I have decided that I need to find a new Free Baby Health Nurse. This is going to be problematic, as the two closest shopping-centres to me both have the same nurse, the one I am trying to avoid. Now, C. seems perfectly competent, and I imagine she is reasonably good at what she does, it's just that she and I do not see eye to eye on one quite important thing.

C. advocates solidly and *very* insistantly for a white-bread-standard Western diet for Baby K.

I am a child of organic-meat-and-chickpea-favouring ex-hippies. I adore Japanese food and believe that having rice at all three meals of a given day is just dandy. I also believe that cold leftover potato is nature's perfect breakfast food. (Cold chips/french fries, baked potato, mashed potato, it's all good!)

Baby K is *not* eating a white-bread-standard Western diet. In fact, up until this week, she'd never encountered bread at all. It's not a big part of my diet, therefore it isn't a big part of hers. And I am *judged* because of this, despite the fact that C. acknowledges that Baby K is a rampantly healthy, alert, active little girl who gains weight with clockwork regularity. But she is not having fruit and cereal for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch, so clearly I'm doing something wrong, wrong, wrong.

I, personally, am a strong advocate for protein as well as carbohydrates for breakfast - and more than just what you'd find in a glass of milk, if we even drank milk, which we do not as we are lactose intolerant. It's much more conducive to stable blood-sugar and reliable energy throughout the morning than just sugar and carbohydrates, whether the sugar is fruit or Froot. Since hypoglycaemia runs in my family and diabetes in my husband's, frankly, I feel that Baby K's blood-sugar warrants a bit of care and attention in her formative years.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, apparently.

So is not eating wheat (gluten intolerance is so common in my family that the pediatrician strongly urged me to keep Baby K away from gluten in any form until she is one or two, no testing required) , only eating red meat once or twice a week (look, if it's good enough for the Heart Health people it's good enough for me) tofu as a breakfast food (it is delicious!) and using coconut cream in the baby's food. Polite horror was definitely C.'s reaction to that last suggestion, and she clearly didn't believe me when I explained that coconut is a staple food in many cultures and perfectly safe for babies!

Ethnocentrism always startles me, but never more than when it comes to food. I have talked to the offspring of quite a few former hippies over the years, and there are a few things that we all almost invariably agree on.

1) That health-food shop peanut butter, that stuff that's just mushed up peanuts, is *evil* and possibly an act of child abuse.

2) Sugar is awesome.

3) A Standard White-Bread Western Diet is intriguing when you're a kid and can't have it, but invariably turns out to be the most boring thing in the whole world after hommus.

4) Hommus tastes like bum.

I would never subject my child to mushed peanuts, no matter what people say about the salt and sugar in peanut butter. I am planning to keep her in the dark about sugar as long as possible, but will be open-handed with the honey and dried fruit to make up with it. Hommus... well, I'll let her try it sometime, but it's not compulsory.

And while I do make roast lamb and chicken soup upon occasion, I'm also planning to send her off to school with tamagoyaki and octopus dogs in her lunchbox, not Vegemite sandwiches. After all, all the magazines say you should feed your child what everyone else in the family eats.

As for C., I'll show her. I've just found a lovely recipe for fried eggplant. Looks like just the thing for finger-food.

Dressing Myself And Others

You know what's a completely thankless task? Learning to dress yourself.

Dressing yourself just paves the way to a lifetime of self-doubt, misunderstandings and frustration. If you are female, for example, you must live with the certain knowledge that every single day in which you leave the house, other women are judging your shoes. Not just looking at them, judging them. Heel too high, heel too low, too tarty too practical too red too shiny too boring too uncomfortable too everything! It doesn't end! And that's just shoes... let us not even go into what one's bra says about one. It's a lot more than anyone without breasts would suspect.

High-school is among the worst times for this, of course, when all your peers put every single item of clothing under a metaphorical microscope and you can spend a year in social purgatory because you wore white socks with black jeans. But it never really stops. If you walk out of the house wearing clothes, you will be judged by said clothes. Eventually you settle on a Look or Looks, accept that not everyone will approve, and move on.

Then.

Then you have a child.

Which you must dress.

And be judged.

Baby K is seven months old. Everyone knows she's not dressing herself. If I take her out of the house in pink corduroy cargo pants with eight pockets, a white t-shirt and a pink tie-dyed jacket, then everyone knows that I'm the one who chose the outfit, not her.

