A bunch of catalogs came in the mail today, including one of the many child-oriented ones that I never signed up to receive but just began getting in the mail, mysteriously, before my first kid was even born. I don't know how they knew I was with child and thus more likely than other random consumers to shell out bucks on baby monitors and burp cloths, but somehow, they knew. Perhaps the CIA notifies them. The USA Patriot Act has to be doing somebody some good, right?

Anyway, back to the point: while I am all for child safety, and this company sells some items that look quite handy, there are some things just go TOO FAR.

Such as this "bumper bonnet," meant to protect my child's poor tender little head from ever coming into contact with a hard surface.
(If you've ever been to my house, you might notice that it appears to be my exact couch in the background of this picture. How did photographers sneak into my house and photograph a baby in a cloth helmet without me noticing? I'm not sure. The CIA, I'm telling you.)


This "bath-time bumper" that "surrounds baby with soft, safe padding" even while in the bath is lovely too. After all, you wouldn't want a single surface in your home to remain un-padded.
















And, the ultimate in weirdness....

The "bottle" that is basically just a giant plastic boob.

Though technically Christmas is past, our tree is still up and our stockings still hang, for Poetry Thursday today I offer you a favorite Christmas poem.

A Christmas Carol

In The bleak mid-winter
Frosty winds made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

--Christina Rossetti

I, the CBOE, spent my first Christmas surrounded by brightly-colored packages with ribbons and paper that were fun to grab. People kept coaxing me to tear the paper off and see what was underneath, but I didn't understand what all the fuss was about. My new teddy bear was fun to chew on too. I was constantly entertained by my many adoring subjects, which pleased me greatly. My sister mixed me up some cookies with her new baking set. They are a fabulous item on which to gnaw with my one tooth. All in all, I approved of the proceedings heartily.

Well, the seventh title is out. I must say I like it. It has quite a mysterious and ominous ring to it.

Much discussion ensues, of course, on the meaning of those two words. One popular theory seems to be that the hallows are spirits (i.e. All Hallows' Eve), particularly the spirits behind the veil in the Department of Mysteries.

My first thought was that it would be a place. It immediately called to mind a misty grey bog: the deathly hallows.

However, after doing a little quick googling of the word hallows I've come up with a theory I like better. Check this link http://www.mystical-www.co.uk/arthuriana2z/h.htm and scroll down for some very interesting information on the use of the word hallows in Arthurian legend: "The Hallows across most legends are seen to represent...the objects sought by someone such as a 'Grail Quester' (See Grail Knights) in both ancient and modern stories."

Let's see...deathly objects sought by someone such as a grail quester? What could they be? Don't we know someone who is on a quest for some dangerous and mystical objects?

That's right. I'm making my guess right now, and if I'm correct my loving readers can buy me fabulous presents after Book 7 actually comes out.

Deathly Hallows = Horcruxes.

For your Poetry Thursday pleasure today, here is a poem I read on the e-mail version of The Writer's Almanac this week. Wintry, Christmasy, funny, timely.

Advent 1955

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver-pale.
The world seems traveling into space,
And traveling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound —
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out 'Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.'
And how, in fact, do we prepare
For the great day that waits us there —
The twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards. And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know —
They'd sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much.
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.
We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well.
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defense is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax.
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
"The time draws near the birth of Christ',
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago.
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

--John Betjeman

Beth's first Christmas program was last night. What she was supposed to do: sit on stage wearing sheep ears and make animals noises at appropriate times with other members of the 2- and 3-year-old Sunday School class. Follow this performance up with singing "Silent Night" along with all the other kids in church, and shout "Glory to God in the Highest!" at the end.

What she actually did: sit on stage. Not sing. Not make animal noises. Pull her own sheep ears off, drop them, get down and retrieve them, drop them again, go get another little girl's ears after she dropped hers as well.
















Get cranky and not want to go on stage again for "Silent Night" unless a big girl whom she adores, 11-year-old Chrissy, would hold her. Cling to Chrissy and silently play with her hair for the entire performance.















Lucy's performance consisted of screeching angrily at me in the audience when I wouldn't let her chew on the expensive digital camera I was trying to take pictures of her sister's non-performance with. Some friends then volunteered to hold little Squirmy-and-Screechy so I could take pictures.
(Eric was videoing the event for grandparents who couldn't be there. Is this an awful lot of hullaballoo for a 2-year-old who doesn't seem to understand that when you go on stage you're supposed to actually do something? Yes, yes it is).

But both of them looked darn cute.

I offer two poems on Poetry Thursday today, homage to the two-state dichotomy that plagued me this week. It's also atonement for last week, when I flat-out forgot it was Thursday and did not post.

