To put it bluntly, this sucked. I wanted to like it–I expected to love it, looked forward to reading it. I love historical fiction and I have a soft spot for books about the Arthurian legend (dork alert, I guess). But I put this down before I was even 150 pages in, and I almost never do that.

Guevenere, Queen of the Summer Country is meant to be a fresh look at the Arthurian legend from feminist perspective, with Guenevere, not Arthur, as the protagonist. It had the potential to be great book. But the prose is overwrought, the characters are shallowly drawn, the dialogue is appalling, and the narrative is constantly broken up by these irritating little exclamations in italics, meant to be glimpses into the thoughts of a character. And the author’s attempts to make the book sexy come across as just so much titillation–I found it embarrassing (the women in Guenevere’s pagan country have the right of “thigh-friendship” and “thigh-freedom”–ugh).

Mary Stewart retold the legend much better in her trilogy–in her hands the story is rich and well-researched. She strips away the magical and mystical trappings that have been added over the years and tells the story as it might really have happened, if it were true. That’s a version that’s well worth reading.

If you haven’t already, go meet Andrea at Superhero Journal (one of the most inspiring blogs out there, btw). Resolutions are a big deal in our house, but they’re hard to keep, and I like her idea of setting intentions much better. It’s about being kinder to yourself.

Take a look at her site for a great explanation of her Mondo Beyondo project. Here are my answers.

1. What do you want to acknowledge for yourself in 2007? I spent the year shepherding a child from baby to toddler, and I did it with more patience and grace than I thought I’d be able to. Norah and I fell utterly in love with each other. I learned how to put myself second and also how to carve out a little bit of space for myself. And for most of the year, I was able to work from home and make money for our family.

2. What is there to grieve about 2007? I miss the easy, lazy relationship Brian and I used to have. I miss taking care of him the way I used to be able to, and being taken care of by him. I still very much miss my lovely vast stretches of free time. I forgive myself for not taking better care of my body and mind this year. I really do forgive myself. It’s okay, and it’s not too late.

3. What else do you need to say about the year to declare 2007 complete? I need to send myself a message: It’s okay. Have faith. The year ended in a hard place, but all it will take is some work to make things better. Believe in your own abilities, and let go of fear and anxiety.

Now, the next part: setting my intentions for 2008 and being brave enough to declare the hopes I can’t believe are possible, the ones I’m scared to write, the ones I’m talking myself out of before I’m even done thinking them:

I will be a good caretaker of my body this year. I will feed myself with good nutritious food and plenty of water. I will wake up early and work out three mornings a week. I will get stronger and leaner and have more energy.

I will be making money again for our family. I will search for work tirelessly and market myself and build my list of editorial clients. I will (and this is the scary part to say) do my best to expand my freelance career to writing as well.

It’s hard to have faith in yourself. I don’t even realize how much mean, negative stuff I say to myself all day long. This year is about learning to be a good friend to myself.

This post from Sherri just speaks to my heart. More than most winters, this has been a time of creeping worries and fear and anxiety. That cold wind just seems to find all the chinks in this little house I have built, and it sneaks in to get me.

I call it the House of Cards Theory. I seem to believe that there’s some sort of safe harbor I can swim to–like a happy marriage and a warm house and a sweet small child and a good job for my husband and a little money in the bank can keep me safe. Like all the dangers were in the struggle to find those things, and now that we have built our life nothing bad can happen. Except of course it can, and when it does, I feel so panicked and taken by surprise. “I thought we were safe! We have everything in order!” And then I see that it’s all a house of cards that can tumble at any moment: Brian could lose his job, we could try and fail to sell the house, I could get cancer, we could go broke dealing with the medical bills.

Sherri’s right, they’re Winter Fears. Spring always seems to chase them away. But it’s January, and spring’s a long way away in this part of the world. So I do what Sherri does. I keep my bookshelves filled. I keep homemade chicken stock in the freezer and an apple bundt cake on the counter. I keep a cozy blanket on the couch. And on cold dark mornings, I wake up an hour or two before the rest of the house, and I brew my coffee, and I turn on just one lamp, and I sit on the couch in the window and read while the sun comes up. And that hour, stolen out of sleep, can carry me safe through the rest of the day.

Norah has two great loves in this life (in addition to Mama and Dada and cheese, of course): Dino and Elephant. Her crib is filled with lesser loves, and she has pals she likes to carry around all day, but Dino and Elephant, they’re IT. The true and loyal companions. Which is lovely, as far as I’m concerned, because it means somebody else helps her back to sleep in the middle of the night. Except that the way she loves them is, well…she sucks on their tails. (It started out as their tags, but then the tags fell off from so much love.) And I mean really sucks on them–in the morning, you could wring them out, they’re so wet.

