day to day ridiculousness

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Weigh In Wednesday on a Thursday: Current Identity Crisis

Lately I’ve been feeling like I’ve outgrown this space. Which isn’t to say I have any real desire or intention to stop blogging. It just feels like I don’t know what to post, that anything I do write is inconsequential or boring or dumb or… I don’t know. 

I’ve also begun to dislike, more and more, my blog name. It fit me once, a long time ago. But I no longer feel like my identity is Doctor’s Wife, nor do I think my life is any different from anyone else’s, nor do I write a whole lot about the doctor’s-wife-specific aspects of my life anyway, and it just feels dumb and stale and cringe. 

One of the most memorable – and most sobering / terrifying – quotes I’ve come across is Annie Dillard’s “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” If I look at my blog archive as a catalog of how I spend my life, it’s full of posts about parenting, relationships, food, my cat, worries / anxiety, and day-to-day minutiae.

The things I write about here are topics that interest me. But do they add up to anything???? Sometimes the silly and frivolous things I post about feel so very silly and frivolous. Am I wasting my time, and yours, by dwelling on such inconsequential topics?

I want to write about deeper, heavier themes. And yet, many of them feel outside of my ability to discuss with any nuance or intelligence; many feel too personal, or too revealing of the private lives of people who aren’t me; many feel so heavy I fear I’ll drag us all down (and we have enough of that, elsewhere). 

More and more often, lately, I find myself thinking, What am I doing here? 

  • I write for this blog because I believe in the practice of writing. But shouldn’t I be devoting time and energy to my other writing, the writing that I’m neglecting all too often? 
  • I write for this blog because I love keeping a sort of loose record of my life. But isn’t it far too loose, when I’m barely delving into anything real? Will I revisit this in twenty years and think – my god, was my whole life really wrapped up in coming up with meals to make for my family???? Would Future Me be better served by writing a private, messy, no-details-spared journal?
  • I write here because I love interacting with you. But couldn’t I get the same feeling of connection by reading and commenting on your posts (which I do far too infrequently, let’s add that to my list of failings), or texting / emailing / calling you more often? 

It all comes back around to the simple problem that I’ve outgrown the “life of a doctor’s wife” conceit. If I find a focus or a point or a perspective, I could imbue my writing with fresh purpose. But… what would my focus be? I have no specialty or expertise, no original wisdom to share, no unique viewpoints, no secrets to offer. Even if I changed my blog identity, I would still be the same over-anxious, often-cranky, germ-averse, self-absorbed, quick-to-catastrophize, food-and-cat-obsessed middle-aged me. And, to be honest, even if I did have some area of expertise, I don’t know if I would WANT to write an “XYZ advice” blog, you know? I don’t necessarily want to be locked into one thing. I kind of like having a place where I can moon about my child growing up or discuss my dinner plans for the week or overthink gift ideas. If I were to suddenly to be The XYZ Blog, would I still feel able to post those things?

Speaking of focus, I already have a profoundly neglected book blog. Maybe I should shift all my energy to writing about books and writing. I love books! I love writing! Maybe writing about books and writing would mean I’d read more! And write more! But do I really have anything revelatory or interesting to say about the books I read? Could I write anything about writing except that I am very, very slow and mediocre at it? Plus… the book blog is “public” in a way this one isn’t, and I don’t feel entirely free to be me there. (And what does THAT say about me, that I feel more open when I am semi-anonymous than when people I know offline might be reading?) (And have things become extra complicated, now that I know several bloggers in my offline life, too?) 

Now that I have so many lovely “real life” connections, do I even need this blog anymore? It was a lifeline when I was a lonely newlywed, working from home in a new city while my husband was at the hospital all hours of the day. Many of those connections have grown and lasted and crossed over into offline friendships, and wasn’t that the hope all along? Have I achieved a goal, making the ongoing pursuit of that same goal superfluous? After all, I can continue to read YOUR blog, even if I stop posting on mine.

If I reverted to “just” a blog reader, would that feel like enough? Would I magically shift all the time I spend writing blog posts toward other, more valuable pursuits? Somehow I think I would still itch to get all the random silly mundane frivolous cranky food-and-cat-related thoughts out of my head.

But if I feel driven to do that anyway, why not share those random thoughts with kind people who will empathize and offer insights and make me laugh? 

As you see, I continue to travel in circles. 

Okay. Let’s see here. Is there anything concrete we can derive from today’s post? If you haven’t already clicked away from this drivel, perhaps you could weigh in on my current identity crisis by answering the following polls.

Well, that’s it. That’s the dumb post that’s been stopping me up, writing wise. If you made it through this meandering, whiny, naval-gaze of a post, I salute you. (And believe it or not, I cut 500 of the dumbest, whiniest words from it.) I hope posting it here allows me to move on.

Thanks, as always, for reading and understanding and weighing in.

