daughter

New Look! Same Great Taste!

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Friday Free-for-All…

I’ve been hating my old theme for awhile; that narrow strip of text stressed me out. But what doesn’t these days. Anyway, still working out the kinks with this new theme, so I apologize if you visit my website and are greeted with life-sized images of Z’s Entourage of stuffed animals.

Speaking of new looks. I need a haircut. Or,  like, a tattoo or something. Things are getting desperate, the elliptical machine is not working its magic, and I’m ready to take things into my own hands (or the hands of a talented hairstylist or tattoo artist). Z just noticed Husband’s tattoo for the first time the other day, and her delight was infectious. I’m ready to impress her with my own tattoo.

But you know, a haircut might do the trick.

Actually, she’d be thrilled with goldfish crackers.

And if I got a tattoo of a goldfish cracker!? I’d have myself a new 21-month-old BFF.

The thing is: I want a good haircut, and those aren’t cheap. At the same time, getting a real style seems sort of pointless, as I’ve worn my hair up every single day for the last fifteen years. Actually, I think I was born with my hair in a ponytail. (Total lie; I was a baldy just like Z was.) All I know is I’m ready for less hair. Something between what I’ve got now (down to middle of my back) and what I was born with (nada).

I’m adding a new feature to my blog: interviews with UNpublished authors. If you are a struggling writer, or just a writer who would love to be published someday, don’t wait for fame to come to you! Tackle fame through my obscure website, where I will treat you as a guest on my very own imaginary talk show. Which means: without the makeup and hairstyle, and without a studio audience. Leave a comment if you want the glory.

I promise I won’t make fun of you. Much.

Since what the world needs now is Clark, sweet Clark, I end with this:

If You’re Happy and You Know It

Posted on by Beth Hull

First, two cute toddler things:

1) Z has been dancing and trying out hand motions to songs for awhile now, and I believe this is a result of a couple of different factors: the Music Together program, and the fact that I often sing to Z and recite nursery rhymes and poems instead of suffering through enjoying her scintillating conversations about whether the dogs next door are awake, asleep, eating, wearing diapers, singing, or barking.

Of course I’d like to believe a huge part of her love of music and dancing is due to a) her inherent genius-ness and b) an inheritance of my own unrealized talent for singing and dancing (I can hear family and friends laughing aloud at this. Shut up. I’m totally talented as a singer/dancer. Chicago NEEDS me, and everyone would love Cats if I were cast as Grizabella and warbled out “Memory”).

Whatever the reason for the dancing and accompanying hand movements, it’s pretty cute.

2) Another cute thing is her Entourage. This is the name I’ve given her stuffed animal friends. Not all of them are animals, though. We have Mr. Penguin, Talula (a cat), Noop (a doll), Doggie, Giraffe, Giraffe (again), Bird, and…Necrotizing Fasciitis. Necrotizing Fasciitis is a giant stuffed microbe holding a fork and knife, a joke gift from when Husband did lab work in school.

Z carries her Entourage around the house. Usually she only has three A-listers, since that’s all she can manage to carry, and she switches it up a bit (perhaps Z, too, notices that conversation can get dull when hanging out with the same person day after day after day).

The cute things are totally necessary right now, because life has not been serene or happy in my house lately. I have to steal these cute moments when they come, because at naptimes and most of the night she has been an Unholy Terror of Screaming Proportions (UTSP). The UTSP is not happy, and everyone knows it. Including the neighbors, their dogs, and the people one county over. There has been so little hand-clapping, foot-stomping, shouting-hooray fun here that I even -gasp!- considered getting a job and sending the UTSP to daycare just so I don’t have to deal with her anymore. Last night I was about to give Husband my formal resignation.

But then, she was falling asleep in her enchilada at 6:30, so we (er, Husband, that is, since I was still busy sulking) whisked her off to bed, and she didn’t wake up until 6:30 this morning. Which for Z, and by default, me, is sleeping in.

I don’t know if the sunny disposition will last, for either of us, which is why I’m going to clap my hands, stomp my feet, shout hooray, and let my face show the tiny, stolen happinesses I find.

The Unsung Clarkie Underfoot

Posted on by Beth Hull

A Wednesday Momming Around Entry

Clarkie

Don’t sit down. Especially with a blanket and a book or notebook. This cat has Couch Radar and she knows when your lap is easy game. Even the dinner table and the desk are fair hunting grounds for her. Your lap is her prey and she is a skilled huntress.

Clarkie (Clark) is my other baby, and she will never allow herself to be forgotten (you’ll feel the prick of her paw on your face in the morning, or trip over her as you prepare breakfast). Since Z made her screaming way into our lives, though, Clarkie has been shuffled off to the side in a classic case of Forgotten Older Sibling. Has anyone read Socks by Beverly Cleary? Because that’s what I think of sometimes with Clark, and it makes me very sad.

We feel bad for her, especially now that Z is on the move. It used to be that we’d drag a toy mouse on a stick over the bed for her to chase, or toss paper balls around the house. Now Z runs after Clark, an old paper ball held in her sticky, outstretched hand. Screaming. And Clarkie just trots in the other direction. Quickly. I can see a martyred expression on Clark’s face. I think she’s grateful that she is unable to have children, and a little resentful that we did.

