paper and strings, you can have your own set of wings
August 30, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
this morning we all slept until nearly eight o’clock, a fluke for us that those without children (children who prefer to start their days while the dark still lingers) will not understand the need for rejoicing, great rejoicing, the kind for which kings are scolded. again, ernie is right. regardless of textbook authority telling us how many hours kids need for sleep, ours don’t sleep as long as they could in the morning if they go to bed at 6:30 at night, right after dinner, while the light still burns. so last night, instead of early bedtime coaxing, henry went swimmingly to kids 4 truth, which he loves and is very cute and five-ish while he’s doing it. later we all had ice cream and a run around the playground in the dark afterwards.
as hard as it is to parent small children and to deal with the many crabby dealings that come along, there are the flashes of time that suspend themselves in saturated colors, kites, high above the rest of it all, bobbing and swooping and pulling at us so that we can hold fast and keep running in the grass with a laugh and a squint and a welcome sunburning bridge of the nose. last night was one of these atmospheric flashes of clear air and wind. more, and close between.
long line of cars
August 28, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
love
vacuuming the house just before bed
new school clothes and the way kids feel when wearing them
jude’s sneaky way of charming sips of coffee from my cup
the amazing way that children! learn! to read!
marvel hero (and villain) postage stamps
the potential for cooler weather
hel looks and the all-too-brief explanations as to what the heck is going on there
finding a good pattern to make the use of and need for kleenex lovely
hate
cereal for dinner
amber on big brother 8
three year old whining instead of the helpful use of words to express needs, dislikes, displeasure
adults posessing self-centeredness but poorly disguising it as busy-ness
uncomfortable inability to not feel enormously pregnant
***
(this commences a series of love and hate lists of the week. hopefully there’s more love than hate, but there’s plenty of both to go around. i like to make lists, lists of things to do, to buy, to make, to give. even when i don’t write out the lists in bulleted lines on paper with good pens, the occasional pencil, i keep lists in my head, which jumble together and don’t give the satisfaction of a well executed X upon completion. lots of people like lists, ticking off time and activity so that they feel like they’ve accomplished something. i like lists for this reason, i suppose, but also because i can’t help myself, the duty to make them given to me by anastasia, maybe harriet, years ago when i bubbled dots over my i’s and made lists for the sake of playing in a handwritten smear.)
burdened carrier pigeons
August 27, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
today henry’s new chucks came in the mail, the vans we got for him being a full size too big (hello, spring), and the coming of fall requiring something more than the flip of a flip-flop, especially when it comes to race-about games on occasions that bare feet are unfortunately snubbed. my first reaction when we tied them to his feet was really sad: his feet are huge! he’s definitely a kid now, no more a little bird, he’s now a little boy with little boy thoughts that grow all the more complex.
also in the mail came a surprise! from tarenne. honey from her sister’s bees, as ernie requested, and other things, old pics from college, old beaded goodness, and a cd. kid music that does not annoy or even induce a headache: elizabeth mitchell’s “you are my little bird.” we’ve been listening to it all afternoon, it truly is this delightful. surprises are the best part of the mail, things unexpected and sweet. thanks, tarenne!
leger, comme un oeuf
August 23, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
at thirty two weeks and some days pregnant, i am clearly beginning to feel such, and act like i feel it with much whining and flopping down on the couch, the bed, the chair in the living room jude leaps from, bashing his lip, gum, nose, bringing on blood too early the other morning while he and henry were chums who were building a fort with cushions and furniture, sometime before the coffee finished trudging her way down the stairs with a gurgling stumble in the dark. i feel so pregnant that i often mistakenly think “any day now.” delusional in this heat that will not let up.
today i cooked two meals that were actually edible and were not too boxy and pre-packaged. most days the baby is growing well due to prenatal vitamins and little else, since all that i can muster has zero nutritional value and pretty much zero appeal. the kids feed themselves when they are hungry, needing me for the peeling of apples, the cutting of cheese, the pouring of milk. they feed themselves sandwiches without crusts (which they cut off themselves with butter knives, cutting more than crust, of course), cereal. they think that they can cook now, that the food processor is theirs for the whirling. “someday,” i tell jude, as i stash the thing high and far away.
i try, i really, do, but i’m tired. tired and old and great with child. the doctor tells me all is well and then he talks about a c-section. i look at the boys and don’t want to die, fear of all manner of catastrophe coming over me late, in the dark, keeping me from dreaming about it, about anything at all. it’s hard to know what to do, to be smart, to be carefree, to trust.
the cat brushes at my legs and i feel him purring. he bats at a marble henry rolled across the floor for him earlier in the day, when i suggested he do something the cat would like to do, something other than wrapping him in a blanket and squeezing too tight with a frenzied look in the eyes and a crazy, repetitive sound on the lips. even the cat is not free from worry, i think, as he pauses before rounding a corner, listening for sounds of danger mysterious.
bonheur conjugal
August 18, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
when you marvel you’re learning
August 16, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
it’s not every morning that we all wake up smiling and chirpy, that the day starts with sewing, long sitting with coffee, and the patient wait for toast. i suppose it’s fitting that such a morning also involved the gross job of sticking my hand in the tank of the toilet to reattach the chain and the horrible fact that the car was not planning on starting properly, needing a jump and a follow to the shop. what a bummer, a terrible way to spend money.
