creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

Archives for February 2007

Color, orange or mourning the paradigm shift in fashion

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Orange is my most favorite color in the world. It’s vibrant and fiery and friendly and sunny and warm. And it suits my complexion.

It’s also associated with the second chakra, with – according to Sonia Choquette – our vitality, our emotional and sensual well-being. With quite basic needs though not as basic as those attributed to the first chakra, the foundation where our personal power and well-being originate. The first chakra is associated with the color red.

Sadly, orange will soon be out of fashion again. You can see it. Right now clothes for young women are brown, soft pink, black or white. Orange clothes can only be found in stores for women age 50 and older. So, out of fashion it is.

This happened to me once before. At the end of the seventies, orange vanished and I had to transfer my love to hot pink. Well, I might like pink too, but pink doesn’t like me. I can live with red, that’s okay, but not as good as having the choice between red and orange.

There was a shirt I once saw and didn’t buy at the time because I was pregnant then, and I still lust for it: Indian, tie-dyed, orange, red and pink with an image of Ganesha on the front. Ah.

I’ll be quite content as long as they leave me at least some color, but I fear the days of black only are coming back. Not that I have anything against black as such. Marvelous color. Especially for shoes and pants. (Even for blogs.) But tops?

You see, I’m an autumn type. That means I look good in brownish colors, moss green, burgundy, burnt orange or terracotta. Some autumn people may wear caramel or pastels but not me. Pale colors, white and especially black or pink make me look s if all color had been drained out of my face. Oh, and don’t forget gray.

There used to be a time when I wore black, grey, red and green exclusively. With very pale makeup and very red lipstick. Those were the early 90s. Vampire look. Then a friend told me that maybe grey and black were not the ideal colors for me and you know what? Nobody has asked me if I felt sick when I was actually healthy since I changed my look.

So, I’m mourning the fashion shift. There were orange tops, orange sweaters, even orange purses, backpacks and shoes. One time they even made my favorite computer wear tangerine. No more.

Do you think it will come back sometime? In 30 years or so? For now I’m stockpiling on moss-green and brown.

(This is what happens when I cheat and use my writing group assignment for a blog post. And when I write my writing group assignment on the way to the meeting on the train. The train ride only takes 20 minutes. I’ll be back with regular posting next week.)

How not to make your child a picky eater

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You know, I only write these headlines so that many, many people will find me through goggling. Because I so totally know that there is no foolproof method for anything in child-rearing. But then, I am a little tired of hearing all these mothers saying, “But she doesn’t like anything. If I don’t give her [enter food of choice here] exclusively she’ll starve herself to death.”

First of all I very much doubt it. Most children tend to have that much survival instinct that they don’t starve in front of a full plate. As the wise Moxie always says food is one of the few things that children can control. The more it is important for you the more you will have a power struggle. So now I tell you what we did. And our son eats absolutely everything. So when he was about nine months old we started giving him part of the meals that we were eating. When he was older than a year he ate everything we did. We continued cooking the same as ever, only, we found out that eating hot food caused his diaper rush so we cut back on that.

What we do is this: At mealtime we sit down and everybody gets a plate with the meal of the day. With all of it. My son then eats. When he is clearly done, the rest will be thrown away. If he decides to eat nothing, well that’s fine too. But then this is it. No substitute, nothing to eat until the next designated snack time. Period. If he decides that asparagus is not to his liking, well, then he’ll just have to eat potatoes only. The next time we have asparagus there will be asparagus on his plate again. Interestingly he often then decides to eat the exact same food that he left over last time and to shun the potatoes.

It also helps that we eat everything. You know that children learn more through example than through your words, don’t you? And I have to tell you that I was a very picky eater as a child. And to be honest I still don’t like strawberries and raw tomatoes. Though I’m not allergic to them. So, when I’m at home I don’t eat them – mostly. When I am somewhere else and somebody makes strawberry cake I say thank you, smile and eat strawberry cake. I come from a family of picky eaters. My father doesn’t eat: rice, pasta, poultry, fish and innards. My mother doesn’t like mushy foods, peas, lentils and beans, anything with a strong taste (like brie), hot or spicy. My sister’s a vegetarian and doesn’t eat: eggplant, bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, and I don’t know what else. In addition to the strawberries and raw tomatoes I used to be a vegetarian too from the age of 18 to 29 and didn’t like celery.

