FIRST... woo-hoo!

I know, I know... I've neglected this blog shamefully this past year. All of my highfalutin' talk about writing more is deliberately counteracted in direct proportion with how much I ended up not writing. How dare you try to better yourself, my self-destructive streak huffed, we shall see about that! 

Ah well.

No grandstanding promises for this year,  except small incremental changes. No beating myself up for failures, except just to dust myself off and try again.

The small changes I'm thinking of:

1. Limit internet escapist consumption - only check FB weekly to touch base with friends; no more Babycenter groups except maybe 15 minutes catch up on Friday night nursing sessions.

2. Aim for 20 minute blocks of the following activities daily, to repeat when possible: exercise, praying/meditation, actively playing with one or more kids, food prep/cooking, housework (laundry/dishes, tidying, for examples), singing practice, reading a good book

3. Use these activities rather than former bad habits like zoning out on the internet or emotionally eating to get through blah days: listening to an audiobook or playing informative YouTube channels in background while doing chores, taking baby for a short walk/errand.

4. Curb my material consumption by less readily buying things. This will save our money for experiences and community projects we support, as well as free up space and cleanup time.

My immediate family unit spent the three-day weekend mostly cooped up at home sick. The baby had/has classic markings of hand-food-mouth disease all over him and the husband and I were coughing up our lungs. I completely lost my voice. So I mostly rested, cleaned enough for the kids to keep making messes, cooked simple dishes, rinse and repeat.

It was surprisingly cozy and stress-free.

5. Be more at peace with staycations and just being together. Control my FOMO, because I'm just thankful now for good food, clean water and air (the air quality index was HAZARDOUS on the last day of 2017), healthy bodies, and everyone not fighting with each other. That is enough. Seriously.

One cannot tell how sick we are in this shot...

which is why social media is a lie

snapshots of daily life

At P's dance class tonight, I puzzled over the music that blared in the background to one of the dance sequences... before I identified it as Britney Spears' "Gimme More". Techno-ed up with some house dance genre twists to be sure, but these are kindergarten-age girls. Not sure how to feel about that. Must confess I personally find some of Britney's music videos surprisingly hypnotic and hard to disengage from, but not necessarily because of admiration or beautiful musicality. I guess that's what they call star quality?

D came home with a new notebook he was doodling on; he said one of his classmates traded that for part of his lunch. Apparently there was a bid between several contenders. Flattered (since I make his lunches), I asked which item they were fighting over. "The cheerios, Mom." Yes, I did include some cheerios that I can't find anywhere here and brought back from the US. They're fortified with calcium and B12 which I worry D doesn't get enough of. So much for my culinary prowess.

This past Sunday, it occurred to me at various times at church service that so-and-so is probably the kind of person one of my ex-boyfriend will eventually become. Both of them could be considered the best products of the Taiwanese education system: Upstanding professionals in leadership positions. A bit blind to social injustices and the plight of the poor. A bit lacking in creativity and imagination but makes up for it with strong work ethics. Another so-and-so reminded me of my high school nemesis/frenemy: Very talented and knows it too. Wants to be highly regarded by others and feel slighted if others don't obviously do so. A bit of a prima donna but old enough now to temper it with some humor and allowances for other people's strengths.

Both people are of the age range my ex-bf, hs frenemy, and I will land in the next 20 years. That made me wonder who I would remind myself of as an outside observer. On the ride home, it crossed my mind that I hope I would become like Jennifer, the pastor's wife. But then, another thought crossed my mind: But she has become the way she is (patient, kind, wise, strong in so many ways) because she endured and overcame a lot of shit.

Oh man. Would it be possible for me to become like her without needing to go through that process? Something tells me I won't like the honest answer, and the question is really: am I willing?

a major pet peeve: gender conditioning

Be forewarned, this is a vent. Or a rant. Or whatever you call uncensored verbal diarrhea heedless of "*gasp* you can't say that!"

No matter how much people in the present-day mock the supposedly antiquated sexism of 1950s US as codified in housewife manuals or even Wellesley education or embedded in marketing psychology, I look forward to the day, possibly never, when people in the future would be ridiculing and mocking today's society regarding male and female roles/responsibilities with equal fervor.

