Time.

The other day, I reposted a link to Frank Bruni’s, Op/Ed piece in the New York Times, “Read, Kids, Read.” Bruni cites a study that recently revealed “fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure almost every day. Back in 1984, 31 percent did.” What an incredibly disheartening statistic. Aside from the nearly irrefutable fact that reading is linked with higher intelligence, this speaks to our culture of instant gratification found through digital technology. Those few who are actually reading are slowing down their pace of life. Sitting with a novel, albeit in the hard copy or tablet format (I still very much prefer the hard copy; the act of turning the page, and yes, I’ll admit it – smelling the book), takes time.

Reading for pleasure is not something I’ve been able to figure out how to incorporate back into my life post the birth of my daughter. I have cued up on a list the next several books I’d like to read and have promised myself that I will pick them up this summer. I used to read before going to bed, but I go to bed so early now that if I read before bed, I’d be getting into bed at 8 o’clock, thus leaving little time for catching up with my husband after the baby goes to bed. An excuse? Perhaps, but perception is reality and that is my current reality.

There is a larger issue at hand, though. Time. The pace of it all. How we’re always looking to get things done more efficiently so that we have more time. And yet despite all the gadgets, aps, and time savers available, there doesn’t seem to be any time gained. I’m guilty of it. Just this morning I was trolling Pinterest for “quick and healthy recipes.” The irony is, last night after watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, where he travels to France, my husband and I were talking about the culture of food in France as compared to here in the states. We’re all about the hurry-up, the fast-food, the “quick and easy.” I remarked to Big Red that we need more of that in our lives where the ingredients and the cooking of those ingredients becomes part of the leisure and enjoyment. That dinner is more than just a wolf-down in front of the television, but a reason to stop and relax. How we are to accomplish this with a seven month old escapes me.

From time to time I get these romantic notions that I will only buy the freshest ingredients from our local farmers' markets, maybe even join a CSA, cook it all from scratch, and we’ll sit down to each meal prepared with a glass of wine. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? I have yet to transform this vision from black and white to Technicolor.

Here’s what I don’t want, and forgive me if I digress. I don’t want my daughter learning that the end goal is to hurry-up and finish whatever it is we’re doing, whether it’s cooking, eating, or yes, even cleaning. Nor do I want her learning to turn to the television to fill in the blank spaces. As of today, I’m hosting an internal battlefield as to whether or not the TV is in fact abominable, and if I should fight to change the current. It’s how I grew up and I’d like to believe I turned out alright. As I’ve said before, monkey see, monkey do – so if I’m not willing to change my own television watching habits, how could I ever expect her to learn otherwise? Some days I want to get rid of the bright shiny box, and other days I’m like, “Nah, it’s not so bad – I really love watching Real Housewives of ______.” As my students would say, this is “the struggle.” I’m riding the “struggle bus,” when it comes to television.

Lucille deserves the bucolic childhood that every kid should have; playing in the park, rolling down the hill in the backyard, riding her bicycle, painting, running through the sprinklers, drawing, fishing, and reading at her leisure with a flashlight inside the fort she built out of couch cushions and bed sheets – a modern day Laura Ingalls.

Maybe it’s more about balance and less about definitely exclude this or must include that. Not every dinner in our household will be a pastoral farm-to-table, but maybe we can work those in a couple times a week…at some point...someday down the line. So she may watch cartoons on Saturday mornings; I have fond memories of watching such with my younger brother, and we often were playing while watching The Smurfs. We’d dump the bin of Legos out on the floor and create mansions while He-Man battled villains or Jem made sure those pesky Misfits didn’t thwart her latest Holograms concert. I used my imagination. I did. And so will she.

This issue of time will never leave, and is something I’ll have to reckon with. My daughter is seven months old already. It’s such a tired cliché, but it really is all happening so quickly, and I find myself in isolated cyclones of panic knowing that I’m never going to get this moment back. It is terrifying.  Yesterday, I only saw her for a few minutes in the morning. Professional duties occupied my afternoon and evening, thwarting my time with her before she went to bed for the night. This morning, when I fed her at 5 am, I found myself running my cheek along her downy head of hair, inhaling that magical sweet scent. My free hand gently playing with hers as she grasped my fingers in a milk-drunk trance. I found rapture in the weight of her body against mine. In the cloaked darkness of her room, the morning chorus of birds beginning their hymns just outside her window, I savored every moment. Time, for once, was not my nemesis.

