Feverish brain fuzz

I keep thinking I'll wake up and feel better--but whatever I have decided to kick it to me. I am STILL sick with a fever, and feel generally misearable. My brain feels like a dust bunny. I cannot think straight, let alone post anything coherent. Gah.

And so the week is gone

I've been sick. A major yucky head cold + fever combo that has left me wimpy and whining watching re-runs on TV. I hate being sick. Especially around the holidays. To distract you from the abundant LACK of posting going on around here, pretty pictures: My boys whispering in the early morning light, while I got up, snuck downstairs and slipped something into Bean's advent box.

Breakfast this morning. The thrill (yes, it really is) of going to the coop and getting freshly laid green or blue shelled eggs has not warn off. Talk about fresh.

The kitchen, post breakfast. The penguin's name is Snowflake, and Bean is in love with him.

Feeding the sheep & lamas is a regular weekend activity. I love the lama's eyelashes, and the way the barn always smells sweet with hay and is warm with animal breath. Our neighbor's always put on a full nativity play in their barn every year. All the local kids act out the parts, and everyone sings carols and eats cookies & goes sledding afterwards. So fun.

Getting the newspaper on the way back from our walk. We sled down to the bottom of our drive, then pull the paper up.

My little mischief maker, "helping" me make Christmas cards.

I miss you

This week has been crappy/busy. Every day filled with eighty-nine OTHER things to do, so that every time I sit down at the computer it's usually nearing midnight and I'm officially mushy headed. I am looking forward to the weekend: to skiing on Sunday, and writing, and posting, and catching up with all of your blogs... what have you been up to this week?

satisfied

Outside a wood pecker hammers into the trunk of a poplar and the sky is the color of snow. I finished my manuscript yesterday, and couldn't have felt better about it. The stories work, I think, and they've begun to carry themselves, the characters leading me to new discoveries and scenes. It's how I mostly imagine writing should feel--and I've decided there is absolutely nothing better writing for two days straight, hours blurring, in a quiet house. DH too Bean over to the inlaws, and I cozied up by the wood stove, clacking away at the keyboard as content as a clam.

Other delights:

My lovely hens have started to lay eggs! Regularly! I've been particularly enjoying them soft boiled with a little salt and pepper.

I was inspired by Ali's beautiful advent boxes to make a set of my own for Bean, and he's delighted at the advent fairy's tiny gifts: yesterday a miniature tape measure; today a handful of tiny dinosaurs that grow when submerged in warm water (remember those? So fun.)

I spent the morning vacuuming and straightening, and mopping. The floors now gleam, and this makes me happy.

This afternoon, after a wee nap, I think we’ll head to the craft store to pick up tissue paper and card stock to prepare for the holidays; and also to a home store for throw pillows. Every couch needs a good collection of throw pillows, and we have too few.

What are you doing/eating this Sunday afternoon?

Tidbits

Bean said, "Mama, why do we wake up instead of down?" *

My spine feels looser after yoga. I had fun, watching him, hearing his breath, moving through the sun salute.

*

We bought pfeffernusse cookies today; a holiday tradition from my childhood.

*

Snow is falling in fat, wet flakes outside.

*

UPDATED: My brain = mush. Too little sleep. Too many words. I'll resurface on Sunday-ish. Until then, tell me what are three of your favorite things to receive in your stocking?

A positive counterbalance

It's the end of a week off and I feel at once relaxed and utterly frantic. I keep trying to remind myself not to let amorphous anxiety paint the backdrop for the entire day, and to instead pinpoint the underlying fear that causes angst to spread like a dark stain over calmer moments. This week my fear is that I won’t have enough time. My writing deadline looms at the end of the week, and although I love the work I’ve been producing I haven’t had the undivided time to sink back into it in a week or two, and this week is particularly busy.

I have decided to focus on the positives this week as a counterbalance to the stress. I am excited because DH and I are starting a new class together: a beginner series in ashtanga yoga. I can’t wait for my new yoga pants to come in the mail, and am looking forward to bring more attention and focus towards being consciously in my body next to DH being consciously in his. We’ve missed each other like crazy for the past couple of weeks. Bean has been sick, and this always results in him cozying up in our bed, needier than usual and full of toddler snores. We had an afternoon napping date yesterday, and though not a lot of sleep happened, we’ve been grinning at each other ever since.