it’s also not every morning that i can begin and finish a sewing project (aided by the sorry likes of clifford, curious george, a man playing the saw on mr. rogers, and a small army of bionicles to trip over, step on with a screech). not only did i sew like i did a long time ago when distractions were non-existent, but i had the added joy! delight! intoxication! of using a pattern that was not maternity (cheers abounding) and was a dream to cut and sew and now, to wear. hooray for simplicity and built by wendy and the old woman in norris, illinois who died leaving a stash of prettiness to be sold (along with a huge stack of vintage knitting and embroidery books) via yard sale.
noon-ish and there’s much of the day remaining. hopeful.
when you marvel you’re learning
August 16, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
it’s not every morning that we all wake up smiling and chirpy, that the day starts with sewing, long sitting with coffee, and the patient wait for toast. i suppose it’s fitting that such a morning also involved the gross job of sticking my hand in the tank of the toilet to reattach the chain and the horrible fact that the car was not planning on starting properly, needing a jump and a follow to the shop. what a bummer, a terrible way to spend money.
it’s also not every morning that i can begin and finish a sewing project (aided by the sorry likes of clifford, curious george, a man playing the saw on mr. rogers, and a small army of bionicles to trip over, step on with a screech). not only did i sew like i did a long time ago when distractions were non-existent, but i had the added joy! delight! intoxication! of using a pattern that was not maternity (cheers abounding) and was a dream to cut and sew and now, to wear. hooray for simplicity and built by wendy and the old woman in norris, illinois who died leaving a stash of prettiness to be sold (along with a huge stack of vintage knitting and embroidery books) via yard sale.
noon-ish and there’s much of the day remaining. hopeful.
generation to generation
August 15, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
ernie: “i think it’s your bedtime.”
henry: “no it’s not. i had a lot of caffeine today and i’m nocturnal. caffeine makes me strong and it makes me stay up. and, you know what? tomorrow i’m going to drink a lot of caffeine out of mommy’s teacup.”
and, earlier,
me: “jude, just a sip, okay?”
jude: “does this have caffeine in it?”
me: “yes. a lot. it’s not really for kids, only for mommies.”
jude: “but i neeeeeeed caffeine, mom. i really do.”
we really don’t drink it that much, do we? i know i don’t drink as much coffee as i did in school, abominable beans that they used cafeteria-wise. noel and i used to drink full pots of our own cheap stuff before bed, our clothes spotted with the stuff, our breath tasting of it. perhaps it wasn’t life we were full of in those days, after all.
“the country was made on cigarettes and coffee,” my dad says, leaning back in his chair, his own cup, black contents unmoveable looking miniature in his hands.
sometimes i am able to convince myself that iced-tea is mostly water. my mother confirms this, nodding, as she squeezes a lemon into her glass. sometimes we chase coffee with iced-tea, a terrible practice but strangely good all the same.
i scratch at the frozen block that was yesterday’s coffee to make it through the afternoon, to dinner, when ernie comes home to us all, someone new on whom to bounce, to show flips that are higher than yesterday’s, to give attention, to relieve.
up in the air and over the wall
August 14, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
with every venture into the yard he returns, tapping on the glass with one hand, his other fist he thinks is hidden behind his back, but i am taller and can see over and down, behind him. he brings flowers, the weird from the yard, some that he planted, the morning glories that wilt in a flash, jarred in glass and water regardless. he smiles and runs out again. this morning i am annoyed on the way to the car as he picks two in dark purple to give to both of us. ernie, better than i, presses his down in his book as i back and turn in the driveway.
there’s a breeze in the yard today and if we stand in the shade it doesn’t feel hot. it is not yet midday and the sun is still practicing his pitches of fire over there, behind the oak tree, where we don’t feel them quite yet. early they play before complaints of heat and the danger of it come readily.
twice now we’ve left the house at eight at night for the park. barefeet that need to run under the last blue before stars pierce and twinkle. they run down the hill to the soccer field and speed the length of it, back, forth, around, and again. they smile and turn pink, drink water, and run again, faster with the dark. the spanish speaking children on the playground are silhouetted in black against the last of the day. they shriek and scream at each other, at the chubby boy that chases them, echoing screams in the tunnel of the slide. ernie and i enjoy summer without the sweat of it, the boys move, running, vapid air conditioned legs that climb at last, pump for a swing, leap over rocks in search of toads who hop out at night unsuspecting. these are the nights i like best, places for running and screaming, leaping, sliding away.
remembered, learned
August 10, 2007 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
the construction of paper airplanes and that boys will play with them for well nigh an hour.
allowing free reign with the hose does not raise the water bill more than ten dollars (a worthy investment for my summer sanity) in a three month billing period.
the arrival of two different martha stewart periodicals is cause for involuntary jumping.
the constant purchase, step-over and clean-up of legos is worth it in the creative long-run.
eating cherries can save the day.
mama needs to leave the house alone at least once a week.
morning glories are not glorious when the sun is beaming them to death.
the phone company occasionally hires competent employees.
there is always more stuff to give and throw away.
sadly, neither children need afternoon naps to survive, or even to be happy.
five year old children are deeply offended when their discarded and forgotten artistic masterpieces are used as wrapping paper.
come halloween we will have three children to costume.
possibly sadistically, the cat seems to only shed when napping on ernie’s pillow.
shel silverstein is a genius no matter how old you are.
always check underneath the bedclothes for a possible stash of hidden wooden and metal weaponry.
describing your brother’s drawings as “scribbles” is frowned upon.
mary ingalls is just as annoyingly good as she was when we were children together.
yes, picking that mosquito bite will make it bleed. a lot.