At it again

Today I felt like maybe, finally, I might be making progress. I can't really describe the way I've felt for the past couple of weeks, other than to say that I've felt like I've been drifting somewhere above myself, above my life. Out of touch, maybe, or tangled. Desultory. Haphazard. And this week has been all about coming down to earth. Getting on top of things. Organizing. It was a busy month, and maybe that is my excuse. Introverted by nature, non-stop wedding parties and a week long visit with my dearest of dear friends, and a weekend visit from my sister and her husband, packed my September to it's gills. Not to mention freelance work was eating up all my spare moments. The result: dislocation, distraction, doubt, disillusion, despondency. (Okay, so I'm suddenly alliteration drunk. But you get the idea.)

Either way, for the past couple of days since all the fun ended I've been moping about the house, doing heaps of laundry. SIDE NOTE: I kind of want to write another entire post about laundry, actually. How I had this groundbreaking moment watching my friend fold my laundry precisely, neatly, into these perfectly stacked rectangular piles of shirts and jeans and sweaters. Groundbreaking as in: it never occurred to me that the purpose of folding the damn laundry might be expanded to a) fitting more in one's drawers neatly and b) to reduce the amount of wrinkles in any given garment. I honestly have been folding laundry all these years because it's what you're supposed do with laundry, right? I mean, who doesn't fold laundry? But truthfully, I never put thought into it. Now, I am reformed. See? I simply must post more about this (with pictures!)--it's become a new obsession.

It's taken all week to sort myself out. But finally I'm starting to get the hang of my life again. I have my submissions calendar sorted out and some clear-cut goals, and some long term novel goals (40k words by the end of October) and some maybe sort of plans for an autumn party with the community of friends I am gradually starting to make here, and it all feels good.

It kind of astounds me how easily I got knocked off kilter in the past two months. I've felt so alarmingly fragile, up to my neck in angst and uncertainty that I've had hardly anything to post. Things have felt tenuous and flimsy around here financially lately, and that too adds to my apparent state of internal vertigo. My mind has been twirling all day long, but when I've come up for air, there has been nothing to put on the page. No way to capture the tightly wound, tugged-at feeling that's lodged itself in the pit of my stomach except maybe to say that a part of me has been feeling a little like a kite caught up in a tree, thrashing about in the wind. But less so today after eight loads of laundry, and listening to Selected Shorts while making apple sauce.

So. Hmmm. All this brings me to October.

I have plans for October. Real, practical, concrete plans to disentangle and make things happen around here, including more organization and less stress.

And I'm thinking of doing morning poems again, as a way to slip back into writing for real. I have done morning poems in the past, and have loved it when you have joined me. I've gotten so much this exchange. These small scraps of joy and arc and moment that we capture, first thing, before the blur of the day takes over; before the laundry piles up.

Are you in? The rules are really simple. Show up at the page every morning and write a poem. It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be much of anything. All it needs to be is a small handful of words tossed up to the gods; an offering, a gift, a start to the day.

Laundry

A solitary plastic chickenfalls from among the denim and fleece; the lint trap is full again. This thing we do: wearing clothes, then washing them, goes on forever. Sometimes I like to imagine (at the a red light next to a Mexican boy with oily cheeks who is driving an El Camino, or walking through one of those superstore warehouses, where everything is wrapped in plastic including the last of summer’s succulent watermelons, each green globe swaddled in cellophane) everyone naked or feathered, or adorned in something less fretful and persnickety than the clothes we need so many of (rain boots with polka dots, and heels that sink into the soft sod as we try to run towards our friends at parties, and also negligee and belts and jackets made of wool or down) but we are human; adept at hiding things. Notes, lipstick stains from kisses, favorite marble; the small small bits of other people’s hearts and thoughts; ourselves. We are thieves, mimes, fakers with our clothes all pressed or stained, our laundry bulging with the remnants of things that tumble out unexpected, or get lost.

Suspended

I feel like a part of me is suspended above myself somewhere, caught among the helium balloon strings of my heart. Can't quite seem to find solid ground, yet, again. It's become a pattern for me lately.

Everything is gold and rust here: the light, the leaves, the barns bathed in late afternoon sun. Trying to catch my breath and find a rhythm today.

