Micro blogging

So I've been both rediculously busy and rediculously sick. Still. Isn't that sad? But in my state of near dispair I came up with a good idea: micro blogging. Of course twitter already came up with the idea, and I'm just a lame copy cat, but I decided that I'm going to try this month to blog as much as possible, about all the little things that I keep saying "I should write this down or I'll forget," and then I promptly forget. Like this: Bean, in a conversation about how you can tell the difference between boys and girls said: "Girls have hair that goes flowing down. Boy's hair mostly flows up. Occasionally boy's hair goes flowing down too though." Direct quote. Yes, he used the word occasionally. Can YOU think of a better three year old definition?

Or this: It is thundering every single minute right now. Not big huge cracks of thunder, but little bursts. The sky is pale and overcast, and of course, it has been raining. It has so far rained every single day in August.

And also this: for two days I felt better. I had an iced latte (tall) made by DH with maple syrup. It was divine. He also made biscuits (from scratch) and eggs. Everything tasted rediculously good. I was heady with the possibility of feeling like myself again. I accomplished eighty-nine things including starting to paint my new studio/office space (deep blue.) And then crash. Yesterday I was a miserable ball of ick. Beyond depressing.

Alright. That's it. I'll be back today. See, micro blogging means I am basically going to write everything down in little bursts like the thunder. We'll see how long it lasts. A month? Maybe? (If I have internet in Colorado.) Anyone want to join me?

Snapshot

Two years ago today I was watching gold finches and feeling rain. I was moving from rumpled sheets to shower, feeling my body linger on the cusp of sleep deprivation in the midst of Bean’s early toddlerhood. One year ago I was eating peaches and watching finches and feeling ready for anything. It’s funny, having a blog. It makes you return to your former selves, finding where you were at on this day or that, a year ago or two. It snares small moments in the weft of life; keeps them there even after memory grows fickle and occupied with greater things than the small fragments of a day.

I’m in such a different place this year, my body doing this crazy and miraculous thing. I’m sensitive and distracted and sporadic. Everyday is like the twirling flight of the bats I watch every evening. They come from within the eaves, darting about in the melon colored light of after sunset.

I’m unsettled, even as I’m content. I have this ridiculous urge to nest, to dig in, to just be in this small corner of land, and it feels so out of character to just want to be here. But the thought of traveling makes me want to tuck my knees to my chest and move closer to the softest pillows on the couch.

Here is all I want, with my cat curled next to me, her gentle purr making the air vibrate along my thigh. Yet I am hungry—for more than just this: curling towards myself, protective and quiet.

Hungry for art. I’ve spent so long without it, I feel an unfamiliar resistance at the thought of gathering up glue and scissors and paint. Hungry for running, and while I’ve gone for several runs recently, the days are too unpredictable and filled with nausea to make any of it a routine. Hungry for good food.

Inexplicably, I feel like I’m in a state of limbo now, a nine month limbo waiting for this little one.

Will it always feel this way? Like I’m holding my breath, like the two small lines of the pause icon have been stamped across my days? I am holding my breath, waiting, at the very least for this nausea to stop. It makes me a husk of myself. I linger in bed mornings without the gusto to rise.

It has also been a summer of rain which has left us always on tiptoe expecting summer to start. The grass is verdant and waist high in the meadows, but the air is always damp. Every day thunder. Every day out the window I watch the rain come up the valley towards us: a steel gray cloud against the paler blue of the summer sky. It arrives quickly, thrashing the leaves and pelting the windows.

And the garden, well, it’s rampant and wild. Tomato plants as high has my shoulders; little orange cherry tomatoes as sweet as sugar; beef steaks still green, and five other kinds, all in various stages of ripening. Beans by the colander full (should I blanch and freeze them?) Basil to be made into pesto; empty beds waiting where the peas and broccoli were—waiting for late summer seeds and early autumn crops, while I stay indoors writing, a deadline and a trip to Colorado for more writing with Pam before the month is out.

