Cravings
My husband posted this to Twitter last weekend. I am fortunate to have a husband who is willing to be patient and kind and helpful in many ways, no matter how weird or hungry I get during this pregnancy. I may have eaten four muffins in under 5 minutes.
In addition to muffins, he also kindly volunteered to write regular expression scripts for me when I was pulling my hair out over a ridiculously over-complicated programming problem. He is MULTI-TALENTED.
On the Miriam-is-mostly-useless side, I have to admit that the only crafting I got accomplished last week was four rows on my baby blanket and a dish of root-vegetable-and-phyllo pie. This may be a new low.
Small(er) Space Crafting
As you might imagine, impending parenthood has brought with it a variety of changes, and more to follow. One such change was the need to change my guest room/craft space into a Kid room. In the end, I decided not to move out, instead I just moved into the closet. Luckily for me and all my stuff, it’s a very large, deep nice closet. Behold:
In the following photographs you will see what a miracle of tidy organization that small closet has become. It has so many kinds of storage that it puts the Container Store to shame. You can’t go into it anymore, what I do is use a bar stool and sit at the tables behind the doors. I can access anything I need from that vantage point. The only real downside is that I can only have one side open at a time, since it is outfitted with sliding doors. But it’s only a minor inconvenience, and overall, I really love this amazing space.
When I started, though, I didn’t love it. I was deeply divided about this whole plan. Losing my crafting space to the baby was hard, in a symbolic way, and hard work, in a literal way. It was really the thing that brought home to me that I was actually going to magically produce a child in a few months. The trouble is that I am not a young chicken. I have been an adult for quite a while, and I am comfortable in my habits and identity. “What am I doing?!” I thought to myself as I worked. “Am I literally in the process of exchanging my identity for that of MOM?!” It was a panic-inducing thought.
Before you say, “Oh, that’s ridiculous” you should read this post from Kim Werker’s blog, in which she is scolded by a reader who thinks it’s terrible she doesn’t have “Mommy” in her blog blurb. Lots of times women do intentionally subsume their identities into Mom-hood, or prioritize motherhood above all other aspects of their identities. And there are women who can get quite nasty/condescending/scolding when that’s not your choice, as if it makes you a crappy parent. As for me, there are lots of private, personal reasons I chose to be a mother, but subsuming my identity into that role wasn’t one of them. In fact, it was one thing I really did not want to do.
So, no. Moving into the closet didn’t mean I was exchanging my identity, it just meant I was making room for a new aspect of it.Does that mean I’ll be a crap parent, or not care about my kid, as some might imply? No. It means I’m a reasonably happy, well-rounded, complicated individual, so it’s unlikely that any one aspect of who I am will ever completely subsume the rest of it. In the same way, the Kid won’t absorb all my writing here, either, because I would be bored senseless if all I ever made and talked about was baby stuff. It’s just rather new at this point and therefore interesting, and also I’m under the influence of Nesting Hormones.
I imagine everyone approaches these things differently. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to how you make room for parenting in your life, but as a rather independent feminist with a career I don’t intend to give up, this is how I approach it. With caution and thoughtfulness, and the knowledge that I am perfectly able to go to Ikea and outfit a closet as an awesomesauce sewing lab.
And you thought I was just going to talk about my crafting closet.
Scenes from daily life
Oven-drying some spiced tomatoes.
Fresh herbs from my tiny container garden and the farmer’s market.
Tomato, basil and caramelized onion pizza with Jeremy’s homemade dough.
Summer is the time for really overdoing it on fruit-eating.
I don’t understand why she thinks a face plant into biking shoes is comfortable for sleeping.
A few flowers to liven up the place.
