clearbluecup

liquid blog - full of beautiful gardens, textiles, illustrations, la la la. lovely.

loobylu - she's excited about finding fabrics! she posts links to magazines that feature knitted robots on the cover! this site inspires me to get going on my own crafty projects....

the only things I've been creating these days are sweet baked goods and tidy gardens. last night I made cinnamon buns, the lovely sticky sugary kind. mmmm. I can feel my blood sugar levels seesawing just thinking about eating one, but oh! they're wonderful. if I do say so myself.

to spend a rainy day

than curled up with a big fat indian novel?

On Sunday I spent hours upon hours curled up in a duvet cradling the enormity of A Suitable Boy in my lap, relishing every intricate detail and description I read. It's the literary equivalent of a Persian rug, or the embroidery and beading on an expensive silk sari. It's like reading a raga. I'm finding that time just slips away from me when I start reading, and I only look up when my stomach rumbles or my wrists start to ache.

There's something about the huge weight of the book itself that makes it delicious to me, all 1474 pages of it. It's clearly self-indulgent in the expansiveness and lack of restraint shown by the author. But unlike some kinds of artistic self-indulgence, (hello certain genres of soloist ego-stroking jazz) Seth has a mastery over pacing. We alternate between the world of women and the world of men in post-independece India with dancelike grace, moving from business deals to doting grandmothers, and yet the whole elaborate scene holds together. I aspire to be so adept at the craft of words. It's like there are invisible silken spider threads in the dialogue and description, some there for structure and some to catch your heart.

The characters swirl around each other, one providing the contrast for the next. The government minister and the lazy young man. The dutiful pregnant wife and the young daughter with a crush on a boy from a forbidden faith. The courtesan and the cheat. And through it all the sensuous language of India resonates. I find myself rolling words around in my mouth, letting them drift over my tongue like chocolate or fine wine. Meenakshi. Tonga-wallah. Zenana.

I'm interested to see if the book gets bogged down later on. The potential is there, perhaps too much talk of politics or too little change in the characters and the momentum is lost. But so far it's got a lively melody all it's own.

So I've made a few big changes in the past week or two. I've been keeping them a bit hush-hush, firstly because I wasn't sure it was all going to pan out until I'd finished doing all my research, and secondly cause I'm a little superstitious like that and didn't want to jinx it. But it's all systems go now, so I can tell you a bit about what's been going on behind the scenes.

It all started when tom said to me over lunch one day, "Is it alright if I don't get a job right away after my thesis is done? I'm really stressing out over this." My first reaction? I wanted to be supportive but there was another (loud) voice in my head saying something like, "ahhhhh, how will we provide for our child and what do you mean you don't want to find a job and why did you want to get the phd anyway and we can't both be unemployed bums!" That last one resonated around and around in my head. We can't both be unemployed. If it is ok for me to be unemployed, why is it not ok for tom to be unemployed? Do I really need to be unemployed anyway? Sure, I'm not exactly a prime choice for employers at the moment, but there are ways of earning money that don't involve having to wear pantyhose and heels, showing up at 9 and leaving at 5, or selling one's soul to the corporate machine in any other number of ways.

I googled freelance writing and found heaps and heaps of websites describing how to be a freelance writer, how to do things like pay your bills and set up your home office and decide how much to charge. I also found several websites devoted to WAHMs - Work At Home Moms.. I liked the sound of that. Like, "WHAM, take that commuter traffic and business casual clothes! I will raise my child and earn a bit of money AT THE SAME TIME!!!" I put in a few applications, checked for scams and got a callback the very next day from a transcription company that was interested in sending me a test to see how I would do. I started doing calculations, first in my head and then in excel, crunching numbers and comparing financial options. Never in my life have I felt as practical as I do these days. Once I realised the bottom line is my own and I am fully responsible for it, I became highly motivated to work to preserve it.

Right around the same time as all this I had a dream that I was at some kind of retreat centre/camp/yoga ashram, and I was helping people repair the building, which was made out of logs and sticks. First I was blocking up the spaces between the sticks behind a countertop, where wind and cold drafts could blow in. I fluffed up bits of wool and wrapped them around the sticks. Someone came along and told me that the wind could get through anyway and that I needed to find more sticks to weave in there to make a more effective wind block. So off I went, with a small swiss army knife in hand, looking for sticks. I found some that were the size of toothpicks, that crumbled a bit in my hand when I picked them up. I looked some more, and found really nice bamboo poles that looked perfect for the job, long and narrow and flexible. As I went to pick them up someone else came along and told me they were reserved for the summer games program, and couldn't be used for building work. I set off again to look some more, a little worried that I wouldn't find the right sticks but optimistic that given enough time I could find what I needed.

When I woke up and described my dream to tom, the meaning popped into my head in one giant flash. I'm nest building. My mother hen instinct is awakening, and I'm busy looking for sticks to protect us from the harsh winter. Cheep cheep, flap flap.

So, yesterday I handed in the form to register myself as a self-employed person, and today I signed off social welfare. I am certain that the benefits outweigh the risks of doing so, and I am surprisingly energised by having more work and responsibilities now. This afternoon I drove myself around town, running errands, and the sun was shining and the radio was playing groovy tunes. I rolled down my window, put on my sunglasses, and enjoyed the rhythm of driving. Somewhere in the past few months shifting gears has become effortless. How did that happen? I used to be in tears over this, hot, bitter tears of frustration. I thought I'd never master the skill. And now it's enjoyable?

I'm starting to like being in the driver's seat.

We're moving webspace right now, and many things don't look or work as they should. In fact, you might not have been able to get here at all for a day or two because of boring technical details related to shutting off the redirect that pointed clearbluecup.net to our old webspace. The photo galleries are also down at the moment.

