I started the year off with a bang: in the hospital for a fluid drip after getting severely dehydrated from the most intense food poisoning/vomit/unmentionable sickness EVER. It struck in the middle of the night, after a demure and pleasant dinner out with friends. Way to start the year off with a bang, no?
Doing
Our holiday in photos /
I keep wishing that my thoughts could somehow be automatically transcribed here so that I could record all the good and delicious moments that have happened over the past couple of days. I am hoping a handful of photos will serve for the thousands of words that I could write, were I to be inclined (but am not.) Firstly, here is the Advent Box I made for Bean this year. Remember the one I made last year? This one was significantly smaller and at his height--so that he developed the ridiculously adorable routine of waking up and running downstairs first thing (dragging his blanket no less) to find out what the Advent Fairy brought. I made a note with a tiny little envelope and a vintage stamp for every day that came along with a small gift or treasure. Some major hits were: a Chinese Yo Yo, a small wind-up bulldozer, heart shaped post-it notes, a single large sugar-coated gummy candy, a music box that played The Pink Panther theme song, and a sparkly yellow pen with a little fluffy duck at the top.
Next, I achieved the unimaginable this year--and baked, from scratch, an entire gingerbread train--something Bean saw in a magazine and swooned over. All three of us decorated it together in the kitchen, getting frosting on our fingers. DH and I kept harping on Bean about eating the icing--but then we looked at each other and realized, who are we kidding? It's Christmas and the kid is decorating a freaking gingerbread train. He's going to eat the icing. DH made the heart out of candy canes on the caboose.
Bean got sick a few days before Christmas. Woke up with a blazing fever, and spent the day on the couch feeling rather miserable. Still, we did end up going out and cutting down a tree, and decorating it made his entire day. The way he oohed and squealed as he unwrapped each ornament made it almost as fun as Christmas morning. Then he quite artistically clumped all the ornaments together in arrangements of twos and threes on the lower portions of the tree.
Christmas morning Bean woke up later than usual. We were expecting not-even-light-out early, but he slept until about 7:30 and then came into our room (dragging his blanket again) for a snuggle before sitting straight up and asking, "Did Santa come?" We made him sit at the top of the stairs while we went down & turned on the tree lights. When he came downstairs, the look on his face was wide-eyed. I think it's the first year he's actually really gotten the idea of Christmas. We let him open his stocking while we went about preparing coffee and fruit salad and dried cherry scones to tide us over during the real business of unwrapping once the grandparents arrived. (Note his awesome pink bunny slippers--as per his specific request.)
By afternoon, we snacked on imported dried salami, fresh mozzarella, and aged vinegar and lounged. Bean was more than content to spend hours with his new remote control fire truck, which was his number one request from Santa.
I was also more than content to play with my goodies. DH was beyond generous and lovely this year, and spoiled me rotten. Soo many fun goodies, including a little Olympus Stylus 1030SW so that I can have a camera with me at all times. Not even close to replacing my beloved Cannon EOS20D, but fantastic to slip into my pocket and take along on trips downtown, or to document impromptu sledding adventure.
All in all, it's been such a good couple of days--and I'm off for several more, which thrills me to no end. I am nesting. Washing baby clothes and setting up the crib.
How was your holiday? What are five things that you loved?
Right Click /
Trying to figure out how to use my new MacBook Air. Everything about it is so pretty I cried when I got it. It's as thin as a piece of toast; fits in my purse. Love it. Still--I have yet to figure out what to do instead of right-clicking on everything. I had no idea how much I relied on that feature. Mac lovers out there, help, please. :)
More to come, once I figure that out.
Getting back in the groove /
Happy that the snow is falling.
Hanging garlands and Christmas lights.
Planning to make a gingerbread train with Bean.
Writing.
Making photo albums.
Feeling more like myself than I have in months.
*** What are you doing? I've missed you.
Hibernating /
I've been curled up under the eaves in my studio on the couch, listening to the rain fall and perusing all the delightful blog links you left in the comments of my last post. Such delight & inspiration. Thank you, thank you for dosing me with your good taste and fabulous finds.
Everyone here is sick with one thing or another. Bean with a double ear infection, DH with a cold, me with a possible sinus infection. We keep passing these germs around like sandwiches, apparently, so we're all lying low, staying put, and generally eating soup and bread and keeping to ourselves.
Today DH bought a new truck out of necessity and in celebration of a new month. Okay so we're officially half way through already. Still. October sucked. Long story made short: the day after our friend died, the our plow truck gas tank fell out on the road, followed the next day by our septic backing up. Followed shortly thereafter by 2 of our 3 geese getting eaten by coyotes. Yes. It was a month. Anyway, the truck had irreparable rust damage--it was used to begin with--and so we sold it and bought a new one.
