btw

i've decided to redecorate. with birdcages and topiaries and sprigs of green things and oranges. i think i'm nesting again. no, no not the baby kind. so far, and this is part warning to m. and part invitation for inspiration, i've moved the living room pictures into the dining room, the purple bathroom pictures into the living room and the dining room pictures into the kitchen. so far, since about 3 pm it's mostly been a shuffle but i have grand plans to paint our dining room chairs green and said living room frames (now in dining room) white. what i'd really love is an expense account at anthropologie but i've made do with a little home goods inspiration--found, for example, a lovely bird paper towel holder to prop a picture on--and spray painting and sandpapering plans. you picture it, right?

"mommy, what are you doing?"

after reviewing the current critical discourse on virginia woolf & the body for my diss. chapter i decided it was time to transcribe my own writing notebook--the trusty ark journal i scribbled in as i reread the novels that launched me on the quest in the first place. and i must confess i'm exhausted, owen's napping and all advice suggests i should nap too--and so i thought i'd compromise with my notebook and a sticky pad while lying in bed, but as i started reading i realized this is it--the key to what this chapter needs to be about, the key to my own sanity and why it seemed at times i never wanted to come home (and if you're reading rose mari, thanks for sharing your space with me; and caroline, thanks for giving me this time):

tues 8 may 07

everytime i begin again with virginia it is a renewed love affair. the need to weep describes it best, but triumphantly so. this is the experience of 'a room of one's own'. this sitting at a small table with a lattice green tablecloth and a hlaf drunk cappuccino, a slice of carrot cake with a surprising bite of lemon zest. the hum of cafe talk. jazz. the old stuff of throaty inappropriate women--"tipsy" they might be called. a nd the overwhelming push that comes from stilled momentum seems more grassy knoll than boggy swamp. becasue she is beautiful, brilliant and so longingly real. "i want beautiful prose" she writes. her work list alone is an echo of desire and most-dos--evrything from bringing
Dalloway 'to full talk' on january 1923 to tackling proust as a meanst to earn some pocket money. i am dizzied on where to begin-again- and so i go back to Dalloway. It seems the bridge anyhow between Jacob and the lighthouse , even between the voyage out the dalloways are on a ship bound for america and the waves. and i lok ahead at this introduction i see that "clearly the diaries and the letters can be read as a history of distraction" ah, back to reading...

and so this too is a kind of distraction, but i think as with virginia, a necessary one. for me it's the momentum of fingers (and newly cut nails--i hate nothing more than the click of fingernails on a keyboard) on keys, words dancing across the screen, and a reminder of this kind of love, this kind of work. and it's the core part of me that after all of this angst and trying to "figure IT out" the mothering, the moving, the writing that this is just all part of the process. this thinking through language and knowing that one of the most brilliant writers of our time too had bouts of panic and insecurity and struggled with words and yet kept writing because it was the only thing she knew to do. it is the same with carson mccullers, who finds in her bouts of illness (she suffered half a dozen strokes before thirty) that writing was the only thing that seemed to keep her alive. and it is this desire, this passion that i can't help but think is part of what makes me a good mother--that keeping this momentum is crucial not just for the life of my soul but for my role as a mother: owen is exponentially and i daresay exceptionally amazing and he's not just a smart, funny kid but a boy with an desire for knowledge--he looks at the world with creative, inquisitive energy and he ispires me to ask more, to see more colors. it seems only right that i should continue to do the same for him.

and the title of this is of course what owen asked bleary eyed from his nap as he stumbled into my office. and how wonderful to answer: writing, sweet boy.

road warrior

the plane from SEA to AMS took a record only 8 hours, so I had plenty of time to kill in Amsterdam... I visited Starbucks (picked up a new mug!), then headed over to take a few pics of the lego version of the airport that you might enjoy.. I have a go-live this week at my site, which keeps me plenty busy.. 12 hour days, etc.. so I'm going to head back into the meeting.. bye for now, michael




breakfast... bedtime... more Bs

michael just called on his way down for breakfast at the scandic. as i was saying good morning owen woke up bleary eyed and stumbled into my office and then i gently said good night as i held his hand back to bed. i asked owen if he needed some bedtime water and he just kept murmuring "owen is OK. . . owen is OK" and after some hair twirling fell back asleep. so good morning, goodnight, we are OK and begininning and ending our cycles which seems somehow appropriate for all of this writing and thinking of v. woolf. here's a bit from the waves, the opening and the closing interlude in which the day, and also life, begins and ends and the cycles of the sun and the sea rise and fall:

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly ceased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. . .
Now the sun had sunk. Sky and sea were indistinguishable. The waves breaking spread their white fans far out over the shore, sent white shadows into the recesses of sonorous caves . . .

