Lazy-assery.

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Nanette

I realized (in the middle of the night last night, of course) that I will be returning to work a month from today. A month is a really long time, technically, so it’s not like I have to start getting up at 5:45 AM tomorrow. I have a few weeks before I need to start doing that. But still, when you start with twelve weeks off from work and suddenly you’re down to four weeks off, it’s a little jarring.

The best metaphor I can think of is that maternity leave is like a really long vacation where your wallet gets stolen on the second day. You spend the first couple of weeks freaking the fuck out and wondering what you are going to do about it. You have to scramble to get everything replaced before someone steals your identity. You have no money, no credit cards, no ID, so you are losing sleep and the stress is killing you. Then everything gets resolved, and you start to have some fun. You see the sights and get active and do a bunch of cool stuff. After about seven weeks, you get lazy and start spending long hours sitting in your hotel room, happy to be on vacation but kind of bored with your surroundings.

And that is where I’m at. I’m happy to be on leave, but I’ve noticed a steady decline in how much I am able to get done lately. A couple of weeks ago, I’d spend the morning cleaning the house or cooking something interesting while Tim kept an eye on the baby (i.e., she was asleep in his office while he worked). Tim still keeps an eye on the baby in the mornings, but I don’t get anything done. I have cooked some good meals, though. Hopefully, I will get some kind of second wind or whatever during my last four weeks, because there’s a lot I’d really like to get done around here before I go back to work. I am convinced that my house will start looking like something out of Hoarders after I go back to work if I don’t get it cleaned now.

My big accomplishment today (thus far) is that I went to the grocery store. I think Tuesday must be markdown day at the grocery store, because I picked up a bunch of sale stuff to throw in the freezer for later. I also picked up some beer that had been marked down. Our local store carries a pretty decent selection of craft beer, and they recently started carrying beer from Flossmoor Station. As a native of the southern suburbs (but not Flossmoor), I wanted to try it, even though my opinion of Flossmoor Station was somewhat tarnished by a complete nutsack who was on the Three Floyds brewery tour with Tim and I last year. He kept going on and on about how he had just finished going on the tour of Flossmoor Station and how he tasted their newest beer and blah blah blah…while he was on the Three Floyds tour. Admittedly, Flossmoor Station Nutsack wasn’t as annoying as the father who brought his hyperactive four-year-old on the brewery tour and expected everyone to find his antics completely adorable, but still…ANNOYING.

I may be a parent now, but my attitude toward poorly behaved children hasn’t changed very much. I told Lenora that she can move into a cave and be raised by wolves if she wants to act like an ass in public. (Perhaps “move into a barn and be raised by donkeys” would be more appropriate.)

Posted in How Babby Is Formed | 1 Comment

What I Read: January 2012

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Nanette

Since I originally started this blog as a means of chronicling the things I was reading, I am going to make a valiant attempt at doing just that. So here is what I read in January 2012:

  • Superbaby by Dr. Jenn Berman (1/4/12): I started this while I was still pregnant, and finished it a few weeks after Lenora was born. This book ties in with the bit in my last post about Research Lady, because it focuses on all kinds of research on infant and toddler development. There’s interesting material here, and some of Dr. Berman’s points gave me some things to think about. However, some of her suggestions seem difficult to implement unless you’re in a stay-at-home parent situation or you have your child care provider completely on board with the plan. For example, I’d love to teach Lenora some basic sign language, but to make that work you really need to make sure all caretakers respond to the signs, otherwise the baby will give up. (Seriously, why keep signing “my diaper is wet” if nobody’s going to pay attention?)
  • Your Scandalous Ways by Loretta Chase (1/5/12): Loretta Chase’s books are always winning awards, so I decided to do some “light-duty” reading and try this one out. It was an entertaining historical romance about a courtesan who gets herself entangled in some intrigue and falls in love. Good stuff, I’ll read more.
  • Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser (1/11/12): I started this in early December, but it was too dense/thinky to read during the post-birth haze, so it took me a long time to finish. Excellent historical biography of the women in Louis XIV’s life. It went well with Karleen Koen’s Before Versailles, which I read in December.
  • Wicked by Gregory Maguire (1/16/12): This is one of those books that I have been meaning to read for years, but never got around to finishing. I started it several years ago and abandoned it partway through, mainly because I’m an easily distractible reader. You probably know the story: it’s a re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz from the Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West’s point of view. I enjoyed this a lot–it was thoughtful enough that I felt like I was reading something substantive, but light enough that I could sneak little bits of it while doing other things. It was also a lot more political than I would have expected.
  • Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire: I decided to read the entire Wicked Years series, since I enjoyed Wicked so much. This one focuses on Liir, Elphaba’s son. It wasn’t quite as good as Wicked, but it wasn’t awful. I’m not necessarily the sort of reader who has to connect with or identify with characters in order to enjoy a book, but I didn’t find Liir quite as engaging as Elphaba, which may have lessened my enjoyment.
  • Prelude to a Scandal by Delilah Marvelle (1/23/12): A recovering sex addict enters a marriage of convenience with a feisty young woman whose father has published some controversial research about homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Romance ensues! This was bathtub reading for a few weeks. The large type and giant margins made it a quick, light-duty read.
  • A Lion Among Men by Gregory Maguire (1/23/12): I’m now 82% of the way through the fourth book in The Wicked Years (thank Kindle for useless stats) and they are all starting to run together. This one focused on the Cowardly Lion, who is not so much cowardly as self-centered and overly focused on covering his own ass at the expense of others. Easily the weakest in the series, but I did love the parts about Yackle, who is probably my favorite character in the series.
  • Balance is a Crock, Sleep is for the Weak by Amy Eschilman and Leigh Oshirak (1/27/12): I read this hoping to get some good advice on returning to work after my maternity leave. Instead, I just got annoyed. Anything useful was eclipsed by the parts that irritated me, including all the stuff that perpetuates the stereotype of the uninvolved, hapless father who is more interested in playing golf than being a parent. It’ll probably be a while before I go on another business trip, but when I do, I don’t think I’ll need to provide Tim with a laminated guide to everything that Lenora needs. He already knows what to do. I know I picked a winner, but sheesh, are most fathers really that clueless?

Stats for the month:

  • Total books finished: 8
  • Fiction: 5
  • Nonfiction: 3
  • Review books: 0 (this is probably the first month in years where I haven’t read anything for review)
  • Books started but not finished: 3 (I’m still reading all three, so they’ll show up on next month’s summary)
  • Favorite book of the month: Wicked
Posted in Books & Reading | Leave a comment

Week Seven.

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Nanette

I swear I don’t want this to turn into a mommyblog, but maternity leave is giving me way too much time to gaze at my own navel (as well as Lenora’s). And after childbirth, my navel is kind of gross. But here goes.

My house is cleaner than it’s been since we moved in. When we moved in, it was brand-new and empty, therefore clean. Then I filled it with all of my crap, then I added some more crap, then I lived in it and it became cluttered. Then I added cats and purple bath towels, and it became dusty and hair-y. (I will never buy purple bath towels again. Every time I clean the bathroom, I wipe up gobs of purple lint, and I’ve had these towels for YEARS.)

So I’ve been spending a couple of hours every day cleaning and organizing the house. My goal is to have things looking decent enough that I won’t need to spend several hours every weekend cleaning shit up around here. Tim helps out a lot during the week. Since he works from home, he’s willing to throw on a load of laundry or do dishes or empty the dishwasher when he’s on break. This is further proof that he is a better person than I am, because I would spend my breaks doing absolutely nothing useful if I worked from home. I am happy to vacuum and wipe down the bathrooms on the weekend, but I hate doing dishes more than most other things in the world, so I’m happy to pawn that off on someone else.

I’ve also been trying a lot of new recipes, and they have mostly been winners, with the exception of some really bland cornbread that I made a few weeks ago.

