nina turns 40

This is it, folks--UPDATED with new blog link

This, dear readers, is my last post to nina turns 40.  You can't say you weren't warned.  "nina turns 40" no longer fits who I am or where I am in life.  I'm solidly in my 40's now, and not freaked out about it.  After three years of blogging, I've proven to myself that I am not just a big flake who can't finish any project that she starts, but rather that I simply needed the right project.  I have learned that writing for an audience is a powerful and important thing.  I'm not going to stop.

I have loved to write for as long as I can remember, and it's becoming more imporant to me to do it well.  The new blog will be ready to roll soon. Details will be posted here

UPDATE:  It's live! I've made the new blog my default blog with TypePad, which means that you can reach it at this URL:  http://ninaturns40.blogs.com , which I'm hoping will make it easier for everybody to keep me blogrolled if they so wish.  If you find yourself missing the comfort of nina turns 40 (as I do already), it will still be hanging out at http://ninaturns40.blogs.com/nina_turns_40

Hope to see you over at the new place soon!

Janeen

nina dating update

After a long dry spell that was sapping my confidence and faith in mankind, I finally got an interesting and worthwhile response to my online ad (I met Bachelor #1 by responding to his ad).  It came as no surprise to me that men did not come stampeding to my virtual door.  After all, I have three strikes against me:  I'm over 40, I have a young child, and I'm not skinny.  However, I still expected that there would be men out there who would appreciate all of my other fabulous qualities, and who might actually prefer them over youth and anorexia.  Finally, this has come to pass. 

Will he think I am as compelling and delightful in person as I am in writing?  Will the fact that his age is a few years beyond my usual range make the dynamics too creepy?  Will I actually like him, or will I just enjoy being flattered by his attention? Will nina EVER get laid again? (Oh yes, yes she will, even if she doesn't blab about it here.)

The real, deeper question, though, is how will it feel if I do turn out to really like Bachelor #2?  In my put-all-my-eggs-immediately-into-one-basket past, I wouldn't let myself consider that there might  possibly be more than one interesting, intelligent, charming, disarming man out there who would not only be all those things, but would like me, too.  The fact that my old way of thinking and being around men may have turned out to be completely wrong is blowing my mind (bits and pieces of my brain are flying around the room as we speak). 

OK, so that's not entirely true.  I knew that my former "men" paradigm was wrong because it wasn't working for me.  I wasn't having the kind of satisfying, intimate relationship that I longed for (remember, I've left not one, but two marriages).  I very consciously set out to figure out why that was, and change it.  It's a far more complex and difficult journey than I ever imagined. 

When I was pregnant with the kidlet and still married to Vicente, we decided we didn't want to know the sex of the wee thing until it was born.  I was pretty sure that I'd have a girl.  I have a sister, my mom has a sister, he has three sisters--both families are full of women.  It seemed logical--and comfortable--that I would continue that trend.  Vicente, being the highly intuitive man that he is, told me that he thought the universe would send me a boy so that I could work out my issues with men.  At the time I was rather horrified.  I shot back, "And he'll be gay, so you can work out your homophobia," which had the satisfying result of freaking him out, so I didn't have to focus on the realization that I knew that he was right, and that yes, the hard work was about to begin.

tell Alanis we've got some real irony for her

Chile, that long strip of a country that looks like its name, has elected a single mother for President.  I've been thinking about what I wanted to write about this, but Chris Clarke has beat me to it, in his usual elegant way. 

caminando

Took advantage of a brief pocket of no rain this morning to go for a walk with my camera.  It felt so good to be outside, moving my body through space, and taking in everything--the smell of the earth and the wet leaves, the bird talk, the gardens of the houses, the houses themselves, their locked doors and fenced yards, their dripping eaves.  Everything was so beautiful.  Every little thing.  It felt good to walk along the streets that I normally drive, to know them in a different, more intimate way.  My hands got so so cold.  I looked out at the bay and the far off islands and the train tracks, and I wanted to go down closer to them, but I never found the path that I know is there that leads down the hill to the waterfront.  So I stayed on the streets and the sidewalks and I took fotos.

thursday miscellania

Yes, it always rains in Seattle.  Twenty-four days in a row, people.  The record is 33, set way back before I was even born.  Can we beat it?  Do we want to?

