My bible
So I just finished Muffy Mead Ferro’s Confessions of a Slacker Mom.
This may as well be the book I was supposed to write, the book I would’ve written had I gotten my act together. Then again, I’m not just a slacker at mommying.
Highlights:
- The example of making-do, photographed here. It’s so true that we parents give so much to our kids, thinking more is “better” – more technology, more toys, more room, more praise (but not necessarily more time or attention). Are we slowly taking away their resourcefulness? Their ability to “make do”, to improvise rocks and sticks into flying saucers and magic wands?
- Providing more also takes away their ability to share. I’ve always been advised to buy two of everything to minimise fighting, for my peace of mind, to promote fairness. What about teaching my kids the importance of sharing, taking turns? When we assign cutlery and plates, toys and books, rooms, computers, books and cars to each of our children, are we slowly and subconsciously not just enabling the culture of entitlement (”Rae has one, I deserve one too!”), but also the “Mine and mine only” attitude?
- Lastly, does real and sustainable self esteem really come from heaping praise upon glowing praise on our kids for the tiniest of accomplishments, or should we nurture a sense of self-driven pride and delayed gratification by remaining neutral (i.e. we don’t praise nor do we show are disappointment or criticise if the opposite occurs) unless we are really, truly impressed?
Someone needs to give Ms. Ferro an award, if she’s not already gotten one.
Random question: Is cheating part of evolution?
Would you take your partner back if he or she cheated on you?
Would you be able to go past the betrayal?
Is moving past the betrayal the only sign of maturity, of enlightenment, of true love?
Is resisting the impulse never to do anything wrong despite one’s lifeless life a rejection of one’s humanity?
I just finished reading Sue Monk Kidd’s The Mermaid Chair about a woman named Jessie in her 40s who takes the journey back to her island hometown to the aid of her mother who seems to be losing her mind, which she has been slowly since after her husband’s death 30 years ago. In her return, Jessie finds that she herself is on a similar journey and perhaps in retaliation, has an affair with a monk despite being married to an attentive, loving husband.
I found myself a little skeptical about the whole thing, because in my world, not many husbands or wives, no matter how open-minded or enlightened they claim to be, can accept an affair. It just takes a really long time to reconcile the betrayal, to reconcile the cognitive dissonance in our heads late at night when we are alone with our thoughts because:
We fight with the knowledge that your spouse has had sex with another person.
We fight with the claim that this person can say he or she loves you, and yet loves someone else.
We fight with the realisation that this person may not love you anymore but has chosen to stick with you all this time because of your kids.
We fight with the realisation that this person has grown bored of you just because you’ve been together so long.
We fight with our own feelings of love and loyalty for this person.
How do we be mature and reconcile the act with the person? That this person you love and respect and think is so smart, can be capable of doing something so hurtful and stupid and…weak? That you could have been so blind as not to see this coming?
How do you then move on despite all these battles, to emerge through the surface, hurt but still alive, stronger, more forgiving and still loving? And know that you’re not doing this because you’re afraid of change, that you’re not still clinging on to something so futile that only YOU can see the worth in it?
Isn’t it odd how Western (and exceedingly Westernised) civilisation(s) cling(s) on to and guard(s) monogamy so religiously (pardon the pun) when polygamy has been around so much longer? And yet, more and more people have affairs (it seems to be so) today, and are unable to stay with one partner in his/her lifetime.
Is this evolution? Are animals that mate for life becoming extinct?
And will we be considered more highly evolved if we learn to forgive and accept that emotional, sexual betrayal is just part of life? To be able to move past the hurt and anger, to say to this person who has hurt us, "I forgive you because what you’re doing is normal. It’s just part of growing old"?
If this is so, I have a long way to go.
