The insanity

I am so trying to learn to podcast and it is making me nutty. I just get into this mindset of "MUST TRY" and I will create a tunnel of psycho that I cannot escape from until I succeed..Oh well...I tried and I have no idea if you all can hear this at all and if you can you probably won't want to bc it is so crusty and not professional at all
YET...but, I am a stubborn bitch and I will get this
someday
soon
I am going to make nice with a computer person this weekend
like bake em something chocolaty and smile a lot
and beg for guidance.
Anyhoo HERE IT IS
much love
I try

because it is what you do

frozen moments today
he asks why I am taking his pictures
when he is being silly
I tell him so that one day
a long time from now
I will be able to find a smile
when I need one

Podcasting or Blogcasting or Dooblehvay...Here it comes

Podcast #1
http://www.archive.org/details/amytsharpmyfirsttime

daily itinerary needed here

So I am starting to like the fact that I am older and wiser and that I know who I am nowadays. Sucky part is that I so know who I am.

When I left my job I thought that each day at home would come scripted with an outlook calendar. I mean, I thought the day would unfold much like my professional one- I would tackle projects and assignments and kids and tick each one off in an orderly fashion and reward my self with lattes...like always. I would have a schedule and semblance of order. Nope. Not even close.

I am a bit freaked out at how a day can float out of my life and I am still in sweatpants. How is this possible. I get a bit anxious when I think about my lack of order. I mean, I am living in chaos...this is one problem..but, the bigger picture is that I just don't know how to do it all and not lose the time for myself. I have to write and create and play with these beautiful boys. I must work on my freelance work and clean the house and cook meals and entertain the sexy husband. I try and comb my hair and paint my toenails and shave my legs. I want to wear lipstick.

How is one supposed to balance this all? I am also taking Finn out of the two day preschool as of this week to save some money until 2008...So there is more stress. I have to compete with his old teacher who was a sage and wore a fedora? I mean, what are some possible daily schedule for me? I really need some advice...Currently I stay up late and sleep until the baby wakes and then get up....Should I be getting up early? Should I apply lipstick before bed?
Aidez Moi?

Run Jenny Run

Jen is running the NYC marathon in a couple weeks. I made her some good luck panties. Unfortunately I am taking my sewing class in November. But, I did stitch it with love. I am so proud of this gal. I don't run. It is a particular type of hell for me, much like mathematics. But, for her it is golden time. She can run 26 miles. Amazing. Today I tried to be healthy and push the stroller rather quickly the Starbucks that is located 30 yards from my front door. I was done. Run Jenny Run.

Actual downloads from Starbucks 2 free itunes card today:
Eddie Money " I wanna go back" Yeah. I know. My head hangs in shame.
The Cure "boys don't cry" Yeah. I liked it better in 1989.
I'm sure everyone has some lil secrets on their ipod. Shit they don't unleash at the party. I am helpless for memory music.

One more thing. At a board meeting I attended tonight I learned something so freaking cool about this woman. She has a kick ass last name. Gratitude.
Love it. Well, back story is that her and her husband chose a new name together when they married. He dropped his. She dropped hers. They chose one together that symbolized their lives. That is ace. She is really living her one small life. I love a risk.

The "er" ones are my favorite

September
October
November
December
October...I shed my prufrockian skin and sent an article query letter away to a magazine. I am slowly doing this thing called acting out on my dreams. They are good ones. I had a dream that I tattooed "life is for living"on my wrist. It was kinda sexy.

Elizabeth Vargas-you lucky bitch

I was eighteen and riding a train through Europe and a man I knew gave me his CD Walkman to listen to as I became restless. I heard Marc Cohn for the first time as my eyes settled on the landscape and I fell right in love. I liked alternative music and wore Cure concert tees and was a bad ass but my God...I just loved this man and his voice and the lyrics and the way I felt stitched in the heart and side. It wasn't that "Walking in Memphis" song that got me...it was just the whole soundtrack to my travels from that train ride. I have followed his career ever since- he is a tinker though- does not pound out the albums really- but the small few are treasured. I think he had lot in his life to drive him to write again...After a decade he has a new disk. "Join the Parade"
listening right now
He was carjacked and shot in the head in 2005 and remarkably walked away without major medical injury, was deeply affected by Hurricane Katrina, went through a divorce, remarried Elizabeth Vargas and had children...I read somewhere that at one point after the carjacking he had so much inspiration that he could not stop the song writing process- they just kept coming...

