rollercoaster

Feels like I was on a rollercoaster all weekend. Hanging out with a sick Bean, soaking up sun, spending time with really good friends, feeling moody and then, logically coming down with a fever tonight. I'm trying to get my bearings now, and feeling dizzy both literally and figuratively.

Sickie nuggles

I took a wicked spinning class last night. My first, ever. It was fun, and invigorating (if an hour of standing while sprinting while gasping for air can be called invigorating.) But it was totally the wrong thing to have done yesterday in particular because I felt kind of off and didn’t listen to myself and as a result woke up this morning with a terrible sore throat. Bean also seems to have woke up sick—running a low fever and a juicy cough that seems to have showed up out of nowhere (though in a likelihood it is probably from the doctor’s office, when we brought him for his ‘well baby’ visit a few days ago!) So I stayed home today, and we made French toast and lay around on the couch in the sunshine doing interactive games on PBS Kids and feeling generally miserable and snug at the same time. DH left last night for a weekend trip to help his parents get their house ready for sale, so it’s a single-parenting gig for me for the next few days. I’m feeling less thrilled about this now that I feel exactly like I swallowed a golf ball and my voice is sounds like sandpaper. But I’m determined to have a good weekend. Lay low, nap, buy some rain boots, play with trains at Barnes & Noble, and maybe make a trip to Starbucks for a cookie later on.

It isn’t all bad though, being home sick with a sickie. He climbs into my lap and says “Wanna nuggle” meaning “snuggle” and then he nuzzles into a nook and his hair smells like vanilla and fresh bread.

Seeking

Trying to find beauty tonight, and striving to ask the right questions of the universe, but feeling shaky about it all. Trying to put the right words out there, the right prayers, the right hopes, so that joy floods into my life and makes me full. Some days this is easier to do than others. Sometimes its hard to even be right here, in this moment, even for a moment without fragmenting into worry and what-ifs.

Thank you for writing all your little rituals--the things you do to find solace and serentity and balance every day. I loved reading them.

I still haven't made it back onto Dh's computer to get the song title print-out for that running mix (which is totally embarrasingly 80's, but definitely rockin'!)...but in the meantime, anyone who hasn't checked out Pandora should, immediately. I'm so undaring when it comes to buying CDs, and I almost never hear new music on the radio (I listen to NPR on the way to work.) This has become my way to venture into new uncharted music territory.. I'd love to know: who are your top five favorite musicians right now?

Finding the beat

Last week I was like a satellite thrown out of orbit, twirling in crazy loops from all the scrambled sleep, and the on-edge waiting. I let myself slip haphazardly out of my routine of writing mornings, first thing while the house is still sighing in its sleep.

I’d hear the alarm, and peer at it through mostly closed lashes and then hit the snooze button with vigor, before turning to inhale the sweet sleeping scent of my boys, pressed at odd angles to each other. Light would slip softly through the wooden slats of the window shades, zebra-striping the sienna paint on our wall with gold, and mourning doves would gather below the feeder outside and coo like a clutch of kerchief clad old biddies waiting for a bakery to open.

I’d get up, staggering. If I was lucky they’d both stay asleep while I showered and made coffee, and I’d pocket those moments of silence like a thief. But I found myself missing the routine; the rhythm of bowing down first at the page, each new day.

Instead of writing, I carved some time out on the treadmill at the gym everyday last week (the weather too cold until today to be outdoors.) In doing so I began to remember this about myself: moving, running, doing, is anther way to bow down at the door of all that is good in my life.

Moving, one foot and then the other, in a steady rhythm, feeling my lungs and heart send bright red blood circling through capillaries makes me feel immediately at right with my life, with the twirling stars, with the sap running, with my all my hopes. Now, to do both: to run and to write. This is my goal this week.

** I’ll totally post the running mix! Just have to get back on DH’s computer—tomorrow, maybe?

In the meantime, tell me, what few things do you find you really need to do every day to feel whole (even if you don’t always get to do them.)

Saturday list

* Croissants, fresh strawberries, vanilla yogurt, lattes. * A trip to the store for rain boots.

* Grocery shopping ("Bean drive OWN CAR," he says, earnestly. And so we push around those awful, cumbersome, rediculous plastic car/carts. He loves every minute.)

* Teething, and a struggle to go to sleep at nap time. Finally we went for a walk with Bean in the running stroller (think MUD on the roads) and he was asleep in less than a minute.

* A teeny-tiny circus, just down the road. (Such a long post coming on that tomorrow!)

* Lasange, garlic bread, wine and chocolate cake with friends while the kids chased the cats, and shared sippy cups.

