Stream of consciousness drivel in which too many different and unrelated points are attempted.

It’s late.  I am tired.  A little sad and feeling a little thin.  Typing with my eyes closed at the  moment which feels relaxing and comforting but will require a great deal of cleaning up before I hit publish. 

Speaking of typing blind.  In the early days of TBG and my courtship.  (When we were just living together, and renovating our 80 yr old barely habitable fixer-upper) we would have what felt to me like command performances at my not-quite-yet in-laws.  They lived less than an hour away and we had dinner with them 2 to 3 times a month.  (N.B. They are tremendous people, I could not ask for better in-laws but at that point I was very uncomfortable with having these new parental figures in my life.)  And their family dynamics were so different than mine.   Very buttoned-down.  No one ever seemed to argue or express a contradictory thought.  No feeling more intense than gentle amusement or  mild consternation was expressed.   And when “delicate” topics needed to be discussed [i.e. feelings, money, wedding plans, ] I simply didn’t understand they way they communicated – coming to arrangements without ever seeming to actually talk through the topic everyone was assiduously avoiding.   For a passionate, loud, assertive, Jewish woman whose mouth runs at least as fast as my mind, this was torture.  I would sit at the dinner table, and my only outlet for the anxiety and tension that this Chinese water torture of deliberation created in me, was to type out what I was thinking against my thighs under the dining room table.   Needless to say, my perception of my in-laws have changed as our relationship has developed over the last

decade.  But it is interesting to me that sitting down to this keyboard in the dark, with closed eyes has offered me a respite , a release that called to mind those trying dinners… 

But where was I …

Oh yes, feeling thin.  I have spent a ridiculous amount to time on=line this week.  Reading bloggers.  Writing.  Researching. [3 hours researching head start this afternoon. Why?!]  Why?  I mean, yes I care about it.  But who am I fooling?  Only a couple of dozen people are dropping by here each day and most of them aren’t staying around a hell of a long time.  And nobody on Capital Hill is waiting for my analysis of 15 years of research and review of Head Start programs.  And hell, I know what I think – I didn’t need to spend 3 hours doing the research to prove a point to myself.   

It was fun though.  In a way.  Fun to see how far I could get with just my cable modem and google.  I really did find enough source material that with maybe one trip to the UM library to check out a few professional journals, I could have put together a professional- or academic-quality overview.   Obviously the project gave me some kind of juice I had been missing.  But I am not sure what kind.  Was it the intellectual stimulation?  The sense of validation that the majority of research supports everything I intuitively believe about the importance of child rearing/child care/education?  The need to impress folks “out there” with a whiz bang post?  Probably a bit of it all.  And somehow it all comes down to ego, eh? Stroking the self.  And maybe that’s why I feel thin tonight.  Because I jumped into the deep end of the pool with this blogging thing and immediately felt the need to be successful.  Rather than just rolling over onto my back for a nice, relaxing, meditative float. 

So a reminder to me: I am doing this for me, yeah?  So relax …

[written last night, posted this morning]

8:46:55 AM