so many possibilities
splashed
in wet morning
sunlight
against bright white
snow
under a dripping
gutter.
splashed
in wet morning
sunlight
against bright white
snow
under a dripping
gutter.
Showing posts with label Seasons Change and So Do I. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seasons Change and So Do I. Show all posts
Monday, April 9, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Schooling
My mom tells a story about my first day of school. I walked out of the red brick building at the end of the day and when she asked me: How was your first day? I replied: Well, I won't be going back THERE again. We laugh when she tells it, but I believe I was dead serious. I still remember my kindergarten teacher as one of the meanest people I've ever met. She brought her newborn baby to school one day in the middle of the year, and although I was a well-behaved and generally kind little kid, I vividly remember thinking: I'd like to hurt her baby. So she knows how she makes other people feel.
Another one my mom tells: Shortly after I started kindergarten we were driving through the city, and I was sitting in the passenger seat (back before the dawn of booster seats and airbags), gazing out the window at the passing scenery. Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" began to play on the radio, and I grew animated and emphatic, singing along with the lyrics: We don't need no education! We don't need no thought control!
In light of these stories, it's amusing that I became a teacher. Or it could be that I had strong opinions about education right from the start.
The first time I heard of the school where I've been planning to enroll my son, I gasped loudly in the middle of an Irish pub and then read aloud from the newspaper to my husband. Our city had just moved from an open enrollment plan to neighborhood schools, and kids were being moved from the schools they'd previously attended to whatever building they were assigned by a street-by-street district map.
We live in a middle-class neighborhood backed-up against poverty stricken pockets; our whole city looks like this. We didn't live here back then, but I was familiar with the name of the neighborhood. And parents from this neighborhood were being asked to pull their kids from a school with a decent reputation to send them to one that ended up being closed down a few years later by the federal government under No Child Left Behind (Remember how the government could come in and close down failing schools if they didn't make adequate yearly progress? That's what happened here.).
A group of parents banded together to sue the district. Their lawyer was quoted in the newspaper, commenting on the fact that these kids had to leave their school of choice to attend the newly-assigned school with the bad reputation: This school isn't suitable for middle-class children.
I gasped aloud over my entree, because I couldn't believe he'd say that out loud, to a reporter. But it's suitable for poor kids!? I said to my husband.
Of course, once we moved into the neighborhood, and I did my research, which school do you suppose I wanted my son to attend?
No Child Left Behind expired in January, along with parental rights to school choice. The transfer request form disappeared from the district website; the woman who answered my call in the district office chuckled when I asked about my chances at getting my son into the decent school.
She chuckled.
I'm guessing that means my chances don't look very good?
Because I'm at home, teaching these babies, and I have no colleagues to talk to, I've been reading voraciously: everything I can find on early childhood brain development, activities for learning in the home, self-directed learning, promoting literacy in young learners. I'm bursting with excitement every day for all the amazing potential that education contains!
I look at my boy, who never runs out of questions and ideas. He's full of stories and theories; he overflows with energy and joy. His mind races like his heartbeat, only faster, and I imagine I can see the neurons pulsing, the dendrites reaching out in every direction. They only grow when you feed them, you know. Some of them grow like weeds, and others shrivel and die, and this is just how the brain works, you know? But you have to feed the ones you want to grow.
All this is to say: I'm thinking about homeschooling. It's never anything I thought I'd do. But things change, and here we are.
Another one my mom tells: Shortly after I started kindergarten we were driving through the city, and I was sitting in the passenger seat (back before the dawn of booster seats and airbags), gazing out the window at the passing scenery. Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" began to play on the radio, and I grew animated and emphatic, singing along with the lyrics: We don't need no education! We don't need no thought control!
In light of these stories, it's amusing that I became a teacher. Or it could be that I had strong opinions about education right from the start.
* * *
The first time I heard of the school where I've been planning to enroll my son, I gasped loudly in the middle of an Irish pub and then read aloud from the newspaper to my husband. Our city had just moved from an open enrollment plan to neighborhood schools, and kids were being moved from the schools they'd previously attended to whatever building they were assigned by a street-by-street district map.
We live in a middle-class neighborhood backed-up against poverty stricken pockets; our whole city looks like this. We didn't live here back then, but I was familiar with the name of the neighborhood. And parents from this neighborhood were being asked to pull their kids from a school with a decent reputation to send them to one that ended up being closed down a few years later by the federal government under No Child Left Behind (Remember how the government could come in and close down failing schools if they didn't make adequate yearly progress? That's what happened here.).
A group of parents banded together to sue the district. Their lawyer was quoted in the newspaper, commenting on the fact that these kids had to leave their school of choice to attend the newly-assigned school with the bad reputation: This school isn't suitable for middle-class children.
I gasped aloud over my entree, because I couldn't believe he'd say that out loud, to a reporter. But it's suitable for poor kids!? I said to my husband.
Of course, once we moved into the neighborhood, and I did my research, which school do you suppose I wanted my son to attend?
* * *
No Child Left Behind expired in January, along with parental rights to school choice. The transfer request form disappeared from the district website; the woman who answered my call in the district office chuckled when I asked about my chances at getting my son into the decent school.
She chuckled.
I'm guessing that means my chances don't look very good?
* * *
Because I'm at home, teaching these babies, and I have no colleagues to talk to, I've been reading voraciously: everything I can find on early childhood brain development, activities for learning in the home, self-directed learning, promoting literacy in young learners. I'm bursting with excitement every day for all the amazing potential that education contains!
I look at my boy, who never runs out of questions and ideas. He's full of stories and theories; he overflows with energy and joy. His mind races like his heartbeat, only faster, and I imagine I can see the neurons pulsing, the dendrites reaching out in every direction. They only grow when you feed them, you know. Some of them grow like weeds, and others shrivel and die, and this is just how the brain works, you know? But you have to feed the ones you want to grow.
* * *
All this is to say: I'm thinking about homeschooling. It's never anything I thought I'd do. But things change, and here we are.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Just Around the Corner
My son got a Frog and Toad book from my mom for Christmas. In one of the stories, Frog keeps walking around corners, looking for Spring. I think I've been making the same mistake as Frog, assuming I'll just stumble across it each time I turn a corner.
I can't help but point out, though: he does find it in the end.
* * *
I started a new job on Monday; I'll be teaching three evenings a week: yoga or pilates. This will make me busier than I already am, which is not necessarily a good thing (an exercise class at the end of a ten hour day! i feel tired just thinking about it!), but it's doing something I love, which has a higher net gain, so we're going for it. Two nights a week I'll have the option of bringing the kids to the brand-new childcare, so my husband will get some time to himself, which I know he needs, too.
We're slowly figuring out what work-life balance looks like in our home. I keep hoping Spring is right around the corner with that question, but I think it may be a bit of a walk, yet, before we stumble into the sweet spot.
* * *
The housekeeper has been coming weekly. Here's the difference:
When I'm walking through the house, picking up all the millions of tiny toys that four kids under four have trailed in their wake as they wander to and fro for ten hours a day, and returning them to their rightful baskets and bins, and noticing all the curious crumbs and baby dustbunnies who seem so intent on growing up fast and then reproducing as rabbits are wont to do, here's what I think:
Should I text Nichole?
And then I think:
Yes, yes I should.
Ooh, these toys look so cute arranged here! Let me pull these puzzles up front and see how the kids like them this week!
What I DON'T think anymore is this:
OMG, these floors desperately need to be cleaned. When can I do it? Will I have the ENERGY to do it at 10pm tonight? Can I get away with sweeping? WHAT is that sticky stuff? HOW did I miss it when I raced through with a clorox wipe after lunch? But the baby was sobbing and hanging on my leg, so tired she needed to be put down for nap right away, and I had three other sets of hands to wash, and three highchair trays, and OH MY GOD, WHEN am I going to get these floors done? Can I squeeze it in at naptime? But the kitchen is next to the baby's room and the bathroom is next to the toddler's room, and neither has been sleeping well lately, so filling and emptying the mop bucket is likely to wake them up, and nap is the only time I have alone with my three year old, and we like to hang out together in the quiet (which also makes it more likely the others will sleep). Should I give that up for the floors? DO I HAVE TO START GETTING UP AT DAWN TO CLEAN THE FLOORS, GOOD GOD, HOW WILL I EVER DO IT? I CAN'T KEEP UP! I CAN'T KEEP UP! I CAN'T KEEP UP!
From a mental health perspective, I think we can all agree, the first is preferable.
* * *
We've had the easiest winter I remember in a long time. I can jog, outside, at least once a week. Snow falls occasionally, but it doesn't stick. I'm not having my usual argument with myself about how I really ought to take up skiing. Today it's nearly 50 degrees. I think I'm going to try and fit a jog in.
It's not as simple as a jog on a Wednesday afternoon. I want to write it like it is, probably because I wish it was that simple. And in some moments, it is.
It's still just February. I'll be working evenings AND I've agreed to take one of the boys full-time for the next two months. I also signed my three-year old up for a twice-a-week afternoon preschool (he went from complaining about not wanting to go to preschool when he turned four to suggesting that he attend a preschool for threes, starting now! I made a couple calls and found an opening at what appears to be a wonderful little place for little people! He starts next week.), and I'll have to transport him, with two other kids, during what should be their naptime. My car needs new tires. My husband's job continues to be incredibly demanding. We still need to eat those pesky three squares every day. Any number of things can -and will- overwhelm me in the next few weeks.
But right now, in this particular moment?
It feels like Spring is just around the corner.
I'll take it.
I can't help but point out, though: he does find it in the end.
* * *
I started a new job on Monday; I'll be teaching three evenings a week: yoga or pilates. This will make me busier than I already am, which is not necessarily a good thing (an exercise class at the end of a ten hour day! i feel tired just thinking about it!), but it's doing something I love, which has a higher net gain, so we're going for it. Two nights a week I'll have the option of bringing the kids to the brand-new childcare, so my husband will get some time to himself, which I know he needs, too.