I'm so f*cking tired of being told or counselled that "men and women process things differently." I mean, sure, that's not untrue. The stereotypes are true to a certain extent: men are generally less thoughtful and attuned to nuance; more goal-oriented; longs for big goals and wild adventures; most bolstered by appeal to ego and praise etc...

Oh wait. Aren't some women that way too?

No, no, those kind of women are the minority of their penis-lacking gender. Women are generally more nurturing than men. They just think differently. Must be born that way.

BULLSHIT.

I paid for a voice lesson session on Tuesday, and discovered that in my more than a decade of performance-level choral and a cappella singing, that I have been breathing and exerting sound projection all wrong. Just one hour of instruction has made a vast improvement in my support, volume, comfort, and now also confidence in how I can sing a piece like Panis Angelicus. All the years that I wished I could have taken voice lessons--turns out I really should have.

But I noticed, as I was practicing Panis Angelicus today, that I could either focus on proper techniques in breathing and projection or I could focus on still trying to memorize the lyrics and melody. I couldn't do both at the same time, as whenever I really dwell on the song itself all of my bad breathing habits returned. So, I realized, I need to practice the proper techniques every day as my voice teacher instructed until that muscle memory is wired into me as a new habit.

And I can't help but wonder just how much of the way men function, like the way my husband claims he's trying his best to be an equal partner in running the household and raising the kids and yet once again today left me 60 meters away to wrangle the baby and try to record an event as expected by our son while he enjoyed our son's sprint race completely unencumbered (spoiler: I missed seeing everything during the attempted juggle and still failed to get adequate footage), is simply due to low expectations. Very low expectations. Nonexistent, really.

When people of the female persuasion are both subtly and overtly trained to be more considerate of other people's feelings and desires since they're, say, three years old, I bet one hundred dollars the majority of them would become fairly nurturing and knowledgeable about other people's emotional cues and needs by the time they're adults. It would almost seem like...hmm...maybe...it's just their nature!

When people of the male persuasion are encouraged with "boys will be boys" or their behaviors or lack thereof apologetically explained away with the "fact" that being more sensitive or considerate doesn't come naturally to males, I bet one hundred trillion dollars the majority of them would take advantage and enjoy that free ticket out of needing to do the emotional work in interpersonal relationships, without even realizing they've been given this pass.

Just like with my singing training, the muscle memory of emotional work takes effort. Or maybe I'm just not naturally a singer. Versus that opera singer who never needed any training. You know, the one that always rides onstage with her unicorn.

The next person to counsel me about my "high" expectation of guys pulling their weight in managing this world on a society, business, national, family, or individual level with "You have to understand that men are just not built that way" gets a punch in the face. Except I'm trying to be more loving and merciful, so maybe just a kick to the shin.

a life-changing understanding

Excerpts from Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God by Brian Zahnd

"The justice of God is restorative...the cross is where God saves the world through self-sacrificing love...The cross is where God in Christ absorbs human sin and recycles it into forgiveness. At Golgatha humanity violently sinned its sins into Jesus. Jesus bore these sins all the way down into death and left them there. On the third day Jesus arose without a word of vengeance, speaking only 'Peace be with you ' on that first Easter (John 20:19)...The cross is both ugly and beautiful. The cross is as ugly as human sin and as beautiful as divine love--but in the end love and beauty win." -pg. 86-88

"The cross is a cataclysmic collision of violence and forgiveness. The violence part of the cross is entirely human. The forgiveness part of the cross is entirely divine. The Roman cross was an instrument of imperial violence that Jesus transformed into a symbol of divine love." - pg. 101

"...the cross heaps shame on the rulers and authorities that preside over structural sin...At the cross the principalities are stripped of their cloaks of legitimacy so that their naked bid for power is exposed to the world for what it really is. God didn't crucify Jesus; Rome and the Sanhedrin did. Now the cross forever shames the rich and powerful who seek to preserve their privilege and position through the use of violence. Their pretentious claim that they are wise and just enough to use violent means to achieve good ends is put to everlasting shame." -pg. 107

"'In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.'" - Colossians 2:15, NLT