I’m enjoying my time off, and I love spending time with Lenora, but I don’t think I could do this long-term. My house would be immaculately clean and I’d eat really well, but I’d be spending an awful lot of time plotting my escape. I don’t do well with unstructured time.

—

I do my best to avoid online arguments. They tend to be counterproductive and annoying. But someone in one of the parenting forums (I know, gag) I frequent made a comment that not only got my goat, but tied a rope around its neck and yanked its poor goaty beard. So I responded calmly, and she came back at me with “WELL THE RESEARCH SAYS BLAH BLAH BLAH I AM RIGHT! YOU GAVE BAD ADVICE! SHAME ON YOU!”

One thing about consorting with academics (and most of us who live in college towns consort with a lot of academics) is that you learn, quickly, that research can prove many things, especially in the social sciences. (It’s a lot tougher to force your research to back up your dumbass, misguided opinions if you’re a scientist.) The research on parenting changes frequently and is often contradictory. It is also frequently used as a means of guilting people (especially women) into doubting their choices and abilities. As much as I’d love to follow all of the current research to a T in order to raise a Superbaby who will cure all the world’s ills AND be socially and emotionally well-adjusted, it’s just not feasible. I refuse to feel guilty about going back to work, giving Lenora a pacifier when she’s wigging out and nothing else seems to work, or watching TV while I breastfeed.

Besides, next week the research will probably change, and the best practices will include something completely different. All I can do as a parent is make sure that she feels secure and loved and do the best I can to keep her reasonably happy. I trust my ability to do what’s right by her, and that’s good enough for me.

I’m sure the research also says that Naked Raygun is not an appropriate musical choice for an infant, but that’s what I’m listening to right now. Surf combat!

—

THINGS THAT MAKE LENORA CRY:

  • Wet diapers
  • Gas
  • Boredom
  • Rick Santorum (Whenever he’s on the news, she loses it. I hope he drops out soon because it will help preserve my sanity.)
  • Hunger
  • Dirty diapers

—

Found on a sticky on my desktop, something I wrote while I was pregnant:

“If anyone ever refers to my cervix as a ‘baby door’ I am going to kick them square in the box”

Fortunately, nobody ever did, so nobody got kicked square in the box.

 

Posted in Food, How Babby Is Formed | Leave a comment

The New Normal.

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Nanette

I am now the proud mother of a one month old baby. She does exciting things like spit up, belch, poop, cry, and look at me with what could be recognition. She also makes a face that looks suspiciously like a smile, but she could just be trying to poop. Exciting fact about infants: they seem to poop in clusters. Lenora will go for three hours without a poop, then she’ll dirty four diapers in a span of half an hour. Sometimes I wonder where she hides all that poop. She’s not very big.

In an attempt to leave the house for more than an hour at a time, I cleaned out my car today. This will allow Tim to install the car seat base in my car, which will allow me to leave the house with the baby. My car wasn’t dirty, it was just cluttered. I like to have a cluttered car because it means that I don’t have to drive people around in it. If there’s ever a situation that requires carpooling or ride-sharing, all I need to do is point at my backseat and say, “well, we could move that stuff over, or just throw it in the trunk.” They usually respond with, “oh, we can take my car instead.” Yay, that. Besides, my car isn’t the most comfortable car to ride in if you are, say, taller than 5’4″.

So I had to clean the clutter out of my car, because a) I need to get that car seat installed before I go nuts because I can’t go anywhere besides the grocery store; and b) Tim learned at his New Dads class that clutter in your car can become a baby-harming projectile if you get into a car accident. Not that I am concerned that Lenora will be gravely injured by the pile of handouts from a meeting I attended in 2009, but still, I will do what I must if it means FREEDOM!

