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

2 Things I learned This Thanksgiving

Folks, I've been feeding-myself-every-day-all-on-my-own-adulty for 15 years now.  In preparation of this shift from kinda-sorta-adulty to full-on-adulty, I went through a lot of my mom's recipes and copied out a bunch of my favorites.  This has been invaluable, of course, but also somewhat fruitless.  I've learned two things from that:

1. Even if I have Mom's recipes, my food still tastes like my food and her food still tastes like hers.  I don't entirely know how that works.
2. I've only ever needed a handful of those favorites because I virtually cycle through the same twenty over and over again.

One of those essentials that I made sure I got was my mom's / grandmother's pie crust recipe because pie crust is death and I don't love me pie crust, generally, but this one works for me.  I've made at least one pie a year ever since this advent of adulting, and this is the only pie crust I have ever made.  So on the minimum, I've used this pie crust recipe at least fifteen times.  NEVER ONCE have I enjoyed making it.  NEVER ONCE have I felt confident in my pie crust making abilities.  MORE THAN ONCE I have owned my inability to do much with the pie realm.

And here we go...FIFTEEN YEARS LATER, I figured out what the hooey is the problem.  People: I copied the ding dang recipe wrong.  How, might we ask?  What, perchance did I copy incorrectly?  Well.  The recipe that I wrote down has 3 cups of flour, 1 bar of butter (cold, not melted), 1 egg, a pinch of salt, and 1 T of vinegar.  Where is the liquid, one might wonder.  It took me FIFTEEN YEARS to figure this out after grumbling my way through this recipe over and over and over.  So this Thanksgiving, I learned that I'm actually OK at making pie crust.  But I'm somewhat rubbish at copying recipes and absolutely dreadful at figuring out when there's a pretty obvious problem.  Oh.  My.  Word.

Also, what the what is it with my children and Thanksgiving / Christmas?  The Elder went through her first stomach bug on Christmas day when she was 2.  For a 3-year stretch, The Boy and I alternated with who missed each Christmas gathering at the parents' houses while staying home with a throw-uppy kiddo.  I first learned about the convenient marvel of "free shipping" and "online shopping" when a sick child was napping and the other half of the family was enjoying a holiday party elsewhere.  And the oddities continue.  Over the years, I've learned two things from this:

1. My children are weird about stomach bugs.
2. I can always use the quiet-at-home time with my child and never mind missing that slice of pie and chaos.

Yesterday, The Elder did it again, this time waiting until the day after Thanksgiving when we were staying overnight with my parents before leaving early the next morning for the other side of the family.  Gross story short, she made it to the bathroom and then I had to clean the whole thing shortly afterwards. 

Kids are maybe the hardest people to understand.  Or maybe I'm not the most sympathetic of mothers when my child says "Oh, my heard hurts a bit" and "Oh, I'm beyond exhausted."  It may be possible that I rolled my eyes (on the inside) and muttered "Ten year old..." (also on the inside).  On the outside, to my credit, she was cuddled all day long and was dosed with Tylenol twice. 

So, this Thanksgiving, I learned how to use a mop.  The conversation went something like this...
Me:  Mom, what do you want me to use to clean the floor?
Mom:  I have a mop and bucket.
Me:  Mom, can you teach me how to use a mop?  I don't own one.  I would use disinfecting wipes.
Mom:  (blinking at me) You make a lousy adult who keeps humans alive.  (She didn't actually say this.)
Me:  How much of this bright yellow cleaning solution do I dilute in some substantial amount of water? 
Mom:  (blinking at me)  You make a lousy adult who keeps humans alive.  (She also didn't actually say this but I have my doubts that she wasn't thinking this.)

Summarily, it has been a couple of days full of learning opportunities (growth mindset, y'all).  That's what happens when I step away from a day job to "relax" and "catch up on my reading" and "do nothing for a few days."  When we all get back at it on Monday and I get involved in those inevitable conversations about how the handful of days of went, I very well may raise an eyebrow and launch in with "Well, I learned 2 things..."   

