The Littlest Penguin

Wow, a year already?

Monday, June 7th, 2010 | Liam, musings, travel | 5 Comments

A lot of “this day in my history” dates these last couple of weeks. May 15th marked one year since I left my job in Tennessee. I moved to Virginia on the 24th, and on the 29th William and I got married. It doesn’t seem like a year has gone already until I look at how big Liam is (9 months next week!), and then it kind of sets in.

Being stay-at-home is a little easier now that Liam doesn’t absolutely need me for everything at every moment of every day. Granted, he’s still got some separation anxiety, but now I can leave him on the floor with toys and he’ll poke the buttons on his radio and dump the blocks out of their bucket and generally amuse himself for a little while. I still need to establish a bigger circle of friends in the area; I miss the Tennessee crew pretty badly sometimes. But it didn’t occur to me that I missed my coworkers and professional conversations until a few weeks ago. I found myself posting in reference desk mode, answering questions and sharing a lot of “Facebook is in ur base killin’ ur privacies!” stuff to . . . Facebook. Ironic. Then, I was invited to a meeting of the local ARMA chapter and heard a presentation about the District of Columbia’s 5 year records management plan. You mock! But it was interesting! And humbling. Everyone in the room was (a) employed by (b) some terrifically important company, department, or agency. And there was little ol’ me. Eek. Unfortunately job searches take a lot more time than I’ve felt the ability to invest lately. I really need to step it up, because the little bit of poking around I’ve done has only turned up jobs in Maryland. That’s a little too much daily commute for me.

William and I didn’t do much for our first anniversary. We did some sightseeing of DC, but we didn’t stay long. Apparently, part of the problem with marrying on Memorial Day weekend in this area is the huge number of motorcycles you have to swim through if you want to do touristy things for your anniversary. I did get to see some places I hadn’t before: the National Archives building, the Library of Congress. Also, that day it threatened to pour rain. Which would have been fine with us – there was a torrential storm the day of our outside vows ceremony. It made things interesting, and the pictures are pretty funny. Liam kept us from going out to dinner the night of (we wanted him with us because he’s fun to take out lately), so we went to hibachi the next Monday. Liam got to watch the cook toss things around and make faces at him, and dinner was pretty yummy.

Liam’s fourth and fifth teeth broke through last week, so he’s all snaggle-toothed when he smiles. It’s very cute. He’s also gotten very good at pulling himself up into a standing position if you offer him your hands or if he’s near the couch. That took him less than two weeks to perfect once he figured out how to get onto his knees. The baby gates are up and we’ve barricaded off a place for the cats’ food bowls, so Liam has fairly free reign of the living room, kitchen and hallway. If I’m walking around doing chores he follows me going “rar! rar!” with a big smile on his face. Hard to believe he’s mobile already. . .

Updating fail

Monday, December 7th, 2009 | Liam, musings | 8 Comments

My last post was apparently submitted sometime after midnight on Sept 10 – 11, because I know for fact I didn’t blog the day of the 11th. It was kind of creepy, though,seeing that date posted and knowing that it wasn’t too many hours later I was checking myself in to the hospital prepping for a c-section. I dread surgery and I was in tears calling around to William and my parents. I’m under the impression that the preeclampsia they found was worse than they let me believe, because they wanted the baby out now. They waited just long enough for William to come and the 8-hour waiting period after my last meal to pass before I was on the table talking to the anesthesiologist.

Just shy of three months later, surgery wasn’t all too bad. And the end result is pretty darned cute, though the first month and change of mommyhood wrecked my nerves. Liam would hold his breath and then inhale with a loud gasp. I’m told this is totally normal and he is growing out of it, but holy crap was it unnerving. He still does it every so often, but at least now I’m a little more confidant he’s not really dying. Also, because he came c-section I didn’t start producing milk for nearly a week, so I was constantly worried he was hungry. And of course he cried most of the time he was awake and he woke at weird hours and all that normal stuff. Thankfully my mom and William’s mom took turns staying to help those first two weeks. They made sure I got some sleep and some alone time with William and didn’t have to cook while my stitches started healing.