B

i guess B is for beta--see below--but here's the video from youtube:



note, that D and Daddy are definitely on his mind ;)

owen moves onto "b"

it seems that owen picks a letter of the week and works and works on how to sign the letter with his hands. and he won't let me help, certainly won't let me show him how to make the handshape "no, not like that mommy. like this!" but love him he just works and works on it and when he's ready it's like a proper unveiling. he's perfected "A" and is pleased to show me: "mommy, A is like this!". and only then, "ok, now mommy make an A." and then he smiles and says "cheers A!" and we knock A-hands together. he's been toying with "F" but i think "B" is the winner--this afternoon he jumped up and said: "mommy! where's my B?". ummm. right here? and i sign in. "NO! my B!". think think think. your magnet B? "NOOOO." and then he starts running up the stairs. oh, of course, the letter B in the bathtub (coincidence, i think not!). and then he was soo excited and running around upstairs showing his B my Books and singing a Bbbbbb song. so since B is also for "beta" we'll try out this google video and see if this works:


we took michael to the airport yesterday morning for his 28 hour commute and owen has worked it out pretty well in his head.

mommy, where daddy at?
remember sweetie we took him to the airport, he went to work.
oh, daddy's not home.
no, he's in norway.
oh, it's mommy and owen time.
yes, it's mommy and owen time.

in a fit of frustration this afternoon --sometimes i forget and remind myself: ah, owen is two--i stupidly asked owen: "what is your deal?" (apparently i have taken to using cliched valley girl 80's phrases so when he says back mom, "what's your dammage" in a couple of years i shouldn't be suprised) he quickly answered "thomas is my deal, mommy." at which point i couldn't help but laugh. for despite the fact that owen has bursts of two-ness he recovers every so love-ily.

so i think that's how we get by with michael gone, we just have mommy and owen time. we stream kcrwmusic (and i'm obsessed with this bass-boosa sp?? cover of "wicked game" that is as of yet unreleased/unsigned but spooky beautiful). we play trains (and we clip michael's coupons form our neighbors to buy new ones--today we got molly). we watch lighting storms in the oc. and we read two books, sing the fishy song, then the butterfly song, then say goodnight and i get the moonlight night to write in a corner of my own (or after a day of relentless "no! mommyno!"--and a night of refusing to sleep without mommy in the room-- we crash out on the couch at 5:30 and ask to go to bed).

but every time i think it should get easier and it really doesn't. the absence is there, and instead of daddy, my mookoo-michael as owen hollers down the stairs imitiating me, there's just a sad kind of funk. but as there should be. but i think the rain is good, lightning is good. ah, am on the verge of crazy digression. i'm going to review some lit. crit. and then reward myself by reading some elizabeth george (although i am a bit weary of this one but do need the mystery disconenct) in bed.

not just "moo"

really, the whole reason you should drag your toddler across the other side of the world is so that he can know things like choo choo in norway is toff toff and that a cow in holland says. . .



and owen is of course very concerned about what a cow on sodor would say!

fidfam update; stretching time with owen

things have been wonderfully uneventful here in "ladery ranch." michael's here for a week before he does the commute to norway and we're just enjoying the day to day. we start out our mornings with a stroll led by owen on his new tricycle (we got a great deal at [of all places!] toysrus--pics and videos coming soon!) and sierra, me and michael trailing behind. michael's been having international-round up calls up in the office in the morning before the big go-live at the beginning of september and i've been working on my conference paper for october. it's been blissful just doing the tag-team with michael and getting that wonderful balance of together time with some room-of-ones-own writing time. michael and owen are getting quite masterful at duplo legos while owen and i are becoming skilled flip-flop players. last night we even sat down after owen went to bed and watched the netflix movie (which was beautiful, tragic, artsy and literary all at the same time--i even got to pull my old graham greene book off the shelf and quote from creased pages) 've had out for nearly seven months. i think it had been about that long since i had sat down and watched anything other than charlie & lola or thomas & friends. tomorrow morning we're going to our favorite breakfast cafe and then to see the tall ships in dana point.

