I forgot to share one other than that tickles me red.



Pippi! She has adventures. She lives alone at Ville Villakulla while sailor papa is off at sea. She has a monkey named Mr. Neilsen. Annika and Tommy are shocked and delighted by her hinjinks! Oh how I loved Pippi when I was little.

Ayla's just a little too young for the book. But I approve of the movies:



The girls are watching one right now.

Pippi reminds me of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

And Anne of Green Gables. And Ramona Quimby. And Beezus, of course. And Matilda. And Sophie from the BFG. And Laura and Mary and baby Carrie. And Sally J. Freedman (she stars as herself).

And I haven't met them myself, but I've heard Junie B. Jones and Cam Jansen are pretty great too. And there's the new girl from Inkheart. And Harriet the Spy has been around for ages, I just never ran into her.

But does anyone remember: Peanut Butter and Jilly? Girlish duo of my Scholastic book order obsession in about 4th grade? Amazon has all but forgotten them.

I love all those other gals. But the redheads steal my heart.

Anyway. It's cold here. There is snow on the ground. I am looking forward to the end of January. I can't wait to say it: "Goodbye, January". I think someone should write a song called that. I am looking forward to trying Cjane's heart and arrow shaped sugar cookies for Valentines day. Early on I told Mr. Vesuvius I wanted to see Avatar, but the reviews have changed my mind. Nine, meh. Sherlock, meh. January feels like a giant gaping space. How does one appreciate January? I sure don't know.

By watching Pippi and browsing through early reader favorites online, I suppose.

And by watching Beckett twirl her hair when she took Castle's arm. That was delightful. Did you see it?

Well. Now the natives grow restless and my shower window is all but vanished.

Signing off

--Vesuvius at Home

These Is My Happy Thoughts

Things I love right now:



The taste is so strange and earthy. To me it tastes of minerals, of rivers, of the rocks at the bottom of rivers. But sweet and vaguely melon-y.



Kashi Mayan Harvest Bake. It's vegan! (I'm not vegan. Not yet. More on that later this week.) It's delicious! Kashi describes it thus: "Plantains with roasted sweet potato, black beans and kale. Spicy ancho sauce with pumpkin seed garnish served over Kashi seven whole grain polenta, plus amaranth". I don't know what amaranth is, but I know I buy these whenever they're on sale. It really does look like the picture.



Castle. I find this show comforting. All the characters get along, they enjoy one another, and other than the weekly dead body, their lives are refreshingly free of drama. Castle lives with two redheads, so credit for that--his adorable daughter Alexis and his aspiring Broadway baby mother. Well. I guess I should say she lives with him. Add the humor to some good old fashioned UST (unresolved sexual tension) and you have a happy me on Monday nights.



Kate Rusby. The above album and also this one:



Kind of like Alison Krauss only a little more Irish and a little less country.

Lastly this amazing book:


Other happy things:

Indy refusing to answer any questions for the screener at her preschool application.
Screener, very kindly:"Indy, can you say: four?"

Indy, gentle but firm:"No."

"Can you say: ball?"

"No."

"Can you tell me what this shape is?"

"No."

"Would you like to play a jumping game with me?"

"Nein."

Ok, she didn't actually say 'nein'. This should not be a happy thought because we couldn't complete the screening and have to return another time. But it is a happy thought because it is just so essentially Indy. She is tenacious and stubborn and she does things on her own terms. And I love her.

Princess Culture

Just now, Ayla said to me, "Mom, princesses don't fight. They have the princes to do that for them."

And maybe you have heard, and maybe you haven't, how around Christmas my five-year-old daughter said to me, "Mom, when I put my legs down like this they're big, but when I lift them up they're small like a pretty girl's."

The problem is. Well. The problem is everything and everywhere. I let Ayla and Indy watch Disney movies. I watched Disney movies growing up. I somehow never absorbed from them the ideas that Ayla is absorbing. When I was a little girl, I wanted to be Indiana Jones and Robin Hood. Now I see how sad it is that there weren't any kick-ass women for me to aspire to be. But I was spared real damage because I just assumed that I could be like those adventuring men, despite all media evidence to the contrary.

I also assumed Ayla and Indy would be like me. Natural born feminists. But now I see, maybe they're not. Ayla is very uncomfortable with the idea of a princess who does anything other than wear dresses, sing, and 'be nice'. She wouldn't even let the princess drive the pretend carriage--the prince had to do that. When a big piece of the plastic toy castle fell off, the princess couldn't lift it. She called the prince.

