The kid is sleeping so I’d better post January 25, 2011

 

The Little Dude is having one of those mysterious, coma-style naps he sometimes falls into while we are walking the dog. Keeping him bundled in the snowsuit after we arrive back home probably helps. Why jar him awake by taking it off? Besides, he looks like a giant baby-blue marshmallow and it’s fun to laugh at him when I glance over at the bouncy seat.

Speaking of snowsuits and sleeping — I cracked the code, y’all.

When Little Dude was six-weeks-old, he suddenly starting sleeping through the night. Then just as suddenly, back in November he started waking up for a bottle. This was at five months. He was already starting solid foods, so I was amazed that he could be waking up hungry. But there he was, at 3 a.m., wide awake. And so, because I’m not a monster, I would sit with him in the rocking chair. And then, because a mother can sniff out a droplet of urine at 30 paces, I would change his diaper. Which woke him up even more. Which meant, he realized his stomach was empty. And so, bottle, and then back to sleep for a few more hours.

I tried everything I could think of. Although he wears cloth diapers during the day, he’s now on his third brand of overnight disposable diapers, due to my efforts to make sure it’s not the wetness waking him. I tried pushing his evening meal later and later — but that only made Little Dude shun his bedtime bottle and wake up hungry at midnight.

This pattern continued until just last night. I think I figured it out. First, flashback to six days ago: I got up with him at 3:30 and changed his diaper, put him back to bed, went back to my bed, and proceeded to listen to him babble and whimper for the next 30 minutes. So I got up and made him a bottle. I brought it to his room but did not let him see it. As soon as we were in that rocker — which, by the way, is the single best thing a parent can have in the nursery and I don’t know what I would do without it — he was looking around for the bottle. I thought I had cracked the code:  that he wasn’t getting enough to eat during the day.

However, much like a character in a Dan Brown novel, I wasn’t even close to finding the key to opening the codex to uncover some ho-hum revelation that nobody should care about. I’m sure that in a parallel universe someone is reading the fictional thriller that is my life and shouting “Idiot!” That would be the universe where wildly successful authors write novels about people getting up, taking showers, eating, watching TV — sort of like The Sims.

This morning, I figured out that my seven-month-old’s demands for formula in the middle of the night (yes, formula … amazing how the powdered stuff is not deforming my kid, unlike what the militant breast-feeders had me thinking) was only partially due to an empty stomach. What I did differently last night before bed was …

… add a FOURTH blanket.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “They tell you not to put blankets or toys in the kid’s crib until they are 12 months. Shame on you, Calvinette.” Well, “they” never met my child. Little Dude likes to be swaddled, and he doesn’t like those so-called swaddle sleepers. He likes to be wrapped up tight in his flannel and then pinned down to the mattress with two fuzzy blankets. Then it occurred to me, in the fashion of the fictional hero, the dim bulb Harvard Professor Robert Langdon, long after it had dawned on the Parallel Me reading my boring novel prominently featuring spit-up and diaper changing. Little Dude’s 3 a.m. wake-ups started in NOVEMBER. The temperatures started dropping in NOVEMBER. At the same time, the child started getting more and more mobile, and so, when he would wake me up, I’d find him scooched about two feet from where I’d tucked him in, blankets askew. Last night, I added the fourth blanket, so that all three blankets were stuffed so tightly between the rails and the edge of the mattress that the kid was going NOWHERE.

And this morning, ladies and gentleman, I am happy to report that Little Dude slept until 7:30 a.m. Cue the clouds parting and the choir of angels.

I’m not saying that the child-development experts are wrong. You should all do what they say all the time. But because I usually get my way, I get to declare, with relish, “Experts, schmexperts.”

 

Can we all just leave this guy alone for a while? January 12, 2011

My parents thought I was a bit crazy in college when I chose Streetwise for my writing internship. But not only did the job give me some pretty interesting filler for my post-college portfolio, the entire experience was, every single day, eye opening. I dislike describing it as “putting a human face” on homelessness, but I don’t know how else to put it.

