And to think I made myself a list of new “commitments” just the other day. I decided it’s (that) time (again) to make a change. Because I made a deal with myself back in September (my birthday), and then three weeks before New Years, that I would make concrete changes, and nothing has changed. And I keep beating myself up — I do! — for not making changes. Maybe my expectations have been too high, I don’t know: quitting Starbucks — too high? I want to feel and look good, nay fabulous. I really do.

In my haze, I’ll attempt to remember my new commitments and share them with you here. They’re sitting upstairs in a brand new 100% recycled notebook. They’re not too lofty, I don’t think….

1. I commit to eating nutritious food.

2. I commit to sitting (meditating) 5 minutes a day.

3. I commit to doing my breathing exercises (or pranayama) 5 minutes a day.

4. I commit to doing yoga 5 minutes a day.

5. I commit to walking outside 20 minutes a day.

The idea is that if I commit to 5 minutes — I may just want to do MORE. Anyway, there are other commitments, too. I can only remember the diet and exercise ones with this splitting headache I’m sporting. The idea is, just, to COMMIT to switching things up, finally. I spend way too much time futzing around at Starbucks. I love getting out of the house, sure, but it seems I need to spend a wee bit more time here on my yoga mat and outside. I definitely need to take better care of myself. And, let’s see, 35 minutes a day taking care of myself? Sounds reasonable to me. And from the way I’m feeling these days — sick, like, every other week? — sounds necessary to me. I could even take Rascal with me for my 20-minute walk. He’ll love that.

There you have it. As soon as I feel better, it’s on, baby. Actually, I have my yoga class tomorrow — which means at least half an hour of pranayama, ten minutes of meditation, and an hour of yoga. I adore yoga, the poses, philosophy, psychology. It’s absolutely my passion. This doesn’t mean that I act like a yogini or anything (whatever that means). I’ve been SO negative lately, what with this awful cold. It just might mean that I recognize and work with that negativity, and accept it as part of myself. Blah blah. My eyes are burning. And Brett Michaels is on Celebrity Apprentice. And Rascal’s up again……

Love!

xo Haley-O

Four days ago I was all set to write the post we’ve all been waiting for (you know you’ve been waiting for this, at the edge of your seat, yahhuh!) — the post IN WHICH I announce that a certain two-and-a-half-year-old is finally sleeping through the night. I was all ready to get my HOLLAHHHHHs and everything. But, then, this revelation came about, and I just had to write about it, and then, ummmmmmmmm, the certain two-and-a-half-year-old stopped sleeping through the night, and has practically stopped sleeping altogether.

“MOMMY, MOOOOOMMMMMY! I. NEED. YOU.”

How can you resist “I. NEED. YOU” in the wee hours of the morning? Actually, it’s more like, “I. NEED. HYOU.” How do I resist that? Do I want to resist it when, 10 years from now, I know I’ll be bribing him for a wee cuddle? Because, frankly, I missed the little guy last week when he slept from 7:30pm to 7:30am for a whole 3 days straight. He even played in his crib when he woke up, telling his stuffed animals to, “Wait yo turn!” He was all proud of himself for sleeping through the night, too: “Mama, you powda me?” I totally thought we had it in the bag. But, no. As the Rascal would say, “Not really.” Actually, it’s more like, “Not reeee-eey.”

But, now that he’s back to NOT sleeping through the night, I miss when he WAS sleeping through the night. Especially since my bed is extra packed these days because my parents are away in California. Yes. It’s their fault. Because now, not only is Rascal in my bed, but also

and

Minden, MAARGE (looking très creepy up there), and my parents’ dog Olivia — or, as the Monkey likes to call her, “Yulivia” (we refuse to correct this), and, as the Rascal likes to call her, “Yayvah Yayvah Yayvah” (we refuse to correct this). Olivia’s deaf. All of them and THE RASCAL (never mind Josh…) aggressively vie for my slumberous attention throughout the night…. Actually they’re vying for my attention all the time — right at this very moment as a matter of fact. Minden is purring on top of me, and I can hardly see the computer screen. Have I made any typos?

