Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple

Getting back on the writing horse! I missed a few days because of a family visit, but the important part is starting back up again.

Next month's book club read is Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple. I started it up with absolutely zero idea what it was about and stepped straight into the twilight zone. Quick background: We're relatively recent transplants to the Seattle suburbs and the Gaffer has worked for two of the big tech firms up here. Where'd You Go, Bernadette? takes place in Seattle and out of nowhere the novel's opening hit viscerally, terrifyingly close to home.

Within the first few chapters we're mired deep into the high-stress tech industry, vicious private school parent politics and the hazards of blackberry vines. Although the setting is several miles away from us and several social strata higher, it feels like turning over a pleasant log and finding a bunch of maggots. But worse, because I actually enjoy entomology way more than stressful social situations.

*Deep breath* But other than the gut punch of the opening, I'm really enjoying the book. The characters are vibrant, the plot is intricate and delicately crafted, and its overall a fun read. Four stars.

Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis

I didn't think it was possible, but it turns out there's a C.S. Lewis book I don't like. Pilgrim's Regress is the first novel Lewis wrote after converting to Christianity and is an allegory for his faith journey up to that point.

Before roasting this particular novel, I have to say that I absolutely love Lewis' writings. His fiction and nonfiction have been central to my own developing faith and whenever I feel spiritually dry or lost, I return to Lewis.* Narnia, Til We Have Faces, and his Space Trilogy are on my list of "books I will re-read occasionally until I die".

But there's a reason Pilgrim's Regress is rarely mentioned among Lewis' other works. For one thing, it's racist af. I usually look at a book and author's cultural surroundings and tend to gloss over racist references to see the larger message, but no. You cannot use "brown girls" as your allegory for base lust. Right. Out. And it only goes downhill from there; I can't even bring myself to repeat some of the phrases he gets stuck using when starting from that point. If your writing is so racist that it makes my privileged, protected, very white self uncomfortable, it's really bad.

Past the racism though, PR is largely a failed allegory, which is something Lewis himself admits in the book's afterward. Its modeled after Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and also feels very much like George MacDonald's Phantastes (not a coincidence, I'm sure). I wasn't particularly fond of either book, so its not surprising that this one failed to impress me as well. I did see many ideas and themes that show up in his later writings, but you could easily skip this novel and miss none of Lewis' most beautiful, enduring ideas.

I've often heard that Lewis and Tolkien, who were close friends, had a bit of a falling out over the Narnia series, because Tolkien disliked allegory and wasn't impressed with the series. That always makes me feel like a kid in the middle of a divorce, but if Lewis started work on Narnia soon after PR, I can more easily imagine why Tolkien wasn't enthusiastic. "Another allegory, Jack? Will this one also include bland, obviously named characters and a rather rambling, obscure journey across a dull landscape?"

I almost gave the book up a third of the way in, which is very rare for me. But I did get a reward for sticking it out til the end: Lewis' afterward to the third edition is brilliant. Written 10 years later, it offers an explanation and redemption of the novel's more obscure points and has several quotable lines in its own right.

*Ok, so technically the first place I turn should be the Bible, but due to a myriad of personal and spiritual failings, I have a hard time reading Scripture all on my own. I get there eventually, but usually need a bit of a running start.

Gratitude

This morning was hard. Not spectacularly, trip-to-the-ER hard, but the soul-grinding slog of Merry fighting every step of the morning routine, Bella yelling constantly for attention I couldn't give, and Pippin wanting adorably to be his own boss about every. little. thing. I was up before 6 and didn't manage to take my first blessed sip of coffee until after 9, after which things improved considerably.

But rough mornings have a nice chiaroscuro effect on the rest of the day. For one thing, after a start like that, its satisfying to look back and realize that the rest of the day went pretty well. The boys played outside 3 different times, ate healthy meals, and I even managed to give Bella a bit of avocado to experiment with. (At 4 months and as the third baby, giving her table food doesn't happen unless I have a bit of spare sanity, so that's a good sign.)

But more importantly, once the coffee starts to take effect and I finally get a second to breathe, a difficult morning only highlights how good I have it. The most I have to complain about is that my three beautiful, wonderful children drive me crazy in my nice safe house while my husband is at his job? Yeah, perspective and gratitude save the day.

Lesson Learned

So the first lesson learned from this experiment is that 20 minutes a day is not enough to actually write anything substantive. I had some half-developed ideas yesterday about mindfully celebrating holidays, but between the time limit and writing late at night I ended up with the mess posted below. Apologies for that.

I'm not a night owl by any stretch of the imagination, and although I'm not planning to limit my writing time on purpose, life intervenes. For instance, late nights have become Right Out with the hobbits waking up at 5:45 on the dot every morning and Bella up at least once a night. Boring, but that's how it works in this season of life.