For those of you who don’t know, Streetwise is a newspaper sold by homeless men and women in downtown Chicago. They buy each copy for $0.25, and sell it for $1. Say what you want about how annoying it is to be accosted by dudes trying to sell you Streetwise every morning when you’re just trying to pop in and out of Starbucks on your way to work, I’ve heard it all. But I still maintain it’s an amazing organization that offers people the chance to get back on their feet with dignity, and without having to listen to a sermon in exchange for help.

Over the past week, one human, homeless face has been plastered all over the television. Ted Williams, a man who had once trained his voice for a career in radio, was discovered on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, begging for work. Somebody noticed the voice, and for some reason the story exploded. He’s been on television non-stop since then, doing both the interview circuit and getting gigs with professional sports organizations. I’m so glad he got off the streets, but I could not help but have an icky feeling about all of it. Not an ickiness toward Ted, but toward the media. As if there are not a hundred thousand other homeless people still homeless, who once studied an art form or a trade and fell on hard times because of drugs, mental illness or both.

And just as I was starting to form that thought in my head, the tide turned.

It is my own fault for getting caught up in this story. Every morning I feed the baby his oatmeal and applesauce and I try, SO HARD, to keep the TV on children’s programming. But at 7 a.m. I can only take one episode of Blue’s Clues, and sometimes the kid takes about an hour to get through a meal. At some point, I need to hear an adult voice delivering the news. I haven’t had my caffeine yet and I don’t have the patience for the measured delivery of National Public Radio. I just want a quick, peppy injection of the day’s news and I want to see the fabulous Robin Roberts because, I don’t know. I love her and she never looks tired and I imagine she smells good? Is that a good enough reason? And so, I turn on Good Morning America. Even though I find myself yelling at George Stephanopoulos for doing hacky interviews with Charlie Sheen’s hired escort — “George! You went to Oxford! You worked for President Clinton! You are better than this! Snap out of it!”

This morning, the media, not surprisingly, totally turned on this guy. After sticking a camera in his face for the last eight or nine days and congratulating themselves on helping this single person find a job, everyone is now reporting on rumors that poor Ted is drinking again. They’re going back and recutting the footage of his kids, his pleading mother, his admissions to past substance abuse — AS IF IT’S A REAL NEWS STORY.

What GMA and Entertainment Tonight and every other professional with access to a camera and a live feed does not seem to remember is they created the perfect storm for this man to have a relapse. They jolted him into a major life change and expected him to act on his best behavior, with no real social or clinical support. And now the reporters are shocked, SHOCKED, that he’s been questioned by police for arguing too loudly with his daughter at the posh hotel they set him up in. Set him up — that is the whole truth of it. The dude wasn’t even arrested — just harassed by police. Something I’m sure he’s never experience before as a homeless black man in the U.S.

I’m not surprised by any of it, but maybe I’m just surprised at how surprised everyone is. Can y’all just leave him alone now, and let him go to work, get counseling, get comfortable in his new home, before you aim the cameras at him again? Come on people, it’s going to take a while. Leave him be. Lay off.

The one thing we all need to realize when we put a human face on homelessness is that face belongs to someone just like us — an actual, complicated, messy human being.

‘Stories’ gets another review and I get a nifty stamp September 15, 2009

I love getting letters in the mail. Not only is it refreshing and dramatic and delicious to receive good news in the form of a paper letter which you tear open in anticipation, it is always interesting to take note of the kinds of stamps people use. For example, I know a certain podcaster who always uses Darth Vader stamps when filing her taxes. These days a lot of people are using up their 42 cent stamps by adding those little 2 cent ones. Me, I’m too lazy to keep buying 2-cent stamps so of late I’ve been just slapping two whole 42 cent stamps on all my letters and hoping for the best. I know it’s wasteful, but I just tell myself it’s a tip for the post office. They need all the help they can get. And anyway, I have an uncle who works for the USPS, and I also happen to like my dog-biscuit-carrying mailman very much. So does my dog.

So anyway … This might be the coolest stamp I’ve ever received on a letter. George and Gracie! In a tiny television set! Where do they get those?

This adorable little stamp came bearing good news, as it should. It was attached to a notifications that Midwest Book Review has given my little book, “Stories of Clean Living, the Dutch-American Way” a recommendation! They’ve very graciously posted the review on Amazon, as well as on the MBR website’s September online magazine, “Small Press Bookwatch.” You can take a gander right here, by scrolling down to the biography section. Pretty cool.