Imagine cooking for that family. You make something like pasta bolognese and end up cooking potatoes too for my father and have your two children eating pasta with ketchup. Or you make something like bean soup and have three people eating bean soup (vegetarian bean soup) and one eating leftovers from the day before. My father doesn’t like vegetarian meals, when my mother wanted fish she had to make something else for the rest of the family, it took all the fun out of cooking. Interestingly even the people who clearly dislike certain foods will eat them when they are prepared differently. The on not eating peppers will like the vegetable quiche with bell peppers, the one not eating poultry will eat Tandoori chicken every day when in India, it’s all a bit mysterious. And every single one of them will at least try everything that my husband has cooked, because he is a formidable cook.

When I moved to Bavaria and started living alone, life became a culinary adventure. New kinds of pasta! Eggplant! Greek cheese! French cheese! Wow! Then we went on vacation in Italy, the whole family together and everything was just so delicious that I gave up being a vegetarian and started eating meat and fish again. Imagine having the whole menu to choose from! When you’re in a traditional German restaurant and you are a vegetarian you have actually about two or three choices: vegetables with a fried egg on top, Kasspatzen (which is a special kind of pasta with cheese), and Semmelknödel with mushrooms (not strictly vegetarian since there is broth in the sauce). In Bavaria especially they even have bits of ham in your vegetables, because obviously there has to be something in it to make it edible. So after ten years of that I started eating everything. I tried things I never ate before, seafood, exotic vegetables (garlic!), cheeses from all over the world, Italian salami, chick peas, Indian food, Greek food, Thai food… Marvelous.

My husband is not only a fabulous cook, he comes from a family where there are no picky eaters. None. Period. So we decided to make our son a non-picky eater. So far we have succeeded quite well, but I found out how this picky eating thing might have gone. When he started eating the same food as we there were often things that he obviously didn’t like. He left onions on his plate, he didn’t eat the outsides of his bell pepper, he didn’t like asparagus. And I found myself panicking, “Oh, he doesn’t like onions!” But I didn’t stop giving him onions to eat. Also we tried to introduce our son to every food we could imagine because I had read that all children get picky at age 3 to 8 or so. And right, for the last year or so he has started announcing that he doesn’t like this or that and wouldn’t eat it. This has become a little more since he started eating lunch at preschool because all they get there is traditional German cuisine. And pasta bolognese. But since we always respond with, “You can stay hungry if you want to.” he just eats. Sometimes he doesn’t eat his potatoes, sometimes he doesn’t eat his meat, sometimes he eats all the meat first and wants seconds, sometimes he eats only potatoes… All in all he gets a very rounded diet. Sometimes he eats only one or two bites, sometimes he eats more than me. His needs obviously are changing.

When we go to a restaurant he gets part of our dishes too. He may choose which one to have, but he can’t choose his food. We don’t have to order something special for him since restaurant portions are too big anyway and he doesn’t eat that much. One thing I found is that people seem to suggest to him that some foods might be unsuitable for a child. Like, “What? You’re eating FISH!” or “And when you’re going to an Indian restaurant, what do YOU eat?” Well, the same as Indian children I’d say. If it’s too hot he gets a little yoghurt stirred into the dish and more rice. My husband and I are a little jealous of him because our childhoods didn’t include olives, foreign cheese or even Chinese food. When we grew up pasta and pizza were considered exotic.

You might think that I’m only lucky and maybe I am, but I didn’t make this into a power struggle and I think this is key. You might also think that I wouldn’t have done this if my child were underweight, but you’re wrong. I recently found out that according to US growth charts my son would be considered seriously underweight. By German standards he is on the light side of the chart with no need to worry. My mother thinks he should gain weight because one can see his ribs sticking out. I think he is like me and like my husband’s brother, a skinny kid. Since he is healthy, growing, smart and active I don’t worry.

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small talk and the dangers of growing older

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I have been meaning to write on small talk for quite a while now. I have been thinking about small talk for even longer. The thing that got me thinking in the first place was this: Why are there conversations that I enjoy and others that I find outright boring and what’s the difference between one and the other?