In my molskine quickly scribbled quotes. Together, they're where I'm at right now:

"I believe in everything that has not yet been said." ~ Rilke

"I write to discover what I know." ~ Flannery O'Connor

"The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as a part of the process. Ask different questions." ~ Bruce Mau

"It is as if mothers have two hearts and two bodies--one heart loves the babies, the other heart attends to the world; one body feeds the babies, the other body moves through ttime and space." ~ Elizabeth Lesser

Happily ever after...

...And now all three of my dearest girlfriends are married. The four of us climbed trees and talked Rilke and Kant in college. We ate ice cream by the pint, barefoot on the fire escape; skinny dipped, hiked to an island with swans, cried, laughed, and cooked and shared endless meals together. The end of an era. The start of another.

Glad to be back home. This month was non-stop. I spent the day folding laundry, setting goals and writing to-do. Bean has an ear infection. Sprout has two teeth. I have a lot of things to get done. Tomorrow it's go time.

Today is my Monday

There and back. Maine. 11 hours in the car each way with both boys & my best friend from forever. The wedding of a dear, beautiful friend. Them together. The windy, sunny days. Good lattes and sail boats in the town. Bean in brown converse, as the ring bearer. Sprout cutting his first two teeth (and not making a big deal out of it at all). Friends who love my kids. iPhone apps and silly putty in the car. Hardly any fussing from either boy (a momentous fact, really, seeing as we were literally on the road for 11 hours, with stops.) Back home, bed felt like heaven. Yesterday was a blur of catching up. And being sick with a head cold. Today is my Monday. Hi. I missed checking in here last week. This week: lots of photo posts, organizing my submissions calendar for the fall. Taking a few naps. Saying goodbye to my mother who is moving away. And another wedding of another dear, dear friend this Friday.

*

Things on my mind lately:* My novel. I'm scared to go back. * Running, hard. * Feeling moody. Often. * Finding my stride again, maybe. * Indian summer. * Wishing things were easier. * Getting a glimpse of what a house with TWO boys in it will be like. * Learning to check pockets stain treat laundry.

You?

Sitting down to write.

And there is sudden trepidation. Like always. Like skiing for the first time every season, or doing a flip turn in the pool. Even with practice, there is always this. These moments of blank screen when everything else seems more attractive/reasonable/safe.

Weekly Crushes

It seems like it was just a couple of weeks ago that I was clipping Bean into his ski boot bindings for the first time and sending him down the driveway. Now the first leaves are already golden and orange. Where has the summer gone?

The crickets know that snow is on its way. In the garden, fat pumpkins with girths rounder than Bean's hugs. My Bean, who has started a mixed-aged (Waldorf) kindergarten program, and comes home singing. My Bean who tells us about the enormous imaginary kangaroo that lives upstairs. My Bean, suddenly a big-little kid. Four and a half. Mischief around every turn. He is my favorite forever.

And then my baby boy, my little Sprout, coming up on 7 months old, impossibly. He is a chunk. Pure love. Grins always. He's been surfing the floor the past week or so, trying to crawl. In between attempts he's pleased as peas to sit in the center of a circle of pots and spoons, banging things and grinning. He's always cracking himself up. There are so many times throughout the day where I'll look over at him and feel my heart catch and then expand. He'll be smiling at me, watching me from across the room as I do things in the kitchen or fold laundry or type. He is my little Buddha. My reminder to be right here, now, in this precious, precious moment. He is my favorite always.

Also, some weekly blog crushes to share:

2 or 3 Things, Bliss, Le Love (can't help going here and smiling), listing quirks over at Cupcakes & Cashmere...(a quirk DH pointed out tonight while we rocked it in the basement gym---3 miles in 24:15 minutes---is that I love to watch bull riding. Really.)

Also, these houses (still brooding over treehouse plans, as you can tell.) This gorgeous little party. This amazing installation. It's how my heart feels, sometimes, lately. Overflowing, made of feathers, of air, of fragile things.

What are some of your crushes right now? Share please. Also~ what are you looking forward to this week?

Unfinished things

Elana Herzog I’ve been finding fragments of my heart lately, tossed among the hair pins and pennies by the washer; lint too, purple from the red shirts and blue towels that seem to endlessly make their way through the wash. So this is a life.

Certain things are never done. The wash for one; the spoons in the sink are always there again, and the bowls; the small hands that need scrubbing; the ripe things waiting for harvest in the garden, some silent and round under the dirt, or fat and humming with wasps, sides split open in the late summer sun.

