What's it worth to ya?

I had a discussion recently with a friend of mine, about whether pursuing activities you will never "excel" in or make money at is worthwhile.

He's never really had much occasion to work on something he wasn't naturally already pretty good at, and he also comes from an upbringing that prizes excellence and income over those little things like personal fulfillment and the like. Which, you know, different strokes and all that. But he's hit a bit of a slump lately, and we were talking about it, and I realized something kinda odd.

See, while my faithful blog readers don't often see it (count yourselves lucky), I often carry a pretty large chip on my shoulder about the way parenting is treated in this country. I mean, I'm never going to say that having a uterus is the sole determinant of a woman's destiny, because it's certainly not. This uterus was built for baby-building, these hips were made for birthin', these breasts were made for nursing, but none of that changes that this brain was made for thinkin', y'know? And the brain means I get to decide if I put the uterus and the rest to work or not, all by my smart little lonesome. Dammit.

But still - baby-making is an option, and it's something I've chosen to do. And while I don't expect a giant reward or something for it, I do think it's a friggin' crime that if I spend my days taking care of my own children, I'm a worthless freeloader, but if I spend my days taking care of someone else's children, I'm a hardworking, contributing citizen.

So on the one hand there are all these paeans to motherhood and how being a mother is so good and noble and yadda yadda, but at the same time the work mothers do is taken utterly for granted, and is assigned literally no value in our culture. Which bugs me. I hate that I bust my ass every day, not just feeding and diapering and keeping my kids from doing something completely boneheaded and dangerous, but also encouraging them to develop their physical skills, teaching them words and numbers and how the world works, and trying to shape their morals as well, with no guaranteed breaks, no guaranteed lunch, and then I get told loud and clear that all the work I do isn't "worth" anything.

Like I say, it's something I've got more than a small chip on my shoulder about. I try to be mature and all, but sometimes I'm more successful than others.

But so anyway, I was having this discussion recently with my friend, wherein I was encouraging him to think about what he wants to do, and never mind if he's all that good at it or if it'll make him money or any of that. He should just do what he wants to do. And the entire idea seemed really foreign to him.

And I realized that, for all that I still get really frustrated with the hypocritical way mothers are treated in our culture, and frustrated by the weird mix of adulation/utter disdain I get treated to, when people find out I'm an at-home mom, this time outside the world of paid work has given me something of an interesting perspective.

In fact, it kinda ties in with the stuff I was talking about the other day, to do with Judith Levine's Not Buying It. She stepped out of the capitalist world in terms of shopping, I've stepped out of it in terms of working for pay. But it's still the same thing - where you really begin to break that link between the "value" of something and the dollar amount assigned to whatever the item or service might be.

Just that we're so conditioned to think the dollar-cost is the best, and often only, way to determine what something is worth, that it's not always easy to really feel entitled to devote time or energy to something which doesn't add to the bottom line. As if "happiness" or "self-fulfillment" or "personal enrichment" are unworthy goals because they don't have a spot in the Assets column of our personal ledgers. And let's face it, the assumption in our culture is that anything that's not an asset must be a liability.

And so my friend really had a hard time grasping this idea of just doing something because you enjoy it, and never mind if you'll ever be "stellar" at it or if you'll ever make money from it.

It's something I've noticed, actually, as people in my life come to realize that this knitting thing is gonna stick around a while. Lots of people saying things like, "Ooh, you know, you could totally sell scarves to people online!" Which, you know, I appreciate that they think I do a good job at my knitting, but it's so NOT the point.

I knit because I like to. I'm not a full-on "process" knitter - I am pretty keen on the products I get at the end, after all - but I honestly think that I would in no way enjoy knitting for money. And not just because making something actually worth the time investment a knitted project requires would price it completely beyond what anyone would be willing to pay. It just... it's what I do for fun. It's what I do for ME.