I always meant to start this post with something like: I don’t like small talk at all. I thought it was all about shallow topics. I prided myself on being very deep, thoughtful and philosophical, and therefore I deemed myself to be above the usual party talk. Well, as anyone who has read this blog ever can testify that assumption turned out to be – incorrect. Then I thought, this is a muggle versus artist thing. I’m way above all those shallow, non-creative types. Yeah me, I’m actually so advanced that I don’t have anything in common with ordinary people. More on that later.

I started thinking about this whole issue when I started realizing that I didn’t like parties anymore. I go there, not very often, I dive in, find something to eat and to drink and then chatter away for hours. Sometime later I go home and say to my husband, “You know, if I had stayed at home and spent he whole evening looking at a blank wall I would have had a better time.” He said, “Well, nobody could have noticed that the way you kept talking everybody’s ears off.” I’m a highly trained small talker. I can talk with everyone about everything for hours. Especially when I’m tired, exhausted, or have imbibed alcohol, my mouth goes on automatic pilot and keeps blubbering away without any connection to my brain. I’m one of those people, Jane Espenson recently talked about who always tell funny stories completely with gestures and sounds. And I didn’t fully realize that until I read about it. And then happened to glimpse myself in the mirror while telling a student something about my day. Completely with sounds, facial expressions and gestures. The only thing I didn’t do was get up from my chair and act it out. But only because this was a piano lesson and during piano lessons I don’t get up. Only during singing lessons. While I can’t see myself in the mirror while teaching voice, I’m sure that I am acting out too. Completely unrestrained. But my students usually laugh, so maybe that’s okay.

But back to the parties. As I do often since becoming more mindful, I started watching myself in social situation. Doing the funny stories and everything while part of me was sitting in my head watching over my shoulder and asking, “So, if you don’t enjoy this, why are you doing it precisely?” and “What if you just sat there for a minute and let somebody else have a go at talking?” “What if you just listened for a while?”. I know, shocking concept, but well, I thought, maybe there are other people out there who enjoy telling something who don’t have trained the art of grabbing everyone’s attention as hard as me. Like, maybe my husband. He’s usually the one in the corner who has something really insightful to say, but nobody will hear it, because a) everybody is speaking at once, b) nobody is listening anyway, and c) he actually waits for somebody to leave a space for him, and d) he stops talking if nobody listens. He is also usually highly frustrated by parties and such social gatherings.

As, strangely, am I. But I really enjoy people from time to time. So, what to do? The next part of the answer came to me when we went to a concert last year. A musician friend of ours had a performance with his band. We went out, my husband and I (Only parents know how marvelous it can feel to be free and childless for the evening.) first to the station. In the train we spotted clusters of teenagers and twens. Oh oh. Young adults with beer. Nonetheless we entered the train and were greeted with, “Hi. Do you want a beer too?” The cluster of suspicious males turned out to be two of my husband’s students with the rest of the band. Quite a good band which we already had seen. We declined the beer which they had brought with them to save their hard-earned money. Turns out that nowadays they get drunk on the way where the beer is cheaper. We talked. About where we were going, performances, bands, I don’t know what. We left the train. We went to our jazz concert. We met a lot of friends. We talked about music and musicians and whatnot. We went home early. On the way home I thought about how I had enjoyed the conversation on the train and how boring the conversation had been with our friends. So, why? I still can’t say for sure, but it surely wasn’t the topics. There was nothing deep or insightful in either encounter. But after the evening I almost wished to have gone with the young ones.

At the end of NaNoWriMo there was a celebratory dinner of a group of writers based in the big city. When I told my husband that I wanted to go he said, “But that’s our friend’s birthday. She’ll probably having a party that day.” That’s quite typical of her BTW, we knew that she would have a party then, but she didn’t yet and so there was no invitation. I thought about it and then decided that I’d rather go to a meeting with people I barely knew instead of celebrating the birthday of an old friend of my husband whom we have known for years. And we know all the people who were likely to be there. And I like those people. That’s not the point. But it was one of there parties were I first found out that maybe staring at a blank wall is not that bad an option for an evening. I wondered. Was it because the writers and I had more in common? But there were even musicians at the party. I was puzzled. But I never regretted not going and even my husband was relieved to be able to say, “Oh no, we can’t come. Susanne is out and I have to be with our son.” We thought maybe we were turning into misanthropes. But then I had a lot of fun at the dinner. Not that misanthropic.