It maybe sounds a little funny, at first. It's like Ayla somehow knows exactly what will drive me the craziest and is determined to act that out. But the thing is, she has absorbed these ideas from our culture. From our tv and movies and even our books. Do you know how many 'princess' books are out now? No girl is spared. They even make little princess Bibles for girls. The Bibles say things on the back like "Little girls long to. . . give their heard to their true hero". Boys, on the other hand, get to be "God's Mighty Warrior". Boys get to learn how to be "Strong, honorable, courageous, and true".

Great. But aren't those traits important for girls too?

Browse the toy aisles at Target. Boys get Nerf guns and warrior shields and firefighter hats. Girls get pink vacuums and purple washing machines and flowered janitor sets and ironing boards.

Here, NPR's Linda Holmes writes a letter to Pixar about the lack of girls who aren't princesses in their movies. The title of the letter is called "Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees".

The title makes me sad. Because the bruised-kneed, muddy, tree-climbing, frog-catching, adventure-seeking little girl is an image I grew up with. But they're being smothered out. Ayla wouldn't recognize that character as a normal little girl, but as something of an aberration.

All my Ayla wants to be is a princess or a fairy.

Which would be fine, as long as I was confident she knew there were other options. I don't think she does.

Indy's a little different. Indy likes to fight karate-style when we play Barbies together. But maybe all that means is the media monster hasn't gotten to her yet.

I'm frustrated. I'm tired of hearing parents tell me about how dainty and 'girly' and fussy and diva-ish their little girls are, while glowing that their little boys are "all boy". Parents: why are you reveling in gender stereotypes?? They are harmful to girls and boys. The differences you see in your two children--one male and one female--are more likely due to the fact that your children are two different people, not that they're two different genders.

As for me, well. I'm cutting out the Disney movies. I'm not going to buy any more Disney princess dolls because their legs are skinny as toothpicks. (Totally not an exaggeration). Going into the whole raising girls thing, well. I was certain I was the woman for the job. I was sure that I would raise daughters who were strong, informed, liberated. Girls who didn't think twice about diets. Girls who knew they could be whatever they wanted--even a president, or an academy award winning director, or an Olympic competitive ski-jumper (yeah, all things women haven't done). Girls who knew, beyond a doubt, that even though silly stereotypes about their gender were out there, they didn't apply to them. Girls who would be confident, courageous, sure-footed and strong.

Now, I'm not so sure.

Good Medicine

“Life will break you.
Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearnings.
You have to love.
You have to feel.
It is the reason you are here on earth.
You are here to risk your heart.
You are here to be swallowed up.
And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt,
or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree
and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.
Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

- Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

I want to tell you how beautifully Louise Erdrich writes, but I've made the decision not to try and follow Louise Erdrich.

Just go read Louise Erdrich. The Painted Drum or Love Medicine are where I recommend beginning.

C'est la vie

Blogger's Block has struck.

I don't think I'm really a blogger, so don't ask me how I caught it. But I did.

(Maybe from hanging out with real bloggers).

I am sending my blogging self to a cafe in Paris. I told her I expect her to have something interesting to say by next week.

My writing self is happily unblocked and will, with some luck, be able to find an empty table by an outlet at a Starbucks in Fort Collins.

This isn't as easy as it may sound.

My blogging self is hoping to run into Hemingway, maybe at Le Deux Magots, but my writing self sure isn't. Blogging self knows it would make a good entry.

Writing self knows he was a great writer, but also a bit of an arrogant misogynist.

Writing self also just learned that a man is blond, but a woman is blonde.

Au revoir.

Domestics

Something just rubs me the wrong way.

Well, many things.

But something rubs me the wrong way in particular about those blogs.

You know the ones.

They show you the pictures of moonlight on falling snow but they leave out the rest.

The ice. The mud. The mess. The cold. The cracked knuckles. The dirty watery footprints tracked into the house. The cars stuck and sliding. The accidents. The slush. The blackened dirty snow. The rambunctious excitable children and the broken vase and stained carpet.

They're not telling you lies, exactly, but they are leading you to believe that:

Their house is either always clean or vaguely, lovingly messy.

They never forget to marvel at the simple thrills of a well-iced cookie.

