3 am

It's 3 am and I am...awake.

This morning, I am lying in bed, thinking about a post I wrote. It's a post I feel like I cannot publish. I've been working on it for a while. I finally felt finished with it, so I emailed it to my mother - my sounding board - and had her read it. "Is it thought provoking? Is it sensitive enough?" Yes. I cried a little. Yes. "Will it hurt anyone's feelings? Will it make anyone angry?" Maybe. "Specific somebodies?" Probably.

She urges me to change the specifics, create a different lead. But the one I've used is true and honest feels poignant in a way that I can't imagine any other being. We debate the merits of changing the details or of asking someone else to publish the post. And none of these solutions seem satisfying to me. It's my story. The way it unfolds is important. I can't change it. But I also don't want to hurt other people when I tell it.

This is the end of One Year of Blogging for me. I reflect. Sometimes bloggers apologize for reflecting on their blogging, but in many ways, these reflection-on-blogging-posts are always my favorite - even when I was just lurking around and NOT blogging myself. Isn't reflection a huge reason that we, especially in the mommyblog-o-sphere are blogging? Maybe, maybe not. Well, it's ONE of the reasons I'm blogging.

That and I like to create things. I find nothing more satisfying doing something and then being able to say, Yes, I did that. Studying architecture and becoming an architect was a natural fit for someone with good math and art abilities. But if my grades had been less good - or the amount of time I had to spend in school less generous - I could also be happy in trades - a carpenter, perhaps? a mason? a painter? I like to be able to see a product after I work. The influence that this product has - this is important to me. But whether or not I personally am liked because of this product? Whether or not my product is validated and loved by many? Actually, I find this 'liking' business a whole lot less important to me than the creating. But that doesn't mean I'm willing to hurt anybody in the process of creating.

For me, blog posts are about creation. Some bloggers have beautiful, coherent, carefully-crafted essays as their posts. These essays focus my attention on the product. Some bloggers have spontaneous, chaotic snippets. These snippets remind me of the process. But either way, whether posts are process or product, I love seeing the various sides of creation. It's endlessly fascinating and interesting. I have loved watching and reading others for many years. It's fun to now be on the other side, trying it out myself.

One might think, as a mother, I'm up to my eyeballs in creating little 'products.' That my children are my product - or at least my product in process. It's a valid interpretation; but it's also one that I've had a really hard time seeing in everyday life with little kids. Endless diaper changing, spilled milk cleaning, and laundry doing have a way of filling up the little picture and distracting from the bigger picture. Also, with Noah, I feel like he's revealing to me whatever impact I've had on him very slowly. The ability to have 1) the space and 2) this accumulation of posts for reflection is important to me. And even if I sit here at my computer, typing a post for three months before I hit publish, three months still feels like immediate gratification. Hey, I made that! I thought about it coherently. Um, kind of. There IT is! Now quick, fix those typos!

I don't know how long blogging will continue to fill me like this. I'm open to the possibility of longer term, but still weary of the limitations this format gives. It's important to me to fill that big hole in my life that occurred when I stopped working and became a SAHM. But blogging doesn't completely fill the hole. It doesn't give me the recognition that I got from a job with a paycheck under my real name. So, blogging is still a compromise, but a compromise that I'm enjoying. For now.

Fence

I recently said here that I'm not going to post any photos of the fence. The fence that I literally spent all summer staining? The fence with forty-four painful panels? The fence that I can not bear to look at any longer?

I did finally finish staining, right before the (TWO) snowstorms that we've already had this season.

As I was finishing up the last. four. panels. I was thinking to myself, why, oh why, did we do it this way? I really couldn't remember why we had decided to use ridiculously expensive Penofin deck stain on the fence. Just because we had some left over? What kind of leftovers did we think would cover over 300 linear feet of fence? I don't remember now. Or why we thought we I should do it ourselves myself - especially when we hired someone to do the other 200 feet of the fence. Why? If only I had written it down somewhere! I looked at my posts, discovered nothing there, and decided I better record something for future reference. Now.

Although, I do hope this staining job last SEVERAL seasons; thereby eliminating the need to reference this post anytime soon.

Penofin on the bottom/left and some fence stain from Home Depot that was about half the cost on top/right.

So. Here it is. The fence. The top/right side was completed by some guy we hired, and he used some sort of fence stain from Home Depot and applied it with a spray gun. The bottom/left is my hand-brushed Penofin. I think we used the Penofin because it looked better. And I still think it looks better. Unfortunately, I figure EVEN with doing all the labor myself, we spent about $100 MORE on the Penofin. Because it's just that expensive.