Last week I was at a meeting of the parents of my son’s preschool group, an informal meeting at a restaurant. They have those about twice a year. Interestingly only four mothers were there. Yes, mothers, no fathers. We sat there, talked about nothing much, the children and a possible date for ice skating. Again I was doing lot of the talking though not most. Again I was secretly waiting for the best time to go home. Again I hoped I could have stayed home, played the piano, watched Buffy, or stared at the wall, and I thought, “Why?” These were very nice women. We talked about children, learning, and such. All topics that I care deeply about. I was puzzled. And then I got it, or so I thought: nobody was really caring about anything we talked about. We were only making what I’m calling “mouth-noises”. What these conversations lacked was passion.

But then I thought again. For example, my father is really passionate about taxes but that doesn’t help me to find talks about taxes interesting, not even with him. And then I really had it: it was not the topics at all. I have had interesting and stimulating conversations about things like bell bottoms or plumbing. No, it was the people. That was why I often found talking to my students more interesting than to people my own age. When you grow older, often something inside of you dies a little. You’re buried in everyday life, you don’t play, you don’t have real fun and then you get a little deader inside every day. And that’s what I can’t stand. My mother told me something similar when I told her about my problem with small talk. She said that she missed working not because of the work but because of the chance to talk to younger people. She said, “Everybody my age talks about the same things over and over again. This is boring.” Well, about everybody my age seems to do it too.

But then I’m talking about the same things over and over again and I think that’s a different brand of boring. At least I care and I’m passionate and don’t have the feeling my life is running on tracks and there’s nothing I can do to change it. And this giving up a little every day and dying a little every day is what my husband calls the danger of growing older. Not the danger of growing old, no, the danger of growing older. One of the women at the preschool meeting said, “I’m always happy to have a chance to go out in the evening.” and I sat there staring in bewilderment. I like it at home. There are plenty of interesting things to do at home. (Like blogging.) I don’t really need to go out and do something I don’t really care about only to distract me from my utter and sheer boredom at home.

Okay, so it’s about the people. But then maybe not. So, where do I go and where don’t I? If everything that’s not an absolute yes is a no, does that mean I won’t be attending any preschool-related activities any more? Or family gatherings? Because those often feel the most boring of all. I don’t want to sit there like a teenager with a face that says, “Are we done yet? Can I go home now?” But I don’t want to stop seeing old friends and family. Any strategies for getting people to talk about things they really care about? Things I don’t know about them yet? Or about the world?

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A year and more than a hundred posts

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I missed my hundredth post. Well, didn’t miss it as such but I didn’t know that it was No. 100 while I wrote it. But then there are posts in this blog that really don’t count like the one that’s the oldest in the archive (and still in German). That was neither my first post nor the day that marked the birth of this blog for me. I opened my blogger account in May 2005. My husband wanted a website and I said, “Well, but you have to have something that makes people coming back, like news or a blog. Like Neil Gaiman has.” He asked me how to do it, I didn’t know, mumbled something about blogger, and maybe free service, went to my computer, set up an account, wrote something about the weather and my son disclosing the name of the town where I live, went back, opened another account for him, said, “Look here’s your account, this is your password and if you have time I’ll show you how to enter new posts.” That was it.

If you’re interested, his blog is still there, though his website has its own news-page. (And it’s about as easy as entering Fort Knox to post something there, it needs me, my list of passwords and three different account or user names to enter anything. It’s done best with phone assistance by our friend who programmed the whole thing.) Oh, and the whole thing is in German. I still have to translate everything into English and then have our friend do whatever he does to create new pages…

But back to this blog. There was that stray entry in August 2005, and then silence. Think of it as the gestation period of this blog. Nine months of expecting. Then I decided to make the switch to English and this marks what I count as my first official post: language switch. Since then I found a lot of blogs not dull at all. In fact I found so many that I can’t read them all if I want to do something else in my life than reading blogs. The first glimpse of what a community there was, I had when I joined blogher. Back then this blog was still called “Diapers and Music”. I started blogging away enthusiastically and then stopped to think about who on earth would want to read this. As those of you with blogs of your own know it is a bit of work. And I wanted to be read, otherwise I could have stayed with my paper journal.

