Babies and animals and nesty things

Big announcement, folks.  BIG announcement:  I think we're expecting babies.  Plural.  All at once. 

In a nest.

I've been all enamored of our mama robin building her nest in a prime tree right in front of chair on the porch, which is my favorite reading spot this summer so far.  It's all wild life-y at that spot.  And me heart is a wee lot bit sad because this prime real estate is looking half dead this year, and the birds love this joint, I tell you. 

We have Chippy the chipmunk, who is a whiz I tell you at stuffing his cheeks and spitting out those seeds before scurrying off for me in a mere blink of an eye.  We've had a few bonding moments where we stare deeply into each other's (beady) eyes.   

We have Herman the hairy woodpecker, who (as it turns out) makes a delightful cheep-y sound in between whacks against the tree trunk. 

We have the sparrow gang who flocks together and nests in some tall evergreen trees just around the side of the house.  It turns out that they're little thieves who tried to raid Mama Robin's nest (somewhat successfully) as it was a work in progress.  It turns out that Mama Robin has some gutsy moves and is at least twice their size.  Her nest was well defended.

We have the darling finches that hop around in the very tippy tops of the tree and belt out the sweetest staccato chirps.  They are flashy and everyone's friend.

We have the wreniest little wrens twittering around.  These eensie little birds pack a mighty wallop of noise in their little throats. 

And, (as of today) we have Moliere, a friendly little dude with admittedly lousy eyesight.  This little mole champ practically trundled across my foot in his cute-y little way.

There's a lot of cute-y-ness going on around here.

Which leads us back to those tiny, tiny little eggs.  I. Can't. Wait.  They are my bright spot, or will be once they are there are opening and cheepy and sending me into gaggles of joy and delight.   

Today, I chose

Follow-up bit on the previous post (It's...puzzling): Finding puzzles right now is harder than finding a chicken with teeth.  Also, I like a certain kind of puzzle and have spent probably far, far too long trying to land on one that is actually available, especially when it takes a sweet forever to sift through the hundreds if not thousands of entries on an indie bookstore's site when you search for "puzzles."  I haven't yet figured out a better way to do this.

Now, a brief spot of happy(er) news: My library is open again for curbside pick-up!  Oh the joy that thoroughly filled my hands, heart and soul as I (first) danced enthusiastically around the room with The Elder and (second) quickly added almost 30 books to my holds list.  The joy that oozed out of that email announcing I had books to pick up was real and true and good.  The timing of this was also primo as I was rapidly, rapidly adding more titles to my To Be Read list following all of the everything that my eyes, ears and brain have been grappling with of late.

Good timing, indeed.  By happenstance when the library opened again, I had Beloved by Toni Morrison up next in my physical hands to read.  And then I quickly had several necessary books available to me immediately from the library.  Book serendipity is truly magical and while the content has not been exactly what I would call "a delight," it has been a delight to immediately follow Beloved with Eloquent Rage by Brittney Cooper and then Me and White Supremacy: Combat racism, change the world, and become a good ancestor by Lalya F. Saad this week.  The serendipity grows deeper because all of these threads came together at the same time as I had a couple of days a-l-o-n-e in the house.  Let me repeat it for those of you who think you misread: I had a full 54.5 hours alone by myself and in my house where my favorite reading places happen to be.  I wedged another book in  there as well (a bit of recon work that was a laughable clunker), but all in all was able to focus and spend honest-to-goodness time with reading.

I did virtually no work around the house in that time, which just goes to show that sacrifices were made to ensure that I had optimal reading time.

Good inter web folks: It was mind boggling how immediately relevant Beloved struck me.  This is a book about escaped slaves set in the mid-1800s.  Woe unto us that this book is still needed as part of our cultural conversations.  Both Cooper's and Saad's books discuss events that should be outdated.  But are not.  WOE UNTO US THAT THIS IS THE CASE.

My heart has been heavy and beyond words.  My heart has been convicted in reading Cooper and Saad...convicted in the best, most necessary ways.  My heart needs to learn more.

I have been taking notes and looking ahead to the start of the next school year when we will in some capacity come together again to talk race and lenses and Otherness in my literature and writing classes.  It has always been there.  I'm anxious to use my time right now to find more and better and applicable tools to use RIGHT NOW with my students.

I strongly urge you to read Cooper and Saad.  To seek out Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward and Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson and Motherhood So White: a memoir of race, gender and parenting in America by Nefertiti Austin and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson and The Nickel Boys: A Novel by Colson Whitehead.  To read along with me and challenge me and convict me.  To do better.