We spent most of the day driving about in the rain through some neighboring towns, stopping for sandwiches at a general store; lattes at a bakery; poking into little toy shops; stopping at a train station; and listening to music low on the stereo. Just the three of us, content to be half sick and with each other in the small circumference of the cab.
What did you spend Saturday doing?
A house of yo-yos /
I keep trying to be here more regularly. It makes me so happy to write, to respond, to hear your comments and share my art and small snippets of my days... but lately my days have been one thing: EXHAUSTION. I catch myself curling up with the intention of reading, and then all I do is stare out the window.
My days are long and by the time I get home I've given all the little fragments of myself that I can give away. I cry easily. I'm snappy and snippy and short fused. It sucks.
I kind of remember it being this way with my first, with Bean, but the difference was: I didn't have Bean. I could go home to my house and cats and chill. Dinner could happen anytime. We could head out for coffee at 9pm if we wanted. Life after work allowed for some decompression.
Now, well, not so much. Not at all actually. And poor Bean. He's going through some kind of phase of being at once stubborn and sensitive, fragile to the quick and emotional and tempermental and oh so needy. As in he wants to be on my person all the time. That, or throwing himself on the floor in diagreement.
We're a house of yo-yos. Extremes. Fragments. I keep trying to snatch up moments that I love to fill me up: watching the sunset from our bedroom window, my cheek on DH's chest; making play dough with Bean; the warmth of the fire; the first flakes of falling snow... but I am not quenched, the tiredness like a drought, spreads through my bones.
I need inspiration.
What are 4 of your favorite blogs right now?
What is one good book you've read recently?
What is your current favorite magazine?
What is your newest food discovery that you love?
A week in the Life: Wednesday (on Friday) /
In the morning, first thing, snow coated the ground like sugar. Then it melted, and a soft rain started to fal, rinsing the remaining orange and yellow leaves; making them fall in wet heaps to the dark ground.
Every day hinges around these simple things: dishes stacked in the cupboard, food prepared, then put away. Each day I try to succumb more gracefully to the essence of these tasks.
After work I put fresh paint in Bean's pallett and let him go to town. I love his abstract lines and the way color and shape become things after the fact, after the paint has been smeared across the page.
Bringing fresh water for paint, I have my camera with me and snap a photo. This is life documentary: catching the bubbles swirl in the glass and the water running down the drain.
Evening, before bed. A circle of lamplight in our blue bedroom.
A Week In The Life:: Monday /
Morning blur. All of the pictures I took today have this blurry quality. Such an apt reflection of my Monday. Here, Bean giggles in the covers as I get dressed. He's such a big kid now--sleeping every night, all through the night, in his OWN bed. I still am marveling at this. It's such a big deal for him--the boy who is impervious to sleep.
A skeptical self portrait. From this angle I hardly look pregnant. Must take a side angle photo tomorrow so you can see how truly huge I am.
Work bag on the floor at the end of the day. The house is cold when I come home.
I curl up on the couch to check email and savor the quiet of ten minutes when no one needs me.
Dishes. Laundry. These small things. I try to give myself over to them, being wholly in them, letting all else but the moment slip away.
Bean lives his whole life in the moment...although he is beginning to get the concept of future. To him the future means one thing: toys he can ask for for Christmas this year. He's taken to marking with Xs all the toys he wants from every catalog that arrives at our door.
A Week In The Life:: Sunday /
Drying my hair. Hating maternity clothes as much as I did last time. This is not a good start to the morning.
Breakfast = best part of the day. DH made biscuits (he makes the best.)
Yummy lemon curd to go with flakey, dreamy biscuits.
Then an insurmountable list of everything to do. I dropped the couch on my foot while moving it to vacuum. I started to sob. The rest of the day pretty much felt like a bruise. Thin skinned doesn't even describe it.
Everything feels on edge. Precarious. Fragile. Dramatic. Technicolor.
After Bean is asleep, I sit on the couch in the living room writing lesson plans and wondering where I'll find the energy and enthusiasm to face 22 second graders tomorrow. The house is quiet & clean. I lit a candle on the windowsill. The light falls in yellow flickering circles.
A perfect afternoon. /
Mellow autumn sunlight. A blanket. Orange leaves getting stuck in our hair. A pomogrante to share. Giggles. Juice on our fingers. Delight.
Small orbit /
I want to write, but every time I sit down I feel my energy evaporate like moisture on hot pavement. Five months pregnant, and my orbit has grown small. Small so that it only encompasses my growing family. As small as the round circle of the milky white moon climbing rung by rung into to the heavens through the branches of the tree. As small as a dinner plate.
At the end of the day I curl up on the couch with a head full of daydreams. Suddenly I've been having images of paintings I want to create. The slightest whisps of glimmers for stories, like the first hint of smoke in the autumn air.
I am content to wait. Content to let making minestrone soup from scratch and cornbread muffins be enough accomplishment for the day.