Actually, I do know where they get those cool stamps. They’re donated. The MBR is a not a profit-making business. They place priority on small, independent presses and self-published authors. I’m guessing, there’s not a lot of dough in providing a service like that. In return, authors and publishers (and I would guess anybody else) can help out by donating stamps. If ya’ll feel inspired to do so, you can mail your donated stamps to:

The Midwest Book Review

278 Orchard Drive

Oregon, WI 53575

To get an idea of what this review is talking about, you can read a sample essay, and the book can be ordered through Amazon.com or createspace.com.

Earbud Monday: The Moth August 31, 2009

I’m astonished at the bravery of the young, sometimes. I never felt that more than when listening to the most recent podcast from The Moth. The very idea of getting up in front of a live audience and telling a story is terrifying, but as a writer, my only excuse for not doing it is I don’t live near a city that hosts live Moth events.

This week’s The Moth features a story by a young man from Brooklyn named Terrence Buckner, who participated in The Mothshop Community Program, a storytelling workshop for students and young people. Although it’s only audio, I can see Terrence up there on stage. He’s raw, unrehearsed, his speech is full of “like”s and “um, so”s. And yet he might be the most articulate example of how a person who identifies as gay is not necessarily choosing a lifestyle, and how that identity has very little to do with sex. He’s just a teenager, trying to get through school without getting beat up. At the same time, he’s tired of forcing himself into a certain mold, a mold that includes baggy jeans and tee shirts and whatever else at his school qualifies as inherently heterosexual. He just wants to be real, to his mom, to his friends, to his obnoxious brother. He wants to get rid of the baggy jeans and wear his skinny jeans.

Some gays and lesbians wait until after high school to come out of the closet. Understandably so. In some communities, it’s the difference between life and death. In some cases, a kid knows Mom and Dad will not just kick them out of the house, but promptly yank all that handy college financial support if a kid dares bring home a date of the same gender. Others just don’t know what could happen, so they carefully wait it out until they can move somewhere more comfortable as an adult. Terrence is a pretty special kid. I would like to think that a big high school in a big place like New York would naturally have a student population with a more cosmopolitan attitude about the gay teenagers that walk its halls. Apparently Terrence’s neighborhood school, or at least the one he attended at the time of his coming out, wasn’t so ready for Terrence.

But then, something amazing happens. They get over it. Everyone moves on. Before Terrence came out, the issue was so much bigger in his own head. Then he told his Mom, who said, “You know I’ll love you no matter what.” And then it’s no longer such a big deal. It was enough to help him decide to wear his skinny jeans to school and to face the bullies and the derision. But the bullies got put in their place in a very unexpected way. And the rest of the kids got over it, almost by the very next day. And then it seemed a non-issue.

If only all the misfit kids out there had a mom, friends and a brother like Terrence. If only we as a society could just get over it already.

I like being your dog and everything, but I’m not an appropriate substitute for a child anymore August 25, 2009

Jenn, it’s time we had a talk.

While I appreciate you rescuing me from the shelter, try not to break your arm while patting yourself on the back. Fact is, I’m a 20 pound bundle of excitable white fur with a curly tail and hypnotic brown eyes and I can smile – yes, I do that on purpose – so how long do you really think I’d have been waiting around at the SPCA? I was there for two days before you came in, for heaven’s sake. If it hadn’t been you, it’d have been some other suckers. Probably that family with little kids in line behind you. I saw them. They would have scooped me up in a rabbit’s heartbeat. Or maybe another married couple with unfulfilled parental instincts.

