multifaceted? schizophrenic? inconsistent?

Hey. Um, I'm doing fine after that rather dramatic post there. Things are still uncertain. But hasn't all of life been uncertain since we left Florida-- and really, since we arrived in Florida and found it wasn't what we believed it to be? I've been walking around learning to hand over my fear and panic for around six years now. What's a few more months? Pshaw.

That's not what I want to write about; it's just my response to my felt obligation to somehow apologize for or explain that Dark Night post. I can't really do either, and I refuse to delete it, because that is part of my life these days. So it stays, I try my best not to minimize it-- although I can see already that I just did-- and we move on to other fascinating topics.

Including: Who on earth am I? (note: fascinating to me. I rather guarantee this to be tedious to anyone else.)

I've lately become very puzzled by the inconsistent breadth of my own perspective.

I am part snarky modernist, sneering at the simpletons and fundamentalists and hippies. This man's derision of the homeschooling fundamentalist moms at the blueberry patch, for example, made me snort in my tea--- particularly when I clicked on the link to discover who Little Critter's Mom was.) I read snooty food blogs, lifehacker, and like geekery, and usually relish it.

But part of me hates the snarky modernist. I want to grow my own food, educate my own children, follow the God that's been in my heart since adolescence, eschew cable tv and video games and even Dora and Elmo. After laughing at Dutch's vitriol over the homeschoolers, I click right on over to another regular read--a homeschooling mom of 6 in Canada who writes the most beautiful and honest reflections I've ever seen about living life as a mother devoted to Christ. I soak up the wisdom in her writing, and it dissolves away some of the cynicism and arched-eyebrowness that comes from the snarkers.

Then I click over to my Wiccan teacher friend in Hawaii who writes beautifully about her dogs and her knitting projects. And then over to another Wiccan, a mom of a toddler in Virginia who lives with very little so that she can live deeply and richly with her son, giving him a world of hikes and flowers and friendly wolves instead of days of shuttling between a harried home and a chaotic daycare experience. And then over to my favorite snappy shopping blog, who gives me tips on where to find great stuff dirt cheap-- even as I'm contemplating how much less we could live with if we just tried.

I am all of these perspectives, but also a critic of all of these perspectives. I love parts of each and every one of them, but am fairly sure that, were we to need to be slotted into a particular "type," that I would fit in none of their respective compartments-- and possibly even be welcome at none of their dinner parties, because so many of my other sensibilities would not be shared there.

Perhaps this is some of what's sparking this question inside me: We have good friends here that are enthusiastically environmental and naturalistic in their viewpoints. I love those friends and in many ways love their viewpoints. But something in me can't commit to sharing them wholeheartedly. I am a skeptic of all things. I can listen with great interest as they mention their hatred of Wal-Mart, their refusal to vaccinate their children, their distrust of traditional medicine. But I can't join the bandwagon without tangible proof. Can anybody give me something to read that proves that Wal-Mart is worse than other corporate entities they're buying from instead-- not just bigger? (And why shop at Sam's when you drive to the bigger towns, if you don't like Wal-Mart?) Has any reputable source published anything about the dangers of vaccination, when the dangers of NOT vaccinating a society's children are so great? I want to ask these questions because I really would like to know their answers. But I don't want to seem like a prick, so I don't-- and feel myself a little withdrawn as a result.

Our church, which contains some of those good friends, is also full of older generations of a decidedly more conservative order-- Christians whose worlds are more black and white than mine, who would never dream of voting Democrat for any reason, who think that questioning the 7-day Creation account in Genesis is essentially questioning the validity of all of Scripture and even the Gospel itself. These are sweet, hearty, wonderful, loving, good people, and some of them helped shape my faith when I first came to God. I am honored to have them in my life. But my world is much more murky and uncertain than that, and I'm not sure I could return to that purity of perspective even if I wanted to.

My husband is one of those people who cannot help but speak his mind on almost everything. He'll challenge almost anyone's viewpoint, argue or debate if necessary, lay his own perspective out on the line before he knows what the other person believes at all. I sometimes admire this and sometimes think it's insane, but regardless, I have never been able to imitate it. You probably won't know my opinion unless you ask me outright. This is sometimes wise and safe, and sometimes overcautious, I know.

Apparently I am unclassifiable. Too conservative to be a hippie, too liberal to be a conservative. Too environmentally conscious to run around consuming thoughtlessly, but a bit too skeptical to believe every eco-rumor that gets passed down from a friend or natural foods store worker, and unwilling to modify my life for something I'm not sure of. So I end up with friends (and reads) in each camp, sampling from everyone, enthusiastic about everyone, and utterly unable to stake a tent in any one location.

It's odd, and I think it's part of what makes me always a little lonely. But isn't everyone always a little lonely?

It does happen.

Another doctor's visit today. Weight gain slight (that's good), blood pressure good, baby heartbeat strong and audible. Eighteen weeks along tomorrow.

