sewin' monsters

last night and this morning, i raided my scraps stash and sewed up three lil monsters for a customer who was headed to a baby shower for twins, and has a little one of her own.  they were pretty fun to make.  each monster had one crinkly ear (plastic grocery bag) and one ear filled with rice, for tactile delights.  sho (not normally a stuffed animal/blanket loving kid at all) got ahold of em and hugged them tight, dancing around the yard singing, "fweinds, fwiends, i haff some new fwiends!"  it was pretty much a total shitstorm trying to distract her long enough to kidnap back her fwiends.

i think maybe i like drawing monsters with big teeth and whatnot so much because you don't have to be so perfect all the time.  lopsided head?  crooked eyes?  uneven legs?  go on with your bad self!

it was good to try sewing something a little different.  i always forget to take pictures of the orders i make for folks, but now that i'm a total blogger i'm goin' for it!  would you like me to make you an ugly monster for the child of your heart's affection?  holla at me, sarahvaneck@gmail.com!  each one comes in a brown paper gift bag with a vintage sewing pattern as tissue paper.  the price totally varies by how rich you are, because i am a communist.

happy weekend!

sk8 or die

three summers ago, when david and i first started hangin' out (and, it turns out, a scandalously short time before shoshi came to exist in the world), i was recovering from a hard time in my life and was, at the age of 25, strangely out of nowhere fascinated with skateboarding.  i was like a twelve-year old boy who had suddenly discovered boobs, mtv, and skateboarding (maybe not in that order) for the first time. the thing about skating is that it looks easy, but as soon as you step on your board and kick off the cement, you realize how little control of your destiny you really have.  i fell so many times.  i was way too old to be failing like this, at simply stepping on a board and kicking off.

but i kept going back for more.  i started to realize that the more you just sort of let go, the better you do.  the more free and wild you feel, the less you fall.  dude, it was so totally symbolic.  i ran into david, whom i'd known for ages, one night at bell's, and mentioned my recent skateboarding passion (it was sort of all i could talk about at the time, like any freshly twelve-year old dork-skating devotee).  he said that he, too, had been 'boardin it up more than ever lately.  we met up downtown, i carrying my little brother's scuffed skateboard from back when he was a twelve-year old skate fanatic.  i felt like a total badass anytime i could coast on the board for longer than ten seconds. 

we skated together a lot that summer, kicking off from the rough pothole-strewn north side pavement in front of his brand new hundred-year-old house in the ghetto, and going as far as the heat and our scraped knees would allow.  this video still sums up so much of what i remember from those days, and this song.  i will never listen to either of them without remembering those barely pre-shoshi days, for as long as i live. 

soon i was knocked up, and far too consumed with turning that old north side house into a dreamy babyland to skate much more after that.  but i will always smile at any skateboarder i see racing past, feet kicking ferociously and hair swirling in the gliding breeze...'cause without skateboarding, i don't know if there would be a shoshanna mary today.

no pictures

  

last night when i got home, shoshanna wanted to go down into the basement (a favorite place of hers, for dank and unknown reasons).  i kept putting her off distractedly, doing other things first. then my mom said, "why don't you go play with sho?  she's waited a long time to see you."  oh man, duh!  so often i am doing other things when i'm with my girl, checking my phone or sneaking peeks at my book.  it's so hard to be really present with kiddos sometimes, especially when the repetitive activity they want to do for the fifth time in a row makes you want to run screaming in the opposite direction.  (candyland, can i get a witness?)

so i said, "shoshi, do you want to go paint outside?"  what what!  she was all, hell yes.  especially when i then stripped her down.  paint and outside and naked?  three of her all-time favorite things!  throw in some chocolate and she might just have exploded with happiness.  so i refrained from the chocolate.  anyway, so i spread out a roll of brown kraft paper and forgot about paintbrushes.  she used her hands, feet, booty, rocks, grass, the cat, etc, to spread the paint around.  before long she was a glorious mess, head to toe paint monster.  she had streaks of red paint across her shoulders and cheek like an awesome warrior goddess, and oh my gawd i wanted to run inside for the camera like a total crazy person.  no!  i told myself.  sometimes cameras are just another way of not really being present, at least for me.  so i made myself sit, and just soak in the moment without needing to document, catalog, or share it as it was happening.  it was not easy, which means that i am a dork and also that i should probably do it a lot more often.

so that's why the only pictures are unrelated ones my mom texted me while i was at work today...but the ones in my mind of our painting session sure are bright and clear.  is there anything better than a juicy little baby booty waggling around, covered in paint?  you'll just have to use your imagination....

gettin' philisophical

i feel like having shoshi as my daughter is the hugest cosmic reward i could ever ask for.  she's kinda the person i always wished i was, all wild and outgoing and darkly beautiful.  i like to believe that somehow she chose me to be her mama.  though lord knows i have a lot of flaws and maybe i'm just foolin' myself....  

i never used to believe in anything, but nowadays i do like to imagine souls going somewhere lovely when they die, and the same souls choosing what kind of life they'll be born into, what challenges and heartaches they'll face.  it sort of lends meaning to the brutal realities of life.  like huxley said, god is that "rich round feeling in your stomach," when you're so happy and sure of the beauty of everything.  maybe when you die you catapult right into the center of that feeling.  i would heartily reccomend this worldview for any recovering atheists out there!     

thoughts on this mother's day

[airborne sho, mothers' day 2012]

yesterday was my first mother's day in the "single mamas" camp.  i have to say, i'm proud to be here.  thinking back to the single mothers of my childhood friends, it's an honor to be part of this hard-working, ocasionally pissed-off, ever-loving crew. i remember really looking up to those fatherless family units a kid. they seemed glamorous, strong and scrappy, more like friends who were in it together than the boring nuclear families who dotted the suburban landscape of my childhood.