They say that the first 6 weeks are the hardest, but I declare shenanigans on that. Liam only recently started smiling, so I’ll say things were toughest through about the 9 week mark. It’s still not easy, but at least now he looks around, grins when we’re in the room and munches on his hands when he’s starting to get hungry. It’s a little easier to figure out what he wants when he cries and he makes a funny little squeak when he tries to laugh. He’s napping less during the day, but will sleep for longer stretches at night. He’s also not quite so teeny-tiny, which makes us a little more confidant when we’re holding him. He was born at 6 ponds 14 ounces, and weighed 10.5 pounds at his two month checkup. He’s also grown about two inches.

I miss having coworkers and having an income to contribute, but that’ll come again soon I hope. The smiles and snuggles are a pretty good reward, too. (Though I could do with less spit-up!) I really miss being in the church choir and all the activities I had there. I found a nice congregation, but I’m not 100% sure they’re where I’ll end up. I might try one other place before talking to Little River’s choir director and starting to make that place home. The gaming group William, Mike and I do over Skype once a week helps fight the boredom and missing my friends. And Zeb and Alarra and Cieka aren’t very far. Also, and I almost hate to admit it, messing around World of Warcraft with the Circle of Fear guildies also helps. The cats help, too, when they’re not tearing the apartment down or demanding as much attention as Liam. So I think I’m settling into this new groove pretty well.

Now I just have to get back into a blog-updating groove.

square peg

Friday, July 25th, 2008 | books, musings, rants | 11 Comments

I went to a friend’s book club meeting tonight. Which is not the wonderful intro to this post I’m searching for, but I’m a little off my game tonight. I badly needed a trip to the chiropractor today, but things conspired against me leaving work early to go and now I’m developing a headache. Ah well. Tomorrow I’ll get it all fixed.

Anyway. Book club meeting.

Edie invited me Monday night, which was kind of short warning, but it sounded like something worth trying. Lately I’ve been feeling treated a little too much like ‘one of the guys.’ Seriously. It’s bad when someone who’s known me for more than a year doesn’t believe I own a skirt, much less ever wear one. And another one of my friends wrestles with me like he would his little brother. It’s been forever since someone not on Facebook flirted with me. (And the Facebook dude was an isolated and brief incident.) So I turned down an invitation to learn how to play Warmachine, made a quick purchase of Eat, Pray, Love at Barnes and Noble, read what I could, and went to book club.

And quickly realized I have nothing in common with Edie’s nice book club friends. They were all businesswomen, most of them were wives and mothers. When I get nervous I tend to try to impress people so they like me, and the only way I know how to do that is to show that I can contribute something intelligent to the conversation. But that kind of backfired on me tonight. The way many of them talked about religions and faith was uninformed and I was self-conscious of myself around them. (And almost the whole evening centered around talk of religions and faith, or of husbands.) One of them said I must be really conservative because I knew so much about speaking in tongues! (I know nothing about that, just one weird little fact I dropped without thinking!) Some of them were well-traveled and that put me a little at ease, though not totally. I’m always afraid I sound like I’m bragging when I talk about my trips, even when it makes sense to mention them in a conversation. I just…

I dunno. I don’t fit with the guys. I don’t fit with the girls. Where the hell do I fit? What kind of niche does a theology-debating, ethics-reading, globe-trotting, food-loving, tomboy, gamer girl, sci-fi, steampunk, archives ninja-penguin fit into, anyway?

Tags: book club, books, Eat Pray Love

today

Saturday, March 15th, 2008 | musings | 2 Comments

I planted lilies. Scarlet ones. They’ll be beautiful.

And I started a painting. Holy crap! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve painted anything?!

Week over.

