My Kid's in Color

My kid is really strange. He's odd with words and people, and sometimes with his hands and feet. Watching him among others is watching him being in his own world. Most of the time, he doesn't even take note of the world around him. Nor does he seem to care. He doesn't participate in other children's play, and he doesn't get the rules they set up amongst themselves. To his own world, their rules have no meaning.

He walks across the blanket two girls spread out to have a picnic. He does that over and over. I think he likes the color, red and white, and the fact that there's squares on the fabric. And he likes the feeling of walking on it, because it's soft and he has no shoes on. That is all. In the meantime, the girls get furious. "Don't walk across that blanket anymore. How hard is it to understand, stupid?"

I can tell you now: it is very hard. Yes, my kid is stupid. He's not really noticing that he's upsetting the girls. But they, in turn, are also stupid. Because they're not getting how great it is, to just be walking barefoot across a blanket without thinking of anything but your feet. Without thinking of the rules of girls, the rules of having picnics in public, or properly socializing with people. I mean, seriously, how cool is it, to not care about anything besides what it feels like to walk across a blanket?

And how awesome is it, to just run around without a destination until your cheeks are all red, and you get so exhausted, you're barely able to breathe? How awesome is it, to be that weird? I can tell you, it is super crazy awesome! Because normal is boring, and normal is redundant, and throughout history, normal has been done to death. And while normal probably would be easier for me to handle and easier to explain to the outside world, I wouldn't want to have it any other way.

You see, I gave this boy some of my traits. I may be partially more aware of what's going on around me, but that doesn't mean I always agree with the demands of world. In fact, many a times, I do have some problems getting along with world.

I can feel your vibe, little boy. I see what you're all about. And if I were just a little bit braver, I'd be doing what you're doing. I'd be walking without my shoes, just walking and feeling the soft fabrics of my world.

Motherhood's Kicking in!

I was wondering about this for a while now, ever since the moment the other little strip turned a faint shade of pink. Surprise! The idea of pregnancy wasn't something my mind could fully grasp, the consequences being too extensive to even imagine a world beyond ginormous belly.
Sentenced to 9 months to life!

The first 12 weeks of any pregnancy are known to be shaky, a fearful stretch of hit-or-miss, and to be completely honest, I had no reason to believe it would stick this time. It tried to pay as little attention to it as possible plowing through NaNoWriMo. And it stuck. Now that it's past half-time and actual proof is hitting me from within with violent little earthquakes, I'm still having trouble believing it.

Thoughts like is that belly that has long begun to cast a shadow really a baby or did I just let myself go over the winter? Are these strange bursts I'm feeling coming from my intestines after all? Are these kicks telling me that my bowels are in trouble, do I have some kind of abdominal epilepsy?

I don't know whether it'll ever start to feel real in a way that will allow me to fully commit to the idea of having a child before it's factually there.

To go out there and buy stuff for the nursery, because I am certain it's going to happen. No way. I will give birth to a human being. Seriously!? I can tell myself that over and over. I'm two people now, one of them living inside the other. Get that: one of them is not a woman... Still not quite sure if it's me after all?! Him? There's going to be a him? Maybe I'm just fat and schizoid!

I feel motherly towards my cats, and even more so than towards children. I have never been needed by a child. I think we're biologically prone to like whomever we're responsible for. (Or what we've tamed, in the words of The Little Prince)

I'll have a lifetime to make horrible mistakes once it's in the world. I'm sure I'll never feel like I'm doing a good job, or that I'll be making the right choices; living up to some absurd standard of parenting that I don't even know I'll have. That's just how I am in life. Let's hope the mistakes I'll make will be glorious ones, and my shortcomings will make me smile rather than want to make me beat myself up.

Also I'm not sure I'm ready to accept that once I'm a parent, a part of my life will be in freeze mode, the parental stage of preservation. Worrying and caring override any impulse to run for your life and join a cult in search of self-fulfillment. Parents are a different species. Biology forces them to zone in on a tiny piece of life other than themselves  - at least for a little while. Some people go nuts, others blossom in new-found meaningfulness, and others yet again see their children as some kind of investment opportunity.

The only thing I ask is that you, lovely baby, will not make me stupid..at least be kind enough to merely put my brain on ice. Don't eat it. I'm not ready to give it up for good...

June. Not too far away. Still some time to get acquainted. If not with baby, then at least with the concept of change. If that's ever possible before it is thrown upon us. Bloody hell!

WiF(e)i - Wife of Nerd

Me being married to a ginormous computer enthusiast - you'd sure take me for someone who speaks "nerd" fluently. Well, now I do, but I didn't when me and hubby first met.

Good old Toshiba - my first laptop

I was a late bloomer, I didn't have a computer until the year 2000. That was when I bought my first laptop, a Toshiba Satellite. A sad little brick, that ran hot and noisy against my desk. I regarded old clunky as a high-class typewriter for writing term papers, and at first I didn't use it for anything else. Oh, but then of course the internet found its way into my daily life, and that changed everything.



I remember using the Word processing power by day, and the dark side of LAN by night, in chat rooms. I met people who called themselves -°;*~Neo~*;°- or TylerD666 in obscure chat rooms. I didn't think much about the digitized world back then, although basically, it was already there and I was a part of it.

Hubby came into my life a little while after I had purchased my Tosh. There was no doubt he was a technophiliac. His apartment appeared to be hardly a notch above an office with a bed. Large, yellowed bed sheets covered windows, the cabinets were crammed with piece parts, and countless empty board boxes piled their way up to the ceiling.

David's former work desk

There was no sofa, but a designated cable cabinet. Back then, I thought that the on/off blinking was what the inside of a computer was supposed to look like. At night the PC and Mac consoles flashed in yellow, red and blue lights. The life signs of the machines. If it hadn't all been behind firm walls, we could have easily been mistaken for the landing strip of an airport. It was kind of romantic though, the good old days of humming CPU fans and blinking lights.



I remember it being a strange sight the first few times, but it all became normal pretty quickly. It was obvious that the computer was both his passion and his livelihood, so there was no dividing line between job and hobby. A jobby. And consequently I realized that what he does is how he lives. Like a writer, surrounded by piles of books. When I think about it, it had an artsy flair to it, that sort of living in the - mostly virtual - moment, which I liked. And it made me rethink other living arrangements.

Like nowadays, living spaces that don't look like people really live in them can freak me out. For me, there needs to be some kind of proof that people really exist, not only the ideal they want to see portrayed to the outside world. Pointy black figurines on end tables tell me nothing. Battered tables, steamrolled rugs on the other hand, that kind of thing I find inviting. Things that are in use. Vintage, but authentically so. I guess it must attribute to the whole idea behind caveman drawings. I lived here, I left my marks. Human habitation, and what a cool concept that is.

You see, I think that over time I got bitten by that same radioactive spider: nerdmaker. It must have built its lair in our apartment...And now it's official. A home, a hubby, a PC - I'm having my cotillion and I'm coming out nerd!