that it wasn't so sore now, but I'd made the appointment because I was pretty sure that would make it get better, and my tactic seemed to be working. But that I'd come along anyway, and look, here's my stupid foot and right here underneath where it looks perfectly normal - or as normal as my foot can get - is where it hurts.

First he asked to see the other foot. Then he asked me if my feet had always been that way.

"You mean weird? Yup."
"Okay." He said. "So this is the normal foot - I mean, the asymptomatic one, since they're not all that normal---" (Not a man to mince words, this one. I like him.) "---and see where this toe bends up?"

So the reason the bottom of my foot hurts is because the toe on top is stupid. I have stupid feet.

"It's usually genetic," he remarked, helpfully allowing me to shift the blame to my father, where it belongs. Why the DNA couldn't have picked my mother's feet instead of her nose to give me, I don't know. I already had his eyes, his mother's hair, and his liking for bad puns; did I have to have his hoofers too?

But I'm sort of pissed off about this. I mean, it's not like I have a large collection of Jimmy Choos that will now start gathering dust, but it was hard enough to find shoes that fit pyramid-shaped feet to begin with (short, wide, high arches, your basic pyramid), and I'm already wearing the cushiest, most comfortable, most German-looking shoes you've ever seen.  

I have a two-day blogging convention to go to this summer, you know, I wanted to shout at the doctor. Where I will be meeting women I want to impress with my personal effortless sense of style. (Stop snorting. It makes your nose look funny.) I have to wear shoes that I can walk around Chicago in that also look okay with whatever I'm going to be wearing, into which a lot of thought will have gone.

I AM NOT READY FOR NUN SHOES. DON'T MAKE ME WEAR NUN SHOES.

Ode to shoe

Ah, Zappos, how I love thee. And also hate thee, for you try so hard and so well to part me from my money.

Zappos, in case you live under a rock or on the tragically Zappos-less rock of Ireland, is an Internet mail-order shoe-selling company. They sell other things too now, but shoes are their main stock-in-trade. If you say Zappos, I think shoes, and so do many, many other women who have fallen into their supple, shiny, suede-trimmed trap.

It's not that they're bad. It's just that they're very very good.

So you go to the site and you look at lots of pretty pictures of shoes. You can see the shoes from every angle, you can zoom in to examine the stitching detail or the pattern on the sole, you can even watch a video where someone wears the shoe and then holds it and bends it to show how delightfully flexible it is. You can read reviews by other people who were delighted with these shoes, or disappointed by them in some specific way, and thus you can make an educated guess as to which shoes are best for you. They have all those odd sizes that are so hard to find in stores, like wides and narrows. You can sort them out by size or style or colour or brand or season - or emotion they inspire, probably.

But here's the best bit. Shipping is free, and return shipping is free. So you can order as many pairs as take your fancy, safe in the knowledge that if they're not quite right once you have them in your own hands, and on your own feet, you can send them back and not be a penny out of pocket.

Oh, those canny Zappos people, they are so clever. Because once you have the shoes not just in your hands and on your feet - as you might at the mall or on the high street - but in your very own house where you can try them on with all thicknesses of socks, with trousers and jeans and skirts and everything you own, the temptation to just let the nice people in the computer keep your money while you keep these shoes that are so nearly right, but maybe just not exactly what you had been initially envisaging, that temptation is great. These shoes that you might not even have picked off the display in the store, because you could see immediately that the shade was wrong, or the leather was oddly wrinkly, or you were actually looking for sandals, not boots - now you can see that really there could be a place in your collection for these shoes too. Maybe you'd be crazy to send them back.