Small good things that make me smile: my orchids blooming again on my windowsill; chai tea with sugar cubes and milk; discovering new settings on my camera today; carrying around a list notebook in my back pocket (instead of obsessing about the things I’ll otherwise forget); the first green and blue eggs from my Ameracuna chickens; and my new subscription to Cookie magazine. What are some things that make you smile?

Hello winter

I’ve blinked and it’s winter; the lush carpet of crumpled brown and yellow leaves is obscured by downy blanket of white. I sit at the kitchen counter, my back to the wood stove, watching snowflakes drift to the ground. My mind slips into a reverie, tracing the twirling track of individual snowflakes as they fall; the view straight from a Courier & Ives postcard. I take a deep breath. Hello winter.

It would be a lie to say that I’ve been looking forward to winter. I love the snow, and the first flakes falling every year make me giddy, and certainly I am eager to haul out the sleds and the snow shovels. It also helps that this winter I have toasty warm Sorrels to keep my feet snug, and a new powder blue down jacket. But winter brought out the sharpest edges last year, and it’s a bit like getting back on the horse after being bucked off to return to these cold months where the sun barely slips between the cloud cover for a few short hours, and in the night the mercury slips below zero. It was this time last year that my relationship with DH felt like it was imploding, as it underwent the fierce growth of a relationship moving past the seven year mark.

In my writing I’ve begun to explore how dialogue always overlaps. How really, there are only a small handful of moments (if any) when two people talk and both of them are actually talking about the same thing. Last winter, we were a caricature of this, aching to be close to each other yet sparring endlessly, our words the serrated objects of separate agendas. I still can’t put a finger on the pulse of the pain we caused each other: what it was for, or why. Most of it was reactionary; the product of external stresses from work and life that became distilled into the small orbit of our love, but it was also the product of a hundred small things: a cold house, anxiety over dreams unrealized, a toddler with insistent needs and disrupted sleep, and an accumulated lack of time to ourselves.

So the trepidation is there, if only faintly perceptible when I stop to take my own pulse. A slight blip. A snag in the fabric of these early winter days with snow falling and warm firelight and laughter. Every small argument bears undue weight, even though I know we’re so far from there, our love like maple sap grown dark and sweet in the heat metal evaporator pan.

It’s strange how the seasons bring things up. How certain days recall others; and for the longest time I’ve hated November. In college, and for years after, I’d get stir crazy. I’d try to break up with my boyfriend, or move to a new state, or write reams of dismal poems. It makes sense in that context, that last November marked the beginning of a season of angst, and it thrills me to no end to realize that I’ve actually this year I’ve bucked the trend. November was full of yellow leaves, a filigree of frost, and page after page of prose written with more confidence than I’ve ever had with a purpose and a deadline driving each paragraph towards completion. It’s all about climbing back on the horse, and then asking it to be Pegasus, and expecting to fly.

Daily chatter it is, then!

Happy Thanksgiving! Bean was sick with the stomach flu last night. All over everything. He's better today, but we're all a little delerious, and are getting ready to turn in for a nap. Rain is falling steadily and the air is heavy with fog. Brett Dennon is playing; the stove is toasty. Nap time it is.

I failed NaBloPoMo

I didn't even mean to. I simply forgot to write yesterday--amidst snow falling and my father-in-law's birthday, and conferences at work and, well, life. Now I'm torn. I can either revert to my pensive ever-two-days posts, or continue to bombard you with daily chatter.

33 Months

33 months old, and he says, “Mama, do you think Kiwi birds eat kiwis?” and then giggles.

When I say, “You’re my little guy” he says, “No I’m not, I’m you’re bunny, and I’m a little bit big.”

When I skip a page in a story, or skim past a few lines to speed the process up he says, “No mama, you skipped a page.” And then he’ll go back and tell me verbatim the words I didn’t read.

