Author Archives: Jennifer Butler Basile

Children, Education, parenting

To K or not to K

That is the question.

Whether tis nobler to stay home one more year,
gnoshing on animal crackers and coloring,

Or to load those neuron capacitors with ammo
so they may fire sooner and surer,
to better achieve their full potential.

Will planting you in the garden of kinder now make you blossom
or make your fragile shoot wither in the face of social corruption?

Will another year of playschool keep you pure, wondrous, awe-some
or hinder your thirst for knowledge as it’s satiated too easily?

Am I second-guessing the educational policy-makers-that-be
or my prospects for the next year –
my last with you
or my first of freedom
?

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Humor, motherhood, parenting

How to Lose Your Keys

Step One: Start at t-minus 10 minutes till you have to leave the house (preferably to pick up your child from school).

Step Two: Put away all the groceries you just purchased in your small window of kid-free-dom – even the dry goods that can wait until your child safely arrives home.  Run up and down the basement stairs to the pantry in a frantic exercise routine (it’s all you get anyway).

Step Three: Stash the candy canes you bought at deep discount in a spot where they won’t be found till next Christmas (you hope) – there’s so much sugar in them they’ll taste the same a year from now anyway.

Step Four: Forgo carrying a purse in favor of a fistful of keys – car and house on two separate rings.  Better yet, at least one with no ring.

Step Five: Cram as many cardboard recyclables (empty now from all the granola bars you oh-so-efficiently placed in their tins) as you can into your other fist so as to deposit them in the bin in the garage on your way to the car.  This is so much easier and convenient than making a separate trip.

Step Six: Use both hands to crush said cardboard into the overflowing recycling bin.

Step Seven: Dance around all the junk in the garage to locate the stockpile of reusable grocery bags that would’ve been useful about an hour ago.  Pick things up, move them around, especially with the hand holding the mess of keys.

Step Eight: Throw reusable bags into trunk with great aplomb and slam the lid.

Step Nine: Run to the driver’s side door in a panic to hit the trunk release because you think you just shut your keys in there.

Step Ten: Pull apart every reusable bag, snapping one of those infernal plastic liners meant to stabilize the bottom of the bag because it’s so friggin’ cold out.

Step Eleven: Don’t find your keys.

Step Twelve: Avoid looking at your watch because you know your 10 minutes is close to elapsing.

Step Thirteen: Begin to fling toilet paper rolls and the mangled remains of Monster High boxes out of the recycling bin imagining your state-of-the-art, extremely expensive electronic key fob in a heap at the dump.

Step Fourteen: Remember the slight echo of that rubberized plastic fob hitting cement, somewhere.

Step Fifteen: Dance around all the junk in the garage again, lay nearly on your belly, and find key under red wagon.

Step Sixteen: Arrive at child’s school directly behind the mom who called ahead saying she’d be late and yet still stands on the steps in a sweaty panic.  Act as if nothing happened and you meant to arrive at this time, key in hand.

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Writing

2013 in review

Stoked with what the annual report for Chopping Potatoes reveals, especially when I see how much it’s grown since 2012.  Thank you so much for your support!

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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anxiety, Identity, Living

Desperately Seeking a Daytimer

Second rewarm of my tea this morning.  Second start to holiday vacation for my kids thanks to a snowstorm.  Second application of warm socks and boots for the youngest who managed to lose her left one in a fall.

Final and total, complete agitation.

I rose to the insistent plying of my youngest to make her ‘brefkast’.  A detour into her sister’s room to find her playing on her iPad kept her there and left me alone with my laptop.  Instead of writing the three posts I should be or researching and revising the short story I should be, I putted around with email, online statuses, and reading blogs and comments other people had written.

I’m about as mushy as this 4-8 inches of snow will be once the temperature soars to a balmy 48 degrees on Monday.

How many pains in the asses do we have to feel before we become a cranky ass?

I’ve gone too long without a routine, this I know.  The four to five days following Christmas where we ambled out for a hike once we actually got dressed, ate whenever we wanted, and cuddled in actual or electronic firelight were divine.  I sorely needed them.  But one day of waking early, rushing to the bus stop, running errands, etc. etc, etc, and then back to that loosey-goosey schedule was not enough.  As much as I hate working to a clock, leaving me to structure my own days is a little like playing with that actual fire.