* Making the perfect running mix. (Leave a comment if you want the titles! I'm into goofy, fast paced, 80s inspired stuff when I run. Anything to keep my feet moving!)

* And delight, of all delights: my iPod and book were found and returned! Thanks for all the positive comments on that one. I seriously think you helped balance the universe in my favor. Now, just keep your good thoughts dancing my way re: grad school. They say I won't necessarily be notivied until mid April.

More up down

So I'm going with the co-sleeping-ish arrangement for now. Which is what we've been doing, and it works fine except for when he's ansy and can't lie still and insists on holding my cheek pressed against his cheek, and howling "Mama TURN OVER" when I roll the other way. But. So. Well. We'll keep trying because it seems that's the only thing we can do, seeing as we adore the pants of him as it is. Other things:

I had a great hair day today. I never have good hair days, and today, all sorts of perfect luscious shine and bounce and complements.

It's 40 degrees out right now, at night, which is almost unbelievable, as it hasn't been this warm (yes, WARM) in oh, five months.

We had tacos for dinner. I love tacos. I grew up in California. Mexican food always makes me smile.

And... PLUMS are back in stores around here, which means somewhere, they're in season right now.

But:

I left my ipod and my beloved Eat Love Pray book at the gym tonight, parked on top of one of the lockers, and when I called a few hours later, they didn't find it. I'm going to assume the positive--that it was placed somewhere for safekeeping and that I'll get it back tomorrow. But if not, who would steal a book? An ipod, well, at least it has value. But my book? All underlined and happily dog-eared, and not half read?

The good & the not so much

Feeling tiredness crowd me like breathy people on a commuter train, I write a few scattered sentences and prepare for bed. The house is humming: the heat turning on, DH playing guitar, the low moan of the wind pulling around the northern corner. I feel snug tonight. Impatient still, with no answer yet, but content because I ran four miles today, watching my lanky legs in the mirror to work on form. God, I look like a gorilla on stilts. I throw my left foot out at a funny angle, it seems; which explains why I always have a splotch of mud on my right calf after every run. I kick myself. What’s left to write after writing that? But the running felt good. I kept a nice 9:30 mile pace and felt my lungs expanding easily. At the end I was grinning, inadvertently. Other things I’m thrilled about tonight:

* The gorgeous Sam of Sunday School Rebel is having a BOY! Clearly, I’m partial here.

* I’ve started reading Eat, Pray, Love and was pulled right in. I love books that do that to you. Her writing has a conversational tone, tender and honest, like she’s talking to you over tea.

* DH gave me a new laptop yesterday. There it was on the counter when I came home, in it’s snug little box. It’s so pretty and sleek and utterly functional that I can hardly contain my glee. And it doesn’t have a fubar every five seconds like my old one was apt to do (the fan sounded like a jet plane, and the power adapter port only worked every OTHER second. GAH!)

Things I am not thrilled about:

* The fact that still, every night, Bean has been waking up and wailing and insisting on going to bed in “mommy and daddy’s bed” or being rocked for eons. It’s wearing me thin. I want him to sleep through the night, happily, in his own room. Here are the things I know: he’s definitely cutting his last incisor right now, and his nose is all stuffed up. But really—does that warrant this? I’d love advice… (Know, we can’t for various reasons bring ourselves to be of the “cry it out” camp, including among other more important reasons, that his cries make it impossible to sleep. And also, how can you NOT go, when he calls, “Mama, Daddy, where ARE you? Need HELP. Need a HUG.”)

Do I just ride this out and tell everyone that raccoon eyes are the new thing? Or is there some strategy I’m overlooking?

Waiting

Feeling the tight stomached ache of waiting, now. For spring, for the fat envelope, for several nights of sleep stacked up against each other like a solid cord of wood.

I finished The Year Of Magical Thinking yesterday, and all day today I keep going back to it in my mind. So many of her sentences are like the unusual pebbles we scoop up at the beach and then finger softly in the white cotton interiors of our pockets all afternoon.

This one, particularly:

"Marriage is memory, marriage is time."

I randomly opened an old issue of Vanity Fair today, looking for inspiration, and landed on a page with her bird like portrait: frail after so much loss, but fierce. I clipped it to the wire running along the low wall near my desk, with other glossy pages ripped from other sources, each image causing amazement to quicken in my soul.

Waiting always feels like this. I heard from one school, yes. But the other, the one I dearly want, most, utmost, not yet. There are more birds now: doves, grackles, starlings, chickadees and a whole bevy of chatty bluejays at the feeder; but not yet robins from the tree tops, and not yet buds swelling large enough to force in jars along the windowsills. Though surely soon.