When my kids were newborns, knitting was practically all I had that was simply for myself. I'd wind up sitting on the couch, with each kid balanced on a pillow on my lap, nursing or bottle-feeding them to sleep in the afternoons, and then I'd have a little time to myself. Except I couldn't move. I couldn't get up to pee, or take a shower, or get something to eat, or check my email or any of that. Because if the kids weren't right there, on top of me, they wouldn't nap for very long at all. An hour at best, 20 minutes at worst. But if I stayed right where I was and kept the TV volume turned kinda low, the kids would sleep for a couple of hours at a time.

Sometimes I'd just go to sleep right there with them. But as they got a bit older and would actually, you know, sleep at night (man, I remember what a miracle that seemed like at the time - it still makes me wanna cackle like someone who just escaped from the psych ward), I'd be wanting to actually /do/ something while they slept. And that's when I really got into knitting, after Meg (who just finished an amazing quilt, you should check it out) taught me several months before. It was my one way to do something for myself, even though I was still trapped under this little puppy-pile of sleeping babies. (Which is why all my early FOs were hats - I could knit them over the kids' heads without the fabric dangling onto their faces.)

Of course, knitting isn't the only thing that I do that sidesteps the traditional capitalist model of living. Breastfeeding as long as I have also kinda puts that whole thing on its head. The whole idea of doing something that I don't /have/ to do (according to many people), never mind that it's available for free, kinda leaves that whole "capitalism" thing out in the cold. And I think there are a lot of people who don't know quite how to handle situations like that.

Anyway. The point is that being in this weird limbo as far as "not working" right now gives me kind of a different perspective on things. I don't /have/ to look at everything as an asset or a liability. Or rather, there are things on my personal ledger that I think a lot of people don't have or don't allow themselves room for. Things like Happiness and Personal Enrichment, things which don't look good on a resume, which don't help pay the rent, which don't make for a quick one-sentence introduction at parties (not that I go to many, but you get the idea).

When I got pregnant, I never planned on leaving my job. Even when I found out I was having twins, the thought of leaving my job never occurred to me, not until I found out that losing my entire contribution to the household income would actually be less expensive than day care for twin infants. And I remember having a hard time adjusting to the notion of no longer having a 'job'. And then as I began to really experience how undersupported mothers are in our society, that chip on my shoulder began to grow.

But I still think it's the right decision for us. I still think my kids are better off and our whole family is better off by my being home. And I've come to appreciate some of the things I am able to do, some of the things I've been able to experience that I wouldn't have if I had gone back to work already. And now I'm appreciating the perspective all this has given me, the chance to really see (not just talk platitudes about) that the price tag assigned to something is at best only somewhat related to how worthwhile it may or may not be.

(ANTI-"MOMMY WARS" NOTE: Please, do not think I'm talking about any mother's decisions but my own here. Work for pay vs. stay at home are decisions all moms must make for themselves, and I would never presume to tell any woman that I know better than she what's best for her and her family. There are benefits and drawbacks to each, and I'm certainly not qualified to weigh all the pros and cons for anyone but myself.)

Think Big Thoughts Now...

I've been a reading fiend lately. Not sure what it is, though I'd better watch it or I'm going to get myself into trouble with the library enforcers. Having over 25 books out at once is kinda cool, but heaven help me if I lose track and a whole slew of them go past their due dates.

So what have I been reading?

Well, let's see:

First I started reading The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World Is Still the Least Valued by Ann Crittenden. I still haven't finished it, because I can actually feel my blood pressure rising after only a few pages. It's been such an education in how history really is written by the victors.

I also read Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine, which... wow. I'd expected something a bit more strident (Shopping BAD!) and dry, but it wasn't. It was like reading a really really well-researched diary. Which it pretty much was. But still - I love books like that, which can combine personal experience and statistical research and whatnot. It was while reading this that I decided that, with few exceptions, from now on people are getting homemade Christmas gifts from us every year, even if it's just cookies and maybe a knitted warsh rag (though if I include soap, I won't be making that, I have to admit). I think the thing she said which is still echoing in my brain a month later is how in our (United States) culture, we're being trained to think that the only way to effect social change is to change our shopping habits. And while I agree that it's important that we remember to vote with our dollars whenever we can, I think it's all-too-easy to forget to vote with our actual votes as well. And not just vote, but also to engage ourselves, even in the simplest, laziest fashions (which are thankfully now available to us via this here In-tar-net), in our local politics.

