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Notes on Everything and Nothing At All

I am liking this new quiet(er) routine.

I just typed that Q word and my toddler started crying.

So nevermind all that.

And I was just listening to a podcast (Girls Gone WOD) about how kids sense when you wake up in the morning, so “getting up before they do” is an impossibility for lots of moms…

Notes, read in a whisper:

    Isn’t “Girls Gone WOD” about CrossFit? Do you do CrossFit? No. No, I don’t. Do I even really know what it is? Also, no.
    Is that even the name of that podcast anymore? Also no. I am way behind on nearly all my podcasts, and I believe that particular one has changed names now.

What I mean(t) by “quiet(er)” is that now that my oldest is back to in-person learning, I have some space to breathe a bit. I do have a toddler directly under my leg right now — he is right now kicking my foot — but I don’t have a toddler underfoot, a five-year-old to entertain AND a seven-year-old to bribe into doing his “school” all at the same time.

All of this is to say that I’m running a couple of groups, if you’re interested.

    Short Story Club. We had our first virtual get-together this past week. We will meet monthly. I choose two short stories — one classic, one contemporary — and we chit chat about them.

    Creatives for Creatives. This is an ongoing accountability group for all kinds of people wanting to start, maintain or build their creativity in whatever way fits. We check in daily and we are meeting once or twice per month online. There are prizes for meeting certain goals and achieving milestones.

Reach out in the comments if you wanna know more.

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Story Published & Creativity Cohort

I am so happy to announce that I have another story out in the world. The Bangalore Review published my latest story.

My Mother’s Ring

Also! I’ve been running a creativity cohort online for the past few months and because it’s going so well (and is getting me to write on a more regular basis) I’m opening up another one through my music therapy business site.

http://soundmattersmusictherapy.com/creatives-for-creatives/

In all the madness, there must be hope. Right? Right?

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The Insurrection and the Kids

I’ve been thinking about the kids.

Truly, I think about kids all the time. I am surrounded by my own. They crawl on me and attack me with tickle fingers and yell at me and defy me and crawl on me some more. I manage them and change them and sometimes feed them (that job mostly falls to my husband) and nowadays I teach them.

When Trump took office, I thought about the kids in a different light. Now after the insurrection on the Capitol on the 6th, I wonder how our kids — and their kids — will function together.

I recognize that I say “our kids” and “their kids.” I’m specifically thinking about the kids and grandkids of the people who stormed the Capitol.

Many times in the four years since Trump took office, we’ve had questions from our oldest child, and sometimes our middle child, too. Why did he say that? Is he mean? Is he a bad guy? etc. And yeah, we answered those questions as succinctly and honestly as we could. Many times I’d ask my son how he felt about whatever it was he was bringing up. He isn’t being kind. He isn’t thinking about others.

Our kids weren’t asking questions about the guy’s policies. They were asking about the way he conducted himself, as a person.

This guy has led so many adults astray. He has done serious damage to family units and pushed family members apart. My concern lies with the kids who overheard Fox News commentary for these past four years, or heard their parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents speak glowingly about that guy. How are these kids going to manage in the classroom or on the field or whenever there is anything that does not go their way? This tantrum that the former president threw resulted in five people dead. How is that being explained?

Of course it was a horrible day and I hope Trump will not be allowed to run for public office in the future. And of course there is a lot of immediate aftermath here that will I hope be handled in Congress. I just wonder how these kids are going to be together in the future. How will they function in a group? How will they ever resolve any conflict? What does resolution even look like, when you have THAT as a model?

I worry.

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Distance Learning Returns

Just a little look-see at my day.

