SpiderWomanKnits

The Half Reality of Blogging

In the comments yesterday Saskia said something very interesting. She said,

"Weird how as a reader I've been looking at your life, from the other side of the world, as if it's a movie. I just realised that's exactly what other people do when they read my blog. I find it very interesting and intriguing how blogging 'works', how it's a half-reality but very real at the same time."  

 

Of course as bloggers, I am sure we think about things like this all the time. Often times I read blogs that make me feel incredibly inadequate. Like I must be grossly mismanaging my time, that I should be getting more done, enjoying my time with my children more, reading more books, or just making more stuff. The list goes on and on. I know that the people who author these blogs have no intention of making their reader feel that way, rather they chose to blog the joys and the inspiration, to capture the moments that too often we let slip by if don't pause to write them down or take a picture. But you know and I know it is only half of everyone's story. If you are a blogger you know that there are messes you are ignoring perhaps even children you are ignoring to get that post written. If you are a crafter you know that there are mundane chores you must set aside to pause for your creation. There is always another side to the coin. And the picture isn't always pretty.

 

But do we blog to make ourselves feel better about those compromises?  Or do we blog just because we want to share? Writing this now makes me think of Stephanie Nielson's blog NieNie and her courage in allowing us to still follow along on her journey despite it not seeming as picture perfect as it may have before the plane crash. Obviously and thankfully our situations are not nearly as extreme. The flip side of the coin for me is the stack of dirty dishes I left out from my Stack post or the million pictures of crying children in an unsorted, unlabeled folder on my computer because I have enough of those moments in reality that there is no need to rehash them digitally, or getting hit in the head with a freaked out chicken who knocks my already damaged glasses into a pile of chicken poop along with my newly knitted hat. Believe me there are far more moments like that in my life!

 

We are all guilty of editing out some of the 'ugly' whether it be on our blogs, in conversation with friends and family, or simply in our own minds. I am sure it is self preservation! As a mother, being able to pause for a minute to take a picture if the incredible mess that was made during the first few minutes of our day (not even our entire day) allows me to step out of the frustration I may be feeling and just accept it, maybe if I am lucky, even laugh at it. It's even better when our old cat Obie can find the warm sunlight in all the mess! A perfect metaphor!

Shouldn't we all find that warm sunlight in our days whether they be harmonious or as I like to call them, 'Upstream Days'?  Why do you blog and what do you enjoy most about reading blogs? Do you wish more blogs showed the messy or does the pretty give you something to aspire to? How do you cope with your Upstream Days? What and how much do you edit out? I'd love to know!

***For the record, I typed this whole post with one hand while Vaughn in was in my other arm pulling my hair and having an Upstream Day with the five teeth ripping through his poor little gums. I also answered the phone two times, kept Finn (the goat) from getting his horn caught in the doggie door once and gave Simonne three snacks. But, I am going to edit out how long it actually took me to write the post, ok? ;)

30 Days of Happiness: Day 22

A few weeks ago my husbands parents a.k.a Nana and Papa came for a visit and we spent the day at the park.

Everyone had so much fun!

These pictures will bring as much happiness in the middle of winter as they do now when the playground becomes an abstract winter sculpture and it seems as if the sun will never shine this brightly again.

Tomorrow watch as Nana and Papa's Happiness turns to Sheer Terror when they go for a joyride through our field in a Jeep...in their pajamas...

30 Days of Happiness: Day 14

Jorn lost his second tooth today! We were on our way to a fair and it was just dangling by a "thread". His friend, who was with us, said he better take it out so he doesn't lose it on a ride. Well, the trip was about an hour long so just before we arrived he had played with it enough to have it fall out.  Into my wallet it went for safe keeping it went until just now when he placed it carefully in his tooth pillow before bed.

I remember that tooth from the very moment it appeared disrupting his smooth baby gum line.  It was the first to appear and the second to fall. When they are babies getting their first teeth simply means a world of solid food naturally opens up to them. It is survival, it is primal and like most of infancy it is basic. By 'basic' I mean that we as parents impose the meaning into our child's life at that point. We understand their development and the joy in it while they are doing only what their bodies make them do. We watch as they suffer pain they will never remember as each tooth comes in. We delight in their constantly changing smiles, dread the sleeplessness and thank the spirit-in-all-things for Highlands Teething Tablets.  But losing the baby teeth? That's huge.  It is magically trans formative. It's different.