A taste of the mid-life feels

I know that 60 or 70 years ago, my age (the big 3-6) would be solidly entering mid-life time.  I'm not at all sure where that distinction starts anymore, though I feel pretty sure that my mentality isn't there yet.  For Patricia's sake, I have a whole gaggle of high school and college friends who are still pushing out sweet, roly-poly babies, which is certainly the antithesis of middle-aged in my mind.

But within the last handful of months, I've been faced with some seemingly incontrovertible evidence that the old bod is aging. 

1. I now take a daily vitamin-y / supplement-y pill for the pigmentation in my eyes.  I'm not a hundo percent sure what the deal is with my sub-par pigmentation other than I'm strongly encouraged to boost my numbers and these pills are supposed to help: $200/year for old-lady-eye-pills.
2. I had a normal dental cleaning this week, and my hygienist was updating my chart when she was done and we were waiting on the dentist to come in for his poke around the mouth region.  In basically talking to herself out loud, the hygienist made a comment about a couple of spots where my gums are receding: What. In. The. World.
3. I pulled out a yoga video that I've had for years and use every once in a while when I want to do something physical but also want to stay home.  The Older joined me, and while I can for certain promise you that my form was way better than hers, I can also promise you that I cramped my hamstrings so hard on a cool-down stretch that I can still feel it two days later:  What is going on with my legs?
4. In the spring, I went through a whole day where my arm was inexplicably sore:  I hurt myself while sleeping.
5. My hip pops when I run:  I sound like a percussive instrument every step I take.
6. I forgot my glasses on a recent 3-night trip, which didn't stop me from reading or doing the work I needed to do on my computer, but it did change the way I felt about my eyeballs:  I fully trust my eye doctor that she knows what my eyes need (refer to #1).
7. The only thing that helps my painfully dry hands as soon as the average temperature falls below 70 degrees is medicated lotion: old lady cream.

All of this just basically makes me want to stay at home, read a good book, and drink loads of warm things like tea.  I might want to eat bread, too.  It makes as good of sense as anything just to hunker down and embrace my middle aged-ness. 

Also, my girls have been entirely invested in baseball all season with me, even now when my / our team is no longer playing in the World Series.  I love them so much.

An introvert day

It's been a stretch of time whereupon I've been meaning to write on here again for literally weeks, since about the middle of September when this day happened.  But life and work are what they are.  (And also -- get this -- I have nothing that I have to grade tonight.)

Also, my boys lost last night so my season of soaring joy and crushing disappointment is over.  For that, I am overly sad, I admit.  But t turns out that I have a fellow baseball-crazed fan who works across the hall from me and we have much to say.  I need people like this person.

About a month ago, the days felt a bit bleak.  A bit weary.  A bit dull.  And I did something that I had never ever in the history of me done before: I took an introvert day.  

I fully intended to work at home.  And I did.

I fully intended to read and run.  And I did.

I fully intended to just BE.  And I did.

It was...nice.  For all that this word is bland and I would never encourage anyone to really use it, that's exactly what this day was.  NICE.  

There was beautiful sun.  There was a sunggly beasty beside me all day.  There was plenty to keep me busy but for which I ultimately felt productive rather than over worked.  I felt satisfied at the end of it.  And not just good-I-got-things-done satisfied, but fundamentally satisfied and quiet.  

I really needed that quiet.  The boy is on the downward slope of a busy coaching season on top of his day job and all-other-time-fatherhood job.  My students have been at times a bit cloying.  I always like them individually, but there are some collective personalities that are just a bit blergh for me this semester.  And truth be told, I really loved my last group of kiddos, who have now all flown the nest.  I miss them, though trying they were as well.  This year's class is really more "normal" for me, and after a year of "love," then "normal" is just a bit off.