  • Wake up at 4:17 to a screaming baby.
  • My husband brings him in to nurse.
  • Oh look, there’s the seven-year-old next to me in bed. Huh. I didn’t notice him. Thank god he no longer kicks me in the face while he sleeps. I guess he’s getting taller and is not that flexible anymore?
  • Nurse the baby. Think about Samuel L. Jackson and his “Go the F*** to Sleep” book but not because, of course, I want the baby to go the fuck to sleep, but because oddly Alexa the evening before suggested this book to read aloud to my five-year-old when she asked it about reading suggestions.
  • Remain awake but in bed with the also awake and also in-bed baby and sleeping seven-year-old for the next two hours.
  • Finally after 6:00 I called my husband from the seven-year-old’s room to take the baby.
  • Sleep for about an hour.
  • Get up and get ready for a video visit with the pediatrician to address why the baby’s cheek hasn’t fully healed from the impetigo he had and then learn that we will have to take him to a dermatologist. Great.
  • Vacuum the rug in the “school room” (dining room turned classroom for the distance learning we have been doing for almost a year now) so that all the other seven-year-olds on Google Meet don’t judge me for having crap on the floor.
  • Get the first grader onto his first meeting.
  • Take the baby’s first outfit of the day off as it has been encrusted in food and then put him down for a nap.
  • Get the five-year-old on her Zoom class.
  • Engage in first fight of the day — nee, year! — with the first grader who doesn’t want to do any of his work and begins to cry because I won’t give him a break after the very first class of the day — nee, year! — because that baby is asleep right now and damn it if we don’t try to be productive while that is the case.
  • Give the first grader and five-year-old lunch early because the first grader says he’s hungry and he doesn’t want to do Social Studies.
  • Oh look, the baby’s awake.
  • Feed the baby and wonder why I bother putting clothes on him.
  • Coerce the big kids into their 1:00 classes somehow.
  • Keep the baby from pulling down the still-standing Christmas tree.
  • Repeat.
  • Listen to the first grader begin his list of what he wants for his birthday coming up in August while not realizing he hasn’t even unboxed most of his Christmas gifts. I’m so glad I went overboard on presents this holiday.
  • Shit, I haven’t eaten yet.
  • Go find the baby next to the Christmas tree.
  • Yell at the first grader that he needs to do all of the SeeSaw activities even though he has decided he wants to take up napping again.
  • Let the first grader nap while I put the baby down for one, too.
  • Fully realize the mistake in the above decision.
  • Continue letting the five-year-old watch YouTube Kids.
  • Do a small percentage of work while the house is fairly quiet.
  • Coax the first grader awake with the promise of a snack.
  • Get the baby.
  • Listen to the first grader whine for the next couple hours as I try ignoring him, helping him, doing something entirely separate from him but conclude that there is no way I can painlessly get him to finish his work. He flops on the couch, and then he flops on the other couch, and then he flops on the floor to find a comfortable position in which to finish his one last worksheet of the day. The baby crawls over and drools on the iPad, and so the first grader complains about that and finally finishes his last activity after 5:00 PM.
  • My husband comes up from working downstairs and I do one more pull-the-baby-from-the-Christmas-tree before going upstairs to sit in our room and remember the hit-by-a-truck feeling I’d had when this all started in the fall.

    • Going great.

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    The End of 2020

    How did we make it through this year? So many people have suffered or died or been kept apart from family and friends who were suffering and dying.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever spent a Thanksgiving and a Christmas away from my family. This year we did.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever felt compelled to learn about anti-racism and really try to deepen the limited knowledge I have of it. This year I’ve read more and thought more and tried to teach my kids about what I’ve read and thought. I’ve joined a discussion group that reads and considers various articles and papers written about race relations in my professional field. This year I’ve had troubling conversations about race and white supremacy, much of the time with extended family.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so alone while being in the same room as all of my immediate family members. Facilitating distance learning is difficult. Assembling a makeshift gap year curriculum for my five-year-old is annoying and it makes me sad. Chasing my infant around the house while doing both of those things is exhausting.

    I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so much as I have this year.

    Of course there were many, many happy happenings in our household. But today, right now, I’m acknowledging the hard.

    And we made it.

    Christmas Card Picture

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    My Son and I Love Dory Fantasmagory

    My oldest baby kid is in first grade. He is loud and energetic and currently obsessed with planes and robots. (Specifically, he is interested in a robot called Spot made by Boston Dynamics that can be purchased for $74,000. He is pondering where it will stay when Santa brings it to him on Christmas.)

    “Honey, you’re not getting Spot for Christmas.”
    “Why not?”
    “That’s more than a car.”
    …
    “And they don’t sell it to individuals. It’s for companies.”
    “Santa will bring it. It will stay in my room next to the RC plane.”
    “Hm. You won’t be able sleep in your room. It’ll be too full.”
    “That’s OK. I’ll sleep with you.”

    He has high hopes for Santa. And for us (but let’s be honest, he sleeps with us more often than not).

    This year has been unforgettable for so many crappy reasons. One of the good reasons, though, is that I will hopefully never forget that this was the year when my son really, really learned to read. He has been in full-time distance learning the entire year, and thankfully he has a great first grade teacher. Every day over these past few weeks the teacher has read one chapter from the fantastic Dory Fantasmagory series by Abby Hanlon.

    There are five books in the series. It follows a little girl whose name is Dory, nicknamed Rascal. Rascal is the youngest of three kids and she has a wonderful, exuberant imagination wherein a villain named Mrs. Gobble Gracker tries to catch her to keep as her baby. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I bought the books from our neighborhood Wild Rumpus bookstore and watching my little guy thumb through the pages and describe certain illustrations to me from his car seat while we drove home was one of the most special moments in my parenthood to date. Because he knew what was coming, and because he knew he loved what was coming, we blew through the series. He even elected to go to bed early so that we could read two chapters instead of just one. We are done with the series and are now reading The Lulu Series by Judith Viorst and illustrated by Lane Smith.

    And now I want to write a children’s book. Agh. I don’t know how to do that…

    Other news:

    I wrote an article for one of my friends and colleagues who runs a music therapy private practice here in the Cities. Working and Parenting in the Pandemic offers insight into a few music therapists’ lives who try to manage their clients and their kids’ distance learning when it is nearly impossible.