A daily dose of intellect
I’ve been reading David S. Kidder and Noah Oppenheim’s The Intellectual Devotional these past few weeks. It’s a 365-day devotional (a devotional in the bible sense is scripture reduced to 365 days of mini-lessons to make for easy daily reading) for knowledge in seven fields: philosophy, visual arts, music, history, science, religion and literature. I’m now reading the American History version of it.
Did you know that ‘cotton gin’ is not actually a gin? The ‘gin’ is short for ‘engine’. The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney, revolutionised the production of cotton and the cotton mill powered by rapids/water falls aka hydro powered, invented by Samuel Slater, revolutionised the textile business in America, with consequences that included the increased and prolonged use of slavery in the South, among other things.
It’s interesting to read American history now that I’m living here. We studied very VERY little of it back home in Malaysia. For instance, did you know that Pocahontas didn’t really end up with John Smith but a John Rolfe? And that Ben Franklin signed all three key documents that established America, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris and the American Constitution? And that John Hancock (which was to me just a word for ’signature’ and the insurance company of the same name) was one of the patriot leaders of the American Revolution?
I can literally feel my brain growing. How will you be able to tolerate me now? 
Tip: They have a blog. Three words: Subscribe the feed.
Good evening
Living room, mid evening. Tipsy from sipping a 25.4oz bottle of Frutezia, Passion Blend. Alcohol content 6%.
Jeremy Irons is reading Vladimir Nabakov’s Lolita. Humbert Humbert is describing making love to the newly made Mrs Humbert, aka the mother of the real object of his desire, Lo. "Bathed through the undergrowth of dark, decaying forests…" Bet you’ve never heard a ‘mature’ woman described as such. If you’ve never read Lolita that is.
I wonder if Vladimir Nabokov was a pedophile. I’m sure I’m not the first.
Missing my husband. Need to pee.
Realisation: The name "Lolita" can never be used again because of its ‘literary’ significance.
I could not help myself…
…but this was circulating on email. Made my day, really. I added my own in brackets.
19 things I learnt from Movies
1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick’s Day parade – at any time of the year.
2. All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.
3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.
4. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off – even while scuba diving (and sleeping in the L-shaped top sheets).
5. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.
6. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.
7. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.
8. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
9. When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note – just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.
10. If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm.
11. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them.
12. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.
13. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.
14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
15. All single women have a cat.
16. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
17. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.
18. Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.
19. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings – especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.
Now go on and have a great day!
Ex-fat people are wise people
Pasta Queen (your name should be in a spelling bee, lady), a fellow blogger and hostel mate I met in Chicago last month at Blogher, just wrote this amazing post about the importance of remembering how it feels to be 300lbs.
Her book, Half of Me: The Last 200lbs are the Hardest, out April 2008, is about her painful but poignant two-year weight loss journey. Make sure to get it because she is a truly remarkable writer, as you can probably see from her blog.
Being on The Journey myself, I am not yet at a point where I can say, wow, I can now fit in a swing without looking up at the bolts. And that is perhaps my most sensible reason to lose weight.
It’s not about being able to shop at a regular store or fitting into an airplane seat. It’s about fitting into a ride at the county fair or go down the slide at the park with my girls without getting stuck.
It’s not about getting stick thin so I can get into my secondary school clothes again (no amount of money will make me get into those fluorescent yellow leotards). It’s just getting to my ideal weight so I can do things with my children without embarassing myself, embarassing them or damaging public property.
Although I won’t be able to reflect on memories of being fat for a while, I will feel good about myself now, because while boogying to Maroon 5 at Jazzercise this morning, I felt better than I had ever felt in the last five years. I was jumping, skipping, plié-ing and relevé-ing up a storm, energy and endorphins rushing through my veins. And like Eliza Doolittle triumphant over her vowels, I felt like I could’ve danced all day.
Oh. My. God.
I received an email from Amazon.
My pre-order has shipped.
My pre-order of Book Seven.
Please, please, please, PLEASE let it reach my house BEFORE I go to Chicago. PLEASE!!