Things I found in my car:

  1. Receipt from pizza carry-out, dated July 15, 2009
  2. Aforementioned agendas/handouts from meeting attended in August 2009
  3. Temporary parking pass for the county courthouse from my week of jury duty in (ahem) Summer 2007
  4. Wadded-up straw wrappers from Sonic. Lots of them. During my first trimester, I lived on slushes from Sonic.
  5. Two dollars!
  6. Three umbrellas, one of them broken.
  7. Thank-you gifts from a committee that I served on a while back. It disbanded sometime in 2009. This is actually some nice stuff, including a glass tumbler that is just the right size for bourbon on the rocks, and a laminated bookmark. And a tote bag. Can you tell that this was a library-related committee?

—

Maternity leave has been interesting, so far. I recovered from the birth pretty quickly, and Lenora isn’t all that fussy or high-maintenance, so there’s been enough down time for me to do things like cook, read, knit, and sew. I am getting plenty of sleep, even with the interruption of night feedings, and I am getting dressed and showering every day (and have been since the beginning). One thing I have learned is that I am not good at managing my time if I’m left to my own devices. I need some structure, or I find myself looking at the clock, noticing that it’s 4:30 PM, and realizing that I spent my day dicking around online (when I wasn’t soothing or feeding the baby). Without structure, my days are a blur. It’s like they run into each other, and I forget what day it is, what time it is, and what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m thankful that I have this time to be at home with Lenora (and it’s paid, too, since I had enough accumulated sick and vacation leave to cover twelve weeks off) and I know it’s going to be difficult when I return to work, but there are parts of me that are looking forward to getting pieces of my “old life” back.

Posted in How Babby Is Formed | Leave a comment

The latest updates.

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Nanette

HOLY SHIT, I am having a baby tomorrow. This is both a relief and a completely terrifying prospect. It’s a relief because I am so uncomfortable and unwieldy that it is next to impossible to get comfortable in any position for any amount of time, and it’s terrifying because, well, it’s a baby. And I’m going to be responsible for her. Forever.

I know the baby is coming tomorrow because she is stubborn. Rather than doing the normal baby thing and turning herself head-down, she has decided to stay butt-down, with her head, arms, and legs sitting underneath my rib cage. Standard protocol with breech babies (at least, in the U.S.), is to schedule a cesarean delivery. My gestational diabetes (or cryabeetus, as I sometimes call it) and my “advanced maternal age” add to the argument for a cesarean. So I go under the knife tomorrow at 8 AM, and the baby comes out approximately 20 minutes later.

Then they’ll remove the placenta, which caused the cryabeetus, and I’ll give it the finger for causing me so damn much grief. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to eat Greek yogurt, string cheese, or peanut butter toast ever again. There’s only so much of those foods that a person can take.

Yesterday was my last day of work before my maternity leave, and it was kind of bittersweet. I’ve been involved in an all-consuming, huge project at work for the last several months–we just transitioned to a new automation system, and I was one of the leads on the project. We went live on December 8th, so the last three weeks have been insane. I’m not the kind of person who feels that my job is a huge part of my identity–it’s something that I do and something that I enjoy very much, but it doesn’t define who I am or what I am about. But it’s something that I do every single weekday, and not having that routine to cling to is kind of freaking me out. I have no worries about the people that I supervise, because they can handle whatever gets thrown at them without my intervention. And I’ve heard all the old chestnuts like “oh, when the baby is here, you’ll be doing plenty of work,” and I’m sure that is the case. But it will be a different kind of work, a kind of work I’m not used to (and that I’m a little afraid of).

Tim has just informed me that my eggs (one of the few things that my cryabeetus will let me eat for breakfast, and I don’t even really like eggs that much, but at least it’s variety) will be finished shortly. I think I’m going to go hog wild and have some apple juice with them, even though fruit and fruit juice are strictly forbidden as breakfast foods when you have gestational diabetes. But I am having a baby tomorrow, and I am a little weirded out by that, and I’m not going to deny myself apple juice right now.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Joining the Ranks of the Smug

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Nanette

So if you have a blog, and you don’t update it for almost six months, people stop reading it, right? Oh wait. No. People use RSS feeds now, so they leave your blog in their feed reader eternally (or until they decide that you’re never going to update it again or whatever).