    Here’s to the end of 2020. 🙂

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    Looking ahead

    I am excited lately. I wrote a short story that I submitted to my writers’ group that got great feedback. I’m looking forward to submitting it to a few journals this week.

    Also, I’m starting a group and partnership with a handful of other people out there to stay accountable to my writing practice. Such that it is with three little kids indoors in the Minneapolis winter in the middle of a pandemic. We’re starting this up tomorrow. I’m aiming for it to go six weeks at least.

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    Good Ancestor Podcast & two takeaways

    I’ve been keeping track of the podcasts I’ve been taking in over these past few days as I’ve been re-organizing my media playlists. Especially since George Floyd was murdered, I have been seeking podcasts and hosts and media figures who are BIPOC. I’m really liking Good Ancestor Podcast with Layla F. Saad. I’ve heard two episodes so far — Ep028: #GoodAncestor Candice Braithwaite on Being a Black British Mother and Ep029: #GoodAncestor Nicole Cardoza on the Reclamation of Wellness — and I’m looking forward to more.

    I didn’t know about Layla F. Saad before I heard these episodes. Of course, she is the author of Me and White Supremacy (which I haven’t read yet). From her website:

    Layla is unapologetically confronting the oppressive systems of white supremacy and patriarchy, while offering important teachings and tools for transforming consciousness, cultivating personal anti-racism practice and taking responsibility for our individual and collective healing.

    This! This is what I’m hunting right now.

    me and white supremacy cover

    There is so much in both of these episodes. Unfortunately, I can’t remember all of it. There is a lot to return to, but I can’t right now. Two items that struck me were these:

    1. Candice Braithwaite and her partner agonized over the names to give their children, not because they were afraid the names were in the Top 100 lists and therefore too popular or some other nonsense but because the concern was whether or not white people would be able to pronounce and spell them. They were being careful about how the names would be read and spoken and treated in a white society.

    2. Nicole Cardoza used “underestimated” to describe people who are in other instances described as “marginalized” or “minority.”

    good ancestor podcast

    I acknowledge that I have privilege and opportunity and advantage, relative to many. I know this. I struggle with how to use this for good. Vote, to be sure. I will certainly do that. Research the candidates for local elections, including school board. Teach my kids, somehow, to be thoughtful people. The list goes on. Engage.

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    In the middle of the summer in the middle of the pandemic

    I have re-done this website yet again because it’s a Sunday and no child is on top of me and I have millions of things to do but I am refusing to do those things.

    Also I haven’t been here for… some time.

    And here we are, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of the summer in the middle of that pandemic, and I have a seven-month-old and a four-year-old and a six-year-old and a husband and I don’t know where I fit in between all of them. Living in the cracks, lately.

    What will we do this fall, when we have to decide whether I become a full-time home educator? Will I lose it? Will my kids? There is no way, as I see it now, that my kids will be safe if they go to in-person classes, nor will their teachers nor our older family members.

    I can’t work right now because the music therapy clients I was seeing are not accepting non-essential visitors. So I guess I’ll be a teacher! Yikes.

    I should probably write about it. There are lots of obstacles to doing that, but really it’s the only thing I like to do. So I should do it?

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    Catching up / Raising Empowered Daughters / Looking ahead

    I’ve been absent. From the blog, anyway. And probably from lots of other stuff that I simply don’t make time for right now. But let’s catch up:

    I’m pregnant with my third child, due in mid-November. We all are very excited, though frankly in my day-to-day with my five-year-old and my three-year-old, my pregnancy is an afterthought. I have lots of lower back pain, which really sucks. But I didn’t have any nausea, so there you have it.

    I am still writing, though not as regularly as I’d like to be. I am working on a personal essay and have a piece of flash fiction submitted to my writing group for review. I’m trying to finish some piece of writing every month, so I hope to write something new (all the way to its ending) this month.

    I’ve picked up a freelance writing gig wherein I write a reflection on some research I find (not a review, exactly, but hopefully a more digestible and accessible curation of ideas that emerge from the research I read).

    I’m reading a lot lately, too. I’m in two book clubs that meet in person, and one that is online.

    Dang it, I’m in love with the book Raising Empowered Daughters: A Dad-to-Dad Guide. Note that I am, in fact, not a dad, but a mom. I was introduced to the book via Cool Mom Picks (this is the online book club), and I think it’s really powerful. Written by a guy, Mike Adamick, he’s trying to reach other dads and guys out there who are raising girls. Every chapter lays out all the ways in which our culture is cheating our kids through the language we use and the products we buy. We are teaching our girls and our boys that girls are lesser than. And so we need to be intentional about how we speak to our kids (and how we don’t) about gender. I have a boy and a girl (and maybe another girl in November? I don’t know). It’s a maddening and lovely book.

    Looking ahead, I’m planning to publish a podcast episode once every other week. I’m working on putting all of that together. I am truly addicted to podcasts, and simply want to have one of my own. Not that I expect listeners. I just want to do it.

    Anybody out there?