so after our morning walk we usually do a little yoga. this morning we started out late and owen went straight from his trike to his trains, michael got on coffee and i took some pressure off my back by doing some "still" stretching on the floor. later in the morning, however, owen dropped his puzzle pieces and said "mommy! it's stretching time!" as if he had just remembered that part of our morning routine. so here's owen doing some pretty impressive yoga stretches:



ans yes, at the end owen just sprints off "to run really really fast!".

owen makes an A

finding time to post


it's been a while since my last post -- just busy, so I'll give you a run-down on what I've been up to the past week. I've been doing the 9-6pm thing at work, and it's been fairly busy this time around, and promises to be much busier next time around as we prepare for go-live in 2 weeks. At night, I've been getting dinners at the hotel (cod), or at the bar across the street from the Clarion (bacalao), or XL (bacalao)... so basically a lot of fish.

In the mornings, I've been doing the 418 stairs up to Fjellstua for exercise. Here is a pic... other than that I'm watching TV (watched a lot of the PGA Championship, thanks to my Slingbox), or I'm on the phone with Cara and Owen -- who seems to get the fact now that I go to work on an airplane to Norway, and when they go to the airport they pick me up from work.

some pain and some promise

usually a week or so after m's been gone i hit that slump. the momentum and energy from when we were all together has been spent and i spend a few days somewhere between bordem and despair with bouts of panic. this is of course after i front load my week with distractions so that when he does leave it doesn't feel so lonely. and it was a good week: fun, busy, productive. but by friday afternoon my leg pain was searing and the library articles gathered were unread. the mri i had last week solved little and it seems the time without pain between ibuprofen and alleve are less and less (i've had increasing sciatic pain and after some research it does seem that carrying a 30 pound owen hipside all around norway may have aggravated some prenatal sciatica) and then i don't exercise because everythign hurts and it just starts to slowly spiral down. o. has completely abandoned naps and the spurts of promising and productive research followed by days of no reading or writing seem so discouraging. and having nothing but starbucks for breakfast all week doesn't help either. and soydogs for lunch and of course preparing anything beyond something healthy and simple for owen seems like too much bother.

but through it all my boys are champs. and, as always, my mom. after weeks of what felt futile armwrestling in and out of owen's bed--last night (and it seems we might have a repeat performance on our hands tonight) i honed our bedtime routine down to two stories, the fishy song, the butterfly song, and a goodnight kiss. and for a two year old o. is amazingly receptive to logic--he responds very well to routine and seems satisfied with nearly any course of action if he's been given a map prior. so i laid it out. and the bedtime kiss came, i closed the door, went downt he hallway and didn't hear a peep until four am when he came snuggling up in my bed (which is SO allowed) and just smiled good morning to me at 8 am. i cleaned up some stuff on my desktop, researched yoga poses and studios for sciatica (and even did a few) and read a dozen pages of a critical article on vw by molly hite which was engaging and brilliant and overall a promising springboard for my own chapter. i hope to finish it tonight and have a smart analysis to offer. i made plans with mom for two work days while she has "nana time" with owen and made a commitment to put in daily reading hours in at night when all is quiet.

and this morning we took a trader joe's trip--when i asked o. if he wanted to go to tj's he said "yes yes yes! let's get purple juice mama!". and we bought a rainbow of fruits and veggies and owen was so excited he shouted "look at all these delicious things!" and wouldn't put down the bag of organic carrots he had picked out. and for dinner i mixed the organic garden salad with a tj's combination of pepitas/almonds/pinenuts, some chopped "just chicken," and some blanched broccoli topped with some yummy herbed buttermilk dressing and a mini corn tortilla for grabbing the good stuff. it was crunchy and satisfying and owen ate his way around his plate of strawberries, chicken, broccoli and tortilla all with a big-boy fork--it was all so inspiring i had to pull the camera out. then we had frozen yokids gogurt on the patio for dessert. and now i'm going to read all about virgnia's "two bodies." what could be better? aha. reading that with some droste pastilles stashed in my freezer, of course (ah, note to m.: need more red from schipol). that and m. will be home in less than a week already!

dig the shades

i've probably bought owen half a dozen pairs of sunglasses but the only ones he'll wear are mommy's superfly 30 nok ($5) h&m shades. but he does wear them well!

words!

while doing some work in our office owen made himself cozy in the blue reading chair and continued his ransacking of my literary biography shelf. he's become quite the scholar and is well versed now on langston hughes and james joyce. abcs 123s? we've moved right into harlem renaissance and postmodern british literature!

regarding summer

so faithful adfidfam readers probably noticed the blog mood shift for a few days--from summer dots to blue dots and then back again. it did seem, with the gift of a "summer break" that when michael set off on his trans-continental commute that summer was over. but after watching charlie & lola today where lola can't collect leaves because it's not autumn yet and owen and i talkeda bout seasons and waht summer means i realized it was defnitely still summer. because we still eat popsicles out on the patio and splash in the water and wear swimmies and walk sierradoggy in the sunshine. at least out here in "ladery ranch in caleefornyea" and i'm betting those norwegians are still trying to get a suntan!