Anyway. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write something, it’s that I’m too lazy/busy/uninspired to actually DO it. There’s been plenty going on around here. Most noteworthy: Tim and I have reproduced. We have spawned. We have learned how babby is formed and we have made it happen. It is a girl. Her name will be Lenora, which is my grandmother’s name. She will arrive around December 20. I am thrilled that it’s a girl, because a) I can indulge my love of Hello Kitty that much more freely; and b) I do not have to pretend to be interested in superheroes or Transformers.

I am doing my damnedest to not act like a smug pregnant lady, because even though I now qualify as a potential member of that group, I still dislike smug pregnant ladies. You know, the ones who walk around rubbing their swollen bellies, smiling like the Virgin Mary in an Italian Renaissance painting. The ones who come up with “clever” nicknames for their unborn child, like “spud” or “fingerling” or “tadpole.” (We call ours “the babby,” or “Lenora.”) The ones who can’t talk about anything other than the exciting thing their fetus did last week, which is usually something like “the spud was totally punching me in the bladder yesterday.” The ones who are all “OMG I CANNOT FUNCTION like a normal person morning sickness pregnancy brain weight gain Braxton-Hicks contractions waddle waddle baby kicking me in the butt cheek.”

Pregnancy is not without its inconveniences. I miss being able to bend at the waist to pick stuff up. I don’t like peeing all the time. Being tired for no apparent reason sucks. I miss beer and cocktails. This gestational diabetes (or pregnancy-related glucose intolerance) that I have magically developed can seriously go fuck itself. But overall, it is really not that bad. I have little right to complain about it–this was definitely planned, I knew what I was in for, I work at a sedentary job that does not require me to do anything particularly strenuous. I will, however, say that it is very weird having something alive inside of you that occasionally thumps against your innards.

So I’ve been pretty quiet about this overall, with no EPIC FACEBOOK ANNOUNCEMENTS about my delicate condition. I feel awkward telling high school classmates from 21+ years ago know that I’m having my first baby, at the ripe old age of 37. There are people I went to high school with who are grandparents. In their late 30s. But what the hell…I was always a late bloomer. That’s what happens when you skip kindergarten.

—

Tim is sitting next to me on the couch, messing around with Picasa. He’s got a bunch of hard drives backed up on his laptop, including his mother’s, so he has apparently imported a bunch of pictures of his mother’s friends onto his laptop. And also a picture that I took of him while he was eating something. I don’t know why I took such an unflattering picture (or, more accurately, why I kept it) but it’s impossible to tell whether Tim is putting something into his mouth or regurgitating something out of his mouth. Charming!

—

So I will try to update more often. Fair warning: some of it may be baby/pregnancy related content, but I won’t be icky about it. I will not post pictures of the birth or the placenta or a slimy newborn or anything like that. There will be no poopy diaper stories. I will steer clear of the TMI, because nobody gives a crap about what’s happening to my body except for me. And maybe Tim.

The one thing I will share with you as part of my birth story: whether I remember to grab my husband’s ass when I am in labor. I told him I would. He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I will be “too busy” and will forget about it. I reminded him that there are downtimes between the contractions, and I’ll grab his ass then. Now that it’s in writing, I have to do it. Maybe I will take a picture and share it with everyone on Facebook. “Look! Here’s me grabbing my husband’s ass while I’m in labor!”

I will leave you with this harrowing story of prenatal yoga, which I posted to a web board for women due in December:

I’ve been in prenatal yoga for the last six weeks or so, and my experiences have ranged from awesome to eye-rollingly irritating. The usual instructor for the prenatal class around here is very hippy-dippy, and last night she had us visualizing a light shining from between our eyebrows, down our spine, through our womb, and out through our perineum. All I could think about was shooting a laser out my crotch, which made me laugh during what was supposed to be a Very Serious Visualization Moment. If I could shoot lasers out of my crotch, I’d be making money off of it, because I am opportunistic like that.

Also, she must have said “perineum” fifty times during the hour-and-a-half class last night. I’m not squicky about my body or anything like that, but there comes a point where I have pondered my perineum enough for one evening, and I don’t wish to think about it any further.