These are days when the light is amber and still. The grasshoppers are huge, springing into the hedgerows as we run by. Their legs are always bent, poised again and again for the small prayer of almost-flight; temporary, dizzying, before they land again among brambles and gravel.

This. This life. It feels so small, so incredibly small and so enormous all at once.

Walking about the house gathering toys in the quiet that comes after small boys finally sleep and the dishwasher runs, I wonder if this can be enough for anyone? If anything is ever enough, if any heart beats regularly with contentment; or if to be alive always means to crave, to lunge, and long and push. We have our hearts after all, full of muscles that never sleep, and chambers secret even to us.

I put a wide mouthed jar of zinnias on the windowsill; follow the hawk with my eyes as I run. Its body is gold and white in the sun, circling against the blue. It is only there, present in the sky. Eyes like arrows, bones hollow, feathers tilting and lifting its small handful of life into the wind.

Life has been a little like this lately

And like this.

Little Boys

1. Treehouse, 2. Treehouse, 3. MAJ_The Ultimate Tree Fort II *, 4. 2nd February 2007, 5. Tree House, 6. DSC00145

We're building Bean a tree house and we're discovering that it's uncharted territory. DH never had a tree house. I grew up climbing trees with my sisters, and there were certainly a few make-shift tree forts that are scattered throughout my memory, but never a real honest tree house with a ladder and a roof.

Because neither of us have real experience we seem to get sucked into substituting nostalgia in its place, with dire consequences. Having spent most of my childhood with scraped knees and in trees, I picture a helter-skelter little tree nest tucked up in some branches with a few log stairs nailed into a tree trunk. DH's childhood was all about suburb sidewalks and and swimming pools and green lawns, so his image of the perfect tree house includes functional windows and an shingled roof.

Thus far we've settled on a platform built between three trees within eyesight of the kitchen window. Bean wants two stories, and a secret tunnel. I want to use logs from our property. DH wants everything to be built with two-by-sixes and six inch screws. We're a mess.

Really, I'm a mess. I am outnumbered, and this is becoming more and more apparent every day. I have no idea what to do with little boys, I am discovering. They are not like little girls (though apparently this might be my fault.) They like to be LOUD. They like to smash things, and run really fast, and make skid marks with dirt bikes and dangle from tree limbs. They like to make plastic alligators eat the heads off of Lego people, and they like to make sharks attack. They like to have their pancakes in the shape of monster faces, and if you make beets and polenta into a similar design (with the beets for bloody teeth) they will acquiesce and devour them.

Other than that, I have no idea what to do with little boys. Or specifically my little boy. My frog-catching, fearless, stubborn, shy, determined, goofy little boy who loves to use every 'big' word he hears, and who has an opinion about every single thing under the sun.

Take naps for example. What do you do with a little boy who is determined that he is beyond naps, but still desperately needs them? He becomes the monster when he's overtired--which is almost every afternoon. And what about refusing to wear certain articles of clothing? Or arguing about brushing teeth? Or? Basically, help. Mamas of boys, I need a primer, STAT. What are the top five most important things I should know/learn about parenting little boys? Because clearly, I'm in for it.

And also, about that tree house... What's your idea of a perfect tree house? What's essential? What's overkill?

September Crushes

I adore September, and little boys hanging out in tree forts; back-to-school, back to routine. I love the newly sharpened pencils, newly picked apples, earlier bedtimes, scrambled eggs & toast for breakfast, new sneakers, and watching the pumpkins grow fat Hand monsters.

September is perhaps my favorite month of the year, especially here in New England where everything is golden and lingering and lovely.

I kissed my husband for the first time 10 years ago on September 5th, and that continues to be what I consider one of the best decisions I ever made. (Have I mentioned recently how hot he is? Ever so. He's like a good wine: keeps getting better with age).

Bean starts school on Thursday. He's excited. Right now we're in the backyard lolling in the sun. He's lying on a quilt in his new tree fort (a post coming on that soon!) and we're both eating plums and I'm thinking of stacking the final cord of wood, although a run might be on the docket.

Some recent crushes start off your week:

Sunday Suppers~such gorgeous food, I want to lick my screen.

thoughtful friday, oh hello friend, and kate neckel are some new blogs I am loving. And this post. Every bit true. Also this advice. *** What are you browsing, considering & doing today?

A kind of love letter

Sprout is six months old. Already. I feel a lump at the back of my throat when I write those words. When I think of him, the space inside my ribcage hardly feels big enough to contain the feeling I have for him: like a thousand rainbow helium balloons all lifting, lifting skyward.

