AatW – Worthy of Love
Tag: motherhood
Introversion
I’m very introverted, and sometimes the ability to socialize just isn’t there. Not only am I unable to think of anything to say, I don’t have the energy to listen/read what anyone else has to say either, and I don’t even want to deal with anyone online or through texts. My husband occasionally teases me that if I were any more introverted, I’d be nonfunctional in society.
When I first became a mother, I worried about how I was going to raise and homeschool my children without going crazy. Being an introvert, my social circle is very small. I am also the black sheep of my extended family, so they’ve been a non-factor in my life (which is my polite way of saying I have zero contact with most of my relatives). Babysitting is not easy to come by, especially because I’m extremely distrustful of leaving my children with people I don’t know very well.
It took some time, but I found my zen.
Which wound up leaving me well positioned for the lockdowns.
While others are sobbing for a break from their children, I already have the routine and boundaries in place for me to thrive. Bonus: As an introvert, I don’t require much interaction with others.
What I had initially feared would be a weakness, turned out to be a strength.
Obviously, what works for me probably isn’t going to work for most other people, because my form of recharging involves going inside my own head (usually to explore story ideas), but my advice is:
…
Honestly, I don’t enjoy giving advice; I couldn’t care less what you do. It’s mostly that I’ve seen some people having nervous breakdowns, and thought to myself, “Phew, glad I’m not like that.” I want to share my personal thoughts more, but I worry too much about hurting other people’s feelings. I’m not trying to rub it in.
But seriously, I really don’t care what you do or don’t do. It’s your life, and if you want to have a nervous breakdown and wallow in depression, go right ahead. All power to you.
Thank you for sharing my work!
2020
A few years ago, a mormon bishop took it upon himself to inform me that my lifestyle was outdated, and that as a woman I needed to apply myself to a career instead of settling for being a simple stay-at-home-mom. He proclaimed this on a Sunday, while wearing a suit, with the authority of God and all that jazz.
And I thought to myself, “Wow, even the mormons don’t like me.”
If it was some sort of attempt at conversion, it had the exact opposite effect — and I’m still very much a stay-at-home mom. I guess the thing that people don’t understand is that I feel an enormous amount of passion about raising my children, and no criticism is going to change that. I’m not going to sell my soul for approval.
The one thing that I did take away from the exchange was that I am alone.
Totally, completely, alone.
I’ve met a lot of women who consider raising kids to be nothing more than a diversion from the ever-so-much-more-important career. Like paychecks are the only things that matter in life.
I’ve lived with the isolation ever since.
But here’s the funny thing about 2020: despite the lockdowns, social distancing, and rampant censorship, the one thing that I’ve learned is that I’m not alone.
There are a lot of people like me.
More than I would have expected, too.
We were just all too scared to say what we really thought before now.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Austrian cream cheese bars
I jumped on the baking bandwagon.
I don’t actually know if that’s still a thing, or if people have burnt out on it by now.
But anyway, I’ve been baking WAY more than I used to. For the sweet tooth.
I made Austrian cream cheese bars, and thought that it would be fun to take a picture for the blog.
But before I got around to it, my two-year-old attacked them with a chopstick while I wasn’t looking.
So here you go. Yummy.
They’re supposed to have nuts on top, but I didn’t have any on hand.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Writing babies
One of my pet peeves with fiction is when child characters start out important, then are reduced down to props or are inexplicably absent at the end. A good example of this is from An American Tail, when Fievel’s baby sister Yasha is completely nonexistent for the latter half of the movie.
If you’ve been following my blog this year, you’ll know that I had a baby about six months ago, and that I’m currently working on a fictional story about a woman who had a baby. The silly thing is, having those parallels is actually making it harder for me to write about motherhood.
I spend all day snuggling, kissing, playing with, and caring for my baby, then at night after the older kids go to bed and I settle down to work on my writing, I feel self-conscious about describing all of that. It’s a little too autobiographical.
And it’s bothering me enormously.
I’m going to add in more descriptions of motherhood when I rewrite it, but for now I feel like the first draft has a giant hole in it.
Chalk it up as part of the process.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Personal Note
This is the time of year when I typically slack off from writing and put more energy into holiday activities, but there’s a good chance that this year is going to be completely different. For starters, I have no interest in taking the kids out Christmas shopping.
I might get more into holiday baking, since I’ve always wanted to make one of those chocolate yule log cakes, but have always been too intimidated to try. Might as well give it a shot.
It’s hard to say what the next two months are going to look like, honestly.