And if you don’t hear from me about two nights in a row, you know what’s up. So if you’ll excuse me, I need to drop off the face of the earth.
Serendipity
Today, I started reading Jodi Picoult’s The Tenth Circle.
I had no idea what the book was about, as I love Picoult and had held a few of her books at the library.
And then I read the Prologue:
To. a. tee.
Good Reads: Miranda July’s No One Belongs Here More Than You
I first learnt about Miranda online through Miss Snark’s (now expired) blog where she’d put a link to Miranda’s ingenius website marketing her new book. And now that I’ve read it, I am more in awe of the lady, for Miranda is a true genius as her stories are beautifully original, quirky and a learning experience in what new writing should be all about as a wannabe writer myself.
I’ve been stuck in a rut trying to write something the past few months, and the more I read, the less I seem to want to write because I feel dwarfed by the talent here in America. And yet, writers like Miranda inspire me to abandon all my inhibitions and insecurities and look within myself to want and go to a place where I can just throw away the shackles of adulthood and motherhood and perhaps even readerhood to unlock my inner muse.
No One Belongs Here More Than You
I am not a deep person but I do love a good philosophical, metaphysical ”why” and ”what if” pondering from time to time, and that is what each Miranda story is like. That some of the stories are disturbing in content (a man is given ecstacy and coerced to having sex with his male friend even when he’s not gay; a teacher having sex with her autistic student; a movie being made about an older man being in love with a child) is a factor that becomes less important as she delves into the imagined how of these scenarios, how easily these things happen, how commonly they take place, how loneliness does not discriminate, how even the most ordinary, traditional, ‘normal’ personas can make drastic turns in life with even the smallest decisions – taking a drug, sending an email, a mere phone call. That most of what happens in life needs no grand gestures, no build-ups, no elaborate staging. That some things just happen because they happen in our minds, and the rest of the world is left to wonder, “Why didn’t we see that coming?” because really, who do you know has the time or inclination to really look?
My simplest reasons for liking Miranda is she’s funny and imaginative. Sometimes it seems that she may be a little crazy but I think those are the best kind of writers, those who seem to have a controlled madness about them they can use to come up with truly original stuff you don’t get to see very often.
I await eagerly for more of Miranda’s books and her films.
More of my amateur book reviews can be read at my Library Thing.
Scattered
I woke up this morning feeling only a fraction of myself. Scrapped and read until 2am last night. For some reason (and it’s not coffee – I drink only a cup a day these days – used to be three or more – mostly more), insomnia has kept me up this last week. I woke up with a headache that lasted two days in a row, and I finally took two Tylenol PMs at the end of which just about dropped me for 12 hours straight. Was so tempted to take more the next day to help me sleep. Instead, I scrapped.
Don’t worry, I hate taking pills more than fitful sleep.
The girls stayed in their beds as agreed last night, and I’m so proud that they remembered. It’s really quite a miracle. And yet, I felt so alone waking up all by myself in our great big bed.
I miss Lokes. Painfully. Three more days. I don’t even remember how he smells like.
I can’t decide what to read. I’ve started Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale
And then I went and got myself trapped at Half Price at their Clearance bins outside.
Look what I got for $10:
(minus Water for Elephants – I got that at Costco for $9)
And I have Born into Brothels waiting for me on my Netflix. I am afraid to watch it.
Read, read, read
Wow, I’m on a blogging spree tonight.
To make up for the silence the whole of last week. I was super bee-say.
Anyway, a few of my preschool friends asked me how Raeven is reading so well today (she can actually read my blog so I have to put a stop to my incessant swearing. Or ban her from reading my blog).
I promise you, I did not force her. She loves Dr Seuss and those Scholastic picture books which are just marvellous. I’ve also been reading to her since she was a baby, mostly board books with pictures, where I make up the stories because well, those books aren’t cheap so I make up different stories even when I am using the same book and the same words and pictures, the cheapskate that I am.