Also, of course, sending them back requires action. You have to package them up again, and your children have already run off to pop the bubble wrap. You have to seal the box, and you can't find the packing tape. You have to print out a return label, and the printer is all the way downstairs in the basement and sometimes the wireless connection doesn't work so you have to go down there and manually turn it on. And then you have to drive to the post office or the UPS store and bring it inside. (I've heard you can just give it to your mail carrier too, but I don't ever trust my mail carrier to actually take things as well as deliver them. That sort of thing would never work in Ireland.) Sure, you don't have to pay anything, but all that activity, when you could just let them keep your few paltry dollars (eighty, whatever, were these on sale, I don't remember) and have these shoes in your collection for the day when you do own the perfect pants/skirt/suspenderbeltwhatIdon'tjudge . . . well, you see how it goes.

Right now, as you might have guessed, I have two pairs of shoes upstairs, all nicely re-packed in their boxes with the fiddly plastic mouldy things and the tissue paper and the inner bags all perfectly replaced. One pair was gorgeous, the perfect colour, but not comfortable enough. The other pair was blissfully comfy but the wrong colour. I'm trying very hard to either just let it go and send them back or find some good reason why I need the brown ones so that I can keep them.

Oh, Zappos. I just can't quit you.

Point of origin

I forgot to mention it here because I said it elsewhere, but I've been in the US for ten years this month. I think my anniversary was last Sunday, actually. I emigrated without even feeling like that was what I was doing - I was just moving in with my boyfriend. The fact that I had to painstakingly win the visa lottery, go through the green-card process, and move across an ocean to do it was just details, once it was all under the bridge.

For my writing course this morning I had to describe fifteen important minutes of my life. Tricky. I mean, I suppose they had to be minutes in my life, not just minutes that affected my life, because otherwise I'd have been duty-bound to envision my own conception, which is really not something anyone wants to have to put any amount of imaginative thought into. And they had to be minutes that were important to my life, not someone else's - because who knows if something I said offhandedly in a supermarket queue or at a playdate or online had a deep and lasting effect on someone else's life? I mean, it's unlikely, but not impossible.

So I had to come up with a fifteen-minute episode that made a difference to my life. There are the birth stories, of course, but I've already written those. And the thing is, once the baby's in there it has to come out one way or another, so while the births were great and life-affirming, they didn't really change things. Finally, although it's the epitome of cheese and terribly obvious, I found I had to go back to that house party in 1993 when I calculatedly but nonchalantly wandered into the kitchen after the boy who'd gone looking for a corkscrew, because I thought he was cute.

I won't give you the blow-by-blow account here, but it was probably a pivotal moment. It's possible that the same moment could have come later, or earlier, since we had a mutual good friend and would probably have encountered each other again if we hadn't that day - if I hadn't gone to the party, or he'd chatted up the Australian girl for a few more minutes, or he'd been wearing the sweater with the duck, for instance - but that's how it happened.

There were probably lots of other important moments or sets of moments: when we broke up (numerous times), when we got back together (numerous times +1), when I filled in the visa application form, when some random-number-generator or bikini-clad lady pulled my application number out of the hundreds of others, when we dated other people and found them not measuring up to previously set high standards. But the fact stands that if things had gone differently that evening in Rathmines, I very easily might not be sitting here, emigrant, immigrant, runner's wife, mother of these two particular amazing/appalling children. I might be writing somewhere, wherever, but that's about the only thing that would be the same.

I don't think I have to mention, do I, that I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out so far?

In dreams

There's a road I walk along often in my dreams. The sea is on one side, a high wall on the other. The waves tend to be choppy and white-crested, the weather harsh. I am trying to get to an exam, or walking an impossible route to catch a train, or late for a performance of something unlikely. I may or may not be missing some clothes, or have lost my glasses. Maybe I've only visited this place once or twice in some very vivid dreams, but it feels as familiar to me as a path I tread every week.

I've always known exactly where it is, because this place exists in real life - though the wall might be a little craggier and the sea a little wilder in my dreams. It's near my old school, by a tiny local harbour with a marine-supply store my dad often went to. I don't know that I've ever walked that particular part of the path in reality, as it's beyond where we'd turn off to go down to see the boats, and I'd never need to go further by that route - but in unreality, it plays a frequent role.

