Last week, Jess blogged with this question: How and what do you eat on a typical day? I’ve been pondering this ever since. Generally speaking, I’m not a food person. I would probably give up eating in a heartbeat if we didn’t have to do it anymore. I don’t ENJOY cooking. 90% of the things I “cook” turn out to be “too much work” in my book. The husband makes dinner more often than I do. It’s not uncommon for me to just make myself a sandwich and just plop down and eat it for dinner, figuring out what the kidlet will eat later. I’m a morning person, and I’m very much NOT an evening person, so I don’t have much energy to cook dinner. I also don’t like to experiment; I prefer tried-and-true every time. And my overly-forgiving metabolism means I’ve never been forced to really plan meal or snack times. I just eat when I’m hungry; don’t when I’m not. All of these things are pretty obviously reflected in the way I approach food on a daily basis.

Breakfast!
My everyday breakfast consists of a big mug of hot tea, year-round. On Saturdays, I usually go out to breakfast (buffet) with my family. I already have so much energy in the mornings that I can usually take or leave the extra calories. Ironically, I do eat breakfast every day when I’m dieting. (Most important meal of the day becomes more important then.)
The husband grabs a breakfast bar or energy drink.
Andrew eats breakfast at grandma’s house.

Lunch!
Kyle and I meet for lunch on most weekdays. I hate eating lunch at the office because no matter where I eat, it feels like I’m still working. I don’t really consider it a “break”. So I like to get out of the office, drive with my music loud, and chat with my husband for a few minutes. Our most common lunch spots are currently Quizno’s and Spicy Pickle. Today I ate a beef bacon & cheddar bullet from Quizno’s.

Dinner!
Oh, the most haphazard part of my day! Sometimes I will plan to cook. I try to do this two nights a week, but in the summer I really lack motivation. Otherwise we don’t really think about it until Kyle gets home from work. Right now it’s pretty rare that all three of us eat at the same time. We find that Andrew eats much better if it’s a bit later (at least 6:00p) and he actually also does a lot better if nobody’s paying attention to him (he has a tendency to clown around if we’re all there). If I cook something that all of us are eating, we’re all at the table at dinnertime. This happened the other night when I made chipotle-honey chicken fingers (non-chipotle-honey for Andrew), rice, and peas. Otherwise, usually Kyle and I will grab our dinner first, then Andrew eats a bit after we do.
Like I said, I grew up eating whatever, whenever. It’s hard for me to shake that, so I’ll still just make myself a quick sandwich or a quesadilla (okay, Kyle’s the quesadilla-maker) and scarf it down before Andrew’s dinnertime.

Post-apocalyptic and utopian/dystopian novels are always difficult for me. The reason I threw On the Beach down half of the way through, sobbing, and promptly gave it away is the same reason that The Time Traveler’s Wife is my favorite novel of all-time. I get involved in books. I think about any book I’m reading an awful lot, and much of it sticks with me. Books that I like to think about, that I want to stick with me… well, those are my favorites. Books I want to forget about quickly are harder. It’s not that they aren’t good books. Is Schindler’s List a good movie? Yes, but I don’t want to watch it every day (or ever again, really). It’s about my enjoyment. This is entertainment. (But is that all? Literature often seems to hold more “value” when we are young. Can we still read books we don’t really LIKE, as adults? Or will Gatsby* and The Grapes of Wrath always be dusty after middle school?)

What’s interesting about The Giver is that Lois Lowry (one of my favorite young adult authors, by the way) paints a utopian/dystopian picture for youth. But I don’t mean that it’s somehow easier or any less disturbing than most adult dystopian fiction I’ve read. There is some amount of controversy surrounding the availability of this story for children. It’s a thinking book. And not all of the thinking is pleasant, but it holds meaning. Just like all dystopian fiction. They’re portraits. What does this other society say about OURS? How does it make you FEEL about ours? About your life? Did you tiptoe in and kiss your sleeping 2-year-old son after reading this?**

I read this book when I was a kid. I remember that I didn’t really like it. Now I remember why. It’s beautiful. It’s well-written. It’s incredibly sad. It’s like so many others that will always sit on my bookshelf, read once and remembered vaguely, recalled verbally as “bizarre and depressing” (boy, my husband will NEVER read it now). But I would give it to anybody and say “Hey. You GOTTA read this one.”