Saad makes a point that we are none of not racist.  Rather, the goal is to chose anti-racism each day.  We have a lot of work to do and this seems like the right time to do it.  Today, I thought consciously about it and chose anti-racism.  I invite you to do the same.  

It's...puzzling

Good people, I enjoy a good puzzle.  The Younger and I are copacetic this way.  A couple of weeks ago, I was in need of a puzzle diversion and gifted myself the chance of putting together this puzzle first…even though I had given it to The Boy for Christmas (and he hadn’t opened it yet).  Nailed it in three days.  (The Younger helped with a few pieces here and there.)

In this last puzzle adventure, I realized something key to my puzzling exploits: It matters what the picture on the puzzle is.  I enjoy vibrant colors (like this one) with symmetric shapes (like this one) over buildings or people (like this one…doesn’t have).  And now that I figured out my sweet spot in puzzles and am ready to treat myself to a new one, they’re harder to find than someone holding a 3-pack of yeast in one hand 12 rolls of Charmin in the other. 

Couple this with my preference to throw my dollars toward an indie bookstore to find my next puzzle instead of to Ye Olde Amazon, and this has become quite the questy challenge.  Where is the outrage and backlash and people throwing shade at others who are hoarding all of the beautiful puzzles? 

On the bright side:  It’s a good time to be a maker of puzzles, I believe.

No matter the circumstances, it’s always delightful to find something particularly enjoyable when you’re not really expecting it.  Another new development in the regular routine is that the girls are old enough for The Boy and I to leave them home alone for short amounts of time while they’re occupied with certain activities that tend to be all consuming.  This may be quite the head scratcher that it took us this long to figure this whole aspect of parenting out, but our children are just fine by themselves while we run a mile or two together. 

I mean, if my children are able to multiply fractions and figure out the order of operations for a multi-step math problem, they can probably figure out how to stay alive for a few minutes. 

The Boy doesn’t run as often as I do or for as long as I do, but we’ve been able to manufacture some pleasant chats in the nicer weather with some regularity now.  Lo and behold, it makes running a wee bit more delightful.  This boy is still a keeper.

You know what else is a keeper?  My children once went for over a week during these past since mid-March without whining about dinner even once.  I kid you not…we’re got up to around 9 dinners in a row.  Who knew that they each had it in them all at the same time?  It was a precious time of zen (and good conversation).

Folks.  My children nailed it, despite having 2 potential dinner offerings to unravel them (i.e. we dared to try new things).  And then they scorned my D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S from scratch lemon cake, which I offered up as a big old, sweet HOOZAH!  And they turned it down.  They are heathens.  Still keepers, too…but heathens.

Whiplash

In the spirit of full disclosure, this post is eventually going to end up talking about the sweetest pair of finches (warning).  But first (with a lot of capitalization because all of the feels right now)...

Can we just talk about the whiplash (of course)?  Also, I haven't blow dried my hair for around 3 weeks now and probs don't have to for another 15.  It's quite a weird feeling walking out of your job on March 13 and then find out later that you won't be back until the end of July.  Perhaps this is something like what going into labor early feels like.

Let us not fall too far into the words before we pause for a moment of silence that the library is closed for at least another 2 weeks.  How does one prepare for this catastrophe?  We hoarded and stockpiled a solid 2-3 weeks worth of reading material and now we're either a) going to go rogue or b) blow the budget on supporting independent bookstores.  Actually, it's really more of c) a little bit of both A & B. 

For those of you who have wondered through my house and have gazed upon our bookshelves and thought to yourself "Why in the world does this erudite lit-ite person have oh, so many John Grisham books?"  For such a time as this, folks.  For such a time as this. 

(I've been stockpiling these books for about 2 decades AND IT'S ALL PAYING OFF.  Also, I read a 400+ Grisham thriller in 2 days.  That's crazy fast for me.  Meanwhile, today I have struggled to keep my attention on 60 pages of Alice Walker.  Sometimes Walker speaks words of truth and I will carry on to the end of this one, but sometimes life demands all of the Grisham because ESCAPISM IS OKAY.)

My child "has no books to read" even though I'm looking side eyed right now at about 8 that we snagged from the library the very day before it went under for the season.  My child.  She has some ability to be exclusive about some books and then decides other perfectly lovely books fall under the category of "I want to read these, but I really want you to read them to me."  Positive:  YES, PLEASE.  I love reading out loud to them still.  Negative:  My child is at times bouncing around the house like a listless pinball at times.

