Starting at the Beginning

On my way home tonight I need to stop by our local library (to which I could compose an ode, if I had any poetic talent whatsoever), and pick up Spring Flowers, Spring Frost, by Ismail Kadare. It is the first book on my 1% Well-Read Challenge list, and I thought that I might as well just jump in and start at the top. For those linear-thinkers amongst us, perhaps my blog post title is inaccurate, since starting at the beginning would probably be Sister Carrie, but I'm just not feeling like embarking on a bit of Dreiser right now. I'm finishing Ursula LeGuin's Lavinia, and gave up hope last week on My Name is Red, by Orhan Pamuk. I almost never give up on a book already started, but I couldn't do this one, and I'm pretty sure I'd already attempted it once. I think it was the narrative in the first person that did me in (a rich comment coming from a blogger!). I didn't dislike it ... I just couldn't keep up with the changes in narrator. I'll put it on the "try again" list, where hopefully the third time is the charm. Perhaps when my brain isn't already taxed by wrangling two young children.

At the other end of the spectrum, for the second time I am facing a wrapping up, an ending of sorts. As a working and breastfeeding mom, I've become very good friends with my pump, an Avent Isis Iq Duo this time around. Oh, the many times I have cursed its existence! However, now that Miss T is over a year old, I can stop. But oddly enough ... I can't stop. I have a very hard time dropping the pumping, and not just for the restful breaks in my cave of an office with the soothing "whoosh-whoosh" of a breast pump as background noise. (I actually had a dairy farmer ask me if I was near a milking machine when I was using a hands-free pump and speaking on the telephone the last time around. I told him that indeed, I was. Surprise!) Breastfeeding is something my body has actually done well, and while I never try to rub that in, I do take a certain small amount of pride in sticking with it. But Miss T really needs to move on to other sources of nutrition, and I need every extra minute in my work day. So I'm trying to cut back to just once a day, and some day, I will drop that session as well. Perhaps its harder this time because I am so conflicted about stopping at two children. That decision isn't tied to this one, but it is one more step away from the baby stage in my life. Ah well, nothing lasts forever.