Plus, as excited as I am about some new ventures coming down the pike, they’re new and therefore anxiety-inducing.  Will I succeed?  Will I have enough time to complete my new tasks in addition to my existing ones?  Will I be able to create enough quality content for three blogs? (Rob and Ruby, if you’re reading . . . of course, I can! 😉 ) Perfectionism is the enemy, but if I’m putting my name to it, it best be good.  Nothing like self-induced panic and pressure.

We’re in that in-between state where the merriment of the holidays is no more, but it’s unclear what this new year will be.  Unknown strikes fear into the heart of the fear-a-phobe.

Which I suppose is why I sorely need a schedule.  One trivial, nitpicky way to get some tiny semblance of control over the whirling dervish that is now – my thoughts, my responsibilities, my needs, my children, my irrational, unfounded worries.  That should be one hell of a calendar.

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Identity, Living, Poetry

How Low Can You Go?

My head keeps butting up against expectation

No amount of plying with my pronged horns can make it go away

Some holes poked, but never enough to tear the fabric,
to crumble the wall,
topple the tower

I can peep through the hole, see the happy people on the other side

Those who can see their blessings
who are pleasantly surprised by the unexpected
those overwhelmed by the ordinary, everyday miracle

Setting the bar is fine
but those who only try to go over
are always left in limbo

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Children, Living, motherhood, parenting

Moms in Toyland

I assembled a trebuchet
Luke Skywalker slingshot ready to take out the dark lord
Ponies and Barbies and zebras, oy vey
Puzzles and playing cards
Flashlights, fleece, painted fingernails
A few minutes by the fireside
before I fill out the Christmas cards that just came in the mail today

Have fun assembling your Christmas treasures!
(Image from Mathworks.com)

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Living

Fa La La LaLa

We’re on our fourth consecutive day of merriment.  Surprisingly, I haven’t crashed yet.  I just stare in a sort of middle-distance coma.  My oldest puked last night due to an overdose of chocolate.  My middle child hid in her room for most of the party last night because, first, too many people were looking at her, and, then, because she wasn’t getting enough attention.  My youngest wandered around petting babies and regaling adults with party conversation.  I got strong hugs from family I don’t see nearly enough.  I got to speak on the phone to another I didn’t get to see, but warmed to hear his voice.  For all the stress and worry in anticipation of the holiday, it left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling in addition to the exhaustion.  So my family found me in the woods and sat by the hearth for a while.  May you all be warmed by the fire of family with none of the third-degree burns.

Jennifer Basile

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anxiety, Identity

Getting to Point A by Starting with ZZZZZZs

It occurred to me last night, as I drove in a dream-like state from sheer exhaustion, that the dreams we experience in REM sleep and those that our soul manufactures for our future do, indeed, intersect.

In the land of greeting cards and self-actualization, dreams are lofty ideals.  A higher state of being to which we aspire.  Some goal, which in the practical nature of the ‘real world’ seems too good to be true, unattainable.  If we could do anything with our lives, it is our dreams we would live.  Some bliss-inducing, talent-utilizing best form of our lives.  The realization of our truest potential.

In the land of our subconscious, dreams are bizarre alternate realities.  Different worlds where I tour Jamaica with Ziggy Marley, but don’t leave the restaurant until I collect the empty glass spice jars from the table that came from my kitchen.  Where another woman literally tries to insert herself between me and my husband.  Where I’m forever late to work, in danger of missing the bus, grossly under-dressed for some huge milestone in my life.

Ironically, the only way we remember dreams is when our sleep is interrupted.  The whole story, the important details would be lost if the alarm or an insistent child didn’t come calling.  And usually that’s perfectly all right.  More beneficial.  All those anxieties that would eat me alive – or that at least would gang up with those that torment me in my waking hours – are processed by my subconscious so I don’t have to worry about them later.  I’ve always been one for multi-tasking; if my brain can tick a few worries off the list while I sleep, fantabulous.

If my subconscious can harness its power into removing some of my anxiety while I sleep, I will be more able to achieve my waking dreams.  More at peace, calmer, even-keeled, ready to step up rather than be dragged down.  The physical processes of sleep prepare our mind and psyche to focus on achieving that other sort of dream – the ones that don’t even occur in our wildest dreams.