We're slowly figuring out what work-life balance looks like in our home. I keep hoping Spring is right around the corner with that question, but I think it may be a bit of a walk, yet, before we stumble into the sweet spot.
* * *
The housekeeper has been coming weekly. Here's the difference:
When I'm walking through the house, picking up all the millions of tiny toys that four kids under four have trailed in their wake as they wander to and fro for ten hours a day, and returning them to their rightful baskets and bins, and noticing all the curious crumbs and baby dustbunnies who seem so intent on growing up fast and then reproducing as rabbits are wont to do, here's what I think:
Should I text Nichole?
And then I think:
Yes, yes I should.
Ooh, these toys look so cute arranged here! Let me pull these puzzles up front and see how the kids like them this week!
What I DON'T think anymore is this:
OMG, these floors desperately need to be cleaned. When can I do it? Will I have the ENERGY to do it at 10pm tonight? Can I get away with sweeping? WHAT is that sticky stuff? HOW did I miss it when I raced through with a clorox wipe after lunch? But the baby was sobbing and hanging on my leg, so tired she needed to be put down for nap right away, and I had three other sets of hands to wash, and three highchair trays, and OH MY GOD, WHEN am I going to get these floors done? Can I squeeze it in at naptime? But the kitchen is next to the baby's room and the bathroom is next to the toddler's room, and neither has been sleeping well lately, so filling and emptying the mop bucket is likely to wake them up, and nap is the only time I have alone with my three year old, and we like to hang out together in the quiet (which also makes it more likely the others will sleep). Should I give that up for the floors? DO I HAVE TO START GETTING UP AT DAWN TO CLEAN THE FLOORS, GOOD GOD, HOW WILL I EVER DO IT? I CAN'T KEEP UP! I CAN'T KEEP UP! I CAN'T KEEP UP!
From a mental health perspective, I think we can all agree, the first is preferable.
* * *
We've had the easiest winter I remember in a long time. I can jog, outside, at least once a week. Snow falls occasionally, but it doesn't stick. I'm not having my usual argument with myself about how I really ought to take up skiing. Today it's nearly 50 degrees. I think I'm going to try and fit a jog in.
It's not as simple as a jog on a Wednesday afternoon. I want to write it like it is, probably because I wish it was that simple. And in some moments, it is.
It's still just February. I'll be working evenings AND I've agreed to take one of the boys full-time for the next two months. I also signed my three-year old up for a twice-a-week afternoon preschool (he went from complaining about not wanting to go to preschool when he turned four to suggesting that he attend a preschool for threes, starting now! I made a couple calls and found an opening at what appears to be a wonderful little place for little people! He starts next week.), and I'll have to transport him, with two other kids, during what should be their naptime. My car needs new tires. My husband's job continues to be incredibly demanding. We still need to eat those pesky three squares every day. Any number of things can -and will- overwhelm me in the next few weeks.
But right now, in this particular moment?
It feels like Spring is just around the corner.
I'll take it.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Snow
Everything outside is covered in white, and it keeps on falling. The bare branches outside my window are frosted delicacies, and the city streets look cleaner than white china right from the dishwasher, whiter than a duvet cover freshly laundered in a bleach load. The city sleeps under a snow blanket, and loathes to rise.
I spent last night unable to sleep, thinking about my boy (my baby!) starting school next fall. Or not, as the case may be. There's this whole new world, waiting for us just beyond the horizon. Our worlds keep changing so quickly it's hard to catch up. Who knows where we'll be by next fall.
But today is the first real snowfall. My husband has a snow day. My kids are still asleep, even though one of their friends has arrived and is happily bogarting the train tracks and engines.
Today we'll stay in, and stay warm.
There is comfort in that.
I spent last night unable to sleep, thinking about my boy (my baby!) starting school next fall. Or not, as the case may be. There's this whole new world, waiting for us just beyond the horizon. Our worlds keep changing so quickly it's hard to catch up. Who knows where we'll be by next fall.
But today is the first real snowfall. My husband has a snow day. My kids are still asleep, even though one of their friends has arrived and is happily bogarting the train tracks and engines.
Today we'll stay in, and stay warm.
There is comfort in that.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Summertime Yellows (Cause it Sure Ain't the Blues!)
Holy hell, it's July! How did that happen?
The baby is growing like the weeds in our overgrown yard. The boy is bossing everyone and everything around (NO kitty-ditty! You canNOT sit on my chair! It is MINE! That would be a VERY BAD idea!). The husband is home for the summer, slogging through slow mornings sans coffee, as is his summertime custom.
I race off to work, late almost every day. It's so hard to say goodbye to my family, sleepy eyed and pajama'd in the family kitchen while I dart out the door in (still rather ill-fitting) work clothes. Kisses scattered in all directions, bags hanging over both arms, and one eye on the clock to calculate the time I'll arrive at the office, add five hours, and determine exactly when I can come back home to my loves.
It's summertime, and while the livin' ain't exactly easy with babies and yard work and a house somehow always in need of reorganization, it is sweet. Sweet like raspberries, lemonade, and sweet tea brewing in glass jars on the deck. Sweet like weather that beckons you to forget all the items on the to-do-list-that-won't-ever-die, sit down in the late afternoon sun and take note of the perfectly still air. So hot it could conceivably be another hot day from another hot year in the still, hot silence of your memory.
Or it could simply be now. Just one moment in this particular summer, staring at the shimmery air beating off the blacktop and feeling as if anything is possible.
God, I love summer.
The baby is growing like the weeds in our overgrown yard. The boy is bossing everyone and everything around (NO kitty-ditty! You canNOT sit on my chair! It is MINE! That would be a VERY BAD idea!). The husband is home for the summer, slogging through slow mornings sans coffee, as is his summertime custom.
I race off to work, late almost every day. It's so hard to say goodbye to my family, sleepy eyed and pajama'd in the family kitchen while I dart out the door in (still rather ill-fitting) work clothes. Kisses scattered in all directions, bags hanging over both arms, and one eye on the clock to calculate the time I'll arrive at the office, add five hours, and determine exactly when I can come back home to my loves.
It's summertime, and while the livin' ain't exactly easy with babies and yard work and a house somehow always in need of reorganization, it is sweet. Sweet like raspberries, lemonade, and sweet tea brewing in glass jars on the deck. Sweet like weather that beckons you to forget all the items on the to-do-list-that-won't-ever-die, sit down in the late afternoon sun and take note of the perfectly still air. So hot it could conceivably be another hot day from another hot year in the still, hot silence of your memory.
Or it could simply be now. Just one moment in this particular summer, staring at the shimmery air beating off the blacktop and feeling as if anything is possible.
God, I love summer.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
March is Here!
So much to say, but time and inclination don't seem to be lining up together lately. One of these nights, I promise ... I think I feel a random list post coming on, one where I empty my brain onto the screen and see where it takes us!
All in all, life is pretty wonderful right now. Here's a little taste of what today looked like:
All in all, life is pretty wonderful right now. Here's a little taste of what today looked like:
How much longer do I have to dress like this?
Hey, maybe not so much longer after all! There's life under the snow!
Mud is a sign of spring. And so: mud is beautiful!
Happy, happy March! I wish you more blessings than raindrops. And more raindrops than snowflakes (fingers tightly crossed!). I'm taking this week to count my blessings, and they feel deeper than the snowbanks that have buried us since December. Hope yours are too!
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
ReRun: A Metaphor for Winter
Scene: My Inner Therapist's Office. Winter's in one chair; I'm in another. My Inner Therapist is gazing down her nose at us through cat frame eyeglasses. We all look uncomfortable.
My Inner Therapist: So we're here today because LazyBones *shuffling through intake paperwork* wrote some things on a blog? Is that correct? On the Internet? And Winter, that made you feel.....well, why don't you tell us? How did that make you feel?
Winter: It made me feel terrible, just terrible. *Sniff* Can I have a tissue? I'm sorry, I just, this is very emotional for me. The holidays always bring up a lot of emotions, and then this...this attack! Out of nowhere! I just...this is difficult.
MIT: Take your time Winter, we're here.
Would you like to tell us more about these holiday emotions?
W: Everyone wants me around for Christmas, and New Year's, but then it's just Poof! Be Gone! Like I'm not good for anything else! It hurts! Every year I give it my all, I give everything, and in the end I just...*whispers*...I just feel so used.
MIT: LazyBones, how does it make you feel to hear what Winter is expressing here?
LazyBones: Well damn, Winter, I wasn't trying to bring up all that. I mean, it wasn't even personal! It's like, you're just a metaphor, Winter. A metaphor for the existential emptiness we all experience from time to time. I was just using you as a metaphor...
W: So you WERE using me! I knew it. I knew it.
LB: Not like that! I just wanted to express the melancholy and the rage I was feeling, and you seemed like a good symbol for that. I'm sorry Winter. I never meant to hurt you.
MIT: This is good, this is good, we're airing our feelings here. Winter, would you care to respond?
W: It's hard for me to accept the apology after yesterday's post. I was treated like a cheap floozy. It's hard to come back from that. LazyBones has proven that entertaining this...blog audience...comes before my feelings, and I don't think I'm ready to forgive that right now. I'm more than a metaphor! I am a season. I deserve more.
LB: More!? More!? You already get six months of the year, and Summer, Spring and Fall share the other six! How is that fair? When I lived in Arizona you barely got a month! Now we're in upstate New York, you get six months and you deserve more!? You take over half the year, and get all the major holidays and then you complain about being a metaphor? Winter, I'm sorry, but when you take up six months worth of my psychic space, you end up as a metaphor.
And yesterday? Okay, I came at you wrong. You're not a cheap floozy; I'm just not ready to commit to you and--you're right--I shouldn't have tried sweet-talking you that way. My Inner Playa came out as a metaphor for making up, and my metaphors got mixed. I didn't meant to hurt you.
Besides, it's an honor to be a metaphor. All the seasons have been metaphors for me.
W: Really? *dabs eyes* Even Summer?