So a day came when I could carve out an introvert day and recharge my internal batteries a bit.  In the past, I've always guarded my personal days because of inevitable times I need to use them for saving up days to use when on maternity leave, taking care of a sick child, or attending court for some volunteering that I do.  But now...no more maternity leave time needed, the boy and I try to split any necessary days off for a sick one (which last year = 1 day each I think), and I'm on hiatus from the court time.  Suffice it to say that I used a day on me and it was in September and yes, there's a whole bunch of the year still to come.  

I fully trust in mental health days and support my colleagues who use them.  It's hard(er) I think when it comes to your own choice to engage in some rest.  For me, these days that I am allowed to use each year are not by definition "mental health days," and my type-A personality is a go-by-the-book and ask-permission-first type of person.  But I allowed myself some time for deep breaths and, most importantly, silence, which I have learned is a need rather than a want.  

And right now, the washing machine is running, the refrigerator is humming, and it is otherwise SILENT.  In fact, it's quiet enough that I hear a book calling my name from the other side of the house.  

May we all engage in recuperative silence on purpose and with deep, calming breaths.  

Daughters...BLESS

Sometimes, we have to take care of each other.  Sometimes, it’s hard knowing what to do.

My job forces me to practice empathy each and every day.  I’m glad it does – keeps me human.  As frustrating as it can be when you just don’t believe someone’s sob story, I still need to care for and about the individual.  That person still has a story.  I almost never feel taken advantage of and appreciate having avenues to understand individuals for who they are and what they bring.

I inherently get it that people need compassion and need a community.  I always want to be part of that conversation, no matter what.  And…yet.

I have this thing about being “that parent.”  I don’t want to be “that parent.”  It takes me 15 minutes to write a few sentences to a teacher to give a heads up about my kid feeling her feels because it feels like an imposition to the teacher who I KNOW has ever so much to keep track of. 

My child deserves it.  Absolutely.  My child’s teacher needs to hear about those few times when the feelings are big and when I know that a quick check-in would do loads of good for her ability to trust her adult and to focus. 

Yet…hmm.  It’s a weird feeling for me to be on the other side of the conversation.  I doubt I’ll ever be quite right in that head space, but I’ll still speak up when I would appreciate having the communication shared with me were I in that other teacher’s place. 

People.  Parents who are teachers are generally either the worst or entirely silent.  I don’t want to be either, so this Type A extroverted introvert will just have to keep at it. 

Bless.

Meanwhile, there's been loads of fun baseball in my day-to-day life and some fun books.  I'm f-u-l-l-y onboard the Louise Penny Three Pines mysteries train.  Inspector Gamache is my book crush right now.  AND THEY ARE ALWAYS EATING DELICIOUS FRENCH FOOD.  It makes me want to visit Montreal post haste and eat and read books in a cafe while eating French food in Montreal.  (Read them in order, good interwebby people.)   

I ended last week with an afternoon coffee shop date with the Elder, a card game, and a French soda.  I know there's more of this coming, but I need her to talk with me and if that means we get the whipped cream and pass a drink back and forth, then it shall be so.  Gamache would approve.

Also, there is a small frog clinging to the window right now.  They are adorable and show up in squished places occasionally.  Our previous house had slugs; I choose this.

I know...another camping story

I am happy to report that when your children are exhausted while camping, they sleep through raging neighbors and raging thunderstorms.

Ask me how I know.  (Actually, I'll just tell you.)

Also ask me how well I slept.  (Not well.)

Another week, another camping trip.  The foam pad + self-inflating camping mat are working like a charm even for this side sleeper; I may have sleeping woes, but these aren't part of 'em.  On the other hand, I loathe sleeping bags.  They're restrictive and almost always too hot for camping in the summer.  

We joined some extended family for a few days in Wisconsin and ran into both the hottest/muggiest/grossest weather + loudest/intensest/grossest storms of the summer all in a matter of a couple of days.  

But the bugs weren't terrible. 

