The Pointy Meanderthal
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
jenmarya's LiveJournal:
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| Monday, September 29th, 2008 | | 8:33 pm |
Scared of Jinxing this...
but I went in at the 5 minute crying mark and that's all it took. One reassuring visit. She asked for water. I got her some. She drank it and went to sleep. Unreal. Thank you for the valium thoughts! | | 1:17 pm |
Strife, No Tickets Sold, No Ears Bitten Off
Peter and I had a gigantic fight, mostly over how to put K to bed. He is a proponent of the Cry It Out school and I cuddle her until she's quiet. Our bedtime ritual is announcing it is "5 minutes til bedtime," then in 5 minutes brushing teeth, changing into pj's, kissing the non-putting-to-bed parent (we switch off) goodnight, reading two books and singing two songs. This isn't short, and it used to work like a charm. Ever since school began, it's been getting harder. She's quiet for 15 minutes and then starts crying, sometimes yelling for one of us. I've been going in and rubbing her back, which works as long as I rub. If I stop, there's more crying. It doesn't seem to be helping her learn to calm herself down. So... Last night she yelled she wanted one of us to rub her back. We waited 90 mins, hoping she'd sleep. Listening to her cry is like having bamboo shoots shoved in your ears. It didn't work. Peter went in. First I heard him say if she didn't stop crying he'd take away a book from tomorrow's nighttime. That resulted in increased crying. (And Peter probably remembered we agreed to let her cry as much as she wants in her room.) Then he tried to calm her down, telling her she could calm herself. That part sounded great. Then I heard, "If you don't turn over, I'll smack your ass." And then "If you don't get back in bed, I'll smack you." Then I heard a smack and screaming/crying. I went over the edge and tried to rush in. He grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me out of the room. I fought him the whole way. I told him if he didn't go back in and cuddle her, I would. He went back in and cuddled her told her we were going to let her put herself to sleep and we wouldn't be coming in any more that night. We listened to her cry for another hour. Hell. Peter regrets the threats and slap, but he is positive that our 3 year old's sole motivation is to manipulate us into coming in to postpone sleeping. Furthermore, he thinks Crying It Out is the best method and may not be in vogue now, but will be in another 40 years. I still think she is learning how to calm herself down to sleep and am positive there are better methods of teaching her to sleep. So we stared at each other with spiky hot hate and eventually talked about how we can change things. We are going to put her to bed earlier and incorporate backrubbing into the bedtime ritual. When she cries later, we're going to try to - Let her cry for 5 minutes. - Go in, comfort her briefly (without removing her from the bed), and leave. - Wait twice as long, and do it again. - Wait twice as long, and do it again, as many times as needed. Wish us luck. Think valium thoughts. | | Sunday, September 28th, 2008 | | 12:57 pm |
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation
I want this book by Olivia Judson. Sounds fun and informative. Just reading these four sample pages, you learn about Bateman's hypothesis, ca. 1948, from whence sprang the still-pervasive belief that all males are philanderers, and all women, saints, and why his data was borked. I have to admit, if I'd only known this was crap, I would have spent my life looking at men and women in a wholly different way. Seriously interesting. | | 12:51 am |
| | Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 | | 10:45 pm |
K update
Last week, Kaia went to a new classroom and told the Juf there that she wanted to be an older kid and go to her class. That Juf told her to go back to the Blue classroom. It wasn't until today that I saw that Juf with her kids in tow and realized that K had not asked to be in the same classroom as her friend Janneke, who is two years older; she had only asked to be put in one grade higher, presumably because she thinks she ought to be there. I find that to be amazing. I ask her what her favorite part of the shcoolday is and she says, "Coming home" or "Having a nap." It's fair to say she's not loving it. It sucks that she is backsliding with potty training. There's no way Juf Bieke would let K in the older class with as many accidents as she's been having. We all told her that and she said she would try harder. Today when she had an accident at school she burst out crying. Her Juf, Juf Sofie told me all about it and couldn't understand why she cried. K's story was that Juf Sofie was mad. No idea who to believe. Sure hope K improves soon. Our laundry machines are having a tough time keeping up. K was telling us she wanted to go to a beach in outer space. P wondered if she knew what that meant. "What's space, Kaia?" "A place far, far from the Earth with planets with rings around them." Audible gasps from parents and grandparents. Then she adds, " and space gems." Muhahahaa! Our girl learns