In late June the sky was light at nine. Now at quarter-to the sky is already indigo and the insects rattle their warning: summer is ending. Already, passing over the bridge at the end of the road, I saw the first red leaves on a maple. My heart flutters at this so soon turning. The ache of last season’s winter still clings close.

What were you doing last year, or the year before? How have you changed?

It's only the beginning

I’ve grown accustomed to being hunched over. Hunched, as in, knees up, back rounded, almost fetal. This is the way I spend my day, curled on the couch, attached at the hip to my laptop, mostly, between tentative forays into the kitchen, and occasional attempts to be useful in any way. It isn’t pretty. Remember when I used to be a runner? When I wake up, for a split second as I’m lying there in bed, I think I’ve maybe just been having an unpleasant dream (one that involves lots of dry heaving and vomit.) I lie perfectly still on the apricot colored sheets and feel the wind blow through the open window above the bed, cool on my cheeks, and my body feels simply there. Toes, knees, arms heavy from sleep. Usually, DH has already gone to shower, but Bean, who crawls into our bed at sun up, is snuggled next to me, and I still like the smell of his hair, so I curl towards him and nuzzle in.

Eventually though, I must stand, shower, and begin the ridiculous process of trying to put food in my stomach while my stomach furiously tries to expel it. Banana didn’t go over so well this morning. Peanut butter, which I can barely stand in ‘real life’ is one of the few things that sticks without complete offense. If I eat every two hours, I seem to be able to avoid vomiting. Sort of. According to the doctor, this is all good news. She told me this with a grin, while she measured the blur of black and white with a fluttering heart rate on the ultrasound monitor. Due date, February 24.

Yesterday was miserably hot, which only increased my discomfort. Over night though, the humidity was squandered in big fat raindrops. Now, the grass is dew-dimpled and silvery. Everything is a tangle of green, the meadows are waist high with grass. The goslings have tripled in size. In the garden, the cabbages like fat purple jewels are tucked between pewter leaves. The tomatoes are ramshackle, taking over an entire bed. The radishes have gone wildly to seed, but I leave them in place, their tiny white flowers calling for honey bees.

Last night, in a rare moment of inspiration devoid of nausea, I made peach grunt with a pile of almost spoiled peaches. Easy peasy. Cut up peaches and place them in the bottom of a pie pan with a few dabs of butter and a sprinkle of sugar. Mix 1 cup flour, 1/3 cup sugar, and 1-1 ½ cups whipped cream together until it becomes a sticky dough. Place dough in mounded spoonfuls on top of peaches and bake at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes until the top is golden brown and the peaches are bubbly.

We ate it with whipped cream. The dough bakes into this lovely scone-like confection. Really quite delicious, even while nauseous.

Now I am hunched on the floor beside Bean who is drawing with scented markers. Of course, he thinks they are the coolest things in the entire world. I think they were invented to torture women afflicted with the all day version of morning sickness.

While I’m genuinely excited about the idea—the idea, mind you and not necessarily the actuality—of two kids, the fact that I now must be pregnant for the next eight months is painful to me. And depressing. I hated being pregnant the first time around, and I hate it no less this time. I also hate all those women who virtually sparkle the entire time they are pregnant. Who act as if it is the best thing in the universe. Halley Berry types who say they wish they could be pregnant forever.

Am I the only person in the world who hates being pregnant?

flitter

I spend much of the day curled like a cat, now, dozing. My dreams are surreal and technicolored and sexy. My stomach is in a constant state of upheaval, the word nausea hardly encompasses the scope of queasy that I feel. It is a perpetual all day thing, indigestion, bloating, every single food suspect.

I turn my nose up at foods I have always loved; I become obsessed with certain food and then suddenly, irrationally, cannot stand them. The refrigerator is a dangerous place. I can hardly stand to open the door. My sense of smell has gone from acute, which it has always been, to hyper sensitive. I can smell peanut butter across the room. Garlic makes me dry heave.