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Friday Photo Array

I’m plum out of ideas for blog posts lately. So let’s look through the photos on my phone and see if we can find anything remotely interesting.

(Why yes, I do realize it’s Saturday now. Shhhh. I’m in a very Late To Everything phase right now and it has apparently seeped over into blogging as well. As Carla kindly but firmly told me yesterday, as I was apologizing for dropping her off to an event more than 15 minutes late, I really need to “get it together.”)

This was Proof that I went for a walk on October 1. It has been so warm lately, and I’m so glad I loaded up on athletic shorts this summer. These are my favorite: they are so comfortable, and I like how they have the tight shorts with a pocket for my phone, but the floaty top layer so I don’t feel like I’m wearing a bathing suit. Strangely, though, I also really love these biker shorts. They are long enough that my thighs don’t chafe and they also have a pocket for my phone and they are very comfy. Anyway, I have been taking a page from Engie’s book and walking without listening to anything. I do still take my phone, though, and end up taking lots of pictures of the things I pass. I love these grasses; they are so fancy. Probably there’s some evolutionary/reproductive reason for their fanciness, but I enjoy them purely for the aesthetics.

I cannot resist photographing a pile of pumpkins. They are so pleasing! This particular pile was at the farmer’s market my family and I visited when my out-of-town friend was staying with us. Why don’t we ever go to the farmer’s market on our own? It was super charming and there were so many dogs. The only thing I bought was a bunch of icicle lettuce. It was so beautiful I couldn’t resist it.

Ah yes. I tried to take an artsy photo of the chicken soup I made as a post-surgery comfort offering. I do not like chicken noodle soup, and I did not enjoy making it as it involved dealing with bone-in, skin-on chicken. Ew. But the recipient seemed pleased, which is the important thing.

Cat in a box.

Carla loves to take random photographs with my phone. Someday I should do an entire post of the photos Carla takes. I’m guessing it will be an array of Leo shots, snaps of toys she wanted me to buy that I said “put that on your Christmas / birthday list,” and pictures of things she wants my mother to paint. This sky photo is one of the latter; she doesn’t 100% understand what makes a photograph paintable yet. But the cloud pattern was quite delicate and lovely, I’ll give her that.

This is one of the planters in my backyard. I quite like how it turned out and I took a picture of it so I can remember which plants to buy next year. I packed the planters so full of flowers and plants, and so many of them got swallowed up by the more showy plants. So next year I am sticking with Coleus, whatever this vine-y plant is, and the white and pink flowers. (Are they impatiens? I should probably figure out what they are.) The petunias just don’t do well. Those little blue flowers on the left weren’t a good fix next to the more voluminous foliage. I got some wonderful balloon flowers for some of the other planters, and they were too small to show up. Maybe I need to try to propagate some to keep inside my house; I think they are shade-loving flowers. I like this combo, and it seemed to thrive in both shade and sun.

Allison and I had a few exchanges about pork chops and how small the ones we can buy are compared to the ones the recipe wants us to cook. Like, no way is this pork chop an inch thick. (Confidential to Allison: I will never eat another pork chop without giggling like a twelve-year-old boy. Thank you for this gift.)

This cartoon showed up in my Instagram feed the day after I’d been awakened something like three times by the cat, and then a fourth time by my child who had similarly been awakened by the cat and was bringing him to me to complain that she couldn’t go back to sleep.

Leo’s main personality trait is that he is curious about everything. Obviously, he had to examine all the groceries as I unloaded them. (He is NOT ALLOWED on the counter.) (He does not recognize any of my arbitrary and stupid rules. He is The Cat and this is his house and there is no place he will not go.)

Another in-car Carla photograph. It took me a minute to understand why she took this picture. Ah yes. The temperature. She is very, very deep into Gen Alpha slang these days. At an appointment recently, her doctor said something about “16 or 17” and Carla looked at me and whispered “six seven” and of course her doctor overheard so I had to explain what “six seven” means and, since it doesn’t mean anything, and since neither the doctor nor I listen to Skrilla or do Tik Tok, the doctor only got more and more confused and I felt like an idiot.

I made sandwiches for Carla’s sports team and this was the photo I took when I ran out of bread and needed to text my friend to bring me another loaf. Am not so good with the maths.

Carla and my husband and I went for a walk and Carla wanted to pose on this bench near the pond.

Leo is working on his strength training.

My dad taught me how to change the oil in my car this week! It’s something he’s been trying to teach me for decades, but I’ve only recently understood how useful a skill it would be to have… and how nice of a bonding experience with my dad it would be. It was much simpler a process than I anticipated. I also made a HUGE mess the first time I released the drain plug, and dropped the drain plug in that tub of oil. Fortunately, my dad had a cool magnetic tool that I could use to fish the plug out. I feel very Let Me Change All the Oil now, while the information is fresh in my mind. Of course, since it’s not a weekly project, I will probably have forgotten everything by the time I need to do it again. (Need me to change your oil?)