From the "If Dooce Can Do It, So Can I" Department:  I have dubbed 2006 The Year of the Screaming Poo.  (My poor kidlet.)

The Joshua Redman concert that I didn't even have a chance to tell you how excited I was about going to got cancelled.  Too bad, seeing as how I have fallen quite in love with him.  Don't tell Adam Gopnik.

la cama

It used to happen all the time, I'd be sound asleep and dreaming, and something would jar me awake, the sound of my son's voice.  "Mom?," it would come ringing out, and if I didn't answer right away, again, more insistently, "MOM! Can I come and sleep with you?"  I'd roll over and mumble something vaguely in the affirmative, and he'd come plodding out, plop his pillow next to mine, and climb on up, bonking me in the head with the current favorite stuffed toy.  Inviting the kidlet to sleep with me is a mixed blessing.  He's not the most considerate of nighttime companions.  He wiggles.  He kicks.  He ventures towards the middle.  If he has to pee, he announces that loudly, too, and turns on the bathroom light, which floods my room and finds its way beneath my shut eyes.  On the other hand, having him near, being able to reach out and feel him there, listening to him breathe, are all deep pleasures of motherhood.  He is close and safe and all is right with the world. 

When he was a baby, he slept in bed with me almost all the time.  Sometimes the only way he would sleep was if I lie down on my back with him on my chest, a position I resisted at first fearing it was unsafe.  In those delirious disorienting first weeks of motherhood, however,exhaustion usually won out and I fell back relieved.  I admit that I loved feeling him there, curled up against my heart.  As he got older, our relative poverty dictated our living situation, which has graduated from a room in a shared house, to a studio apartment, to a not-quite-two bedroom.  He has a big boy bed now complete with Spider Man sheets, and his own lava lamp along with a gajillion books and lego pieces in his very own room.  He asked for and got an alarm clock for Christmas this year, too, and he loves to wind it up each night and pull out the pin in back that will make it ring the next day.  As often as not these days--the stress of his recent illness perhaps--the alarm goes off in an empty room.  I'll be sitting at my computer after my shower, and I'll look over and see a ruffled head emerge from my sheets. "Mom? What's that noise?"

sickness, health, and cake

It's hard to write about the things that have been going on so far this year.  Not because they are so terrible or fraught with meaning or anything but simply because I don't know how to do it well.  The kidlet is having some persistant (but minor) health issues which are causing him lots of pain and trauma, and are frustating the hell out of me, so that's taking up a lot of my mental and emotional energy.  And then there's this dating thing.  It's stirring up all kinds of stuff.  I'm wary, though, of writing too much about it here.  For one thing, chances are good that before too long, I'll tell him about the blog. 

Here's what's significant about what's happening now:  we're dating, and I don't think I've ever just dated. I've always fallen madly in love.  Most of my significant relationships--and too many of my flings--have started with a heady rush of passionate delirium, and I was convinced I'd found my soulmate.  I love being swept off my feet, and tend to mistake sexual attraction and infatuation with the real thing.  Not surprisingly, this rarely turns out well.  So why is this time different?  Don't think that I've suddenly matured significantly over the last couple of years, or that heartbreak has made me wise.  A large portion of it is because he is not yet divorced and has made it plain that he's not ready for anything serious.  And that jibes very well with what I was thinking when I decided I was ready to have a social life again.  So, we're dating.

Part of me is really freaked out by this.  It's so outside of my normal pattern, that I don't always know how to proceed.  I want to go back to what's familiar and comfortable.  On the other hand, this new way feels really good.  I am relaxed.  I am not twitterpated or infatuated or in love.  I like him.  When someone asks me about him, I usually break into a big smile.  It's easy.  It's fun.

All this easy, healthy sort of stuff just isn't that fun to read about, I know.  It would be much better blog fodder is he were a jerk, or if we were running away to Vegas to get married next weekend or something.  You'll just have to bear with me on this one, folks, and be glad for me.