He is obsessed with forts. The kind with quilts on the couch are best. Boxes also have his affection. And he loves his little back pack and fills it full of treasures. “I have a wallet, mama,” tells me. “With credit cards. I can buy food and toys.” He collects pennies and keeps them in a jar in his nightstand drawer.

He loves his new snow boots, but hates nearly every winter hat we have for him. He fights us about putting on his jacket every time. “I will wear a jacket tomorrow,” he says, with the hopes of avoiding wearing one today. He also tries this with nap time. “I already napped today,” he says, head tilted, eyes twinkling.” It is 10:30 in the morning. “I will nap tomorrow again. I do not need a nap today.” Yeah right buddy.

“I want to do it by myself,” he says about unzipping his pajamas, or taking off his shirt.

“I love you and I missed you,” he says every day when I get home and we crawl onto the couch to snuggle.

He patters into our room in the middle of the night, and in the morning his arm is wrapped around my neck. “Snuggle me, mama,” he whispers in the early morning light.

He loves to paint, and just this month he started drawing his first recognizable images: a bunny, a person, a digger. He loves his Etch-a-Sketch, and makes elaborate “castles” with stair-stepping patterns. He’ll work on it for a half an hour at a time, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

When we’re outdoors he stops and cocks his head, “Do you hear that chickadee, mama?” he’ll ask.

When the first snow of the season was falling when he woke, he climbed up onto the windowsill and watched it, eyes wide and joyous. “Snow is falling everywhere, mama,” he cried. “It’s on the trees and on the roof and on the grass.”

I am completely smitten. My kid is the coolest kid in the world.

I spent the entire day writing

And it felt good. So good to sink into the work, to get beyond the distractions, the internal rebellions, the anxiety. Things are starting to fit together, the synapses of the story becoming evident.

Tomorrow I'm making a cherry pie; and doing laundry. Tomorrow it's back to reality. But today was for words.

Do you have days like this that slip away into some place else? Like you never really touched down here? Today was like this.

First snow of the season

Driving home, three good songs on the radio and then perfect light. I couldn't stop smiling.

I pulled on my new snowboots, and dashed out the door with my camera thudding against my chest.

The light was so perfect it took my breath away.

A momentary break in the clouds, and pure gold.

Everything was silent except for the wind, and the light faded fast.

Still I was grateful, so grateful, to be in the right place at the time. With my camera.

Saved by a meme

I was tagged with a meme for 7 random things about me, and since it is Thursday night and I'm exhausted, but I'm stubbornly not quitting NaBloPoMo, a meme is all you get: * I'm a stomach sleeper.

* I feel guilty because I have never put photo albums together for either my wedding, or Bean’s first year.

* I have a weird, bordering on frenzied, dislike for any lettuce or leafy green that becomes black and slimy.

* I contributed to NPR for the first time this year, and felt very pleased with myself.

* I get nosebleeds in the winter time.

* I've been in bars, but I've never sat at the counter and ordered a drink or carried on a debaucheries conversation with a hot bartender.

* In high school and college I was a swimmer. In the past year I’ve been in a pool exactly once. This depresses me.

What are 7 random things about you?

Too short

Bean got a haircut yesterday. Far too short.

I couldn't stop the lady. How do you stop a lady cutting your kid's hair once she has begun?

He looks so grown up. So serious with his big eyes.

I wanted to cry about it last night. Didn't, but wanted to.

NaBloPoMo is kicking my butt

I have nothing to write about today because anything I actually want to write about would take far longer than the 1.4 minutes I have left to post before bed. The time, where does it go? EVERY DAY is like this. I've been bucking against the idea of waking up earlier in the morning to write--but I just got my Pam deadline today, and I have to have a whole lot more written by Decmeber 2. So. Up early seems to be my only choice. Seriously, I want to know: how do you manage your day? Especially those of you who write--how do you work that time in? How do you make it all happen? I'm feeling kind of crazed about it all right now. I keep wishing I could wake up one morning and have time be the way it was back in high school, or even better, like when I was nine.

Remember that? The way it took forever to get to Saturday? The way the weekend lasted forever? The way an afternoon could be all day. What happened to that? What's with all the business? And holy crap, how is it possibly almost Thanksgiving?