I want to record every moment with him because every one is fleeting, but I haven’t. There are pictures, yes, but only a few quickly scribbled notes here and there that mark the passing of his babyhood —because the truth is this: I am greedy with my time with him.

I want every single moment to last.

I want the smell of him forever: soft, inexplicably sweet; the essence of these baby days when we’re curled together in the morning before our little world wakes up and the day begins, a ruckus of matchbox cars and giggles from Bean; a hot shower; the espresso grinder running.

I want to be able to forever feel the roundness of his soft darling belly, like a little fat moon when he stretches out.

I want the way he smiles at me—like I am the moon, the sun, everything at once—to go on for eternity every single time.

This has been the gift of my second son. He has allowed me to slow down and linger in these moments of early motherhood. Instead of writing about him, as I did with Bean (when I was always anxious for the next phase and in need of reassurance) I curl around him after I’ve scooped him up from a nap.

He nurses, then grins up at me and smacks his lips with satisfaction and I whisper to him, leaning close until my lips brush his babysoft cheek. I whisper about how I love him until he falls back asleep for a few perfect moments, a smile playing on his lips.

He is impossibly sweet. He spends every day grinning at everyone. He nap, he sleeps at night, he waits patiently for food, or a diaper change. He is content to play on the floor or in a laundry basket, or anywhere—as long as it is near me, or his big brother. He has just learned to sit. He is starting to crawl.

This second boy of mine has taught me something I never imagined I would learn: to mother with a kind of grace that first-time motherhood cannot afford.

I have learned that the laundry can wait, and that the dishes and bowls and pots in the sink will return to their state of clean or dirty regardless of whether I do them first, or often, or last. What matters most are kisses.

I have learned how to wait a beat before reacting with panic or frustration when he begins to cry juuust before going to sleep, and in that moment of pause I take a breath and can see how he feels this. How his body becomes soft and relaxed. How sleep comes if I give it a moment.

I have also learned that baths aren’t as essential as maybe I believed they were, and that pajamas are overrated—whatever onsie and pants he has on will do; and that making baby food is not complicated, and that with a food processor anything is possible.

I couldn’t have imagined this. I remember thinking that there was no way that I would really love him as much as I loved his brother. It was a real concern of mine. I imagined that my heart would be too small. That there wouldn’t be room in it after all the love I already had for my lanky-limbed Bean. I imagined feeling stretched, overdrawn. I didn’t believe there would be space to spare anywhere in my heart for loving some other little boy too. But oh, how I love, I love him, I love him.

Ho-Hum.

Today the rain is falling and I can’t put two and two together to make anything even close to resembling four. I have cold feet and fingers and I keep forgetting things. Out the window and the ornamental crabapple has blossoms on a single branch. Now. At the brink of September, after a summer that for all intents and purposes never came at all. It’s rained almost straight for the past three months. The delicate pink blossoms are almost shocking among all the late summer foliage. Green everywhere.

I cannot see the mountains. Clouds press up close around our little hilltop and I am restless today. I cannot put my finger on what is wrong. I am listless. I should be grateful. I have so much to be thankful for and yet I woke up with the surly ungrateful attitude that there would be nothing to look forward to today, and I am proving myself right by default. The law of attraction. I am annoying myself.

Bean is also annoying me. There. I said it. I hate myself for this—for feeling like my child is someone I don’t want to be around, but I don’t. Uh-uh. Not today. He is one big negotiation after another. Temperamental, every few minutes whining about something or gritting his teeth or intentionally twirling something heavy or sharp through the air at the end of a very thin string.

I am at the end of a very thin string with him. I want patience. I want grace. But today with the rain cold and splattering and perpetual all I’ve been is too close to everyone in the same quarters and all I want is to be somewhere the heck away from here. Of course this matters not at all. When you're someone's mother you can’t just get up and shake off your life for a day. And to be honest, the glumness is so pervasive today I can’t think what I want. I have no idea what would make today sparkle.

It’s like I woke up and tripped over a bucket of gray paint and it’s gotten everywhere, obliterating the possibility of a sunny outlook. Humbug. I am hungry even though I just ate. Again. This is how I am all day long with the whole nursing thing. I am always ravenous. Hum.

Maybe baking will cure things.

What should I bake?