I urge you all to spend a few minutes each day breathing deeply, contemplating your taint, and imagining lasers shooting out of your genitals. If you can do this while sitting on an exercise ball, you get bonus points.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Breakfast, and love.

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Nanette

This morning, Tim and I went to breakfast. I am not a big fan of going out for breakfast. Breakfast food is merely OK to me, so any time that I consent to going out to breakfast Tim is all over that. So we went to a local farm where breakfast is served.

The place was lousy with the usual suspects: foodies, hippies, and smug parents. But the breakfast was good.

When we were sitting at the table eating our savory scone (which contained sausage, cheese, and sun-dried tomatoes), I turned to Tim and said, “I want to punch that guy.”

Tim said, “the one with the hat?”

I said, “You know me so well. That is why I love you. Because you were able to instantly identify the specific guy I wanted to punch out of the hundred or so people in this crowded room.”

Posted in and Eating Food, Food | 1 Comment

“Here’s a tip: you can take a lot of abuse if you exchange your skin for leather.”

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Nanette

Tim and I are on a quest to actually see all of the movies nominated for Best Picture and Best Documentary this year. We are doing pretty well thus far, although it looks like I’m going to have to watch Toy Story 3, which I have been mysteriously trying to avoid like it’s some kind of violent, boil-inducing plague. (Really, I am afraid it’s going to make me cry, and I always feel like a complete dipshit for crying over an animated movie.)

We watched The Social Network last night. I enjoyed it and was surprised that I did, since it was directed by David Fincher, who is responsible for Fight Club, a.k.a. that steaming turd of a movie that (almost) every young man of a certain age was obsessed with circa 2000, because they were all so damn tortured and it really spoke to them. I think I had a conversation with Tim soon after we started seeing each other to ensure that he was not obsessed with Fight Club. I just asked him how he feels about the movie Fight Club and he responded with, “I don’t know, why?” which is as good as it gets.

So we have now seen The King’s Speech (which I enjoyed muchly), Black Swan (weird in that Darren Aronofsky sort of way but good), and True Grit (which was awesome). Inception, Winter’s Bone, and Toy Story 3 are on the DVD pile. If I have to watch Toy Story 3, Tim has to watch James Franco cut off his arm in 127 Hours. It is only fair.

And then there is Marky Mark in The Fighter. Thinking about Marky Mark gives me flashbacks to the jazz dance class that I took during my junior year in college (and that I almost failed). I will attempt to see that in the near future.

—

Anyhow, Trent Reznor is nominated for an Oscar for his score for The Social Network. I am wondering if he’ll show up to the ceremony wearing leather pants and a fishnet shirt. Seventeen years ago, I would have been going batshit crazy about this, but now I’m pretty indifferent. I haven’t followed Nine Inch Nails for years, other than watching the slow-motion trainwreck that was Trent Reznor’s personal life as displayed on Twitter. In case you missed it: he got himself a ladyfriend, some groupies got jealous and said nasty things about said ladyfriend (the usual girl-on-girl crime: “she’s a gold-digger!” “what a whore!” etc.), and Reznor flounced off of Twitter in a most epic fashion.

For someone who’s been a celebrity of sorts since 1989 (yes! when I was in high school!) he sure has a thin skin. If someone called Tim a gold-digger and a whore, I would just brush it off.

—

Apparently, Snowmageddon is about to hit central Illinois, and I have been obsessively following the coverage. The weatherpeople keep referring to a winter storm that hit right around New Year’s 1999 (January 1-3, 1999, to be exact). I would have still been in the Chicago area at that time, so I was trying to remember this particular event. I think I had gone to the Neo-Futurarium for New Year’s Eve, and I vaguely remember snow and having problems getting a cab and sleeping on Matty’s floor or something, but I don’t remember 20 inches of snow. Which simply proves that I spent much of my mid-20s with my head up my ass.

And that is all for now.