One of the hiking trails I frequent with a friend is in full fall bloom. The profusion of flowers is spectacular and we stopped frequently to take pictures and look up the names of the blossoms.

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Some Quick Bullets, Mainly About the Kitten

We have welcomed our new housemate!!!!!

By the way, it is Very Difficult to do anything at all when you have a kitten. He is quite darling and very distracting. Case in point: it has taken me three days to get this poor excuse for a post into WordPress.

He is what I consider to be the platonic ideal of a cat. He is playful and weird and does that thing where he will be walking sedately and then will suddenly take off for reasons known only to him. And yet he is also incredibly cuddly, and will sit on or beside his humans for hours, purring loudly. He has had no trouble identifying and using his litter box, he is already starting to come when we call him. He seems to prefer being in the same room as his humans, although he does enjoy exploring the house. He is friendly and cheerful and not easily startled. He loves to play with toys, especially these silly little crinkly mylar balls – two of which are already lost forever underneath our oven. He loves to look outside. He seems to prefer sleeping on his back, fluffy tummy bared.

When I called the vet to make our kitten’s first appointment, the (very kind and friendly) person I spoke to asked for his name, and then said, “Oh my god, my cat’s name is Leonardo, too!” And then he added, “We named him after ALL the Leonardos.” But then he could only think of two – DiCaprio and DaVinci. Are there other Leonardos? I mean, there’s the Ninja Turtle. But I’m pretty sure that’s a mononym in the spirit of Cher/Beyonce/Sting, right? Anyway, I’m trying to get the nickname Lenny to stick, but my husband and child are resisting with all their might and they might be wearing me down. I already have to scroll through my parents’ cat’s name and their dog’s name before I come up with Lenny, and with my kid saying her chosen nickname constantly… I don’t think I can keep it up. Lenny may end up being his blog name, which is a surprising benefit of having a blog. Perhaps I should have chosen a blog name for Carla instead of reserving them for potential future children.  (Edith and Eloise were my top contenders.) 

Pre- and now even peri- (intra-?) kitten, I have been sleeping pretty well – waking up only once-ish per night and falling back to sleep pretty quickly. Because sleep is normally a major challenge, I wanted to note for Future Me that sometimes it’s not. Is it because I am taking all the supplements right now? (Magnesium, B6, B12, iron, vitamin D – okay, so not all all but more than I was taking which was nothing.) The other thing I will note is that I am still tired. If I sit down, I will fall asleep. So either there’s something going on that we have not yet tested for (all my labs are totally normal, and my at-home sleep study showed no evidence of apnea), or – and this is my personal theory – being tired is just How It Is, and maybe I notice it more now because I am less busy.

 

My kid is still in school, but summertime is imminent and I Am Pumped. I am looking forward to more leisurely mornings, to spending time outside, to forcing encouraging my child to read through bribery the thrill of the vast literary canon.

On the cooking front, I am in one of those phases where I cannot think of a single food I want to eat, let alone make. We’re depending a lot on leftovers of the few things my husband suggests and/or takeout. To make matters more complicated, after such a long, damp, cool spring, we have suddenly been skyrocketed into the 80s and it’s too hot to turn on the oven. My air fryer makes a mean piece of salmon though.

Oh – okay, more about the kitten. 

So far, I have had itchy eyes but no other allergic reactions to the cat. And I could just as easily attribute my itchy eyes to the increase in pollen outside. 

Let’s see. Are there any negatives about having a cat? I mean, I can’t do anything unless I shut him away in his temporary room. But that’s not annoying as of yet. He does, of course, occasionally scratch the furniture which is not ideal. But I was expecting that, and we are also working on it. It took me all of two days to release my deeply-held conviction that I would never ever welcome a cat tree into my home; now we have a cat tree. He gets carsick, which is sad. Oh – he is obsessed with my houseplants, so I have temporarily relocated them to higher places and may need to re-home some of them. (Why are so many houseplants toxic???) He is also obsessed with climbing on the kitchen table, and then immediately shoving his entire head into whichever water glass is sitting there unattended. 

He has absolutely no grace. I thought cats were supposed to be agile and graceful and have good balance and land on their feet, but Lenny is unaware of these stereotypes. He leaps at things and misjudges the distance. He flops over on things with edges (cat tree, chair seat, ottoman) and falls off them. He trots along the back of the couch and slips off every few steps. I even asked the vet about it; she seemed unconcerned. Perhaps kittens are the equivalent of toddlers, lurching around drunkenly until they fully understand what it means to walk.  

One of my writing partners came over to meet Lenny and, ostensibly, to write. Focusing on our projects was… bordering on impossible. She suggested I get him his own computer. 

If it’s not entirely clear, I love him. He is perfection.