I say the same about a lot of young adult books.

(Have you read this one? What was your impression?)

The Giver by Lois Lowry was the August choice for Book Club Bloggers.

* I LOVE Gatsby. Husband hates it.
** Because I did.

In case you’ve never noticed (impossible), I love weather. I love seasons. I’m always overly in-tune with the changing seasons… to my great and almost childlike excitement. I have the pleasure of living in a climate with four wonderfully enjoyable seasons. I am constantly stupefied, amazed, bewildered, delighted by the weather. [Read my spring post about this!] We’ve had such a short summer; so short, in fact, that I almost feel like I could live another month of it – and yet, the earth moves, impatiently, and we right with it.

- It’s been deliciously chilly in the mornings. I still have our windows open and fans blowing all night, so by 5:00 am it’s downright snuggle weather. There is nothing like being able to hunker down under heavy covers after months of tossing and sweating under nothing more than a light sheet.

- Even though it’s still almost 100 degrees during the day, it doesn’t feel the same as mid-summer 100 degrees. It’s breezy; the shadows are long. I’m enjoying the last scorching tendrils of the sun even as it’s falling away from our hemisphere.

- I hear the crickets right now. As I told Kyle this week, I don’t ever want to see them (ew, BUGS! ugly ones!)….. but I love listening to them.

- I walked outside at lunch the other day and immediately thought fall! It wasn’t for the temperature, or even any lack of sunshine. It was something in the way the leaves rustled in the wind. They had a sort of dry, hollow sound. They’re not quite scuttling along the ground yet, but they gave me the distinct impression that they are not long for this world (or this year, perhaps).

- I wore a mustard-gold sweater to work – short sleeves, mind you – and smugly celebrated my secret enjoyment of fall colors all day. (My normally fall/clouds/rain/winter-loving coworker finds herself unwilling to part with summer just yet this year, so I have to keep my jubilee to myself for now.)

- I find myself unwittingly staying on the channel with the football game and passing over the channel with the baseball game. As much as I hate to admit it, I find my eyes lingering on the fresh white yard lines with a tiny thrill of excitement. It’s a bit like the first time you see a pile of pumpkins at the store.

- The “school year” has been far from my mind for years, but I’m suddenly back there again, feeling somehow scrambled about my son who was just a baby yesterday and must soon be thinking about backpacks and teachers and school clothes.

- I’m finally settling into my new laptop at work. I didn’t have the leisure of missing nearly an entire day of work to transition everything over, but it had to happen, and I will spend the rest of the week and beyond not only tinkering and installing and copying everything I’ve forgotten, but catching up on lost time and getting used to Windows 7 coming from XP. How does this feel like fall? I don’t know, but somehow it does. Like a bouquet of sharpened pencils.

- Is it time for boots and long cords and jackets yet? The weather says no, but my fashion magazines torment me so.

- Being “good” at something is relative. You may be good at something compared to somebody else, but compared to a different somebody, you may be terrible at the same thing. For almost everything you do, there is probably somebody who does it better and somebody who does it worse. GOOD is an arbitrary sliding scale.

- But how many people who are better/worse does it take for you to feel that YOU are good/not good at something? Is it a percentage? Or just a general feeling?

- I have a lot of trouble thinking of things I am good at because… I can always think of people who are better at those things. Most of the things I listed in my last post are things at which I don’t really know anybody who is better.

- For 95% of what we do in life, “sufficient” is completely adequate. I’m not the best at doing my hair because I don’t really need to be. But then I think “gosh, I’m just pitiful at that” and it brings me down.

- Does the best involve inherent talent more than acquired skills? You can BECOME better at something, but that doesn’t mean you’ll ever be good. And even if you are, it doesn’t mean you’ll ever be one of the best.

- What does “one of the best” mean? We all have such different definitions of good. If I’d never seen major league baseball, I’d probably think a double-A league baseball player was GOOD, maybe the best.