I think it also helps when she sees me spending so much time with my nose buried in a book or the computer, reading something or other.
“Mommy, let’s read your blog!” she will ask because she knows she’s in here. I refrain of course, what with the things I put in here.
Anyway, the girls have a few favourites that Lokes and I have to read each night and in Skyler’s case, during her nap time.
Right on top is Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We borrowed the board version from the library a long time ago and she loved it. Then I saw one at a garage sale. It was brand new and cost only 50 cents, so now, she even sleeps with it. My gut feeling is that it has all kinds of junk food in there, like an ice cream cone and a cup cake and salami. Oh, she loves the damn thing.
Her other top favourites are Dr Seuss’ ABC
Rae’s book du jour is Martin Wadell’s Once There Were Giants. It’s a beautiful tale about growing up and I love reading it myself. Rae also loves to ‘read’ a new children’s atlas we bought her, which I explained to her is a ‘book of maps’. Now that Lokes is travelling, she has fun looking at all the places he’s visiting. She also loves a book her preschool teacher recommended, called The Squeaky Door
But my favourite book of all is Joyce Dunbar’s Tell me Something Happy Before I go to Sleep. It’s a sweet tale about a brother telling his sister all the happy reasons why she should go to sleep, and why I like it is because by the time I finish, the girls are both yawning and ready to call it a night!
So what are your favourite books to read to your kids? Share!
So good I’m crying
I just finished Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper.
The last five pages had me sobbing naked in the can (I was going to take a shower but ended up sitting on the toilet half an hour trying to finish the book without soaking it in tears).
To those who’ve read it: I thought the ending was a little dramatic. I mean, c’mon. That is just way too much tragedy for one family, even in Fiction World. If they were Buddhists, they must have had murdered an entire village to have racked up that much bad karma.
That said, this is the first time I’ve cried reading a book. Someone once said that to write something that makes people laugh is hard, but to write something that makes people cry is near impossible (or maybe I said that, ‘coz I can’t remember who the hell said that).
Anyway, whoever said that must not have met me. I will laugh AND cry at anything. I am that flaky.
But man, that is a good book.
Go get it. Don’t walk. CLICK.
Book review: Life of Pi
I finally finished Yann Martel’s Life of Pi
My amateur review at my Librarything:
This is my first Man Booker book and I can see it won the hearts and minds of the judges for at least one reason: originality.
Reading it, I can’t help but admire Martel’s zoology knowledge and research. I now know much more about the habits and practices of wild animals in captivity!
Of course, one must not ignore the underlying messages of survival, the resilience of the human spirit, and of faith that are so uniquely presented in Martel’s elegant prose.
Life of Pi is a surprisingly easy book to read. I was expecting difficult language and flowery, high-brow stuff as was my impression of award-winning literature. I think the subject matters written about were more challenging to tackle, as there are moments of savagery that may shock or at the very least disagree with the delicate reading palate of the reading public. And yet, Martel is able to relate these scenes in an even and gentle voice, almost as though he was talking, instead, of the migrating habits of birds rather than the slow and painful death of a zebra being eaten alive by a hyena.
An interesting, enriching read.
Mr Clooney has a fan
Funniest thing I’ve read in a month.
Trust me. You NEED to read this.
ps. Have you ever heard of Dan Liebert? You’re gonna want to bookmark this. He makes ‘verbal cartoons’:
My Living Will: I no longer wish to go on living if I should lose control of my body functions or if my mind is in a vegetative state or if I have that “old-man smell.”
Small town life, a novel
I finished Ken Haruf’s Plainsong
What an uplifting read.
Wrote a short review at my Library Thing:
I’ve not read many American books, most of which were thrillers/murder mysteries, so Kent Haruf’s Plainsong allowed me a peek Americana that had me turning pages deep into the night.
