Author: jenzug

Meet-Up for local This Pile Readers!

I’ve heard of other blogging groups getting together for meet-ups in the area, and thought it might be fun for the Friends of This Pile (heretofore called FoTP) to have a local Meet-Up as well! Are you interested? I’d love to meet you in person (those I don’t know already), and I think it would be fun for some of you to meet each other.

Here’s the info:
Thursday, March 29, 5-7pm in the Renton area.
If you would like to come, please email jen (at) zugbot (dot) com for the location.

I wish I had the creative energy to make this sound more exciting, thereby luring you all in. But I’m working through an anti-computer/pro-Getting Things Done phase, so this is what you get. Just the facts. Trust me that it will be fun, and if you’re lucky I might do some interpretive dance.

Happy Birthday to Ruthie

Yesterday was Ruthie’s 4th birthday so we threw a dinner party in her honor. We began talking about it several weeks ago when, with pen and paper in hand, I asked what she wanted for her party. It was funny how precise she was, and how reasonable. I had wondered what I would be getting myself into by asking her, thinking there would be much tears and drama if I could not provide ponies or bouncy machines or any other high expectations. As if she had been preparing for this conversation her whole life, she confidently rattled off the following:

“I want a cake with pink frosting and red strawberries, and red balloons and red streamers.”

First of all, there was no mention of Dora in her request, which made me want to check her birthmarks to see if she’d been body snatched. Second, what is with the introduction of red? My girl is a Pink Lady and wants nothing to do with anything that is not pink. I was really surprised by all this, but she stayed true to her requests for weeks, continually checking in with me to make sure I remembered the pink cake with red strawberries.

And what birthday celebration would be complete without a little mishap to end the night with? After many folks had cleared out and there were just two families left visiting with us, Ruthie came up from downstairs where we had a table set up with craft supplies for all the kids to create with. She had taken a scissors to her hair – a small chunk out of her bangs and most of her pig tail that was on top of her head.

Such is life. It happens to every kid, and I know it will grow back. I’m just glad she didn’t cut into some other poor kid’s hair!

(our flickr set is here).

Bathroom talk: trivial or completely necessary to keep me in line? You decide.

You know your shower is nasty when a remodeling contractor can’t tell what color the grout between your tile is.

“Do you have any more of this green grout left? Oh wait, over here it’s an orange color.”

No, Mr. Contractor, that would be the green and orange colored slime created by months of ignoring my most basic responsibilities.

But thanks for pointing it out.

My Very Own Truman Show

If you’re anything like me (read: narcissistic), The Truman Show was the movie that made you want to smoke a cigarette when it was over. I could have made millions had I capitalized on my vivid childhood imagination, for I had envisioned ‘reality tv’ long before it was even a whisper in the womb. There were cameras in every room of my house, in my car, at my school, following me down the street – I was the star of my own show, and EVERYONE wanted to watch it. I even NARRATED during the slow parts.

If you know me personally, perhaps this sheds a little light things.

Bryan has been raving about a new online tool called, Twitter. And like most things he raves about, I roll my eyes and ignore him for awhile, wait for one of my friends to say it’s cool, then I finally check it out. It drives him mad, but it’s good to keep him grounded.

Things I like about Twitter
Many use it in the work sector as a tool for workstreaming, but as a stay at home mom I have found value in the social aspects of Twitter – ambient intimacy, as one blogger called it. The tool limits you to only 140 characters – just a couple of lines – so it forces you to be quick and concise. You can use it through your IM client (I use gtalk), so it doesn’t add one more feed or blog or website to check into. I do many interesting and fun and mundane things throughout the day, but don’t have time to fashion a blog post, nor do I want to bore the masses with my Truman Show-like mentality. So I twitter, and only those who choose to ‘follow me’ will receive the updates. Also, if you are a more private person than I am you can set up twitter to be private, so only those you allow access to can read your updates.

I feel this tool could be a strong connector for moms who, at times, can feel isolated. One thing of value I have gleaned from writing at This Pile is the world of connectedness it has opened up – other women writing me to say, This is exactly how I feel, or I have struggled with the same thing, or I’m glad that’s working for you so maybe I’ll give it a try. My theory is that it can not only be a point of fellowship, but of accountability and networking. Did I make it to the gym? Am I eating bon bons while my children watch their fourth movie? Am I drunk blogging???

I personally feel that my online and offline communities can be enhanced by twitter, and that there is great value in connecting through simple, easy-to-use tools.

Please twitter me and make all my fantasies come true!

Thinking About Current Events

I glean a lot of my news and current events from John Stewart on The Daily Show. Sad as that may be, he’s a lot more entertaining than Brian Williams.