- Your best isn’t always THE best. And the best isn’t always YOUR best.

- Is it easier to be good at things that you like? Is it harder to be bad at things that you hate? I’m one of those people who won’t do something I’m not good at, unless I have to.

- A lot of times, when I think I’m not good at something, it is because I’m not like “most other people” at something. I tend to experience the world quite differently than most other people seem to. This is especially true when it comes to being a mom.

- Can one be “good” at something simple like changing diapers? It may not require as much skill as other activities, but what does that mean? Is it one of those things that EVERYBODY is good at, with practice? Or is there such a thing?

- What do you WISH you were good at, but you KNOW you never can be? (Like singing, for me. I can hold a tune. But I want to be able to SING.)

Miss Jen has challenged everybody to come up with seven things that I’m good at. (Er- you come up with things that YOU’RE good at. I come up with mine.) Her post is much more eloquent, but let’s tap into our inner children and become the people that we were at two when we cried I’m VERY GOOD at jumping, Mommy!*

1. I’m good at Photoshop. I have my doubts about this (does that defeat the purpose?), but I believe any single one of my coworkers would list this first and foremost if you asked them. The thing is, I Photoshop for a living. And when my husband mentioned this (he came up with this one – does THAT defeat the purpose??) and I said I wasn’t sure, he looked at me and said “You Photoshop-swapped people’s heads FOR THEIR CHRISTMAS CARD.” True story.

Okay, I’ma try to be better about the rest, and actually come up with things that I think I’m good at.

2. I’m good at communicating. I take the specifications from the customer to the software engineers. (Cookie if you know where that’s from.) I really do! And you know why? Because I know how the customers think (I spent 20 minutes today telling my programmer why I like Quick View on online retail stores and in what circumstances I still use the item detail pages) and I know how the programmers think (we also discussed how a second catalog is going to pass a separate script back to our system with a parameter that identifies the catalog). A lot of times I am a communication bridge between a frustrated marketing/sales department and the programmers.

3. I’m good at reading. I’ve been reading since I was three years old and I am totally a speed-reader. Words have always just made sense to me.

Um, this is really hard. *stares at the blinking cursor*

4. (I’m totally stealing this one from Jen) I’m good at managing our finances. I do part of the earning, all of the bill-paying, and most of the money-spending. It works out nicely.

5. I’m good at getting along with people. I’ve always been the one who gets along with everybody, even the most disagreeable folks. I still manage to find myself in situations where I’m friends with two people who don’t get along with each other. EVEN NOW, with adults. I’ve never particularly enjoyed that aspect, but I think that my ability to be friends with everybody has always been at least partially to my credit. (Which actually seems kind of bizarre to me, since I don’t have what I would consider a “sweet” personality. I’m just real and straightforward, I guess.) (And on the flip side, while I get along with everybody, I’m close to almost nobody.)

6. I’m good at typing. Even my programmers exclaim at this (but then, programmers are not generally the best typists. Actually, the one who usually exclaims types faster than anybody else I know). I can do 110 words per minute without breaking a sweat (+95% accuracy or something). I think this is much more common these days among our internet generation, though.

7. I’m good at details. I am detail-oriented to the extreme, whether it’s spelling, party-planning, packing for a trip, or putting together my son’s winter wardrobe. I don’t lose things and I don’t forget things. When I do, which is rarely, it bothers me immensely.

Yay, I did seven! And discovered I’m terrible at this exercise! I can’t think of very many things for this list – at least, not anything practical. Wouldn’t it be nice if I were good at cleaning the kitchen, or playing with my son, or doing my hair? Things I do all the time, at which I never seem to improve? It’s definitely an interesting study.

Thanks for the food for thought, Jen!

*Something my son said to me today. Incidentally, I am NOT very good at jumping. Must get it from his Daddy.

Weekends are precious to me, and also maddening. Since I work at the office five days a week, and since the vast majority of my energy is present in the morning, that means I have two mornings a week in which my energy and focus can be directed elsewhere. Which means that I’m always doing my best to divide that time between my husband, son, house, yard, family, errands, and… well, ME.