And this creates what is known in our house as a Laundry Problem. Because the tails? They smell. Despite all my best efforts at weekly washings and diligent applications of baking soda and tireless scouring of the internet for nontoxic cleaning solutions. Even right out of the wash–they smell better, but…they smell.

But here is where I share with you my newfound secret. Because you know how you’re always hearing that your kitchen sponge is the dirtiest item in your kitchen, and the only way to get it really clean is to put it in the microwave?

You see where I’m going here. We microwaved Norah’s Elephant. We ran him through the wash first, and he came out smelling like old cheese. So we got him really soaking wet, threw him in the microwave for 20 seconds, and prayed like Jesus, Mary, and all the disciples–because apparently there are no Elephants available for purchase anywhere else in the world. We’ve checked. And we did not want to set Norah’s true love on fire.

We took him out and he was hot but unharmed. We took a sniff. He smelled like popcorn. But fresh, clean popcorn–no stinky cheese. Laundry Problem officially solved.

So, from the test kitchens of the Monkey household–your first (and likely only) laundry tip.

…and when I think that two years before, I spent the day after Christmas having a miscarriage and being afraid that we might never have a family, I can only say, heart absolutely filled with wonder: thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I might have used this site so far mostly as an outlet for my fears and my anxieties and my frustrations, but truly I know–there is no one in the world more blessed.

I’m back, after a long, delicious, somehow both restorative and utterly chaotic couple of weeks of holiday everything. I am totally exhausted, I don’t want to pack up a suitcase and go anywhere ever again, and I don’t think there is room in my house for one more toy–but I’m also completely happy.

Every year, my favorite part of Christmas is the night before. Christmas Eve is my birthday, so I get to sleep in and be a little bit lazy. Brian gives me birthday presents here and there throughout the day, and seeing all those gifts so beautifully wrapped and ranged around the living room fills the day with a lovely anticipation. He always makes dinner–probably the only night of the year that he does, though he’s as good a cook as I am; this year it was chicken cordon bleu and roast potatoes and broccoli with garlicky breadcrumbs. Yum. This year there were no presents left to wrap–we had done them over the weekend, while watching Casablanca and drinking Bailey’s–so once we put Norah to bed we poured ourselves a drink, put on a little Christmas music (courtesy of the Rat Pack), and got everything ready for the next day. We baked an orange cardamom cake, ironed the tablecloth, had a little existential chat about the meaning of life, got out the good china and set the the table, and then brought out all our presents to each other and arranged them under the tree and filled each other’s stockings and set those out too. We always do this right before bed, so there’s no chance for peeking. We like to be surprised. And this is my favorite moment, the lights turned down and the house lit only by the Christmas tree and the little white lights winding up the banister, Norah asleep upstairs in her crib, the living room filled with lovely surprises just waiting till morning.

Brian and I are good gift givers. I come from a family of good gift givers. Every year, Christmas is filled with the excitement of knowing I have all these perfect gifts to give to the people I love, and that they have chosen equally perfect things to give to me, lovely things like good olive oil and soft cozy yoga pants and books I can’t wait to read and four or five gorgeous necklaces I’ve been wearing in constant rotation.

But this year there was something else, too. This year we woke up early just like every year, and got ourselves coffee and cranberry coffeecake and opened our stockings in the half-light of just before dawn–but then we got to creep upstairs, where a little girl was sleeping snuggled in a pile of stuffed animals. This year we got to wake her up, saying, “Merry Christmas!” and, “I think Santa came while you were sleeping!” This year we got to tiptoe downstairs with a sleepy-eyed, tousle-haired girl in our arms and point to the presents under the tree and tell her they were all for her, that Santa brought them. And she’ s a little too young still to really get it, and I had to open her presents for her, and the boxes and bows were her most favorite part, but still–this year, at Christmas, we were a family.

One of the things I do obsessively is read. And I like to talk about what I read. So I’m going to do that here–not a full, polished book review, but at least a mention of what I’m reading and what I think about it.

Last week, I was reading The Calligrapher. It was worth the read, but not as good as I’d hoped. Frankly, I expected it to be sexier. And I guessed the surprise ending pretty early on, and it’s an awful lot to ask your readers to swallow. And the foreshadowing frustrated me–since he’d already told me it was going to go so badly wrong, I felt like I wanted him to just hurry up and get there already so I could stop anticipating. On the other hand, there are some fantastic passages, especially the really caustic send-ups of London stereotypes, and I enjoyed the literary analysis aspect, being a former English major.

I’ve been having fantasies of the Cape Cod B&B where we spent our honeymoon. That vast maple sleigh bed, piled high with quilts and soft feathery pillows. The little pinstriped sofa, just room enough to snuggle up on. The weathered dresser where, returning each evening, we’d find a bottle of wine or a plate of freshly baked cookies. The huge tub, big enough for two, with whirlpool jets and soft curves to lean back into.