25 months

Snow is falling again, though last week the grass started to show, barely green, in muddy patches in the yard. The temperatures were in the fifties and the creek running through the meadow down our road, was swollen with snowmelt, its blue-black water spreading out across the snowy expanse of buried grass like a bruise. Now, they’re calling for three feet of snow—tonight—and the mud on the driveway is frozen in stiff tracks.

More snow means more days spent clambering into boots and mittens in our slate-floored entryway, which is interminably heaped with outer things, jackets hanging three deep on every hook. It means more fights with you about wearing your fire-engine-red snowsuit; more pell-mell chases around the living room to capture you, half squealing with delight, half wailing in frustration. It means the mourning doves and starlings and jays and chickadees that you delight to watch gathering at our feeder by the dozens, will huddle tonight in the pines, heads tucked deep into the downy warmth of their bodies. It means that spring, certain in it’s coming, is still not here.

Do you remember spring, little one? Do you remember how the dandelions plunge up from the verdant green, like a thousand bright yellow suns across our lawn? How suddenly in the span of a month buds are everywhere, and throngs of insects, and the shrill, vibrant chorusing of peepers in the swamps?

We bought you a new pair of red rubber ladybug boots today, because mud season is just around the corner, and though you haven’t truly experienced it yet, mud is certain to become one of your favorite things.

Tonight the wind whips around the north corner of the house, howling, low and soft. Upon hearing it earlier, you looked up with wide eyes, and said, “Daddy, what dat?” Now you’re snug in your crib, curled on your sheepskin wearing red stripped pajamas, and we’re hoping you’ll sleep till morning, but the past few weeks have been iffy in this department.

Sleep deprivation is by far the worst part of being a parent. It feels a little being pushed up against the chain-link fence by the bully at school; the lunch-money quarters smooth and round in your closed fist, unwillingly and suddenly exposed. You have no choice. You give them up because that’s what being asked of you; because if you give in quickly, the way your hair is being pulled and the way the back of your neck is being pinched by the silver chinks of fence will likely ease. For now.

When you cry at night there is nothing we can do except reply; go, be there with you as you squirm about, sleepy and disoriented, calling, “Mama, Daddy, where are you?”

Then you say, your nose snuffly because you’re sick, “Need a hug. NEED A HUG.” So we go. We hug you. We take turns, feeling the cold creep up our legs, and a splintering ache begin at the backs of our eyes. We take turns rocking and singing, coaxing you to sleep. Begging you. Or sometimes, when we’re so sleep-stupored and staggering, we carry you to our bed, where inevitably you sleep perpendicular to both of us, thrashing, your feet in my jugular, your head pressed firmly into the crook of Daddy’s neck.

The past few months you’ve woken up more often at night, and I think it’s because you have energy left to burn. Your wiry little body was made to run. Some days, when the thermometer doesn’t pass zero, you don’t get outside at all, and running around the house leaves something to be desired and many things out of place.

This month of winter after your birthday, has also brought delight by the spoonfuls. The world of imaginative play has suddenly opened wide for you, and you play with blocks and cars, building houses and navigating to stores that sell only chocolate and ice cream for breakfast (you little scamp.)

And we read.

We sit snug on the tan couch in the living room, your body pressed against mine. It is the same tan couch I lay on in Connecticut when the midwife first pressed her Doppler stethoscope to my belly and we heard your heartbeat fast and strong like a rushing flurry of wings. Now we sit on it together and read, book after book, you pointing everything out in the pictures and turning the pages, me reading aloud the same stories again and again until I’ve nearly committed to memory every line of your favorites. You love stories now, not just identification books, or books with simple verses. You attend to the characters, and get anxious when they are trouble and laugh with glee when something silly or funny happens. You count, you sing, you talk. All the time.

I can’t wait to spend spring with you. To hear what you have to say about taking hikes in our woods and digging with wooden spoons in the mud. I can’t wait plant a garden with you and to order baby chicks in the mail. You’re such a cool kid now, talking in complete sentences; talking a blue streak. You ask why and what and when a zillion times.

Even when I’m exhausted, I can’t wait to spend every single day with you.

Love, Mama

Morning blur

The morning is smudged with rainy dark. Gradually the snow melts, an the temperatures climb. Along the roads, silver buckets hang from maple trees now. My fingers move slowly this morning, making up sleep debt always takes a few nights. My body still feels somehow separate, as though I’m above it slightly, directing it as I would a marionette. Bean is sick with a cold—the first time he’s been sick all winter. I wish I could wrap him up and snuggle him all day, but he’d protest. So instead I taught him how to play patty cake and he loved it. He went around the house singing “Paddy cake paddy cake baker man,” over and over again and grinning. Anyone know any other fun hand games for small kiddos?