Recently he had a woman on his show (I can’t remember her name) who criticized those who hailed Barak Obama as an ‘African American’ presidential hopeful, stating that Obama’s father came to America in the 60’s, which meant his descendants didn’t come from the struggle of slavery, and therefore he wasn’t REALLY an African American in the American sense.

She got a little ridiculous in her semantics, calling him an ‘African’ African-American, but I think I was getting her point. She felt Obama could not embrace the plight of the Black Man because his lineage has not had to press through the trials and tribulation of slavery, and overcome the effects and the dysfunction that this oppression has caused generations of African Americans.

In similar news, the other day John Stewart had the Reverend Al Sharpton on The Daily Show to talk about the shocking news that he is a descendant of a slave owned by a descendant of Strom Thurman’s. It was an interesting discussion, and I think what struck me the most was Sharpton’s point that slavery is really not that far removed from our generation.

The slave owned by Thurman’s descendant was his great-grandfather.

I didn’t know any of my own great grandparents because I am the youngest in my family, but Ruthie knew her great-grandmother, and my sister’s kids knew their great-grandmother. It is a generation that is within our reach; it is a generation with stories to tell while we sit on bended knees.

I know I, for one, think of slavery as something that happened long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, so I appreciated this perspective brought to me through the interview with Sharpton.

Any thoughts?

Keeping Watch?

Keeping Watch?The other day we had too much going on for the kids to get a full nap, but I wanted them to at least get some quiet time.

Okay – it was ME who needed the quiet time.

When Ruthie has a difficult time staying in bed I give her a clock or a watch to keep with her, and I show her where the hands will point when it’s okay for her to come downstairs. When one o’clock came and went and Ruthie didn’t show up, I snuck up to her room and found her fast asleep, still guarding the clock.

Going Bananas

plantainsTonight I fried up some plantains to see what would happen. While eating out during our travels last month Bryan and I had several dishes that included warm, sweet, plantains, and I was excited to come home and try something out. My version was not so sweet, even after drizzling a little chocolate over the top. I think they were not ripe enough, so I will definitely research and try again.

Redirection: Not just for toddlers

Today is already a better day than yesterday. I woke up at 6am to read and drink some coffee in my big chair. It was quiet. I tried to block out my mental list of things I should be accomplishing, and just be in the moment. Starting my day like this is so effective, and I forget that that all the time – especially when I think it’s a good idea to stay up until 1am and sleep in until the kids wake me up.

God also sent me an angel, yesterday, and her name is Gayle. My good friend stopped by unannounced in the late afternoon just to say hello. We enjoyed a glass of wine together, we talked, the kids loved on her, and she folded my load of towels while I prepared dinner. It was just the thing I needed to let the air out of my stress that afternoon.

The Low Rumble of Things Lying Deep Within

This morning I ate my breakfast while locked in the bathroom because Ruthie would not stop bugging me about giving her a bite of my eggs. I kept asking her in a calm way to please back away (she was literally in my face, hovering over my plate, with her fork touching my food), that mommy needed to eat, that she had just finished her second breakfast, blah blah blah. She was not listening to me, but instead kept insisting, “BUT YOU HAVE TO SHARE, MAMA!”

This is an aspect of parenting in which I have not yet formed a thesis – do I share to set an example of sharing? or do I eat my own meal because it is in the best interest of my blood sugar level, which in turn makes me a mommy who won’t tear your eyeballs out? For this reason I was hesitant to put her in a time out, though in retrospect I probably should have because she was not listening to me when I asked her to stop. So in that moment, as I felt my adrenaline building toward rage, I excused myself, told her that mommy needed a time out, and locked myself in the bathroom to finish eating. At which point she screamed, began to cry for her daddy, and went downstairs to bang on his office door.

Great, I thought. I’ve denied her basic sustenance, hurt her feelings, AND dragged Bryan into the drama. Way to go, jen.

My day has not gone much better since, at least in respect to the tense feeling in my chest and the Twisted Spine of Stress.

This is a battle that is fought with Ruthie on a daily basis – mostly at breakfast. She rises at the crack of dawn, at which point she has one or two bowls of cereal. Then when Thomas wakes up and has breakfast, she has something else to eat, and I try to make it something more substantial than cereal. While the kids are sitting at the table eating, I make breakfast for myself and for Bryan, which usually involves eggs, because one can never have too many eggs in my opinion. By the time I sit down to eat said eggs, Ruthie is in my face asking for a bite, REGARDLESS OF WHETHER I HAD JUST GIVEN HER EGGS OF HER OWN TO EAT. There is something about MY FOOD that she insists upon wanting, and I’m coming to the conclusion that it may not have anything to do with food, but with control, because by the time she gets to my breakfast, she’s already eaten more than she will eat for the rest of the day.