LB: Yes, and I complain about Summer too. She's stifling; she has a forced cheerfulness about her, and her expectations are always too high.
MIT: How does this change things for you, Winter?
W: Well, I appreciate the apologies. I do. And now that I know Summer is a metaphor, I feel...better somehow. Like it's not as personal as I thought before. I've been told I tend to make things all about me.
I guess I do need to learn to detach. I've been working on that with my own therapist.
MIT: Good Winter, good. Keep that up. And LazyBones, how are you feeling about our session today?
LB: I want to get along with Winter, I really do, but we've had issues all my life, and.....at this point, all I can say is I'll try.
MIT: Alright, good work you two, I feel like we really started a dialogue here. We can continue this at our next session. We'll leave it at that for today.
My Inner Therapist: So we're here today because LazyBones *shuffling through intake paperwork* wrote some things on a blog? Is that correct? On the Internet? And Winter, that made you feel.....well, why don't you tell us? How did that make you feel?
Winter: It made me feel terrible, just terrible. *Sniff* Can I have a tissue? I'm sorry, I just, this is very emotional for me. The holidays always bring up a lot of emotions, and then this...this attack! Out of nowhere! I just...this is difficult.
MIT: Take your time Winter, we're here.
Would you like to tell us more about these holiday emotions?
W: Everyone wants me around for Christmas, and New Year's, but then it's just Poof! Be Gone! Like I'm not good for anything else! It hurts! Every year I give it my all, I give everything, and in the end I just...*whispers*...I just feel so used.
MIT: LazyBones, how does it make you feel to hear what Winter is expressing here?
LazyBones: Well damn, Winter, I wasn't trying to bring up all that. I mean, it wasn't even personal! It's like, you're just a metaphor, Winter. A metaphor for the existential emptiness we all experience from time to time. I was just using you as a metaphor...
W: So you WERE using me! I knew it. I knew it.
LB: Not like that! I just wanted to express the melancholy and the rage I was feeling, and you seemed like a good symbol for that. I'm sorry Winter. I never meant to hurt you.
MIT: This is good, this is good, we're airing our feelings here. Winter, would you care to respond?
W: It's hard for me to accept the apology after yesterday's post. I was treated like a cheap floozy. It's hard to come back from that. LazyBones has proven that entertaining this...blog audience...comes before my feelings, and I don't think I'm ready to forgive that right now. I'm more than a metaphor! I am a season. I deserve more.
LB: More!? More!? You already get six months of the year, and Summer, Spring and Fall share the other six! How is that fair? When I lived in Arizona you barely got a month! Now we're in upstate New York, you get six months and you deserve more!? You take over half the year, and get all the major holidays and then you complain about being a metaphor? Winter, I'm sorry, but when you take up six months worth of my psychic space, you end up as a metaphor.
And yesterday? Okay, I came at you wrong. You're not a cheap floozy; I'm just not ready to commit to you and--you're right--I shouldn't have tried sweet-talking you that way. My Inner Playa came out as a metaphor for making up, and my metaphors got mixed. I didn't meant to hurt you.
Besides, it's an honor to be a metaphor. All the seasons have been metaphors for me.
W: Really? *dabs eyes* Even Summer?
LB: Yes, and I complain about Summer too. She's stifling; she has a forced cheerfulness about her, and her expectations are always too high.
MIT: How does this change things for you, Winter?
W: Well, I appreciate the apologies. I do. And now that I know Summer is a metaphor, I feel...better somehow. Like it's not as personal as I thought before. I've been told I tend to make things all about me.
I guess I do need to learn to detach. I've been working on that with my own therapist.
MIT: Good Winter, good. Keep that up. And LazyBones, how are you feeling about our session today?
LB: I want to get along with Winter, I really do, but we've had issues all my life, and.....at this point, all I can say is I'll try.
MIT: Alright, good work you two, I feel like we really started a dialogue here. We can continue this at our next session. We'll leave it at that for today.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
ReRun: Wooing Winter
C' mon baby. It don't have to be like that. I know I said ... some things ... the other day ... that maybe I shouldn'ta said, but you know how I get sometimes. It didn't mean nothin'. I'm still here, you see me right here, don't you? You really think I'd spend 6 months outta every year with you, right here in CNY baby, if I didn't have feelings for you? I was just bloggin', baby, I was just tryin'a entertain, you feel me? You know how it gets out there.
But I'm here with you now, ain't I?
What, you need proof? Look around my house!!! What do you see? FLEECE! How much fleece I got up in my house, and you're gonna question my feelings for you just causa some shit on the Internet!? You know you ain't supposed to believe everything you read on the Internet, anyway. I got, I got...LAYERS! Look at this: non-cotton for next to the skin so I keep that heat in, I got blankets stacked up from ceilin' to floor, I got, I got...hoodies! How many hoodies I got right here in this room!? And these is just for inside the house!
Winter, I am HERE! I am here with you baby, right here, and I don't know what I gotta do to make you see that.
Okay, winter.....it's like that, then? It's like that? Okay, then. I'ma remember this. I'ma remember this, though, winter. This shit ain't over, winter. This ain't over. You'll be hearing from me again.
But I'm here with you now, ain't I?
What, you need proof? Look around my house!!! What do you see? FLEECE! How much fleece I got up in my house, and you're gonna question my feelings for you just causa some shit on the Internet!? You know you ain't supposed to believe everything you read on the Internet, anyway. I got, I got...LAYERS! Look at this: non-cotton for next to the skin so I keep that heat in, I got blankets stacked up from ceilin' to floor, I got, I got...hoodies! How many hoodies I got right here in this room!? And these is just for inside the house!
Winter, I am HERE! I am here with you baby, right here, and I don't know what I gotta do to make you see that.
Okay, winter.....it's like that, then? It's like that? Okay, then. I'ma remember this. I'ma remember this, though, winter. This shit ain't over, winter. This ain't over. You'll be hearing from me again.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
ReRun: If I Meet Winter In A Dark Alley I Will Thrash It With A Garland Of Spring Flowers
Winter is coming to Upstate New York, and with it the melancholy that I wrestle every year as the season changes. The air gets colder and the sky darker and the green earth turns grey, and before I can embrace hibernation I rage against the change. Can there be melancholy and rage? I think there can. The rage is suppressed, helpless, like violence hidden underneath a heavy blanket of snow. Like frostbite eating away at your fingers and toes while you sit, so tired and still, as if in a trance, slowly freezing.
I should be grateful that it's December (or that we can pretend it is for the sake of a rerun) and winter is only now rearing it's ugly head. I am not. At least not right now. This is not a grateful post. This is the end of a long, lonely day covered by a cloudy sky and full of dirty floors and unending laundry. This post is about boredom, and the purgatory of transition. It's about resistance to inevitable change and stubborn, futile defiance, digging heels in when it makes no sense whatsoever to do so.
It's about the start of winter.
I don't want to go gentle into these dark, endless nights and days. Winter lasts for months upon months in Upstate New York! I don't want patience. I want to rage like the rainstorms of early spring, melting ice with explosive strength. I want to burst into technicolor like buds on trees in March; I want to sweep away the debris that gets hidden under the snow; clean the streets with a wild, maniacal energy. I want to bare my teeth and rip berries from their vines before they have the chance to ripen; I'm so hungry for winter to be over before it begins.
Winter, you leave me no choice but submission, and in the meantime melancholy and a silent, seething rage. I'll play a collection of short films in my mind tonight and in each and every one I will be the heroine and you will be the villain and I will best you with ever more colorful, creative schemes. Tonight I will melt you with the fire in my mind. Tonight I will annihilate you. And in the morning I will wake to your bleak and unforgiving landscape just outside my bedroom window.
Tomorrow, you bastard, I will sigh and begin to embrace you.
I should be grateful that it's December (or that we can pretend it is for the sake of a rerun) and winter is only now rearing it's ugly head. I am not. At least not right now. This is not a grateful post. This is the end of a long, lonely day covered by a cloudy sky and full of dirty floors and unending laundry. This post is about boredom, and the purgatory of transition. It's about resistance to inevitable change and stubborn, futile defiance, digging heels in when it makes no sense whatsoever to do so.
It's about the start of winter.
I don't want to go gentle into these dark, endless nights and days. Winter lasts for months upon months in Upstate New York! I don't want patience. I want to rage like the rainstorms of early spring, melting ice with explosive strength. I want to burst into technicolor like buds on trees in March; I want to sweep away the debris that gets hidden under the snow; clean the streets with a wild, maniacal energy. I want to bare my teeth and rip berries from their vines before they have the chance to ripen; I'm so hungry for winter to be over before it begins.
Winter, you leave me no choice but submission, and in the meantime melancholy and a silent, seething rage. I'll play a collection of short films in my mind tonight and in each and every one I will be the heroine and you will be the villain and I will best you with ever more colorful, creative schemes. Tonight I will melt you with the fire in my mind. Tonight I will annihilate you. And in the morning I will wake to your bleak and unforgiving landscape just outside my bedroom window.
Tomorrow, you bastard, I will sigh and begin to embrace you.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Writing about Writing and Fighting with Winter
As a child, I remember one thing I knew for certain was that I did not want any sort of career that required me to write for a living. See, I liked writing. And while this might seem counterintuitive, I didn't want that joy to be sullied by everyday repetition, regular requirements, and deadlines. I wanted to keep my voice for myself, to say only what and when I wanted to say, to hoard my words, a quiet source of solitary pleasure for a girl with five sisters who had few opportunities to have everything the way I wanted it, few chances to choose not to share, collaborate, compromise.
I wanted to be the whole and only boss of my words.
Though this has resulted in far fewer of them being written down, and less opportunity for development and improvement of my writing skills, I have never regretted it. If being a "real" writer means (as I have often read that it does) that you don't want to write, but that you must write, then I am quite happily less than real. Unreal. Or surreal? Whatever the case may be! I go long periods without writing, and I am perfectly content with it. It's not at all that I simply must write. It's that I want to. And I really like it that way.