"God did not kill Jesus, but Jesus's death is a sacrifice. Jesus sacrificed his life to show us the love of the Father...When we say Jesus died for our sins, we mean something like this: We violently sinned our sins into Jesus, and Jesus revealed the heart of God by forgiving our sins. By saying 'we'...I mean that all of us are more or less implicated by our explicit or tacit support of the systems of violent power that frame our world...At Golgatha human sin is seen as utterly sinful. God did not require the death of Jesus, but our sinful systems certainly did!" -pg. 108-109

"On Good Friday we see that our violent system of blame and ritual killing is so evil that it is capable of the murder of God. And once we see it, we can repent of it, be forgiven for it, and be freed from it. This is how the cross saves the world...in Christ [God] give us a new way of organizing the world. Instead of being organized around blame and ritual killing, the world is to now be organized around forgiveness and cosuffering love...The cross is the place where human fear and anger are absorbed into God's eternal love and recycled into the saving mercy of Christ." -pg. 114

"Very early in the morning the leading priests, the elders, and the teachers of religious law--the entire high council--met to discuss their next step. They bound Jesus, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor.
      Pilate asked Jesus, 'Are you the king of the Jews?'
      Jesus replied, 'You have said it.'
      Then the leading priests kept accusing him of many crimes, and Pilate asked him, 'Aren't you going to answer them? What about all these charges they are bringing against you?' But Jesus said nothing, much to Pilate's surprise.
Now it was the governor's custom each year during the Passover celebration to release one prisoner--anyone the people requested. One of the prisoners at that time was Barabbas, a revolutionary who had committed murder in an uprising. The crowd went to Pilate and asked him to release a prisoner as usual.
     'Would you like me to release to you this 'King of the Jews'?' Pilate asked. (For he realized by now that the leading priests had arrested Jesus out of envy.) But at this point the leading priests stirred up the crowd to demand the release of Barabbas instead of Jesus. Pilate asked them, 'Then what should I do with this man you call the king of the Jews?'
     They shouted back, 'Crucify him!'
     'Why?' Pilate demanded. 'What crime has he committed?'
     But the mob roared even louder, 'Crucify him!'
     So to pacify the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip, then turned him over to the Roman soldiers to be crucified."

- Mark 15:1-15, NLT

"What God willed was that Jesus be faithful to truth and love so that through Jesus's violent and sinful death we would be liberated from violence, sin, and death. The sacrifice of Jesus is the ultimate gift of love offered to a world distorted by hate, where death is wielded as the supreme weapon." -pg. 84

"Golgatha is where all the great crimes of humanity...are dragged into the searing light of divine judgment...we see the system of human organization that we blithely call 'civilization' for what it is: an axis of power enforced by violence so corrupt that it is capable of murdering God in the name of what we call truth, justice, and liberty. At the cross we discover that the God revealed in Christ would rather die in the name of love than kill in the name of freedom. In Christianity the supreme value is not freedom but love. We can kill in the name of freedom, but in the name of love we suffer and forgive." -pg. 86

"We are worthy of God's love and healing not on the basis of personal merit but because of the image we bear: the very image of God." -pg. 108

wonder woman: quick right-after-first-viewing thoughts

Finally watched Wonder Woman in theater:
1. Definitely not suitable for children
2. As romantic as any romance genre movie. Actually 100x better, because there is a common goal and respectful push and pull that's not about emotions but about what needed to be done. (Self-sacrificial *useful* acts = seriously sexy)
3. The decision to change the time setting to WWI and using Gal Gadot's aura of childlike innocence to explore the themes of justice, grace, essence of humanity...excellently done
4. There *is* something contradictory about a hero(ine) who seeks to bring about peace through lethal fighting... yet the enemy combatants, save one, weren't completely villified and the movie did impress upon me the absolute waste and unnecessary carnage that is war.

As good a movie as mainstream Hollywood could produce this far. From me, a very high praise.

"May you get what you need, may you get what you want, and may you never get what you deserve."

for all intent and purpose

I thought about starting a brand spanking new blog (why this phrase "spanking"? Is it referring to how newborn babies used to get slapped on the butt?), but it's so rare that anything have continued with me for so long that I am unwilling to abandon it just yet.

The desire to start afresh stems from a new resolve to hold a more positive attitude in life. I have no doubt the same problems in my marriage, childrearing, personal habits, etc... will continue to bubble up regularly, but I'm ready to orient myself differently in response to them.