It’s a weird state to have suddenly slipped into. Early pregnancy has forced rest upon me. It’s been a long time since I sat in a lawn chair on the grass and did nothing. I sit and watch clouds get tangled at the horizon; swallowtails land on the yellow roses by the door; my small boy rides his bike pell-mell up and down the driveway, skidding to a stop on purpose. He has attached a pinwheel to his handle bars, and it spins brilliantly. His face is a smudge of wild strawberries and dirt: a recipe for little boy glee. Next week he’s going to summer camp at his preschool for four half days and I’m holding my breath, wondering what it will be like.

Of course, I start to think about him there, away from me, and my heart feels like a bungee jumper, mid air before the cord catches at the bottom of the fall.

He is at this lovely stage right now where, on a good day, he’s the sweetest most sensitive little guy in the world. He picks me flowers. Sometimes when we’re walking he’ll stop dead in his tracks and gasp, “Oh look at that flower, its just so beautiful!” He notices sunsets, and birds darting though the sky like bright flecks of paint.

In the book Lyle Lyle Crocodile, he gets genuine big tears in his eyes when we get to the page where Lyle gets locked in the zoo. And at the playground when a smaller boy was crying, he stood near by, a worried look on his face, until the boy was comforted.

I so hope that this tenderness doesn’t get wiped away by the big-boyness he’s sure to acquire in the first few days of spending so much time with other, older kids. Around big boys he walks taller, his little shoulders thrown back, and laughs at jokes he doesn’t understand. He’s growing up, and it makes me feel dizzy.

The other day he asked, “Who will snuggle me at preschool?”

“Your teacher will,” I said hopefully, and he smiled, convinced.

But will they?

And what about me, when this second little one enters the world? Will my heart really expand to love the both of them? Somehow I can hardly believe it, even as I feel fiercely protective of my tender belly, where this unexpected miraculous handful of cells is multiplying and growing: tiny arm buds, eyelids, it’s heartbeat like the fluttering wings of birds.

I'm pretty much just muttering now

Am packing for our trip to Spain. In the process I've discovered: dear god in a housedress, I live under a rock. I haven't gone "out" in oh, over a year I imagine. I no longer know how to wear lipstick. My feet, my barefoot garden loving feet, are in desperate need of a pedicure. And I threw a load of whites in the wash with a delicate, silky PINK wrap. And now everything is pink. Everything. I have never, ever done that before. Love how I saved that up for right now. So I'm a bit muddled. Thank you all for your love from my last post. Some days parenting just knocks my socks off. Today, Bean was still sleeping when I was getting ready to leave--so I smooched him and sort of nudged him awake and he opened his eyes, reached out and climbed into my arms for the world's most perfect snuggle ever. I'm gonna miss him like crazy. Even though we'll be soaking in Old World charm, and having drinks with some of our best friends ever, and generally having a blast.

I'll try to update when I'm there, but I can't be sure of the Internet connection I will have. Don't think I've forgotten you. I'll be taking lots and lots of pictures.

A fun weekend

New baby chicks & new bantam chickens from a neighbor (we named the rooster Guisseppe!)

A new bike for Bean.

New plants in the garden.

Sore muscles.

A night with just DH.

And only four three weeks left of school.

I know I promised I'd write more

But it's been sunny and I've been outdoors in the garden. I've decided I want to keep a garden journal here--but I'm afraid if I say so, I'll surely sabatoge my entire attempt. Everything I seem to say I want to do I immediately lose all interest in following through on. Why is that? Anway, I've double dug three long beds--and am currently in the midst of digging mounds for squash, watermellons and pumpkins. My legs itch from using the weed-wacker to cut down tall grass at the edges of the garden, and I'm wearing a big floppy white hat. Why am I posting then, when I claim to be in the midst of gardening? Bean is taking a poop. And dear lord, I still can't figure out how to teach the boy to wipe himself. So I was summoned from the garden with yells echoing from the bathroom. "Mama! I need to be wiped." I am sure the neighbors love that.

Weekend snapshots

(Bean took this one.)