Oh and also, the potted palm in my bedroom isn’t happy. It has big elephant-ear fronds, and is in a smallish bowl. Anyone out there with a green thumb? Do palms like water, or do they like to be dry? Sun or less so?

Sleep, interrupted.

Every hour. Every single hour, he woke up (stomach ache? teething? All he kept saying was, "Hug! Want a hug!") Does the word derailed have meaning for you? Because that's how I feel this morning. Or like all of my cells are zinging, vibrating at some near out of body frequency, my pulse quick from exhaustion. I don't do well with no sleep. I would suck at those adventure races. Today will be a scramble to get back on track. A large coffee this morning, and then a long day. What do you do when you're this tired? Any tricks?

Anew

It has been a few weeks now, of feeling different. On track, in the thick of sweetness. We’re playing again, laughing, dreaming, taking care of ourselves. It wasn’t until your comments from this post that I realized maybe, really, the winter was affecting us. And since then, the longer days and weeks with occasional clouds, rather than occasional sun, have given us enough fabric to stitch together joy.

In March, our dirt road turns to mud, and driving, you get pulled in, the metal hulk of your vehicle swerving this way and that as you navigate each sticky groove, the ground pliant with snowmelt. Before March, it was our discord that was like this. The groves so traveled between us, we were not sure how to navigate beyond them. But then, gradually, we gave each other space, and the possibility of a new track, and now we’re here, knee to knee throwing bowls, or making love, or simply offering generosity of intention to every moment we’re with each other.

In our eighth year together, this seasonal quality to love is something that I’m starting to see and comprehend, viscerally. Now with longer days and sap rising in the maples, I’m ready to go buy yellow rubber boots and plan a garden. Patience is a gradual lesson. I learn it slowly as new greening of spring rises up, and my heart beats quick at the sight of him again, differently, anew.

Things I'm excited about, and a small piece of art

* New plants: a tall potted palm for the bedroom, and a delicate fern for downstairs by the kitchen sink.

* Running every day this week except for Monday, and sleeping better at night because of it.

* Starting a half-marathon training program--mid May-ish is the date for several possible runs. Loving the focus a tangible goal provides.

* The earlier daylight savings time this year (this Sunday!) and making plans to spend time in the sun.

* Having a piece accepted for publication in a magazine you can buy at Barnes & Noble. (WHOOhoo!)

Self Portrait: new haircut

I got a new haircut today, and I had my eyebrows done. I always feel so much more put together & pretty when I do. It's been too long since I put any effort into my appearance. The entire winter, in fact.

Afterwards I spent a few hours by myself. Sitting at a cafe people watching and scribbling in my notebook; smiling at strangers. Then using gift certificates I've been saving to buy some new things: a pair of dark jeans, a hot pink tank top for 2$, some classic t's I've been needing, and a new pair of earrings (pictured). I hardly ever get to spend this kind of time, just for me. I had to stop myself more than once from lurching out of the dressing room in just a bra when a toddler yelled "Mama!" just the way Bean does from the room next door.

It was kind of my own private celebration for taking the plunge and going after something I want. This is what I'm in the mood for right now: ready to revamp things, to gear up, get busy, plunge in, and DO. Spring has this affect on me, and though we just got snow last night, I know it's on it's way. I'm making lists today, ready to kick some butt.

Delight

Today I was going through my notebooks and I found this page from last spring. It got me to thinking about the small things that make me smile, right now, no matter what. These are good things to think of. Little things, that pull me into the present, into an immediate experience of pleasure. Here's my list for today. What is yours?

Little beansprout art

We've been doing a lot of art lately. Bean often asks to paint, and I've been offering him various mediums--letting him be as much a part of my creative process a possible. First off, I've discovered that finger painting is much more fun if you put the paints into a cupcake tin. Bean loves to use brushes to mix the paint--he's almost more into that than putting it on the paper. But he also loves to get his hands in it. "Splat! Splat!" he says as he puts his handprints all over the page.

We also had fun exploring splattering with a brush. I showed him how to flick the brush across the page, and he had quite a lot of fun flecking page after page.

Finger paints are fun, but I find them to be rather messy in general, so I've explored letting Bean use water color paints instead. I have an old tray of watercolor paints I've used forever that I let him explore with. Once I showed him how to dip his paintbrush in water and then wet the tabs of paint, he became quite adept at it. Here is one of his more recent creations. Watercolors allow him to add layers of paint without having the pigments all mix together to into a dull shade of goop. They're also easy to wash off--and most colors come out of clothing entirely (stay away from some of the darker blues--ultramarine and cobalt in particular.)