Do you ever feel this way? Grouchy without a single real reason in the world to be so? What do you do then? ** UPDATED: I finally went for a run on the treadmill & made a new record. 3 miles. 23:50 minutes. And after running hard, the world felt more in context, as it often does when I run. Why can I not remember this when I am in the thick of feeling sorry for myself?

Monday crushes

Zoom!That was just the entire month of August flying by. I cannot believe how quickly it has gone. One week until September. Already there are fallen leaves on the lawn.

I wanted to share a few things I have been crushing on today:

This darling little clock project.

This glorious sketchbook series and this lovely inspiration wall.

And this list of stories. Good to listen to while doing the dishes.

The past week has been a blur of copy-edit days. Every scrap of time spent close to the thesaurus and the delete key. I miss my book. I miss talking to my characters in my head in the shower. I hope they're waiting. It terrifies me that maybe they have slipped away. A page of events and scenes languishes in the top drawer of my desk. It cracks me up that I professed big plans for this story by the end of the month and here I am at end of the month. And I am not even close.

But there is something to this that I've been learning and learning again this summer. Things come and go---and really, you can't hold on to anything too tightly.

I'm starting to get that it's okay to just ride the waves. To be greedy with sleep and joy and creativity when they find you---and to sink into work and fast-paced days and tiredness on the days that those things hit hard. Each will return, and leave, and return again. There is something in this of faith, I think.

Whatever today is, tomorrow will be different. Yet there is a thread that loops through the fabric of both with its promise. Continuity somewhere. Balance, eventually.

It's scary though to feel a surge of creativity, only to have it plundered by more practical things. There are moments where it feels like having a blindfold yanked down over my eyes, and I'm just bumping into things, fingering the shape of each moment with hands as unknowing as the blind eyes of potatoes.

Are you doing the life you want daily?

Hmm.

August.

I have been writing posts in my head all week. I've been swamped, and I love it. I'm doing copy editing. Being paid to write. Life is good.

Except. I haven't had a scrap of time to write--on my novel, or here. Still trying to find balance. Always this. Is there such a thing? I am determined to sink deep into these last summer days with gratitude.

This is what I want to remember about August:

The humid hot and sticky days. Making cherry pie, served warm with whipped cream. Yellow watermelon. Friends visiting a lot. Backyard bonfires. The corn almost ripe in the garden. Oscillating fans. Rain falling from sunny skies. My apricot colored cat on the white sheets. The dragonflies circling in the heavy air, waiting for rain. Falling in love again, more, enormously with my guy. New calf muscles, and biceps. Running hard almost every day. Swimming in the pond in the rain. Bean's obsession with helium balloons. My beautiful, gorgeous baby boy Sprout who is six months old, sitting, almost crawling, smiling always. I adore him. Utterly. He is a dream baby, and I don't want him to grow up yet.

I found these lines at the end of a poem today--in the Sun, from A Warning by Eric Anderson Nothing ever goes away enough or arrives enough, and I want to cry when I think of my heart, muscle pounding in muscle, greedy always for joy.

This is exactly how I feel.

***

What do you want to remember about August?

Camping

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91 degrees

We are sweltering. It is official: I hate summer. Well, maybe that is too strong. Oh wait, no it isn't. Not if summer means this. This 91 degrees business. This so hot my brain inside my head feels like a lump of boiled ham bumping about on a plate.

Oh you poor thing, you are thinking. Where I am it's 110. Yeah. Well. And where you are probably has air conditioning.

Sooo. Can you tell I'm a delight today? The whole weekend has been a bit like this. One ill advised idea after another. Yesterday we decided to go camping. Sort of off the cuff. We had initially decided we wouldn't go camping and would just go to spend the day at a lake somewhere, but then DH called some camping place and they had a teeny little cabin available for the night and we thought: cabin + 6 month old + 4 year old might be better than a tent in that same equation. But it wasn't.

It was a cabin at one of those places where people are sandwiched in like sardines. It was by the bathrooms, and didn't have it's own bathroom. And it was surrounded by EIGHTH GRADERS on some vaguely organized youth group camping trip. Really. Dozens and dozens of them listening to music with the refrain "I wanna have sex with you" (I couldn't find out who sings it. It was some very innocent sounding girlie, actually. I did discover that maybe it's not wise to search for that phrase on the Internet.)