I have no idea why my subconscious chose this place as the site of so many incongruous and frustrating adventures, and it had been a long time since I went there in person. I was driving to my parents' house a few days before Christmas, and I took the sea road, as we often do when we're home - I like to see the sea. The road turns up inland after a little and we usually follow it straight up the hill, but this time I turned back down a smaller road to go past the harbour.

There it all was: the stone of the tiny pier; the narrow concrete path, single-file wide; the sheer, slightly mossy granite wall - I probably hadn't been there for more than a decade, but I'd seen them all so recently and so regularly that if I stopped to concentrate, my feet and my fingers could trace every inch of it.

We didn't stop, though, because while in my dreams I'm usually alone, singular, in the daytime world I had two cantankerous and jetlagged children in the back seat, who were getting tired of being told to admire the sea.

"Why do we have to look at the sea again?" they whine.
"Because it's a rule," I say.
"It's not a rule." They are too canny.

But it is a rule. The sea is always there, and even when I'm an ocean and a landmass away, I have to stop and look at it in my dreams.

Unshopping

Now is the time on Sprockets when we blog...

That is, the children are wending their way to sleep and I am off duty, so I'd better come up with the goods. Whatever they might be.

Earlier I tried to tempt Dash to do his homework, or at least think about his homework. I called out to him from the kitchen as I figured out something to make plain pasta and chicken a little more grown-up for me and B. "I'm not on the menu," he replied.

I had to laugh. I'm not sure I'm ready for such a smart-arse kid, but it beats yelling, I suppose.

****

I don't usually go in for reverse shopping, (as I believe Marian Keyes called it, though maybe she's not the only one), but this morning I got a great sense of satisfaction and freedom out of returning two items I'd bought and regretted.

The first were the red jeans I got at the start of the month. I tried and tried, I really did. I got things to go with them, which I still like and will wear with other things. I readjusted my sensibilities and recalibrated my whatsits and learned to love my hips even when they weren't balanced by big wedges of fabric flapping comfortingly round my ankles (and soaking up the rain from the ground at every wintery opportunity). I thought I could make them work. I was sure the answer lay in the footwear.

Last week I got a lead on a pair of boots. On Sunday, I bought them. They were on sale, and I had a coupon, and they looked exactly like the boots I needed to go with the jeans. They were even comfortable, which is quite a miracle where my feet are concerned. It was meant to be. I was delighted.

Then I came home and put on the jeans and the boots. (No, I hadn't worn the jeans to go shopping. What sort of sensible person do you take me for? For one thing, I couldn't because I didn't have the right boots to... oh, yeah.) And I was underwhelmed. In fact, I was pretty sure that this wasn't even just not a great look, this was a downright undesireable look. I looked kind of, well, I have to say, skanky. And not in a good way. Not in a sexy way. Just in a "She shouldn't have worn that" way.

So I came to the conclusion that if you have to try so hard to make something look right, it's not going to. The jeans were an unflattering fit to begin with, but just because they were less unflattering than some others I have tried, and because I loved the colour, and they were a good price, I made an impulse buy. Usually, my MO is to spot something I like, mull it over, decide I wanted it after all, go back and find it's left the shop, and spend the next three months searching in vain for something similar. When you find something that's right, you should buy it, but I obviously misinterpreted "right" in this case.

So this morning I brought back the jeans and the boots. (Amazingly, I was able to locate the receipt for the jeans.) The nice ladies gave me my money back and I continued on my way with a feeling of freedom and lightness heretofore known only in tampon ads.

The world is my oyster! I can start again! I have fifty-two dollars (woohoo!) back in my wallet and some other poor mug can buy those jeans, and those boots, and I wish them the best with them. They'll probably know better than to try to wear them together.

So I still don't know what I'm wearing for Christmas, but I think I'll be looking more like me in whatever it turns out to be.