BOOKS & CARBS.  That is what we are collectively running on for hours at a time throughout our days.  But the sun and the springtime have also been poking us hard in the ribs time and again these past few weeks and we laugh out loud and shout "You got us again today, sun & springtime!"  When, oh when have the sun and the springtime been more definitively needed and outright worshiped?  We have filled our lungs with crisp, sunny air.  We have been cataloguing the burgeoning leaves with pictures on the phone so that we can flip through them quickly and watch the leaves emerge.  We have been glorying in the daffodils that always seem to surprise us in the various clusters around the house. We have been playing game after game after game of monkey-in-the-middle because when we live on a cul-de-sac and there is only one other house with young children in our vicinity, we basically get the run of the place.  And to this, we shout AMEN.

I have also wondered a half dozen or so times now why, oh why in the name of all that is good and right in this world do people enjoy running outside?  There are hills.  There is wind.  There is sticky humidity at times.  What genetic malformation do I have that I prefer a treadmill please and thank you and please turn on the HGTV so that I can forget that I'm running between commercials?       

Then The Boy ran with me today in so far as we shuffled along at his slow rate because he is sloooow right now.  It's not like I'm fast, but I quickly realized that this would not be one of those times where I huff "I'm about to die" as he defaults to coach mode.  (This has happened.) But this was one of those blessed afternoons where time slipped by and it was so nice just to chat (which you can do if you're running at a pace where even the neighborhood dachshunds were gaining on us).  Truth be told, this was the first time since The Elder was born that we went out for a jog through the neighborhood together because we've never felt capable of leaving the girls behind for 30 or 40 minutes.  But they were busy and The Elder has been staying home all school year for varying lengths of time by herself and today was the day.  We tested the waters a week ago with a 15-minute walk around the neighborhood.  Today started as a 2-mile run that ended up being almost 5 for me.  The Boy maxed out at 3 and beat me home.  And then my children locked me out of the house because they're funny.

Also, do you know what quanrantining does to a family?  It causes the mother to insist on taking everyone out for ice cream (curbside service, folks) followed by sitting in the car in a sunny parking lot while The Younger nibbling ever so slowly on her 1 scoop and The Elder criticizing the same benevolent mother's choice of wearing the-perfect-quarantine-daily-outfits-ever.  I have finally culled my wardrobe to a handful of perfect t-shirts, perfect running (and all-day) leggings, and the perfect hits-in-all-the-right-places-while-also-being-the-perfect-length sweater.  The Elder thinks I look ridiculous apparently.  I'm just gathering pictoral evidence on her daily attire so that way we can revisit this conversation in 5-ish years.  I'm patient.

And so there you are: a bunch of whiplash.  Much like this bunch of sentences, we're all over the place of late.  But the girls have never been better friends, the sun has never seemed sunnier, and we have a pair of darling finches building a nest in a tall pine tree shrubbery thing outside windows that I look out a lot of late.  I don't love the shurbbery, but it's ideal for nesting bird-o-s, like the fab pair of cardinals who hatched a sweet little chickie last summer.  I have never studied the finches much before, but they're hard to miss as they bring back bits of nesting material (while Papa Finch keeps guard way up on the tippy-top of the shrubby thing) and since they hang out a lot in my very favorite tree.  Just hanging out.  As we all are.  Yet they are adorable. 

I, however, brought 24 mini croissants, 2 loaves of sourdough bread, and 1 bag of enormous soft pretzels into this house today.  I am not adorable (ask The Elder).  I am carb loading.  And I am carb loading while chasing patches of sunshine around the house while clutching book candy to me.  This may very well be what life is meant to be right now.     

Guys. It's been a month.

News: Guys.  It's been a month.

Better news:  Guys.  It's OK.

Yesterday, we enjoyed breakfast church with our burgeoning ELCA congregation.  It basically includes ALL SORTS of breakfasty goodies (i.e. loads of delish carbs) and conversation in small communities sprinkled about the space.  There's a Gospel reading for us to share in community, the wine & bread to pass in community, and time to share highs & lows with people who are fundamental in grounding us for another week. 

Lemme say again: Guys.  It's been a month.  A challenging one at times -- nothing extraordinary or shocking.  Just plenty of opportunity for wallowing and time in the pit. 

