Schedules

All this past weekend I couldn’t stop thinking about schedules.  The word schedule comes from the Latin schedula or “slip of paper,” a diminutive of scheda, from the Greek skhedē, meaning “papyrus leaf.”  I like that its origins have to do with plants and paper — and writing.

If you read my last post (Take your twins to work — every day) you know that I’ve been struggling with balancing writing and twin-care.  The twins are on a pretty set schedule — wake up, bottle, play, nap, breakfast, play, walk, lunch, nap, play, dinner, walk, play, bottle, bed.  Could I sum up my day in the same simple way?

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Take your twins to work — every day

So April 26th was Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.  I missed it, but it doesn’t matter.  I never take my twins to work — they’re already there.  My twins and my work live in the same place: home.

I’m a writer.  Less than twenty yards separate my workspace from their play-space.  Sometimes they break out of their room, run up to my desk, stand on their tippy toes, their chins perched on the edge, their tiny hands reaching for the corner of a piece of paper, a pen, a paperclip, the coaster under a mug of tea.  They love to grab things and run away, waving their contraband like a pirate flag.  But this is not conducive to writing.

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Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Yesterday I took Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty out of my local library.  Last night I spent an hour slowly leafing through this amazing book.

I am not a fashionista.  My look is beat — like, from the Beat Generation.  Jeans, t-shirt, boots.  Basic, but not sloppy.  Fitted, but not fancy.  I’ll wear a scarf or a watch — a stainless steel Swiss Army, or a chunky plum Zodiac — but rarely jewelry.  Still, I occasionally like to look at fashion magazines — but I’m almost never struck by anything I see there (either in terms of clothing or photography).

How would Jack Kerouac dress today?

Alexander McQueen is different. 

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Conversation vs. connection

I’m always late reading through the Sunday New York Times.  Because I have 14-month-old twins, Sundays have become precious getting-things-done days (since my husband is home to take over the care of said twins).  I try to write on Sundays but I also do a lot of puttering around the house and a lot of reading — including the Sunday paper — but I never manage to quite get through it all.

So this morning I finally got to the the Sunday Review, and this article: The Flight from Conversation.  It starts with a bang:

 We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

Yikes.  When I look at the picture that accompanies the article this seems undeniable.  But is it?

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In praise of tea

I love tea.  My mom before me loved tea.  And her mom before her probably loved tea.  When I was in high school I’d come home and talk with my mom over a cup of tea before I went off to do my homework.  This wasn’t a formal tea — not a British crumpet-y affair — but two cups of Red Rose with plenty of milk and sugar.  Since then I’ve pretty much always had a mid-afternoon cup of tea.  Since I’ve had the twins, this has increased to two pots of tea over the course of the day.

I’ve tried lots of fancy teas — from Upton’s, from Tealuxe (all good stuff) — but the tea I like best is an international blend that I get from an Indian grocery store for about five bucks a bag.  Its logo has a shirtless man in a with a cup of steaming tea in his hand overseeing a tiger (wagh) and a goat (bakri) eating from the same dish at his waist … or maybe they’re drinking from the same bowl of tea.  Whatever they’re doing, this logo only increases my love for this tea.

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Mom insomnia

Way back in November I read a New York Times article called Sleep Medication: Mother’s New Little Helper.  In November the twins were around six months old.  They were sleeping though the night and so was I.

Dear reader, forgive me, but I thought the whole sleepless mom thing was kind of BS.  Not if they were sleepless because they were dealing with 2am feedings, but sleepless they couldn’t stop thinking about things?  Really?

Note to self (and others): when you’re very new to a large and long-established group — like moms  — do not judge them until you have been a member of said group for longer than six months — or six years, or sixteen — or even then!  You have little idea what you’re in for, so stay open to what might be around the corner.

What was around the corner for me was — surprise! — insomnia.

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Why I like Game of Thrones

If you’ve been watching Game of Thrones you’re only a bit of the way into the larger story.  If you’ve been reading the books you’re much further along.  But if you’re totally new to the series (book or HBO), don’t worry — I won’t include any spoilers in this post!

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

I like Game of Thrones because it asks a terrific question:  What happens in the years after a rebellion?  What happens after your greatest love is kidnapped and raped and dead, your closest friends are strangled and burned and dead, your anger has fueled a war that conquers a kingdom and you yourself are now installed on its throne?  What happens

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Titanic and the tsunami ghost ship

The Titanic sank 100 years and some hours ago.  Over 1500 people died.  Sentences do not seem the right vessel to contain this tragedy, but I don’t know what would be.  Not James Cameron’s film (re-released in 3D this week), nor the “Titanic” miniseries on ABC.  Maybe Walter Lord’s book A Night to Remember, which I read in tenth grade English and, sadly, don’t remember.  Why are we required to read such heart-rending books — A Night to Remember, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Ethan Frome, All Quiet on the Western Front — in mid-adolescence when we are at our most heartless?  But I digress …

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Equinox paradox

It’s been officially spring for nearly a month now, but I’m finding it difficult to accept.  Not because of the weather — too hot or too cold (although, in the mid-Atlantic, temperature swings from the 40s to the 80s and back are not uncommon).  It’s because I keep thinking it’s not the beginning of spring but fall.

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Hughes writes back

I’m still in Plath-y state of mind — Sylvia Plath, that is (see Plath Attack for how this started).  Not because I’m having a breakdown or eying gas ovens — it’s because I’m still reading her biographies and poems and now Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes.

I wasn’t interested in Plath when Birthday Letters first came out in the late 90’s.  It didn’t much register that Hughes died only a few months after it was published.  But now — having read the biographies Bitter Fame and parts of Rough Magic and a little of Sylvia Plath: A Biography by Linda Wagner-Martin — Birthday Letters has a painfully poignant impact.

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