Kyle has been working the past few Sundays to make up some of his time from vacation. Andrew and I both really miss him. It becomes the longest day of the week. And yet, somehow, at the end of this very long Sunday featuring failures and fallings short, it also feels very full of… LIFE. It’s true that life is what happens while you’re making plans. Life is what happens on Sunday while I’m preparing for and dreading the rest of the week. My life is TODAY.

Today was…

…getting up at 7:00a, waking up the husband so he could get ready for work, and getting Andrew up, dressed, breakfasted, and out the door into Uncle Danny’s truck at 8:00.

…grocery shopping for about an hour with Uncle Danny & Grandma, including Andrew picking out a new kind of bubble bath at the store, and looking at the fish on the pet aisle.

…putting all the groceries away, cleaning out the fridge, and removing everything from the bottom shelf of the fridge to scrub it with Goo-Gone and kitchen cleaner (HOW did it ever get that gross?)

…playing outside in the backyard until Andrew fell off the deck & didn’t feel like playing outside anymore.

…watching Backyardigans and some tidbits of Andrew’s other favorite shows.

…making myself a huge tunafish and tomato sandwich for lunch & reading ESPN Magazine.

…making Andrew an egg salad sandwich, peas, and pineapple for lunch – of which he mostly just ate the peas.

…finding piles of salt all over the kitchen & living room, with a gleeful 2-year-old holding the salt shaker and showing me proudly…then making Andrew sit in his chair in the middle of the kitchen while I cleaned it up. (He kept saying “I sorry, Mommy” over and over.)

…finishing my book club novel and taking a nap.

…visiting the Nick Jr website with Andrew & trying to show him how to use the computer mouse for the first time.

…watching the clouds outside pour down buckets of rain, listening to the thunder, and finally going outside to splash in the puddles.

…observing with satisfaction the rain giving my thirsty flowers & lawn a drink (FREE WATER!!)

…making a taco salad for dinner. No recipe but it was more successful than anything I’ve tried recently.

…waiting patiently for my husband to come back from the neighbor’s house, where he was summoned shortly after he got home from work to help with their computer.

…watching baseball AND football.

…baking brownies, the husband generously cutting them, storing them in a container, & cleaning the pan, and sharing a few bites with Andrew before bed (AFTER his teeth were brushed – eep!)

…being completely surprised and delighted by Andrew’s willingness to eat his pineapple at dinner, AND ask for more.

…listening to the boys play and Andrew’s hysterical laughter coming from his bedroom.

…doing laundry, vaccuming downstairs, but somehow just not managing to get the rest of the scheduled chores done, especially with the major sinus headache happening.

…hearing Andrew incessantly calling “Mooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmy.” over and over, and feeling simultaneously annoyed and dismayed that this age will last such a short time.

In the 6th grade, I wore an Emmitt Smith jersey. Back then they didn’t make women’s or kids’ sports jerseys, so I wore a men’s size small, the huge blue-starred shoulders draping down to my elbows. E. SMITH, read the stark block letters across the back.

It was easy to be an Emmitt Smith fan. It wasn’t always easy to be a Cowboys fan. I grew up in Northern Nevada: Bay Area sports land. 49ers territory. In those days, the 49ers and the Cowboys were the best teams in the NFL, natural rivals. The Cowboys may have been America’s Team, but they were a difficult team to follow. With no cable television ticker, no internet scores, I put on television whatever west coast team game was aired locally each Sunday, going about my business with the game playing in the background, dashing for the TV whenever I heard the “score update” music jingle just to check the current Cowboys game score. I still joke that I watched dozens of Cowboys games through the CBS ticker at the bottom of the 49ers game.

If you think it was weird being a 12-year-old female wearing a football jersey, scouring the morning newspaper for the stats & scores, and talking sports smack with the best of them – you’re right.

I didn’t (and still don’t) like Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys), and I’ve never particularly cared for any of his coach choices. The Cowboys’ offensive line and their well-known drug habits & jail time were the butt of more cocktail party jokes than the US president was. The Cowboys were great, but they were never without their share of problems, especially with all of the publicity, and for a long time it was difficult to defend that. But what was NEVER difficult, what never required defending, what was never an embarrassment…. well, it wasn’t a WHAT. It was a WHO.

