Why I love Wi-Fi

While I'm stuck in Washington, DC, waiting for my delayed flight to Vermont (where I'm going for this), please enjoy this little bit of magic, which is much nicer than being stuck in an airport with a crappy, overpriced turkey and Havarti sandwich. (The cheese was slimy in the middle from the anemic tomato pressed into it. Ick.)

My Favourite Things from kidswithcrayons on Vimeo.

(Found on Liz's bring on the joy, who found it via Vivienne.)

Website, Meet Blog

 Cherries, Pier 39, San Francisco, July 2008

Welcome to The Word Cellar's new online home. My website and blog used to be somewhat separate entities, but everything is cozied up together now, kind of like those gorgeous yin and yang cherries up above.

If you're new to the site or blog, here are a few suggestions for you.

• Find some of my favorite blog posts in the "Favorite Stories" list over in the right sidebar.
• If you'd like to know when I publish new posts, please subscribe to the feed. (See the sidebar.) I hope to add an email subscription soon.
• To find out what blogs and sites I read regularly, see the "Link Love" under "Inspiration" to the right.
• If you'd like to know more about what The Word Cellar is or who I am, visit the home page and the about page.

Please have a look around and leave me a note in the comments if you'd like. I'm glad you're here.

The Road Less Traveled (leads to cows) *updated

A small snippet of where I've been....

Several Saturdays ago I made the half-hour drive to the local berry farm. Strawberries were in full swing, but raspberries were still a week or two in coming. I'd called earlier in the day to reserve several quarts of strawberries. When I arrived late in the afternoon, I found that they were the very last berries on the shelves. In hindsight, I regret not giving a quart to the couple who came in after me, anticipating berry goodness. I considered it, but got greedy and hoarded them all to myself. In the end, I didn't even use them all up before some went bad. As I dumped those once perfect, now spoilt, beauties in the trash, I thought of that couple and felt such sadness that I didn't share.

There was a small pen for sheep and one for lambs near the farm parking lot. The little lambs were so busy munching the scrubby grass, like little eating machines.

These little ones took no notice of me or the cars. But the two mama sheep in the next pen were much more interested in me. Well, one of them was. There was black-headed beauty that was all chilled out and relaxed, as if to say, "Yeah, I'm a sheep. No biggie."

But the other one started baa-ing as soon as I approached the fence, as if to say, "Check me out! I'm a sheep! Don't you love my new summer coat? Check me out!" She even put her big schnozzle through the fence opening so I could pet her. As I reached out my hand, I heard my husband's voice in my head, telling me not to pet the animals. And just as I touched the back of my hand to her furry snout, she opened her mouth -- the one she was using to chew grass -- and let out a terrific AHHH-CHOOO!! That sheep sneezed on me!

I was momentarily terrified, thinking she was about to bite me. But as I picked little bits of grass off of my shirt, I started laughing out loud, wishing my husband had been there to see it.

On the ride home, I took a sharp right-turn detour down an unknown country road, hoping to find a farm stand selling peonies. I'd been longing for pale pink peonies and had nearly resorted to stealing them from neighbors' yards. In the end, I didn't find any, but I did come face to face with these lovelies:

I finally got my pale pink peonies this week, after ordering them from a florist. Not as romantic as finding them at a roadside stand or as thrilling as stealing them, but they're lush and decadent all the same. I don't have a good photo of them (*see update below), but this does them more justice than my camera every could.

"Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?" (Mary Oliver, "Peonies")

I'm going to plant my own peonies this fall so I can have armloads of them in summers to come. I'm going to pet the animals, no matter what my husband says. I'll stop my car along narrow country lanes to photograph the locals. And the next time, I'll share my strawberries with strangers.

Updated
I took the peonies outside today just after a sun shower, when the light was gorgeous, and captured these. Lovely, yes. But I still think this is even more so.

What are we waiting for?

image by Diskychick

I don't hesitate to use the good china. Okay, I don't have "good china," but I do have good pottery. I love it, and I use it every day. I'm trying to make this the model for my everyday life.

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I buy pint of organic raspberries. They're like little red jewels, which is an overwrought phrase when it comes to raspberries. But what else can I say? These ruby fruits are my favorite, so I want to make them last. But berries are not meant for waiting. Ripe soon turns to ruin. Eat the juice-full berries. Eat them now, whole bowlfuls if you must.