about space from playing the Backyardigans' Mission to Mars game! K's becoming a daredevil at the park. She stands up on the swing after I push her once. She walks on top of the teetertotter from one end to the other. She tried to sit sideways on the swing and swing that way (woodchips make a delightful faux beard). And she tried to slide down the inclined board with brads on it that people climb while holding a rope. And she loves to do somersaults in the sandbox. She's a daredevil elsewhere, too. Inside the house, she likes to play catch, and she does it well enough that she likes to goof off by tossing the ball up so it hits a light fixture. Not amusing. Game over! Outside, she zooms go down fairly steep slopes on her scooter with her helmet on. On her very worst tumbles, she winds up in the grass, crying cause it was scary but not because she's hurt. With everything she's trying, I'm amazed she's not more dinged up. Hope she keeps on trying new things and surviving them. One thing I'd love for her to try is to say hello back to the kids who say hello to her. I asked why she won't, and she said she didn't want to. When pressed, she said, "it isn't fun." I ran it by P, who said he hates small talk, too. Yeah, me either, but still, 'Hello' isn't that hard. One day we went to the park and a little boy told her she was too small to climb. Instead of ignoring him right away, she sat down in the woodchips and cried. Me and another little boy told her we believed she could climb. I had to tell her to ignore the silly little boy many times. Finally she stopped crying and climbed. All the way up. And the silly little boy shut up and went away. She asked me why he did that. I explained that he wanted to feel powerful and puffed out my chest and said he wanted to feel like he could Tell People What To Do. She smiled hugely. She's been asking why a few million times a day and smiling at least double that. I hope the next time something like that happens, she just goes for it. There'll always be naysayers. Might as well learn to ignore them young. | | Monday, September 22nd, 2008 | | 3:08 pm |
If you want to keep up with cutting edge science, it helps if you can read many languages. That isn't enough, of course, you have to know where to look. Someone has finally thought to put together a searchable compendium of blogs discussing (peer-reviewed) research. Here there be wheat and chaff and ye shall discern between them. | | Friday, September 19th, 2008 | | 9:46 pm |
| | 12:55 pm |
Some days I just feel flattened. All it takes is one little thing. Yesterday I rode on a high of doing well on a test and kinda doing improv and that lasted all of three hours and then kaPOW! This woman at K's school (a close-close-talker who stands two inches from you so her spittle flies in your eyes) asks me mundane questions about my class. I can't answer them. I have no idea what street my school is on. And ya know what, I have no idea what CVO stands for. Nope. I am clueless and clueless enough to choose to remain so. Then closetalker introduces me to this American mom with the directive that we practice Nederlands. American mom spools out flawless Nederlands at breakneck speed. I can only grasp the rims of what she's saying. I choose to answer in English so I have a chance of conversing. Apparently this isn't fun enough for her. So then she spots flaws in my logic. We all know this isn't hard to do. When I said that the CVO course is less intensive than the ILT course, I am aware they have the same hours, I meant CVO's is easier, oh wow, she caught me! An unexpected meaning of intensive! Woo. But I don't explain that cause she's not worth it. She can go on thinking whatever. As K rushes to me for a hug, American mom says "it's a pleasure to meet you" in English. Ja zeker, bitch. And that was yesterday at 3:30 and it's been all downhill from there. I read the other day that self-esteem is the ability to assimilate criticism without letting it disproportionally suck the essence from your being. I ain't don't got enough of that. | | Thursday, September 18th, 2008 | | 1:31 pm |
Nederlands
I got a 19/20 on my first test, covering pronouns, comparative and superlative adjectives, the present tense, and how to respond to berichten I made a dumb mistake, identifying someone on a family tree as a mother instead of a mother in law. D'oh! Today we went in front of the class in pairs, one person acting as salesclerk, the other buying a jacket. I bought my jacket as a hunchback and asked to have my sleeves shortened to different lengths. People found that to be extremely amusing. Well, most did. My partner was so surprised she said she'd alter it without a downpayment and that I could pay on pickup. The teacher pointed out if I didn't come back, she'd never be able to sell it. More giggling. In another dialogue, a woman bought clothes right off of the salesman. It would have been more amusing if it had been more than a jacket, alas... | | Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | | 8:44 am |
Slump
K cried on drop off at school just now. She was still crying when I checked a few minutes later (after putting clothes in her box--I am not hovering).