Evidently they were not a church group. Also, I was the only one who was noticeably snickering and/or flinching as these lyrics blasted sweetly through the campground which made me feel terribly, depressingly old. I am a prude. Who knew? But wait, it gets worse.

Once we had settled in and unpacked somewhat, we loaded up the running stroller with an ENORMOUS amount of stuff (ninety percent of which we didn't use) to take to the beach across the road because we didn't want to be going back and forth across the relatively busy highway for every little thing...but when we got to the beach, it was PACKED. Again with the whole sardine business. People and their kids and kayaks and fun noodles and towels and umbrellas and dogs on every square inch of sand.

So we schlepped all of our ridiculous stuff through the woods along a very bumpy rooted trail to another beach I'd seen out of the corner of my eye as we drove up, one cove over from the first beach.

Picture us please: it was 90 degrees yesterday and we'd spent the morning packing all kinds of crap and then driving, and all we had had to eat were hot peanut butter sandwiches. We wanted to swim. We were dreaming of leaping into cool lake water and parking our stuff in some nice little secluded corner where Bean could wade, and Sprout could occupy himself on the blanket, and DH and I could finally cool off, sip something refreshing...and blah blah.

Picture the stuffed cooler and the iced tea cooler and the heap of towels. Picture Sprout (who was an angel ALL DAY LONG by the way) stuffed in there too, and Bean running uncontrollably ahead, nearly slipping off the edge of the steep path in his crocs. Picture: huff puff. Swatting mosquitoes in the shade. Snapping at each other. Heave ho. And then picture this: rounding the bend we finally came to a beautiful secluded beach with pristine water and...

... at least three dozen naked old men and a few very brave naked women.

A nude beach. Fantastic.

To be clear I don't really mind nude beaches. I've gone naked more than once on the beach (alright, it was France, but still.) So it's not the naked that bothered me so much. It was just. Well.

"Are you okay with it?" "Yeah I guess so, are you?" DH said scanning the view. "Sure, I mean if it was France...." I let my sentence trail off.

Passing us: an old guy with a saggy paunch wearing a bright blue tank top and NO PANTS. Really, buddy? News flash: Penises, even young ones + a shirt = not that flattering. No. Not at all. Something about the way those bits dangle makes them look compromised and foolish when poking out from under a shirt.

"So, what do you think of that other beach we passed?" I finished.

The other beach was at the other end of the lake. A five minute drive, but DH agreed. It was really too much to wrap our heads around: navigating between naked folks with a bulging stroller and a questionably behaved four year old. We could already imagine his loud proclamations. "WHY ARE THEY NOT WEARING PANTS, MOMMY? WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE THAT MOMMY?" It could go terribly wrong. Just think what we could bump into. See? It's official. I am a prude.

So we pushed the stroller back and shoved the entire thing into the truck and drove to the other beach which was a thin strip of sand between the lake and the road. A road that seemed to be the 'it' place for all the locals to cruise by with their music blaring (when did I become such a grump?) But we were going to have fun, damn it. And also. It was hot.

So we situated ourselves on the only available postage stamp sized piece of sand we could find and attempted to have FUN. Fun was Bean wading out into the lake and trying to kick away from me in his inner tube despite the fact that he can't swim, and ending with me catching him and him just as he was going under and him coming up sobbing. Fun meaning, DH breaking the buckle on my favorite belt trying to use it to open a beer while I was in the water instead of just asking me where the bottle opener was. Fun, as in: sand everywhere. And also the girl next to us was very pregnant and very young and very decidedly chain smoking.

It just about broke my heart, watching her watch us. She had this vapid depressed look on her pale face. Like it was the end of the world. Like we were everything she never wanted to be. Us, with our baby and our Tupperware of watermelon and our umbrella blowing away. Us, with Bean covered in sand and 'accidentally' hurling a toy that nearly took out some unsuspecting sunbathers.

Her boyfriend was blond with lots of tattoos and a soft stomach. He kept taking his shoes off and putting them back on. I heard her say, "I just can't get comfortable," as she took a drag on her cigarette and squirmed about on her towel, her belly round and pale, like she'd swallowed a watermelon. I kept picturing them in the middle of the night with their newborn and it was devastating. And it put things in perspective.

Because really, even though the day proved to be more disaster than not, DH summed it up perfectly when he said, "If I have to have a day like this, I'm so glad you're here to have it with." And really, it wasn't that bad. Sprout was delightful the entire time, and Bean, well, he's a rascal at 4 and a half. He had a lot of sugar and he was thrilled about the bunk beds in the cabin, and let's just say we might have fared better had it not been 90 degrees with Eminem playing and soccer balls flying over our heads.