There are more couples like you than you think. A dog can tell these things. Remember about a year ago when we lived in that place you call Texas, where you still have a house that you can’t sell, where I had a yard with a fence inside which I could run out whenever I wanted to chase grasshoppers? Remember when the reservoir almost dried up that summer and the drinking water had that weird odor? Sometimes people smell like that — sad and cloudy and in need of … something.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy being your dog. I do. I didn’t like that leash thing at first, but Leash and I are cool now. I thought you were nuts the first time you made me climb stairs by my own strength, but I’m over it. The crate … well, I still don’t much care for it, but that’s OK. Your guilt spills out like spoiled milk every time you put me in there, and I can use that to my advantage. It helps that you buy me expensive beefy treats, and that you’ve let me appropriate that really comfortable World Market bean bag ottoman. And I like it that you stay home a lot, and you take me outside whenever I bite the dishwasher so I can say hello to the mailman who gives me biscuits and to Maintenance Man Bill who fixes all the garbage disposals in all the apartments and rebuilds old cars in his spare time and therefore is the Awesomest Smelling Human Ever.

I don’t mind spending most of my day lying by your feet while you write, but I have to say, and please don’t be mad, that the best part of my day is when that guy comes home. That guy is fun. It’s not that you aren’t fun. You are. Most of the time. In a quiet sort of way. But that guy is, you know, different. He rolls me around on the carpet. I’ve seen families with kids, and I believe that children enjoy even more of this rolling around kind of fun.

So, I’m glad you finally went ahead and signed up for that baby class or whatever. I know it means I’ll have to go to that place with the cages once in a while, but you know what? Get over it. I’m not your child, and those people with the cages are not babysitters. I’m a dog. I can handle being away from you for nine hours. Question is, can you handle it?

I’m probably making you feel like you’re too messed up for anyone to just hand you a kid, but then again, we both know there are plenty of breeders who shouldn’t be breeding at all, right? As it turns out, you’re not that messed up. So what if going off the Pill didn’t magically make you pregnant? I never had my own litter either, so what’s the harm in bringing home some unwanted babies to fulfill everybody’s Mommy instincts?

So, just stop worrying, and stop feeling guilty and most of all, stop wondering if the right people are going to like you. Stop thinking about whether the state will frown at your money situation because you rent an apartment here but also pay a mortgage elsewhere on a house that’s worth less than what you owe. Whatever happens, happens. Kind of like how you found me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to tell you to start thinking and acting like a dog, or remind you about how simple it is to be a dog and how you should take an example from me. I’m also not talking about you wanting to be the person that your dog thinks you are. None of that “Marley & Me” crapola. I don’t give a hoot what kind of person you are, as long as you keep feeding me kibble and walking me outside to have a sniff at Maintenance Man Bill. I don’t know anything about philosophy. I bite dishwashers and and eat remote controls. I bark whenever I hear a TV sitcom doorbell. I can’t be trusted around the cat’s litter box. So really, there’s no reason to take any advice from me. I have no credentials.

But I do know this. People like to say it’s a good idea to get a dog, because it helps you practice parenthood. But there’s a point when practice crosses over into somewhere else, and I don’t know what that somewhere else is called, and I don’t know where that line is, but I know the line comes somewhere after picking up my messes and somewhere before we get to the place where you start calling yourself my “mommy.”

Enough practice. Get to it.

Another review of my book! July 14, 2009

Thanks to David for posting this awesome little review on Amazon.

David is a fellow product of our particular brand of upbringing in Northwest Indiana, now living in beautiful South America, whose parents are friends of my parents. One time, while I was visiting my parents in the New Dutch Ghetto of Saint John, IN, we stopped by David’s parents’ house. It just so happened David was also home for a visit, and had generously bought up half the coffee in Colombia to hand out as presents in America. My parents received a little bag of this stuff as well. I remember spending the rest of my visit waking up extra early to hog the coffee maker, before my parents woke up and made the usual stuff, or the stomach-cramp-inducing decaf (Seriously, what is the point?). How to buy good coffee is one of those things not taught by the calvinists, in fact, most of us grow up learning how to get the most volume of coffee grounds out of our thinly stretched pennies.

Nice compliments and good coffee — two things I can never get enough of!

I don’t know what to say … May 28, 2009

Take a look at this review of my book by Dr. James Schaap. I almost expected the book to come back marked up with red pen, but this is better.

http://siouxlander.blogspot.com/

I’m searchable! May 8, 2009

My book is now available on Amazon and at Target.com!

Last I heard, the shipments were starting to arrive. I’m itching in a very hard-to-reach place to know what y’all think. If you want to, you can leave a review at Amazon.