“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore…”

Trimming the Fat

As per my last post, the theme for 2012 in our household is less is more. And we're sticking to our guns. This morning, I made the call to Comcast and had our land line cancelled and our cable viewing reduced to just -deep breath- basic cable. I think I just threw up a little in my mouth, which is incredibly pathetic, but I've made no bones about my addiction to television. I'm convinced this will not only benefit our overall monthly expenses, but it will help get me out of my TV quagmire. Time to dry out my brain, so to speak.

In addition to the overall cable bill, we also went and updated our cell phones. Because we knew these would be our only forms of telephone communication, Big Red and I wanted to make sure we had the proper equipment.

No. We did not get smart phones. Sorry. We refuse to do so. Neither one of us feels the need to have the Internet at our fingertips. Our wireless and individual laptops will suffice for now. And if our overall goal is to spend less money, getting smart phones would blow that up quickly with a data plan. So no, no smart phones. Just a simple Blackberry-esque looking phone without all the bells and whistles:

We revamped our cell phone bill which included a 15% discount to our monthly bill thanks to my employer. So even though we added unlimited texting to both our phones, with the discount, our bill will actually be cheaper.

We win.

dollars saved

It is a well-known fact, and no secret kept, that I thoroughly enjoy watching television. Call it what you want - an addiction, a problem, a time-waster, a brain musher - I still love my beloved television and the host of horrible shows that come along with it. Cause let's face it, The Real Housewives of ______ isn't exactly quality TV watching. Nor is Kendra, or Teen Mom, or Dance Moms, or Gene Simmons Family Jewels. There are, I believe, a few shiny moments in my TV lineup like Breaking Bad, Modern Family, Frontline and the newest additions: Up All Night, Suburgatory, and Pan Am. Somewhere in between are the competition shows like Top Chef, Top Chef: Just Desserts, The Amazing Race, and Project Runway.

I know. It's exhausting just reading over them all. And slightly embarrassing. What can I say, TV is my vice. That having been said, what I DO NOT like about all this television is the bill. Big Red and I have a bundled service. We get the TV, cable and telephone all lumped into one bill in an effort to save some scratch. The reality of it is that we've been paying quite a bit for our luxuries. Because our cable subscription included every channel under the sun except maybe one or two premium movie channels, our bill each month was $193. A bit sickening. I'm always looking for ways to save us a little more money, money that could be used for Roth IRAs, home projects, or even vacations. A few weeks ago I made it my mission to cut down our bundled services bill.

One thirty-minute phone call solved the problem and I was able to execute my mission. I have to admit, as pathetic as it may seem, while on the phone with my cable company, I was actually nervous. Nervous about losing channels that housed my most beloved programs. In some quick editing, my fabulous operator was able to lower our monthly bill by $60. The best part? I didn't have to sacrifice a single channel. Well, totally not true. I did have to give up HBO. What am I losing? True Blood. The good news is that if when True Blood starts up again next year and I feel I really, really need to see it, I can order HBO for those months while it's on, and then cut it out again. Or, if I'm really slick, I'll just wait for the missed season to come out on Netflix. I'll have to wait longer to see it, but I will be able to see it.

All my other shows remain intact!!

We can lower our bill even further if we were to cut out our land line, but I hesitate in doing so. I'd really much rather talk on the house phone than my cell phone. The sound quality is better and it's much more comfortable. Perhaps someday down the line we'll get rid of it, but for now, we're keeping it.

So there you have it. One phone call = $720/year savings. More money for Big Red's retirement, more money to put into the bathroom remodeling, and possibly more money for vacation.

Questions.

HBO is running a documentary called, "There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane." The piece documents the story of the 2009 Taconic State Parkway accident in which Diane Schuler, 36, drove the wrong way on the parkway and ended up killing herself, her daughter, three nieces, and the three men in the SUV that she hit, head-on.

In the documentary, Schuler's husband, Daninel, and his sister-in-law are determined to find out what really happened to Diane. When the autopsy revealed through a toxicology report that she had what essentially amounts to 10 drinks inside her system, and high levels of THC (marijuana use), Daniel didn't want to believe that those indicators were the cause of the crash. He maintains that his wife would have never driven a minivan full of children under the influence of any kind of drug or alcohol. Daniel and his sister-in-law enlist the help of private parties to rerun the toxicology report which only reveal the same findings. No one wants to believe that Diane got in the car drunk and high. They don't find the answers they're looking for, and they probably never will. Big Red caught the end of the film with me, and we ended up talking about death, unanswered questions, and our shared belief that visiting the headstone of a loved one at a cemetery is useless.