In short(ish), my last living grandparent died, though not unexpectedly, at the beginning of the month and there has been some ensuing hurt and such.  On the same day that The Boy's cousin (of whom he was not particularly close) also chose to end his life.  This cousin's brother did the same in early December.  That family unit is hurting right now.  Each of my brothers have had a child suffering from a bout with pneumonia in the past week on top of the general pink eye/colds/sinus infection germs that are plaguing their houses.  My brother's beloved 3-year dog is struggling against a disease that is life threatening, and while it's a pet, there's still a hurt there.  The Boy is slowly crawling out from his own week of persistent hacking and discomfort.  The days have been incredibly February-ish: dark, dull, and dreary.

Yet as the highs and lows were being shared around the community table at church and before my turn came, I mentally prepared my own subsequent answers and realized I had several highs to choose from.  An abundance.  Unfairly. 

1.  We had a short week of school, and at this time of year, that's a blessing.
2.  I had finished a couple of books lately, and since they were decent / good ones, that feels like a smushy richness of time.
3.  I snagged one of the foster babies in our community congregation.  She's 4-months but shaped like a 2-month old.  She has the best eye lashes, and she was deliciously squishy and snuggly.  I got to give her a bottle and gently noodge her back to sleep.  That is pretty bliss-y.
4.  There was sun, and loads of it.  That is enough on many a day.  This is the week's high that I choose to share (which was summarily met with hearty head nods and "Ooooh, yes!" by other members of my community table).

Just the day before, I needed to make a trip that was a bit of a drive and took me through a 90-mile chunk of rural Indiana.  While I don't mind driving with a purpose, I'm not much for enjoying a drive through barren fields without a purpose, but hand me some good podcasts or an audio book, a plan, and a quiet, sunny morning, and I'm all in.  Along the way, I found a field of windmills (expected -- I've driven by this often), a 1.3 mile stretch of state highway with bumper to bumper pick-up trucks on both sides of the road for a Saturday morning auction (unexpected -- this isn't usually my jam and I can't say that I've ever been to one of these or have ever driven by one), and a boy in the yard beside a farmhouse systematically whacking a tree with a long stick (quasi-expected -- what else might one do with one's time on a sunny, warm enough February morning in rural-ville?). 

So for a month which had plenty of moments where I too could happily whack a tree with a long stick, I'm still going to choose the sunshine.  My word but that sunshine felt great.

Relaxing? Mothering? It's All of the Above.

I’ve been all mother-y lately.  It seems that my relationship with my kids is in a shifting point, and there’s a whole lot of new stuff that we’re exploring in that realm right now.  It’s odd to feel NEW about mothering after a decade of experience in this role, but lemme tell you that this is so for me right now.

Big picture, my time is also just different right now.  For the first time since before I started grade school way back in 2007, I don’t have a-n-y professional outside requirements on my time other than my full-time gig.  We’re four weeks into the semester and it still feels odd to have nothing that I have to work on at nights.  One might think that this feels like a breath of fresh air, a break in the stress even. 

One might not know me well.

I don’t feel comfortable in extended periods of whatever you might want to call this.  A term like “free time” springs to mind, I guess.

Note that I didn’t say “I’m not good at this…” or “I hate this…” but rather “I don’t feel comfortable…”  There’s a part of me that does truly delight in the possibility of calm.  But there’s also a decided part of me that feels all itchy and discombobulated all up in my psyche.  Even though I full support this time for deep breaths and good books as a boon to my mental health, I don’t necessarily always enjoy it. 

Case in point:  I don’t much care for sweet potatoes.  Yet, when my child is watching me, I choke those mushy bits down because I recognize their value and want to promote that.

A different aspect of my free bird status right now is that I feel even more particularly tuned in to the aspect of mothering, and hear me out on this – I don’t feel compelled to be more motherly but rather I’m more hyper aware of mothering.

The Elder is heading off to middle school next semester and I’m fully aware of any number of ways that this will change our relationship.  Being a bit more zen with work is enabling me to truly enjoy some mother-y things with her, and due to some schedule changes this school year, I often get a bit of time in the afternoons where it is just her and I alone together.  I’m not implying that we’re braiding each other’s hair on the regular; we often are spending that time just co-existing.  But the opportunities for low pressure conversations are more readily available, and it’s delightful to just be a physical presence in her space when she is recalibrating from the emotions of her day.

