creative.mother.thinking

explaining my life to strangers

Archives for June 2007

Cloth Diapers

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There was a time when this blog was called “Diapers and Music”. That’s why there still is a pile of diapers on he piano in my masthead. Since that days of diapers are long gone in this family, I don’t think about them very often. (And some time this year there will be a new picture on the blog, I promise.) But then I read Crunchy Chicken, prompted by the Just Posts. And I thought about “low impact” again. I started using dish towels instead of paper towels for my (almost) daily swish through the bathrooms. I tried out HagRag-pantyliners. Very comfy (and so smooth), and she sent me one with guitars on it as a sample, can you believe that. She doesn’t even know I’m a musician. And I ordered a mooncup, which has yet to be tested. (I opted for a mooncup instead of a diva cup because it came from the UK instead of the US, so it arrived faster and I didn’t have to pay tax on it, and it came 10 € cheaper.)

But I wanted to write about cloth diapers. I only realized how much I care about them when my husband’s cousin had a baby a couple of weeks ago; she took all the baby stuff I had left and when I forgot that the cloth diapers were still sitting in a closet in my bedroom, and told her I’d bring them over, she just made a vague noise and shrugged it off. And since then I have been wanting to force the cloth diapers on her. And to persuade her to use them. But I can’t. And I know perfectly well that most of the people reading this blog don’t have children of diaper age, or are well set in their ways. Nonetheless I’d like to tell you why I like cloth diapers so much:

1. They don’t smell as much.
Really. When my son went to play group the teachers there often didn’t realize that his diaper badly needed changing because there was not that much stink. On the other hand, when – for travel reasons or such – I had to use disposable diapers I kept thinking that he had a poopy diaper when in fact he hadn’t.

2. You don’t need to haul immense amounts of diapers home from the super market.
And

3. You don’t need to pay insane amounts of money for diapers.
When I first contemplated the cloth-or-not-cloth-issue I stood in the diaper aisle of the grocery store thinking, “Oh, they aren’t that expensive.” And then I started to do the math. Let’s take an average of 4 diapers a day for 2 1/2 years, and let’s say one diapers costs about 25 cent (which it doesn’t in the grocery store, I just found a discount price on the net right now), and then you’ll pay 912.50 € for diapers. At least. (That would be 1.234.25 $. But then I don’t know the cost of diapers in the US.) And I know that washing things also costs money, and cloth diapers cost money, but not that much. Which brings me to the next point:

4. You often can get used cloth diapers very cheap or for free.
Most of the diapers I have been using for years were given to me by a friend. She used them for about two weeks and was very glad to give them away. I have bought some new diapers over time because some were worn out, and I have been using disposable diapers from time to time, but the money I spent was nowhere near 900 €.

When I was pregnant I read tons of books about pregnancy and babies. In one of them the author said, “Imagine yourself on the balcony, folding nice clean diapers with your baby in a sling, while everybody else is stuck in a traffic jam because they have run out of diapers and have to get new ones in a panic.” I thought she was a little cuckoo. But really, some of my fondest memories of my son’s first year indeed involve me hanging up or folding diapers while carrying him in a sling. Of course I don’t think that much about the days when I had to do everything wearing him in a sling while he screamed on top of his lungs, and I had to rush around, sterilizing my milk pump and washing diapers. (And I am a sling fanatic too. Not that I practiced Attachment Parenting, but I really have to stop myself from pressing a sling on every new parent. It literally saved my life. I even volunteered to teach people how to use them. If you’re anywhere near Munich, drop me an e-mail, come to my house and I’ll show you.) I seem to be a bit of a missionary at heart. Sorry.

5. Cloth diapers are better for babies with sensitive skin.
My son developed a rash every time we went on vacation and he wore disposable diapers more than two days in a row.

So now about the things that people don’t like about cloth diapers:

1. You have a bucket of smelling, dirty diapers sitting around all the time.
Yep. True. Make sure to get a small bucket with a fitting lid. Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to swish them in the toilet though. Or iron them. You don’t even have to touch them after changing, or soak them. Just get a laundry net, hang it in the bucket like a trash bag, roll the used diapers up, and put them in there. Close lid. When the bucket is full, take it to the washing machine, grab the net, close it, toss it in the machine – well done. You have to clean the bucket once in a while, though. Think of it as training for when your child uses the potty.