She was home from school yesterday cause she was up coughing the night before. I questioned keeping her home until yesterday afternoon when she fell asleep in my arms (to the dulcet tones of the Fleet Foxes) and slept the night through. Well, ok. Not the whole night. Up at 5:45 ack.emma. In the do-I-have-call-it-morning?-Jesus! she was set up with banana, yogurt and pasta with cheese (last night's missed dinner) and the Backyardigans on tv. I slunk back to bed. First time alone downstairs for her. She didn't want to be alone. I couldn't sleep cause she didn't want to be alone. Then there was banging in the kitchen. A little later she stomped upstairs and jumped in bed between us, full of energy. I sent her back down and she hovered on the stairs for a while, retreating slowly. I capitulated in both our best interests and slept on the couch while she ate. As I lay down, I discovered she'd gone into the forbidden kitchen implement drawer and gotten --the sharp knife? the sharper knife? No!-- a wooden spoon. Whew. She said it was for cooking time. :)
I had eons of time this morning to check her temp and she doesn't have a fever. At drop off, with her crying and clutching me, she had red cheeks and her teacher asked me if she was better now. I said yeah. I don't think a fever can spring up on the way to school. I hope not anyway. This is a continuation of the cold she got Sep 4th. P's mom told me he was sick for an entire year at her age, snotty nose the whooooooole year. Noooo! She's on echinacea but it doesn't seem to be doing anything.
Oh. the. Crying. I hope she feels better soon. So tired... COuld sleep if I knew she was ok... | | Sunday, September 14th, 2008 | | 8:45 pm |
Vandaag was een grote verjaardag feest voor Peter zijn nicht. A is in haar deerde jaar universiteit. Ze is nog altijd ( 6 jaar nu) verliefd met en vreemd jongen en niemand kent waarom. Hij is niet lief met haar --geen knuffels of kusjes-- en spreekt niet met haar familie. Misschien aanbidt hij haar in privé. Geen idee. A is heel loyaal. Ik hoop dat hij waardig is. Ik heb mijn Nederlands met alles geoefend. Het was niet gemakkelijk, maar leuk. K is zo lief! Zij heeft met bijna iedereen voetball gespeeld. Alles haar uitnodingen charmant was. Meestal trok zij aan kleding. Zij met haar vingers haar sluimerende tante haar haar gekriebeld. Zij is zo moeiteloos sociaal ik ben verbaasd. En opgelucht. K zal wat geld van haar overgrotemoeder erven. We heb in een foto het huis dat zij is verkopen gezien. Zij zal de opbrengst met veel andere kleinkinderen delen. Maar nog, surreal. Mijn moeder heeft mij altijd verteld dat ik niks zal erven, daarom... surreal. Heel bijzonder situatie om voor mij of mijn kind te ervaren. En ook heel lief. :) In Amerika, mijn broer heeft een problem. Volgens mijn vader, hij doet nix behalve WOW spelen. Hij werkt niet, kuist zijn appartement niet. Mijn vader belooft dat hij te geïsoleerd is. Mijn vader heeft mij deze avond gevraagt of R hier kan blijven, hier in Belgie of hier met ons. Morgen zal P vraagt op het werk wat ons opties zijn. Ik denk dat ons huis te klein is voor iedereen, en ik wil niet dat K met een roker samenleeft, maar als het moet, moet het. Hij is familie. | | Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | | 10:10 pm |
It's In the Way You Walk
Orgasm Ability in Women Can be Determined By the Way They WalkA study done here in Belgium helps these Scots determine vaginal orgasms can be determined by gait length and vertebral rotation. They even opine that mental health may play a part in a woman's propensity for vaginal orgasms. Methinks these gents were transported her from Freud's couch. They missed the memo from all the other sexologists saying vaginal orgasm is a myth for 97% of the population. | | Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 | | 8:50 pm |
Updateville
Lessons
My Nederlands class is still fun, two days in. The first day was getting-to-know-you games which did a fine job of getting us to practice speaking. Today it was de Superlatief and de Comparatief and more games, like armworstelen, to elicit all the comparisons. Sanjay beat Kumar in an extended armwrestling session. Gladiator games in class are cool!