I'd like to think of this as a little competition. Let's see what happens over the winter - through the spring and summer and maybe many more years - will one outlast the other? Was all the labor and cost worth it? To be determined!

Thoughts on Halloween

Don't google 'mummy' to show your four year old what a mummy is! And, just, DON’T EVEN GO into the whole Ancient-Egyptians-death-Pharoahs-Museums...MISTAKE! MISTAKE!

When I sat down to type this post I thought to myself: it's the candy. And then I thought, No, the commercialism. Or the question of appropriate costumes, costumes for younger kids, costumes for older kids complete with weapons and masks, costumes for children of different genders. Or the explaining of skeletons and mummies and ghosts and spiders and spider webs as ornamentation of the front lawn. Or the very confusing issue (for younger kids) of SCARY IS FUN!

Or it's the embedded (American) cultural meanings of Halloween.

Where to begin?

Our Halloween was fun!

[photo removed]

A statement which in no way accounts for narrowing down the sheer number of costume ideas Noah came up with this year, or the fact that he didn't even wear the costume he finally chose for trick-or-treating. (That's okay, I was prepared for that one. I think mostly Grandma, who wanted a photo of Noah-as-Front-Loader will be disappointed.) We fussed over candy and all those questions like how much to buy and what kind to buy and all the various permutation of who eats what and what to give the babies who come by and what to give adults who think they get candy from the trick-or-treat bowl just like with their kids and what’s sugar-free and what’s gluten-free and after all of that: I was so pleased to see that PLAYDOUGH was the biggest hit - if I let the kids pick their own treat - which I didn’t always - because then I would have been out of playdough.

Hey, you know what? If playdough is IT - I could make that myself. And if nobody is eating it, it’s okay if it’s homemade, don’t you think? Do you think it will still be popular next year? Or am I too late to the trend? I already hit the store, thinking I could stock up on the After-Halloween-Sales-Playdough for next year - saving myself both time and money. Totally sold out, so I know I’m not the only one thinking about playdough. This probably indicates I’m late to the game.

That’s the first level of Halloween (Fun).

At our house, we also have a whole second level of cultural difference that becomes very obvious at Halloween.

Let’s start with an honest reveal: the boys don’t watch American television or movies anymore. The only movie that Noah has ever seen is Toy Story. And he didn’t like it. Even after he had watched it three times so that he knew there was a happy ending, he cried through 75% of it. And then he asked not to watch it again.

“Okay,” we said.

We also don’t have a lot of commercialized books or toys and, well, I tend to keep the boys pretty close. So when it comes to contemporary American cultural knowledge, we’re in the dark. All four of us.

That makes Halloween kind of tough. We don’t recognize a lot of costumes. We don’t think of super heros or villains or even general popular characters for our costumes. We come up with ideas like: “I can be a Front Loader for Halloween!”

[photo removed]

Part of me feels it is my duty as a parent to expose the boys to American Commercial Culture. (Thus, watching Toy Story three times, crying be damned!) But lately I've come to realize that in leiu of my American parental duty, I've substituted. Instead of American Commercialized Culture, we fill in the boys’ life a hefty amount of German culture: everything from speaking two languages, to participating in German specific traditions, to watching German children’s television (aka German commercialized culture).

This is not really a statement about what is better, it's more about what is possible for us and how can we best balance out our exposure. Between living in one country and detailed learning about another, it’s enough, you know? I’m not sure we could do more. It also underlines a possible reality for us: we don’t want to move again for a long time, but Fritz and I DO want to keep open the door on going back to Germany.

Germans celebrate Halloween lightly. And by that I mean, there isn’t a culture of candy and costumes and trick-or-treating. It exists a little bit, but mostly as an odd American import. Some of the Germans I knew in Munich actually did the whole trick-or-treating bit. But most, like my mother-in-law, found it highly improper. Asking neighbors for candy while dressed in a scary costume? No, thank you! Around Halloween, Germans are buying wreaths to decorate graves for Allerheiligen (All Saints Day), or making lanterns for St. Martins Day, or starting to prepare a feast of goose, dumplings and red cabbage.

If you think about the trick-or-treating bit, it is a little odd. Last night, I sent Fritz out with the boys to do the trick-or-treating. After they left, it occurred to me that it might have been a mistake. Fritz’s experience with trick-or-treating is primarily as a homeowner's roommate handing out candy during grad school. Did he know proper trick-or-treat manners? What would he teach the boys?

All of these thoughts swirl around in my head at Halloween. I might seem to have more fun if I just ignored them, but the truth is, I like to think about them. It makes me feel a little freer to be different AND to be comfortable with being different. I do hope the boys feel the same way.