I'm saying this badly, so you should definitely read the book yourself to have a better idea what I'm saying, but the idea was that instead of thinking of ourselves as thinkers and activisits and letter-writers and opinionated so-and-so's, we cast ourselves solely in the role of "consumers" and most of the folks who run our government couldn't be happier about it. So that's been rumbling around in my head ever since I read it.

To kind of lighten things up, I've been reading my way through just about every For Better Or For Worse (by Lynn Johnston) compendium out there, with the exceptions of Reality Check and Never Wink At A Married Woman, which our library unfortunately doesn't have. I remember reading For Better Or For Worse growing up, and then when I went to college I kind of lost track of it, but I still would kind of keep tabs every so often. My dad's side of the family would often spend a Sunday morning at my aunt's house talking about the latest FBOBW strip, or what had been going on recently in the Patterson's world. And then once I got hip to the Bloglines jive I started subscribing to the RSS feed, but there's all this stuff in the middle that I'd missed. So I decided to go back and read it all.

I also started reading Unconditional Parenting, by Alfie Kohn, which I'd hoped would come in handy now that my kids are really starting to flaunt their "two"-ness. It's been an interesting read, though it's been a little hard to get through sometimes. Such a weird experience, to be reading something and suddenly go, "Sh-yah right! What-evER!" (Yes, I really do think that way - mock me at your leisure.) Only to then kind of go, "Waitaminnit! I agree with that! What the hell?!" And thus we discover sneaky little roots of preconceived notions and whatnot which are not only surprising to find, but then difficult to dig up and bare to the light and examine carefully to see what can stay and what can go.

I'm still not finished with the book - all this root examination being a tricky and slow process sometimes - but I do hope that he's got some alternative parenting ideas that will work with only marginally verbal toddlers. Because there's a lot of great stuff in there, but so much of it I kind of find myself going, "Well, that'll be great... when they're FOUR! But what do I do NOW?!" sigh.

I also took a mental breather (of a sort) by reading the first six volumes of DC Comics' Fables, which if there are any comic book fans out there, is really awesome. A really fascinating basic idea - that all those fairy tale characters and creatures we learned about as kids are real, and have fled to "our world" to escape a voracious and unbeatable invader. Now they live among us, mostly in New York City, a little underground community of storybook characters, just trying to make it in the modern world. I especially like their depiction of the thrice-divorced Prince Charming who lacks any real skill or usefulness in the world, as well as having little in the way of moral anything, but manages to survive because he's handsome and, well, charming. In the same way that Superman might be described as "capable."

And then I just finished reading Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream by Barbara Ehrenreich, who has long been one of my all-time favorite authors. "Bait and Switch" is the followup to her previous book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. Where she went undercover as a blue-collar wage-earner in "Nickel and Dimed", she set her sights on the world of white collar corporate employment in "Bait and Switch", reverting to her maiden name in order to seek a job with a corporation. Her experience was, as expected, enlightening.

Reading "Bait and Switch" was also kind of timely, as well. After eight months of official unemployment - during which time he wrote and self-published a gaming book and a big chunk of another gaming book, as well as partaking in a couple freelance stints for a friend of ours - Caz finally got a job. Make that two jobs, in fact.

The first made me nervous from the start. First it didn't pay nearly as well as his old job, and secondly it was for an outfit that always has ads running. Which never bodes well - if they're always hiring, it means they don't keep the folks they do hire, and if that's the case? There's usually a darn good reason. And, it turns out, there is. Without getting too much into it, it's the kind of job where one should be doing good work and helping people, but instead everything's gone wrong and so the days are full of watching people misuse something which should be noble and clean. Add in crummy hours and benefits which don't kick in for the first 90 days (which only makes sense, seeing as most people apparently don't last that long), and it wasn't a great option. But it was a job.

Well then, a couple days before it was due to start, Caz got a call from this recruiter (read: temp agency) he's been working with. She had a gig for him, he was practically guaranteed the job, but he had to interview on his first day at the new job. Well, he worked it out and managed to duck out of his first day of training at the new job to go interview for the other job without making too many waves, and sure enough he got this second job.