Now, our children begin to make their own meaning. It's like some magical threshold they cross and all of a sudden not just solid foods but the entire world opens up to them. Though they might not grasp the symbolism just yet they are in fact shedding the "baby" and allowing the child to come through. Along with this change comes a different type of "teething pain". I have noticed a change in Jorn. He is struggling more with decisions and rules, thinking about them fully rather than just "obeying them". He is becoming more agile and adventurous, taking risks he would never have taken before because then my words of caution were the gospel. His thoughts and questions are maturing at an almost astonishing pace. In fact looking back, it is also around this time where life as the individual knows it begins, as memory. But I am not foolish, I know all of this has been gestating for some time now it just seems that the start of losing your baby teeth somehow coincides with these new developmental milestones. Now, the teething pain becomes the uncertainty of navigating this big world a little bit more independently, tooth by tooth if you will.

I meant to take the picture I took above but I didn't realize how relevant the composition actually was in relation to my feelings about him losing his baby teeth until I read this post before publishing it.  There he is, near my center where he was when I carried him. And there I am, behind him now, there to lend support and offer advice but not get in the way of letting him discover him self.  Hmm. I didn't think any of that when I sent up the shot but I feel that now when I look at it.

*Update* I also realized that while I am holding the camera in the picture it also kind of looks like I'm holding my head which may be more to the point of this new "phase" of boyhood, eh?

** BTW, in case you noticed I'm intentionally skipping over day 13/yesterday. At first I was planning on a post but then the number 13 reared it's ugly head. Let's just say there was a trip to the ER after my husband decided to cut his finger instead of the rope of the new tree swing he was hanging for Jorn.  He's got 4 stitches and narrowly missed the tendon but he's fine.

30 Days of Happiness: Day 8

Gregorio is my name, my maiden name.

I made this shirt about two years ago when I felt absorbed by my married name. I was finding it hard to physically write my married name. My hand naturally wanted to write the name it had written for decades. My pen wouldn't move smoothly across the document or check I was signing and I found that I had to really focus on spelling out the new letters that had absorbed the only way the world had ever know me for the previous 28 years. I was receiving mail addressed to Mrs. Gregory So and So. I found it uncomfortable that I seemed  to have lost my identity in marriage. Sure it was just my legal name and of course no matter what you call me Abi, Ab, Mom, Spidey, Mrs. Husbands Name etc...I would still always be who-I-am but something just felt wrong.

When you choose marriage you choose to compromise, when you become a parent you must master compromise.

Somewhere in all of that I had to hold on to me. A t-shirt may be a silly way to do that but when I put this on I feel like Abi Gregorio not Mrs. So and So or Jorn and Simonne's momma.  Don't get me wrong I am a very happily married woman and mother. I just started to understand a little why some women choose to hold on to their madien name. After all I am much more a Gregorio than I will ever be a Connors.  This issue has very little to do with feminism for me and much more to do with the familiar. After all a woman who keeps her madien name is still using a mans name but we grow up forming our identity with a name, our madien name, something constant to hold on to as we grow and navigate the world. So what really is in a name? What happens when those of us who choose to take our husbands name suddenly disconnect from that history? When our hands are asked to move in a pattern so very different than the one we learned to write with? The answer...not much really and everything at the same time. We do what women do so well and we adjust. But every now and then I like to slip this t-shirt on and remember the little girl and young woman whose only responsibility was to her-self. I like to put myself back on that powder blue banana bike and cruise around the block not worrying about getting back in time to make dinner or just simply knit a few rows unencumbered by the thresholds I crossed into adulthood. It really does do that for me and I love it and it makes me happy.

Wanna know the kicker? Gregorio is actually Italian for Gregory which is my husbands first name. So, if I had convinced him to take my name, which some 21st Century Fellas do these days, he would be Gregory Gregorio or Gregory Gregory or Gregory Squared.  How 'bout them apples? That idea makes me happy too.

By the way...Sneaky Chicken strikes again...