Majink: Michele Ann Jenkins

Follow up…

December 12, 2008 – 12:40 pm
Just came across a comment on a column in todays New York Times: "Perhaps it all comes down to personality types. Those of us who are baby people — who do not mind, who truly cherish the physical intrusions, the constant neediness, the absolute trust inherent in babies — will enmesh with our children as babies and toddlers. And likewise those of us who are more inclined toward a less physical give and take — conversation, argument, sharing of ideas — will enmesh with our children as adolescents." So there's some hope! And, "enmesh" makes a good word-of-the-day...

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Working for the weekday

December 11, 2008 – 3:02 pm
Supposedly, people living on the edge of the Sahara desert must sweep their homes daily or, slowly but surely, they will find themselves living under a sand dune that has crept, grain by grain, into their house. That seems to be an apt analogy for my daily decluttering-- only instead of sand it's oatmeal and small toys. It seems that the majority of my day is given over to fighting entropy-- to "resetting" the house, as I like to think of it. The family gets up in the morning, eats breakfast, reads the paper, plays a bit, gets dressed and leaves; I reset. They come home, eat a snack then dinner, play, work, change clothing a few times, take a bath, go to bed; I reset*. They wake up in the morning and do it all again (though with a recently-out-of-diapers toddler and a one-month-old there's a load of laundry ...

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Resolving to Fail: Again

December 10, 2008 – 11:00 pm
Last year I made a New Years resolution to get rejected-- at least 5 times or more, if possible. My theory was that it's almost impossible to get published on the first try. Thus, the first step to becoming a published author (after writing something, which has turned out to be the easy part), is to rack up a couple of rejection letters. At the time, I was writing children's books, so I focused on one story, "The Family Bed," rewriting, editing, and putting it up for critique on various writing websites. Finally, I had something that I thought was pretty good (it was also, interestingly enough, nothing like the original story). Along the way I learned a lot about the editing process as well as the publishing world (first off-- it's a scary place). I put together a query letter, sent it out to 8 publishers. I got back: 4 ...

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Of multidemensional arrays and motherhood

August 21, 2008 – 11:59 am
My original intention with this blog (besides writing more than once a month) was to cover a variety of topics, both personal and professional. So far the few-and-far-between posts have really focused on the personal-- travel and family life. It occurred to me that I might be holding back on the other stuff because it would be "weird" to have observations on web development, information science and the like side-by-side with toddler tantrums and the usual stay-at-home-mom venting. It's not like I have an audience in mind here. In fact, I purposely avoid imagining that there is one. After 21 years (whoa, hadn't actually done the math on that before) of private, ink-based, analog journaling, I'd managed to convince myself that personal writing was for my eyes only. I'm not sure how to strike the right tone with the weird world of public-private writing that is the blog-o-sphere. As far as I ...

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Familia Insomnia

July 4, 2008 – 12:16 am
We didn't sleep last night The husband because he launched his new site/project/open source code base identi.ca yesterday morning, and hasn't slept since. Upside: wildly successful launch with tons of really smart people thinking and blogging interesting thoughts about the project. Downside: Zombie husband stuck upstairs at parents' Tahoe vacation home. The toddler because of a nagging cough turned bad around three am. It's probably just the leftovers of the last germ-gift from day care exacerbated by altitude and smoke from the four-billion-plus forest fires burning over here. I tried propping her up, rubbing her back, honey, lemon, lemon and honey, steamy shower, walking, rocking, singing. Then I turned to drugs. That's right: I gave my under-6 year old Canadian child children's night time cold meds. Bought here, south of the border. I'm not sure if it helped, but we both were out when the sun rose. I did not sleep a)because of ...

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I mean to have fun…

July 1, 2008 – 12:35 am
Really. I know you wont believe me, but I start out with every intention of giving you happy, positive, play time. Only, before we go out to the park/beach/ice cream store there are a few things we have to do first: Get dressed. For some reason this makes you cry. And run away from me. And kick at my head when I try to put on your pink and green undies with the kitties on it. Then I get your shirt and pants on, but when I turn around to get your shoes, you take it all off. Get sunscreen on. This makes you scream. And alternate between flailing wildly and curling up in a little ball. Every day I weigh the pain of possibly getting sunscreen in your eyes vs. skin cancer. Go to the potty. You're a big girl now, so we don't want to wear diapers. Do we? That means a ...

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