Which pays better. And is a little less soul-destroying.

However, it's still a temp gig, which means no paid time off, no health insurance*, no retirement plan, no nothing. And now we find out (after he resigned from the other job after being told that no, they would not consider moving him to a part-time position instead) that the "possibility" for a non-first-shift work schedule is more like a certainty, unless he somehow really lucks out. And since he's technically employed by this temp agency, there's a decent chance that even if he winds up working third shift, they won't be offering him any extra money to make up for messing with the schedule of our whole family.

So sure, Caz is working again, and now no longer counts as "unemployed". But neither job that he was able to get is remotely equivalent to the job he lost, and so now we're going to have to consider further adjustments to our already deeply "adjusted" lives in order to survive.

Anyway. Back to the reading list.

I also got partway through Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel which has been very good, though I'm still not finished with it. I got sidetracked by Barbara Ehrenreich, and then misplaced it for a few days trying to keep it safe from the grubby hands of toddlers. But I've re-found it, so I expect to get going on it soon.

Ooh, and I also have several knitting books out - Barbara Walker's Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns which I never ever ever want to give back. I've been in a big sock-knitting phase still, and I found two stitch patterns I want to try turning into socks one of these days - we'll see if I pull it off. And I got Folk Mittens by Marcia Lewandowski which has got me thinking about knitting mittens lately too, which... oof. So many lovely patterns in there. Yum yum yummy! I also would love to do those pirate ones from Hello Yarn, but they're kind of low on the to-do list right now, unfortunately.

So yeah. Is it any wonder I've been up much too late just about every night the past several weeks, my brain just rattling and rumbling, like a coffee can full of rocks rolling down a hill?

Okay, I really am going to try to sleep now.

* After a certain amount of time, the temp agency (ahem, "recruiter") offers a chance to buy into their health plan, but if it's anything like the one I was offered several years ago by a different temp agency, the cost is incredibly prohibitive.

Mom's Greatest Lesson

It's late. I should be asleep. But instead I'm awake and dinking around the internet. I was entertaining myself by reading blogs, when I ran across a few which are already talking about this being the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

Chris brought tears to my eyes with her post about David E. Rivers, one of the 2996 people who died on that terrible day five years ago. It's part of 2996, a tribute project wherein 2996 bloggers will each post a tribute to one of the victims of 9/11.

It's things like this, in which strangers at computers erect electronic memorials to people they'd never met, which make me think the world can't be so wrong, can it?

And then I read this post by Suze, which she begins by talking about where she was on 9/11, and I thought, "You know, I should post about that too."

But then she continued, and mentioned that while this is the fifth anniversary of 9/11, it is also the 100th anniversary of Ghandi's declaration of Satyagraha, the philosophy of non-violent resistance, and asks how the U.S. response to 9/11 can possibly go toward making a better world.

And that made me realize what I should write about today.

I've mentioned in the past that my relationship with my mom is... well, it's not so good. Our relationship has been troubled for as long as I can remember, and due to a lot of factors, a lot of the big lessons I learned growing up, she didn't teach me. As a result, we don't share many of the same values.

But there is one lesson she did teach me, one lesson that I learned and have kept with me my whole life, one lesson that I still hold up and can't find a single flaw in it, can't find any compelling arguments against it. And that lesson is this:

Two wrongs don't make a right.

It sucks, too. Because so often, when we've been wronged, all we want to do is wrong right back. We want to make others experience the pain or fear or anger that we feel, we want to make others sorry for reminding us just how vulnerable we are. It doesn't matter if the weakness they've revealed is physical, mental or spiritual - we want to cover up that chink in our armor just as fast as we can, and we want to punish those who have revealed it, that others might see.

But no matter how we've been wronged in the past, if we do wrong by someone else, it's still wrong.

It's not like math, where two negative numbers can be multiplied to create a positive number.

It's not like driving, where you can make three left turns and arrive at the same place you'd have landed if you'd made just one right turn.

It's not like knitting, where a mistake can be repeated a few times until it becomes a design element.