Still a thrill, in my mid-thirties, to be the whole and only boss of something, even if it is only my own words, my own place to play without sharing a single thing!
So in the spirit of purely recreational writing, starting tomorrow I will be re-running a four-part series I wrote last year about winter. I had only been blogging about a month when I started it, and I drove home from work each afternoon thinking about the next post, excited to sit down after my son went to sleep, put fingers to keyboard, and see what happened. I had a lot of fun writing it! For me, and for now, that's the whole point.
This winter series is apropos for another reason too. Namely, here it is again, and here I am again, both hating its guts and trying hard to embrace and make the best of it. Having two children is thus far lovely, but it would be far lovelier in the spring or fall, with the option to spend some time each day outdoors. My son needs to move, and so do I, but it's hard to convince myself to do it when it's twenty-something degrees outside and it means leaving the baby and my husband indoors, carrying my cell phone and waiting for the call to rush home and nurse.
Yesterday my boy and I did an hour or so of yoga together, incorporating his new plastic play tent and tunnel as props in our stretching routine and utilizing his big alphabet floor puzzle as a cushioned mat between our spines and the hardwood floor. I let him climb me in certain poses (Child's Pose) and ride on my back in others (Cat and Cow), and directed him to crawl, jump and run while I contorted into corresponding poses (a homemade mash-up of Sun Salutation components) and offered enough high-fives and high-jinks to keep it interesting. But I'm not always quick and creative enough to make the best of our too-often-too-messy house to meet his needs, or my own, before we begin to get stir-crazy. We've gone out almost daily on "family drives" just to get out of the house, but neither cruising the city neighborhoods nor ransacking the various branches of the county library offers enough exertion to wear us out the way a summer hike or morning spent swimming would be able to do.
I choose to live in Upstate New York, in one of the snowiest cities in the continental United States, and yet winter and I ... well, we've never gotten along. And so each year I battle the elements, determined one of these days (or years) to be able to say: I love winter!
It won't be this year.
But last year: I loved writing about winter. And this year: I love that I keep trying to make the best of it, with plastic tents and tunnels, alphabet puzzle playmats, city drives through snowy neighborhoods, and everyday outings turned adventures with the inclusion of a new baby, the creative eyes of a toddler, and the ongoing efforts of his parents.
Much like the act of writing for my own silent pleasure in the words themselves, I like to sneak what moments of glee I can covertly gather in the face of an adversary much larger than myself. I won't win the war with winter. But that doesn't mean I can't score a few smackdowns in battles along the way, and take a couple moments to thoroughly savor their thrill.
I hope you enjoy reading about winter over the next few days as much as I enjoyed writing about it! And I wish us all much joy and pleasure in the words that the cold winter weather gives us extra time to compose. See, one more small seasonal victory! Take that, winter!
I wanted to be the whole and only boss of my words.
Though this has resulted in far fewer of them being written down, and less opportunity for development and improvement of my writing skills, I have never regretted it. If being a "real" writer means (as I have often read that it does) that you don't want to write, but that you must write, then I am quite happily less than real. Unreal. Or surreal? Whatever the case may be! I go long periods without writing, and I am perfectly content with it. It's not at all that I simply must write. It's that I want to. And I really like it that way.
Still a thrill, in my mid-thirties, to be the whole and only boss of something, even if it is only my own words, my own place to play without sharing a single thing!
So in the spirit of purely recreational writing, starting tomorrow I will be re-running a four-part series I wrote last year about winter. I had only been blogging about a month when I started it, and I drove home from work each afternoon thinking about the next post, excited to sit down after my son went to sleep, put fingers to keyboard, and see what happened. I had a lot of fun writing it! For me, and for now, that's the whole point.
This winter series is apropos for another reason too. Namely, here it is again, and here I am again, both hating its guts and trying hard to embrace and make the best of it. Having two children is thus far lovely, but it would be far lovelier in the spring or fall, with the option to spend some time each day outdoors. My son needs to move, and so do I, but it's hard to convince myself to do it when it's twenty-something degrees outside and it means leaving the baby and my husband indoors, carrying my cell phone and waiting for the call to rush home and nurse.
Yesterday my boy and I did an hour or so of yoga together, incorporating his new plastic play tent and tunnel as props in our stretching routine and utilizing his big alphabet floor puzzle as a cushioned mat between our spines and the hardwood floor. I let him climb me in certain poses (Child's Pose) and ride on my back in others (Cat and Cow), and directed him to crawl, jump and run while I contorted into corresponding poses (a homemade mash-up of Sun Salutation components) and offered enough high-fives and high-jinks to keep it interesting. But I'm not always quick and creative enough to make the best of our too-often-too-messy house to meet his needs, or my own, before we begin to get stir-crazy. We've gone out almost daily on "family drives" just to get out of the house, but neither cruising the city neighborhoods nor ransacking the various branches of the county library offers enough exertion to wear us out the way a summer hike or morning spent swimming would be able to do.
I choose to live in Upstate New York, in one of the snowiest cities in the continental United States, and yet winter and I ... well, we've never gotten along. And so each year I battle the elements, determined one of these days (or years) to be able to say: I love winter!
It won't be this year.
But last year: I loved writing about winter. And this year: I love that I keep trying to make the best of it, with plastic tents and tunnels, alphabet puzzle playmats, city drives through snowy neighborhoods, and everyday outings turned adventures with the inclusion of a new baby, the creative eyes of a toddler, and the ongoing efforts of his parents.
Much like the act of writing for my own silent pleasure in the words themselves, I like to sneak what moments of glee I can covertly gather in the face of an adversary much larger than myself. I won't win the war with winter. But that doesn't mean I can't score a few smackdowns in battles along the way, and take a couple moments to thoroughly savor their thrill.
I hope you enjoy reading about winter over the next few days as much as I enjoyed writing about it! And I wish us all much joy and pleasure in the words that the cold winter weather gives us extra time to compose. See, one more small seasonal victory! Take that, winter!
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Fall Melancholy
The first time I remember experiencing a certain feeling I've come to associate with autumn, I was in high school, maybe tenth grade. I was waiting for a ride from a friend, and rather than wait in the house, I decided to wait outside, where I'd be able to see her arrive. It was early evening, and beginning to get dark, the days getting shorter as we moved further from summer. I walked outside and balanced on the hood of my parent's station wagon parked at the curb, my knees bent high, feet perched on the bumper, and looked out into the distance, waiting to see the headlights of her mother's car.
As I waited, I became aware of the early darkness, the leaves beginning to fall, and the gathering chill in the air. I noticed a distinct feeling of ..... melancholy is the best word I can find ..... and the interesting thing about the feeling is that it didn't seem to reside within me, where I might expect to find feelings, but rather in the very air around me. I wasn't sad, pensive, wistful. But the season was. Fall carries those feelings in its cooling air, and the early dark of its evenings. I could sense them in the breeze around me, and I remember feeling distinctly fortunate, protected by my big, boisterous family gathered in the house, and the imminent arrival of my good friend.
The next time I remember that fall melancholy was my freshman year of college. I lived in a dormitory overlooking the entrance to the campus library, and while it was busy most of the week, Friday nights looking out that window was like looking out on a ghost town. I wasn't so lucky to have family or friends around me at that point; I was terribly lonely, and it seemed like those fall feelings were just whipping around in the wind outside my window, waiting to get in and annihilate me. I would shudder looking out at the empty campus walkway, and hurry to make plans with any group of girls seeking company that I could find in my dorm. It took a few months before I found my close friends and it was frightening, in the meantime, the way that autumn melancholy threatened to eat me alive every weekend evening between dinner and whatever protection I could seek from the comforting presence of others.
As an adult I've noticed it most years, usually just as a sense of something stirring in the air, something slightly haunted maybe, beneath the surface of our lives, right as we begin to move away from our neighbors and into our houses, the long hibernation of winter lurking ahead around the edges of the imagination. It's in such contrast to summer, where what you see is what you get. It's too damn hot to hide anything in the summer, there's no space for secrets in the constant and overbearing light of the sun. Neighbors and strangers, both friendly and nosy, share the city spaces as we all escape our houses in search of relief from the heat.
Last night I sat outside after putting the toddler down to bed, and I could feel that fall melancholy, whistling like the breeze through the leaves beginning to turn colors in the trees. I put my hand on my belly, and felt the kick of my unborn daughter as an omen of protection, and then hurried back into the house to snuggle with my husband as the night got darker and cooler. We awoke to the aftermath of a rainstorm, opening early morning curtains to wet black pavement and glistening overgrown grass in the yard, under a still-gray sky. I made pancakes and hot coffee while my husband fried bacon and eggs, and then we sat together at our dining room table by the big windows overlooking the yard, eating and drinking hot while the wind blew cold outside through the waterlogged leaves of trees and bushes just outside our fence.
Every year I say fall is my favorite season, and it's true --there's so much I love about autumn-- but every year at this time I'm grateful that I'm not alone. Fall is the loneliest season of them all, just on it's own. It doesn't need me to add to its melancholy, and I don't want to be trapped by its sadness either. I gather my family around me like a circle closing, like a latch on a gate never used in the winter. I thank the gods with each leaf that falls, golden or red or browning at the edges, that I have them, that we are together, and safe. The sky turns a darker gray and I turn the lamplight brighter against the coming of that haunted melancholy that fall carries with it just under the surface, somewhere invisible in the air.
As I waited, I became aware of the early darkness, the leaves beginning to fall, and the gathering chill in the air. I noticed a distinct feeling of ..... melancholy is the best word I can find ..... and the interesting thing about the feeling is that it didn't seem to reside within me, where I might expect to find feelings, but rather in the very air around me. I wasn't sad, pensive, wistful. But the season was. Fall carries those feelings in its cooling air, and the early dark of its evenings. I could sense them in the breeze around me, and I remember feeling distinctly fortunate, protected by my big, boisterous family gathered in the house, and the imminent arrival of my good friend.
