I made that.

I went back through my photos to try to see how much I've stitched and crafted in the past year. Here's a look at what I made in 2012:

I'm most proud of the two small quilts I made, and the He-Man embroidery was my favorite project by far. It also makes me happy to realize that I gave away almost everything I made. Each piece was a gift, with the exception of the airplane embroidery and the Christmas stockings (and the stockings, of course, were for the whole family). I really enjoyed making all of these pieces, and I have big plans for more crafting, stitching, and quilting in 2013. :)

Happy 2013!

James, Chelsey, and their cousin C___ and I went to a club for New Year's Eve. By the time James got off work and was ready to go, it was past 10:00, it was an hour's drive to the club, and I did NOT feel like going anywhere. But I got in the car anyway, and we headed up there. I was glad we did.

We danced like mad in the throng of sweaty, happy bodies, balloons and confetti everywhere. We made it back home at 3:00 a.m., exhausted, with the DJ's beats still ringing in our ears. 

Today we've played Jenga, Apples to Apples, and Risk, James made a delicious late afternoon lunch (the best burgers and coleslaw ever), and we're sitting around watching TV, waiting for Eliot to come home. 

I'm admiring the lights of the Christmas tree for just a wee bit longer--promised James it could come down today! :)

Or you know...maybe tomorrow?

Don't shake the baby.

The recent elementary school shooting in Newton, Connecticut shook me hard. I kept picturing Eliot's elementary school, where I drop him off every morning and watch as he blends into the straight marching rows of five- and six-year-olds walking single file into their respective classrooms, so orderly, looking so tiny with their backpacks almost as big they are, strapped to their backs. There are little voices chirping, "Hi, Eliot! Hi, Eliot's Mom!" and grinning faces, and tiny bodies stooping to pick up dropped mittens and homework assignments all along the hallway.

Eliot wasn't even at his own school that Friday--he was out sick and at his dad's house. I called three times just to hear his voice over the phone. I wanted to hold him, touch his cheeks, and smell his hair. I was sick thinking of the mommas and daddies who wouldn't be holding their just barely school-aged babies that night, or ever again.

Over the weekend I thought hard about what to tell Eliot, or whether it was appropriate to tell him anything at all about what had happened. It seemed weird not to discuss something of this magnitude, something that shook my world and immediately made me want to hold him tight. Then again, if it wasn't on his radar at all, I could get away without the hard discussion, right? I could preserve his innocence at least a little while longer, I thought. I didn't want him to be scared to go to school. I wondered if other kids at school would be talking about it. I wondered what they'd heard on the radio, on television, what snippets of adult conversations had fallen on their listening ears.

When I picked Eliot up from school on Monday, I tried to be casual. I asked him how his day was like I always do, and I waited to see if he would mention anything. I didn't bring it up.

I don't know how to do this parenting thing. It's really all just trial and error. At the hospital, when you give birth to a child, they tell you not to shake it, and that's basically it. That's all the instruction you get. "Don't shake the baby." They don't prepare you for what to do when he's five years old and the world has gone crazy and elementary students just like his sweet little self get murdered while learning the alphabet. They don't tell you what to say or whether to say anything.

Oh, don't get me wrong--plenty of people will tell you what to do. EVERYONE will tell you what to do. That's why I had to take a Facebook hiatus this week. So many people, talking so loudly and angrily about what should be done, and why this happened, and how not to have it happen again. So many different voices, saying different things, yelling different things, until it all just blends into a cacophonous, unintelligible noise. I had to step back from it. I had to remind myself that we all really want the same things. We all really want to keep our children safe. We just have vastly different ideas about how to accomplish that common goal. Everyone has an opinion, and plenty of them will broadcast it, preach it, sing it from the mountaintops, but no one really knows what the right answer is.

Finally, I remembered to listen to the one person who always has the right answer when it comes to parenting: my son. He's the one from the very beginning who has taught me how to be a mom. When I don't know what to do, I hold him to me and I listen.

Today, while sitting at the kitchen table, he drew this:

"Can you tell me about your drawing?" I asked, politely (making what I hoped was an emotionally neutral face, but what in reality probably looked more like horrified disbelief).

"It's a bomb that hit a plane and destroyed everything, and this guy fell out and died," he said.

"Oh, yes, I can see that," I said.