When we have been wronged, and we choose to do wrong in response? We correct nothing. We only add to an ever-growing pile of wrongs, which does little but inspire us and those around us to greater feats of injustice and cruelty and harm.

So while we revisit the terror and grief and rage of this date five years ago, I pray we all can leave a little space in which to also remember the courage, determination, and hope displayed on this date 100 years ago, by a man of peace.

We have all been wronged in our lives, in ways large and small, by design or by accident. If we choose to wrong others in response, we have no hope of progress, no hope of making our world a better place to be.

If we seek peace, if we seek justice, then when we are wronged, we MUST respond by doing right.

Can you get arrested for Blog Negligence?

Zang, I hope not.

It's been nut-a-ree around here the past month or so. Caz put the finishing touches on his book, working right down to the wire (like, he had to call up the printer with a last-minute change, and luckily the printer hadn't gotten to that page yet!). Then I turned 33 years old, and I'm finding myself kinda dazed by the thought that I'm actually, fer realz, a 30-something. And then Caz dashed off for darn near a week at GenCon demoing his game and selling his book and talking to other folks in the industry, trying to line up other writing gigs. Then we had a week in which to recuperate from massive sleep-deprivation (if anyone ever was unsure, I can hereby declare that one adult and two 2-year-olds can fit in a queen-sized bed, but it's not going to be pretty... oooch! Toddlers have bizarrely sharp knees, especially when they're pressed into your back!) before my in-laws came to visit. It was a wonderfully nice visit, and we had a really nice time. And then we had a week to fret about finances and stomp around on each others' nerves before Caz started (at last at last at last!) his new job.

So now, we're in that weird window that always seems to happen - where there's work being done and you're starting to relax and not think, "Oh god oh god oh god, we're going to be in the poorhouse by this time next week," every unoccupied moment, except you still haven't gotten that first paycheck, so for all the increased relaxation and celebratory desire to spend money on all those things you've been putting off, in reality? You're still just as broke as you ever were. It's temporary, and thank heaven for that, but man... it makes me twitchy as all get-out.

So what's been going on otherwise? Well, let's see....

I have indeed still been knitting. I finished the Embossed Leaves socks from the Winter '05 Interweave Knits, and I love them. I can't wait to take pics of them, because they're just awesome. I also (this is part of that dangerous celebratory relaxing-on-the-budget feeling) have been trolling around the internet for cheap sandals so I can properly show off my gorgeous gorgeous socks. I found what I think are the perfect pair, and now they're sitting in my Amazon cart just waiting for me to have the money to buy them. And if they're back to regular price the same day we get money in the bank account, it will be nothing more than proof that the universe likes to see me sputter and try not to swear when I really really REALLY want to.

Which reminds me of the other latest development(s): the kids, they are a-growing. Not like this is probably a shocker or anything, but man... some of this stuff I'm just not prepared for. Like how suddenly the kids' cribs went from "effective toddler corals" to "laughable". Or Ben's sudden penchant for jamming things like wads of carpet lint or stuffing he squirrels out of the holes Connie (one of our cats) scratched into the couch up his nose. Or, and this is especially dire, their sudden increase in speech abilities (though they seem to have inherited their father's reluctance to actually use them when it would be most expedient to do so). It was cute when I said, "Awesome" and Ben piped up "awesome!" next to me. It was less cute and more, "Oh crud" when I was snarling to Caz that if his recruiter-lady didn't come through with the promises she was making him job-wise, I was going to have to find her and beat her down, and from beside me I heard, "down!"

But really, all of that pales in comparison to Ben making it totally and unmistakably clear to us (and to anyone within a two-block radius) that he is a Big Boy now, and as such would prefer that maternal hands not touch his banana, as he can plainly peel it himself (though if Mama would just start it for him, that would be great - unless Mama likes to see him take great whopping bites out of the banana, peel and all). The Big Boy thing effects all kinds of situations and interactions. So I'm learning to be trickier. Now, when it's time to leave the park? I don't say, "It's time to go now!" I've wised up (after Ben did that go-limp-dead-weight thing in front of a whole bunch of peppy, fit, tanned, chatty parents at the park when I merely suggested we go to another area of the park so he could go on the better swings) and now I just say, "Let's go to the car!" I figure I've got maybe a week or so before he catches on to that one. Oy!

