AIH

I went to go see Architecture in Helsinki last night. A great show. 8 people and a ton of instruments packed on the small 7th St Entry stage. Their website is supercool. It's all in Flash so I couldn't steal any pix to post here. We'll see how well I survive at work today after staying up til 1:30 am. So far it's worth it.

Birth Story

I have been meaning to write Boyo's birth story for some time. Seven months later I am sure I have forgotten some of the details. Last night I had a horrible episode of heartburn, the same kind that sent me to the emergency room a couple weeks after Boyo was born because the intense, all-consuming pain radiating from the center of my chest. Many tests were run before they diagnosed it as gastrointestinal. It reminded me of the pain of childbirth that blocks out absolutely everything else and seems like a small miracle when it subsides.

There is a beautifully written birth story over at the Leery Polyp. It helped me tremendously to read about birth beforehand but you just don't know what it will be like. Once I was in the thick of it the one thing that helped most with the pain, vocal toning, was something that I never thought I would use. I love how this essay conveys that no matter how much you think you know there are things you will experience that you just can't describe. She also does a good job of portraying how you have to surrender yourself to the process in order to move through it.

Let's Go Rock & Roll Radio

There is a lot of great stuff to listen to on the NPR site these days. Not only can you search for stories- you can also find out what filler music they used. I am listening to a stream of the Shins opening for the White Stripes right now. I will probably go to This American Life's site next to listen to the episode I missed this weekend. They have also had some great stories about Katrina in the last few weeks.

Boy and His Dog

Here is Boyo with his dog Voltron and new cousin Riese.

Ween & Euchre

Over the years my husband and I have shared our passions with each other and molded each others tastes so that there are many things that we both love. He has picked up my love of hip hop and the habit of picking a movie by the director and I now enjoy motorcycle related things such as world trials competitions and drinking coffee through a straw. There are, however, many passions that we still do not share. I doubt that Motopop will ever get a thrill at seeing marshall arts on the big screen with english subtitles and I will never want to race motorcycles as a hobby.

One of my great joys before meeting my husband was playing cards. Now I rarely get a chance to play and when we try to play together he acuses me of making up rules. So as I wake up today I am still buzzing from the excitement of last night's party where I learned how to play euchre.

Motopop & I set out to dinner at 9 with babe in tow and met a group of friends at a thai restaurant. We had a great time celebrating the birthday of our friend visiting from Amsterdam as Boyo slept at the corner of the table in his blanket-covered car seat. Leaving the restaurant at midnight you would think that we would be happy as new parents to have successfully accomplished the feat of going out with the baby but we are ones to test the limits. (I am a bit nervous about this trait appearing in Boyo.)

So we followed to crew to our friends' place and had a few more glasses of wine and Motopop continued to wax poetic about Moto GP since he had european audience who actually knew who Valentino Rossi was. We were ready to bail as soon as Boyo turned into a pumpkin but after eating he just looked around wide-eyed and we stayed.

Then came the magical point where Ween was put on the stereo and 4 of the 10 of us sat down to play euchre (at a Ligne Roset table to give you a sense of the coolness of our friends' place). The forces of the universe are somehow alligned- our baby is content to be out after midnight, Motopop is talking about his favorite subject, we are in beautiful mid-century modern space, we are listening to one of my favorite bands, our friends that drink sometimes makes unpleasant are smiling, and I am playing cards.


Now if only I could get him to appreciate the oeuvre of Joss Whedon. . .

Rabbit

Rabbit
The things one finds wandering in a landscape: familiar things and utterly unknown, like a flower one has never seen before, or, as Columbus discovered, an inexplicable continent;
and then, behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.
The toilet-paper-pink creature lies on its back: a rabbit-mountain like Gulliver in Lilliput. Happy you feel as you climb up along its ears, almost falling into its cavernous mouth, to the belly-summit and look out over the pink woolen landscape of the rabbitís body, a country dropped from the sky;
ears and limbs sneaking into the distance; from its side flowing heart, liver and
intestines.
Happily in love you step down the decaying corpse, through the wound, now small like a maggot, over woolen kidney and bowel.
Happy you leave like the larva that gets its wings from an innocent carcass at the roadside.
Such is the happiness which made this rabbit.
i love the rabbit the rabbit loves me.

This is the poetic press release for this giant rabbit sculpture by the gelatin art collective.

Arrrr

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Check out Flying Spaghetti Monster related parenting resources (including the pirate-themed coloring book page shown) here and here. (via daddytypes)

Previous post on FSM and pirates here.

Answer the Question

This post from Merlin's List of Five Things seems to sum up the difficulty of getting meaningful information out of a Supreme Court nominee:

Five things I’d ask every Supreme Court nominee if I sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee

1. If you knew to an absolute moral certainty that you could capture and consume a live infant without being caught, how many do you suppose you could eat in a weekend?
2. Have you ever been spanked erotically by someone who was not your current legal spouse? Just yes or no, please.
3. Nominee, do you regard these slacks as accentuating my basket in an un-senatorial fashion?
4. Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about…your mother.
5. Kindly rise, and sing the 1979 hit, The Piña Colada Song, also known as Escape

For more commentary about what the Roberts won't answer check out How to Stonewall the U.S. Senate at Majikthise

The Journey

I attended a 'walking play' this weekend called The Buddha Prince. It was about the Dalai Lama's journey from a child of three picked to head the nation of Tibet to a leader in exile escaped from the Communist takeover of Tibet.