"No one survived," he said.

"That's pretty terrible," I said.

I told him that sometimes tragedies (like the Titanic) happen, and when they do, it's scary and sad, and then we all try to think of ways to make sure something like that never happens again. I asked him if they do anything at school to try to prepare for bad things. He immediately said, "Yes!" and described a fire drill they'd done earlier in the year. He told me, "They care about us and they want us to be safe." I nodded my head in agreement and said that's absolutely right. I asked if they do "any other drills" in addition to fire drills, and he said, "No, my school doesn't believe in tornadoes."

Hmmm...interesting.

What I gleaned from this and the rest of our conversation is that my five-year-old is aware of catastrophe. He knows that terrible things happen and people die, and he tries to wrap his head around that just like we do. But he doesn't know about Sandy Hook. And I guess that's the way we'll keep it for now.

Monday.

Yesterday started out badly.

Eliot cried when we passed the new CVS in town because they'd taken down the streamers from their grand opening. "Why are the flags goooooooone?" he wailed. "WHO TOOK THE FLAGGGGGGS?"

And that was pretty much how I felt too. The weekend is over. The flags are gone. Who took down the flags? Why isn't everything the way it was? The way I left it? The way I have come to expect it to be? It is Monday and I can't move on because someone took down the flags. Without even asking. Those. Rat. Bastards.

I don't know what's been going on with me lately, but I've been in a funk. A crappy, pissy, grouchy ass funk. And I've been blaming it on everyone else around me. It's what I do. Why? Because it's easier than looking at myself and really seeing what is wrong. Because if I shove the ugly unhappiness further and further down and refuse to feel it, it might go away. Right? Instead of accepting and acknowledging my own faults, I blame them on everyone else and their inability to Make. Me. Happy. What the hell is wrong with them? They are not making me happy. Their job is to make me happy. They are bad at their job. Ipso facto, I will fire them. You are all fired. Every last one of you. The end.

James and I had lunch at a Chinese buffet and we ate quietly and morosely and moodily. I hated that there were no corn nuggets. I hated the sweet and sour chicken. I hated the fried rice. I hated the infomercial about skincare that was playing on the television monitor above my head. I hated that James eats with chopsticks and I use a fork. "Oh, so you think you're fancy, you smug, chop stick using motherfucker?" I grumbled internally. We left without getting fortune cookies. I thought, angrily, I don't WANT a fortune cookie because I don't NEED anyone to tell me my fortune I KNOW what it is and it SUCKS. Clearly. 

But yesterday afternoon, something turned around. I can't explain, exactly. We sat on the couch and I looked at James, and I saw him seeing me. And I cried because I looked like an asshole. I had been an asshole not because I'm inherently an asshole, but because in a moment when I was scared and uncomfortable and unwilling to feel vulnerable, I was mean. I made the choice to be mean instead of open and vulnerable. I thought I was protecting myself. And that moment and that choice turned into more moments and more choices, and I realized that lately I have been choosing to be mean and selfish much too often. I've been whining and complaining about not getting the bear when I haven't even been trying to get the bear. I've just been waking up, dragging myself around, and expecting someone else to get it for me everyday.

I know that's all vague and abstract and probably makes no sense at all to anyone but me. That's okay. The point is, if you want the bear, you have to MAKE AN EFFORT to get him.

It reminds me of the scene in Billy Madison when Miss Lippy is reading the class a book about the puppy who lost his way and while all the other children fall asleep listening, Adam Sandler sits there intently until the end and then says, "Whoa whoa whoa, Miss Lippy. The part of the story I don't like is that the little boy gave up looking for Happy after an hour. He didn't put posters up or anything, he just sat on the porch like a goon and waited. That little boy's gotta think 'You got a pet. You got a responsibility.' If your dog gets lost you don't look for an hour then call it quits. You get your ass out there and you find that fucking dog."

I realized that I don't want to sit there like a goon, waiting. I need to get my ass out there.

By the time I went to bed last night, we had visited the (dubiously awarded) fastest soda machine in the world, a deer wandered into our front yard (I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Eliot he was about to knock on the door and ask for a grilled cheese sandwich.), I got to hold a precious newborn baby, and I ended the day cuddled up next to James on the couch watching Kung Fu.

Bear = Mine. Puppy = Found. CVS flags = Don't even miss them.

