A New Name

So little Penny has earned a new nickname: Miss Rowdy. Some variations: Rowdypants, Rowdybooger, QuitBeingSoRowdyandGoBacktoSleep.

Miss Rowdy has been waking two, three, four times a night lately. Not screaming in pain, rather just for kicks. And I do mean that literally. Her nursies are like a wrestling match. Squirm, kick, glug glug. Every five seconds she has to "check in" with me, give me a delirious sleepy little smile, then back at it.

Back in dream land she squirms and wiggles all over the crib. Sitting on my lap at the dinner table she kicks both legs and smashes rattles on the table with both hands. When she's playing, her floor toy sounds like one of those wooden wind chimes. During a hurricane.

Plus she just discovered the Joy of Noise. Her sweet little shriek of delight can shatter glass. I'm not making that up. Ok, maybe just a little made up. But unless she learns volume control soon, the whole family will need earplugs.

We love our Penny from Heaven who is now a great big 4.5 months old. And we love seeing her personality appear, more and more every day. I have a feeling I'm not going to finish off the flock with an easy bird, however. This little sparrow is, in a word, Rowdy.

Recreation

This week ...

• One minivan breakdown which took three days to fix (its Brain died, and yes that's as expensive as it sounds).
• Two all-morning meetings with Baby.
• Three dozen diapers sold online.
• Arranged one newspaper article featuring cool stuff friends did.
• Five million phone or Skype calls.
• Six million hours in the Jeep - see minivan above and note: Six people will NOT fit in a five-passenger vehicle.
• Eight gazillion emails.
• Half a book read.
• Eighty ooglesalakfhgozillion gallons of nursie-milk-spit up on my shirt(s) (and skirts, shoes, floors, etc.). 

This is what I do after a long, stressful week:

On Cottony Clouds

Will you be bothered if I wax eloquent a bit, you my singular reader? If so, hmm, I don't really care. I'm going to anyway! Haha!

So here it is. I love cloth diapers. They're so ... fluffy and soft and sweet (sometimes). They're so effective and useful and inexpensive. They're so cuddly. Can you picture it?

Diapers are also much like plot, aren't they? Absolutely essential and sometimes messy?

I often think of plot as the bones inside a body, or the undergirding of a building. Here's where I get to mix metaphors, like playing in the mud. Industrial and urban is cool right now. We love interiors with exposed brick and copper piping. As far as I know, however, we don't like exposed wiring and rafters open to the sky in Michigan, in January. Many books I read have an overexposed plot. Not photographically overexposed, mind you. Exposed like the creepy guy in the overcoat at the bus stop. These books are anorexic, jagged edges of bones jutting out. They're the books that make you want to tap the author on the shoulder and say, "Uh, excuse me, but your plot is showing."

Other books are fluffy. Soft. They're plot marshmallows that have been put in the microwave for ten seconds on high. They're the guy in the low-riding sedan. They need Weight Watchers and a crowbar to pry off the excess layers of 1970s paneling and a sandblasting to clear the 1930s lead based paint to get to the gorgeous red brick below. They're the diaper with so many layers they never fully dry and always sort of stink, so much bulk baby can't sit up. They're a problem.

Yet there's also a range of what works. I love the urban streamlined design, but I also love Victorian frills. So long as both are in the right place. I don't want the historical 1910 colonial stripped down to plaster and lath; I don't want the high-rise condo decked out in lace. Just as I don't want my sweet baby girl peeing out of her too-small outgrown diapers, no matter how much I love them. The fluff has to match the baby; the structure has to match the book. Genre, audience, intensity, all factor in when making the Plot Decision. At the end, the goal is a book that's not like Papa's chair, exposed springs and unsanded wood that leaves splinters in Goldie's bum. Not like Mama's chair, either. So soft the poor girl suffocates. It needs to be like Baby's chair. Baby's diaper? A perfect fit, soft and squishy, Just right.

Things that Go Shriek in the Night

Or, little people who go shriek in the night. 7pm sweet Penny goes to bed. Cry cry sleep sleep sleep. 10:30 she wakes up. Shriek shriek shriek scream scream. I try to nurse her. Scream scream cry cry shriek shriek. I turn on the light. "Oh!" then, shriek shriek cry scream. I give her a dose of baby ibuprofen. Yum yum. Nursies. Back to bed. Whimper whimper sleep sleep.

3am: cry cry shriek shriek. I get up right away, cuddle cuddle, cry cry shriek scream shriek. Try nursies. Shriek shriek cry cry scream scream. Dr. D comes in. Smile, cry, shriek shriek. Change diaper. Shriek shriek cry cry scream shriek. Push the Annoying Button on the singing bear. "Oooh!" "Coo smile coo." Whimper, cry, shriek shriek. We turn on the light. Blink blink. Smile smile. Nursies. Glug glug. Light out, back to bed, coo coo sleep sleep.

7am: whimper whimper. I run in expecting cry shriek fest. Smile smile giggle giggle.

What on earth?

Update: Down for nap. Scream scream cry cry shriek shriek cry cry scream shriek cry cry. Ten minutes. Scream shriek cry shriek cry cry scream shriek. Twenty minutes. Quiet sleep. One minute. Cry shriek scream scream cry cry shriek shriek. I get her up and try nursies. Scream cry shriek shriek.

Showing a little Hamline University Spirit! Poor bug.

Off to doctor. Ear infection. Poor little love.