So while one sort of dream seems unattainable, the other bizarre, one begets the other.  Our subconscious and our soul working in concert to give us true vision.

I would LOVE to have dinner with you – if you bring the spice!

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Identity, Living, Recovery, Spirituality

Really Hearing the Sound of Music

Everybody’s talking about The Sound of Music lately.

Julie vs. Carrie. Film vs. live performance. Old vs. new.

Initially I was appalled at the news of a SOM revamp with Carrie Underwood.  Who could mess with Julie Andrews’ dulcet tones?  I pushed it out of my head and got too busy to set the DVR.  After putting the kids to bed the night it first broadcast, I wandered downstairs to my husband’s channel surfing.  The remote lighted upon Carrie’s rendition of “The Lonely Goatherd”, yodels and all.  Woo Hee.  Bouncing and dancing and yodelling.  Can’t fault a chick for that.  I was thoroughly impressed.  She has a lovely voice.  But that’s all I watched.  I wandered off in another direction.

A few days later, my oldest daughter had some friends over for a mini-birthday celebration.  The movie this newly-minted nine year-old chose to watch?  The Sound of Music.  (original on VHS, baby!)  And the four other girls who attended sat in rapt attention and sang along!  My husband turned to me and said, “There is hope [for the next generation]!”

We found the televised version on-demand this past snowy weekend and that same daughter begged to watch it.  The five of us squished on the couch and did.  I don’t know whether it was that this new cast did such a bang-up job or if it was the sheer magic of the story itself that bore me along in its spell.  I couldn’t keep from singing.  I teared up when the Mother Abbess implored Maria to “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”.  I finished with a hope in humanity, the enduring strength and support of family, that standing for one’s ideals will pay off in the end.  My middle daughter requested to watch it again two days later when she returned from school.  All three girls sang and danced around the living room as if on alpine mountains.

What is it about this story that captures our imagination?

The music has become part of the cultural canon.  The refrains are easily learned and easily lodged in one’s head.  Their topics and the theme of the story itself is familiar in some way or another to us all.  We’ve all struggled with our life’s calling, finding a true mate, the personal vs political, facing up to or hiding from our problems.  Perhaps the most enduring theme of all is that love does indeed conquer all – even amidst dire struggle and imperfect circumstances.

For me, personally, the part that really struck a chord – that point in the movie when you could’ve knocked me over with a wisp of Edelweiss – was the conversation between the Mother Abbess and Maria when she balks at returning to the von Trapp home.  Maria asks, “How will I know which life is mine to live?” or some approximation of that (a line I don’t think was even in the 1965 film).  The abbess (portrayed by Audra McDonald) tells her emphatically that she must go out and look for it, at which point she breaks into a soul-stirring rendition of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”.  Are you supposed to have life epiphanies watching network-television rip-offs of classic cinema?  I had a moment.

This conversation, these words, the Mother Abbess’ exhortation, the orchestral arrangment – they spoke to me of things I’d forgotten.  Things I’d known, but forgotten to pursue.  Things, necessities that have been dulled by constant use or made commonplace by their very existence.  Things I learned as a child – most notably when I was presented with a cross inscribed with its own exhortation: “Christ is counting on you to search.”

Christ is counting on you

I may have been like Maria, sulking behind the abbey’s walls because life hasn’t turned out the way I’d expected.  Maybe I’d forgotten how to climb those mountains – or even how to try.  I’d gotten lazy in my search for a dream that will make me want to live and love it everyday of my life.  And I’d forgotten to listen for the sound of music in the hills all around me.

The Sound of Music (1965) was playing on the hospital TV as I labored with my third daughter.  I vetoed my husband’s choice of some flavor of Law and Order, saying I’d be witnessing enough blood and gore that night.  Somewhere in my subconscious, I hoped it would soothe and inspire me.  I can’t say that it necessarily did, but I can’t help but think that, now, it’s brought me full circle.  That labor signalled the beginning of one of the roughest times of my life.  Perhaps the Mother Abbess’ exhortation has been sent to me again to snap out of it and get out and climb.

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