28 January 2003 by Published in: in my life No comments yet

2003/01/28

10:32


It’s been a bit of a strange day so far. People have expressed varying levels of
impatience and irritation with me, and the day is still quite young. I’m feeling a bit
confused by it. It’s also grey and overcast today. Not cold, thankfully, but the kind
of constant unending gray of lands with no sun. I’m reminded of The Silver Chair
by C.S. Lewis. I can’t even remember what the sun was like, much less convince anyone
else that it exists. Which, I suppose, brings me to confession time. I have a
confession to make. I hate this time of year. Hate it. Loathe it. Despise it. Can’t
express forcefully enough how much I hate this time of year. I feel slow and cold and
sleepy all the time. Mostly cold. It all starts when the clocks change for daylight
savings time. The days get shorter and shorter, but you don’t notice it so much until
the hour changeover. Then, you step outside of work and it’s DARK. Not even 5 PM and
black as midnight. So depressing. Also, I’m not a big fan of the cold. So I approach
every winter with some trepidation, like an animal past her prime who fears this winter
will be the one to do her in, the one she doesn’t survive. I try not to talk about
this much. In fact, I try not to think about it much. One, because it seems kind of
crazy. I’ve heard about circadian rhythms and seasonal disorders and a lot of things
that can possibly describe what I experience during the winter, but I’m not prepared
to completely buy in on those theories. Two, thinking and talking about how horrible
things are has a strange way of making them worse, especially when they are the sort of
thing there are no solutions for. There are places with mild winters, but no place with
none. And every place on the planet has a winter solstice. If I could muster up some
enthusiasm I’d say I can’t wait for the warm, sunny, long days again. I think I could
bear the cold better if it wasn’t so dark all the time, or bear the darkness better if it
wasn’t so cold. The combination is pretty overwhelming, though.



And that, kind reader, is why I’m a failed Goth. Yes, I was once quite a Goth. I
adored the cloak of night. I welcomed the ink jet of darkness covering me, smoothing me
over, hiding me, protecting me and keeping me alone. I also liked wearing lots of velvet
and listening to Sisters of Mercy. Actually, I still like those things, but I don’t think
that’s enough to keep anyone from revoking my Goth membership card , and quite frankly, I
don’t want to be in the club anyways, as I find most Goths to be quite scary. It has taken
me many years to realize that it wasn’t the darkness itself that I loved. It was the
isolation. There’s nothing quite like the night to break you away from all humanity
everywhere. Safely alone, conversations with a moon who always listens can be a lifeline
for someone who just doesn’t understand anyone or anything. Being the last person on the
last bus at two in the morning and riding noisily through deserted streets is a remarkably
enlivening experience.


Hmmm, I kind of thought I had more to say about that. Had mentally envisioned that
section to be about four paragraphs, wherein there’d be much delving into my history and
recalling some of the great anecdotes that have made up my youth. Apparently, I’ve found
myself too apathetic to go into anything in depth at the moment. I suppose I do have one
thing to say, though, keeping myself busy in November with
NanoWriMo helped me through much of the usual
winter misery, and I plan to do that again this year. Oh, speaking of writing. I skipped
Yoga yesterday, just because I didn’t feel like going, and decided I’d go on Wednesday
instead during Sacred Hour. At first, I had planned to write last night instead, and do a
swap. Of course I didn’t do that. So now I’m all kinds of behind on the writing schedule. I managed to play some Animal Crossing, though. I love that game.


Sophia brought home her first piece of refrigerator art last night. It was a stoplight
with bits of colored paper glued in the three circles. It’s hanging on the fridge right
now. I’m very excited about that. She did it in Toddler B class, which apparently she
hangs out in quite a bit. She adores the Toddler B teacher (Ms. Vicky), and anytime I say
anything about daycare she chimes in with “Bicky! Bicky!” just to reassure us that she knows
exactly what we’re talking about. Because of her history of being reluctant to go to
people and the whole thing where she didn’t want to leave her earlier class (Infant A), I’m
really encouraged by her growing attachment to her future teacher, Ms. Vicky.



Also in daycare news : Sophia now has her providers going to other classes to retrieve
books for her. The Toddler Classes have no books in them for the children to play with.
I am not sure why this is, but I imagine it has something to do with the difficulty of
keeping books hygienic. I have never been troubled by this, as Sophia has more than enough
books at home to make up for that. Apparently, her teachers discovered by some chance (or
possibly Sophia’s talking about it, she has recently started saying “book” with greater
frequency and clearer emphasis) how much she loves to read books, and so they went into the
older kid classes to bring books back for her. So when Kurt went to pick her up one day
last week, she was playing alone (as she often is) with a stack of books that no other
children were competing with her for. That’s my girl! Maybe in a few years she’ll be
spending her entire lunch recess in the school library picking out new books to read the
way I did in elementary school. The provider told Kurt, “She really loves books! You
should take her to the library sometime.” Kurt promptly replied that we bring her library
books all the time. One of the things I wanted to do is keep a list of the library books
we brought with notes on particular favorites, but alas, that is among the things that
will have to go undocumented. You should see her scrapbook. It’s a big cardboard box
that I stuff papers into. Someday there’ll be a book, and glue, and pretty things to look
at. Someday. Maybe she can help me with it when she’s like six or seven or something.
There’s one other daycare story from the past week or so. Kurt went to pick up Sophia and
they were in the process of bringing the kids from outside play to inside. There was
plenty of screaming and crying, but apparently Sophia came in without complaints (at home
moving from outside to inside causes much wailing and kicking and falling down to the
floor for full on tantrums). As she came inside, though, she was also saying, “Inside!
Inside!” which is something we say a lot at home (both inside and outside are regular
parts of the vocabulary) but apparently not so much at daycare, because Sophia’s
repetitions caused Ms. Shannon to say to Kurt,”That Sophia is sooooooo smart.” This is
the second such instance of a Toddler teacher noting that Sophia is smart. I’m a little
hesitant to take such labels at face value, but I’m sure it’s meant as a compliment, and
that pleases me. I don’t really know if I want my kid to be extra smart. Extra smart
doesn’t seem to get one much in the world. All the intelligence in the world doesn’t
guarantee she’ll be happy or healthy or wise. On the other hand, I can’t help but feel
the classic geek thrill at being told my child is bright.

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