When I started telling friends about the blog just to gain a handful of readers another problem emerged: most of them wouldn’t read something in English. But then, most people browsing the blogher blogrolls wouldn’t read something in German. Dilemma. I solved it in true Susanne-fashion, I did both. The twin to this blog, its German mirror was born 8 days later: “Windeln und Musik“. As of December 1, 2006 diapers vanished from my life. I renamed the blog. It’s very hard to come up with something that works in German and in English. My husband suggested “Reflexionen aus einem beschädigten Leben”, “Reflections from a damaged life”, which sounds great but a little too pessimistic for my taste. Even if it has something to do with Theodor W. Adorno. (It’s the subtitle of his “Minima Moralia“.) My life doesn’t feel that damaged though.

So I changed the name to “creative.mother.thinking”. Creativity and parenting are the cornerstones of this blog and obviously I’m always writing about what I’m thinking. I’m not that sure about the dots any more. Maybe they are silly. Preposterous. Do you think I should get rid of them? Name it “creative mother thinking”? Maybe I should.

Anyway. It’s been a year. A year of blogging, a year of walking through my day mentally composing blog entries all the time and actually writing about every third of them. For months I felt lonely with my blog. I had about 3 readers, well, 3 hits a day and 95% of people stayed only one second or less. I have spent more time on this blog than I ever thought possible, I have translated every post bar one, and have contemplated giving it up for the sake of my music about every other month.

During the last months readers have gotten up, this blog’s technocrati ranking has gotten up to 147,303 and I feel like I’m part of a community. I have found friends like De and Liv, and I even was part of a big blogger wedding for social justice. I found out that writing is more precious to me than I though and embarked on NaNoWriMo. Through which I found friends who live a little closer to me. So, yes, as much as I doubted it as first, blogging really is a social activity. It took me from sitting in my house in suburbia feeling lonely and disconnected to sitting in my house in suburbia feeling part of a community filled with friends. Sometimes I even get out and meet them in person. Mostly I don’t. One of the reasons being that I can’t just take a plane and travel halfway around the world. But then nowadays the world comes to me through my little computer screen.

And to complete all this I have to say that I started yet another thing I don’t have time or energy for. When I did NaNo I thought to myself, “Why isn’t there such a thing for songwriters?” Well, surprise, there is: FAWM. As in February album writing month. 14 songs in 28 days. I plan to fail spectacular since a) I signed up one week late, b) I have written all of three or four songs in all my life, c) I don’t even had the time to translate my last blog post for the whole week, and d) I just have to make rest and sleep a priority right now because otherwise I’ll keel over. Nonetheless I signed up and wrote almost a whole song during the last week. It only needs some lyrics thrown at its bridge…

And don’t forget to check out the Just Post posts:

Just Post Jan 2007

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Flowery postcard from australia

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I received my postcard from the “Blogger Postcards around the World” event! All the way from Australia! Wow! (And this makes me regret even more that I forgot to put an “air mail”-sticker on the one I sent. Sorry. It’ll probably arrive in six weeks or so. Shame on me.)


Not only did I receive this magnificent card, the lovely Ellie wrote a veritable letter in it. You probably can’t see it, but it’s a big card. She took the time to read my blog (well, probably not all of it) and to write something as sweet as the desserts she is making and blogging about at Kitchen Wench. And she apologized for not having found a Valentine’s Card twice. Once in the card and once in her post about sending the card. You know what? I don’t care at all. In fact I’m not that much into Valentine’s Day and what could be better than something with flowers, glitter and sparkles? Well, it could have been orange, pink and red, but that would have been a little too much. Instead the color matches that of my piano stool.

So, this postcard really made my day. My only problem is that since I read Ellie’s blog I started fantasizing about making truffles or whatever. But knowing me I’ll probably end up making the same easy cherry pie as always, and with last minute panic, when I’m inviting my neighbor over. And I won’t take a picture of it. Really, I don’t know how those food bloggers do it, everything looks so delicious and easy to make.

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a favor to Neil Gaiman

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Well, if one of your favorite authors in the world asks you for a favor, and especially since it doesn’t take much and even if it’s more a joke than anything, you’d surely do it. Won’t you? So in an attempt to, um, “google-bomb” somebody I’ll link to Penn Jillette. Who obviously has a radio show. In which he made fun of Neil Gaiman. Who seems to have liked that. I still have to listen to that so I don’t know.

Oh, in case you wondered, Neil Gaiman doesn’t know that I exist. Neither does Penn Jillette. Which is totally fine.

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