Should I continue posting every day, or allow myself to carry posts over for a few days in the hopes of producing the occasional coherent thought? If it ends up preventing regular writing or posting I'll go back to daily entries, but for now I'd like the option to sit on a thought for a bit before belching it out to the internet.

Holiday Blues

I have a holiday problem. Every time there's a big one we fall short of my expectations for how it should be celebrated. This is partially because of the unrealistic expectations I pick up from Facebook and other social media: it seems like everyone is posting fun awesome stuff that we 'should' be doing, but between the difficulty of organizing an increasing number of children and the sheer difficulty of planning at all, I'm constantly falling short.

I can't dismiss the problem as simple unrealistic expectations though--the rhythm of holidays breaking up the normal flow of things is important. I remember the first Christmas we celebrated as new parents. We intended it to be pretty low-key. It was our first Christmas alone as a new family without the traditions that would have shaped the holiday if we were at our own parents homes. Merry was too young to bother with the whole Santa business and the Gaffer basically wanted to treat it like any other day. For some reason I even skipped Christmas mass, probably because baby is an excuse to sit anything out unless you're determined enough. This was before the days of near-constant social media, so I hadn't been marinating in everyone else's Merry Christmas posts. But it felt off, not to recognize such a huge holiday somehow. By early afternoon we were bathing Merry before heading to Christmas dinner at my aunt's, and I ended up bawling into the bathwater because a Christmas that wasn't special was so deeply wrong.

This would have partially been due to hormones, but the point still stands. The Gaffer seems to be content to leave holidays as ordinary days until social demands require otherwise. I can't do that. Can't let the social media pressure dictate how we celebrate, but taking the time and energy to plan an outing, a special meal, a special treat--something that marks the day as different and set apart, that's worth it.

Happy Fourth, ya'll :-)

Looking Back

It's been two years since I started this blog, and almost that long since posting; once I get past the guilt of starting a blog and then almost immediately dropping it again it's interesting to compare where we were then vs now.

The biggest and most wonderful change is that we've added another hobbit to the family! Little Bella is almost 5 months now and me from two years ago would be surprised at the thought of having a daughter. I'd always had this mental picture of myself as a mom of boys, but it's a beautiful change. She's absolutely wonderful and the boys adore her; Merry in particular amazes me by being an attentive, affectionate, and (mostly) gentle big brother.

The gluten free dairy/caesin free diet ended up being unnecessary, yay! After about a year on the GFCF diet we were seeing great improvement, but couldn't be sure whether it was the diet, the therapy, or simple mental/emotional development. After a few tests to reintroduce gluten we decided that it wasn't having a negative effect, and gratefully went back to tasty baked goods.

Dairy was a different story though; we noticed more aggressive, explosive and self-harming behavior on days after Merry had dairy. Bummer. Then we tried a probiotic, since I'd seen several promising studies about the gut-brain connection and how it might be linked to autism. It wasn't a fancy probiotic, just an off-the-shelf gummy and I wasn't expecting much. But we soon noticed that when he was on the probiotic, dairy didn't seem to bother Merry as it had before. So we ended up keeping the probiotic and reintroducing dairy, much to everyone's relief.

Pippin is two and a half now and blowing us all away with his quick grasp of language and social development. He's a super-happy and cheerful little guy and between the three of them I'm constantly swinging between brain-fogged exhaustion and crazy joy.

Two years ago we were just getting into Merry's diagnosis and now I can see how much progress he's made. We still have plenty of work to do, but we were so blessed to have an amazing preschool and good ABA program for him. Looking forward to kindergarten in the fall!

Writing goals

I need to write more. That's a thought I have so often and don't act on that its ridiculous. So here's my attempt to change things around a bit. I'm going to try to write 20 minutes a day, every day. Could be a book review, could be a family update, could be random ramblings, could be an attempt at writing an actual story. The end goal is writing a novel, but it's so far off at this point that I'm just taking daily excursions before even attempting the foothills.

I'm pretty sure I've started this attempt before and failed after . . . a week? Less? So I've been wondering what stops me and what I can try to keep it up. I'm currently trying to decide whether it will be more helpful to publish posts as I go along to keep myself accountable, keep everything private because I'm going to be writing stupid stuff and do I really want to fill the internet with more stupid? or save posts as drafts for possibly publishing later if I decide they're worth sharing.

The last option sounds like the worst. Either publish all or hide all, otherwise I spend far too much time and stress over what's worth sharing or not. *deep breath* Lets go with share all, because its the scary option and doing scary things is a good mental exercise. I'll exempt any writing I do towards a story I might eventually try to take up seriously--even then maybe I'll update with a quick "I totally did writing today, yay me!"

Tip #1: Do not sit down with computer in front of children. That's an instant invitation to beg for videos or playtime and then I spend the entire 20 min refereeing. Hide upstairs, write after bedtime, or distract them with TV or tablet first.