The next time I remember that fall melancholy was my freshman year of college. I lived in a dormitory overlooking the entrance to the campus library, and while it was busy most of the week, Friday nights looking out that window was like looking out on a ghost town. I wasn't so lucky to have family or friends around me at that point; I was terribly lonely, and it seemed like those fall feelings were just whipping around in the wind outside my window, waiting to get in and annihilate me. I would shudder looking out at the empty campus walkway, and hurry to make plans with any group of girls seeking company that I could find in my dorm. It took a few months before I found my close friends and it was frightening, in the meantime, the way that autumn melancholy threatened to eat me alive every weekend evening between dinner and whatever protection I could seek from the comforting presence of others.
As an adult I've noticed it most years, usually just as a sense of something stirring in the air, something slightly haunted maybe, beneath the surface of our lives, right as we begin to move away from our neighbors and into our houses, the long hibernation of winter lurking ahead around the edges of the imagination. It's in such contrast to summer, where what you see is what you get. It's too damn hot to hide anything in the summer, there's no space for secrets in the constant and overbearing light of the sun. Neighbors and strangers, both friendly and nosy, share the city spaces as we all escape our houses in search of relief from the heat.
Last night I sat outside after putting the toddler down to bed, and I could feel that fall melancholy, whistling like the breeze through the leaves beginning to turn colors in the trees. I put my hand on my belly, and felt the kick of my unborn daughter as an omen of protection, and then hurried back into the house to snuggle with my husband as the night got darker and cooler. We awoke to the aftermath of a rainstorm, opening early morning curtains to wet black pavement and glistening overgrown grass in the yard, under a still-gray sky. I made pancakes and hot coffee while my husband fried bacon and eggs, and then we sat together at our dining room table by the big windows overlooking the yard, eating and drinking hot while the wind blew cold outside through the waterlogged leaves of trees and bushes just outside our fence.
Every year I say fall is my favorite season, and it's true --there's so much I love about autumn-- but every year at this time I'm grateful that I'm not alone. Fall is the loneliest season of them all, just on it's own. It doesn't need me to add to its melancholy, and I don't want to be trapped by its sadness either. I gather my family around me like a circle closing, like a latch on a gate never used in the winter. I thank the gods with each leaf that falls, golden or red or browning at the edges, that I have them, that we are together, and safe. The sky turns a darker gray and I turn the lamplight brighter against the coming of that haunted melancholy that fall carries with it just under the surface, somewhere invisible in the air.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Peoples Wakin' Up!
One of my son's favorite thing to say is Mommy wakin' up! He says it with such cheer in his voice, usually as he peels my eyelids apart. It's not just Mommy, it's Daddy wakin' up! and Elephant wakin' up! and Baby wakin' up! We went to a playground the other day where a tired mom was resting her eyes for a minute or so sitting on the bench while her children climbed and chased each other. As soon as she opened them, my son loudly announced: Peoples wakin' up!
And I guess he's right, at this point in the year when the mornings and evenings begin to turn crisp and the nights have a chill to the air that makes the fan unnecessary. Peoples wakin' up in our house, and I'm torn between two endings for this sentence. The first being: albeit reluctantly, and the second being: and it's about time. I feel both ways.
I registered for the annual fall conference for my job the other day, and there was something about filling in little squares on my desktop calendar and e-mailing agendas chock full of important items to be tended to in the getting-nearer future that began to caffeinate my brain. I have to admit, it felt good to be engaged and alert, excited about everything coming up, and raring to go.
But there's a real sadness in saying goodbye to this summer too. I think it's been the nicest summer of my life. There's something magical about simply surrendering to the pace and whimsy of a child, and letting go of any other preconceived notions of what to do. We just took care of our baby this summer, didn't really try to do much else, and it was the most fun we've had in I don't know how long. I saw a side of my husband I rarely get to see: the stress-free side. He was silly and lazy, and often downright ridiculous, and we laughed and played and ate and slept, and that's about all we did. I've already decided that next summer I'll only work Tuesdays through Thursdays and take four day weekends all summer long. Ah, the lovely benefits of a flexible schedule!
We took a long drive through farmland southwest of the city the other day, past fields of cattle and orchards preparing for an early season of apple picking this year. It was just cool enough to drive with the windows open and forgo air conditioning, and we talked about the fall, and the changes fast approaching. I was a little worried after seeing my husband so relaxed all summer long, that going back to a busy schedule would be hard on him. But he's starting his first year with tenure, and a classroom renovation finally complete after three years (his entire teaching career!) of working in a work-in-progress. He told me he's excited, and feels confident and prepared. This is a nice change from past years, when he's usually beating himself up at this point for failing to spend the whole summer preparing. (But c'mon now, WHO DOES THAT? Summers are for slacking, I try to tell him, and he admits it's true in the abstract, but the man holds himself to high standards. Fortunately, this summer he decided to let his standards spend a few months visiting mine. We haven't seen them much at all, as I like to keep them locked in the basement.)
My sister's getting married this coming weekend. My son will be ring bearer and I'll give a toast and my husband will take photographs. We have new outfits, and an old friend taking the train in on Thursday to join us for the drive to Connecticut on Friday. We've been deep cleaning the house in hopes that we can come back to some semblance of organization and enjoy the last week of the summer simply maintaining rather than rearranging things in a panic as we face the fact that this sweet, sweet summer is coming to an end.
Every night as I snuggle down in bed with a novel and the two quilts I need to stay warm over the past week or so --one made for my husband when he was a small child by his grandmother, and one made by mine out of fabric scraps leftover from bridesmaid's dresses from my mother's wedding to my father, thirty-some years ago-- my baby girl begins to kick. I pull my body pillow into my belly, and tuck it under just so, giving her a comfy place to rest, and I smile as she flails away in there, like a baby boxer landing blows that can't hurt anybody just yet.
There's fall, and then there's winter just dawning, and then there's her. And then I haven't the foggiest, because I'll have to get to know her, like I've spent the last two years getting to know my boy. But if there are more summers like this one lurking up ahead, and I certainly hope there are, it's just hard to believe that life could ever be anything but just fine.
And I guess he's right, at this point in the year when the mornings and evenings begin to turn crisp and the nights have a chill to the air that makes the fan unnecessary. Peoples wakin' up in our house, and I'm torn between two endings for this sentence. The first being: albeit reluctantly, and the second being: and it's about time. I feel both ways.
I registered for the annual fall conference for my job the other day, and there was something about filling in little squares on my desktop calendar and e-mailing agendas chock full of important items to be tended to in the getting-nearer future that began to caffeinate my brain. I have to admit, it felt good to be engaged and alert, excited about everything coming up, and raring to go.
But there's a real sadness in saying goodbye to this summer too. I think it's been the nicest summer of my life. There's something magical about simply surrendering to the pace and whimsy of a child, and letting go of any other preconceived notions of what to do. We just took care of our baby this summer, didn't really try to do much else, and it was the most fun we've had in I don't know how long. I saw a side of my husband I rarely get to see: the stress-free side. He was silly and lazy, and often downright ridiculous, and we laughed and played and ate and slept, and that's about all we did. I've already decided that next summer I'll only work Tuesdays through Thursdays and take four day weekends all summer long. Ah, the lovely benefits of a flexible schedule!
We took a long drive through farmland southwest of the city the other day, past fields of cattle and orchards preparing for an early season of apple picking this year. It was just cool enough to drive with the windows open and forgo air conditioning, and we talked about the fall, and the changes fast approaching. I was a little worried after seeing my husband so relaxed all summer long, that going back to a busy schedule would be hard on him. But he's starting his first year with tenure, and a classroom renovation finally complete after three years (his entire teaching career!) of working in a work-in-progress. He told me he's excited, and feels confident and prepared. This is a nice change from past years, when he's usually beating himself up at this point for failing to spend the whole summer preparing. (But c'mon now, WHO DOES THAT? Summers are for slacking, I try to tell him, and he admits it's true in the abstract, but the man holds himself to high standards. Fortunately, this summer he decided to let his standards spend a few months visiting mine. We haven't seen them much at all, as I like to keep them locked in the basement.)
My sister's getting married this coming weekend. My son will be ring bearer and I'll give a toast and my husband will take photographs. We have new outfits, and an old friend taking the train in on Thursday to join us for the drive to Connecticut on Friday. We've been deep cleaning the house in hopes that we can come back to some semblance of organization and enjoy the last week of the summer simply maintaining rather than rearranging things in a panic as we face the fact that this sweet, sweet summer is coming to an end.
Every night as I snuggle down in bed with a novel and the two quilts I need to stay warm over the past week or so --one made for my husband when he was a small child by his grandmother, and one made by mine out of fabric scraps leftover from bridesmaid's dresses from my mother's wedding to my father, thirty-some years ago-- my baby girl begins to kick. I pull my body pillow into my belly, and tuck it under just so, giving her a comfy place to rest, and I smile as she flails away in there, like a baby boxer landing blows that can't hurt anybody just yet.
There's fall, and then there's winter just dawning, and then there's her. And then I haven't the foggiest, because I'll have to get to know her, like I've spent the last two years getting to know my boy. But if there are more summers like this one lurking up ahead, and I certainly hope there are, it's just hard to believe that life could ever be anything but just fine.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Catching Up
Contrary to the way it may sound around here, there are things happening in my life. A few, at least. It's just that I'm finding it all so boring to write about! How many times and ways can you say: I'm content, and continue to make it interesting? Not so many, it seems to me. So the writing is slow and sluggish, and I suppose the living is a little slow and sluggish too, but in such an easy, breezy, summer sunshine kind of way. Like a Grateful Dead song. Minus any psychedelic effects. We're more low key than that. And also sober.