They sit down and savor their coffee (served in mugs brought home from Europe and brewed in some faddish way. Brewed by little elves hatched from leaves, the sweat of whom aids the environment and calms all religious tyrants) instead of gulping it down while checking email/calling doctors/paying bills/showering/driving/peeing.

Their children always look like that.

Except for when they fight, and then mom is first just a teensy-eensy bit tickied off, only for a moment, and then she is amused and smiling and benevolent.

They make their homes look like catalogs without actually spending any money. (Their fancy pillows are spun by the sweet inklings of the leaf-hatched elves). (The elves would come to your home if only you yelled at your children less and savored goat cheese more).(Also if you used more birds in your general decor).

They are totally and completely fulfilled, as passionate, intelligent, creative women, by child-rearing, cookie baking, decoupage making, and photograph-taking.

Except when they're not. They may doubt it, in a bad moment. Doubt their happiness, as stay-at-home parents. Only in a very bad moment. But then the words, that holy refrain, sweep in on the wings of sugar-dipped, Le Creuset wielding and high-heel wearing angels: It's all worth it.


(Which is not to say it's NOT worth it--see, even I can't write a blog about mothering without repeating the magic words--but is just to say, it's much more complicated than that).

Is some of my annoyance brought on by jealousy? Oh. Sure.

But consider this.

A little phrase from my college days that kept ringing in my head until, while viewing a picture of Martha Stewart with two modestly dressed, sunshiny, photograph taking and macaroon baking mothers, I went oh yeah.

Behold. The Cult of Domesticity. Instilling feelings of guilt and inadequacy into women since 1820.

Since at least 1820.

Just think about it: Nobody's going to take away your mother card if you say you don't like the snow. Not even if you say: I HATE THE SNOW.

Go on, Vesuviuses at home. You don't have to explode. I'd just like to see you. . . I don't know.

Fire up.

Why Aren't You Asking 100 Other Guys Why They Don't

I love Joss.

Here is part of why.

Distance

I could say that my life is in total upheaval. Everything is topsy turvy. I feel like I'm at a giant train station. An outdoor platform, smoke in the air. I am waiting for the train that is my life to arrive. But the platform is my life. My life is what is happening now. Happiness depends on my ability to make peace.

Make peace with the platform.

I could say that on Christmas morning, Ayla was underwhelmed by her gifts and I was embarrassed.

I could say that we walked to the lovely beach from my brother-in-law's lovely beach-ish house and that we saw dolphins and the girls splashed in the sand and frolicked in the gentle waves.

I could say that I dropped my camera into the ocean and that even though I plucked it out quick as a glimmer, it was ruined.

I could say that I cried at Disneyland. I could say that I was extremely frustrated with Disneyland. I could say that I loved Disneyland, and all would be true.

All are true.

I cried when Ayla and Indy met the princesses. Isn't that the stupidest thing? Who can account for this? Do you know me? I am not the sort of person that cries over princesses.

Yet. I did.

I could say that Disneyland is the line-iest place on earth. That you have to wait in line to wait in line. And let me say: We all know Disneyland is expensive. What I did not know was that it costs approximately $100 a minute. And that is just to breathe the air.

I could tell you that our families were so generous with us that we didn't have to worry about money when we were there, and that was an enormous relief.

I could tell you they confiscated my one Disney souvenir at the airport because ornament Cinderella was sitting on a small liquid-filled bubble.

I could try to tell you how surreal and completely divided from all things natural Orange County is and I feel like if I lived there, I would go into a kind of cement and mall tainted sleep, and possibly never wake to the bracken and bramble again. But really, why bother to dwell.

I could tell you to take heart. Take heart. The darkness has come, and it has passed. Already, the light is returning.

I keep waiting for my life to start, but this is my life. In all its slouching, lurching, glimmering uncertainty. The dolphins may be offering up brief mythic glances in the distance. It's all right to look. Fear not, the tide is coming in. But don't forget. For now, you are not in the waves. For now, you are standing in the sand. Beautiful things surround here, too.

Find them.

Army Holds Annual 'Bring Your Daughter To War' Day

Hungry

I'm always looking for good recipes. Here's one. I could eat this at least once a week. I would, if it wasn't made of cheese and bacon grease. Cheese and bacon grease? You had me at hello.




Paupered Chef's Pasta Carbonara

Image from The Paupered Chef.