"back to work"

so michael went back to work on sunday and monday morning i felt his absence most when i went downstairs and there was no coffee. which mad me felt sad but mostly thankful -- because it's a wonderful thing to be greeted with espresso. and then there are those things you don't even think of that make you feel lonely--like trying to put a duvee cover on a down comforter. i decided that if i was going to have the entire bed to myself -- since we're in stage two of owen sleeping in his own bed (tonight i only had to send him back to bed twelve times before he finally fell asleep and have thus far gone upstairs twice to put owen back in the big boy bed)--i was going to do so on clean sheets from top to bottom. really, though, i was standing up on the bed and doing this shake and wiggle and dangle thing trying to get all the corners in and actually now that i think about it i never actually finished because owen woke up.

the thing is, i miss michael terribly as i always do when he's away but it does seem different this time around. it feels more like a team effort and much of the anxiety and frustration seems to have waned. mostly i'm sure because we're getting better at this. but i think having lived over in norway together and then enjoyed an actual norwegian holiday at home gave us time to figure out the important stuff--for us, for our fidfam. and i won't be redundant, it's the stuff, the moments i've been blogging about for the last few months. . . i think too that it feels like we're both going back to work and less like i'm getting left behind. again--partly because i've been there and know that even the stuff that seems glamorous is really all work (although the xl dinners and nomaden cake are no fair) but also because i feel like i'm going back to work too--both book work and mom work. i know i keep splitting infinitives or something gramatically awkward with all these multiple points but maybe that's the point too. life just isn't that easy or that dull. anywhow, i finally made it through my virginia woolf oeuvre and it was a phenomenal journey wherein much of my reading felt novelistic in itself. with lighthouses in sight and waves crashing around me, i couldn't ask for anything more rewarding or inspiring. but i'm no longer "in the waves" but "at the shore." and that's always where my momentum stops. because when you're not swimming anymore, when the boat has docked what do you do? i usually get distracted by sand or exhausted by the sun. so tomorrow i'm going to spend the day (thanks to a newly retired nana!) getting current on my research at ucr and without making coffee dates or scheduling professor meetings i'm just going to pull up academic articles, photocopy, make notations and work some scholaraly elbow grease. mostly, i just need to do the grunt work. and write. and finish.

in the meantime after some intense re-nesting back ehre in the other oc i'm finishing up some creative/crafty projects and am going to try some modge podge with all of our amsterdam souvies to make a photobox for the book-blog i gave michael for christmas last year. if that works i'll do the same for the 100-page norway coffee table/postcard book i made as well as \ my owen scrapbook from last summer. but all this stuff feels less like distractions and more like extensions/expressions of the things that are important to me. one of the promises i made to myself coming back to cali was to live more artfully and to value that in myself and my mothering. so that even though i have moments of absolute panic of being thirtysomething and no longer sure of what i want to be when i grow up i am also at the same time being that person. if that makes any sense. like i already can't tell you when owen got his first tooth and i didnt write it in a baby book but i can tell you in detail the first moment he ran, with joy, freely through the grass. i have that page in my book and the blurry picture with nothing but a dart of red. and that to me seems infinitely more valuable.

sunshine

here at the scandic



google image search turned up this cool shot... The hotel where I am currently staying, just a view I've not captured on my own camera yet. I've been hiking up this little hill every morning since I can't seem to sleep past 5am yet... Cara, Owen, I and her parents used this dock to get aboard our cruise up to Geringer fjord... it was a bit more icy at the time.

Koffiereus Starbucks komt naar Nederland

Bonus -- Starbucks at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. I didn't have my camera with me, so I'll try to get a picture on my way home -- which by the way will be on the 17th. I did get some coffee beans to bring into work here in Tenfjord. I do have the use of a french press, so I'm guaranteed good coffee for the next week.

owen: behind the scenes