In the summer of 2003, Big Red's younger brother, Mike, died in a car accident. We were living in California at the time, and I was the one home to get the phone call. I was also the one who had to tell Big Red that his brother was gone. In the days that followed, a blur of phone calls arranging plane tickets and buckets of tears, there seemed to be a number of lingering questions, specifically: how did this happen? As far as we know, Mike had been at a party the night before and got up early that Saturday morning to go home. The last thing he said to anyone was, "I got to go where I got to be." He got into his maroon Chevy Blazer and drove the winding roads he had driven for the past decade. Roads he knew like the back of his hand. So when he came to a bend, one that would lead him right and underneath railroad tracks, the underpass as familiar to him as any other bend, we were all left wondering why he never made the turn. Why did his car go straight into the cement wall?

His was a head-on collision, and he wasn't wearing his seat belt. The so-called black box recovered from his car showed that brakes were applied and that he was going no faster than 38 mph. What we were later told was that had he been wearing his seat belt, or had he hit another car, he probably would have been banged up, but he certainly would have survived. Because he hit a cement wall, the entire force of the impact was absorbed by his body, specifically his sternum and thus, his heart. It was just too much. Mike was airlifted, but arrived dead at the hospital. He was just 25.

The documentary brought up our dormant questions over Mike's car accident. We both expressed being frustrated at not knowing what happened, and how much we wish we could know. See perhaps, from a birds-eye view what went down. We also both agreed that going to the cemetery wasn't something either of us cared to do, ever again. It was not comforting to see a headstone with Mike's name and dates. It wasn't him. People talk about going to "visit Mike" and that's something we both don't understand. Mike isn't at the cemetery. He's not even in the ground. His bones are there, but he isn't. All the qualities that made Mike who he was aren't in the block of marble or the grass beneath our feet. His spirit, his life - those are gone. While we would never fault those who take comfort in cemeteries, Big Red and I agreed that we'd much rather remember Mike through stories and pictures, not as bones in the ground.

Mike sneaks up on me in quiet moments. There are times when the thought of him will pop into my head and I'll wonder what if he was still around? What would our lives be like? Would he visit us at our house a lot? Would he have been out to visit us while we still lived in California? The questions come like a barrage that can't be stopped. Sometimes I'll try and fill in the blanks and imagine the answers. I smile at my forged scenarios, but mostly it makes me sad. Not sad in a hysterical kind of way, those days have passed. Just a simple sadness, a twinge of wishing that luck/fate had been on his side that day.

summer: day 9

I don't know what's going on but round these parts, the weather has been lovely. Is this our reward for enduring what seemed like end-of-days kind of rain? I'll take it. There's a great breeze and I'm sure the temperature is somewhere in the 70s. The sun is out and blue in the sky can be seen.

Is it wrong to eat a mango and half an avocado for breakfast? I hope not cause it was delicious, and the bright orange flesh of the mango against the green of the avocado was as pretty as it was yummy. Aren't we told to eat the colors of the rainbow in our fruits and veggies? Accomplished. Olive and I got a late start on our walk this morning. I caught up with a couple of friends on the phone, then a couple of TV shows on the DVR: Million Dollar Decorators, and 16 & Pregnant. Yes, I know - you don't have to say it, my taste in entertainment is above par. We only watch quality in this house. After nudging me several times, Olive and I  headed outside for the morning tour and then returned back home for a lunch of honey wheat pretzel sticks, broccoli salad, and iced tea.

On tap for the rest of the day is time with Tina Fey's memoir, Bossypants, and then later this evening I'll take part in a book club. I've never been in one before, and my only frame of reference is what I've seen on Oprah. A handful of people sit around a perfectly staged dining room or living room, glasses of wine or coffee in hand, and they discus the significance of why an author chose to set the story in the fall rather than the spring. Sounds a bit like English class to me. Yep, we drink wine in my classes. My students love me. I'm looking forward to the book club. We're discussing The Happiness Project. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm almost done with one of my summer projects - transforming the office into my writing/craft room. I finished the curtains this past weekend and organized the bookshelf. I think all I have left to do is find a frame for one more item, and then at some point get to IKEA for the glass top that will cover the fabric slipcover I made to hide the older desk. With the glass in place, I'll have a nice crafting work station. Oh and there's that Macbook Pro that will look amazing on my desk. Yeah, I haven't gotten that yet. Can't seem to find Macbook Pro money. Maybe someday. Pics of the room to come soon.

I've rejoined Facebook. I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet. I'm leery. I'm hesitant. But, it is summer. What better time to try it out again?