Today is Wednesday, and on Wednesdays in the summer we do something different at work. Instead of running our usual classroom sessions we meet at a shaded playground, a block away from a gorgeous city park. We play at the playground, eat snacks, do arts and crafts, and then walk to the park with the toddlers to splash in a giant fountain. My hubby volunteered (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I volunteered him, which is what actually happened) to run the arts and crafts session each week, keeping his art teaching skills sharp over the summer, and of course he brings our boy, so my whole family comes to work with me on Wednesdays.
I arrive first after spending an hour preparing in my office, and my husband and son, the other teachers, and the families we work with wander in over the next half hour or so. Each week I park my car and then unpack: my purse, snacks, craft supplies, attendance sheets, and anything else I may have packed for the day. I spread them out around me on a set of cement stairs, sit down, and wait for everyone else to arrive. It's almost 10am by that time, but the neighborhood is still quiet and there are always birds chirping. Every week I sit and listen to birdsong, sipping from my water bottle or iced half-caf coffee, sweet with milk and sugar.
Today I marveled at the fact that this is my work. It's the very thing I would choose to do if I weren't at work, and how often do you get to say that? My season of discontent with my job has passed, and I'm back to loving it. I supposed work is like marriage in that way: seasons of deep joy and satisfaction and those we grit our teeth through and wait for them to pass. I've been lucky in both marriage and work in that the discontent usually passes quickly, and even when I'm angry I'm also aware that it isn't ever so serious as I'm making it out to be. I guess we need to get angry sometimes, if only to think about things in a different way.
Our dining room is a brand new place. Still not complete, but close enough that we can get a sense of the finished room while sitting in there now. I've never been a huge fan of formal dining rooms. They look beautiful in magazines and even in other people's homes, but they always seem to end up as a paperwork storage center in mine. We've been in this house two years this fall, and despite repeated efforts on my part to organize the room in a way that works for our family, it always ends up neglected except to pass through and drop our things on the various surfaces I've painstakingly arranged. I think I may have finally solved the problem.
We bought a small, pub table that fits four chairs, and is the perfect height for my son's high chair. We put it against the large wall of windows so that it fits seating for just the three of us, and then put an extra chair along each wall on either side of the windows. This arrangement, along with the smaller table size, leaves enough room for a black leather futon on one side of the room and a computer desk on the other. Now the room isn't just for eating, it's for relaxing and working on the computer as well. I'm hoping the variety of uses will draw us into the room more often, and so far it seems to be working.
We hung the giant chalkboard we got from freecycle, and used it to write our weekly dinner menu when we planned meals before grocery shopping. The farmer's market was overflowing with ripe tomatoes and peaches last Saturday, and so we indulged in both and my husband made and canned three gallons of salsa this week, half of them a peach salsa that I would be happy to eat every day for the rest of my life.
Every evening is a meal cooked on the grill and eaten on the deck, or a playground well-used and a toddler wiped out, or a park to explore: trails or creeks for hiking, or maybe a trip to the beach with sandwiches tossed in a cooler for supper. It's the definition of what summer should be. Before I had children I was restless. I constantly wanted to do new things, go new places, start myself over every few months or years, build up new lives in new places just for the fun of it. I'm so glad I did it then, because now this is brand new too. Staying in one city, owning a house, getting to know a place inside and out, making a home. It's a whole new pace, but no less of an adventure.
And soon my husband will go back to work, and I'll go back to dropping my boy at his sitter's every morning and teaching yoga classes two evenings a week, and we'll be busy with the hustle-bustle of being teachers in the fall. And then we'll be a family of four, and won't that be a way to make everything brand new again? So the ebb and flow will continue, and the seasons will pass, and maybe someday this life will seem same-old, same-old, and I'll be pining for a strange place in which to shed myself and reinvent our lives all over again.
For now though? Same old, same old. And ever so content with it.
Today is Wednesday, and on Wednesdays in the summer we do something different at work. Instead of running our usual classroom sessions we meet at a shaded playground, a block away from a gorgeous city park. We play at the playground, eat snacks, do arts and crafts, and then walk to the park with the toddlers to splash in a giant fountain. My hubby volunteered (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I volunteered him, which is what actually happened) to run the arts and crafts session each week, keeping his art teaching skills sharp over the summer, and of course he brings our boy, so my whole family comes to work with me on Wednesdays.
I arrive first after spending an hour preparing in my office, and my husband and son, the other teachers, and the families we work with wander in over the next half hour or so. Each week I park my car and then unpack: my purse, snacks, craft supplies, attendance sheets, and anything else I may have packed for the day. I spread them out around me on a set of cement stairs, sit down, and wait for everyone else to arrive. It's almost 10am by that time, but the neighborhood is still quiet and there are always birds chirping. Every week I sit and listen to birdsong, sipping from my water bottle or iced half-caf coffee, sweet with milk and sugar.
Today I marveled at the fact that this is my work. It's the very thing I would choose to do if I weren't at work, and how often do you get to say that? My season of discontent with my job has passed, and I'm back to loving it. I supposed work is like marriage in that way: seasons of deep joy and satisfaction and those we grit our teeth through and wait for them to pass. I've been lucky in both marriage and work in that the discontent usually passes quickly, and even when I'm angry I'm also aware that it isn't ever so serious as I'm making it out to be. I guess we need to get angry sometimes, if only to think about things in a different way.
Our dining room is a brand new place. Still not complete, but close enough that we can get a sense of the finished room while sitting in there now. I've never been a huge fan of formal dining rooms. They look beautiful in magazines and even in other people's homes, but they always seem to end up as a paperwork storage center in mine. We've been in this house two years this fall, and despite repeated efforts on my part to organize the room in a way that works for our family, it always ends up neglected except to pass through and drop our things on the various surfaces I've painstakingly arranged. I think I may have finally solved the problem.
We bought a small, pub table that fits four chairs, and is the perfect height for my son's high chair. We put it against the large wall of windows so that it fits seating for just the three of us, and then put an extra chair along each wall on either side of the windows. This arrangement, along with the smaller table size, leaves enough room for a black leather futon on one side of the room and a computer desk on the other. Now the room isn't just for eating, it's for relaxing and working on the computer as well. I'm hoping the variety of uses will draw us into the room more often, and so far it seems to be working.
We hung the giant chalkboard we got from freecycle, and used it to write our weekly dinner menu when we planned meals before grocery shopping. The farmer's market was overflowing with ripe tomatoes and peaches last Saturday, and so we indulged in both and my husband made and canned three gallons of salsa this week, half of them a peach salsa that I would be happy to eat every day for the rest of my life.
Every evening is a meal cooked on the grill and eaten on the deck, or a playground well-used and a toddler wiped out, or a park to explore: trails or creeks for hiking, or maybe a trip to the beach with sandwiches tossed in a cooler for supper. It's the definition of what summer should be. Before I had children I was restless. I constantly wanted to do new things, go new places, start myself over every few months or years, build up new lives in new places just for the fun of it. I'm so glad I did it then, because now this is brand new too. Staying in one city, owning a house, getting to know a place inside and out, making a home. It's a whole new pace, but no less of an adventure.
And soon my husband will go back to work, and I'll go back to dropping my boy at his sitter's every morning and teaching yoga classes two evenings a week, and we'll be busy with the hustle-bustle of being teachers in the fall. And then we'll be a family of four, and won't that be a way to make everything brand new again? So the ebb and flow will continue, and the seasons will pass, and maybe someday this life will seem same-old, same-old, and I'll be pining for a strange place in which to shed myself and reinvent our lives all over again.
For now though? Same old, same old. And ever so content with it.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Memories in the Making
Over a week later, and he's still telling me: I wanna go back a little cabin house, Mommy. I wanna go beach.
Can you blame him?
We never went on vacation when I was a kid. Too many children, too little money, parents who aren't particularly into traveling (and definitely not camping, which is one way to make it more affordable). My mom used to say we spent our money on good food instead! I never missed it, that old adage about not missing what you never had seeming true enough, but I love traveling. And I think we may have found "our place". This beach is less than an hour away from our home, and it costs less than a cheap hotel to stay in a cabin for a night. I sense a vacation tradition in the making. And something tells me my guys won't argue:
My feet are beginning to touch the ground. This weekend we acknowledged fall approaching and finally got some things done around the house. I'm catching up on laundry today and I mopped the floors. My grandmother's silver has been polished, for the first time since I inherited it in the fall of '07. So it won't be all beachy and dreamy round these parts for long. But I'm still soaking up the summer while I can, and making memories. They'll be some of our last as a family of three. And maybe next summer we can introduce our little baby daughter to all the fun there is to be had at the little cabin house at the beach. I know just the two year old to act as spokesperson--he's already proven he's cut out for the job!
Can you blame him?
We never went on vacation when I was a kid. Too many children, too little money, parents who aren't particularly into traveling (and definitely not camping, which is one way to make it more affordable). My mom used to say we spent our money on good food instead! I never missed it, that old adage about not missing what you never had seeming true enough, but I love traveling. And I think we may have found "our place". This beach is less than an hour away from our home, and it costs less than a cheap hotel to stay in a cabin for a night. I sense a vacation tradition in the making. And something tells me my guys won't argue:
My feet are beginning to touch the ground. This weekend we acknowledged fall approaching and finally got some things done around the house. I'm catching up on laundry today and I mopped the floors. My grandmother's silver has been polished, for the first time since I inherited it in the fall of '07. So it won't be all beachy and dreamy round these parts for long. But I'm still soaking up the summer while I can, and making memories. They'll be some of our last as a family of three. And maybe next summer we can introduce our little baby daughter to all the fun there is to be had at the little cabin house at the beach. I know just the two year old to act as spokesperson--he's already proven he's cut out for the job!
Friday, August 13, 2010
The Middle of a Dream
I don't know if it's summer or pregnancy, or maybe the rhythm of our schedule these past few months, with rushes of deadlines at work, frantic traveling, and refurnishing rooms interspersed with lulls of quiet days, hot and humid or thunderstorm rainy or just perfect with sunny skies and a breeze, but I feel as if I'm floating through life lately. Drifting, dreamily, and my feet never quite touch the ground.
