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thoughts at the end of indian summer

November 29, 2006

it's 8:30 in the am and it's about 60 degrees out. today is the last day of our "indian summer" although i don't know if temps have really been summer-like. they have been in the 50s and 60s pretty consistently for the past week or two though, and it has been wonderful. we haven't been stuck inside yet. i don't know what this will mean for the rest of the winter, but i hope the rumors of a harsh and snowy winter won't be true. personally, i could handle temps in the 50s all winter long, but i know that won't happen either.

my class this semester is over for me, so i'm starting my new "schedule" today which will hopefully result in me writing here much more often as well as just acting like a writer in general and doing it regularly. this is one resolution i came up with after my 33rd birthday . . . so those of you who are worried about me because of the last post, please cease and desist.

christmas is on the way, and we have begun, just yesterday actually, to listen to some christmas music. last year we discovered sufjan stevens (scroll down on the webpage and you can actually listen to the collections), who does a mix of traditional tunes as well as some of his own crazy stuff. it sounds like he did all the recordings in his living room with his kids screaming in the background, but that's why i love it. the tunes also remind me of this time last year when i was getting ready to and eventually did pop oren out (i think we even had it on in the car on the way to the birthing center the day he was born), so they will always hold a special place in my heart.

speaking of oren, who is almost one whole entire year old (dec 12 is the special day), he's crawling! and standing! and cruising! one day about two weeks ago, he just decided that he crawls. so he crawls, here and there and everywhere, with his little round, diapered bum swaying behind him and a look on his face like he's just figured out the best thing since sliced bread, drooling. and so in only two weeks he's also figured out how to pull himself up to standing, and tackled the stairs. i'm scared. yesterday, he decided that he should be allowed to go upstairs whenever he wants, unattended. so when i wasn't looking (not a rarity, unfortunately) he crawled over to the steps and was halfway up before i realized he wasn't sitting in the living room anymore. i did catch him before he would have fallen down (uh, this time). thankfully.

"be anxious for nothing, but in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. and the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." philippians 4.6

33 years old

November 15, 2006

today i am 33 years old. i'm not saying this to beg for happy birthday wishes. no really, i'm not. no, stop already. JUST STOP SAYING IT ALREADY! i'm also not trying to say that i'm old and decrepit (i realize how ridiculous this sounds after hearing last night women in my current class who are still a couple of years away from 30 talk about how old they are--whatever). i'm just trying to say, i'm 33 years old today, and i still don't know what i want to be when i grow up. i don't think i'll ever know.

i'm 33 years old today and most of my female friends have a career, have some sort of thing that they do or have done up until they started to have babies. even some of those women who have babies still have a career or some sort of thing that they do. i'm 33 years old today, and all i can say is that i worked in a temporary administrative assistant job for almost 7 whole years in order to pay back school loans and then about 4 years ago quit that job to have kids. so i'm 33 years old today and i have 2 boys--that is one good thing in this lament. but this day and age, when being a mom just isn't enough and most people ship their kids off to day care and continue on with their career or whatever it is that they do, only being a mom doesn't seem like enough to me either.

so i'm 33 years old today, and i'm a stay at home mom by day and a graduate student by night. i'm in the process of getting a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing at Chatham College. when i say that (or type it, in this case) it gives me a sense of pleasure. when my friends say to me, "wow, i don't know how you do it all" a sense of pride begins to swell in my breast. feeling the danger of that, i am usually quick to say, "no, no, i only take one class at a time. it's really not like that." because really, it isn't like that. when it was just sebastien and i, it fit perfectly in. i could concentrate on seb whenever he needed me to, and when he was asleep, i could read and write to my heart's content. but now i have two boys, and it's not so easy to fit the school work into my day without encroaching upon my time with them. i thought getting a master's degree is where it's at for me, but now it feels too hard, too much like i'm trying too hard.

so i'm 33 years old today and on the verge of being a grad school drop out. two semesters of content courses have kept me too busy to write anything besides things for those classes so i'm feeling less then a writer than usual which means, i feel like i'm totally wasting time and money on this useless degree. (don't argue, you have to admit that it would be pretty useless for a non-writer to have an mfa in writing!)

i'm 33 years old today. and i'm thinking that this would be a great long essay to send to some magazine devoted to women who are mothers and who wonder what else they are supposed to be doing with their lives. so that makes me think maybe i am a writer after all, because if i am not a writer, i wouldn't have thought about it. but then, why would women want to read something about someone who is exactly like them? so then, i think, even if i am a writer, i'm not out there breaking boundaries. i'm not pushing the envelope. i'm not broadening horizons. i am a cliche.

i'm 33 years old today.