I hope to have everything back to functional, at least, and looking the way it did before, I hope, by the end of the week.

I know I dissapeared for a while there, but here's what happened: We shifted the site over to our own webspace at carchrae.net, then I couldn't figure out where anything was or how to update it for a while. When I did manage to figure all that out, I started fixing things and loading directories of photos into the new gallery software, and I realized that in order to fix ALL the broken photo links on this site I would be sitting in front of the computer for days and days on end. The thought of that was too depressing for words and so I picked the "avoidance" coping strategy. "If don't look at it or think about it, the problem will go away on it's own." And it didn't. And so here I am, pretending that nothing is wrong and I'll just continue writing posts like there is nothing broken about my website.

It was actually quite the illuminating experience when Tom moved the site. I had gotten so used to the way things were that I felt totally and completely lost trying to do incredibly simple things once they had changed, and started feeling really dumb and hopeless and miserable and got cranky with Tom for not magically imparting all his computer knowledge into my brain prior to the transfer. I didn't realize how irrational, "Why didn't you make sure I knew what I would need to be able to do before you changed everything" sounded until it actually came out of my mouth. And then I sulked and felt bad for a while before I realized that I am going to have to get used to this feeling of not being able to do simple things because I'm probably going to be in that situation for a good few months this fall. Haven't been outside of the house in days? Couldn't manage to have a shower today? Can't even hold my eyelids open? Welcome to life with a newborn.

In more positive news, I've started swimming again. I love swimming, but I love it even more now that I'm pregnant. On land I am approaching the "dinosaur" stage of pregnancy. I feel heavy when I walk, when I sit, when I lie down, when I climb stairs. Small expenditures of energy make me feel breathless, and my ribs are starting to be pushed out by my expanding belly when I sit or ride in the car, which is actually my most uncomfortable pregnancy experience so far. But in the water I feel like my body hasn't changed at all. I feel light, weightless even. Bouyant. I still get tired sooner than I would have before, but apart from that swimming feels exactly the same: smooth, soothing and meditative.

The only problem with swimming while pregnant? Having to find a bathing suit that fits. Oh. My. God. If bathing suit shopping is horrific for you NORMALLY, do not even attempt this while pregnant. Or take along an enormous dose of humour and self-esteem. The "maternity" suits fit like a burlap sack, the cheap bikinis were downright obscene, and the really nice maternity suit was twice what I was willing to spend for a maximum of three month's use. I ended up with a slightly-more-expensive bikini two sizes bigger than usual, and it's red with white polka dots. If I'm going to be obviously pregnant, let's not beat around the bush trying to hide it. I will wear the TEENY WEENY POLKA DOT BIKINI and it will proclaim to the world, "This woman is growing a baby in her belly! Look, there it is! Can you see it moving?" It's a good thing the only people at the pool this morning were the older ladies at the aquasize class who probably didn't even notice, and wouldn't have cared if they did.

So, yes. That's about it in my life at the moment: new website hosting, sore ribs and a red bikini. We're hoping to plan a holiday to England soon, like in the next month. After that I'll be busy frantically running around buying a million things before baby makes his or her grand entrance into the world. I'm also considering switching to having a homebirth, but the decision hasn't been made yet. (I can feel all of you gasping and saying, "A homebirth? Is she crazy?", but I promise you I have done a LOT of research on this and need to do some more before I'm sure it's the right thing for us.) But rest assured it is quite safe, perhaps even safer than a medicalized hospital birth. And we live 3.5 minute's drive from the maternity hospital I would be delivering at, so if we do need to be there at any stage it is practically in our backyard.

Also, if anybody out there was thinking about buying us things for the baby, (come on, I know you're all dying to go shopping for baby socks!) I have made up a list. It's mostly to help me tackle this project that is Getting Ready for Baby in an organized and sensible way, but it is also essentially a list of the things we will need, the things that would be nice to have, and the lovely luxuries we probably won't buy for ourselves, but if anyone feels like a wealthy and generous benefactor we'd be delighted to receive as gifts. So I will leave you with our Wish List. The links I've included are mostly for the purposes of pictures, or if you wanted to buy/send things online. We'd be happy to have similar things that are different brands/styles/colours, etc. Where I've included a brand name on the list it's for an item that I think is especially good quality or I've had my eye on that particular product. /shameless self-promotion : )

Edit: Due to some more technical difficulties, I haven't been able to create a new page for my wish list, as I would have liked to do. So, I've included it in this entry. Click on the link titled MORE just below and it will display the list. Hopefully I'll have fixed this tomorrow and will have a proper link.

Because I'm having a total mental block when it comes to website maintenance, I've decided the easiest way to post my list is just to create a new entry. It's not fancy, but it works. I've also fixed the link in the sidebar.

Baby Wish List

Needs

Onelife Cloth Nappies

Muslin Squares

Baby Socks

Newborn Hats

Tomy Baby Monitor (with lights)

Bjorn (Carrier)

Cotton Blankets

Moby Wrap

Cot Sheets – fitted, cot bed size

Cot Sheets – flat, cot bed size

Moses Basket Sheets – flat, moses basket size



Nice to Haves

Green Baby clothes (unisex please, we don’t know if baby is a girl or boy yet) – I like pretty much everything on this site, but especially these:

sleepgown, wrap around bodysuit (in Baby Basics)

babygrow & bodysuit

stripe dungaree (in pages 5-9 of catalogue)

stripe playsuit

Organic Kimono Vest

Organic Cotton baby gown

Hooded Towels

Baby Sleeping Bag (size 6-18months)

Travel Cot/Playpen



Luxuries



Dutalier Glider & Footrest

Glamourmom nursing tank