And all the other metaphors and what have you.

p.s. James, baby, if you're reading this...Will you teach me how to use chopsticks? I love you. ;)

Finished beats perfect, every time.

Lessons I have learned (about sewing and myself) while making a quilt:

1. Your seam ripper is your best friend.

2. There's a certain zen moment in quilting that can really only be reached when one is ripping out the same seam for the fifth time.

3. It's okay to mess up while you're sewing. (See numbers 1. and 2.)

4. It is not as okay to mess up while you're cutting the fabric.

5. When your thread is getting janky, check your bobbin. It's almost always the bobbin. (p.s. You have a tendency to put the bobbin in backwards.)

6. Only touch the handle of the iron while you are pressing fabric, not the metal part.

7. The metal part is hot. Like, seriously hot.

8. No matter how patient and understanding your partner, it might not be a good idea to work in the same room with that person if you are someone who has a tendency to get pissed off and take out your anger out on others.

9. You have a tendency to get pissed off and take your anger out on others.

10. If you are a beginner, don't try to use a fancy decorative stitch on your binding, no matter how easy that lady on the YouTube instructional video makes it look.

11. A straight stitch gives you more control, and is much easier to rip out when you screw up.

12. Accept that you are going to screw up. A lot.

13. Finished beats perfect, every time.

14. When the pigs try to get at you, park it like it's hot.

Queer as...

October is LGBT History Month.

Also, I'm queer.

My esteemed colleagues at Dictionary.com do the term no justice:

queer

 [kweer] Show IPA adjective, queer·er, queer·est, verb, noun

adjective

1. strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular: a queer notion of justice.

2. of a questionable nature or character; suspicious; shady: Something queer about the language of the prospectus kept investors away.

3. not feeling physically right or well; giddy, faint, or qualmish: to feel queer.

4. mentally unbalanced or deranged.

Although even by their definition, I suppose I qualify as "queer." I guess I'm strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint. Shady? Of questionable character? Perhaps. I DO seem to get picked out of line at the airport for extra security screening disproportionately often... Not feeling physically right or well? Indeed. Mentally unbalanced or deranged? Sometimes. Okay, often.

They throw in a helpful [sarcasm font] explanation of the perjorative:

5.Slang: Disparaging and Offensive .

a. homosexual.

b. effeminate; unmanly.

But they make no mention of the reappropriation of the word. No mention of owning or celebrating one's queerness. In fact, as a verb, Dictionary.com offers this definition of the word:

7. to spoil; ruin.

8. to put (a person) in a hopeless or disadvantageous situation as to success, favor, etc.

9. to jeopardize.

Hmmm...I can see that. To announce oneself as "queer" can spoil or ruin others' notions of your identity. To embrace the term, and the concept of queerness, is to jeopardize the status quo, to invite questions, to shift paradigms. Disadvantageous? Certainly. But hopeless? No. Not at all. More like hopeFUL.

But I'm stalling. I do that, see. I've been fumbling my way towards this post for years now, putting it off. I'm too close, and I don't have the words. It's too important, and I'm bound to fuck it up.

 *****

The thing is, I've always been attracted to women. Not just physically, but in every sense of the word. I preferred women to men. The way they smelled, the way they looked, the way they sounded, the way they felt. Growing up, I just assumed that attraction was normal. (How lovely and innocent, to assume one's own normality.) I figured everyone was attracted to women. Women are beautiful! Women are magnificent! Isn't it obvious? But then I learned that despite what I felt, I was supposed to pair up, date, and marry a man. Because that's how it works. So I did. (Of course, it's all much more complicated than that, but this post is already going to be incredibly long, so let's just gloss over a bit for now.)

Fast forward many years, and despite many attractions to specific women, despite mutual attractions to a few women, I've only ever really had relationships with men. After 32 years and two failed marriages, I finally summon up the courage to "come out" as a lesbian to most of my friends and family. No one is particularly shocked. Taken aback, perhaps, but for the most part, people who know me well nodded their heads like it made sense.

And then, after what felt like about two minutes of being "out," and feeling authentic and proud of myself and open, I met a man. And I fell in love with him. :) Because sometimes, that's just how life works.

So what does that mean? I honestly don't know.

I guess I've been waiting to write about my sexuality until it made sense. But it doesn't. And it won't. It is what it is. You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit.