Except, in these fantasies, I’m alone.

I’d go to bed early and sleep late. I’d spend whole afternoons in bed, curled up under the quilts with a stack of books and a couple of magazines. I’d have a glass of white wine and a fancy meal sitting at the bar at my favorite fish house. I’d browse bookstores and preppy little shops, and walk alone on cold, deserted beaches, and get coffee every morning from the general store across the street. I’d take two or three baths a day. I wouldn’t talk to anyone except bartenders and shopkeepers and waitresses.

I am having a hard time. Norah is still not sleeping well–we’re going on a month now. I think in part it’s a long bad spate of teething–she’s already cut two teeth in the past few weeks, and now I’m pretty sure she’s working on a third. And some of it is probably just plain old 12-month separation anxiety. But, most nights, from bedtime till 10:30 or 11 is punctuated by wails and screams every half hour or so, and I have to go to her and sing and rub her back till she relaxes. Okay, it’s not always that bad. But when I kiss her goodnight and say “see you in the morning,” I know I’ll absolutely be seeing her before that. Saturday night after we put her to bed we were having a few drinks, not really doing much of anything but snuggling on the couch together, getting a nice little gin buzz, the kind of at-home date you can have if you don’t automatically turn the tv on. We had just gotten into bed when the wailing, oh the wailing. And that was the end of THAT date. Instead I got up and cleaned the kitchen while Brian spent an hour soothing an apeshit teething baby. How romantic.

And I’m hardly working right now. All my nanny hours are spent tracking down more freelance work, to not much avail so far. And granted I’ve gotten quite used to reading during Norah’s naps instead of working (when she’s not freaking out, that is), but I NEED to work. We desperately need the money, and I need the sense of accomplishment and purpose. The hours when I am someone other than Mommy. I really need those hours, and if I’m not working, then I can’t justify the expense of the nanny. And I cannot be a full-time stay-at-home mom. Of a toddler. Who’s not sleeping.

And the drop in income means we can’t afford a babysitter so we can go out every couple of weekends, and the Norah Sleep Strike means we have a hard time just cooking a nice meal and opening a bottle of wine and having an at-home date instead.

This is the absolutely hardest thing about parenting, that there’s no one else who’s going to come and take the wheel. Just for a few hours, so you can rest. The third shift is not about to punch in. No one is saying to you, sleep awhile, I’ll drive this stretch.

It’s a tooth. Oh, what a relief to know that. A little Tylenol at bedtime, a good dollop of comfort, the reassurance of knowing exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. Whew.

Norah is staging a Sleep Rebellion.

I think. Unless it’s teeth. Or nightmares. Or separation anxiety.

I think you know what I’m talking about. In our house the pendulum swings back and forth–she’s an appalling sleeper, she’s a great sleeper. The newborn phase was almost unbearably bad, then it got better, then at 10 months she started sleeping through the night. But we still have the Bad Phases. They don’t last (the cardinal rule of parenting is that nothing lasts), and it helps to remember that, but…well, they suck.

Now, I’m not complaining here. I read Moxie, I know things could be a lot worse. A LOT worse. But still, it’s hard. Mostly I’ve gotten past that uncertainty, that constant self-doubt and second guessing, that is the territory of new motherhood–I know Norah now, I can read her, I know when she’ll be able to get herself back to sleep and when she needs comforting, when she’s had a bad dream and when she’s in pain from teething. I trust myself.

Except when I don’t, and it seems like that’s now. The current sleep strike has been horrible, an hour or two of angry screaming every night at bedtime, and for a long time we were convinced she was just mad, playing us, sleepy but not wanting to sleep. But it’s excruciating to listen to her cry, punctuated by those little choking coughs, even as I’m angry that the quiet evening I needed so badly, the book and the Christmas cards and the recorded episode of Heroes, isn’t going to happen. And then I start to doubt myself. Maybe she’s not just mad. Maybe she’s afraid. Maybe she’s scared to be alone in the dark. Or maybe she’s teething (which in our house means a freakout at night, with no warning during the day). And I can let her cry if she’s just mad, but if she’s afraid or in pain, I need to hold her, to calm her down and let her fall asleep against my shoulder. And when I’m doing that I never mind, I savor the sweet baby smell and the rare, rare chance to hold my sleeping child–but the not knowing, that kills me. The letting her cry and keep questioning–Am I doing the right thing? Is she afraid up there, all alone? And if I go to her, will we start a horrible nighttime pattern? What do I do, and when will it get better?

When does it come, the time when you can really, truly trust yourself as a mother? I’m guessing never.