Whiteout in the Hands of a Fool

I think I mentioned attending the Festival of Faith & Writing, yes? Yes. And I mentioned these workshops I attended. On poetry and on playwriting.

Well, just this minute I decided to rest my brain from a taxing revision, to read something that was handed out during workshop. A ten-minute play about a guy and a girl talking about their failed relationship. We weren't given time to read it during the workshop, even though the focus of the workshop was on structure as seen in a short play. It would have been wonderful to read it then and there, to dissect it and unpack it and learn from it. But whatever. We didn't.

So I pulled it out and read it. And I wondered what was up with the margins. There were these big gaps in the middle of paragraphs or at the start of lines. Then I noticed the gaps were not gaps, rather words. Words that had been mostly successfully whited out by ... someone. The workshop facilitator? I'm assuming.

See, the topic of profanity came up briefly during our workshop. One participant mentioned that his scene had a naughty word in it, and asked if we minded. I was more than a little surprised when the man beside me said he did indeed mind, and if he read the part, he would not say the word. Really? Well, ok, I thought, the man is a pastor. Not a pastor of any church I've attended (or would attend even if it meant salvation from the fires of hell), but a pastor. So his reluctance to drop the D-bomb aloud is allowable.

But what about profanity in a written work, a script? I can understand censoring a word mid-read-aloud to avoid violating one's own moral code, but is it acceptable to censor a published work (pre-photocopying) - thus inflicting your moral code on everyone who happens to read the document? Hmmmm.

Yes, yes, I understand that she may not have been inflicting anything on us. Rather, she likely did it to avoid offending anyone. Is it really possible to avoid offending anyone? Some may be offended by a well-placed damn, others by the presumptuousness of someone else deciding what words are appropriate for us to read, still others by the (marginally) salacious content of the scene itself. Personally, I'd rather be treated like a grownup. Pick a different scene, or put the white-out away.

Plus, maybe it's the jr. higher in me, but it's really distracting to read something when I'm tilting the page sideways trying to see what that word might have been.

Note to the facilitator: you missed one. An F-bomb!

The Seriousness of Poetry

Setting: A poetry workshop at Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing. Fourteen attendees and one facilitator sit in plastic chairs arranged into a lopsided circle.

Attendees have just finished their first writing exercise.

Facilitator: We've all had sixty seconds. Shall we read what we've created? Let's hear three or so, then pause to consider what stands out most ...

Reader #1: (coughs a bit, reads quietly) Lake Michigan ... sand dunes ... swim on wide feet ... out over the river ... it would be lovely ... like a highway map ... on the palm of your hand.

(attendees sigh and nod appreciatively)

Reader #2: (run together) Tulips and traffic of dunes in Peg and Bill's diner open as a book past the glowing compost of my mind.

(attendees nod and sigh, but appear slightly confused)

Reader #3: (clears throat) Electricity. (clears throat again, dramatically, and begins to read in epic poetry slam style) The glow ... of pollen ... on the fallen darkness of my soul ... is ... not ... a thing ... for ...

(As Reader #3 reads, the door opens and Latecomer enters. She moves toward a seat quietly.)

Reader #3: (continuing unbroken) the squeamish. (pause as if drums are beating the rhythm of the poem) Electricity ... far from dusk ... into

(Reader #3 stops abruptly as Latecomer enters the circle of chairs. All attendees look at Latecomer. The attention makes Latecomer nervous and awkward. She drops her umbrella, trips over someone's bag.)

(Reader #3 watches Latecomer even after she is settled in her chair. For several beats, Reader #3 continues to stare at Latecomer.)

Reader #3: (Clears throat to return to reading. Latecomer shifts her position, causing Reader #3 to stop and fix her with a stare once more. Finally, Reader #3 begins. From the beginning.) Electricity. (clears throat again, dramatically, and begins to read once more in epic poetry slam style) The glow ... of pollen ... on the fallen darkness of my soul ... is ... not ... a thing ... for ...  the squeamish. Electricity ... far from dusk ... into dusk ... (growing quieter and more dramatic) into dusk ... into dusk ... into ... dusk ... in ... to ... ... dusk.

Facilitator: (Over the final syllable.) Very good, so what do we notice about these selections? 

(Attendees begin talking at once, the tension in the air evaporating except for Reader #3 who glares fixedly at Latecomer until lights out.)

The other workshop I attended was on playwriting. Can you tell?

Festivalivities (aka Festival of Faith and Writing)

I haven't felt like a writer since Penny came along, or not like a good writer or a serious writer. I've been writing in snippets between nursings and changings and appointments and errands. It's amazing how complicated life is with now four children. In the past two weeks, for example, I've sewn a Revolutionary War costume, attended two (or three?) school events, two (three? four?) doctor's appointments, writer's group, made several trips to the library, run countless errands, gardened, read a parenting book, gardening book and two juicing books, made thirty or more lunches and several dozen breakfasts and dinners, played Single Mom for six-or-so nights, slept through the night zero times, changed about 190 diapers, spent 3-4 hours each day nursing the baby ... oh, and wrote. A little. When I could.

But this weekend I was able to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing. Three days, 11 sessions, two meals with my MFA friends, and only one occasion of a wet shirt from over-full-leaky-milk-makers. Plus, I still managed to attend the kids' school carnival.

Refreshed, renewed, ready to tackle that ever-present question from Dr. D: How do you plan to pay off your student loans?