Part of me thinks I fell in love with James because I was finally able to love myself. I was finally able to not just accept who I am, but love who I am. And when I was sitting there loving who I am, he came along, and he is this person who, as it turns out, is everything I need in a partner.

He loves my contradictions, and he loves my confusion, and he loves that I don't shave my legs. And I love his crazy smart brain, and I love his at times downright mean snarkiness, and I love his chest hair. TMI? Whatever.

But I feel compelled to say these things, to write these things, because it seems disingenuous to remain silent. I am in a relationship with a man, and in many ways, that's so convenient. I can pass for straight. I can hold my partner's hand in public and not worry about being persecuted for it. I can marry him, if we want; I can have children with him, and no one will question the validity of our family. Were some terrible tragedy to befall one of us, either of us could visit the other in the hospital, be in charge of medical decisions. We could file a joint federal tax return and receive the breaks and benefits that entails. We wouldn't be hated. We wouldn't be discriminated against, just for being together.

It makes me angry. It makes me so angry that because I happened to fall in love with a man, this relationship is somehow automatically deemed legitimate, socially and politically. It could just have easily been otherwise.

*****

So although I'm in a relationship (one that I dearly hope will last the rest of my lifetime) with a man, I still call myself queer. I don't know if I'm bisexual. Maybe? I don't like the labels. I just want to be me. 

My most fervent hope for the future is that the labels will become unimportant. We should all be free to partner with and marry whomever we choose. Gender is performance, and love knows no gender. It just is. Love is when you aren't looking for it, when you don't expect or maybe even want it. Love is never a bad thing. Love should be celebrated wherever and whenever it occurs.

After all, we all belong to one another.

See? He gets it.

Reading challenge.

Eliot's homework for today included pointing to each word of a book as I read it to him. His class is learning to recognize certain words by sight and learning to understand the way the text on a page is split into words and sentences and read from top to bottom, left to right. Some of these ideas he's already familiar with; I've read to him at home since before he was born. We do quite a lot of reading around here.

It's so exciting to watch him learning and beginning to grasp the concepts he needs in order to read. He can already read quite a few words, but he tends to be rather self-defeatist about the whole endeavor. (My kid? Surely not!) His teacher sent home little "books" last week, illustrated with various animals trying on shoes and each two-page spread repeated the text, "Does it fit? Will it fit him?" When I told Eliot reading the book to me was part of his homework, I thought he was going to cry. He puckered up and whined, "But I DON'T KNOW HOOOOOW TO REEEEEAD..." I asked him to please just look at the words and assured him that I would help him with the ones he didn't know. He read, haltingly, "Does...it...fit? Will...it...fit...him?" over and over, all by himself until he got to the end of the book and looked up at me, amazed. "Mom!" he said, "When I grow up, I might be a person who works in a library because I CAN READ!"

I was so stinking proud in that moment.

I remember exactly the moment that I realized I could read, and it was the exact same kind of joyous revelation. I was sitting on the couch in our family room, and whining to my mom to get her to read a book to me. She was busy in the kitchen making supper, and she kept calling in at me, "Sit down and look at it yourself, Rachel, you can read it!" And I was all, "Nooooo, I cannnnnnn't! wah wah wah." Finally, I opened the book (It was called The Animals at the Zoo.) with a pissy attitude that slowly became less and less pissy when I discovered, page after page, that I recognized the words. A slow, begrudging smile stretched across my face and I yelled into the kitchen, "I CAN REAAAD! MOM! I CAN READ!"

It cracks me up that this seems to be the exact same path Eliot is following. (Well, cracks me up AND breaks my heart.)

But however he gets there, learning to read is so magical. Being able to read opens up so many worlds. Providing a home where reading is encouraged and loved and treasured is one of the most important gifts I can give to my son.

Here's what we're each into at the moment:

This year I've been keeping track of all the books I read (and getting new recommendations) at Goodreads. I've set a goal with the Goodreads Reading Challenge to read 40 books this year, and so far I'm only at 22. (Not counting the books I read with Eliot, of course. Pretty sure that would put me far over my goal!)

Got any suggestions for me?

I'm LOVING Let the Great World Spin so far. It's beautifully written.

Connect with me on Goodreads here, if you like, and let me know what you're reading too. :)