And I breezed through the appointment, chatty, few questions, and not a single worry in my head about whether all those routine diagnostics would turn out fine or not.

It wasn't until later this afternoon that I remembered that these things are miracles, that something like 25% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and that not every birth turns out just fine. I've been struck repeatedly by that fact in the past couple of weeks because of those two women's stories-- one a new read, one a journal I've been reading for years and years. I find it very interesting that my empathetic soul, hurting along with these women, found it easy to not connect their agony to my own pregnancy. Is that a defense mechanism? Denial? Or perhaps a safe emotional distance?

Our first, our Bird, was just fine despite arriving a month early. The pregnancy was momentous to me but uneventful as far as pregnancies go. So far, this one has been uneventful as well-- I sometimes forget I'm pregnant, I feel so well these days.

Without becoming paranoid about the possibility of this changing at any moment, I want to remember and recognize what a tremendous (and tremulous) gift that is.

It took him a while to hit the floor, but he got there.

Toddler tantrums are amazing things to me. As a mom about to enter this phase, I view them with a combination of curiosity, dread, fear, and horror-- not unlike the universal desire to peer at the carnage of a wreck as one drives by. Because in a very literal sense, THAT COULD BE ME. Soon.

But this particular little Halloween tantrum is so well-documented that it mostly just made me grin. Don't you feel just a little sorry for him? After all, he'd been told that there WERE no Stormtrooper costumes. And obviously, once they reached the party, he could see that his momma had told him lies. LIES. Oh, the injustice!

...and his momma snapped pictures the whole time. I love it.

What I'm doing online that keeps me from writing in my blog.

Only a few days into the month, and I'm having trouble getting my posts entered on time. I'm going to stick with this-- the point is to get back into the habit, and of course that will take a little work-- but I'll try to be creative with my brief obligatory posts. I'll also quit pointing out that they're obligatory after this paragraph.

There, I'm done metablogging for a while. Yay.

Here are a few of my current fascinations:

Awakened: nature-loving, hill-living mom with a baby boy just Bird's age. Love the simplicity of her life and writing.

Sundry Mourning: working mama of another baby boy just a little older than Bird. Very funny, recovering alcoholic, brutally honest about the frustrations and joys of motherhood.

Knitted Brow: Kim's an old friend (that I've never met) from my Diary-x journaling days. A teacher, a lover of good food and long walks and dogs and spirituality and many other things that I like too. Plus, now she lives in Hawaii, and her scenery fascinates me.

Sara's new preemie Isaac has me checking daily for updates on his progress. I've loved Sara's spunky, honest-yet-irreverent site for years-- anyone who would sell WTFWJD merchandise has my undying devotion-- but Isaac just makes me relive all the joy and terror and love of Bird's Intensive Care days that first month. Plus, she knitted that squee pumpkin hat that I must make.

Harris Chronicles: An old high school friend, now living as a military wife to her high school sweetheart, who's stationed in Iraq. Her posts of moose and snow (she's in Fairbanks, Alaska) entertain me, but I really stop in to watch her baby girl photos and check to make sure Alan's doing fine. He should be back next month, thank God.

Homesteading Bloggers: I've found a whole nest of them at homesteadblogger.com via my friend Beth. You need to be registered to read them, I think, but they speak to all my latent loves of gardening and composting and my desire to raise chickens and grow my own food and (possibly) teach Bird at home when she gets old enough. There's a huge range of philosophies that cause people to choose this lifestyle, and I find that fascinating too.

Mir's Want Not blog. She posts at least twice a day about various fabulous bargains she's found on the Web. She's funny. She makes me want to buy stuff. I have to watch this-- I currently have 16 servings of dehydrated soup that I bought for $2.99 from Canada, no shipping. Do I need dehydrated soup? No. But Mir blogged it, and so I wanted it. Arrgh. But regardless, I love her. So pretty. (I find it weird that I'm all attracted to The Compact and the Brown Dress and the Simple Way while also being a daily visitor at a shopping website. Guess I've yet to work through some of the changes I'm feeling called to make.)

Tabblo. This review describes its features in detail, so I won't do that. But be assured: It is addictive. It makes me feel like I'm part of this big worldwide community that celebrates the beauty of life via each other's photographs. That sounds completely cheesy, but it makes me happy that some young photographer in Italy thinks that I've taken a really wonderful photo of my daughter, and that I get a chance to see what he saw on his way to work last week. It's also a great way to share baby photos with family and friends-- I make a tabblo, and include the link in an email to them. Flickr is dull by comparison.

...and I could keep listing things. But I'll stop there to keep from revealing the embarassing extent of my online habits. It's something I need to curb, but also something that brings me a ton of joy and satisfaction and connection to the outside world.

Hopefully, as I get back into recording my life online, this will become a source of joy and satisfaction as well.