Our first poem is by a former Wyoming state poet laureate.


Lupine Ridge

Long after we are gone,
Summer will stroke this ridge in blue;
The hawk still flies above the flowers,
Thinking, perhaps, the sky has fallen
And back and forth forever he may trace
His shadow on its azure face.

Long after we are gone,
Evening wind will languish here
Between the lupine and the sage
To die a little death upon the earth,
As though over the sundown prairies fell
A requiem from a bronze-tongued bell.

Long after we are gone,
This ridge will shape the night,
Lifting the wine-streaked west,
Shouldering the stars. And always here
Lovers will walk under the summer skies
Through flowers the color of your eyes.

by Peggy Simson Curry

Poem No. 2 is a characteristically simple and lovely one by Oregon's best-known poet.

Where We Are

Fog in the morning here
will make some of the world far away
and the near only a hint. But the rain
will feel its blind progress along the valley,
tapping to convert one boulder at a time
into a glistening fact. Daylight will
love what came.
Whatever fits will be welcome, whatever
steps back in the fog will disappear
and hardly exist. You hear the river
saying a prayer for all that's gone.

Far over the valley there is an island
for everything left; and our own island
will drift there too, unless we hold on,
unless we tap like this: "Friend,
are you there? Will you touch when
you pass, like the rain?"

--William Stafford

Familiar
Enough
Rain
Old friends
Valley
Close to parents
Squirrels, deer and nutria
Small and overpriced house
Start-up company
356 feet
Mennonites
Making payments for years and years and years
Flood insurance
11-year-old, radio-less Honda
Farmers' market
Roads that you know like the back of your hand


Was this the right choice?
Was saying good-bye to not just thousands but tens of thousands of dollars in the first year alone really the right thing to do?

This has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever had a part in making. Deciding to marry Eric? No sweat. I just knew that he was the one. Whether or not to have kids? Again--I knew without even thinking about it that I wanted to be a mother. Whether or not to take a great job that required moving away? Very tough. I think this was one of those decisions where either outcome would have been good--and choosing which of two positive outcomes is the best outcome was tough.

We knew that either way we chose, we'd have some regrets. Paying off the student loans and building up a nice retirement nest egg would have been really nice. But those things will happen in time. There were other down-sides to the job as well--frequent work-related travel and a company policy that encourages its engineers to move every 2 to 4 years were major drawbacks for me. And I think we would have regretted it more if we took our girls away from a place where they are already so loved so much by so many people.

Unfortunately, we don't get to know what lies down the road not taken. Just the one we're actually on. And we decided that for our family, the road does not lead to Evanston, Wyoming.

Would you choose the familiar, safe, and comfortable, or the new, exciting, and unknown?
Would you choose oodles of money, or enough to get by on?
Would you choose seven months of rain or seven months of snow?
Would you choose meeting lots of new people or staying among the same people you've known your entire life?
Would you choose a temperate valley or a high desert mountain plateau?
Would you choose to live within 2 hours of where you were born and 15 minutes of your parents' house, or in a brand-new place you've never been to before?
Would you choose bison, elk and moose, or squirrels, deer and nutria?
Would you choose a 2-bedroom, 2-bath, 1,400 square-foot house for $165,000, or a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 2,500 square-foot house for $150,000?
Would you choose a giant corporation or a small start-up company?
Would you choose 356 feet above sea level or 6,749 feet above sea level?
Would you choose lots of Mormons for neighbors or lots of Mennonites for neighbors?
Would you choose being able to pay off all your student loans or making payments every month for years?
Would you choose having to put flood insurance on your house or having to put a snowplow on your car?
Would you choose a brand-new, free, Ford F-150 or a Honda Accord with 200,000+ miles on it and no radio?
Would you choose a town with a farmers' market every weekend in the summer, or a town with a rodeo every other weekend in the summer?
Would you choose already knowing every street in town and every highway and back road in the county, or exploring new pathways?

If you have the answers to these questions, please let me know.

I think college warped my brain forever.

I find that I am unable to read books to my daughters without completely over-thinking them. Thus, while my voice is chanting: “The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So I sat there with Sally, all that cold, cold wet day...” for the thousandth time, my brain is thinking: Gee, there are really some Freudian implications in this story. The Id and the superego are blatant enough: cat and fish. Who/what functions as the ego? The boy? And why does the boy have no name? What about the absent mother? Where is she, why has she left her two children home alone all day, and what does this lack of mothering represent? And what about the absent father, for crying out loud?

So I present to you here a proposed series of critical essays on children's literature.