Saturday, March 8th, 2008 | archives, family, musings, weddings | 2 Comments

The students were all on spring break this week – lucky punks. The week went by pretty fast, too. I’m not done with the re-processing project I’d set aside. This is partly because other things needed my more immediate attention, partly because I thought it would be a simple re-boxing job and it wasn’t. Somehow my student worker spent an entire school year organizing a collection into folders that were neither in alphabetical nor in chronological order. Granted all the checks were together, and all the letters, and all the essays, but beyond that the collection wasn’t organized and would have been a nightmare to do research with. If she’d done everything the way I told her, the project could easily taken a year. But what she did should not have taken a whole year. I was so frustrated when I realized. She always gave positive impressions when I asked her about her progress. Anyway. There’s also a Heritage Convocation presentation to pull together and a photo/oral history interview project to be executed with the old “V-12 Boys.” That second one should be really interesting.

Also working on how to best divvy up my vacation time for the rest of the year. Mom wants to drive to Chicago with me, Joel E. is getting married, I want to go to Montreat, and time needs to be left for little emergencies like cars breaking and for Thanksgiving. Something will be sacrificed. I have an awful feeling that’ll be Montreat. Again. Because apparently I’m not allowed to take time just for me. Unless I skip Joel’s wedding… and I’m not sure I want to do that even if I have recently developed a sincere discomfort at attending weddings.

I skipped choir, the Lenten supper, and the coffee house this week. It’s good, for the most part. I’ve been to almost every coffee house this year and… well… I needed a break. Just didn’t want to spend Friday night that way. I cooked fajitas for Jared, Sheri, and Nick instead. I also took care of Rucht and McKenna’s beagles. Sadie bit at me on Wednesday, but otherwise it was a lot of fun.

Kind of under a gray cloud tonight, and it’s way late. Time for bed.

oops, in a good way

Monday, February 25th, 2008 | musings | 2 Comments

So last night in the mixup of the gaming table my glasses fell and Jared stepped on them. Both lenses popped out, though the frames seem surprisingly in tact. Nick got the lenses back in (quite the feat with rimless frames), but today I scheduled an eye doctor appointment so I can replace them. So hopefully by Tuesday night I’ll be sporting a nice new pair of glasses. I mean, the ones I have now are only three years old. Surely the prescription hasn’t started to give me headaches or anything. *takes tylenol*

Lenten series followup

Thursday, February 7th, 2008 | church, musings, theology | 1 Comment

I found the post I was thinking of in last night’s post. It’s actually a response I had in regards to a question about missions work, so I’ll just snag the piece relevant to the topic of purpose:

“I want to suggest that the above paragraph describes a very narrow idea of what God’s will is. The sweeping theme of the Bible is the reconciliation of humanity and Creation unto God. This is the Jubilee; this is the Will of God. (See Isaiah and Luke 4:18.) It’s why God established the Law and the Prophets, the holy state of Israel, and finally absolved humanity of its infinite debt through Christ’s death on the cross. In light of this understanding of God’s will, I have a problem thinking that God micromanages us in the name of ‘God’s will.’ In other words, I question the belief that God’s will is distinctively different for each individual. People have argued for ages about the free will God has given humanity. If we truly believe that the scriptures prepare us to understand the will of God (as a method of reconciliation) and that we have free will, then we can make any decision in confidence that as long as we work to show Christ’s healing to the world we will always be in God’s will. . .

I wrote that almost a year ago to the day. Weeeeeird. But I still believe that God’s will overshadows the Church as a Body instead of sitting on each of us individually. We are a Body of individuals made equal and whole by Christ, bound together as a community and a family by the Holy Spirit to the glory of God. Our day-to-day activities and choices should be reflections of the Jubilee, a glimpse into the Peaceable Kingdom. In this way, working in concert with each other and the Holy Spirit, we both manifest the will of God to the world and proclaim it to one another.

Lenten series

Thursday, February 7th, 2008 | church, musings | 2 Comments

I’m a little nervous about this year’s Lenten supper study series at church. George is basing it on songs by Michael Card. (Yeah, the Christian singer popular in the 80s.) I trust George’s ability to pastor better than I ever could, but that doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally disagree with him.

