filters

Not Enough: It seems that one my favorite blogger/life activities is pondering/cataloguing personal pet peeves. Well, here is another: People who lack any ability to edit themselves when speaking. Speech (unless you're giving one) is not by nature a perfect form, and we all have moments where we wish we could have said more, or less, or simply said it better. And, you know, I suppose the people who cannot edit themselves at all may not be aware of the problem, or that it is a problem... but it is. My eyes glaze over and my mind insantly numbs up in the presence of a person who cannot exclude each and every uninteresting mundanity from each and every conversation. Blah. (Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.) I have a sort-of friend that I have been hanging out with less and less and am considering--all right, I'll be honest, I am decided--that I simply cannot hang out with the individual anymore, and this Lack of Filtering is a big factor. That, and the fact that not much else makes up for the time-killing burble to redeem the friendship. Sad, but true. (Again, dear readers: It's Not You.)

Let's Hope So: My parents' neighbors are quite crunchy and in many ways over-the-top with the lifestyle. Of diet, of occupation, the stories are alternately intriguing and apalling. Anyway, my mom relayed to me that R. takes an old 40-gallon pickle barrel to a spring and fills it for his drinking water. The black barrel sits out on his porch, covered, yes, but festering in this god-forsaken heat. Allegedly, R. runs the water through some sort of filter before drinking it, but seriously? Does it take a scientist to know that a dark container of untreated water sitting out in the heat is a veritable breeding ground for heaven knows what? No, no it does not. E.Coli, dysentary, and mosquito larvae immediately spring to my own mind, before I become completely ill and must move on. Oh, and the water, according to R., does taste vaguely of pickles. I guess as long as it's natural.

Undecided: Pick up any parenting book or magazine dealing with the topic of little ones, and you will probably read that so far as language development goes, it helps your baby from the very get-go to "narrate" your day. I mean... I just think you have to do what you are comfortable with, and not feel guilty about it. I am not a Big Talker. Of course I talk to K.Lo and show her things, let her know what I'm doing if she's interested, but it's as it comes up. And especially now that she is actually walking around, picking up new words every day, and generally acting more and more like a little person, the "narration" naturally comes more into play. Do I feel like she is behind the learning curve, though, because from Day 1 I didn't barrage the little lump of baby flesh in my arms with all the, um, mundanites (see: "Not Enough," above) of Mommy's existence? Hell, no. I listen to other mommies in stores, at story hour, etc, and as they prattle on about walking up the stairs and sitting down in their chairs, I kind of feel like jamming kabob skewers into my eardrums just so I don't have to listen to the sing-song anymore. Some people, it comes natural to, and if you're a Chatty Cathy and that's just the way you are, hey, you do how you do. But I feel like there is a lot of neurotic tension underlying much of the extraneous baby babble out there, an internal hand-wringing that says, OMG, if I don't tell the baby all of what's happening every moment of the day, then she won't learn her words fast enough, and she'll be behind the curve, and her Baby Resume will be spare and she won't get into the right preschool, much less the right college, and everyone'll think I'm a Bad Mommy, and, and, and... Relax, Chicken Little. I'm pretty sure it will be all right.

Too much: Again, speech is not perfect, and not being a Big Talker, I simply don't have as much practice, so maybe the woulda-coulda-shoulda-said-it feeling hits harder, festers with me longer. I'm also Tres Sensitivo, so that could be it as well. As I get older and allegedly wiser, I've gotten better at avoiding the Fester. I mean, who cares, right? Let them say what they will, because they will regardless. I guess I just wish, after all, that I weren't so easily disarmed, so almost too quick to filter. K.Lo had her 18-month checkup last week, for instance, and when the doctor asked what kinds of foods she's eating, I told him, vegetables, but not fruit. Milk. And... not much else. Meat? Not really, it's kind of hard for her to chew. And so then he says, while making A Note in K.Lo's chart, So she's basically just eating vegetables and carbs? Well geez, when you put it that way. It didn't sound quite right when he said it, and ever since, I've been thinking about all the foods I coulda-shoulda have mentioned, but didn't. I always leave out hot dogs, because society seems to consider them foul, but actually, hello, they are, for better or worse, meat. Also, while not consistently, she has eaten: bacon, chicken, a little bit of hamburger here and there. Not to mention eggs, and fish. The kid's even had lobster bisque a few times, oddly enough, and shrimp. Anyway, speaking of extraneous, boring information... I guess I just wish I were more okay with what the doctor recorded, because I live with the kid, I feed her, I know she eats more than veggies and carbs, and oh yeah, who cares. Talk about neurotic internal hand-wringing; I'd like to slap my own wrists to cease it, and move on.