Widow Lessons

At a writing retreat, I met a woman who was writing a book on how to be a widow. Not a how-to guide for offing your slacker husband, but a resource for a woman after she's lost her partner. The author had just been through the sudden loss of her husband and needed guidance to cope with a new phase of her life. There were no books to help her, so she decided to write one herself. I have no idea how that project worked out for her, but the idea has stuck with me.
My own father died when I was a kindergartener and my mother was left raising seven children ranging from a senior in high school to a preschooler on her own, so I have the deep-seated idea that I will be an early widow. Not that my trail is predetermined by my mother's fate, but since a child will general duplicate the family structure that they were raised with, a widowed mother seems like my destiny.
Prompted by the woman at the retreat, I asked my mother her advice for a new widow. She has helped other women in her church as one-by-one they lauched their widow life. I fear that she will not be around for my widowhood.
At first, my mom thought that raising so many kids on her own was awful. She wanted some time to deal with the tragedy, but reflecting back, being busy as a mother helped get her through. If she hadn't been so busy with getting lunches ready, looking for colleges and just doing so much laundry, she might have been stuck in mourning for a long time. In addition to taking care of us, she also had a support network of friends who made sure she got out, even including her in their couple activities. These were my mom's lessons to me. I'm curious to see what the other writer discovered, but I hope that I will not need these lessons for a long time.

That Library Thing

This is so cool!
Check out the library thing. If you plug your favorite books in, you get a list of suggested reading based on other user's preferences. What a great idea! Here I've been spending a few hours every few weeks trolling Amazon to find out what other people buy after looking at my favorite books. Now I am free! Whee!
I just heard about it, so I haven't put all my favorites in yet, but I'm looking forward to see what it spits out. I'll post the results soon.

Neighborhood tools

One of the great things about the Irvington neighborhood is how walkable it is. Sure, it's not New York with a great restaurant on every corner, but there are some fantastic options within a half mile of my house. According to Walk Score, a site which calculates neighbor walkability, my home rates a 71 out of 100. Not bad.

Along with being walkable, it's very runable, because of a normal (well, mostly) grid system. Many neighborhoods in our area are swirling subdivisions with multiple cul-de-sacs. My favorite web tool for running is Map My Run. This site allows you to calculate distances for exercise, like running, walking or biking. Users can save their favorite routes and keep track of routines.

The Grass is Greener.

My friend, Shawndra of Living Mindfully, has an excellent set-up--No kids to distract from writing, a clutter-free home, and a bright writing nook with lots of nice windows looking out on a wooded lot.

I imagine sometimes that if I had such a situation that I would be free to write all day long. If I wasn't limited to writing only during the one hour that all three kids nap or if I didn't feel guilty writing while my house looks like Cookie Monster went on a rampage spewing crumbs and toys in his wake, I envision that I would have volumes of books put on paper. But the truth is, I need those pressures to keep me going. It would be nice if I had less clutter or more time to write, but I have my own situation which has its own benefits.

Dishwashing Drama

Our really nice dishwasher was broken. Water was pooled in the bottom of it and the dishes were not clean. This presented a problem.
"Of course," you say, "But washing them by hand is an excellent work around. My parents did it and look at what fine people they turned out to be."
I can't. I don't. It's this little bargain that my lovely husband and I worked out. No washing dishes for me. I will clean clutter, do laundry, mow the lawn and clean bathrooms, but not dishes. Food scraps make me shudder.
Okay, now that I've set up the problem properly--and you think I'm a complete Prima Donna--allow me to move on with my broken dishwasher. After a rather expensive service call, I learned that there was nothing truly wrong with my machine. It just needed to be cleaned.
"What?" you might say, "a machine that spends every moment of its life obediently rinsing and sanitizing dishes to a spotless shine needs a cleaning, besides the regular meals (and occasional snacks) of dish soap and jet dry?"
Who knew?
Our dishwasher needed the elements removed from the interior and soaked for an entire day in vinegar to remove the hard water deposits. After a good scrub, we replaced them and then ran the wash cycle twice with a dishwasher cleaner (Jet Dry or Dishwasher Magic are good) until the interior space was sparkly. To keep it up, we put vinegar in a cup when we run a regular load and once a month, use one of the dishwasher cleaners.
more ideas on dishwasher maintence.

Exactly How Big was that Rock?

I admit it. I live under a huge rock, one whose shadow is large enough to block out even the biggest cultural phenomena, like Amy Winehouse. Don't get me wrong. I've heard of her. I've heard about her, and I've even seen many pictures of her. I've just never heard her. Not an interview or even a song--not until about 10 minutes ago when I did a search on YouTube.

I'm not sure how I could miss hearing either Rehab or Back to Black until this afternoon. She was all over the media this summer. Though I recognized that the headlines of articles about her drug and alcohol problems were puns straight from the lyrics of her song, I was unable to fit the tune to the words. Such is the life of a mother.

Once, when I made the connection that my mother's life intersected the career highs of the Beatles and Elvis, I asked her which one she preferred. Her reply was that at the time she was too busy with five children under five to have any thoughts about music, but I didn't believe her. Both these acts were larger than life. How could she miss them? Surely she'd have to have been living in a bomb shelter to be that clueless.

Now I understand. Being a mother draws most of your time and attention to children and their interests. In the 60's, my mom didn't have cable, the Internet, or access to the family car, which went to work with my dad each day. As a modern Stay-at-Home Mom, I have all these conveniences and still missed out. Some things don't change.

Great idea

I got forwarded a link to Safetytat today. Safetytats is a company marketing temporary tattoos with parent's cell phone numbers on them for children to wear. A great solution for theme park visits or vacations in crowds.

I wish I had known about this when my daughter went to Disney World with my mom last fall. I made up a key chain with her name and a contact number, in case E got separated from her grandma. Luckily it never happened, though poor Grandma thought that I didn't trust her with my firstborn daughter.

Ode to Web Urbanist

Oh how I love thee, Web Urbanist.

Thy beautiful photo collages arranged just so,

Above just a smidge of prose

More! More! More!

Daring people, I am grateful to you.

Confessions of a Book Junkie

I like to read. And I read a lot. Sometimes four books a week, not counting the oodles of truck books my son forces me to read (really just one repeatedly. Over and over and over, until I want to pull my hair out, in large chunks leaving bald patches that the digger would have to fill. Or something even more satisfying, ripping out the pages of the truck book one page at a time until my sanity returns. Your days are numbered, Good Morning Digger!) or the ones that I am blissfully allowed to select for my daughter's enjoyment.

To feed my book habit, I request books from the library. Lots of books. Oppressive amounts that I am required to bring my own bags to cart out. Well, I don't have to bring my own, but I would feel guilty using that many plastic bags.

Right now I have 54 books checked out from the library, which does include a rather sizable number of truck books, one of which I hope will unseat Good Morning Digger as my son's favorite. This load of truck books shared accomodations in my Save-The-World canvas bag with two books I requested for myself. Blogging books. Over a dozen juvenile books on trucks big rigs, garbage trucks, recycling trucks--well, you get the picture--and two blogging books. The librarian gave me a knowing smile.

Right now there is someone searching the web for the Big Truck Blog.