Anyway, it’s later than I thought, but I wanted to at least quickly type my reactions to tonight’s discussion. “My purpose in this life” was discussed. What is my purpose? The good Presbyterian response might be “to love God and to enjoy God forever.” I’m not a fantastic Presbyterian, but that has merit. Kurt Vonnegut once stated that “we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” (Of course, he also once stated “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.“) But what disturbed me was that everyone talked about individual purpose and no one mentioned the idea of a community purpose. We are the Church, and together we have a purpose. We are here to be the Body, to “show forth the kingdom of mercy, pray for the kingdom of peace, work for the kingdom of justice, hope for the kingdom of God” (favorite song lyric).

Short post tonight. I’ve talked about this once before and probably will elaborate nearer to the weekend. But it’s late and I’ve gotta work tomorrow. Night all.

Enduring

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 | musings | 9 Comments

The other night, I had three guests for dinner. I like having people over – we share food, we share discussion, we share games. All around, I can say that having people over has almost never turned sour for me. And it didn’t the other night, but sometimes I wonder if we realize the full impact the things we say to each other can sometimes effect. I’ve said my share of unthoughtful, stupid, and potentially hurtful things, so I hope I don’t come off as sounding superior when I say I really resent men telling me that there is no social bias against women anymore or that there is, but it’s not as much of a problem as it used to be. Not having ever been told they can’t do something because “you’re a girl,” having never endured stares from their employer, and having never looked at a television with the thought “I’m expected to look/act like that because I’m female” I think disqualifies my friends from making an accurate judgment on how much bias still hovers just under the surface of our culture. And often enough it doesn’t even bother hiding itself. There’s a reason I joined a liberal congregation, didn’t go to Bible college, and generally resist anything that sets off June Cleaver alarm bells in my head. On the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s also why I don’t subscribe to those horrific women’s magazines and their pages of advertisements, hate most love stories, and think most celebrity women are unnerving. Which puts me walking in some weird limbo between what my conservative Christian upbringing wants me to be like and what strong currents in our culture are saying I need to be like in order to be “normal” or “desirable.” It causes tension in my family. (My mom seriously once told me “You know what I hate about you, Ging?” Again, not thinking about the effects that might have. It was one of the most devastating conversations I’ve ever endured.) It also causes certain stresses in my friendships and, on those ever so rare occasions, dating life. (It is a perpetual joke among many of my friends that I seem uninclined to date or mess around.) I can take a joke, but there’s a line that occasionally gets crossed where I feel tangible pressure to live up to whatever norm someone else has set for my dating or sex life. My personality being what it is, not only do such things stress me out and get me upset, they also make me disinclined to comply so that I don’t “give in.” The everyday tension between who we think we want to be, who we are, and who people and culture think we want to be is, I’m certain, shared by everyone. I want to understand and appreciate that fact better. I also want people to appreciate it with me so that maybe we can help each other out, keep each other afloat in the riptide of culture, be sensitive when someone says to us that we’re causing them this type of stress, and no longer feel like we’re standing alone and exposed while we endure day by day.

Good Monsters

Saturday, August 18th, 2007 | music, musings, quotes | 7 Comments

Good Monsters, by Jars of Clay

All the good monsters open their eyes
To see the wasteland where the home fires rise
And the people shouting, “Why, why, why”

Do you know what you are?
Do you know what you are?

All the giants wake from their sleep
And roll outside of safety’s keep
And the pain makes them feel so alive

Do you know what you are; do you know what you are?
We are bored of all the things we know
Do you know what you are; do you know what you are?

Not all monsters are bad
But the ones who are good
Never do what they could, never do what they could

All the good monsters rattle their chains
And dance around the open flames
They make a lot of empty noise

While all of the bright eyes turn away
As if there wasn’t anything to say
About the justice and the mystery

Do you know what you are?
Do you know what you are?
We are bored of all the things that we know
And we are forms of everything we love, we love..

If good won’t show its ugly face,
Evil won’t you take your place?
Nothing ever changes, nothing ever changes by itself

We are bored of all the things that we know
Do you know what you are?
Because we are so in love with ourselves

We are forms of all the things we love.