Not long enough /
The weekends are not long enough. The numbers fall off the clock, scattering onto the floor. The day melts into pale of twilight too soon. I've begun to realize that this will be what characterizes my thirties: this hunger for more time. This feeling of stretched-thin, this longing for leisure, for sinking teeth deep into the flesh of the day. It's gone in a blink. Four loads of laundry. Several photos snapped of Bean who caught a frog. Lessons planned. Groceries purchased. Dinner eaten. A book finished. Am I just greedy, thirsting for more time? Do other people feel like they ever have enough?
Tuesday, Tuesday /
I come home with a sore throat. Tuesday. Every week Tuesday seems to day that kicks my butt the most. I feel like a rug worn to the weft. Like the delicate filigree of a leaf’s veinwork—all that’s left after a season of snow. Or like the gray goose feathers scattered about the yard, down torn along the quill. My small boy is waiting for me, playing in the backyard in the slanting sunshine, his hair lit gold, his face smudged with a mustache of dirt. He burrows into me, a full body hug. He hands me a bottle of bubbles slick with soap, “Blow bubbles for me mommy!†he instructs, then waits until I fill the air with transparent rainbow spheres that float up towards the blue sky, cloudless and bright.
We walk down the driveway, the geese following us, a rumpus of flapping and honks, they think we’re Mama. Anyone with two legs. Mama. The leaves have started to turn, though for the most part everything’s still lush and green and the air, until today was warm like summer. But today we can feel a crispness.
Suddenly I’m craving grapefruit and apples. Peaches and watermelon seem like afterthoughts. In the garden, potatoes wait to be dug, and pumpkins have grown fat.
It’s Tuesday and my throat hurts and I want to curl up and make time stand still so that I can catch up with myself. I lie in the grass after Bean goes indoors with DH. The evening sun is falling towards me. The grass is cold. I can here an owl, the baaing of sheep, the twitter of birds. The geese settle in next to me, preening. They nibble at my hair. I try to let myself sink down into the moment, noticing. Noticing layer upon layer of sound, of smell, of light, of hue.
Then they’re at the doorway wanting me for dinner, and I go.
One of those days /
This morning, racing to the toilet in an attempt to avoid vomiting all over the floor, I ended up smacking myself in the face with the toilet seat cover. Hard enough to bruise myself.
Crying + vomit. What could be better? Sigh.
finding my way back... /
I can't say why or when I stopped. Just did, and then the weeks became months, and my soul was elsewhere. Maybe with words on the page? In any case, it felt good to slip back into paint and glue and ink and graphite, making something without editing; the inexact phrase of the image.
What have you left off or forgotten or taken a break from?
Some of where I've been... /
I'm not gone... /
... Just taking a break. So much to tell you about. I'll be back by the end of the week (if not before.)
xoxo!
big skies /
Big skies. Scarlet Gilia and Indian Paintbrush. Writing. It's where I'll be all week.
Friday :: /
* An iced decaf latte tasted good today. This is miraculous.
* Bought orchids for my new studio space (we're shuffeling rooms, repainting, etc.)
* My pants no longer fit, but I'm not really showing. In other words, I look chubby around my middle. So attractive. It's all about the bella band now.
* Am excited to watch the Olympics tonight. They always get me motivated to do sports and to take better care of myself. Ironically--last time I was watching the summer Olympics, Bean was in my tummy.
* Bean used the words "actually" and "absolutely" in the same sentence today. It made me giggle. Now he's digging gravel on the driveway with the geese looking on.
* I've decided all the little things matter. In a year from now I'll forget what being pregnant was like. For the next little while, I'll be focusing on minutia :) and perhaps starting to draw every day objects again. It's somehow very grounding to bring my attention back to the little things. To take notice of food, small moments, errands, conversations.
Wednesday :: /
I felt reasonable today, and as a result accomplished seven times what I have been typically accomplishing every day. As in: completed & turned in 2 manuscripts, finished an article, and completely set my classroom up. That last part took me almost the whole day. My back is rediculously sore from pushing metal desks and bookshelves around. I snagged to boys on custodial duty to move the really heavy stuff, but the rest I did myself. It's too hard to try and visualize classroom feng shui with two teenage boys gawking about.
While I was sorting books rainclouds gathered. Suddenly it was ominously black out my window. Then the rain came pelting down in sheets. The smell of ozone came through the open windows, and then a crack of thunder so close I jumped. On the way home I passed the tree the lightening had hit. A huge branch had cleaved off an old maple--and had wrapped itself entirely around an electrical line. One thing New England weather isn't is boring.
Also: Bean just went and got his shoes and then left the house with his guitar (an old beaten up acoustic guitar we've had around forever) saying "I'm leaving to go to a concert so I won't be able to go to bed tonight. The concert will be really really long and I'll be out really late."
I have absolutely no idea where he got that idea.