Actually, the pink cargo pants and pink jacket are okay. Because then everyone knows she's a girl. It's all cool, we're all on the same page. But Baby K's favourite colour is orange. (Really, she will go for something orange over any other colour). Orange is not a Girl Colour. I am obviously deliberately setting out to confuse people.

The blue overalls with the lion on the front have also caused confusion, unless teamed with a pink onesie. The blue overalls with the robot on the front lead to complete Gender Role Breakdown. Never mind that I'm a girl and I like robots... no, I am deliberately confusing people and trying to make her into some kind of freak of nature.

I don't know what the critics would make of the fact that I steadfastly refer to the plush turtle with the pink shell with daisies on it as 'Mr Turtle', because I don't want her to grow up thinking that pink and daisies is an exclusively girly thing.

Every mother gets judged on what her child wears. And while, yes, Baby K wears her orange lion outfit and her blue robot overalls and so on, she also wears a lot of pink. Not because she's a girl, or because I'm caving to the Gender Stereotype Mafia, but because I refuse to let anyone's opinions influence how I dress my child.

And her favourite colour may be orange, but mine is pink.

And sometimes green. But mostly, for now, it's pink.

She'll be dressing herself soon enough. Given that I wear comfy flat sandals and running shoes almost exclusively, I may have to get someone in to teach her about shoes.

Writing a novel with a young baby is actually quite difficult. Would not have picked that. In other startling news, rain does not help the laundry get dry and the baby yanking the cord out of the phone means it stops working. I am just learning so much today!

Still, it's been one of those delightfully rainy days which provide a perfect opportunity to remain in one's pyjamas all day, and I have a bag of crystallised pineapple, so my glass is half full.

I do need to buy a new phone, though. Baby K has a strong grip.

NaNoWriMo has begun!

And boy, have I not been the first horse out of the gate. More like 2,340,864th out of the gate. I love NaNoWriMo, and I do it every year, but Baby K really takes up a lot of time. This year's going to be a tough one. So far I'm about four thousand words behind, and it's only day three!

But I am determined. I am going to win this year if I have to spend every weekend pushing Baby K and her dad out of the door at daybreak and not letting them back in until sunset. They could stand to spend more time together, anyway.

I need to spend more time on the train. Baby K tends to either nap or amuse herself on the train, which will give me time to write on the handy-dandy netbook that I bought specifically *for* doing NaNo on the train.

I am also unhappy because my nice new e-book reader appears to be a dud. After more than 24 hours of charging, it still refuses to go beyond the startup screen. The identical reader bought at the same time by my husband is working fine. This is entirely unfair.

Of course, these things *do* always happen in November. I should have known, really.

Reading Fees

I have wandered (belatedly) into a collection of blog-posts discussing the concept of agents being allowed, as they currently are not, by the literary agents' professional trade groups of the USA, Australia, and New Zealand (the one in the UK allows limited exceptions), to charge reading fees for manuscripts under consideration.

I started here --> http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/06/should-literary-agents-charge-reading.html and followed some of the links for a fuller picture.

I am not an agent, and I am not represented by one, though I hope to be one day. So clearly I'm hardly an expert. But I personally would not pay an agent to read my manuscript, and would assume out-of-hand that anyone who wanted me to was at best woefully ill-mannered and at worst an outright scammer. I understand that some agents raised the issue that they feel they should be paid for the time they have to invest in reading the lengthy manuscripts and so on.

Well, no. Because as far as I understand the process, it goes like this:

Sending a query to an agent is like emailing your resume to a prospective employer. It gives them a basic idea of what you're capable of, what sort of work you'd like to do, and so on.

Sending a partial/synopsis/both is like going to a job interview. You interact a little, show the agent some of your metaphorical phone manner, and give them a chance to get to know your style a little better.

Sending a manuscript is like making it to the second-tier interview. You have a chance to put it all out there, make your best possible pitch, and take your shot at impressing the boss with your style, originality, and voice.

Then you get the job, or you don't.

No money changes hands, and it shouldn't. Nobody gets paid to conduct interviews in any other industry. They're interviewing you because they think you might be an asset working for them. If they want that asset, they have to do the interviews. It's an investment of time in potential future income.