And really, a diaper bucket doesn’t smell more than a cat litter box. And trash cans with disposable diapers in them smell too. Unless maybe you use those thingies that wrap each and every diaper in plastic, and really how environmental unfriendly do you want to get because of a little poop smell?

2. Your babysitter, day care person, or some such, won’t know how to use them.
Well, most people can be trained. And there are cloth diapers that work like disposable ones. The only two things people have to keep in mind are: a) don’t throw the cloth diaper away, and b) most types of cloth diaper require a kind of cover since they are not water-proof per se. In our family the challenge was to prevent my babysitter from putting a diaper cover on my son when for some reason or other she had to use disposables once in a while.

At first when my son was in play group (without mothers), I put him in disposables to make it easier for the teachers. But since they never changed him anyway, I just put a little plastic bag in his backpack with a fresh cloth diaper and a big handwritten sign saying: “Please us this diaper. Please put the diaper cover over it, and please put the soiled diaper in the plastic bag.” Voilà. No problem.

3. It is too complicated and time consuming.
Again, look at this:

or this:

4. They leak when the baby gets older.
Well, yes. I almost gave up when my son was about nine months old. Then I bought a couple of extra layers like these:


And there was – no more leakage.

5. But who wants to do all that laundry?
Come on. You’ve got a child. You’re doing laundry all the time anyway.
I was surprised at the amount of laundry we had after having a child. And I only changed his clothes about twice a week or so. Since then I made peace with the five loads a week concept. (Of course now I have less laundry than when I still had to wash the diapers. That’s true.)

Have I forgotten something? I stole all the pictures from the excellent shop “Wickelkinder” by the way. I can only recommend it. For Germans anyway. What do you think about cloth diapers? Have you tried them?

I did it! Script Frenzy is over!

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Well, at least for me. All the participants who still haven’t started their scripts can try to reach the goal of 20,000 words until tomorrow evening. But for me the frenzy stops.


My heroes are celebrating, they have won, the bad witches are defeated. Or so they think. Though I have reached 20,000 words, the story isn’t finished yet. Just when everybody thinks it’s over the bad guys will realize that something has happened, the good guys will be captured, and then…
Well, I’m not entirely sure yet but I’d like to blow up the mad professor’s house thereby destroying all of the bad warlocks with my heroes just barely escaping.

But for now I’ll take the weekend off from script writing, have some champagne, and watch a movie with my husband. Something sensible. Like maybe “Hogfather“.

The Wind

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I already told you that my husband has become a blogger too. Over at psychedelic zen guitar he pairs gorgeous photos with breath-taking guitar improvisations. Recently he started collaborating with Elspeth Duncan who blogs at now is wow. They have teamed up three times so far. Their first collaboration doesn’t really have a name yet. If you want you can choose one since it’s still showing at a blog near you. Interestingly the video and music were created independently of one another. But they match perfectly nonetheless.

The second one, “magic” started life as a piece of music my husband had recorded. Then Elspeth did the video. (And it is filmed with the iSight camera of a macbook. Which goes to show that you don’t need much equipment for being creative. See. I told you so.)

With the third project they turned the process around. It’s called wind:

Here is what Elspeth wrote about the process of making it:

Collaborative music/video/spoken word project between Trinidad and Germany. The video was created first in Trinidad and edited with ‘silence’ as the soundtrack. Without seeing the video, Susanne (in Germany) was asked to say something in English about the wind – 20 seconds in length. This narrative was added to the video which was then sent to Gary in Germany who viewed the video and composed the music. The music was then sent back to me to edit into the video.

What is interesting is that Susanne had no idea that the location of shooting (Temple in the Sea, Trinidad) is a sacred site where Hindu people are also cremated outdoors on a large open-air pyre. Her words, about the wind taking bits and pieces of her to the sea, reflect what happens when ‘bits’ (smoke, ashes) of the cremated person are carried on the wind to the sea around the Temple.

Video – Elspeth Duncan
Voice – Susanne Fritzsche
Music – Gary Winter

Location: Temple in the Sea, Waterloo, Carapichaima, Trinidad, W.I.