I see women at the end of pregnancy and their faces always soften, and look very dreamy. It's a little early for me to have reached that stage yet! So perhaps I can't blame it on the girl-babe, who seems to be quite kicky and active anyway, and more ready to run marathons than smile at the sun, sighing happily, stars in her eyes, which is more or less the space and speed at which I find myself.
It's the middle of everything. It's the middle of summer. It's the middle of pregnancy. We're somewhere in the middle of so many projects at our house, although that timeline stretches out so long that almost anywhere is going to seem to be the middle, really. I have none of the sure-footed stamina of the start of things. My lists are languishing somewhere and I don't want to see how far I've come or check things off or add new items. I know in my head, and in my heart, that we're lost in the wilderness of it all right now - no point in checking - and so the only thing to do is keep moving forward. But there's none of that furious energy of the end either. No deadlines looming just ahead, nobody on their way in the car and about to arrive, no sense of impending urgency to fuel the fire of get-it-done-already! So we're wandering ... slowly meandering through each day, and waking the next to do the same like a continual loop of slow smiles, shrugged shoulders, half glasses of lemonade and feet in the pool, swishing slowly back and forth with nowhere else to get to, at least not anytime soon.
It's nice. Nice like an afternoon nap rather than a skydiving expedition, but I'm really more of an afternoon nap kind of person anyway. I don't know that I've ever had the urge to go skydiving. I watched some friends do it once, and when they landed I remember thinking: I could do that, but just that I could, never that I particularly wanted to. My sister read a book about a group who climbed Everest and told me how inspiring she found it. I read the same book and thought: God, those people are a little bit crazy, aren't they?
I once said of my sister that she's the sort of person who, when riding a bike, would get the greatest satisfaction out of fighting her way uphill. My boyfriend at the time I said it, on the other hand, was the sort who wanted nothing more out of life than to sail forever downhill. Going up made him cranky and he never seemed to grasp that you must go uphill in order to earn that rush of flying down, wind in your hair. One of the reasons we parted, I suppose. I'm a flat ground girl myself. I lived in Kansas for a while, and it's the only place I ever liked bike riding. I will pedal forever at a constant speed on a long, flat road going nowhere, and I will be satisfied. I go uphill when I have to, and apply myself with diligence, but not until I make sure there's not an alternate route that's smoother. And the downhill flying scares me a bit. I have trouble letting go and enjoying the rush. I prefer smooth sailing, constant pedaling, mostly knowing what to expect. My husband is an uphill climber, never quite satisfied with himself unless he's working at peak capacity, always comparing his present state with some optimal performance and then scolding himself for his failure to achieve the optimum at every waking moment. But the summer, or the baby on her way but not very soon, or the house in a constant state of flux, has slowed him down too.
Or maybe it's surrendering to the role of caretaker. Last summer he would drink his customary half-pot of coffee each morning and then find himself surprised by the constant low-level demands of an infant, never allowing him to complete any of the tasks he had imagined he'd be able to complete. This summer he accepted from the start that being with our boy was the only thing he'd aim for, and anything else he managed to do would be gravy. So he's dreamy too, skipping his morning coffee and asking me to remind him of everything multiple times because he's just "not in remembering mode". It's funny to see him this way; I tell him he's turning into me! I'm sure it would wear on me if it were permanent (who wants to be married to themselves, God forbid?), but school is just around the corner and he'll be back to the man who unloads the dishwasher before dawn and dances in the kitchen with the mania of too much caffeine tossed back while most of us are still tossing and turning in our beds. So, in the meantime I like this slow moving man, and so does our son, who tells me every night before bed now: I want Dada hold you, and knows I'll allow one more trip to hug and kiss Daddy before retiring to the crib for the night.
So we're all dreamy here, just meandering through the middle of things. I can just now see the rush of fall beginning to approach in the distance, but rather than rise up to meet it prepared and fortified for any and all battles it might bring, I want to roll over and pretend not to notice it for a little bit longer. I want to stay asleep if I can. I'm in the middle of the nicest dream.
I see women at the end of pregnancy and their faces always soften, and look very dreamy. It's a little early for me to have reached that stage yet! So perhaps I can't blame it on the girl-babe, who seems to be quite kicky and active anyway, and more ready to run marathons than smile at the sun, sighing happily, stars in her eyes, which is more or less the space and speed at which I find myself.
It's the middle of everything. It's the middle of summer. It's the middle of pregnancy. We're somewhere in the middle of so many projects at our house, although that timeline stretches out so long that almost anywhere is going to seem to be the middle, really. I have none of the sure-footed stamina of the start of things. My lists are languishing somewhere and I don't want to see how far I've come or check things off or add new items. I know in my head, and in my heart, that we're lost in the wilderness of it all right now - no point in checking - and so the only thing to do is keep moving forward. But there's none of that furious energy of the end either. No deadlines looming just ahead, nobody on their way in the car and about to arrive, no sense of impending urgency to fuel the fire of get-it-done-already! So we're wandering ... slowly meandering through each day, and waking the next to do the same like a continual loop of slow smiles, shrugged shoulders, half glasses of lemonade and feet in the pool, swishing slowly back and forth with nowhere else to get to, at least not anytime soon.
It's nice. Nice like an afternoon nap rather than a skydiving expedition, but I'm really more of an afternoon nap kind of person anyway. I don't know that I've ever had the urge to go skydiving. I watched some friends do it once, and when they landed I remember thinking: I could do that, but just that I could, never that I particularly wanted to. My sister read a book about a group who climbed Everest and told me how inspiring she found it. I read the same book and thought: God, those people are a little bit crazy, aren't they?
I once said of my sister that she's the sort of person who, when riding a bike, would get the greatest satisfaction out of fighting her way uphill. My boyfriend at the time I said it, on the other hand, was the sort who wanted nothing more out of life than to sail forever downhill. Going up made him cranky and he never seemed to grasp that you must go uphill in order to earn that rush of flying down, wind in your hair. One of the reasons we parted, I suppose. I'm a flat ground girl myself. I lived in Kansas for a while, and it's the only place I ever liked bike riding. I will pedal forever at a constant speed on a long, flat road going nowhere, and I will be satisfied. I go uphill when I have to, and apply myself with diligence, but not until I make sure there's not an alternate route that's smoother. And the downhill flying scares me a bit. I have trouble letting go and enjoying the rush. I prefer smooth sailing, constant pedaling, mostly knowing what to expect. My husband is an uphill climber, never quite satisfied with himself unless he's working at peak capacity, always comparing his present state with some optimal performance and then scolding himself for his failure to achieve the optimum at every waking moment. But the summer, or the baby on her way but not very soon, or the house in a constant state of flux, has slowed him down too.
Or maybe it's surrendering to the role of caretaker. Last summer he would drink his customary half-pot of coffee each morning and then find himself surprised by the constant low-level demands of an infant, never allowing him to complete any of the tasks he had imagined he'd be able to complete. This summer he accepted from the start that being with our boy was the only thing he'd aim for, and anything else he managed to do would be gravy. So he's dreamy too, skipping his morning coffee and asking me to remind him of everything multiple times because he's just "not in remembering mode". It's funny to see him this way; I tell him he's turning into me! I'm sure it would wear on me if it were permanent (who wants to be married to themselves, God forbid?), but school is just around the corner and he'll be back to the man who unloads the dishwasher before dawn and dances in the kitchen with the mania of too much caffeine tossed back while most of us are still tossing and turning in our beds. So, in the meantime I like this slow moving man, and so does our son, who tells me every night before bed now: I want Dada hold you, and knows I'll allow one more trip to hug and kiss Daddy before retiring to the crib for the night.
So we're all dreamy here, just meandering through the middle of things. I can just now see the rush of fall beginning to approach in the distance, but rather than rise up to meet it prepared and fortified for any and all battles it might bring, I want to roll over and pretend not to notice it for a little bit longer. I want to stay asleep if I can. I'm in the middle of the nicest dream.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Heaven on Earth
Remember when I said that my husband and I have never taken a vacation together since our honeymoon that didn't involve visiting family? Ten years later, for our anniversary, we finally did. And I have to say: it was worth the wait for the beauty of the place alone:
All photo credits to my husband
All photo credits to my husband Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Hot As Hades
I heard it was over 100 degrees today, with the heat index. I didn't bother to seek evidence proving or disproving this hearsay. I don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
No, I don't need no steenkin' thermometer. I have my inner thighs. And they told me, loud and clear, that it was a bazillion degrees today, with a bazillion percent humidity. Either that or they're opening a small business, manufacturing and selling sweat by the gallon. I'm not sure how the market for gallons of sweat is looking in light of the current economic crisis, but it seems churlish not to let them try, especially after such an enterprising start early this morning, and lasting all day long.
I'm hotter'n a cat on a hot tin roof.
An egg frying on an inner city pavement.
A lipstick on the dashboard of a car parked in the desert sun.
Speaking of which, did I ever tell you about the night I spent in the desert, dancing like a revelation, lipstick-free beside the parked car that carried me there? No? Well, now's as good a time as any. Pull up a seat, and mind your ass don't stick to the leather. It ain't easy gettin' comfortable in this mess, but we'll do our best.
It was southern California, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Wilderness area, east of San Diego. We were headed for Tijuana, in no particular hurry to get there, or anywhere. We drove all day in sweltering sun through tiny towns with nothing but mexican mercados, and finally turned left off the road and drove straight into an endless sand flat. There was nothing but sand as far as the eye could see, and then the purple hint of mountains framing the distant horizon. We set up the tent as night was falling. There was no one, and nothing, but us, and a car, and a tent.
Even after the sun set, it was so hot I had to strip down to bare skin. I heard coyotes howling in the desert night. I slipped from the tent and looked up to a sky that could swallow you whole. I danced around that tent in the buff, like a woman possessed, under a deep purple sky and yellow moon. I howled with coyotes, and felt each grain of sand under my feet, still hot like the desert secretly embracing the sun after nightfall. The night was empty, and the desert endless, but I felt no fear. This place, as foreign to a northeastern Irish girl as anyplace could be, embraced me like a mother, washed me like baptismal waters, sang to me like a gospel choir, or maybe an angel hovering in the open air between the hot sand and heaven itself.
