clearbluecup

I would like to write something witty, clever and short to introduce some links I found today... but I also want to go to bed now. so, I hope that was witty and clever enough. (oh, am I lazy or just pragmatic these days?)

Two links to New York Magazine - Kids, The Internet and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll. (Via Ariel at Electrolicious) and The Power and Peril of Praising Your Kids. Now that I have a child articles like these are more compelling, but even from a psychological standpoint it is interesting to look at motivation and how to encourage people (even one's self) to work harder without constant rewards.

"The videotape also shows a man in a Superman costume walking around the car, but he did not stop to help the driver or any of the victims. His identity is unknown." Huh??

"He said: 'We did not know until the day of section that this baby was outside the womb. It was an absolute shock.'" Yikes.

You are given a moment. What do you do with it? Does what you do depend on how much time you know you will have available to you? Do you need an uninterrupted segment of time in order to actually accomplish things?

I am not usually an ADD-type personality, but I feel like parenting has reduced my attention span and drive to engage in things. I am the queen of multi-tasking, but it's gotten to the point where I can only attend to something in sound-bite sized amounts of time. Even if I have more than a sound-bite of time available, I flick to something else anyway. For example, when Bea wakes up every hour or two, I get accustomed to that and tend to wake up just before she does. When she sleeps longer stretches again, I continue to have broken sleep because I expect to be interrupted.

I think it was Virginia Woolf who said that in order to be a writer one needed £500 a year and a room with a lock on the door.

I don't want to complain about being a parent - I chose this role, am continuing to choose it and really do enjoy it most of the time. But I need to either refine my time-management skills, so that I can make the most of the fragmented time I have available to do things, or refine my expectations. Or both. But sitting on the couch gorging on crystallized ginger and watching TV shows is not exactly a useful way to spend my time.

On Saturday night, I was feeling sick. Tom had just gotten back from being away in Toronto for three days, and Bea wasn't sleeping well because she is teething and/or having a growth spurt. Actually, her lack of sleep could really be due to any reason you can think of - a rock fell off a ledge in South America, the cat sneezed and Venus entered Gemini, etc. Your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, all I wanted was to lie in bed and veg out for a bit, while taking care of Bea and hanging out with Tom. So we grabbed our books and camped out in our big bed for the evening. It was one of those moments that make me think, "I want to remember this". Bea was lying between us happily playing with her cloth book and we were the picture of happy family contentment.

Beatrice has just learned to laugh in the past week or so. Yesterday we were walking home from buying groceries for dinner, and Bea was on my front in the didymos. Suddenly she started laughing at something she saw, and I looked down and saw her laughing and burst out laughing myself. Then she started laughing at me laughing, and there we were, standing on the sidewalk both giggling away like we were sharing in some hilarious inside joke.

I just wish I knew what she was laughing at in the first place.... :)

Now that I feel like I've settled somewhat into life as a stay-at-home mom, I've started trying to refine my goals and challenges. It would be very easy to sink into the pit of quicksand that is depressive lethargy, and I find myself slipping in that direction at times. But I'm working hard at keeping myself out of that, recognizing when I do just need some quiet time at home (which is more than most people need, I think) and creating some challenges for myself.

One of those challenges ties into my new year's resolution to be more organized. You may remember this from such writing topics as "my cleaning schedule" and other exciting variations on that theme. Well, now I've branched out into frugality. I suppose this is, in it's simplest form, being organized with one's finances. And more than just organized, but being mindful in spending so as to maximize savings and minimize expenditures. It's been a gradual shift in my awareness over the past few months, but after finishing The Tightwad Gazette a few days ago I have started to put some things into action. Like creating a price book - a record of the lowest prices I've seen for the regular things we buy. "Who has the time and energy to figure out which store has the lowest prices on rolled oats?" I can hear you all asking yourselves. "Like she really has time in between taking her baby to the potty 20 times a day, cleaning the house from top to bottom every week and washing cloth diapers, now she's going to start shopping at 14 different stores?"

Call me a sucker for punishment if you like, but once the idea of reducing spending took root in my head the prospect of creating a price book seemed interesting. When I was earning money I didn't really care if I was paying the lowest price for something, as long as I could afford the price I was paying. But now that I'm not earning and the idea of saving has become much more appealing, that money we want to save has to come from somewhere. And our grocery bill is our biggest expense after rent, so it seems a logical place to start.

Then I discovered that there is a listing of free stuff on craigslist. The stuff people give away! For nothing!! Lots of it is junk, of course, but some of it looks useful. And if you had the time/energy/tools to do basic furniture refinishing, there could be money to be made in selling the refinished pieces.

Of course, all things should be approached in moderation, at least at first. The Tightwad Gazette recommends saving such things as margarine tubs (cheapo tupperware) and egg cartons (for kids crafts, making princess crowns, etc). Apparrently even those metal lids on frozen juice cans have a million and one uses. However, it's a fine line between frugal housewife and crazy hoarding lady who has a basement crammed full of empty egg cartons and old newspapers. I'm sending my egg cartons to the recycling bin with reckless abandon, although I will admit to saving the juice lid after making juice last night though. Keep your eyes peeled for a Joan of Arc halloween costume in the future (sometime around 2017, I'd say).

after a day of "running" errands with bea in the pouring rain, which has been incessantly pouring for about two weeks straight, I am so glad to be back inside.

running is really the wrong word for the kind of errands we do. I had three things on my list to do today - apply for bea's SIN, go to a new grocery store and return the bottles to the depot. this took me six hours, involved two trips back to the house, several missed turns, two diaper changes and two feedings inside the car, and I think I listened to the CD I brought five times.

it's time for a hot chocolate beside the fire, I think.