This is what everybody keeps talking about. You start a blog and suddenly you are doing a creative project with somebody halfway around the world.

(For those of you interested, my script stands at 17,200 words. Four more days and 2,800 words to go. Normal blogging will hopefully be resumed soon.)

I still don’t eat sugar

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Well, at least not much.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to give up eating sugar because I felt like I was addicted to it. In fact I haven’t been giving it up entirely. This is the amount of sugar I eat every day:


It’s all brown sugar, I choose the very dark chocolate that has brown sugar as the last ingredient on the list (I even tried chocolate with 99% cocoa in it, bleargh.) I don’t even remotely like dark chocolate. But I’m starting to get used to it. Better than no chocolate anyway. The müsli has a tiny amount of brown sugar in the corn flakes. I could eat the same sugar-free müsli as my husband but I like this much better. And the sugar cube shows my weakness, I can’t bring myself to drink black tea without sugar. And no, I won’t try artificial sweetener (Are you nuts? There are enough weird chemicals in my food as it is, and besides they taste horrible.), or splenda. (I don’t even know if that is available in Germany.) But from what I read about it I’d rather eat some honey or brown sugar, or even white sugar, before I tried that.

I know that when I’m writing about this “no-sugar”-thing I trigger every woman’s “I’m not eating healthy, and I should lose weight anyway.”-trip at once. Especially now that everybody is going the Atkins-route again, and carbohydrates are flailed right and left. I love carbs. I still eat a lot of sweet things. And I don’t think everybody should stop eating sugar. Only, when I start eating sugary things I instantly crave even more. And then, often, I can’t seem to stop before all is gone.

I still feel calmer when I don’t eat much sugar. But I’m getting used to it. At first, every time I ate something like cake I’d go completely hysteric. Or depressive. Now it doesn’t affect me that much. When I’m invited for cake, I eat cake. I only eat one piece though, not three. On Tuesday I even had iced coffee with ice cream and whipped cream with sugar in it. And stayed reasonably calm. I never eat those kinds of things at home though. My son’s candy is firmly out of bounds.

So it would be quite easy to say, “Oh, now I got it. I can have some white sugar on a regular basis without becoming all addicted again.” But I don’t think so. Every single time that I eat a piece of cake or a cookie I end up craving sugar even more than before. So this craving seems to be insatiable for me.

I’m still getting used to this. I miss baking. Every time I go to the grocery store I recite, “I can’t have this, and I can’t have that. ” “No sugar, no candy, no cake, no cookies, no ice cream,…” But it’s getting better. There are whole aisles I’m not going into anymore. And I’m finding peace in that. I don’t miss the bloated and disgusting feeling I had when I ate a bag of potato chips, chocolate, and a bag of jelly beans in one sitting. I don’t miss that feeling at all. And I don’t miss all that discussions going on in my head like, “But I want only one more piece of chocolate. And then I’ll stop.” and the mother-me saying, “But you already had four pieces. And you know that you will keep on eating, so why don’t you just stop now and eat the rest tomorrow.” – “But I waaaant toooooo.” – “Stop it.” – “Waaaaaaa.” – Sigh. “Okay, but just one.”
(After writing a screen play for three weeks I still haven’t got the hang of formatting dialogue. And in case you’re interested, 13,491 words so far. I know, I’m way behind.)

Oh, and if you think of cutting back on sugar for weight-loss reasons, I can tell you that eating two pounds of nuts for snacks every week will take care of that. I mean, the weight loss. Or, the lack of.

How to be creative when you don’t have the time (part 3)

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It’s been a while but I didn’t forget. In the first two installments of this series I wrote about finding the time, and finding resources. I promised to write about physical space but since then I have come to think that that isn’t exactly thrilling. So I’ll write about that briefly and then go on to talk about finding the space for creativity in your mind. And then, maybe, there might be a last post about inspiration.

3. Finding physical space

Most creative things don’ need that much space. Again, writing is a winner, sit down anywhere with notebook and pen, and voilà, instant creativity. For music space isn’t the issue unless you want to play drum set or grand piano. Sculpting is harder but then, if you stick with your play-doh…

When I was sewing my grocery bag a student came early. My whole teaching room was full, with the fabric and the sewing machine and the ironing board. And she said that she loved sewing too, but that one really needed time for this, and a place where one can leave it all. She had a veery longing gaze in her eyes.