It may not be an easy book for a non-American to digest. Those with little to no experience of cowherds or Americana or are not fans of Westerns, may find the setting a little dry or the parts about the old cowboys working with heifers uninteresting, but Haruf is a very gentle storyteller, who writes as though words are little precious stones, picking only the right ones, and not too many, to say what he needs to say.
The dialogue in Plainsong isn’t punctuated. Not sure why but it was, at first, a little hard to follow. And yet, the voices soar and lift up the story (or stories), giving depth to each of the characters. I feel as though I now know how a horse autopsy is done 50 years ago, or the confusion faced by a pregnant teenager. It is remarkable how Haruf is able to breathe life into such a diverse set of characters.
An excellent read, of just the right length.
Middlemath
While watching Superman Returns, the part where Superman goes back to rip out the chunk of kryptonite from the earth:
Raeven: Why is he going back, Daddy?
Daddy: To save the world.
Raeven: Because Superman RETURNS?
So it’s been one natural disaster after another in the last two months. First the floods, which turned our pastures into lakes. Then the snow, which was nice actually, but not so much for those whose cars were stuck by the roadsides. Last Thursday, one of the worst windstorms in the history of windstorms hit the Puget Sound area, knocking down trees and plunging millions of homes and businesses into pitch blackness. Ours went out around 9pm the night itself, and we’ve been living in darkness ever since. It will be one week tomorrow.
The first night, under the light of several aromatherapy and Halloween votive candles, we turned on our gas fireplace furtively, while desperately surfing on Lokes’ phone to the Puget Sound Energy website to check if our gas was piped in. Having a fireplace is a completely foreign concept to us, so we didn’t want to suddenly run out of gas because there’s a tank somewhere underneath the house that we had to go fill. Imagine our relief to know that this source of heat, at least, would go on for as long as, well, we paid our bill. And with this knowledge secured, we kept the fire burning, and camped out in front of it, building a tent for the girls using a bedsheet and our couch, stuffing pillows and blankets to make a warm bed for them in front of the fire. At night, we played shadow puppets to keep them entertained, read stories under torch light but they of course, preferred to play trampoline with the tent bed.
Since Thursday, I have finished three four books: Michael Crichton’s Next (horrible – fragmented, the plot was not cohesive at all – one of his worst, IMHO), Milan Kundera’s Laughable Loves (darkly funny), YiYun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (sometimes surprising, sometimes alarming), Ha Jin’s Under the Red Flag (made me cry) and am now in the middle of Waiting, which is beginning to get real interesting.
So this is what people did in the old days when they had no electricity!
Alas, I am a power addict. Thanks to Lokes’ office, we had our hot showers and every evening, he would bring home a fully charged notebook so we could watch some movies, next to a hot cup of hot and sour soup from Grand Peking. I love you, baby. So far, we’ve gone over Superman Returns (I’ve definitely outgrown my favourite superhero, darn it), United 93 (absolutely horrid because it’s so damn real, couldn’t stop crying throughout), Funny Face (Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire do NOT look good together) and while doing laundry at Karli’s, we watched Pride and Prejudice (Kiera Knightley and Matthew Macfayden look perfect together).
Word has it that we will have to endure a few more powerless days. We cleaned out the freezer yesterday and had to throw out vast quantities of meat, yogurt and other must-keep-frozen things. The house is in a fine mess but you know what? We are a-okay. Thanks to Lokes’ work, and some really good friends who have offered us so much help, we’re just fine.
But enough about me. How’s things with you?
Raising creativity
My husband, the dear man, shared with me a TEDtalk video yesterday, which just blew my socks off. It was of Sir Ken Robinson, a leading expert on innovation and human resources. Here, he speaks of the flaws of today’s archaic education systems worldwide that focus on providing human capital for the present (or the past?) instead of the future, and how creativity is being educated out of our children. He is an articulate, hilarious speaker. Entertaining and enlightening.