I hope they keep coming. I like this album a lot. "Listening to Levon" is a good one.
His music has been a part of the soundtrack of my life for a long time.
I'm wistful tonight
thinking of that eighteenth year
Europe
a different life
that train


P.S. welcome to the world little Nora Sinead
we are glad you are here

The trees touch in the middle

I think it was the movie "Big" with Tom Hanks that I first saw the street I did not have. I saw this idyllic tree lined street flanked with beautiful large homes and it was Autumn and everything shined and the trees touched in the middle
like a canopy of perfection
I never lived like that
always before in the woods
or small college towns
or a little island
or an urban city
I never had that
until today while driving home
I looked
the pavement slick with rain
crimson and russet leaves sticking
mostly cool and some wind stirring
my car sped past the houses
that were lovely and above my head the trees
touching like lovers
just like I always wanted
the music on the radio was a soundtrack to a movie moment in my life

yes, I have another house on the market that won't sell and is sucking money left and right and I have problems like the whole wide world
but, the trees touch
in the middle
and sometimes you can get what you need

reinvention of modern mama

It's silly how we get so attatched to our hair-how it tries to define us...I was holding on to this long hair for no good reason. I wore a bun daily...looking like Ma Ingall's and did not care for it. Sure, it looked hot and like Botticelli when I would do it once a month..but really...I did not need it anymore. I was feeling for a while that I needed to look more modern and fresh and actually wear my hair down. I love it now-shorter in the back- darker-swingy... No regrets. I sit here on the couch and type on my new macbook(how did I live before?) and catch my reflection in the mirror across the way- hey girl..you look alright.

you don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows

I wish I would have known that being the most popular girl at Camp Otterbein would have meant nothing twenty years into future. That being said, the same goes for class clown, undercover slut, and biggest bullshitter during formative high school years. It was tough work and for nothing really. Fast forward to motherhood and I am without the minions flocking wildly to be with me. I am at times alone and a bit deflated by the reality of my idealistic interpretation of family social life a few years back. I imagined a baby on my hip and toddler in tow at fabulous dinner parties. I saw three nights a week out and wine tasting with my girlfriends once a month. I hoped for impromptu holidays, whirlwind shopping days, and Saturday coffee klatch. Not happening. I am a happy woman. I have a wonderful life. My husband of eight years and my two boys are the solidity of my life. I am a productive member of society and I matter. Yet, my once strong social self has withered into a woman who rarely goes to the movies. A woman who after leaving the workforce just recently does not really brush her hair much. And when I do go out for drinks with the gals, I am the one sent home in a taxi at 11 pm because I have once again tried to recapture the 90’s in a bar.

I miss my girlfriends. It is not the same anymore and I know why. Relationships are in a state of flux at all times as everything is relative to where you stand in your life. Every friendship has to be able to weather the shit life gives. It seems that each of my girlfriends have been going through major life issues such as birth, death, love, hate, and other big ones at radically different times. I'm sure it is truly shitty to have to sit and watch your BFF unwrap onesies and Gdiapers days after miscarrying a child or being in wedding party weeks after your partner leaves you for yr neighbor. I feel like we are all silently pretending to understand and empathize properly. I mourn my old life where we were all on basically the same playing field and we could relate. I always thought I was different from the masses because I had neatly created the perfect friendship circle that nothing could break nor change. I did not want new friends and I clung to the idea that nothing would change. Ever. I was not bending to that whole relativity notion.

After having children I felt trapped between the camps. The “mommies” and the “having funners”. Sometimes I don’t feel like I belong to either. I find it incredibly dull to simply talk about motherhood with other mothers; I‘d rather be mothering. I also feel a dichotomy surrounding my parenting. I tried to breastfeed and was pretty unsuccessful after much effort- so I am not always welcome by judgmental mothers who cannot look past the Similac can in my diaper bag. I also had two C-Sections and apparently that means I am not in the true mama club to some. I am however, pretty crunchy when it comes to most baby raising. I sling and attach the shit out of my boys and I feed em locally grown food that I grind with mama sweat. But then I did try the cloth diaper thing and I really do prefer to use the disposable ones-I am not a menace! I also feed my baby from plastic bottles. Yikes! Yet, I don’t really groove with mainstream mothering at times either. I like natural products for their skin, but I buy Spiderman toothpaste. I don’t want my kids to eat McDonald’s or watch much TV. I detest plastic toys, but my kids have many littering my floor. I am the mother I am and I am learning to accept this about myself. I wanna hang with the mommies, but I want to talk about us and our goals and distractions, not our kids 24/7.


