update

In between my last post and this, I turned forty. Funny to think of myself as forty when I'm still following a toddler around. I'd sort of envisioned myself at forty as this mature matron looking quite dignified...and instead here I am dashing about with my hair all wild about my head and quite topsy-turvy because that's what life with a toddler is like.

I don't know how forty's supposed to feel like, but I sure don't feel a day older .

Because life has been so hectic and rushed, we took a break and it's done me a world of good. I'm feeling quite laid back and relaxed and I'm thinking these sunny days are part of the reason for me feeling very good inspite of my struggle with hay fever.

Preparations for the summer are underway. We've been searching on the net, looking for places to go and spend our summer vacation. Being carless people, we have to rely on public transportation and our bikes, so a french vacation is out of the picture until I've earned my driver's license and can drive us there.

We do have to take our budget into consideration as well. Vacation parks in The Netherlands are quite expensive, and a week's holiday costs more than half a month's paycheck. I stare at the prices and wonder how other folks manage to go on vacation, not once, but twice in a year. It does look like luck is on our side. Jan's decision to take the last three weeks of the summer vacation seems to be quite favorable as during the last weeks of summer, the park we've settled on gives families with children under 12 years old a 20% discount. This is something we'll have to keep in mind when we look into our vacation next year.

We'll probably have to take my bike with us, but otherwise, the train goes almost all the way to the boat we have to take which will cross over from the mainland to the island where we plan to spend a week. My sister-in-law says there's a rent-a-bike on the shore, and so Jan and Joel can just rent bikes for the length of our stay.

I'm actually beginning to look forward to the summer break. We'll have to take one of those trekker's backpacks for our stuff and probably will have to load another backpack onto the bike. Packing will have to be as minimal as possible. The lovely thing about vacations...it's relaxed and anything goes...er...at least that's my idea of vacation.

I shall be taking books and the laptop and hope I get time to write.

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During this spring break, I finally got around to sitting down and focusing my attention on Achiote Seeds with the poetry of Barbara Jane Reyes, Rich Villar and Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor.

This slim volume is thought-provoking and inspiring, and I found myself thinking on the way my fictions have been going and the role of the woman in the stories I've been writing. I'm quite curious now and want to take a look at women in genre work...I want to observe the roles these women play and how they are reflective of the convictions of the author/writer.

Barbara Jane Reyes writes:

What are feminist retellings of our stories important to write, and why do we need new, other ways of telling our stories?

And Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor responds with:

I question separateness, of our/their. I question stories that are only feminine/woman in nature. I question exclusion, forgotteness, victimhood, appropriation, authenticity.

There's excellent dialogue going on here, and I love how these thoughts lead me to spin my own thoughts and to examine my own feminism.

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It's liberating to be comfortable in one's own skin.