New people keep dribbling in. Despite CVO's efforts to keep it a small class, looks like it will be at least 20. I'm the fourth oldest. The oldest is 56 and the youngest, 17. People come from Cuba, Russia, England, Syria, Nepal, Congo, Nigeria, Indonesia, Phillipines, Poland, China, Somalia, Morocco, South Korea, and India. Some people have only been here 45 days, one 16 years. Some have taken a week-long intensive course, some a 3 month course, and some nothing. Gotta say, I fit right in. Hardy har.
The teacher is very good. She keeps things moving, notices and reacts accordingly when people are struggling (extra attention) or surging ahead (extra oefiningen).
Lee Pace
What or who is that? A guy from Oklahoma! who acts. How well? Peter and I finished watching Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day and Peter suddenly exclaimed, "we'd do him." :) He was excellent in The Fall, too, although the movie itself was odd.
The Fall
(Thanks again. I <3 movie nights!)
As a movie which comments on movies, it was interesting. If you see the internal story as increasingly driven by the girl-representing- Audience although told by Pace-representing-movie industry, it winds up being a perfect allegory for what happens to movies ruined by too many focus groups, eg that thing where the Audience wants a particular character to have more air time even though it doesn't fit into the plot so the plot changes. Yeah, my problem with The Fall is that the internal story isn't so compelling but I enjoyed the leads' performances and the cinematography and the set design.
Dexter
I think this is the first of the fall TV shows I'm planning on seeing to air. Still waiting on House and Battlestar Galactica. Dexter doesn't disappoint. There's always a new facet of "ethics" to analyze. No status quo on this show. Interesting to see Jimmy Smits as the a new main character for the season. The internal affairs officer steals every scene. She needs more air time!
Bailey's Cafe by Gloria Naylor
Couldn't put it down. Not only did I read lots aloud to P, I had to preface the first with an explanation of how her first book, The Women of Brewster Place, affected me. Obviously, I'm white. Ms. Naylor is brilliantly black. Such humor, such insight, such pain, such sensuality, such love imbue her expertly woven stories that by the time I finished a book, I felt I'd lived with her characters, experienced their community, absorbed their resilience, had their epiphanies. To be able to write someone a ticket into a new understanding is the most powerful writing there is. Naylor does it again with Bailey's Cafe. It's about a diner, a boarding house, and a pawn shop that only show up when someone is ready for it (shades of Harlan Ellison's "Shoppe Keeper") and all the people who are ready. I can't explain more than that and do it justice. Read it for yourself. | | Sunday, September 7th, 2008 | | 10:56 pm |
Tonight K said "I am your" and she wrote "KiD." I said I was floored and lay down on the floor and she started jumping on my tummy. That'll teach me. | | 1:30 pm |
School Daze
Just one week in, school-wise, and we are all sick. K had a runny nose by Weds and Thurs night she woke up screaming and barking like a seal. P knew it was the "false croup" as they call it in Dutch and he hustled her into a steamy bathroom. I was thinking maybe she was choking on something but no, just trying to breathe past a swollen larynx. Terrifying. P had it often as a kid. I never ahd it at all. Neither did my brother. Totally outside anything I'd experienced. She calmed down and wanted to go back to bed after a half hour, still sucking air. In the morning she was back to doing acrobatics on her bed. No repeats since then, and it didn't keep her out of school for even a day, but scary! P and I just had sore throats, and now we all have runny noses. K is back to normal, energy-wise, but we're shuffling around dazedly. We've stocked up on echinacea and vitamins. I wonder if I'll have to wait until next summer to get healthy again. | | Friday, September 5th, 2008 | | 9:36 pm |
| | 3:04 pm |
poli-tickles
The one thing I don't get about McCain is that back in the day he was the sole Republican who voted against the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a massive deregulation that would (and did) effectively allow a few companies to buy all the radio licenses in America. He seemed to care about free speech. I liked the guy then. Now he wants to stay in Iraq and keep funneling the "news" (ha) through embedded media. That, Dear John, is waffling on free speech. Me no likee. The one thing I don't get about Ron Paul, MD, is his stance on health care. Why does he hate socialized health care? He alludes to people from Canada coming to America for care but that's the sum of hisexplanation. Surely he's not saying all Canadians, and people often travel (even from America) to other countries to get care that their country does not provide. It