I wanna run with the “having funners” and dance the night away and plan trips to the Greek Isles. But, the “having funners” are too speedy for me right now. Like girls on uppers they fly around on caffeine and put together outfits and work and go straight to happy hour and out on the town so quickly their beautiful faces blur. They know pop culture and what is in and how to behave in the social scene. They are getting degrees and contracts and deals and I feel dizzy. I can’t go anywhere from point A to point B quickly anymore. I lack spontaneity. I try and keep up, but someone always needs a diaper change, a boo boo kissed, or a meal. I actually schedule cleaning and sex at this point. I try and talk to them about my life, the real one I am living right now, but they are bored with my ramblings of what my son can do and how sweet babies smell. I can see it in their eyes that glaze over ever so slightly. I try and talk about what I am going to do soon with my life and I can see how I must look to them, speaking of going back to school as a baby vomits on me and a toddler pulls at my shirt. I wanna be the old me and the new me at the same time and it is impossible.


Just because I miss my old life of debauchery and adoration by several dozen, does not mean that I have not carved out a new type of social scene. I have kept my old friends, just like Girl Scouts taught me so many years ago. (Even though some of them are more brass than gold anymore…I love them still). I now realize that I have different relationships with my old friends presently. I am unable to do all that I did before in terms of the social animal that I was because I choose not to be that person right now. My priorities are different; God when did I grow up? But, I have begun to seek out a new community. It started when I moved to a new neighborhood right before having my first son. I met Kate and she was also pregnant with first child. She and her partner were much more indie and earthy than me and my man. They talked co-ops and tofu, and had incredible grilled cheese parties. It happened naturally though, we became new mothers together and although I did not know it then, I needed a new friend. I think we taught each other things and learned along the way to not judge each other and to just “mother”. I also started a writing group that allowed me to spend some time on myself once a week and mix with other folks. I began to blog and found that there was (as there always is) a million other mothers like me out there feeling the same way. I wasn’t the only one a bit sad and mournful over my old life while simultaneously adoring my new one. I found a whole new community online that allowed me time to stretch out my thoughts and intertwined them with others and learn more about myself as an adult woman and a mother. I joined a co-op playgroup and met families that became not only my son’s playmates, but my friends. It has been slowly working out; the redefinition of me.

I feel more secure about my community nowadays as it is bigger and stronger than I thought possible. It is full of ancient tales of dancing on the bar and new ones of staying up late with babies. It is one that welcomes me from all sides and does not mind if I am away for large stretches of time. I t is one that forgives. It is one that accepts. It is a community that took me a while to sew together, but it is rich with the necessities. I am fortunate enough to once in a while put on my social butterfly costume and run with the “having funners”, but I can also lean into the coziness of the “mommies”. I can finally be me and that is a mix of old and new. I am not losing anything by reaching out more. I am still bad ass and cool. I am still the most popular girl at my house.

I can hardly control myself

I am getting a macbook.
I can't even believe it...I had some unused grant money from so long ago and it is now found its way back into my life in form of...macbook.
I can't wait to get the check
I wait for mail carrier with unabashed delirium
I want to go to that shiny apple store and become
mobile
I type now from the edge of my bed
small desk pushed right up
neck aches
not the writers life
I can't wait
Which one to get?
Does a girl need a pro to write?
Why are the black ones more expensive?
What accessories are needed?
apple heads- I need you.
I will be pod casting by 2008

anus

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071003/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_children_s_health

The worms have arrived

We have started the worm composting process.

I will update in a week and let you all know if it is as easy and low maintenance as I suspect. I am almost giddy with anticipation of sending Finn off to the worm bin with dinner scraps. They are cute -these little garbage disposers.

Fish Pie for baby

I made a simple simple fish pie to celebrate the fact that Blaise is officially eating fish and meats and mostly "our foods" now. He is 8 months and has been blazing through the purees of late and I thought after a intimate encounter with chicken last week that he may want to meet Finn's favorites: pink fish and flaky chicken- that be Salmon and talapia...

so here is a easy fish pie.

fish of choice

peas

carrots

celery

onion

bang it all in a pan with olive oil and saute it....

add some cheese if you like- lemon juice- parsley

add fish

put everything in a big baking dish and top with homemade mash pots

bake about 35-45 mins

OH yummers.

We then blasted the babe's through the fp to make sure it was smooth.

He loved it.

We loved it

It went well with a glass of white wine for the big kids

Here's to you Blaise

Hope you grow up loving fish as much as we all do!

cheers