The world has turned green. Less than a month left of school. The morning sun is waking me up, and I've been heading out to run more. Still not feeling totally in harmony with myself yet: still too much on my plate. But more days and more moments where the the orbit of things aligns with my own twirling self.

(Btw: The Cure was a wild, loud adventure that included getting lost when leaving Montreal--4o miles east, before we realized we were supposed to be going south. Oy. And the next day was a blur of tiredness.)

I am hoping to update here every day this week. I have a thing with perfection. I don't like writing here unless I have long moments to spend, delving into the deeper fabric of my thoughts. But I miss the daily practice. The flawed jotting of notes, of small moments, of daily life. When I first wrote here, I wrote all the time... but somehow I seem to have upped the standard on myself, and now I'm dragging my feet, feeling like if I can't post a brilliant post, I should'nt post anything at all. What is with that?

Nerdyness

We are going to The Cure tomorrow, up across the border. I’m not sure if this is cool. DH thinks it is, but he’s the kind of guy who can sing the lyrics to EVERY SINGLE SONG on the face of the earth. Really. His favorite genre: every song from the ‘80s. Thus, when I found out that that The Cure would be near here, I knew we had to get tickets: just so I could go and watch him sing along to every word. True love, baby.

However, he's returning the affection:

In late summer A Prairie Home Companion is happening my town, and this made me so excited I may have even equated Garrison Keillor with The Cure: as in, the Keillor is as cool in my mind as the Cure is in DH's. Basically I'm an NPR addict all the way. Other shows that make me swoon/giggle hysterically: Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, or Say’s You.

Now that I've posted this DH is learning how to hide his head hole in the ground from an ostrich.*

Alas, I cannot stop.

What kinds of wine come to mind when you read the following clues: (snagged from Say’s You—which I had to listen to in the driveway, until it ended because I could not stop laughing):

1) Fake window glass

2) A deer in the doldrums

3) The tide’s out at Mer San Michelle

Oh, I am such a nerd. It’s spring, I met my deadline, and I get to go somewhere international tomorrow to eat yummy food and listen to music I’m unsure about with my long-eyelashed guy. Life is good.

*See? Even my jokes are nerdy.

It figures...

...that the day I've set aside (taking full advantage of it being Mother's Day so I can totally claim several back to back hours) for finishing up my two manuscripts (which incidentally are DUE tonight) is GLORIOUS. Apple blossoms, a perfect breeze, seedlings to plant in the garden. Sigh. And here I am in my shady studio, clacking away on the keyboard. It is nearly impossible not to procrastinate now, when I'm working on revisions (which I hate) and a honey cheeked little boy comes running upstairs clutching a piece of bread and butter with the sole purpose of giving me kisses.

Anyway. Happy Mother's day to all of you mamas out there. I'm so lucky to know so many of you.

Glimpse

He’s there on the couch playing guitar and the notes are doing things for him that make my breath catch. Not perfect, but strings of notes in a minor chord from the sun-faded couch where he’s sitting barefoot. Outside the lilacs are just beginning to bloom. It’s Saturday again and I can’t seem to manage to put in more than a post a week right now, or get enough sleep.

Saturday in reverse

Eating Nutella out of the jar and writing. A two hour nap with Bean, our noses pressed into nooks amongst the pillows, rain falling outside.

Buying seedlings: artichokes (the love affair continues), lettuces, swiss chard.

Following a dashing Bean around the Aquarium, checking out turtles stacked like pancakes, and sea stars and frogs. "Let's be sturgeons," he said tonight after dinner.

Blueberry pancakes, made my DH, smothered in maple syrup (the only way to eat them.) Outside the azaleas are blooming.

A three mile run first thing this morning, on the treadmill, while Bean ate banana bread and butter and played with "Big Orange" the tractor.

Happy heart

A weekend trip south, to Blue Poppy's, to spend time with wonderful Lizardek and her lovely mom, and Elizabeth and her T. Ambling walks in the sunshine with a crowd of golden pups. Every moment filled up with wonder and delight and gratitude: these women come from my planet.