Emmitt Smith was my pride and joy as a sports fan. It wasn’t just that he was great. He was. But there were, and still are, plenty of amazing football players and professional athletes. I’ve never been one to idolize them. I think it’s a mistake to consider them “heroes”, somehow superior to the average person. They do wrong & make poor choices just like anybody else, perhaps even more. The Steroid Era has been something of a fan wakeup call to that tune. But Emmitt was Something To Be Proud Of. No matter which lineman had been hauled off the practice field by the police & fined by the NFL, there was Emmitt. No matter who was talking talking talking about how great he was, there was Emmitt. No matter how embarrassing the 49ers-Cowboys score on Monday Night Football, there was Emmitt. Emmitt was the guy you could stand behind. Emmitt was the guy whose name you wore across your back with no shame.

Kyle grew up a 49ers fan. He remembers Emmitt Smith much the way I remember Jerry Rice. They were a class apart. You never had a negative word about them. My 8th grade English teacher had a poster on his wall of Jerry Rice, strolling into the end zone with both arms extended upward, the football perched casually in one gloved hand, a sea of gold-and-red fans on their feet in the background. I admired that poster daily. I was a Cowboys fan; not a 49ers fan. (Secretly perhaps I was both; but you couldn’t be both, not in the 90’s.) But Jerry Rice was like Emmitt: untouchable. A sports fan’s dream.

I am still a huge sports fan. I still love the Cowboys. I still don’t idolize sports figures. These two men aren’t perfect. They aren’t angels. They’re just men. But they represent what I still feel all athletes should represent. Good people; hard workers. Emmitt was drafted before he graduated from college; he promised his mother he would go back and finish college. He did. I actually have a similar feeling about the Manning brothers. They make me wish I was a fan of their teams. The same way Jerry Rice made me wish I’d chosen the 49ers instead of the Cowboys all those years ago. (But I bled blue; always have and always will.)

Today, Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith were inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. For the first time in over ten years, I remembered clearly what it felt like to be one of Emmitt’s biggest fans. That was a GREAT decade to be an Emmitt Smith fan. It still is.

Congratulations, men.

I’m feeling write-y lately. Normally when my mind is spinning a lot of plates, I become more reserved in regards to blogging. For some reason, I always feel like this should be a place of finalities and certainty. Why? I don’t know. My life is certainly NOT full of finalities or certainty. (But it IS full of blessings!)

Anyway, as always, play along if you’d like.

I kick-start the day with… hot tea. Always, always tea. Lately it’s been green tea first thing in the morning, but I have probably 10 different kinds in my desk at work.

Other daily essential… good writing pens. I can’t live without a good pen. I bring my own to the office.

Recent splurge… I recently did a mini shopping spree at the Ann Taylor outlet store. Lots of great sale prices and it’s five minutes from my house!

Would love to see host Saturday Night Live… I haven’t watching SNL since college. Even then it wasn’t particularly good, but Kyle and I would wear our glasses and doze off during late-night TV. We always hated having to drag ourselves up and drive home. I SO don’t miss those days.

Dreaming about… fall and Christmas time. I’ll admit it.

Beauty indulgence… Lately I’ve been buying nail polish like it’s going out of style, and I’ve stopped buying the cheaper bottles. I still won’t spend $10+ on polish, but I’ve also discovered that you pretty much get what you pay for.

Can’t stop watching… Michael’s Franti’s Say Hey music video. I have a tendency to get ridiculously hooked on a music video and I’ll watch it incessantly for days. I blame it on the fact that I didn’t have cable/MTV growing up. My friend would record the music vids on VHS tape for me. Sometimes I still have a hard time comprehending how accessible everything is now on the internet.

Top shop… Kohl’s and the Carter’s store. Two of my all-time favorites.

Signature scent… Right now I’m using “Juniper Breeze” lotion from B&BW.

You won’t find me… watching a basketball game. It’s one of the very few sports I just don’t like.

I heart… Andrew’s vocabulary. Whenever I yawn he says “are you tired, Mommy? You should go lie down with your pillow and take a nap.”