Stories of Clean Living, the Dutch-American Way May 4, 2009

I always said I was going to be a published author by the age of 30. I found out that when you choose journalism as your Plan B, it sucks the life out of you. The last thing I ever wanted to do when I got home from my day job is do some more blood letting – I mean writing.

But I am a published author before the age of 40, even though I’m now choking on that number as it’s a mere four years away and not looming so far in the distant future as to make my fear of it laughable, a la Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally.”

Thanks in no small part to an unbelievably supportive husband/editor/tech support guru/manager/cattle prodder, It Is Finished.

And I have to say, I kinda like it. The husband likes it, too, but as we all know, editors are not to be trusted.

You can get more information about my book at www.jennerick.com. Click the “book” button on the left hand side. If you like what you see, you can go directly to check out by clicking “order.” It’s also available at a reduced rate for the Kindle and as a pdf download, for all you people who don’t feel like waiting for your book to arrive, or who don’t care about the tactile experience of reading.

If you’re not so sure if you’re interested, feel free to read a sample excerpt. Whatever you decide to do, I hope you enjoy it and give me some feedback.

And, feel free to contact my tech support guru through the jennerick website and tell him what you think of the site. He worked hard on it, despite all my kvetching about him spending his entire weekend with the square-headed-spouse. Good thing he’s such a looker.

I gave up on predestination long ago, however … April 24, 2009

Sometimes the universe gives you signs that you are doing exactly what you are meant to be doing.

Earlier this week I was having a near mental breakdown about my book. I was tired of looking at the words, sick of thinking and re-thinking and over-thinking it. I was worried that I had not changed the names appropriately. I was concerned that I had included too many personal details about me, certain family members. I fretted over what my family would think, and whether these stories were any good at all.

On Wednesday, the proof copy of my book came in the mail, and everything shifted. I scurried off to my favorite coffee shop and sat perfectly still for three hours, scouring every last word of the proof for typos, grammatical errors, unclear sentences and general unnecessary language mayhem. I cleaned it up, and along the way, I realized it was pretty good. Maybe it won’t set the world on fire, but it does justice to my memories, and it makes me smile here and there.

The real difference in my attitude didn’t come from holding the book in my hands, though that helped. A lot. What really kicked my sad sack butt out of the doldrums was one of my Texas lifelines. I phoned my friend Tammy, my former partner in slack at our tiny rural town newspaper. I told her the title of the book, “Stories of Clean Living, the Dutch-American Way,” and I told her about the general idea of the essays I had written, and about how my awesome tech support guy/husband had designed this gorgeous sepia-tone cover with a photo of me from the fourth grade in my Dutch girl costume. Then Tammy opened her mouth and my head exploded.

“You know,” she said, “This is going to sound crazy but that reminds me of something you would see on the Bonnie Hunt Show.”

After I picked myself up off the ground, I said, “Well, this is going to sound extra crazy, but I was thinking of sending a copy to the show. AND, we’re donating 10 percent of the cover price to cancer research, the SAME research facility which Bonnie donates to and talks about all the time on the show – the Robert Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern. Not because of Bonnie Hunt, but because after a full day of researching and asking questions of different charities, I settled on that one. It’s also the same hospital where my late cousin was treated.”

Tammy: “Jennifer, I think this is your destiny.”

Tammy and I used to talk a lot about The Secret, about putting positive energy out into the universe and receiving it back, and about whether or not this Law of Attraction business is just a bunch of hokum. Sometimes I think it is. Most of the time I just think things come together at certain points in your life and you just gotta grab on and go for it, whether or not it’s something you created or it’s something God is telling you to do. I like to think that Tammy has a bit of the psychic in her – she has the kind of perception that can scare a person sometimes. Before I moved away from Texas, she was my barometer for good and bad ideas. When she gets a good feeling about something, I listen.

If I hadn’t called Tammy, I suppose I would have been just fine doing what I needed to do with the book, and just found the confidence somehow in myself to take the next step. But I also suppose it sometimes helps a girl avoid a mental breakdown with a little pixie dust from a friend.

In the meantime, here’s where you can look at a synopsis of the book: https://www.createspace.com/3380992