Part of it is that I think she is interested in the shared experience of things. For instance, she won’t play with any of her toys by herself, but if Thomas or any of her friends is around, and THEY want to play with toys, then she is happy to play along. And this goes for anything else like play-doh and coloring. There is nothing that I have discovered in the last four years that she will do alone – even the amazing Polly Pockets have lost their dazzle and are no fun unless I’m sitting on the floor with her.

Why is this a problem?

Because my brain literally hurts from being turned on all the time. Just now, as we snuggled in bed before her nap, I had to place a lavender eye pack over my eyes because it was too painful for me to try and keep my eye lids closed independently. Ruthie is at an age where everything is a question, a conversation, and no subject is dropped until Veronica Mars learns the truth.

‘Why is that man standing there?’

‘I think he’s waiting for the bus.’

‘Where is he going?’

‘I don’t know, honey.’

‘Tell me!’

‘I really don’t know, honey. Maybe he’s going to work.’

‘NO! TELL ME!’

I can’t even make up an answer because she knows when I’m bullshitting her.

But I digress. This is not a post complaining about my lovely daughter, because she really IS lovely, and I know all these things I’ve just complained about I will probably adore about her tomorrow. The post is more about me, and what to do with myself when I am feeling so sucked of energy and brain cells that I threaten my children with dismemberment if they will not go play in the damn Ikea ball pit so I can get one hour of peace to myself.

The last time I felt this stressed and trapped and like I never had a moment was a week in which I was not able to spend my Tuesday afternoon writing because the sitter didn’t come. And yesterday? The sitter was sick so I was not able to spend my afternoon writing again.

Herein lies the common thread – the expectation of three hours alone every Tuesday not being met.

[blink.][blink.]

That, my friends, was an epiphany. I just discovered this by bitching on the internet.

Please disregard this post as I figure out a new way to deal with failed expectations.

Preschool Wars

After reading this and this last month I began having nightmares about getting Ruthie into preschool next year. I’m not very happy with the program she is in now so I was planning to put her into my local community center’s program that is walking distance from my house. I should have done that this year, but, you know, hindsight.

Several weeks ago I called the community center to ask if they had space for me to transfer Ruthie over for the rest of the year, but they were completely booked with a waiting list a mile long.

I panicked, and asked how many kids were in each class, and he said there was only one class for each age, and there were fourteen kids in each class.

Fourteen.

A city of thousands, vying for fourteen spots.

I asked when registration for next year began, and he informed me that the three-year-olds were given early registration priority for the four-year-old class, and that the morning sessions would likely be filled up before general registration even began.

I tinkled my pants just a little bit. My perfect utopian world was slipping through my fingers. WHERE WOULD MY CHILD GO TO SCHOOL????

This morning I set my alarm for 5am. I was out the door by 5:50 with my coffee and my breakfast. I was at the community center by 6am, and there were already five people in front of me in line. PANICK! I remained calm. I casually asked the gal in front of me which class she was registering for (THREE’S! YEA!). I tried to act natural.

When my turn came up, I was asked which class I was registering for.

I was nonchalant. ‘Morning fours,’ I said.

‘That class is full, but I can put you on a waiting list.’

‘Sure.’ I said. ‘How long is it?’

‘You’re number 2, and there’s a pretty high turnover so you should get in.’

HOT DOG!

I registered for the afternoon class just in case, and as I walked away I heard the woman as the desk say to the lady behind me, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but that class just filled up. The woman in front of you took the last spot.’

I tinkled my pants just a little bit again and scurried out the door in case my life was in danger.

I never looked back.

Northern Voice: The Moose I Almost Missed.

I have to admit that I wasn’t all that excited about coming to Northern Voice this weekend – but only because it’s been a busy month of traveling, and I was feeling overwhelmed. On the way to a party on Thursday night for friends who were in town I said to Bryan, ‘Would you be disappointed if the kids and I stayed home this weekend? I just don’t know that I have it in me.’

Bryan was great, and he talked me down from the ledge. He assured me that he wanted this to be a fun experience for me, and that he would do whatever it takes to make it work for me.

And man, did he deliver on that promise!

On Friday morning he was up early to pack for himself, let me sleep in, make me breakfast, and help me get the rest of the family going. I was so exhausted going into the weekend that I completely lost all my brain power and ability to make decisions as we approached each meal time, but he kicked into gear, found food like the cave man he is, and brought it to me.

Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

God, I love that man.

I was also skeptical about going to another blog/technical conference. I mean really, after 2 or 3 of these in a year is there REALLY anything new to say? I think I know so much. I think two years of blogging earns me a gold star on my sticker chart. But I don’t know jack, because there was definitely fresh information for me.

