sueeeus

The new fabric has become a modified Mei Tai and a ginormous tote. The Mei Tai incorporates a back support belt which makes it oh, so comfy. The pics of me are taken by the cool cat, so they are not a bit flattering, but much more realistic than the self portraits that I like to post.
I put Boo in the bag to play, okay, to take more silly pictures…
…and he put up with it for a while. The bag has eight outer pockets and is also lined with the happy green batik.

I put a velcro closure at the top and made super long straps so that I can carry it as a shoulder tote. It fits everything including the kitchen sink.

I have a cold. My head is stuffed and it’s hard to breathe. So I am a bit out of sorts, thus complaints and whines bubble to the surface. For instance. I treated myself to some expensive (for me) software recently – home design stuff – and allowed myself the indulgence partially because of the $30 rebate. I dutifully registered the product, clipped the upc, identified the serial number and on and on. All the hoops one must jump through in order to be eligible for a rebate. This week I received a postcard saying that they couldn’t process my rebate because I hadn’t sent the serial number for – get this – the landscape design software product. Hello. I didn’t buy any landscape design software. Which is why I don’t have a stinkin’ serial number for it. So I called the customer service number printed on the card. Ma’am, you need to supply the serial number (for the landscape software). Our records show that there is no serial number provided. Kindly resubmit your rebate, and include the serial number. We’ll be happy to process your rebate request. But I did that already. Ma’am, you need to supply the serial number. Our records show that there is no serial number provided. Kindly resubmit your rebate, and include the serial number. We’ll be happy to process your rebate request. I’ve already submitted everything you need, and the serial number is printed on the rebate form. I don’t understand why you need me to resend that number, when I’ve already sent it Ma’am, you need to supply the serial number. Our records show that there is no serial number provided. Kindly resubmit your rebate, and include the serial number. We’ll be happy to process your rebate request. I hung up on her. (How rude! I never hang up on people!) She was obviously reading a teleprompt and not actually trying to listen or help. (But I did copy my copy of the first submission and resend it. Thirty dollars is thirty dollars, even if one has to deal with morons.)

And another thing. I joined a yahoo group of baby wearers in my area. It seems that most of these women are SAHMs, my dream job that I can’t have because it doesn’t pay the kind of greenbacks needed to satisfy the bill collectors. They get together to try different baby wearing techniques, and meet on weekdays. I’ve piped in that it would be nice to meet on a weekend some time, perhaps. Later, in an email thread, one of the members noted that weekdays seem to work best for most people. Most people chimed their agreement. Reading that snippet really irritated me. I’m not one of the Most People. I must have issues. I’m only a part-time baby-wearing mom, since my baby is shipped off to a childcare provider all day, and I like for him to get plenty of playtime on the floor when he’s home. I don’t end up wearing him very much. But when I do, I’d like to know the best, safest, and most comfortable way to do it, hence the appeal of the idea of networking with other baby-wearing moms. My rant is running out of steam. I don’t even know where I’m going with this. Oh. I was feeling guilty and overindulgent in my obsession to find the best, safest, and most comfortable way to tote my baby, then discovered that my home made handful of contraptions and marvels pale in comparison with the stashes that some mothers out there have. And they have the commercial name-brand spendy items, in the $60-$90 range per piece. Per piece! And they have many! I think I’m just insanely jealous. They get to stay home with their wonderful bundles of joy, and they get to spend all kinds of crazy dollars on gizmos and gadgets. Are they married to surgeons or lawyers or what I just don’t get it. I have a great job, really, in comparison to many people out there, but I can’t justify a wardrobe of baby carriers. Maybe it’s just part of my own issue that I harbor from growing up ‘poor’. Or maybe the offset is the baby wearing demographic. What kind of people are into attachment parenting and baby wearing Hip young mothers married to corporate executives, I guess. In all fairness, there are people in the group who exhibit some thrift and modesty in their stashes. I must just be jealous. Or, I could look at it another way. Take the $10 or $15 I spend on materials for each contraption I come up with, add in the time it takes me to design and construct them, and the unit cost comes out to be, OMG, $298-$303. Either my day job pays a lot per hour, or else it takes me a heckuva long time to design and construct a piece, considering what an able seamstress I am (not). Okay, but who can say their non-working time is dollarwise equivalent to their paid working time We’re talking apples and oranges, folks. So my contraptions end up costing the real world dollar amount of $10 to 15 each. Which isn’t to say that my non-day-job time isn’t valuable. It IS, it IS. Priceless. Look at it another way. What is the cost of entertainment, if one has an entertainment budget (which I do not). I wanted to see U2 in concert when they were here. Tickets sold out in three minutes, so I couldn’t even consider it, but if they hadn’t, I’d be faced with paying over $95 for a ticket in the nosebleed section behind the stage, with no view whatsoever. So I wouldn’t have bothered anyway. $160 for a decent seat. Times two. Who goes alone Cool Cat would want to go too. So that’s $320 for what, 2 hours Let’s say it averages out to about $127.50/hour for entertainment. See The entertainment value of designing my contraptions Totally worth it. The construction part is another matter. Sewing gets to be a bit tedious for me. I’m so anxious for the finished product that I fail to enjoy the journey. Sort of like how I view my life. Now there’s an epiphany. Dang, I need to figure out how to enjoy the journey. Yikes. That one stopped me cold. I must go contemplate.

My beautiful young man has a new expression, and I’m not quite sure what it means. We had our first camping trip this weekend and he was a bit under the weather. Possibly due to teething –there are five teeth protruding now! Or possibly due to the new children at his daycare. I noticed two new boys are there part time, before and after school. They are probably germ carriers from the schoolyard fray. I suspect the latter, as now both the cool cat and I have stuffy noses and cold symptoms.