And if you're wondering, "Gosh, Thorny - what about Henry, is he showing any signs of his Two-ness?" Well, not exactly. But then, Henry was kinda born two. Seriously, one of the first times I tried to nurse him, he looked at me, he looked at my breast, and then he looked at me again as if to say, "You want me to believe that I'm going to get something to eat from that?? What, do I look like I was born yesterday?" And I had to shrug and say, as gently as I could, "Well, no. You look more like you were born today, actually." And if I didn't know better, I'd swear he rolled his eyes at me.

Henry has always done things his own way, in his own time. Which is kind of cute sometimes, but man... I really, really, REALLY wish he'd stop insisting on using the wrong end of a spoon. We've been at that one for months now, seriously. Instead Henry insists on eating a bowl of yogurt with the handle end of his spoon, microgram by microgram. Tonight Caz (obviously under the influence of that same reckless celebratory-relaxed feeling I've got going on) compared Henry eating yogurt to me eating crab legs (I'm already famous as a slow eater, food that requires personal disassembling takes it from "funny" to "obnoxious"). The sad part is, he's right, though of course that did not stop me from declaring that I could work my way through TWO pounds of crab legs by the time Henry ate a single serving of yogurt on his own, easy peasy. Luckily, we're a long way from being able to afford crab, so I'm fairly sure I'll never have to suffer the vast indignity of being proven wrong.

So yeah, that's the news. There's more knitting going on, btw - I just finished my second warshrag tonight, and I'm pretty happy with it. And I finally unearthed an old Jaywalker that had been hanging out just waiting to be grafted, and lo, at last I grafted that damn toe!! (Come on, it's only five months later, what's the big deal??) I wound up tinking and re-knitting the last couple rows (after one more botched attempt at grafting it, for old time's sake), and I think the whole problem had been that the yarn is kinda splitty, so that one stitch just wasn't properly knitted, and thus grafting didn't work well. But it's done done done DONE and I've got the second one started. Which is good, because man... my fall knitting calendar is PACKED.

Not only is there Christmas knitting to contemplate (1.5 stockings for the kids, scarf for Caz, scarf and hat for sister, possible scarf for Dad), but there's also my Olympic (now Turtle) sweater that's still waiting to be seamed and have a collar knitted on. Plus, a friend of ours is getting married in October and the kids are invited, and so, um... I decided I would knit the second sweater by then so they could wear little matching hand-knitted sweaters to the wedding (and so I could avoid having to buy fancy toddler wedding-wear we can't afford). Stop laughing!! Nothing gets me going like a deadline, it'll be... fine, really!

Ooh, and I got a simply faaaabulous birthday package from Abigail who was my pal for the August Birthday Swap. (Again, pics at a later time - I'm awful about pictures in general, and lately every time I've had time to take pictures, it's been ucky murky weather and so I end up feeling very "what's the point?" about picture-taking.) She sent me some lovely stuff - some Brown Sheep Wildfoote in a great snazzy red, and some lovely deep olive-y green merino yarn that I think is going to become a new hat for me (probably some time after Christmas, though), and a super red entrelac WARSHRAG! And that's just the knitting stuff - there was yummy-scented soap and treats and goodness a-plenty in there. Thanks again, Abigail!!

(See? I really need to blog more often, because otherwise it just becomes this mad ramble of interesting stuff with no cohesion whatsoever. But having a working computer here at home again will make that a lot easier. Now it's just dealing with me and my daft-ness. Oof!)

Otherwise, I've been reading like a fiend. All kinds of crazy stuff - also not burdened with an overabundance of cohesion, come to think of it. But it's been good, to be reading so much. I remember when the kids were first born, I felt like I'd never be able to read something that wasn't a breastfeeding book or other parenting manual for the rest of my life. Thank goodness that was just temporary.

So yeah. Caz working, kids growing, me knitting and reading and trying to hold it all together. That's about the sum of it. (Don't you wish I'd just written that at at the top, rather than making you wade through all of this? grin.)