Some days I feel entirely alien to the orbit of people I'm surrounded with at work. People who aren't apt to contemplate karma, or Annie Dillard, or gel matte transfers, or the way light falls on a row of golden gourds on a vintage chest of drawers. But these women, they are brilliant, insightful, generous, and beautiful. They make my heart sing. (BP and I were mistaken for sisters several times, and it delighted me to no end. She is absolutely gorgeous. Inside and out.)

Not to mention is was lovely to sip wine until late and then slumber late without anyone to coax me awake (save for an invitation to see a moose). And also to be fed perfect blueberry pancakes with warm maple syrup and blueberries.

A post in pictures

Artichokes for dinner: a Bean favorite. Mine too. We eat all the way to the heart, dipping each leaf in lemon butter; then wonder at the purple and pale green thistle center.

It's suddenly warm here. Days perfect for drinking fizzy water and limes. Days for getting first sunburns, working in the garden. A week of vacation: to catch up on writing and sleep and time with my boys.

Bean and I spend every second outdoors in the afternoons, ambling through our meadows, taking stock of everything that is new and green and budding. He found these old baskets from last autumn's crysanthemums on the brush pile we're preparing to burn. Natraully, they offered endless entertainment.

Made the first batch of sun tea this week. The temperature has hit 80, and it's almost soporific. Just two weeks ago I was wearing down and socks, now I'm barefoot, my toes badly in need of a pedicure.

Writing, upstairs, alone in the house, I heard a thud. Unmistakable, reminding me of a childhood in the Rocky Mountains in a big-windowed cabin and my dad, holding stunned birds in his quiet palms. They always flew away, and compelled, I went downstairs and out the screen door looking. It was there, below the frong windows, wings spread wide, eyes closed. But I scooped it up gently, and held it. (My dad always said holding the birds helped them with the shock.) And eventually, he started to blink, and move about, then perched for a while on my thumb before flying off. A small blessing.

Wildflowers suddenly everywhere, and insects. I'm so damn grateful to be through with winter.

We hung Bean's first tree swing yesterday. So much nostalgia from childhood: my feet scraping the blue bowl of sky.

I found two today, the first of the year. I think of them as my writing talismans. Last year they brough so much: my writing group, Pam, a piece to be published this summer in the Sun. I've pressed them in my new Molskine.

He's just so beautiful. Yesterday in the garden he was stomping about. "I'm going to get the moon," he said, and then wandered off, gesturing that he'd gotten it and was holding it and bringing it back. "I brought you the moon, Mommy," he said, beaming.

Saturday mosaic

The boys are checking out tractors. Three generations of men with long eyelashes scoping out farm machinery, their fingers nestled into warm jacket pockets, the air still stupefying cold. It’s nearly April, and the mercury can’t make it up above forty for more than an hour in late afternoon. Just long enough to get the sap to start running, before it freezes back up.

I’m in the dining room where the sun makes a pattern of rhombuses: bright and shadow across the table, and the woodstove fills the room with snug heat. The cat sleeps sprawled in the sun, while around the house wind moves incessantly, like restless spirits.

If I look hard, I can see the small buds on the trees growing rounder—as though the woods have been stained with a faint and hazy hue of red. And though it snowed yesterday, the ground is scabbed with mud and melt. Still, it’s cold out. Bitter in the wind the way it was in January, and my body has grown sluggish and soft from all the weeks indoors.

Today we ate toad-in-the-hole’s, ripe mangoes, yogurt and honey, hot coffee. Then packed snacks for a road trip to anywhere, but here. Spring fever has made us stir crazy, and we went looking for sugar makers and for barnyards with animals; for wind-whipped ridges and different sky lines; different windows to look out of, at the very least.

In a neighboring town we licked freshly poured maple candy off our fingers after pulling it from the snow in long golden ribbons, our cheeks chapped in the wind. People serve bread and butter pickles here, during sugaring, and home made doughnuts. Then we ducked indoors at a café where the floors were old pine in wide planks and the lattes were thick with microfoam and the coffee and foam was poured into a perfect bloom at the brim of every cup.