Finally, I'm very happy to have eaten some of the best damn chocolate cake ever last night.  I got it here, which is fast becoming one of my favorite coffee shops.  The cake was moist and dark, and the frosting was so smooth and buttery and, well, chocolatey.  I was very disappointed to not have been able to finish it.  It made me feel like a kid in the best way.

quiet

I didn't mean to start the new year quite so silently here on nt40.  Things have been busy, and I'm thinking a lot.  I'm buried in Legos at home, and with year-end wrap up stuff at work.  The dating thing is going very well, remarkably so considering that my usual MO is to rush headlong off a cliff over these things.  I'll have something more substantial to say soon, but until then, I leave you with another foto, this one taken by my parents' neighbor of their house in Sequim.  It encapsulates perfectly why I love to go there.

fotorama

With little in the way of introduction or explanation, here's a roundup of fotos from 2005 that y'all haven't seen yet

a spoonful of meme

Both Scott and Chris have tagged me.  It's not nearly as sexy as it sounds.  The memes are similar, a list of lists, with a numerical theme.  We'll start with the fives.

Five Snacks That I Enjoy:

Scharffenberger extra bitter (either the 70% or the 82% depending on my mood)
Cinnamon Bears (affectionately referred to as sin bears)
Popcorn (NOT microwave)
Quesadillas (made by me with corn tortillas)
Fried Calamari

Five Songs I Know All the Lyrics To:

Righteously by Lucinda Williams
Closer To Fine by The Indigo Girls
Almost Blue by Elvis Costello
Amelia by Joni Mitchell
Dos Arbolitos, an old Mexican bolero

Five Things I Would Do If I Were A Millionaire:

Buy a house in Seattle
Buy land in Mexico and British Columbia
Buy a camper, wire it to the hilt, and take a year to drive all over North America, homeschooling the kidlet and blogging it.
Quit eVil Corp.
Invest wisely

Five Bad Habits:

Fucking cussing all the damn time
Using bad posture when I sit at the computer
Talking too fast
Checking my email too much at work
Hitting the snooze button one too many times

Five Things I'll Never Wear Again:

White jeans
Stiletto heels
Blue eyeshadow
Knee socks
A wedding dress

Five Three Favorite Toys:

iPod
Computer
Camera

The next meme is all about seven.  I've answered a very similar one already so for my replies to the questions Seven Things I Want to Do Before I Die, Seven Things I Cannot Do, and Seven Things I Say All The Time, please click here.  Thank you.

Seven Things That Attract Me to Blogging:

My vanity
Writing for an audience
Place to publish my fotos
All the hot monkey sex
Community
Being a part of the new media
My love of freedom and liberty and Christmas

Seven Books I Love:

Setting Free the Bears by John Irving.  His first novel, and in many ways, still my favorite.  I've written about it before here.

Songlines by Bruce Chatwin.  Chatwin wins the prize for authors that I wish more people knew about.  It's one of my tests when I meet someone new--if they know Chatwin they get big bonus points (yes, Mr. Christmas Date, who needs a better nickname, passed the test).  This book has so many themes running through it, but like much of Chatwin's work, at the heart of it is an aching restlessness and a dissatisfaction with modern life. It's been far too long since I've read it.  I lent out my copy, and have regretted it since.

Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao te Ching.  I wrote about that one here.

Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek.  I don't care what anybody says about this book, I still love it.  I don't care that the opening anecdote isn't hers, and she wrote it as if it were.  Dillard can write your fucking socks off.  Calling her a liar is ridiculous.  Of course it's a lie, she's telling a story; all stories are lies, even if they come from the non-fiction shelf. </soapbox> Quite simply, this book woke me up.

Anais Nin's Diaries.  If she were alive today, she'd have the best blog. Evah.

Steinbeck's Travels With Charley.

Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr.  She's another author that I wish more people knew about.  This book is devastating.

Seven Movies I Watch Over and Over:

Diva
Out of Africa
Henry & June
Finding Nemo (not by choice)
El Norte
Anything with Jeremy Northam in it
Sense & Sensibility

Seven Songs I Play Over and Over:

Are You Down? by Lucinda Williams
Mulence by Cubanismo
Llora Mi Nena by Eliades Ochoa
You Can Close Your Eyes by James Taylor
A Million Tears by Kasey Chambers
Honey by Venus Hum
Ty, Y Mi Ciudad by Ruben Blades

Oh, and I'm not tagging anybody.  If you want to play along, tag your own damn self.  You know you want to.