Grab the August issue of InStyle magazine and you can read Kristen Wiig’s answers. Or, for fun, check out my August answers from last year!

I have a freakishly good sense of direction. Better than my husband and most everybody I know. I can tell you, at any given time, which way is North/South, which way I’m facing, and so on.

Maps make sense to me – I love them – and I’ve proven a good navigator. I maintain a very clear and organized spacial orientation in my head. Kind of like a photographic memory of maps. Maybe I’d be a good architect. (Nah; I’m terrible at design!) Andrew is the same way. I swear he already has the entire city laid out in his head; or at least, the places we go relatively often. He’s very, very aware of his surroundings. Sizes it all up quickly and stores it.

Further to that, I get EXTREMELY confused when I am disoriented and lose my sense of direction. Almost to the point where I can’t function. Once when Kyle and I came up out of the MUNI underground stations in San Francisco on an unfamiliar block, I couldn’t tell which direction was which. I think I literally stood in the same place for minutes upon minutes, and when I still couldn’t get my bearings, I started walking very slowly in one direction, like the world was suddenly going to tip over, until a nice stranger approached us and asked if we needed help finding something. I was probably turning green by then.

This actually explains a lot of things about me.

Do you have a good sense of direction?

I was having a discussion with my husband yesterday regarding my many reservations about having another kid, when he pointed out something that is so blindingly true that it should have always been blatantly obvious to me.

90% of my hesitation is related to, and one of the MAJOR reasons I feel very isolated from other moms is, this: I work out of the home, every day, full-time, AND I LIKE MY JOB. Not only do I LIKE working, but I really, really like what I do. I like my coworkers. I like my bosses. I like my desk, my office, and my parking spot. I like eating lunch with my husband every day (who needs date night?). I like wearing skirts and heels. I like going to Chicago and wearing matching shirts at our trade show booth. I like teaching people new things and laughing about topics unrelated to our home lives.

I’m a mother of a toddler, and I work full-time in an office job… and I love it.

Kyle also pointed out that if I’m waiting for 9 months to magically surface where my schedule would be completely clear, it’s never going to happen. BAH!

I hated maternity leave the first time around. I was very very ready to return to work. I was able to work from home (mostly) for the first 6 months of Andrew’s life, but I don’t think that would happen again. I never felt sad leaving him and he never seemed sad to be leaving me (granted – he is with his grandma. HUGE difference). I hated missing my office relocation. I hated missing conferences. I hated missing so much of what I felt was MY life. MY life didn’t seem to be sitting at home, staring at a baby. MY life was still somehow out there, with Starbucks in hand, and I was missing it.

This feels very bizarre to relate. It also feels incredibly selfish; and it probably is.

Being a mom doesn’t feel like an accomplishment to me. I’m not particularly proud of it. Andrew is an amazing, incomprehensible blessing, but I feel like I’m just the lucky mom-witness. God made that kid to his own perfect tune. I didn’t do a thing, except what every 2nd person on the earth has done. I’m not even that great at it. I just muddle through, make the best decisions that I can, and pray that God picks up where I leave off. And boy, do I leave off. I’m so short-staffed for this job it’s not even funny. I don’t deserve it, either. That little boy is pure grace.

At work, I’m the only person who has the knowledge that I do. I love feeling smart and knowledgable and useful and helpful. Not one of those words feels like it applies to my mom job. My mom job is completely, wholly, 100%…. NOT merit-based. Laura the Logical Engineer and Cautious Curator has a very hard time with that one.

I love the balance we have now, for the most part, but I also don’t understand how another little one would fit into the mix. Not only would it mean missing conferences again, taking maternity leave again, and actually going through newborn days again (which was probably the worst time of my life), but it means that I would end up rearranging MY life again. Just when I’ve found a way to make MY life include the life of another small, brand new person on this earth.

I’ve said this before: I KNOW I want Andrew to have a sibling if possible. I just don’t know how to actually look forward to it.

The crickets are chirping in my mommy universe. I feel like it’s just me out here.

And my husband, and my little boy. And my great big God, who can fill this vast expanse if I let him.