I do not slip a crisp fifty into the hand of the person interviewing me for a position as a supermarket checkout operator. I wouldn't do it for an agent, either. First, because bribing your way into a position is not something I consider ethically acceptable. Second, because it's not the point - I am being interviewed, in theory, as a potential long-term asset, not a short-term revenue source.

I can see why agents who spend far too much of their time interviewing what turn out to be complete duds would like to stop losing money on it, but I don't think they should. Finding the gems is what agents *do*... and that requires some digging.

I don't expect anyone to pay me for the extra hours I spend doing research for a novel. I don't expect to have to pay anyone for the extra hours they spend doing research as to whether I'm a good prospective client, either.

And that is the Complete Outsider's viewpoint for today.

Verne

Jules Verne is, as every literate person surely knows, a Great Novelist Of Bygone Days. One of those authors everyone ought to read at some point, or so I've been told.

And to be fair, 'Around the World in 80 Days' had me enthralled. It was fascinating, it was fast-paced and readable, the characters were engaging... good stuff. I would recommend it to anyone.

'Journey to the Centre of The Earth'... not so much. (To be fair, this is the 1871 English translation which is known to be inaccurate in places, so it may be slightly better in its original form) Okay, the settings were convincing, the basic premise exciting, and at least one of the characters was interesting and likeable. Professor Hardwigg is so palpably excited by his discoveries and so willing to make any sacrifice for knowledge that he is absolutely convincing.

The novel's narrator, however, the Professor's nephew Harry? I have never wanted so fervently and so constantly to slap a fictional character. Oh, I've had my moments with others, but Harry was whiny, cowardly, stupid and self-absorbed without pause through the entire novel. He only went along at all because he wanted desperately to bone... I mean, marry his cousin, Hardwigg's daughter.

He whines from beginning to end of the novel. Poor Gretchen - I can only imagine what her married life would be like with that pitiful limp rag of a man.

Even so, it's better than '20,000 Leagues Under The Sea'.

Oh, the premise sounds exciting. Giant super-advanced submarine that no-one ever leaves, piloted by a mysterious captain with a dark past... it should be exciting, right?

But it's not. Oh, boy, is it not.

'20,000 Leagues Under The Sea' has to be one of the dullest books I've ever read in my entire life. Now, to be fair, I haven't read all of it... I gave up somewhere between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. I'm told it picks up a bit towards the end, but I just couldn't bring myself to keep reading any more. The narrator is a complete twerp (some of the other characters, like Ned Land the harpooner and Nemo himself are at least mildly interesting, but very one-note) and the story itself consists primarily of marine-biologist-joygasm for page after page after page after page after page after page after page after page... If I wanted a comprehensive list of *every fish ever to be identified anywhere in the entire world*, complete with paroxysms of rapture over their beauty and general awesomeness, I'd read a textbook.

'20,000 Leagues Under The Sea' actually does read like a textbook, for pages at a time. A condescending one, at that. I know that Verne considered it very important for his books to be accurate and informative, but he goes excruciatingly overboard in '20,000 Leagues', to the point where the rare occurrences of plot and/or action seem almost an intrusion on the boring effusions over fish.

I'm going to keep trying Verne, and have started 'Five Weeks in a Balloon', which so far is at least moderately interesting, although I'm not very far in yet. He has a way for presenting incredibly fanciful concepts with absolute realism that is absolutely fascinating, and he's certainly worth trying.

But if you want to make a start on reading Verne, make it 'Around the World in 80 Days', not '20,000 Leagues Under The Sea'.

Unless you really, really like fish.

Broccoli in the Bathtub

There is something arresting about the sight of a tiny broccoli floret in the bathtub.

It is something that so patently does not belong there. An entirely foreign object. Enough so that even I noticed it, and I generally have very little truck with the idea that any given object should be used only for its intended purpose.

I know why it was there, of course. My logic ran thusly.

1. The vegetable bin out of the fridge needs washing out.

2. The vegetable bin is twice as long as the kitchen sink.

3. Trying to balance the bin on the edge of the sink with one hand while scrubbing with the other is inconvenient, annoying, likely to splash water on me, and is quite noisy.