Posted in Crotchety Gen-Xer Stuff, Pop Goes Your Culture | 2 Comments

Moustache Culture.

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Nanette

(Note: this is something that I started writing back in October or something, so it is a little out of date, but the opinions expressed still hold true.)

I hate to pick on Threadless, because a) I own many of their shirts; and b) two of my very awesome cousins work there. But one of their latest design challenges is to design a shirt that celebrates the “moustache culture,” which reminds me of, well, pretty much everything I can’t stand about kids these days. And by “kids these days,” I mean urban hipsters in their 20s. Or, if I’m feeling particularly cranky, millennials as a whole.

I know moustaches have been the thing for a while, right along with those fucking Beardy McWeirdy mountain-man beards. (Those beards make me extra-glad that I was born in 1974 and not 1984, because I’d hate to have to make out with some guy who looks like he slapped some glue on his chin and got frisky with the garbage can in a bikini-waxing salon.) I remember getting a little hand mirror with a moustache design on the back as swag from some yarn club or another, and I remember looking at said mirror and thinking to myself, “this would be a handy and useful item if it wasn’t for the stupid moustache on the back.”

To me, this boils down to nostalgia. When I was in my twenties, my friends and I were nostalgic for the dumb pop culture of our youth and teens. Positive K’s “I Got a Man”? Check. Transformers? Uh-huh. Bad 1980s sitcoms? We could quote ‘em like champions! We were nostalgic for things we had actually experienced. People in their twenties now are nostalgic for things that a) are hideous; and b) were out of fashion years before they were even born. Either that, or they are recycling the worst of the 1980s, like those nasty, brightly-colored plastic sunglasses that everyone used to wear. You know, the ones that would break if you looked out of them sideways.

I am, admittedly, bitter about millennials. I’m sick of hearing about how their skills with social networking and their loyalty and their chipper, upbeat, can-do attitude is going to save the world. In the library world, they’re catered to with special leadership programs and committees and various enticements to attract them to libraries and make them stay. Nobody ever kissed Gen X’s ass like that, and if they did, it wasn’t as egregious. We were expected to learn how to lead on our own. If I hear another baby boomer give another library conference presentation that talks about how millennials are the next generation of leaders in libraries, I’m going to rush the stage. Or, more likely, roll my eyes and blog about it, because I’m too much of a slacker to get out of my seat.

Posted in Crotchety Gen-Xer Stuff, Library Things, Pop Goes Your Culture | 2 Comments

Yeah, I need to write more.

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Nanette

So it’s a new year (go 2011!) and I am on my regular January trip to ALA Midwinter, which is taking place in San Diego this year. So while my husband and co-workers are freezing their behinds off in 20-degree Illinois, I’m walking around in a light sweater in sunny-ish southern California. Yay that, I suppose. My only concern at this point is getting home on Tuesday, because I really do not want to get stuck somewhere because of Snowmageddon (or three piddling inches of “the white stuff,” as cheesy weatherpeople say).

I am not much for New Year’s resolutions–as a matter of fact, they kind of tick me off. Back before Tim and I bought exercise equipment so we could ignore it at home, we belonged to a gym, and the few weeks after New Year’s used to be really irritating because the gym was always crowded with people who were determined to make this the Year that They Lose Weight, so I couldn’t get one of the good treadmills.  But there is something about the beginning of the new year that makes me want to make plans anyhow. Perhaps it’s just something ingrained in the collective unconscious that causes me to buy into it.

So yeah. Here’s some things I will attempt to do this year.

1. Learn to quilt. My grandmother is an amazing quilter. My mom is an excellent quilter. I once bought a “sew your own quilt!” kit aimed at children and got about halfway through it before I pooped out and hid it in the back of the closet. So this will be the year that I learn to cut, piece, and quilt. I bought a collection of pre-cut fabric called a honey bun when I was in Ohio for Christmas, and on Christmas Day I spent some time piecing and cutting under my mom’s expert guidance. The result will be a new lap quilt for my wife lair, AKA the basement, which we are currently finishing/paying someone who knows what they are doing to finish. It is called the wife lair because it has purple walls and a lime green bathroom, so it is obviously the sort of place I will hole up in.