Poor little Boo wouldn’t eat and fought sleep with all his might. He has learned to purse his lips and refuse to take the bottle or the spoon. He wasn’t all smiles the day of this picture, which was very sad for me. It’s heart wrenching to have a little one who doesn’t feel well. I tried to give him Tylenol and I ended up making him gag from the dropper and he threw up what seemed like gallons. Freaked me out. So I tried to lace his cereal with it, but he was on to that in no time, and would have nothing to do with it. I tried to lace his milk with it also, and he figured that out too. Thankfully, my little boy is all smiles again and feeling much better.

September’s feature: body parts. People who know me sometimes say they like my smile. I smile alot when I’m around people. This one is, of course, contrived, as I took it myself and how can one smile a genuine spontaneous smile while taking one’s own picture It’s also blurry, but I haven’t had much time to devote to self-portraiture of late.

Check out the Self Portrait Tuesday blog: http://selfportraittuesday.blogspot.com/

Sailing on the ribbons of a gentle wind
Freedom and Danger coyly embrace
Moving in the rhythm of a new found song
Finding self with self, face to face
Frozen by the recognition
Confounded by the juxtaposition
One look at that familiar face
Begat the journey now in place

Sailing on the ribbons of a gentle wind
Freedom and Danger coyly embrace
Moving in the rhythm of a well known song
Anxiously seeking a peaceful place
Forgotten, the question that conceived
The journey of one so carefully deceived
Freedom weeps in Danger’s hold
Danger laughs at a life waxed cold

Sailing on the fragments of an angry wind
Freedom and Danger struggle entwined
Shaking in the rhythm of a frenzied song
A searching heart long since made blind
The paradox unfolds
Wisdom, yet untold
Gain is loss and loss is gain
The sun goes down, night takes reign
Forgotten the question that conceived
The journey of one so carefully deceived

Sailing on the fragments of a tired wind
Freedom and Danger again embrace
Moving in the rhythm of a well known song
Anxiously seeking a peaceful place
Frozen by the contradiction
Convicted by the recognition
One look at that familiar face
Begat the journey now in place

Sailing on the winds of change
Freedom and Danger refuse to dance
Moving in the rhythm of a new found song
A fragile life born to a second chance
The paradox unfolds
Wisdom, yet untold
Gain is loss and loss is gain
The sun arises and light holds reign

I opened an old pad of paper to work on some sketches of my new baby carrier design and found this poem that I wrote on May 20, 1996, between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. It’s written in pen and there are almost no edits. This amazes me. Not that it’s all that good, but I must have been inspired at the time. I don’t remember what inspired me. Probably disillusionment with my loser fiance and the spiritual struggles that I wrestle with from time to time.

I found this cheerful batik that I plan to use for my next baby carrier design. I’ve recently learned that I’m not nearly as obsessed with baby carriers as many many many women out there, so I’m not allowing myself any guilt over indulging in this fun fabric. It will be something bright and happy to contrast with the upcoming long cloudy gray season. I am thinking of making something that is a sort of hybrid Mei Tai and backpack, but I guess I won’t really know until it’s done. I might have enough to make a matching diaper bag or tote. That would be fun, and oh, so coordinated.

A long time ago I found this vintage mobile at a yard sale. When I say a long time ago, I mean over twenty years ago… It accompanied me through my many moves and various relationships. Also many years ago, I made a painting for my dear friend Pea Soup when she became a mother. The color photo copiers had just come on the market and I made a copy before I sent the original off to her. I think it may have been my first painting. It’s one in a three part series I had in my mind. The first in the sequence is a female figure lovingly and protectively embraced by a male figure (part of this painting is exposed in the photo above, on the right). The second in the sequence is a female figure in the bloom of pregnancy, the male embracing her with his hands gently and lovingly placed on her full belly. I never finished this one, but I did make a mosaic of a female figure in full bloom. It may appear in a future SPT post. The third in the sequence (which is the first I actually painted) is the female figure with the babe in her arms.
The series was a self-portrait series based on my hopes and dreams of family and motherhood. The little pastel angels and clouds in the mobile are so adorable. I still love them after all these years. They also represent my hopes and dreams of motherhood. This is the year I finally put them up, as this is the year that I became a mother. I am a believer in dreams coming true, even though some may take forever!

He’s so precious. I am smitten.

I don’t much like goodbyes. Hellos are good. I have a tough time when it comes to goodbyes though. My mother is in the beginning stages of a 3-month circle tour of the U.S., and dropped by for a very short visit this weekend. She and her husband arrived Saturday evening, and now, Monday morning, they are gone. I am sad. I didn’t get to say goodbye and I feel let down. When they arrived, I was on the floor playing with the baby, and my mom got right down on the floor and started playing with him, so I stayed on the floor and said my hellos from there. It was sort of a chaotic moment, then it was over. No hugs. They are early to bed, early to rise people. We had a nice day of chatting, Scrabble playing (I got a 7-letter word on the first play, with an ‘H’ on a double!) and movie watching (saw Something the Lord Made, very good film). After the movie they said goodnight, and goodbye, as they would be leaving in the morning. I had the baby in my arms again, so again, no hugs. No real goodbyes. I thought surely I’d see them in the morning before they left, as I’m up between 5:45 and 6:00 a.m. every day for my morning expression exercise. This morning I was up at 5:45. I came downstairs and peered out the window. No car. They had already left. What kind of people leave before 5:45 a.m. I was up until 1 a.m., and fed the baby at 2 a.m. Somewhere between 2 and 5:45 they departed, and I find myself sad that I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye. I feel deflated. Maybe even a bit rejected. I really wanted to say goodbye.