Sighh…. TIRED. Sleep well, ye Gorgeouses…!

Love!

xo Haley-O

“Spiritual” is definitely not the right word either. I’ve sort of been-there-done-that, and it didn’t stick. It was definitely a “kick.” I don’t even really care if the psychic across the road from the big bookstore I frequent is really psychic or not, or even if I have a “spirit guide,” and what his name is, or if my dead cat is communicating with me when I’m sleeping. Because, at least for me, it doesn’t matter. Matter.

Regular yoga practice is teaching me this. How good practicing yoga makes me feel doesn’t matter. Matter. What matters is what’s here, what’s clear. My cat sitting on my lap, purring, now turning to me with stinky wet kisses, the click-clicking of the keys under my fingertips, my daughter upstairs serenading her dad: “it’s not my fault, the police gave me a ticket once because it’s not catching up to you, na-na-na-na-na” (#wtf?). Time passes quickly, and I’m done squandering my life.

So there are things to let go of. Me, the clinger. Addictions, fears, desires, anxieties. This doesn’t mean I plan on repressing or transcending these things, or never-ever-having-a-Starbucks-soy-no-water-tazo-chai-ever-again-EVER. It just means watching, noticing, observing the patterns, the wanting, the cravings — human stuff that we all get sucked into, stuck in. Not caring where it all comes from or why.

This is all a little something I’m learning from him (ignore the old caption — try)…

…and through him (who happens to have been my best friend when I was around 4-6 years old — so, kind of kismet)…

One day, I’ll have the guts to go to Michael Stone’s studio, maybe take a class, maybe let him know the impact he’s had on my life and, so, the lives around me….

Don’t worry, I’m still loving The Real Housewives. Just dancing more to the beat of my own drummer. And maybe even to a little Alicia Keys, because…

…because that’s what my girls are playing because we’re going to NYC — Blogher ‘10 — this summer with a whole bunch of other fabulous people whom I genuinely love. Come with us!? God help me, my family’s coming, too! But they’ll be staying with Josh’s sister and husband in Brooklyn. Yes, it will be quite the roadtrip. And I expect to overhear many a backseat conversation, such as this little nugget from today:

TANGENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All that matters: my amazing family, good friends, authenticity (but not the cliche kind), the world, this earth, “this ground.” What doesn’t matter: “big bloggers,” stats, twitter followers, fame, what-if’s, what so-and-so thinks of how my kid behaved in the restaurant, or what so-and-so thinks of what I’m wearing (again)…. None of it matters. Too much squandering. Squandering.

So, basically, while I’m not going to give up squandering altogether (you’d have to PAY me to give up Housewives right now, and, hmmm, twitter), I’m a little more focused on what matters, on what’s real, here, and now, on this earth.

One more tweet for the road – because it came out of nowhere last week and is, dare I say, très apropos….

It’s about being here and now and balanced within an extremely unbalanced society, ecology, economy, etc., etc….

Kind of like this wonderful boy, my blog friend (and fellow T-Dot book clubber) Sandra Diaz’s eight-year-old son Zachary, raising thousands of dollars for assaulted women, and volunteering any way he can for other important charities. He was honoured at Disney on Ice the other night. That’s yoga — as opposed to “blissing out” in hot pink lululemons. I got to take a picture….

Though it’s a fabulous workout and great for the nervous system, the heart of yoga is in the here and now. In not escaping but being present and active anywhere that you’re needed. Most people don’t realize it. Most people don’t realize how enlightening it is to really be in the here and now — through yoga, meditation, and even just reading (maybe even a blog post?) about it.

Bottom line in 140 characters or less? I don’t care about small stuff anymore. Dunzo. (Okay more than 140 characters.) I will continue to wear my flaws on my sleeve. But I’ll let them be. I’ll go with the flow and focus on what matters. Really matters.

It’s a work in progress…, of course.

People ask me about yoga and yoga books/dvds all the time. So, basically: Michael’s books (he has three of them now) — Cheaty RECOMMENDS.