The Younger has a feisty streak, it turns out, which became rampantly present when she was five.  Up to that point, she had been a pretty chill kid, but some burgeoning independence at that point in her life activated a need to be more dominant and proactive.  This kid is a cuddle bug at heart whereupon nearly everything can be fixed with presence and touch.  These same schedule shifts this school year have enabled me to engage with this child more independently because I am not shorting the Elder, who has also been afforded her time.  And, just this week, The Younger had an expander installed to start correcting a significant over bight concern; nothing screams “YOU’RE A MOTHER!!” like forcing your hand into your child’s mouth to floss really difficult to reach spots and expand their jaw one crank at a time.

Maybe it’s the season which is encouraging this level of introspection, but I blame it on not quite having enough to do.  And I’m sure not going to fill my time with cleaning more.  So bring on the books (I read 13 in January so far with another one all primed to finish today) and the mounds of blankets. 

But I’m also falling asleep by 8:30 every night.  That does make it harder to actually read the books.  Still.  Bring it, 2020.

A Bookish Best Year

People: I'm watching a movie.  Not only that, it's the 2nd one in the space of a week.  I've now increased my movie watching for the year by 200%. 

So, I'm watching Footloose for the first time ever and THIS IS KIND OF A WEIRD MOVIE.  Why does high-schooler-Kevin-Bacon have professional gymnast moves and why are the parallel bars something high schoolers would be using in gym class?  Whoa...body doubles.  Why does he wear a tie on his first day at a new school?  Why does the insult that he flings back to the cowboy-hat-wearing Willard in the hallway make them become friends?  Why is Ariel such a jerk? 

Also, this is the first movie I have seen where there's a game of chicken being played out using John Deere's set to I Need a Hero (which Kevin Bacon wins because his shoelace gets stuck and he can't stop...???).  This contrasts directly with one of the final scenes on the other movie I just watched Danny (i.e. John Travolta) fills in at a drag race and wins...but in a cooler kind of grease-r way.

Also (again): product placement.  Did Coke pay a boatload of money at the people who made this movie? 

I'm also not entirely sure why Ren move to this no-dancing-uber-conservative-anti-Vonnegut-Midtown-city?  I'm (mostly) watching and am confused.

I'm getting all distracted.  I really wanted to talk about my G-O-O-D-B-O-O-K year.  This is the first year of my life where I've kept track of how many books I've read, not really with a particular goal in mind but wanting to get as close to 100 as possible.

I decided to include audio books in my tracking as well, and here's whatI learned about my reading life:

1.  I don't generally like audio books all that much.  The narrator really has to be compelling, which adds another elements to whether or not I like a book.

2.  I read more than I really thought that I would.

3.  I like mysteries a lot, and I can't keep going until I talk about a new devotion to Louise Penny and the Three Pines mysteries.  Oh, that there was this was a real town and I would take me to there.  Other than the alarmingly high rate of murder happening, this place is idyllic, which, frankly, makes for some compelling murdering to happen.  My favorite:  all of them that I've read so far (5) but you have to read them in order

4.  I read more books set in Australia than I ever have before.  So, that was unexpected.  I understand why Liane Moriarty is crazy popular, though she's not ever going to be close to a favorite for me.  Her chapters tend to end on cliffhangers.  A lot.  However, she makes up for a bunch with cleverness in the plot.  My favorite:  What Alice Forgot

5.  Tana French is another famous and wildly popular mystery writer that I'll explore more, I've no doubt, but right now I'm less of a fan.  Bonus:  You can read the Dublin murders in any order.

6.  I really appreciate a clever story, no matter the genre.  One of my favorites of the year that I wasn't expecting to want to read:  The Whisper Man (trigger warnings with this one)

7.  It's hard to write a clever non-fiction story.  I keep getting pulled into these non-fiction books that are often just...not.

8.  My favorite author of the year:  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- Americanah, The Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, "The Danger of a Single Story"

9.  I make time for reading at the beginning and end of every day.  This is imperative.  Be good to yourself.

10.  Frederick Backman, another favorite of the year:  A Man Called Ove, Britt-Marie Was Here, Beartown, Us Against You, and Things My Son Needs to Know about the World

Next year, I'm changing my tracking method and I'm teaching less, which means yes, I do believe I can reach that pure 100.

YEAR END TOTALS:  82 physical books (though I know I'll finish the 2 that I'm currently reading with an outside shot at finishing a 3rd before the end of the year) + 12 audio books