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A recent Twitter exchange:

Me: What would happpen if I stopped putting my ideas up on a shelf, waiting for more time/confidence/resources? What would happpen?

Me: I'll tell you what would happen: THINGS WOULD START TO HAPPEN!

A friend: BIg FanDAMNtastic shit -- THAT's what would happen. There's something in the air Jenna, LEAP!

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I yell at my husband for things that aren't his fault because I'm stressed about things that aren't his fault. He says nothing. We ride in silence. I practice "I'm sorry" over and over in my head, thinking I'll say it any second now. The words don't come, and then, without me trying, they do. "I'm sorry." All these years and it's still so hard to say. When will I learn? What am I waiting for?

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I fill notebook pages with ideas for stories, articles, books, projects. What am I waiting for?

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Tonight I filled a little apple-green bowl with red-red raspberries. There was no waiting.

Not the Mama!

When I was a kid, my mom sometimes told my brother and me that a woman in Iowa had been "mummed" to death by her kids. This story usually followed a particularly harrowing round of "Hey-mom-watch-me!" These scenes often took place in our above-ground pool each summer.

I don't think we ever really believed her, and I don't think we ever felt bad about our incessant mom-ing. Our mother had a plenty of love, patience, and attention to go around. I'm sure there must have been times when she really did feel like she was being mummed to death, but she never showed it.

As many people know, I have a bad case of mommy angst. I started out not wanting kids and then became ambivalent about it. Then all I could think about was how I didn't know if I wanted kids or not. The baby question became an endless loop in my head, making me go slightly crazy. I was being mummed to death in a much different way.

I'm feeling a bit more balanced about things these days, even though I definitely haven't made up my mind yet. But have you noticed that the media is mom-ing us all to death now?

Lately, the news is full of stories I like to call, "Motherhood if Effin Hard, Man!"

This is the obvious counterpoint to the other dominant media message about mommy-dom, which is, "Motherhood: Who Could Ask for Anything More?"

We have lost all perspective.

I watched the Oprah show about the secret lives of moms, in which Oprah and a slew of moms talked about how effin hard it is to a be a mom. Don't get me wrong. I like many of those women, and know at least one of them, albeit peripherally. I'm not saying they're just whiny women who complain about their kids.

Still, I was shocked by the general feeling (real or edited-to-seem-real) of surprise at how hard motherhood is. Who are these people that thought having a child would be easy? Nothing about it seems easy to me. From the pregnancy and birth, to the child rearing itself -- these things seem fraught with stress, worry, and hard work.

I told a friend that all that maternal honesty on Oprah was doing nothing to allay my concerns and make me want a baby. She said, "That show isn't for you. It's like doing a show on how hard exercise is. It's just an angle to make it interesting."

But it was the wrong show for me to watch. I didn't need that show. I didn't need to hear about how hard motherhood is, because my concern about becoming a mother is directly centered on how hard motherhood is. The other thing that surprised me is the general message that mothers are glad to finally be telling and hearing the truth; that until now, nobody has been telling it like it is about parenthood; that everyone was just pushing around baby strollers with big smiles on their faces and then crying quietly during their once weekly shower.

Maybe it's taken the mainstream media awhile to catch up, but I've been reading about how hard motherhood is for years now. The blogs -- they are full of it! But I guess it's like Twitter: the media has finally jumped on board.

Now, apparently even some of the moms who were featured on the Oprah show are fed up with the media's portrayal of motherhood as a curse.

Still, isn't motherhood like everything else? Good and bad. Easy and hard. Fun and not fun. Where are the drama ridden exposes about fatherhood? About how much it sometimes sucks to go to work? About the joys and pains of marriage?

Motherhood has long been an iconic flashpoint, a state of being that is bigger than the people in that role. The state of motherhood has been honored, vilified, vindicated, and deified. The interesting thing about the media stereotypes of mothers is that they are so varied. There are June Cleavers, Moms who drink, Moms who work, Stay-at-home Moms, Soccer Moms, Earth Mama Goddesses, Hockey Moms, Stage Moms.

I'm not sure what the media thinks of women like me. What do you call a woman without kids? I don't think there's a label for us, which may be part of the reason we've escaped the media frenzy. We're invisible. And in this case, maybe that's not such a bad thing.