re-engergized parenting: practicing deliberateness

salt lake temple east doors

as the mother of a brood, spread out over a lot of years, i'm worried about parental burn-out.

i'm such a different mother to moses and cecily than i was to eva and ingrid.  for instance, we didn't own a t.v. when eva and ingrid were little.  and there was no internet, really, unless you count dial-up.  this means they spent the majority of their free time reading and in imaginative play.

also, they spent most of their elementary years in oakland and seattle, whereas mo and cec were born and raised in utah.

the east doors of the temple have never been opened.  they will only be opened by jesus during the second coming.

on monday, we took the kids on an outing to salt lake city, and it hit me how few outings we've done with the littles as compared with the number of cool things we used to do with the bigs.  in seattle, we had a zoo pass, we went to carkeek almost weekly, and lake washington on walks and bike rides almost daily.  we went to concerts and events, museums and parties, plays, lessons, the science center, the children's museum, and the aquarium.

now we simply spend too much time indoors, too much time with individual screens.

the view from the joseph smith building, tenth floor. this is a must-see if you're touristing in salt lake.

i'm older now.  i have less energy, and more demands on my time, so i have to be deliberate. i have to practice to keep my quality of parenting up.  being tired has it's upside, however.  i'm mellower, i don't try to micro-manage my younger kids like i did with the older ones, i'm not as critical, i enjoy the kids more and worry less, and i have a good sense of what's important and what's not.

keep start quit (ksq) is a mid-semester evaluation i sometimes do with my students if i think a class isn't going as well as it could be.  it helps me figure out what the problems are.  so here's my attempt at a mid-life parenting evaluation:


keep

--having family dinner every night
--teaching the kids to cook
--kids' daily checklists
--one on one dates with the kids
--family home evening
--reading out loud together
--playing the favorites game
--date night for parents

start 

--turning off the internet for a few hours a day
--attending international cinema at byu together
--planning holidays and vacations more carefully--prioritizing this
--a family mission statment
--involving the kids more in problem solving
--group reading time (we all read our own books together)
--more day trips

quit

--lazy or thoughtless parenting
--criticizing
--too much screen time
--spending time and money on anything that doesn't fit with our family's values
--being distracted during family time

moses loved the austrian-made hand-crafted furniture in the joseph smith building

mission statement

i know it's gross and corporate-y, but i like the idea of having a firm vision in mind of my purpose in this life, and what i want to seed in my children before they leave my home.  i'll try to come up with a better title for this than 'mission statement' (candland asplund family articles?  statement of purpose?) but in the mean time, here's what i want to start with:

Our family cultivates and values curiosity.

dear readers, i want to know your thoughts on rejuvenating yourself when you start to get parental burn out (when i do this, my kids moan and say, "mom's doing her new-leaf-ish thing again.")

i'm also curious about words, phrases, etc. that you would put into a family mission statement.

talking about race/eating more vegetables

what do vegetables and race have to do with each other?

asparagus with lemon zest & cold creek farm artisan butter

a question i have, and it's not really rhetorical:  when you want to get healthier you eat more vegetables, or drink more water, or exercise more, etc. according to concrete, scientifically proven methods.  when you want to become less racist & contribute to a more racially just world, what actions do you take?

i read "a complete guide to 'hipster' racism"  in jezebel today by lindy west (i'm in love with this woman!)  , and she articulated so well the problem with denying racism, with accepting the benefits of belonging to a dominant racial group in a racist society without acknowledging or taking any actions to rectify the situation.

one thing that really struck me was when west said she works every day to be less racist.  since i'm spending this year focusing on small daily practices, i had the thought what daily practices make a person less racist, or contribute to the creation of greater equality in the world?  

that is not a rhetorical question.

here's what lindy west says:


When people are trying to be sensitive about race but they don't know what to say, they usually go with, "Well, race is a complicated issue." Except, no, it's not. Race is one of the least complicated issues that there is, because it's made up. It's arbitrary. It's as complicated as goddamn Santa Claus. Oh, that guy's mom was half-black, which makes his skin slightly more pigmented than mine, which therefore means that he's inherently 12.5% lazier than me? Science! Um, no. What's actually complicated is our country's relationship with race, and our utter ineptitude at talking about it. We suck. I mean, I work on it every day, and I'm still a total fuck-up*. But this new scheme someone came up with—where we prove we're not racist by acting as casually racist as possible? Not our best, white people. Not our best.

so read the whole article. it's great--very incisive and saying some things that need to be said, and then tell me what you think about the whole daily practice thing.  for me to make changes i have to

mushrooms, cabbage, spring onions & chicken over yukon asiago mashed potatoes served in pottery made by lula

a) believe there's a problem that needs to be fixed, b) have a plan of action that i will actually adhere to (not too overwhelming or discouraging, in other words) and c) believe that my actions will be efficacious.