Love!

xo Haley-O

So he’s walking around with his father’s iTouch now. And he’s talking. A lot. Unfortunately,  he likes to start most of his words with “f.” This is only really a problem when he’s yelling words like “cracker” over and over again in the grocery store — which has been known to happen. “F*CKER!!! F*CKER!!!” Nice, Rascal. Nice.

So I have a cold — again. Because I don’t take care of myself: I don’t do enough yoga, I don’t eat right (despite what everyone thinks for some reason), I don’t take my vitamins, and my sniffly kids and smelly cat constantly cover me with sloppy kisses. I am so loved. Loved enough that I don’t care that I have the sniffles right now.

So I don’t care about a lot of things I used to care about. Including getting out a decent blog post every time (ahem)…. The internet can suck you in and spit you out and suck you back in again. It spit me out yesterday — and I quite like it here, all spit out. I’m in a good place. I think I’ll stay here. Covered in spit.

So I just wrote three freelance pieces. Yes, I’m freelance writing, like professional for, like, here and here. And I have very little writing steam left in me tonight because of the hours of writing, the sore eyes and sniffles. I really wasn’t going to blog this evening. But the internet spit me out yesterday, so you know….

So now that I’ve written something here, I DO have to go to bed and attempt to read this month’s book club pick (450+ pages!): The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.

So far, it’s excellent. I can easily say I’ve never read anything like it. Deep into the heart of the Mississippi, the Internet spit me out, 1962….

So I remember a while back, this blogger I used to read. She said she loathed when people started sentences with “So.” And so ever since then I’ve been a little self-conscious about my “So”s at the beginning of sentences. But, you see, I don’t care so much now because the internet spit me out. It had to, you know. I wanted it to.

Love!

xo Haley-O

Someone has a crush on the Monkey. MY HEART, Gorgeouses — IT MELTS. I’ve been hearing for a few months now about how much she loves this boy and that boy, and, mostly, this boy. And I’ve heard about how this boy calls her “little,” and I’ve assured her (based on my own experience) that usually when a boy teases you it means he LIKES you. This, of course, doesn’t make her feel better. So I’ve also assured her that “good things come in small packages” and that (based on my own experience) it’s “fun being little.”

But, never mind. There was no speculation required when I picked the Monkey up from school the other day. Someone has a crush on her. (We’ll call him M.) Immediately, as I walked in to retrieve the Monkey, there was M, all over her. “Is she missing a tooth?” he asked me, dazzled by the apparent gap….*

I chatted with M’s mom for a bit, and she was so excited to share the news: “Haley, he talks about her non-stop. I’m not kidding.” We turned to look at him, and there he was trying to hug my little Monkey.

Although this makes me endlessly proud and all fuzzy inside, the Monkey acts like she hates it: “I don’t WANT M to like me. NO, Mama, NO!” So I’m trying not to make a big deal about it. The boy talks are starting, and I have to plant the seeds for good communication! I never want to make her feel uncomfortable or embarrassed around me when it comes to BOYS. And I THINK I want her to tell me everything. So, I act interested but nonchalant. “M loves Monkey,” I say, “How cool is that to have someone think you’re extra special? So, what else happened today?”

For me, Kindergarten was, like, every little girl’s dream. I remember it vividly. FIVE boys had a crush on me. They’d line up in front of me during playtime — me, in my pigtails and favourite Olive Oyl t-shirt. I was to choose which boy I was going to play with after school by pointing at each of them, chanting….

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Catch a tiger by the toe.
If he hollers let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

Of course, I liked Jason best and promised him that my finger would land on his knee in the end…. And it did. And we played with my dog after school, crouched under the dining room cabinet.

And (segue par excellence), SPEAKING OF CRUSHES…, who else has a humongous crush on Matthew Morrison… (or at least his voice)? BUST IT!

Move over, Justin Timberlake. I AM TELLING you!

Also — CRUSH — Sidney Crosby!!!!!!!

GO CANADA!!! Or, as the Rascal and Monkey like to say, “GO RED!” Best Olympics EVER!!!

LOVE!

xo Haley-O

*It is only an apparent gap from an old injury…. Long story.

The Monkey’s been asking The Questions — The Questions, that is, that I’ve been waiting for.