Thankful

...I am thankful for this piece of land. For every return trip that brings me up the gravel drive, rounding the corner to see the house. We've found a beautiful metal compass-rose star that hangs between our garage doors, as if to say, "Here is home." I am thankful for the way the leaves still catch small eddies of late autumn wind, and rise up twirling into the blue sky, and for the meadows with the grass mown down where voles and foxes and mule deer leave their tracks.

…I am thankful for my small, “a little bit big” boy who every single day astounds me. He’s become sweeter, if that’s possible. More thoughtful. The other night, I sank into DH’s arms, sobbing with exhaustion and overwhelm. “Don’t cry mommy,” he said, and then put both hands on my face and tried to move my cheeks into a smile. Tenderly. Earnestly. And I smiled.

…I am thankful for my guy: broad shouldered, full of laughter, driven to make the best life possible for our family; and for the way he’s always game to take the leap with me—to plan for living in Europe in two summers time; or to put up with and support the certain crazy of my writing life. I am thankful for his topaz eyes, and for the fact that he could stop, when we were arguing and wrap me in his arms despite the sharp edged words I’d flung towards him that were hanging in the air.

…And also for my brilliant sisters; my girlfriends; the way my cat curls up to nap at my hip as I sit on the couch; the way the sun falls through our dining room windows; for our wood stove; for morning lattes, kisses, Project Runway, dark chocolate, Bean hugs, books, and you.

A mini photo documentary of my day:

Another morning to myself. Sitting in the sun at the table writing with the cat.

Re-reading shreds of story, and trying to figure out a better system for filing story ideas, works-in-progress, etc.

Back from a run. Downward dog.

Listening to good tunes on my iPod while soaking up the sun. Post run cool down.

Making a post-run smoothie. Frozen peaches, raspberries, strawberries, wheat germ and yogurt.

The work you love and the work you do

A day to catch up with myself: the boys left early to install soapstone counter tops at the inlaws house. I slept in until after 10 a.m. I’m not sure when I last did that. It felt unbelievably good. I woke up to sun splashed across white flannel and the cat purring and sang in the shower. I had breakfast alone by the woodstove in the dining room, reading Heat and eating bacon, eggs, toast, and a peach-raspberry smoothie, then headed outdoors. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. The sky was bright blue, and the last golden leaves were floating down. I cleaned the chicken coop, relishing the work.

As I scooped debris from the floor I pondered how within the scope of my life there are different kinds of work. So many of you responded yesterday with job worries, and these resonate with me: with my longing to be doing something else (specifically: writing full time.) It seems as though for so many of us, what we do, and the work we love have become disparate, cleaved out of necessity.

What is the work that you love? For me it is a dozen things: wearing leather gloves and stacking wood; raking leaves; turning soil. It is mowing grass, cutting branches, planting seeds. It is spending six hours back to back writing. It is waking up when the sky is stained pale pink, to scribble in my notebook. It is putting paint on a canvass. And also, some days, it is greeting the faces at the door, eager, curious, exalting. But most days it is my job. The thing that pays the bills. The thing I am good at. The thing I put 100 % of my energy into every day. And yet it doesn’t fill me up the way it used to; my solar plexus is too full with longing, with words that never make it to the page.

Five random things today

I want to write, but cannot make my fingers agree with me. Bullet points are easier. Five random things I did in the past 24 hours:

* Tried on almost every single shirt or sweater in my possession and found all to be lacking in one way or another. I hate that.

* Taught first graders about the two body parts of a spider (abdomen and cephalothorax)

* Cried in my husband’s arms in bed from sheer exhaustion and overwhelm (being there in those arms—the best thing that happened all day.)

* Tried to skip a page in Beatrix Potter’s Jemima Puddle Duck while reading to Bean, but got in trouble because he seems to know every freaking word. Of every book we own. Time to get new books, I think.

* Took a walk in the cold wearing a powder blue down jacket and woolen hat. It’s starting to feel almost wintry here.

What did you do today?

Whimpering

I had a day from hell, that seemed like it would never end. And I have a sore throat and am PMSing. Does whimpering count as a post?