Of course everyone of us would like to have a crafts room but then it is possible to do it flylady-style too. She has a rolling suitcase for every project. She pulls everything out when she works on it and when she is finished for the day she puts everything back. Which is exactly what I should have done that day. I plan to empty one of the wooden boxes I have around the house and use that as my “current-sewing-project-in-progress”-box. I’ll put it under the box with all the flutes and the xylophone in it.

(And this was the point where I had written this whole post from beginning to finish while my son was first sitting in the bathtub and then later while I was waiting for him to fall asleep, and I was very good, saving it every other paragraph, and happily typing away on my palm and then it said “unexpected error” and all the rest of it is gone. Very frustrating. Sigh. But no, I won’t give up. So here’s the recreation of the rest. Who knows maybe it’ll be a little shorter.)

So, let’s talk about the big issue:

4. Finding the space in your mind

For most of us this may be the biggest obstacle of all. Our minds are full to the brim with little things and little people. Especially the little people can make the task of finding mind space really challenging. Our minds are constantly cluttered with things to do, things not to forget, places to go, people we met, things we talked about, thinks we read about, … So here are a few tips to help:

Find a little time for yourself in the morning:
Every morning I get up half an hour early to do 9 1/2 minutes of sitting meditation. You might ask, “Why does it take 30 minutes to do 10 minutes of meditation?” Well, I’m not very fast in the morning. But when I am, I also write a little in my journal. I have written about meditation elsewhere, and it really helps to clear the mind, but if you don’t want to, anything helps. Get up a little early and write into a journal, or sit down with your cup of coffee and look out of the window, or take a short walk. Just take a little time alone to hear yourself think, feel yourself before the day starts. (And if you have a child that senses when you get up, either leave it with your partner (if you can), or try to make this time as peaceful as possible with the child.)

Find a little time for yourself in the evening:
Again, just sitting down, turning off TV, radio, or mindless chatter helps. Taking a look out of the window, maybe a little walk. I like to sit down in the evenings and write into my gratitude journal. Mad Hatter sits down and blogs (Um, or not, I just read her blog and she is on blog-vacation.). Either way, taking a step back helps to clear the mind.

Find a little time for yourself during the day
Take the peace and quiet wherever you find it. Do the dishes and let your mind wander, hang up laundry with your baby in a sling, put your child in the stroller and go for a walk, sit down at the kitchen table while the children play in the next room, use the tiny scraps of time that you have, put your thinking and your creativity in the nooks and crannies of your day, and you will see that all those scraps together might result in a big, colorful quilt of thinking and creativity.

Start with clearing the physical space
You can also start with de-cluttering. Nothing refreshens the mind better than a little cleaning or de-cluttering. Only be careful not to stop there. Housework never ends. Just let your hands do the work and feel your thoughts lighten.

Move
One of the best things for me to get out of a rut, get my mind working again, think something over, or solve a problem is a walk. All exercise is good for this. (Well, up to a certain point.) But especially good are those that have a rhythm to it and don’t require thinking. Like walking, running or riding a bike. Or maybe yoga. (Okay, not rhythmic and un-thinking as such, but it helps. I know it.)

If you want to find more mind space it also helps to turn off TV, radio, and also – gasp – the computer. All those things can be very stimulating too. But there has to be a little extra space for ideas, and dreams. So you can go and be creative.

And when you have done all that, or maybe only some of that, all you need is a notepad and pen so you can write down your ideas. And then, some other time, you make something out of those ideas. But first you have to have that space in your mind. Which exactly is the reason why we all get such good ideas in the shower or while driving. There even are waterproof notepads for that but in my experience if the idea is really that good you’ll probably still know it, once you’re dry and dressed.

So now that we have cleared our minds and started thinking, it becomes easier. Remember when you fell in love and couldn’t think about anything else but that person? That’s how it feels when you start a new creative project. And then life comes in the way, and procrastination. Of which I will write another day. The only thing that we still need for being creative is inspiration. That will be the conclusion of the creativity-series.