Everything Zen in the Tibetan Singing Bowl

Now that Z takes one long nap instead of three excruciatingly short ones, Clark has found my lap again. As I type this she’s tucked into  my sweatshirt, twitching her ear occasionally, but I can tell she’s happy. Ah yes, there’s a purr.

And yeah, she’s obnoxious sometimes. When it was especially difficult to get Z down for her nap for awhile, Clark would wander into Z’s room, meowing loudly. It was like she had Spidey (Kitty) Sense that Z’s eyes were closing, and she just had to foil my hard work. Punishment for spawning. I could read the vengeance in Clarkie’s eyes.

Clarkie is infuriating in some ways, and we have to be, you know, responsible for her, and clean up her poop and make sure she’s fed. But she’s soft, and cute, and so full of love and joy, and she makes us laugh. So really, she isn’t that different from Z.

*   *   *

Writing update:
No longer rushing to finish revisions. These things take time, and I don’t want to ruin chances with this Dream Agent by sending anything less than my very very best.

Not Now, Babykins

Posted on by Beth Hull

“Up!”

“Not now, Babykins.”

“Read please.”

“Not now, Babykins.”

“Sit…down!”

“Not now, Babykins.”

“Play!”

“Not now, Babykins.”

“Go bye-bye?”

“Not now, Babykins.”

“Hello song.”

“Not now, Babykins.”

If I’m making myself sound like a heartless jerk, well, sometimes I feel that way. The above is not exactly how a day-in-the-life goes, but sometimes it feels close. Why is it such a struggle to do these three things: 1) interact with my daughter (i.e. entertain her), 2) accomplish day-to-day chores and errands, and 3) try to rescue that weakening hold on some semblance of my old, not-mom identity?

This isn’t a unique or original concern; I’m certain millions of parents wonder the same thing every day. My usual compromise is to run errands, because Z loves getting out, and if the car ride is long enough I can usually get inside my own head for a little while to just think. Then we get something done, and if I’m lucky I can think on the way home with the “Hello Song” blasting.

[I’m going to pretend she didn’t just now hurl a bowl of Cheerios across the basement floor. Which is carpeted in Cheerio-colored shag.]

[Oh lovely, now she’s picking them up and handing them to me, because she knows our floors aren’t clean enough to eat off of.]

It’s time for breakfast, anyway. Our internet connection has been fritzy the past couple of days, so I wanted to seize this rare moment of functional internet to write. The spastic internet is probably a point in Z’s favor, since it forces us out of the basement office and up to the play room, or the back yard, or the library, or the plant nursery. And maybe on the way to or from those places, I can get some me-time in.

Max the Noble

Posted on by Beth Hull

Naming inanimate objects has always been a hobby of mine. My favorite egg baby in middle school was Hester. I had a dust mop named Jorge in college, and my dwarf mandarin orange tree is named Frida. Most, if not all, of my stuffed animals had names, and now I name Z’s animals. She has a giraffe named Gerald, a penguin named Mr. Penguin (yeah, really stretching the bounds of creativity on that one), and her Duplo person is Guy. Husband named her stuffed cat Talula, and I’m jealous that I didn’t come up with the name.

I also have a clothes hamper named Max. He was  in the garage, on top of the Yard Sale pile, and I’d forgotten about him until yesterday when my friend Kristin visited. “You have an elephant clothes hamper,” she pointed out in wonder. Or horror. One can’t be sure.

Max previously belonged to my Grandma Marion, and I don’t know where she got him, or why. But grandmothers have a way of foisting their strange belongings onto their granddaughters. I still have a garbage sack filled with throw pillows Grandma Myrt started to sew but didn’t want to finish. When I look at the fabric patterns of gigantic, blazing orange peonies and kittens wearing Christmas-patterned ribbons, I have to wonder why she abandoned that particular project.

But back to Max.

I grew so attached to him throughout middle and high school that he came to college with me, and then my first apartment, and to subsequent apartments, until Husband and I got married. Now we (gasp!) shared a clothes hamper, and Max simply wasn’t big enough to contain our filth–especially since said filth collected for between two to four weeks at a time until we made a trip to one of our parents’ houses to do laundry (yes, even when we were married. We have a deep-seated and irrational fear of laundromats). Max was sent back to live with my parents, and we adopted an accordion-style, silvery clothes hamper from IKEA that I have christened Ugly.

When we finally bought our house and our parents brought all of our junk from their garages to our own, Max resurfaced, took a quick breath of fresh air, and then the garage door closed on him for months. (Anybody thinking of The Velveteen Rabbit? ‘Cause I am.) During a purge of old things, Mom finally convinced me to put Max in the Yard Sale Pile: an epic mound of…garbage, basically. But garbage I hope someone will buy, so that I can, in turn, use their money to buy more garbage.

Then Kristin mentioned Max, and I remembered our fond times together. Personified as a faithful friend, he held my dirty clothes for so many years, and now I sell him like the other garbage? I asked Kristin if she needed a clothes hamper, concealing the fact that Max was missing an ear. No, she didn’t need a clothes hamper.

But you know who does?

My daughter.

Max the Noble

Welcome back to the fold, Max.