Other children's journeys to reflect on:

The children who are displaced by Katrina and what impact it will have on them. Here's a link about the premature babies and other efforts to help these children at A Little Pregnant

My Life in Orange: Growing up With the Guru
This book is about Tim Guest's childhood in the cult of notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Running With Scissors
Augusten Burroughs memoir about being given away by his mother to be raised by a lunatic psychiatrist

The Tender Bar: A Memoir
A story about the impact of the men of the neighborhood bar on J.R. Moehringer

Of these I've only read Running With Scissors, a hilarious book but you need a strong stomach to get through it.

Rediscover Vinyl Lust

Motopop got me a good turntable for my birthday! It sounds awesome and we've been playing records from my collection that I haven't heard in years.

It's a Pro-Ject which I guess to audiophiles means something but I had never heard of. All I know is that I get to listen to my hundreds of records without fear of damaging them (my old player had issues).

Failure at This Level Requires Sustained Effort

From The Uses of Disaster at Harpers

But the authorities don't usually fail so spectacularly. Failure at this level requires sustained effort. The deepening of the divide between the haves and have nots, the stripping away of social services, the defunding of the infrastructure, mean that this disaster—not of weather but of policy—has been more or less what was intended to happen, if not so starkly in plain sight.

This is one of many insightful Katrina links over at Bitch Ph.D.

Charity Starts at Home

As disappointed as I am by the stories of governement failure I am amazed by the generosity and caring of the average people. Here's a list of some of the poignant things I've seen in the past week:

• "The real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans" from Bitch Ph.D.
• The Regrowth Charity T-shirt at Threadless
• The heartbreaking items posted in the War Room at Salon as well as their other articles
• The smart commentary over at the 15-minute hipster
• My hair salon doing a Cut-a-thon for hurricane relief
• Posts like Serbian native Jasmina Tesanovic's essay on her visit to the Austin Convention Center at Boing Boing

The news coverage and government response are bringing the ugly side of race and class relations in the country to the surface. I hope that this will bring about some positive change as people hear stories from those who are usually ignored by the media.

Overwhelming

There have been so many things this week that have struck me that I have not written anything.
I am prone to write about random items of interest like the NYT article on carving Princess Kay of the Milky Way in a 90 pound block of butter. But mainly my week has been focused on thinking about New Orleans and the devastating events of Hurricane Katrina. Butter sculpture vs. heartbreaking loss, which should I talk about? The deprivation in NOLA, a city that I love and visited just last December, has put into sharp contrast the luxuries that we live with everyday. Let's just take the butter sculpture. What makes this possible that they don't have in New Orleans right now:

• Electricity
• Food
• Buildings

And yet in the same country we are going about wasting hundreds of pounds of a luxury food item for amusement. Gotta love America.

At the same time I have been keenly interested in how technology is being used in this disaster. There is already a listing for Katarina in Wikipedia, Craig's list is turning into an amazing resource for people offering and looking for emergency housing (providing you can get computer access), and places like Google Earth Community and Google Earth Hacks are just two of the many places offering images of the damage.

I'll close out with a message from my friend from NOLA. I wish everyone the best.

STILL ALIVE IN 2005!!

Thanks so much for your thoughts and concerns. In
short, we raced the hurricane and made it out of New
Orleans before impact.

We’re lucky to be alive. It took us 26 hours of
straight driving and we eventually ended up in Austin
Texas, where we’ll stay for at least a week.

It appears as if flooding of roughly six feet affected
areas within a seven block radius of our apartment and
we don’t know if our building is still there, or if
the roof is still intact. Everything may be lost. We
probably won’t know for at least 2-3 weeks. We might
not be able to get back into the city for a couple of
months – who knows!

So, not sure what then plan is going to be. We may
head down to the boarder of Mexico and set up a tent
on the beach or we may go back in Wisconsin for a
month. All depends on incoming information.

Thanks so much for your thoughts. I’ll send out
another email when I know more info.

Iron & Wine & ...

This post from the Confabulators describing Iron & Wine's mythical partnerships with other Indie Rock bands is hilarious. Especially so since Iron & Wine is Motopop's FAVORITE new band and the bands on this list that I really like (Death From Above 1979, Arcade Fire,...) he does not care for much. I bet he'd love them if these collaborations were real.

My favorite part:

The addition of loud and mosh-worthy DFA1979 (the pit at Intonation was incredible) to Sam Beam’s sleepy jams would make music that you could simultaneously fall asleep and rock out to. Concertgoers would begin sleepmoshing, which would in turn lead to the classification of the group as a dangerous intoxicant.

Do you think the Houston teens sippin on that Syzurrp would be into it?