1.Freudian representations in The Cat in the Hat (see above)
2.Man, imperialism, and nature. Source material: Curious George and The Three Little Pigs. Questions: what does the Wolf represent and why must he be defeated (or colonized, or tamed) by building strong brick dwellings? Why is removing a monkey from his native jungle and bringing him to a zoo in a city, where he is completely unable to navigate the industrial infrastructure, presented as an acceptable outcome?
3.A feminist look at Snow White: Why is cooking and cleaning all she ever does, both at the castle and at the dwarfs' cottage? Why is a sexual advance by a strange man celebrated as the happy ending that breaks the magic spell?
4.The Runaway Bunny: A portrait of a parent's constant love and abiding care, or of a twisted mother who refuses to let her little boy leave home and find his own way in the world?
5.Where have all the daddies gone? Absent fathers in children's literature: see The Cat in the Hat, The Runaway Bunny, Peter Rabbit, The Poky Little Puppy, and Madeline (he sends her presents in the hospital but does not come visit her after emergency surgery and leaves her to be raised by nuns in an orphanage or boarding school or whatever it is)?

Feel free to submit any other suggestions for a Kid's Lit Crit course to me here.

P.S. Despite the hyper-critical notions my mind creates, fueled by an over-priced education and the monotony of reading books dozens and dozens of times, I truly love children's literature, including all the books mentioned above. The Runaway Bunny is a particular favorite, despite what some people think about it.

P.S.S. I actually wrote an essay on one of these topics once.

...is eyes in the back of my head. I know that's a really stupid mom cliche, but seriously, Santa. I need some. With better vision than the ones I have up front, okay?

Because otherwise, when I am doing something that puts me with my back to the rest of the room (washing dishes, stirring something on the stove, or ummm...reading blogs and e-mailing my mom) and I think Beth is happily playing with her toys in the living room, I turn around to find out that in actuality she has been happily playing with all my clean and folded laundry in the living room.



So please, Santa. I've been good this year. And an extra set of eyes would add to my mothering abilities exponentially. Not to mention that while I was, for instance, re-folding all that laundry with one pair of eyes, I could be reading my nice chick-lit/murder mystery book with the other. That would be what I call time well-spent.

Come Christmas Eve, I will leave one plate of chocolate chip cookies and one glass of milk in the living room. You will leave one super-powerful extra set of Mom eyeballs. We'll call it even.

While munching on one of CostCo's super-cheap hot dogs this evening, I realized that there was writing on the foil wrapper the hot dog came in. Being a compulsive reader, doomed to process every bit of written information that comes within my field of vision (I even read in my dreams. The other night I had a dream that I was reading a book. I could see the page with words in front of me. That was the whole dream. I don't remember what it was about, but it must have been good because I was annoyed when my baby's cries awakened me before I was able to finish it) I saw that the wrapper was printed with the following helpful message: "Reduce waste! Please recycle!"

"Okay, I will!" I responded internally to the eco-friendly imperative. I wondered for a moment whether it would go in a metal recycling bin or a paper bin, since the wrapper was foil on one side but paper-like on the other. I looked around to see which bins were available, or whether they had a commingled recycling receptacle. And that's when I saw that it was a moot point because there were no recycling bins at all. Just giant trash cans on all sides of the food court.

Now, why would CostCo buy hot dog wrappers that specifically instruct the consumer to recycle, and then not provide recycling bins? How stupid is that?

Okay, rant over. Peace out.

Well, it's finally here. We are kind of sort of officially house hunting.

The end is coming near. Within months, Eric will be no longer a college student but a gainfully employed engineer! That's the plan, anyway. And if all things go according to plan, said employment will be here in the mid-valley. He's still weighing out some different options, but will most likely go with a job around here. Which is why the kind of sort of house hunting.

I am one of those people who has had an eye on the real estate market for years. Whenever I see a for-sale sign, I go take a flier--even if it's not something I really think I'll ever buy. I like houses, I guess. And with prices and interest rates both going down (although the darn Oregon housing market is doing better than most states, apparently), now just might be a good time to buy.

So today, we finally met an actual real estate agent and (for real!) looked at our first actual house.

Is it weird that I was excited because it had hideous linoleum and kitchen cabinets that are straight from 1971? Because it appeared that hidden underneath the nasty linoleum and really tiny dishwasher and too-small backyard was a nice house. A house in a great neighborhood. A house that I could picture as our home.

Decor can be changed. And every update or repair that it needs is one more way to bargain down the price. That's the way I see it, anyway.

I'm trying not to get too excited about it, because really the timing is probably not right, and not everything about the house is perfect. It's vacant now and so the sellers probably want to close a deal soon, whereas we really don't want to buy for another several months when Eric is closer to being done. If it's still on the market then, we'll see.

But it was the start of a process. A beginning. And I can't wait to find out what's in store at the end.