On the way back the sun made us squint. This American Life on the radio, Bean napping. We stopped at the carwash, and DH pointed the spray gun at the wheels, trying to dislodge a winter’s worth of frozen mud hugging up against the rotors. Small things, really, but a change of scenery; a couple hours to elope from our everyday where spring still hasn’t come and the laundry has yet to be done.

Can't sleep

The inability to sleep (wtf? When did that start being one of my problems?) combined with perpetual snow has me rather glum. The only good thing? Tomorrow is Friday.

30 today

Update: because I've almost slipped off the face of the earth

* My laptop is in for repairs (the screen split down the side for no apparent reason) and I'm going through withdrawal trying to write on my old, slow HP. * My rooster, who was attacked by a neighbor's boyfriend's dog, is dying. I am so sad, and feel so guilty and awful, not quite knowing what to do to help. He's more severely injured than he let on the day after--and I think I'm going to have my father in law shoot him. He might have crushed ribs--and certainly a broken leg. He won't eat, or drink. This is the part I hate about loving animals.

* I have another writing deadline (the first of next month) and am tangling deep in the middle of a manuscript. Hence, I have no time to do anything else. Including art. Feeling guilty about that.

* I can't seem to shake the feeling of guilt hanging over me lately---can't seem to ever feel like I'm getting everything done well enough, fast enough, etc--yet I can't seem to figure out what to cut back on.

* I'm turning 30 at the end of the week, and am feeling nervous. Shouldn't I have accomplished more by now? Please tell me, what is the best thing about turning 30?

Fairy dust and climbing shoes

Another really long day. And then, the best thing ever. We started our climbing class tonight, and as an early birthday present DH got me a new harness and shoes. In between trying on pairs of shoes--and while waiting for the sales guy to dig through his inventory for my size--I picked up a climbing magazine and leafed through it. Then, while reaching to put it back, this little gift was sitting right there--where the magazine had been.

I've always adored Rosa for doing this kind of thing and have secretly wished I'd someday be the recipient of a little random bit of whimsy. But to find it today was simply perfect.

I was so exhausted, bummed out, and feeling defeated in general. Let's just say it was a looong day.

So we went climbing and it was glorious, and now I have a little magical bag of glittery gold fairy dust and I can't stop smiling.

The only difference

Friday night my heart felt like a hundred rain splattered puddles: each one reflecting a different small circle of cloud covered sky; so many different things to do all in exactly the same few moments.

Friday I was a flood of hormonal mood swings before I start to bleed, and I felt anxious and sad and utterly overwhelmed. Also nearly sick again. Then Saturday came, and the sun was shining through tatters of clouds and I went for a run for the first time in a month, and dear god, why can’t I remember this?

I need to exercise.

Every day I need to feel my body move, outside, among trees and open spaces, side stepping puddles, feeling my lungs suck in cold air. I need to exercise not because I want to look a certain way, but because I need to feel a certain way. It’s the only variable I can think of that genuinely affects how I manage stress. It’s the only thing that really makes a difference: being outdoors, feeling my blood hot in my cheeks, feeling my muscles sore afterwards.

Exercise brings balance to my life, yet regularly in the winter I let it slip by. Day after day I come home, to the sun staining the west a meek orange, and the shadows already those of dusk. I feel selfish then, setting out on a run, having not spent time with my small boy.

Yet without exercise I start to become irrational. Guilt becomes an entire harbor in my heart, sheltering a whole fleet of inadequacies: I do not spend enough time with my son; I don’t cook enough or clean enough or see my husband enough; I am not a good enough teacher or writer or reader.

The only difference between days like this, and days where I feel like I’m on top of the world is that on the days where I’m kicking ass, I’ve also gotten outdoors and moved.

Seriously. It’s that easy. And that incredibly difficult. Does anyone else experience this?