Spectacle

We went to a lackluster art event on the Stone Arch Bridge this weekend and got me thinking about what makes a good spectacle. The event promised 'follies' and other happenings over a 24 hour period but the best we saw was people dressed in historical garb riding Segways.

I have seen a lot of good spectacles in my life and I started thinking about all the bands that I've seen multiple times in different eras of my life- the kind of bands that if they are playing OF COURSE you will go see them. Some of these may not ring any bells but the names alone are very evocative. Here's a sampling:

High School
Urban Guerillas
The Wallets
Trip Shakespeare
The Replacements
Husker Du
Libido Boyz
Soul Asylum

College
Tikkler
Slack
Smegma
Viscious Wally

College Part Deux/Mid-Twenties
God Bullies
The Cows
Jesus Lizard
Milk
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Adulthood
The Soviettes
Anchorhead
Slug
The Jayhawks
Sleater Kinney

There are plenty of other great bands that don't play as much or as memorably. These are a few that go beyond just playing the record and inspire an energy that makes the live show fun.

Parenting on a Stick

I LOVE the Minnesota State Fair. I took the day off yesterday and we went to opening day. We set off at 10:30 in the morning and figured we'd stay as long as Boyo was doing alright. I can't believe how well he did. We didn't leave until 8:45!

Highlights included:

• Getting pictures of him in his John Deere snapsuit sitting on John Deere tractors
  
• Hearing a dad tell his son "Oh honey, that's not where you go to SEE alligators; it's where you go to EAT alligators" about a 'Gator on a stick' booth
• Seeing that a radio station had set up a 'Lactation Station'- a tented in area with chairs where you could nurse
• Playing the State Fair Scavenger hunt that some friends put together where we tried to get photos of things like 'best ZZ Top beard' and 'most food items on a stick carried at once'
  

I didn't see some other highlights since I'd seen them in previous years:

• Pet surgery- live spaying and neutering in the pet building
• Largest hog
  
• Robot wars
  

I was a little dissapointed with my food experience. You have to eat a lot at the fair but I had a hard time matching my food cravings with the food that was around me. I ate plenty anyway but it's much more satisfying when you think "Mmm, I'd really love some cheese on a stick now" and you turn around and see the cheese on a stick booth.

Punk Rock

We've been cleaning the house for a week to get ready for the in-laws to stay with us. Last night they arrived about 9 and we realized the baby and the in-laws would be asleep by ten and we could actually go out and see some music! We quickly perused the shows and decided on The Soviettes, The Marked Men, Birthday Suits, and Mut Era. We got there during Birthday Suits and bought earplugs at the bar first thing- we may like to rock but we're not stupid. This band put on the loudest show I've ever seen for just one drummer and one guitarist. We found out that they are two former members of Sweet JAP so that makes sense.

By the second band Motopop had had a mid-life conversion to punk rock. He was trying to convince me that we needed to start a punk rock band and with each drink he repeats things more so he repeated this A LOT. I don't know if we're supposed to start this band before or after we buy jetskis, buy an airplane, win the lottery, build a three-car garage, or make any of the many other motorized vehicle purchases he has planned. Somehow I think that if we are even in a position to contemplate buying a jetski we don't have much punk rock cred.

The Soviettes were their usual combination of haphazard and awesome and definately have punk rock cred. It's so great to be at a show where women are at least half of the front row. It was also great to have no one smoking since they just recently banned smoking in bars. We walked back to the car at 2am and got gyro/falaffel sandwiches along the way relishing the late hour.

Breastfeeding vs. Conception

On Friday I will have made it to my minimum breastfeeding goal- 6 months. We now have to decide how much longer I can go. Since breastfeeding inhibits conception and it took medical intervention to conceive Boyo what should we do at this point. We made an appointment at our fertility clinic and they prefer that breastfeeding be wrapped up 2 months before they start treatment! We're going to have to do some research here. I don't want to shortchange Boyo for a child we might not even be able to conceive but I will be very happy the day I can stop pumping at work.

Too Much?

After going through infertility treatments and reading about the experiences of many other mamas in waiting on their blogs Motopop and I are very sensitive about trying to conceive. We have been planning to go with a group of friends to a cabin this weekend. Yesterday Motopop asked me "Do you think we should check with someone about whether bringing Boyo will be too painful for Lolly and Bruce?" Our friends have been through 4 rounds of unsuccessful IVF treatments and though I knew they wouldn't tell us not to come I immediately realized we needed to ask. I just got an email back from Lolly saying how considerate we were. I know it would be painful for her whether there's a baby there or not but hopefully we can keep from stepping on toes!

Alone?

I got home yesterday and Motopop had taken Boyo out. This was the first time I'd come home to house with no people in a long time. But I wasn't really alone because the pug and the two cats were there. What did I do with these valuable moments?- Started cleaning. Arggh. It is just so hard to keep up with all of the 'shoulds' now that we have a baby. I used to be able to say "I should take out the trash, I should do the laundry, I should clean the kitchen..." and have the consequences be a lot less severe if I chose to wait.