Since I got off bed rest last year, and the family changed to a new local church for weekly services, I've gotten to know better the husband and wife pastoral team.  Their way of teaching and caring for the people here as well as the home churches in China makes me hold them in high regard. In attending their parenting class and marriage counseling, my respect has risen even more. They are the first church leaders in my personal experience who actually point out via the Bible that parents should *not* hit their kids to discipline and wives' submission doesn't mean the husband has the first and final say in difficult decisions. Sad but true for my personal experience; I suspect a lot of things would have been better if they'd been the husband's and my premarital counselors. Not that our previous pastors were all so terrible... I think they just didn't understand where I was coming from and so labelled me as "rebellious" or that I think my way is superior. Wouldn't be the first time, probably won't be the last. Perhaps it's my communication style...

being a lemming (kinda)

So I've finally (surreptitiously) jumped onto the Whole30 wagon. I feel slightly embarrassed about it, because intentionally restrictive food choices is such a first world behavior. Daniel had a similar experience when he was chatting with the morning Starbucks barista. They were sharing summer plans, and Daniel tried to push back on the barista's description of our family's "summering in the US". Because the term "summering" conjures in Daniel's mind rich, possibly snobbish elitist aristocrats who own real estate that they rotate in residing. I pointed out that while we don't own property, we are rich in resources through family and friends, and btw that's Starbucks he's drinking. (Starbucks is high-end coffee in Taiwan.)

This is my rich, possibly snobbish elitist aristocrat moment, but I finally decided it's worth the admission because:

1. My two sons have major eczema issues, and I suspect it's food related. There are too many outside forces to put my oldest on a restrictive diet under suspicions only, but for my part, I can sleuth for the allergens by seeing if cutting out the usual suspects would impact my youngest for the better.

2. Due to the c-section, I have been ho-hum about returning to an exercise program. No exercise + obscenely large appetite due to breastfeeding = still gaining weight. While Whole30 is not a diet in that way, I'm hoping it will provide more structure to the way I eat.

3. Just curious about the hype. Decided to experiment directly rather than just read the reviews.

It's (only) been 3 days. I don't expect too many changes to happen on a physiological level, since I already eat pretty healthfully, but I do expect (and am already seeing) a lot of psychological shifts, such as:

1. I'm a lot more intentionally about what I'm eating, because I have to consider the ingredients. Catching myself from time to time while seasoning the food I'm about to eat, I had not realized how much little bits of honey and soy sauce I use throughout the day. That adds up, I suspect. I am feeling some sugar withdrawal/weakness. I miss chocolate a lot. A lot less snacking on that end too. Since Whole30 calls for three square meals and minimal snacking (no snacking a few hours before bed), I've had more "real meals" instead of just grabbing bites here and there as I care for the baby throughout the day.

2. I didn't realize how much I turn to food when bored or tired. Not snacking before bed has been a major change. I tend to snack then because it's one part victory that I finished another day and many more parts of indulgence because my life right now is far from what I desire so I eat (usually a lot of chocolate) to feel a little better.

3. Even after Whole30 ends, I think I'll continue to read ingredients on food items so I'll only buy the most natural (least amount of additives) items. There are sugar in everything! I couldn't even use sirarcha or vinegar salad dressing (added sugar). The TaiTai brand and Costco marinara are the only "before" sauces in the fridge that I can currently use.

4. Had not realized how much my kids depend on me to eat their leftovers before fresh food is made. Now that I've been cooking for myself only again, I get to eat more items I like but haven't made in a long time, like shrimp, squid, loofah... And I wonder why I have restricted myself just because other family members don't eat them. I also cook in more knowledgeable portions for everyone so there are less leftovers. Still some, but nothing that stretches more than three more meals. Fresh food is definitely more enjoyable to eat.

5. Changes in seasoning -- now that I can't use soy sauce and don't have access to coconut aminos yet, food has been blander than before...initially. Now I wonder if I'd been overloading on sodium because food is tasty again by day 3 without the previous level of saltiness. Plus I'm branching out into using other spices and nonsugared/nonsoy-based sauces like balsamic vinegar and stone ground mustard.

Will record more realizations as/if they arise.