that image sure is a glamorization though.  i definitely didn't get breakfast in bed from my adoring husband this year, or an elaborate present, or actually any present.  sho woke up at 6 o'clock, so i did too, just like every day.  but who cares, i still have it so easy.... 

this mother's day, sho's paternal grandparents, whom i adore--they are the laid-back version of family i never had--cooked up a glorious breakfast for the two of us, eggs and potatoes and bacon and fruit and biscuits and gravy, pretty much my dream breakfast o' gluttony.  of course, my own (still-married and fabulous) parents help too much to describe.  and my friend vanessa mailed the sweetest mother's day card everrr.  she is another of sho's true mamas, building her a cardboard clubhouse (which, along with the exercise trampoline she recently garage-sale-scored for sho, take up approximately 40% of her tiny apartment), buying her new shoes each season, listening carefully to every unintelligable word sho has ever spoken, and best of all, not being afraid to say NO to our naughty and charming girl. 

anyway, i had a post planned about everything i have learned from my mother, but it turns out i've learned too much to sum it up in a day's worth of writing, so that will have to wait.  in the meantime, i guess i just want to thank all the women who have mothered my little girl in her almost-two years.  sara, rosie, casey, sara, emily, kelsey, brittany, vanessa, DANG that's one lucky girl!  each woman is worth her own post.  maybe that will be a "feature" of this blog in the future.  she has so many funny, weird, super-smart aunties who love her SO.  happy mothers day, y'all.  i could not do it without you.

it was a hard morning today.  for the second time in a row, sho clung to me sobbing, the daycare teachers prying her off me while i ran for the door.  holy god, what a horrible moment in any working mother's life.  she started crying as soon as we pulled in the parking lot, saying "play, mama?"  when i said i could play with her for a little while but then had to go to work, she wailed, "go, car, mama!"  as in, let's get the eff outta here.  how tempting!  to just snatch her, ditch my job and drive to the beach for a day of ice cream and sand.

 

but i can't, little dude.  it's up to me these days to support the two of us, and that means being away from my kiddo for all but a few hours on weekdays.  honestly, it does feel unnatural to me.  i am full of guilt about it.  i've always really tried to follow my instincts as a parent, and look to the ways humans have been raising their chilluns for thousands of years, and kind of go by that.  wild parenting?  natural parenting?  attachment parenting?  who cares, it seems like when you put a label on it you're just trying to hurt someone's feelings or say "this way is best."  which isn't really my thing, i say go with whatevah works!  so anyway, what worked for us was for me to stay home and cuddle our baby up--even though we often didn't have any money at all because of it.  that stress definitely contributed to our divorce, but i am still so thankful for those almost-two years spent just lovin' on my girl.  it felt good and right (to me), to be able to nurse her whenever she was hungry and carry her with me as i went about my day, showing her the best version of the world i could.

  

and now, circumstances have changed and i have to work, and i'm happy to work.  sometimes i feel guilty about how happy i really am to work, for long hours at a time, without tending to a small person's many illogical and exhausting needs.  but then i think about how small she really is, and how sort of biologically unnatural it is for a little one to be separated from her mother for such a long, long time, every day.  i'm not really sure what to say about it, other than it doesn't feel quite right.  (to me, that is.  i feel nothing but admiration and empathy for other working mamas.)

her daycare IS amazing, the best in town i'd say, and she is a social kid who will really benefit from time with other kiddos, which she was really lacking in her life.  i guess i just often think about the way humans have lived for thousands of years, in tribal communities where the women gather together to do their many tasks and tend the children, who get to play together, and the men also gather together to get other things done, and the whole community benefits and thrives from all this working together.  is that a romanticized notion?  probably, but my soul still thirsts for something along those lines. 

sitting here in an office chair, listening to 103.3 "W-K-F-R!" and answering phones, saying "can i let him know who's calling?"  and "let me put you through to voicemail" dozens of times each day...it just seems so far away from my potential as a human on this planet.  

we'll figure it out though, and in the meantime i am so grateful for this time in our lives, however difficult it may be.  talk about first world problems!  

 

helloooo blogosphere!

[photo credit: dan foley]

i've always kept the pictures small on this little blog, to match my expectations of it.  well, no more, friends.  this blog's about to get loud and proud!  i might even tell people about it.  the more i read other blogs, the more i think, these people's lives aren't any more interesting than mine.  yet i gobble em up!  so maybe someone will want to gobble me up?  if you do read this, won't you leave a comment from time to time?  then i will feel less like i am a narcissist shouting into the abyss.

i just turned 28 last week, and am therefore feeling ruminative.  "how old are you?  thirty?" my mom said.  dang, ma dukes!  but also, i feel you.  this has been a rough year.

in some ways my life has exceeded expectations (see above photos), in other ways i am sort of...not living up to potential.  failuriffic, i'd call it.  my marriage has ended, i live with my parents, i'm a lowly receptionist.  oho, but wait!  my marriage has ended, what a blessing.  i get to wake up with my daughter (pretty much the best boyfriend ever) and know that our day together will be peaceful and stable (or as much as that is possible with a two-year old).  i live with my parents, who are so incredibly supportive and have helped sho and i in about a thousand different ways these past few months.  i really don't know what on earth i would've done without their help; it's worth a post of its own, really.  and: i'm a lowly receptionist, which also means i finally got a full-time job with the fattest paychecks of my life!  which is kind of sad, but whateva dogs, living ever-so-slightly above the poverty line is AWESOME.      

stay tuned, friends.  i'm about to blog this blog into reverse-oblivion.