When I was a little girl, The Questions came first thing one morning. It was like a bell went off — DING: I realized I, and everyone around me, was going to die one day. My head started to spin as I went through all the people I love. All of them were going to die one day. My Great Grandma Fanny was already 96! My DOG Belle was 8! My PARENTS! OMG, MY PARENTS!

I ran to my parents’ room, gripping my favourite doll, “Marcus Mouse” — who happened to have a bell attached to his paw. DING DING DING DING DING. I ran to my parents’ room and jumped into the bed between them, and sobbed.

“When am I going to die? I don’t want to die! Belle’s already 8 years old. And soon she’s going to be 9 and then 10 and then 14 and then she’s going to DIE-HIE-HIE-HA-HA-WAHHHHH!” I don’t remember a thing my parents told me to pacify the anxiety and sadness. I just remember realizing that I was going to have to figure out how to live with all this new knowledge.

I now know how helpless my mother felt that morning. I was probably in Grade One already. The Monkey is only FOUR.

She’s been obsessed with death and dying since we lost Tigger. She would taunt me with hard questions about Tigger’s death, and laugh because she knew she was being a nutball…. She never reflected it all back on herself, thank GOD. Until now.

Yesterday, in the car — it happened. As she asked me Question after HARD Question (in panic and tears), I couldn’t help but notice I felt half there, and half transported back into my childhood, to that day when I realized that my life was finite. I can’t even bear to put her questions into writing.

I had to think quickly. On the spot.

“We die when we’re ready,” I said, “when our souls are ready, and usually when we’re really really old.”

“One hundred and ten, Mama?”

“Or one hundred and fifty! Who knows. But, in one way or another, you’ll be ready, so you don’t have to worry, Monkey.”

But this didn’t help, and the questions got worse, and more intense, and more horrifying. And, in the end, all I could say was this:

“Monkey, I love you. I’m here. I’m with you.”

And it worked.

She was having major anxiety — and, thankfully, I know anxiety. I needed to bring her back to the present. Since then, The Questions haven’t returned. So far. Today.

There are NO good go-to answers for The Questions, I don’t think. When they come, they’re here to stay, emerging now and then, like waves of the ocean. The only thing I can do is bring her back, say, 150 years, to now — to the present and to love.

*On a lighter note (GAH!), if you look closely at the picture above, you’ll see a little blond untamable shock of hair. Her little brother is oblivious to all the Questions…. Ignorance is bliss.

I was really going to have to get my phone number unlisted.

“I’d like to get your thoughts on some things. Because I asked her about you, and frankly, she was kind of a pill about it. Is this a bad time?”

“Oh. No. It’s fine.”

When I hung up the phone five minutes later, I felt numb.

…I sat on the couch beside Eric…. “That was a reporter from California. He just interviewed Julia. He asked her about me. She hates me.” I giggled, like I do in these breathless situations. ”She thinks I’m not respectful or not serious or something.”

…Eric put his arm over my shoulder. “What is she, ninety?”

“Ninety-One,” I sniffled.

“See? She probably doesn’t have the first idea what a blog is.“

…”I don’t know. Maybe she thinks I’m taking advantage or I’m — I’m not –” I was taken surprise by a sudden rush of tears. “I thought I was — I’m sorry if I –”

And then abruptly I was wailing….

–Julie Powell, Julie and Julia, pp. 333-334

So there was a Simon Fraser University Masters thesis written extensively about me and seven other “mommybloggers” (grrr…). I heard about it yesterday, of all places, when I was sitting at Podcamp TO, listening to a panel discussion, of all things, about what happens when social media goes wrong. My heart started pounding when I heard — my face turned beat red, palms sweating, hands shaking.

I’m used to people responding to my individual posts in the comments, on twitter, even on email. I’m definitely not used to someone reading my blog from start to finish, making gross assumptions based on posts here and there, and then publishing these gross assumptions and frustrating misreadings in a thesis — both offline and on — and not telling me about it, even after the fact.