I learned something about myself in the process as well. I learned that I no longer want to hear what blogging is all about because I’m interested in what this new fangled web thingy is, but I want to hear what blogging is all about so I can teach OTHERS what blogging is all about. I wasn’t learning, as much as I was researching, and learning a new language, and gaining the tools to communicate my vision. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be inspired to submit a session proposal! Regardless, I know now that there will likely always be something fresh to hear at a conference because my blogging experience will continue to evolve over time.

[Bryan is going to think that is so sexy.]

It was a full day, and the schedule worked out perfectly so Bryan and I could each attend the sessions we wanted while the other watched the kids. I had my big bag ‘o’ toys for them, a room had been set aside for kid activities, and there was a perfectly situated handicap ramp on which to run, roll, and throw balls down.

By the end of the day, without naps, the kids were drunk with exhaustion (but not with alcohol – that was just a play on words), but they were so amazingly good and fun and friendly throughout everything. Ruthie was a big hit as she ran down the hall in her dress-up heels like a true Charlie’s Angel, and Thomas drew chuckles for his ‘ladies man’ t-shirt.

I am still really tired, but this was a great way to spend a Saturday with my family – learning, loving, and playing. Thanks to the people at Northern Voice for a great time, and to my loving husband for keeping the train running.

I will post notes and thoughts on sessions this week as I have time.

A Note to My Adoring Fans

I’ve had some loving inquiries regarding the recent posts I made about drunk blogging – friends checking in to make sure everything’s okay. I just want to clarify that the term ‘drunk blogging’ is something I picked up in the blog world, especially from that hell-raiser, Dooce, who is an extremely hyperbolic and sarcastic writer – a skill I aspire to possess in my writing, much to the disappointment of many in my tight knit offline community.

And quite possibly, I’m not that good at it.

Truth be told, I was jumping on the bandwagon of this video piece from The Today Show, which ripped on mothers having one glass of wine during their children’s play dates. The topic erupted in the blog world, and Melissa Summers, who was the ‘mommy blogger’ interviewed along side the ‘seasoned professional,’ writes here and here about her anger at being ambushed on the air.

Shortly after I saw that video, I needed to take my son to the ER for some breathing problems. My friend had been over for dinner that night, and I’d had one glass of wine with my meal. I thought this was hilarious, because – as if a woman can not be trusted to know her limits or be responsible – one of the main concerns over a mother having a glass of wine in the presence of her children was, ‘WHAT IF THERE IS AN EMERGENCY, AND SOMEONE NEEDS TO BE RUSHED TO THE HOSPITAL?’

I laughed at this irony all the way down the Valley Freeway as my minivan bounced between the median and the Saab next to me.

(That was hyperbole, by the way.)

At any rate, you should really read this post written by Dooce shortly after the video was aired on The Today Show. It will give you a little insight into my (apparently alarming) sense of humor regarding drunk blogging.

Did I have a few drinks that night? Yes. Was I completely incapacitated and tripping over my fingers, unaware that I was blogging? No. It was a very intentional and sarcastic commentary on a topic that has been widely discussed in the blog world (see here and here).

No worries, the kids are safe.

On the road again / I just can’t wait to get on the road again

Because you can never pack, unpack, and repack a suitcase (or three) too many times in a two month period, we are on the road again. On the heals of our trip to Portland last weekend in which our children also went in separate directions to be cared for, I had three days to turn around this household for the next trip, and Bryan was in San Jose (can you blame me for cutting loose a little??).

We are in Vancouver, Canada, this weekend for the Northern Voice blog conference, and I am finding these events are much like family reunions in that we have the opportunity to connect offline with friendships that have been forming online. For sure I am expecting to see Ponzi, and Maryam, and Beth, and I hope to be surprised by a few more.

This is my first Northern Voice, but there have been Bloghers and Mindcamps, and weddings, and other social events in between. The tech community in the Northwest must be pretty tight because I see the same faces at many of these events, and they are encounters I look forward to.

Our drive up here this morning crossed many weather fronts, from rain to blinding snow to sun and clear skies. But we made it, and they let us in, and after we crossed the border Ruthie kept yelling, “I WANT TO GO TO CANADA!”

“We’re IN Canada, sweetheart.”

“BUT I WANT TO GO INSIDE!”

“There IS no inside, honey. Canada is a country, not a building. If you look out your window you’ll see Canadian grass.”

[now she is crying] “BUT I WANTED TO GO IN TO CANADA….”

And when we walked in to our suite at the Hampton Inn the kids ran around in circles hysterically, full of energy after the long drive. All the closet doors slide back and forth, the sugar packets for the complimentary coffee are at two-year-old eye level, and the clock radio has big white buttons on the top that change the station, so right at this moment I am listening to the sounds of the t.v., the radio, and slamming doors.

So here we are at a tech event with the Zuglets. Many of you have expressed your desire over the last few months to meet them, and now we are here, and all I have to say is, you asked for it.