As some of you may know, TED is the yearly Technology, Entertainment and Design conference for 1,000 of the cleverest people in the world. Tickets are always sold out. Thankfully, we can now watch some of these luminaries speak online.
So sit back, watch, and learn.
Copyright © 2006 The I’mperfect Mom. This blog is for non-commercial use only. If you’re reading the entirety of this entry on another website (excluding your RSS aggregator), please email me to report copyright infringement so legal action may be taken. Thank you.
Look ma, my vocab is expanding!
Growing up with a pair of English teachers can be trying, not so much because of the ‘English’ but more the ‘teachers’. My life was full of rules and schedules and times tables (you read right. The timeS tables, as in multiplications!). My dad also taught math.
I remember very clearly that my father, being the gadget freak that he was even then, had recorded a tape with his voice reciting the times tables from one to 12 and he would play it on that chunky boombox of his (top of the line in the 80s, of course) during mealtimes to somehow subliminally program them into our heads (my sister’s and mine). Is it any wonder why I prefer total silence when I eat these days?
That said, one of the most valuable lessons imparted from this somewhat austere upbringing, was the love for reading. To this day, whenever he visited (or at least back home when I was simply two hours’ drive away), my dad would check out my little library and spend whatever days he had with us reading at least a book every three or four days, while cramming in our Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs as quickly as he can because he did not have a DVD player back in Batu Gajah.
It’s a multitasking (task is not the right word, perhaps multi-entertain is more apt?) skill trained from having one’s telly hours severely limited during one’s childhood. Ask my husband. I’m able to do it too, watch TV and read at the same time. But only Star Trek, oddly.
Anyway, so reading. Need I tell you how marvellously important it is? Even as a writer – or especially so – reading is how I learn words and styles. Without reading, I would be dried out. And I was, for a very long time, ironically when I needed to be professionally filled up, and I wasn’t. Today, because of nap times and quiet times and early bedtimes (for the kids), I am able to refill that well of words and expressions and thoughts and dreams, to my hearts’ content.
Words I learnt from Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children (such an elegant read, almost like a 21st century, New York-style Austen, Messud is):
- tchotchkes: As in, “she abhorred tchotchkes“.
- interlocutor: As in, “…and found his interlocutor was young, female, and attractive,…”
- autodidactic: Having the characteristics of someone who is self-taught, aka, an autodidact (I lost the passage that contained the word).
Copyright © 2006 The I’mperfect Mom. This blog is for non-commercial use only. If you’re reading the entirety of this entry on another website (excluding your RSS aggregator), please email me to report copyright infringement so legal action may be taken. Thank you.
Meeting Mitch!
Thanks to Starbucks, I will be meeting Mitch Albom on 16th Oct 2006!
He’s having a book signing of his latest, for one more day, which I got out of coincidence at a Starbucks I frequent ‘coz I’s completely forgotten about it, lordy lordy.
For fans, Albom will be at the Starbucks @ Madison Park in Seattle Oct 16th 2006 5.30pm – 6.30pm. Address:
Madison Park
4000 East Madison Ave
Seattle, WA 98112
There will also be a Conversations discussion of the book on Oct 26th for two hours from 6.30pm – 8.30pm at the same Starbucks. Join the Starbucks gather.com forum here.
If there is one thing I love about being here in the US, it’s the chance to meet celebs. Woot!
Enrich your vocab!
I’ve started reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte two weeks ago (for my Lit Appreciation Class) and so far, have reached Page 52 – largely due to lack of toilet/nodding off to sleep time. I’ve discovered a huge number of strange words. Beautiful, but strange – words I think we should start using again!:
1. Cavillers ~ jesters, people who like to play the fool
2. torpid ~ lethargic, slow and always tired
3. bilious ~ nauseous
4. exigency ~ the need for urgent attention
There are plenty more, too many to state here. I observe that Bronte put a very mature mind into the 8-year old Jane Eyre. Seems a little unrealistic an adolescent, although of English descent, knows such words!