4. The baby is sleeping.

5. The bathtub is much bigger than the sink....

I was right. It was much easier, even given the need to bend right over, to wash the vegetable bin in the bathtub than it is in the kitchen sink. There was hot water on hand, I didn't have to constantly juggle the thing around - it was perfect.

Which got me thinking about how many things I use for purposes not intended by the manufacturor. There was another incident of this only this morning, during a conversation with the Hedgehog, which went something like this.

"I can't find the tea-tree oil." (Said while rooting through the medicine cabinet, which is in the kitchen because there's not enough shelf-space in the bathroom and I see no earthly reason why the medicines should be in the bathroom if it's inconvenient, just because everyone else puts them there) "Are you sure we have any?"

"Look in the bathroom."

"Where?"

"On top of the cabinet. The stuff we wash floors with."

Because I do, in fact, wash the floors with tea-tree oil. It works a treat on lino, as it happens, and I don't like using harsher disinfectants in the house, given that we have pets and any day now a crawling Baby K who will lick the floor on the slightest provocation. But it's not actually meant for the purpose, and the bottle I have is technically the water-soluble medicinal stuff.

I think my tendency to use whatever tool happens to be most convenient comes of spending my early childhood often travelling, often out in the bush far from such civilized amenities as running water, and always short of money. I blame my pack-rat tendencies on the same thing.

And for the record, if you have something too large for the kitchen sink, I highly recommend the bathtub. Fill the thing (not the tub, which is wasteful) with warm water and soap, and off you go.

Scintillating

It's really very difficult to scintillate on command. I don't know how the likes of John Scalzi, Dave Hingsberger, Lance Mannion et al do it every day. And they make it look terribly easy, which I imagine is why there are so many blog hopefuls who crash and burn within weeks. The good ones make it look easy, but it isn't.

I've found myself further hampered by the fact that I am currently spending most of my time at home alone with a three-month-old, who is adorable but not yet what I would call a stimulating conversationalist. She takes up nearly all my time and attention, and so I've found myself having real difficulty thinking up topics of conversation - for the blog or, sadly, in in-person chat - that don't involve her in some way. Since I have no intention of making a parenting blog out of this thing, that's a problem.

But I'm going to keep trying. Because I love to write and I have lots of opinions and frankly, the idea of being able to interact with other adults without leaving the house is very appealing right now.

So, as of now, I begin to scintillate on command on a series of non-baby topics like books, sci-fi/fantasy, and the state of modern fandom, which is not what it was in my day when everything was better and we walked uphill both ways to the comic shop in the snow to buy X-Men and YOU! BENDIS! GET OFF MY LAWN!

Ahem.

Okay, so scintillating starts tomorrow.

I wonder if it would seem terribly derivative if I taped ham to my cat?

And already I'm missing days. I can only claim as an excuse that Baby K's first immunizations were traumatic for both of us. She's been fussy and unsettled since, and I can hardly blame her, since her own mother held her in place while a horrible, mean nurse jabbed huge metal spikes into her legs and poured something nasty into her mouth and made her choke. And then she was sick, twice.

I know immunizations are important. I know polio and diptheria are nothing to mess with.

I still feel intensely, horribly guilty.

I'm told this is common.

I think waking me up every hour during that first night was entirely justified on her part. I still really, really hope that she sleeps better tonight!

Another evening post. I really do have to get better at this.

I am rereading, for the far-to-many-to-count-eth time, one of L. M. Montgomery's 'Anne books'. Anne's House of Dreams, to be specific. I never get tired of reading Ms Montgomery's work - I love her use of language and her beautifully defined characters.

I can trace my determination to be a writer back to reading another Montgomery work, Emily of New Moon. When I read the vivid descriptions of Emily's drive to write and create stories it was an absolute revelation for me. Because I'd always made up stories, for as long as I could remember, but it had never occurred to me to write any of them down. Once I'd made that leap, though... wow, did it seem obvious. I loved stories, and I wanted to write them. More than twenty years later, I still do - and have written quite a few. Nothing publishable as yet, but practice makes perfect.

That's one of the reasons I created this blog. While I love to write, I am extremely undisciplined and disorganized. I need to practice writing every single day. Even if it's just a bit.

And if I should become published at some happy future time, having a blog already going will probably be a good thing. I'm told all the cool writers have them these days.