Writing is my selfish activity. I love children — my kindergarten dream was to be a mom — but they scream a lot and make big messes. Writing is how I maintain my internal balance so I can deal. With the way the kids have been acting of late, I’m going to be doing a lot of dealing this winter. I’m gonna need as much balance as I can get.
And cake.
I have no clue if I’m going to be slacking off or not.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Observations
It’s one of those hot and sticky days.
The advertisements in my inbox assure me that this is the last weekend of summer, but the weather feels like it has other plans. I’m sitting outside with a floppy crocheted sunhat, freshly washed hair spilling everywhere, and a bunch of kids completely ignoring their new splash pad.
Smells like cats.
Crows are cawing in the distance, cutting over the music I have playing on a bluetooth speaker. The neighbor’s door slams as they let their dog out. A semi truck rattles by. The baby starts to fuss as she achieves a death grip on my hair, and the two-year-old informs me that she needs a new diaper.
…
The air conditioning inside feels nice and cool. The baby is settling down to nap as the kids beg for ice cream.
Sounds like a great idea.
Thank you for sharing my work!
The Little Things
My husband and I finally took a trip into the mountains for a ‘micro-cation’ last weekend. It lasted for about two hours grand total, but I got to feel a little chilly when the sun began to set, which was a wonderful break from dying in the heat.
Thankfully August doesn’t carry the same intensity as July. With luck, I’ll be back to feeling normal (whatever that is) in no time. Might even start braining again.
Though apparently I’m never going to get around to actually finishing this post, since its been sitting here for a few days now. Go figure.
So.
In news that absolutely no one cares about, I am nearly finished with knitting a skirt. This skirt. I started it two years ago, then put it down for a good long while (yarn burnout, lol) until I picked it back up as something to do while nursing the baby. It always amazes me how working a row or two every day really adds up, and I’m looking forward to having this skirt forever.
I came across the toddler’s swimsuit the other day. We bought it at the end of summer last year, because it was super cute and on clearance, and we were absolutely certain that we were going to have TONS of summer fun this year.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
I felt bad, so a browsed online a bit for swimming pools, but I couldn’t bring myself to commit to any. I settled on getting a splash pad — a big one that can accommodate four kids screaming at each other. I’m half expecting it to be destroyed before next week is up.
My husband also got the battery in my laptop replaced, so now it doesn’t randomly die on me. Yay!
Plenty of mundane stuff going on. Nothing terribly philosophical, but it’s keeping me busy enough.
Thank you for sharing my work!
School Lunch
We were part of the free lunch program with our school district this summer. Normally it’s not something I participate in since we’re homeschooling, but this year I figured it would help ease the burden of feeding the horde of monsters that fill my life, with having a new baby and all.
Honestly, we won’t be participating again.
While I appreciate the idea of nutritionally balanced, it functionally doesn’t mean much when the kids refuse to eat their whole grain oatmeal raisin bars. I mean, that’s really asking a lot of them.
ANYway, my main complaint is actually the fact that absolutely everything is ‘fat free’. Like, hey I really don’t approve of the assumptions that you’re making.
I, for one, do not believe that,”eating fat makes you fat,” I do not think that drinking 8 ounces of whole milk a day is going to cause childhood obesity. Maybe the insane amount of juice and soda pop that I’ve seen parents give to their kids, but not things like milk, ranch dressing, and mayonnaise.
I do, however, believe that fat is essential for physical development. I don’t appreciate feeling like I need to supplement meals that are supposed to be nutritionally balanced, because they go out of their way to eliminate such an important element.
And seriously, what sort of person actually thinks that children are going to wash down their whole grain oatmeal raisin bars with skim milk?
The end result has me feeling guilty about the amount of food we’ve thrown away, and I’m grateful that homeschooling is an option for us so my children aren’t stuck eating like that all year round.
Thank you for sharing my work!
Pretending
A couple of weeks before baby #5 was born, someone passing by saw me out in the yard with the children, so she stopped and asked, “How do you do it with so many kids?” The answer is actually quite simple:
Delusion.
Or, to use the more socially acceptable term: Attitude.
I could wake up every day and tell myself that I’m overtired and underappreciated, but that would be such a drab way to live. So I don’t.
I’m a guardian angel.
A mischievous fairy.
An empathetic goddess.
With heavy doses of apathy.
More commonly referred to as, “Picking your battles.”
Some days feel more like a giant game of ‘pretend’ with real chores and real tantrums, because pretending to be a graceful princess is more satisfying than brooding over how much I hate washing the dishes.
It’s better to think of myself as ‘irreplaceable,’ than ‘underappreciated.’
And who knows, maybe I really am a fairy changeling.
😉
By Autumn Rain 