is a fact that in general advances in medicine proceed faster in America than in places with socialized medicine, but I'd rather be part of a system that offers good care to everyone than cutting edge care to a few while 45 million get none. Dr. Paul is afraid that any kind of nationalized health care would be too expensive. [He's right that it would be expensive, but other countries manage without going bankrupt. The difference is that their debt is held domestically.] He thinks that any time someone else has to pay your medical bill (like an HMO or the govt), it's going to be padded. Why does he think that? Does he have a basic mistrust of people? Mistrust is something I like in critics, not leaders. The one thing I don't get about Obama is Biden.There's something about him I don't like, probably related to his spouting off about his IQ 20 years ago and developing new hair since then. Maybe Biden's matured some, but from where I'm sitting, although Obama seems capable of working with other people, Biden doesn't. | | Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | | 2:07 pm |
Kiva
Kiva is an org. that enables ordinary folks to make direct microloans of $25+ USD to the entrepeneurs of developing nations. Instead of making a donation to some bloated organization whose funds will be misappropriated, you can make a 1) loan 2) directly to someone you know something about. You can get monthly email from your borrower on how their business is going. When they pay it back, and it seems almost all do, you can reinvest it with another individual. How neat is that? It's interesting to see what kind of businesses people are in and to see how little a loan some people need--money stretches a lot farther in some places. On a sidenote, it's interesting to see how many Texans are making loans. Must be restitution for putting Dubya in the political arena. | | 11:02 am |
Nederlands
De test van dinsdag nacht was precies hetzelfde als die in het het Huis van het Nederlands. Eerst was er een gesprek. Toen overhandigden ze mij dezelfde test die ik vorige week had gekregen. Ik protesteerde. Ze waren verrast. Ik wees naar hun brochure en toonde waar het zei dat zij een certificaat van het Huis van het Nederlands aanvaarde en zei dat ik dezelfde test had moeten doen om het certificaat te krijgen. Terwijl de opnamepersoon met de brochure dat ging nakijken, vulde ik de helft van de test in. Blijkbaar weten ze zelf niet wat in hun brochure staat. Ze namen het certificaat, vertelden me te stoppen met de test en schreven me in. Joepie! De persoon die het interview deed is waarschijnlijk mijn lerares en ze lijkt aardig. (Ze wierp haar hoofd opzij telkens ik fouten maakte; ze zal whiplash hebben) maar de school schijnt gedesorganiseerd als een grote stoute rozelaar. | | 10:50 am |
Playing music
me: I'm not sleeping well again.
mom: Why don't you try a glass of wine before bed?
me: That just makes me want to sing and play music.
p: Why not? Then you could sleep.
me: I'd stay up mulling over how bad my music is.
p: You are so fucked up. But in the cutest possible way. * * *
I knew a studio musician in LA who believed that as long as someone poured their soul into what they were playing, it was music. To deny music existed cause it didn't fit your prejudices was to deny Art. I wish I could listen like he can, without judging, without judging myself most of all. I can hear it in other people's music, but not in mine. Bottom line: I can tell I'm holding back. What I can do is take a song I have heard before and sightread sheetmusic or charts. I've got an endless repertoire that way (have a lot of sheetmusic and recently discovered chordie.com and ultimateguitar.com) and sometmes don't repeat a song for a year. What I can't or haven't been able to do up to recently is memorize anything. Anything. Since I don't play any one song more than once a week, it's not surprising. As a result, I don't get into the detail, my basslines are non-existent (unless it's jazz and then the chords do it for me), I don't focus on musicality, I don't practice til something goes into muscle memory. I've been wondering if I could memorize something whether I could really lose myself in it, put my soul all the way in. It would be awesome if I could sing/play it the way I hear it inside my head. So I've been valiantly trying to practice something over and over. Unfortunately playing something over and over makes my soul bored. HAHAHAAAAA! I am so fucked. Since I am doomed to be a crappy jukebox, here are some positive things I can remind myself:
*I will never be pestered to play.
*The music is what matters. Maybe if I lost the ability to judge what I don't like, I wouldn't have as keen an appreciation of what I luurve; playing stuff crappily gives me a better appreciation of the music itself, which exists in a perfect state inside my head.
*Being crappy doesn't stop me from playing. |
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