And it's this or bloody Twitter, and I just don't have the attention span for that. I can barely work Facebook. In MY day, you know, we had Livejournals and that was it! And we were grateful for it! And three icons was enough for anyone!

Montgomery and Livejournal. I am such a dinosaur some days.

Three days in and I'm already posting in the evening instead of the morning. But that still counts as every day, at least!

Today I went to the Pregnancy, Babies and Children's Expo, with Baby K; the spousal unit who shall be known henceforth as the Hedgehog (he picked it); and my mother. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but was looking forward to seeing a few things, like shaped cloth diapers, out of the packaging and ready to be examined before purchasing.

It was actually kind of awesome. I've been to a few small comic-cons - okay, one, but I got to Supanova every single year except for this year because I was in the hospital after having Baby K - and it was very much like that, only with babies instead of comics or tv shows.

Lots of merch - some good, some overpriced, and some just plain odd.

Small amounts of overpriced food.

Special con-only deals for everything from sippy cups to baby shampoo to lambskin rugs.

Lots of haphazardly dressed people with blank expressions wandering around (a much higher proportion of women, however).

Shiny stuff that you had never before imagined but immediately had to have, else life would not be worth living.

I have clearly been living in some ivory tower of geekdom, because I didn't know the normals had cons. But they totally do! They just have different themes to base them around, like babies or home improvement or something. And, even better, there was a lot of the same general cameraderie. 'We're all here for the same reason', said the polite rounds of pram-tango and the weary but sincere smiles. 'Baby fandom, sweet as, eh?'

The understanding extended to Sharing One's Expertise and Admiring Shiny Toys, too. I weighed in on a couple of conversations like the one about stainless steel baby bottles (Mine's only ten weeks old and she's already almost outgrown the 125ml bottles, definitely go for the next size up) and felt ridiculously smug about the way the pregnant women nodded thoughtfully at my imparted wisdom. It's amazing how a ten-week crash course can make one feel like an expert.

As for the Shiny Toys - I don't drive an actual vehicle. My depth perception isn't up to it. But Baby K rides around in a sweet toffee-tinted Strider Plus with second-seat capabilities, and I got stopped more than once with the question 'how do you like the pram? Would you recommend it?' I, as it happens, totally would. I love the Strider Plus. It's big, but not too heavy for me to manage. It's easy to get on and off the train on my own, and since I don't drive it needs to be easy to handle on public transport. It's adjustable from newborn to four-year-old seating arrangements with a minimum of effort. Baby K can face towards me now, and later will be able to face outwards to see the world. The basket underneath is HUGE. Every time I was stopped I sounded like I was being paid to advertise the things, but I swear every word was true. And I think I now have a slightly better understanding of how it feels to have one's vehicle admired by jealous passers-by.

To the Hedgehog's surprise and my delight, we actually had a very good time. And I heartily recommend to any geek who has recently spawned or is going to that they find one of these baby show thingies and attend it. Because if it's anything like the one I went to today?

You'll feel right at home.

Giant Shoes

My daughter celebrated her ten-week 'birthday' by sleeping through the night.

I will pause for a moment to allow any other parents reading this to go green with envy.

Baby K - so-called because her other nicknames are potentially very embarrassing, and she might read this one day, and who wants the whole internet to know that you were called 'Miss Wiggles' when you were a baby? - has so far been an unnervingly good baby.

She rarely cries.

She sleeps well.

She communicates clearly with gestures and fusses, even at such a young age.

And now she's sleeping through the night. Which is great, don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying this whole sleeping thing enormously, but it has me worried. Surely this cannot last. After all those dire warnings, those portentious mutterings from more experienced mothers, how long can she continue cheerful and cooperative?

That other shoe is going to fall sooner or later. And judging from how well everything's going, that other shoe is going to be approximately the metaphorical size of Queensland. (For Americans, the state of Texas will, if memory serves, fit into the state of Queensland four or five times over with room around the edges.)

I suspect the other shoe's name will be 'Teething'.

I should enjoy that sleep while I'm getting it.

One day I want to be a published novelist.

One day I want to be a mother of more than one.

One day I want to learn to cook... well.

One day I want to be organized.

One day I want to learn Japanese.

One day I want to master reading the tarot.

One day I want to travel the world.

One day I want to write a blog.


Well. One down.