At first I was furious. And I definitely (over)reacted on twitter:

I got really upset that The Thesis wasn’t in fact about the “works” themselves or the genre of blogging, as indicated in The Thesis’ abstract, and that, rather, it was about our lives, our income, whether or not we love that our children are away (for 2.5 hours, hello) at preschool, and so on. When Danigirl sent me the abstract (which was all I could see for hours until I got home to open the pdf file that contained The Thesis), I was a little flattered and excited. To be studied in the context of Bakhtin’s Dialogic, for example, and to be categorized as “Canadian Women’s Literature,” was so cool. Bring it on!

But, when I opened the document and searched my name…, I was floored. All those assumptions about all sorts of irrelevant stuff. It hurt. Bad.

I think the thing that bothered me most was when The Thesis writer suggested that I may have contrived how I started blogging in the first place. I told the world that Ali Martell introduced me to blogging when the Monkey was 8 months old, and that’s the truth — no questions asked. But, according to The Thesis writer, I “contrived” this bit in order to appear flippy and erratic or whatever. In another post, she ingeniously discovers, I mention that Jennifer Lawrence, who happens to be the author of the blog MUBAR (which no longer exists), helped me out when I was clinically depressed while pregnant with the Monkey. (And, by the way, an article was written about my prenatal depression and published in some major psychiatry journal — APA? — and, you betcha, the author asked my permission even though they used an alias and I’d never find it in a million years!). Yes, Jen Lawrence helped me, but it was OVER THE PHONE. I didn’t know she had a blog, or what a blog was.

Why does this bother me? Because it’s an insult to my integrity as a blogger. SURE, I might exaggerate things — for entertainment’s sake — here and there, and less so these days. But I would never flat-out lie. I would never “contrive” something. To me, that’s the ultimate insult to a blogger.

Somewhere, way out yonder in the internet ether, there’s a great old email conversation in which Ali reveals to me, “I HAVE A BLOG,” and to which I reply, “WHAT’S A BLOG???”

Anyway.

Whatever. I’m really okay now. I’m flattered that I’m in an MA thesis, even though the reading of “me” is false and unflattering for the most part. As you can see on twitter, I felt beyond violated and uncomfortable when I first read the thesis. But, I haven’t looked at it since, and I’ll never look at it again — and I feel better. And I can laugh at the broad assumptions, as I’ve also done on twitter:

And, this one….

Oops, how’d that tweet get there? (Disclosure: CONTRIVED.)

Here, see I can make light of The Thesis writer’s totally unfounded statement that I am the most “affluent” of all the bloggers (if she only knew!?):

Should the student have contacted me? It would have been the nice and, I think, scholarly thing to do.

Do I blame the student? Do I “hate” her SORT OF like Julia Child hated Julia Powell? No. I’ve done a Master’s Thesis, and I know how difficult that can be on several levels. This writer wrote the thesis in 2008. She’s obviously young, likely not a mother. There I go assuming, though….

As with all controversies surrounding “mommyblogging,”  people are now taking the opportunity to troll thoughtful posts on the subject and preach about the ethics of “mommyblogging.” We’re putting ourselves and our kids out there for scrutiny and misinterpretation, so apparently we should just suck it up, not react, and just plain expect this. But, surely we’re allowed to “giggle” or “wail.” On twitter?

Know what happened to me today? I went to Starbucks (shut it — I’m not affluent — I got a card for Valentine’s Day). Rascal and I sat beside a woman who was typing on her mini laptop. When she got up to leave, she said:

You know, I’ve been watching you, and you’re a wonderful mother. I see the way you talk to him and look at him, the way he looks at you. And I don’t see that all the time, unfortunately. It’s amazing to watch you. And I’m a therapist….

That compliment, that observation of ME, was so beautiful and so welcomed given my current frustration. And, so often, my readers and fellow bloggers, whether in comments, twitter, or email, make me feel THAT good with their genuine, caring feedback and friendship.

You can’t read a blog and claim to know the writer. As I stated several days ago on twitter,

You can’t judge a blogger by his or her blog. It’s not a novel. It’s its own genre. One absolutely worth exploring at an academic level.

If you’d like to see a copy of The Thesis, just contact me — which is easy to do for the record….

Love!

xo Haley-O