The great thing about having Bean do watercolor art, is that I can use his work for the backgrounds for little pieces of my own art. I love this collaboration, and how his wild brushtrokes make me less concerned with details and more inclined to just have fun and play with the piece I'm creating. Today we broke out the stamps. He had fun with those too--learning quickly how to put them correct side down on the stamp pad. Then he surprised me by starting to sing the Alphabet song! The kid never misses a beat.

Lastly, something we've had a lot of fun with is collage. We look through magazines together an he tells me which pictures he wants me to cut out. After I've cut one out, he glues the back of it and then puts it into his notebook, exclaiming "YAY!" after each time he's successfully secured it in place. I was surprised he was able to manipulate the gluestick independently, but after being shown how to turn the paper over, and glue the back, with a little practice he was a pro. The best part of this activity was getting to see which images catch his eye. He loves animals and wants to hug and kiss the pictures we cut out of them. So much fun!

At the doorway

So I finished, and I’m happy with the manuscript I put together. I wrote well, I think. My body aches from poor posture, and hour after hour in front of the computer.

Getting these applications finished is a milestone for me. I’m standing at the doorway to something I’ve wanted for such a long time, and finally I’ve given myself the all-out green light to go ahead and be a writer.

It still sounds a little scary to say that, to admit that’s what I’m doing by sending this fat envelope off. Like releasing a flock carrier pigeons, hope takes flight on a hundred wings tonight.

Breathing space

Snowmelt dripping

Tattered clouds

Setting Sun

Snow angel

Evening light

Walking home

Noticing

The morning sun is gorgeous and golden through my window, another day with possible moments of sun makes my heart sing.

I’ve been wanting to write about all the good things in my this past week, but my mind’s been in a vice grip, focusing on these pieces, focusing on the work that I must do.

Today, when I stumbled out of bed, dizzy from the dry heat of our room, and aching from the awkward pillow angles and small kicks to the rib that comes with sharing a bed with Bean, and when I sat down at the computer all I wanted to do was exalt the sun. I’m ready for spring, and though I learned last year that spring here comes in April, not March, longer days are coming now.

Fog fills the valley below the house, and the light is bright and golden.

Yesterday I strapped on a pair of snowshoes, and with Bean on my shoulders, we climbed through drifts to the top of our wooded hill, where the fort we’d made together in summer, had become shelter for small animals, with many sets of tracks converging there. Bean looked at a larger set of tracks and said, “Bunny tracks!”

“Are you sure,” I said laughing at his sweet certainty. “They could be squirrel tracks.”

“No, der bunny tracks. Dat squirrel tracks,” he said pointing earnestly to a smaller set of tracks leading right to the base of a tree.

Where did he possibly learn to make a conjecture like that? He’s grown an entire inch this month. Really. And he’s becoming such a wonder of a little kid. So full of ideas, and so affectionate. Now anything he likes, he showers with kisses: the penguin picture in the magazine? “Hug!” he says, then reaches out to wrap it in his arms, kissing the picture softly.

It’s been a week of happiness, which almost surprised me. February has sucked so much out of us, winter has, responsibility has, stress has, that it felt almost accidental to be in the place we worked so hard to be in. One of real pleasure. Making love in the afternoon and then watching the snow fall outside. Going on a date: fish & chips, a walk in the cold to a coffee shop under the stars, and then cuddled in the movie theater to watch Music & Lyrics (such a feel-good movie!) Hanging out with our kid, clearing paths around the house with the snow blower through three feet of snow.

But mostly, what’s marked the difference this week is we’ve given each other a little wider berth, more space to say things and not be immediately misinterpreted. More time to notice all the sweetness that still gets packed in: making pancakes, racing cars across the wide expanse of floor, DH’s new guitar which makes him grin every single time its mentioned, or sledding down the driveway. Little moments that I almost stopped noticing until there was time to breathe, to be more present and less hurt. Life is good.

One down, two to go

This is what my desk looks like right now.

I'm submitting a series of three essays. One is finished, and damn good, I think. Two to go, with a bunch of raw material to work from. Harder topics though.

I've been sitting nearly all day, playing chicken with words. When I couldn't stand any more hunching at the computer with the cat on my shoulders (that's where he's taken to lounging. I'll get a pic one of these days) I put on a jacket and went out into the freezing cold. The wind chill was brutal, but the sky was blue and it felt good to be out with my camera, feeling my lungs work and my boots crunch over frozen snow.

Now back to the second essay with some dark orange infused chocolate and perhaps some chai.