The food wasn't terrible, either.  This family knows how to eat.

But the heat was relentless, which really puts the kibosh on family-bonding-hiking time.  I mean, we still went hiking, but the experience was something of a challenge, especially for The Elder, who has a happy temperature zone of 71-74 degrees with low humidity, mostly sunny, no bugs, and almost no humidity.  Given those conditions, she's a smiley child who is a joy and a delight; she will explore new places and marvel at nature.  Outside of those conditions, she has easily notched the 20 or so worst days of her life.  (She'll tell us so because each time, "This is the worst day ever."  We continue to find new ways to ruin her life experience, it seems.) . Her broodiness is prone to infecting others of her age set, so there's no doubt that this kid is a leader.  In other words, we had a few grumpy kids among our hiking group.  

A joy.  And a delight.

At least nature was surrounding us with craggy views and gorgeous lakes.

The kid did have a bit of a point, though: We ended up walking/hiking/plodding almost 3.5 miles with some significant changes in elevation and general rock clambering.  It was also about 2.5 miles longer than I anticipated, so imagine The Elder's delight when my promise at the beginning that "It will be short and easy...no one wants to go on a long, difficult hike in this heat" turned out to be 1000% false.  She was basically expressing all of the frustration that I, too, was feeling toward the 60-year olds who chose the trail.  Who knew that these people felt like tapping into their mountain goat younger selves when the heat index was hovering around 100 degrees and it was s.o. h.u.m.i.d?  

I'll repeat:  At least nature was surrounding us with craggy views and gorgeous lakes for these are the times that try men's souls.

Ah, one tiny detail that I cannot forget:  I had around 2 1/2 hours of sleep from the night before.  The boy had around 3 hours.  BECAUSE OUR NEIGHBORS WERE LUDICROUS AND THE STORMS NEVER STOPPED THE NIGHT BEFORE.  

I mean.  It's hard to start your day with a fortifying gulp and thoughts of doom & gloom.  

The 2 camp sites across from ours had EIGHT tents of people and the children were still crazy hellions at 1 AM when the park ranger finally drove by and said "Hey, friends, this has probably gone on long enough.  FOR THE LOVE."  Even The Boy couldn't sleep, which is telling of their ludicrosity.  We did enjoy a generous 15 minutes of silence then before the first round of storms came.

SO LOUD.  Rain is quite thunderous on a tent.  Searing lightening + bone crunching thunder = no sleep gonna happen.  And these were crazy storms with at least 3 sustained rounds rolling through right on top of each other: one round starts to taper off, the next round rolls in just as fiercely.  I did drift off for about 30 minutes around 2:45 AM before waking back up for a bit and then finally getting to some deeper REM sleep after 3:45 AM.  The Younger, who slept through all of everything, did wake up at 4:30 AM and decide she needed to snuggle (of course she did).  Fortunately, we got to doze for a bit after that.   

My sleep schedule is just to let you know that it was a slog.  And while we have 1 more camping trip planned for the year, I'm ready for a break.  It's just too extra right now.  If you find us vacationing in some fancy schmancy resort in Aruba next year, this could be why.  

Camping whip lash -- a bit of yin to this year's yang.

A 2-week countdown

Interweb people:

I am 2-weeks-from-tomorrow back to my full-time gig and I still have a pile of 12 books waiting to be read.  Because I added 3 more to it today.  That might be possible for some and that "some" is not me.  I've been chugging along at a brisk-ish pace, though, and it has been a good stretch of reading that I'm all in for. 

I do believe that I'll miss that the most of all come 60-work weeks on top of keeping 2 humans alive.  And I'll miss my top-knot-bun thing I've been living with all summer.  Deep layers of sadness and sorrow happened to my hair when my normal hair dresser was at a conference (in somewhere Norway/Sweden/Denmark-y, none the less) and I told the sub, "I usually tell Hannah to just do whatever as long as I can still pull it up in a ponytail."  DEEP layers of sorrow and sadness.  And my hair is fine, slippery stuff, which means that you can tell me all you want that "You can pull this into a ponytail, no problem," but those deeeeeep layers defy your foolish words. 