Eventually, I slept, and the heat woke us at 6 the next morning, like loaves of bread trying to escape the fate of our own baking. We stopped at the first mercado we saw. I drank cold lemonade right from the bottle without stopping, tilting it back until every last drop drained down my throat. I felt the eyes of the mexican merchant men on my legs, clad in torn off denim, and my hair, wild down my back like a pony's mane.
I had the desert in me; of course I was desirable. I was more powerful than the purple black of a moonlit night. Coyotes didn't dare approach me, nude and dancing in the night near a nylon tent home I carried on my back, slow and aimless as a turtle on my way to Tijuana. I could see forever in every direction, to those purple mountain majesties of lore. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, got into the car, one foot on the dash, and the other draped out the open car window. We drove off into the southern California sun.
Word has it that tomorrow is supposed to be over 100 degrees as well. California's not on the agenda, and we don't have coyotes in the area so far as I know, but ever since that night, the desert's in my blood, and there's nothing to stop us from stripping down into the green grass clover of our own city yard, dancing 'round groundhog holes like creatures possessed by god, the devil, or the lunatic love child rumored to be born to the two of them after one crazy night in Tijuana.
If I disappear from these here internets, know that I'm off making my fortune selling sweat to mercados in southern California. With the oil market being what it is, somebody out there's gotta be crazy, or crafty, enough to try a new method for frying tortillas. And if this heat keeps up, I'll tell you something: my thighs? Oh baby, they can supply.
No, I don't need no steenkin' thermometer. I have my inner thighs. And they told me, loud and clear, that it was a bazillion degrees today, with a bazillion percent humidity. Either that or they're opening a small business, manufacturing and selling sweat by the gallon. I'm not sure how the market for gallons of sweat is looking in light of the current economic crisis, but it seems churlish not to let them try, especially after such an enterprising start early this morning, and lasting all day long.
I'm hotter'n a cat on a hot tin roof.
An egg frying on an inner city pavement.
A lipstick on the dashboard of a car parked in the desert sun.
Speaking of which, did I ever tell you about the night I spent in the desert, dancing like a revelation, lipstick-free beside the parked car that carried me there? No? Well, now's as good a time as any. Pull up a seat, and mind your ass don't stick to the leather. It ain't easy gettin' comfortable in this mess, but we'll do our best.
It was southern California, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Wilderness area, east of San Diego. We were headed for Tijuana, in no particular hurry to get there, or anywhere. We drove all day in sweltering sun through tiny towns with nothing but mexican mercados, and finally turned left off the road and drove straight into an endless sand flat. There was nothing but sand as far as the eye could see, and then the purple hint of mountains framing the distant horizon. We set up the tent as night was falling. There was no one, and nothing, but us, and a car, and a tent.
Even after the sun set, it was so hot I had to strip down to bare skin. I heard coyotes howling in the desert night. I slipped from the tent and looked up to a sky that could swallow you whole. I danced around that tent in the buff, like a woman possessed, under a deep purple sky and yellow moon. I howled with coyotes, and felt each grain of sand under my feet, still hot like the desert secretly embracing the sun after nightfall. The night was empty, and the desert endless, but I felt no fear. This place, as foreign to a northeastern Irish girl as anyplace could be, embraced me like a mother, washed me like baptismal waters, sang to me like a gospel choir, or maybe an angel hovering in the open air between the hot sand and heaven itself.
Eventually, I slept, and the heat woke us at 6 the next morning, like loaves of bread trying to escape the fate of our own baking. We stopped at the first mercado we saw. I drank cold lemonade right from the bottle without stopping, tilting it back until every last drop drained down my throat. I felt the eyes of the mexican merchant men on my legs, clad in torn off denim, and my hair, wild down my back like a pony's mane.
I had the desert in me; of course I was desirable. I was more powerful than the purple black of a moonlit night. Coyotes didn't dare approach me, nude and dancing in the night near a nylon tent home I carried on my back, slow and aimless as a turtle on my way to Tijuana. I could see forever in every direction, to those purple mountain majesties of lore. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, got into the car, one foot on the dash, and the other draped out the open car window. We drove off into the southern California sun.
Word has it that tomorrow is supposed to be over 100 degrees as well. California's not on the agenda, and we don't have coyotes in the area so far as I know, but ever since that night, the desert's in my blood, and there's nothing to stop us from stripping down into the green grass clover of our own city yard, dancing 'round groundhog holes like creatures possessed by god, the devil, or the lunatic love child rumored to be born to the two of them after one crazy night in Tijuana.
If I disappear from these here internets, know that I'm off making my fortune selling sweat to mercados in southern California. With the oil market being what it is, somebody out there's gotta be crazy, or crafty, enough to try a new method for frying tortillas. And if this heat keeps up, I'll tell you something: my thighs? Oh baby, they can supply.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Three Day Weekend
Look what we found growing in our yard! Just last weekend my mom took us berry picking in her backyard, where she has enough blackberry bushes to fill a bowl daily, or feed a hungry toddler all day long. My son, when he saw them, said: Gwan! Bewwies! Pick 'em!
But we didn't have enough in our yard to pick and eat with this birthday treat:
So we went with these instead:
And life was summery sweet:
Between the berries growing in the yard and this happening new hot spot, we're hoping the kiddo can take over some of the cooking from now on:
And that the birthday/holiday elves will arrive tonight to rescue the rest of the house from looking something like this:
Because we're just plum tired, after our relaxing weekend at home! Early to bed tonight, sticky air sitting heavy on our limbs, breeze from every fan we own brushing over skin, sun kissed and wind dried, after lounging in a pool barely big enough for three. Or should I say barely big enough for four-to-be:
What a lovely summer so far...
But we didn't have enough in our yard to pick and eat with this birthday treat:
So we went with these instead:
And life was summery sweet:
Between the berries growing in the yard and this happening new hot spot, we're hoping the kiddo can take over some of the cooking from now on:
And that the birthday/holiday elves will arrive tonight to rescue the rest of the house from looking something like this:
Because we're just plum tired, after our relaxing weekend at home! Early to bed tonight, sticky air sitting heavy on our limbs, breeze from every fan we own brushing over skin, sun kissed and wind dried, after lounging in a pool barely big enough for three. Or should I say barely big enough for four-to-be:
What a lovely summer so far...
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Upside of Pink Eye
I awoke yesterday morning to find my left eye glued shut with an immediately familiar concoction of gunk. It's easily been over twenty-five years since I last had pink eye, but it's amazing how quickly I could identify the sensation. I opened my right eye, tried and failed to open my left, and then thought: Uh-oh, I have pink eye.
I couldn't get into the doctor until late morning, and didn't start my prescription until yesterday afternoon, so she told me I could "absolutely not" go to work today, spreading the "highly contagious" pink eye all willy-nilly amongst the infants and toddlers in my charge (one of whom most assuredly spread it to me in the first place!). At first I was disappointed about this, because it meant leaving my favorite co-worker on her own in an already understaffed classroom, and two days missing on my next paycheck (oops, three; I have next Monday off. Boo! And Yay!).
But then my husband reminded me that it was going to be in the 80s and sunny, and that the beach is only free for the rest of this week, until they start charging admission over Memorial Day weekend. Then I didn't feel so disappointed anymore. Wednesday afternoon we got a little preview with the sprinkler in our yard:
And today we spent the morning at the beach:
My normally cautious, careful boy went running into the water, full speed ahead, right up to his neck, and when he inevitably tumbled under and I had to fish him out, he came up laughing. So there was some navigating of deeper waters:
There was more than a little bit of this:
And some of I'm-not-sure-what-the-heck-this-right-here was:
And some eating of bagels and cream cheese, which is a surprisingly beach-friendly and delicious treat, so long as no one drops it in the sand or in the water (which, surprisingly, we didn't!):
There was also a changing of a dirty and disgusting swim diaper in a Target parking lot, but I decided against capturing that moment for posterity. You're very welcome. All in all, it was a glorious summery sick day, well worth every red, itchy-eyed moment.
Now let's just hope no one else catches pink eye from me.
I couldn't get into the doctor until late morning, and didn't start my prescription until yesterday afternoon, so she told me I could "absolutely not" go to work today, spreading the "highly contagious" pink eye all willy-nilly amongst the infants and toddlers in my charge (one of whom most assuredly spread it to me in the first place!). At first I was disappointed about this, because it meant leaving my favorite co-worker on her own in an already understaffed classroom, and two days missing on my next paycheck (oops, three; I have next Monday off. Boo! And Yay!).
But then my husband reminded me that it was going to be in the 80s and sunny, and that the beach is only free for the rest of this week, until they start charging admission over Memorial Day weekend. Then I didn't feel so disappointed anymore. Wednesday afternoon we got a little preview with the sprinkler in our yard:
And today we spent the morning at the beach:
My normally cautious, careful boy went running into the water, full speed ahead, right up to his neck, and when he inevitably tumbled under and I had to fish him out, he came up laughing. So there was some navigating of deeper waters:
There was more than a little bit of this:
And some of I'm-not-sure-what-the-heck-this-right-here was:
And some eating of bagels and cream cheese, which is a surprisingly beach-friendly and delicious treat, so long as no one drops it in the sand or in the water (which, surprisingly, we didn't!):
There was also a changing of a dirty and disgusting swim diaper in a Target parking lot, but I decided against capturing that moment for posterity. You're very welcome. All in all, it was a glorious summery sick day, well worth every red, itchy-eyed moment.
Now let's just hope no one else catches pink eye from me.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
It Snowed Yesterday; 80° Predicted Tomorrow. We Take What We Can Get.
~The Nook ~
Work in Progress...
Hello Hostas!
Forget Me Not!
Work in Progress...
Hello Hostas!
Forget Me Not!
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