Still, we managed to salvage the afternoon by going back to the campsite as the sun was setting. We lightened our load significantly, bought some ice cream and then went down to the first beach we'd gone to in the morning and it was much less crowded and the water was pristine. Bean and I swam and the light was golden. DH had fun grilling sausages on the camp stove. We made a fire and roasted marshmallows. We licked our sticky fingers.

And then we drove home.

Because really, after the day we had just had, imagining a night in a tiny cabin with two tiny windows (and no screen on the door) and a double bed with a baby just sounded impossibly horrific when we could be home in our own bed in just over an hour.

Turns out, we're not so much the car camping type. Backpackers first, DH and I both long for seclusion and nature when we camp, and the point of being in a small uncomfortable space (tent) with compromised sanitation is lost when multiple neighbors playing loud music are added to the equation. I have always loved to camp, and it's one of the things I miss the most about summertime now that I have children.

Obviously, backpacking is out of the equation until both boys can tote their own small packs (with their own clothes/sleeping bags), but I would like to believe that car-camping can achieve a similar experience, if done right, in the right place. This apparently means massive research and planning and checking online in advance about things like nude beaches and how people define the phrase "spectacular views."

Also, ziplocs. We forgot ziplocs.

Do you have any tips/advice/stories about camping with kids? I would love to hear your experiences and must-haves lists. Or your condolences. Or anything really. Something. Because I'm still rather traumatized and it has only just now gotten cool enough to commence breathing indoors, and heat and I apparently do not mix well.

Pictures tomorrow. :)

At the end of a rainbow

Tonight rain came from a sunny sky, and persisted. Big fat drops falling hard among the sunbeams. We went out barefoot, twirled, stuck our tongues out, turned grateful palms and faces towards the sky. Sun on our cheeks, and rain. Bean gathered water in a small cup for the fairies. Sprout giggled on the doorstep with me. And then all four of us watched in wonder as a rainbow made a sudden perfect arc before us. ...And we were right there, at the end of the rainbow.

These photos are best enjoyed BIG. Click & enjoy: [nggallery id=16]

Inspiration & such

The rain falls hard, shaken from the heavy air, in spite of the sun. Rivulets run down my arms, the thin cotton of my t-shirt immediately soaked. Even though it has rained all summer I love storms like these. Flat-out rain. The sky impossibly blue overhead, clouds ripped apart like pillows after a bedroom romp.

I’m listening to Penguin Café this afternoon. Trying to mow through the heap of things that has accumulated this week. Filling out forms for kindergarten (Bean starts in a multi-age classroom in a couple of weeks), running to the post office for stamps and to mail packages, copy-editing, writing. Always that.

Of course the very day, yes, the EXACT SAME DAY, I posted about my enormous writing goals for this month, an unbelievably awesome freelance copy editing/writing job fell into my lap. I am beyond grateful. And excited. And happy and such things. But now of course there is really no way I’ll meet my 80K goal by the end of the month. Things are competing for my time. Big time.

I’m thinking 40K will be more reasonable. But I’m also discovering things about the writing process that I didn’t know before—straight up novel writing is so different than short story writing or memoir writing or anything else I have ever done. I’m learning how I can be effective with small chunks of time: to map out future sections—to think in terms of events and scenes. To get notes down on paper no matter what.

Speaking of organizing, on Tuesday I tried out putting a couple of my favorite images I’ve ripped out of magazines together, inspired by this blog.

It was fun. And I had the idea of clipping each successive page one on top of the other on the cork board by my desk—that way I’ll gradually accumulate a whole stack of images that speak to me, and one day, maybe, I’ll get back around to painting and drawing again, and I’ll have them all in one place, rather than in piles on shelves and in boxes.

Now, some lovely things for Wednesday:

A pretty little card.

These summertime pics, and these foodie pics.

Also, this movie. Meryl Streep is glorious, as always. And it’s a story that makes you want to grab hold of the things you love and want, and to pursue them tenaciously and with conviction. Julia Child was told repeatedly that she was a terrible cook and would never have any kind of successful career. It reminded me to not get to bent out of shape about rejections.

And finally, though this has no connection whatsoever to anything else in this post, what is your favorite salad dressing recipe? Please share.