*it's been a week of posts containing the f-word.  in totally necessary ways.  we can talk about it some time if you want.  if you haven't already, please read guest blogger natanya ann pulley's post from monday--it goes with the theme of the week.  also--

**read something that proves there's still racism, in case you're doubting, from this week's news.  rad writer ana castillo was banned from a visit to a tuscon high school.  surely not because she's a chicana, right?

Unperfect

This day had lots of promise, a lot of hours in which to get some grading and writing done, but one small oversight seemed to derail it all:  I forgot to charge my computer before leaving the house and then couldn't find a cafe that would let me plug in.  Housing Works had an outlet that had no power flowing to it.  Psych!  The volunteer counter gal told me she goes to Starbucks, doesn't buy anything, and plugs in.  Starbucks felt too far to go.

I sat and used the power I had.

Then, one of my bondings that I had put on my chipped front teeth years ago, fell off, which increased my feeling of being out of control.   So now I look something like this.  Not a good look for job hunting:

This is not my mouth.

I do envy your perfect teeth, if you have them.  (I chipped my teeth when I was eight on a Payson, UT playground, and they weren't fixed until '04.)

Then at home our wifi wasn't working.  I couldn't unlock the locked desktop keyboard, and my perfet minutes rushed by, dwindling.

Now I'm trying to rescue the shards of the day by finding a poem for my pocket tomorrow.  Like Simon and Garfunkle say:  "I've got my books and my poetry to protect me." Wish poetry could do something about my tooth.

And I'm also trying not to feel like the day was a bust.  Actually, after all this happened, I ran into a  friend, who told me she's doing really well lately, that things were getting more perfect for her.  I liked how happy hearing that made me.  No envy at all.

(And Lara, that should be my one of my daily practices:  refusing envy)

sabbath schooling

 

to continue the burlesque show of GITP (legs! legs! legs!), here are my legs walking themselves to church

 we were schooled on this radically beautiful text today in an excellent and strong sermon:

love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

this seems so hard to do.

i think, though, that it is one of those challenging postures that, once you achieve it, if only for a moment, you'll realize is the easiest thing in the world.

that continuously practicing and falling will take you to a point, finally, where, without effort, you are suddenly filled with love, hate falls away, and, i imagine, you are filled with the most expansively beautiful liberation a person could ever experience.


what is the practice that gets us to this place?

i want to hear your methods and inspirations, and would love some more sunday school in my life from diverse persons and readers.

the tulips, who lead such wildly brilliant and brief lives, are up

 i'm committing to a week full of vegetables.

what's on your menu this week?

le petit déjeuner, chez moi

legwear: bare, in honor of 83 degrees

inspiration: sermon on the mount

looking forward: to monday's guest blogger

Heat Seeking

On the last day inside the holiday bubble, S got out--for the first time--the Fairy Cards I picked up at Golden Braid Books in Salt Lake City on New Year's Day 2011. I had never interacted with them and still not sure what I think of tarot (Fairy Cards are along the same lines), etc, but I asked the following question of them. "What can I do this year to be more productive?" Stella pulled, at random/sight unseen, the three cards pictured here: 1. Ask for What You Want: "Let the universe and other people know what you need." 2. Practice, Practice, Practice: "Polish your skills and talent and increase your confidence." And this one was weird: 3. Pregnancy and Birth: "Big change." I'm choosing to read that one as a metaphor.

All of these things are great and I have to keep them in my head. Won't you help?

It's January 2nd--my spouse's birthday. Kids go back to school tomorrow. I go back to work, my paid work and my work work, which I'm too shy to talk about here yet.

Not too shy to write about tights: Because it's cold today, I wore thick gray ribbed tights from Uniqlo. Newish, bought just before Xmas, they are supposed to be imbued with heat seeking "Japanese technology." I'm not even kidding; they are really that warm. I'm going to try and generate this kind of heat all year.