Writer's Block

I feel the need to blog tonight, and indeed have a lot to say, but am not feeling focused enough to put most of it in a post. Or posts. I have lots of blog ideas running concurrently in my head but nothing fleshed out enough to say.

For instance, I have been mulling over lesbian separatism recently, since the death of our friend, and increased communication with friends in Chicago, many of whom have separatist leanings (i.e. removing themselves as much as possible from spaces with men by creating womyn-only or even woman-born-womyn only spaces). It was never much my thing, nor was it DP's, though we did enjoy some of the women-only activities such as coffeehouse and chorus. We are so far removed from any kind of lesbian community now, though, that I look back on those days happily. Even though, especially though, now with a son, separatism makes even less sense to either one of us.

I've also been preparing my post on art. I'm so frustrated by the quality of art activities for the kiddos at the library. Two year olds shouldn't be following a pattern to make a specific-looking product that they can only produce with overwhelming help from parents. It's a big waste of time and not creative at all, regardless of how hard the librarians work at cutting out the templates. My own art projects--I run a small art group for toddlers--are much more open-ended and (hopefully) creative. For instance, at the end of the month, we're doing string painting--dip string in paint and sling it on paper and even affix it to said paper in patterns (there will be glue in the paint to help this). Messy, fun, colorful, tactile, mixed media, open-ended, no "right" way, as much about process as finished product. In this post, when I write it, I'll reference some books, my favorite ways to talk to kiddos about their art, how to talk to kids about art in museums (we're going with our other playgroup soon), and the like. With lots of righteous indignation.

I haven't written my Chinese New Year post either. Need too. Even dug up the write-up that their Ar-Ma wrote on it, with all the appropriate Thai and Chinese words so that I get it right. Chinese looms large right now, with that show (though, we're not really watching anymore, too bad) and classes starting this week.

And I was going to write about almost being done with physical therapy--and then I pulled my back last week in a combo of snow shoveling and picking up DS awkwardly, then pulled it again yesterday by turning around to hand the kiddos something in the car. Blah. I doubt I'll be done with PT this week, then. But I was going to wrap up what I had learned and what the experience had meant to me.

Oh, and two of my friends have blogs so I'm editing my own page to link to theirs. I'll add more as time passes and permits.

What does that leave? Oh, right, food. One of the big themes of this blog. Which I haven't gotten to in awhile. I had a good food week myself, and lost 2.2 lbs. My goal is 1 lb a week so this is a good week. I've been a little behind but am now catching up to where I had wanted to be. Does that make sense? Anyway, I've also been implementing some of the new ideas I had for the kids--bigger lunches, more DIY meals, and it's going okay. That, and baked chicken with rice and gravy every week. And something from Ma--they love Ma's food--they've been inhaling pork buns and noodles all weekend (we were down visiting Ma and Gong for her birthday celebration this weekend).

So that's where we are. Somewhere, but nowhere really. I'm going to bed so I can get some extra sleep. I'm having 4 kids here by myself tomorrow, to help out my friend with the new baby. I've done it once before.

And, well, that's a post in itself!