Four things meme

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I’m always so happy when I get tagged for something. I suppose this has to do with not being tagged very often. Chani just wrote about the problem that tagging people for memes always leaves someone out. I’m undecided about this. I think you can try all you might but there will always be somebody who feels left out. I know that there are many bloggers out there more popular than me. Of course, bloggers who are read and loved by many do get tagged more often. I don’t think that takes anything away from me. In fact I’m really happy to have a circle of readers who come back. Even though I’m posting infrequently. And if you like a meme, well, do what I usually do – steal it. Though there has been talk that one can go blind when tagging oneself, I doubt it very much. (And I wanted to link to that but it seems to have been at an incarnation of sober briquette’s blog that’s lost to the world. I appreciate it very much that she has named her new archives “I shall not delete” in this new blog-incarnation. I had pondered to backup for her.) At least I’m only extremely short-sighted. (And Chani’s eyesight has been improving lately.)

So, enough for the mangled introduction in which I make fun of my friends. (Sorry, De.). The lovely and extremely flexible (she’s a yoga teacher, what did you think?) Liv of “madness, madness I say!”has tagged me for the four things meme. Off we go:

Four Jobs I’ve Had
1) I worked in a bakery. I was selling bread and buns and cake.
2) I worked in a company that prints labels. I was the one entering all the data into the computer. By hand. I’m really fast at typing numbers.
3) For one year I worked as an assistant at the institute of music education at Munich university. I pretended to work on an encyclopedia of music educators while writing my dissertation.
4) I was a music teacher teaching grades 7 to 12 at a school with mostly disabled students.

Four Movies I Can Watch Over & Over
1) L.A. Story
2) Jumping Jack Flash
3) The Fifth Element
4) all Star Trek Movies with Data

Four Places I’ve Lived
1) Bielefeld
2) Bünde
3) München
4) the place near Munich where I live now. Its name starts with G.

Four Places I’ve Vacationed
(only four?)
1) Ubatuba, Brasil
2) Madeira
3) Tuscany, Italy
4) Germany, all over the place

Four of My Favorite Dishes
1) Green Beans Stew (Grüne-Bohnen-Eintopf) Though I have to say my stew doesn’t look like the one in the picture at all.
2) Garlic Lime Chicken (there is the recipe when you scroll down a little, it’s in English) with broccoli and rice
3) Spaghetti Bolognese cooked by my husband
4) Chicken saté

Four Sites I Visit Daily
You know I have a really long blogroll over there, and there are other blogs that I read too. I won’t pick one over the other though. So, here’s my list:
1) statcounter
2) bloglines
3) psychedelic zen guitar (Well, I’m the tech person for this site… Also, very good music. And pretty pictures.)
4.) Script Frenzy so I can enter my word count (8,524 so far).

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now
Do I really have to be somewhere else? I’m quite content here in my home in my room with the prospect of a little guitar playing and maybe an episode of “Buffy” while knitting in the future. And then bed… So, if I must:
1.) At the Osteria Italiana in Munich. I may well have eaten the best food in my life there.
2.) At a workshop about tarot cards.
3.) A singing workshop with Bobby McFerrin and Voicestra
4.) At Blogher-Conference

You know, there are a million beautiful places in the world, but the best view doesn’t help if I’m bored, or sick or if my spirit has left. Being at the beach and soaking in the sun is nice for about a day or two. While there are a few cities I’d like to visit sometimes, like Paris or San Francisco, I can as well go out of the house, walk for about five minutes and be on the fields and among the trees. It’s very beautiful there. I could take a train for half an hour and have five beautiful lakes to choose from. Or I could take another train for about ninety minutes and climb the Alps. Or take the first train back for about half an hour again and be in one of the biggest and most beautiful cities in Germany.

So, now for the tagging. First, I don’t want to exclude anybody. Consider yourself tagged. Also, since I am a little behind with the blog reading I don’t really know who has done this or not. But I’d really like to hear De‘s answers to this. When she can spare the time. The last I heard she was buying paint too. And crazymumma’s answers. And now I’d like to go and watch my DVD. Oh, and if you don’t have a blog and want to answer these questions? Do it in the comments. I love comments. Or send me an e-mail.