I've been managing my sorrow, but just barely, as you can tell. 

Also, my kids were about pushing me over a gentle cliff with their anxious we're-waiting-to-leave-the-house-ness, and then they both sat down with books.  My word, that is what dreams are made of (which is also while I'm here for a minute -- when in Rome...).

I had other things to say but am currently beyond irritated at my computer/printer combination.

Also, I am going to eat an ice cream bar today, I believe.

I must go read.

Camping in Our 30s

This is the summer of the camping trip.  We have a whopping FOUR trips planned, which is a couple more than normal.  We're usually down for 2 definite camping trips and sometimes slip a 3rd into the mix somewhere, but scheduling purposes have allowed and encouraged four trips to happen.  

And folks, we are tent campers.  Also, the boy and I are solidly in our 30s and THIS IS NO JOKE anymore.  

Case in point:  As I lay on my bedding situation Sunday night at approximately 1:36 AM (not approximate at all, mind you...I was still trying to fall asleep and had just looked at the time after trudging to the bathrooms twice which is not common to my current life situation & nothing wakes you up more than coming face-to-face with a campground-fat raccoon), I wondered A) how is it that we went from blithely sleeping on grounds/floors/hard surfaces to these-hips-don't-lie in a matter of a mere decade, and B) how do people do it on the regular on legit hiking trips?  Props and claps and all the nods to them.  

I don't know if you've noticed, but this spring has been 178% saturated.  Nary a day has passed in the last 24 weeks (give or take a couple) that hasn't included either threatening or downpouring skies.  I know we're just wallowing in our inconvenience here, but this family is over it.  We have been inside more and crabbier.  We.  Need.  Sun.  

And like any fully technologized person of 2019, we obsessively followed the radar for seemingly by the minute updates on whether or not it would dump buckets on us SLASH throw more severe storms at us.  It turns out that the correct answer here is both "neither" and "yes."  There was rain, it turns out, but it was always conveniently located and the dense foliage basically kept us happily comfortable.  There were severe storms but only as figments of our radar's imagination as they kept magically breaking up.  So, around the witching hour (the one where our children turn into ravenous, impatient little people who must be attended to right now or else they will become banshees), we faced a decision:  There was a (literal) room at the inn and we had the chance to grab it as insurance from those promised and threatening severe storms but we had to make that decision imediamente.  

We paid the $130 insurance policy.

There were also no subsequent storms.

It was a beautiful night for camping.

Oh, the joy that nestled in my heart.

The boy and I were on a camping trip with siblings 11 years ago that was the opposite of this experience.  During ye olden era of 2008, none of us had smart anything or tuned into anything resembling THE WEATHER FORECAST.  Here's what our rationale for the trip likely entailed:  It is summer.  Summer is hot.  Today is sunny.  Today is a sunny, hot, summer day.

Did you know that sunny, hot summer days can also (freakishly) turn into scary, turbulent, stormy summer nights?  True enough.

That trip resulted in leaking tents, scary lightening, high winds, a mad scramble for a hotel room that could house 6 people sometime in the midnight-2 AM range, a wallet left out on a picnic table, and a brand new turned ruined canopy.

It seemed like the prudent idea to grab the room at the inn and not challenge the camping gods again.  And I did get to sleep in a bed instead that night.  But still.

IF we had the space and IF we had a few extra grand (can we talk about a new shed and a new roof and new flooring-that-costs-more-than-the-roof-because-the-previous-owners-installed-it-wrong), we would probably be looking for something like this: 

Because nothing says "riding out the storms at the campground" like a vintage 1970 Shasta camper.  

(It's actually pretty sweet inside.)

It has to be an upgrade over sleeping on dirt and tree roots.