2. Finish craft projects that I start. I am notorious for starting things and not finishing them. I have five single socks in my knitting basket that are waiting for me to knit their mate. I know I could just wear them mismatched, but you all know that I’m not down with that kind of whimsy, right?

I also have an afghan that I started knitting on my second wedding anniversary. In 2011, I’ll be celebrating my seventh wedding anniversary. I would say it is about time I finished that afghan.

I made some good progress on this front during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. I finished a bunch of projects that week, and I’m trying to keep up that momentum so I can start some new stuff.

3. Do more writing. See: the title of this post. I got all excited about having this webspace, and I’ve done very little with it since. Writing more will mean making more time for writing, which is the issue here. Back in the olden days, I made time for writing. I didn’t have as many hobbies or responsibilities as I have now, which meant more free time to write. I also didn’t watch very much TV back then, and that has changed.  It’s really cool that I have an extensive record of approximately two years of my life, warts and all. I’d like to have that again.

—-

Anyway, I am at ALA, as I said earlier. And part of the joy of being at ALA is getting some free stuff. I think library vendors and publishers might be starting to feel the economic recovery, because the quality of the freebies has improved quite a bit. I am pretty discriminating about what I pick up at ALA, because I know that I have to transport it home somehow, and once I get it home I need to find a place to put it. Experience has made me picky. I don’t feel compelled to grab every tote bag or galley that I see, only tote bags and galleys that I actually like.

So here’s the galleys/finished copies I’ve picked up thus far:

  • The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure. I have started reading this already and will have a full report for you when I’m finished with it.
  • The Archaeology of Home by Katharine Greider. Memoir/microhistory/domestic history. My kind of thing.
  • Teeth: Vampire Tales. Escapist YA vampire fiction, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, who edited a number of really good anthologies. I’ll read this and pass it along to the girl I mentor, who is obsessed with vampires.
  • Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater. One of my favorite childhood books–it’s being reissued as part of the New York Review Children’s Collection. I will probably purchase a hardcover copy once it’s released. This book is gleefully weird. I read it over and over and over when I was in 4th and 5th grade.
  • Skinny by Diana Spechler. Women’s fiction, I presume.
  • The Preacher by Camilla Lackberg. Swedish suspense/mystery. Surprise! It is being compared to Stieg Larsson.
  • Vixen by Jillian Larkin. YA historical fiction. I think this is supposed to be Gossip Girl in 1920s Chicago. These are two things that I like.
  • Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth. I paid $5 for this (cheaper than the Kindle edition). Tudor-era historical fiction. What’s not to like?

Tomorrow’s the last day of the exhibits, so I might sweep through and pick up some more stuff, especially if there are cheap romance paperbacks.

—

One more thing: in addition to my current reading challenge (which I am woefully behind on), I’m signing up for Historical Tapestry’s Historical Fiction Challenge 2011. With all of the reviewing that I do, I think I can take on the Severe Bookaholism level.

Also, I’m on Goodreads now, and you can be my reading BFF and see what kind of smut books I am reading at any given time.

—

Oh, and it looks like the CSS for this site is broken again, thanks to a WordPress upgrade. When I first started working on this web site, I got really cranky and irritated because I wanted the canned blog title header at the top of the page to disappear, because I wanted to use my simple graphic instead. I couldn’t figure out how to make it happen. Then…

Tim: What’s wrong? What are you trying to do?

Me: This stupid CSS won’t work. I want this to GO AWAY!

Tim: Here, let me look at it. (Takes laptop, looks at source code, presses some keys, saves.) I think it is fixed now. (Reloads page)

Me: I didn’t know that you know CSS!

Tim: Of course I know CSS!

So rather than spending hours slaving over CSS that I only partially understand, I’ll let Tim handle it when I get home! So you will please pardon the redundant titles at the top of the page.

Posted in Books & Reading, Library Things | Leave a comment