curtain call
July 30, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
one time, at the funeral of a very important very old man, i was standing in the back row of the balcony with melanie and someone else, a boy named aaron (maybe? was it him? not my aaron/ernie, a different one…), and a boy that wasn’t my boyfriend anymore. i was wearing this brown knit dress that all of the girls had gotten from the gap that year. we were singing a hymn that the very important man had written when the elastic to my slip gave way and the thing just fell off and landed on my doc martens. right there, during the funeral, in a slip-requiring knit dress, with a boy that knew at that moment exactly why we were never going to work out, my vintage slip with a really pretty fine edging around the bottom slid down and sat in a puddle on my shoes. completely inappropriate giggling followed and i am ashamed to say that i kicked the slip under the seat and left it there, knit dress, windy day and all.
i feel a similar mortification about my blog looking so dismal these days. has anyone else noticed the weirdness with the look of this place? the inappropriate way in which the header has that white line peeking out, the links in the sidebar ashamed and hiding under the last post in the balcony, a long list at the bottom of the page? the changing of font size without permission? it’s terrible. i can barely write because of it. my husband assures me that he will fix it soon (when he can take a break from doing the four billion things that he has to do each night before bed) but i am inches away from camping out elsewhere on some cheap and lazy blogspot template just so that i don’t have to look at my own dear little blog in this plight. all ideas and words for typing through the darkness vanish when i remember that my slip is not only showing, but is in a heap on my shoes where everyone can see. for shame.
ticket, get one
July 28, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
whenever i do something that my kids think is really amazing or just a great idea they say, “mom, you’re a genius!” sometimes they say it to each other, or to me about the other, but they say it in this amazed affirming voice that makes me smile and feel genius-like.
that said, i must say in my own amazed and affirming voice that “cory godbey, you’re a genius!” during the wedding week i got my own copy of cory’s zine (way nicer than any zine, it’s a book, really, it is) “ticket” along with two half dollars for the boys (who think they were given pirate treasure, thanks cory!”) and have been enjoying looking it over, listening to my boys tell me what they think is happening in the pictures, and watching jude pretend his cowboy hat makes him float into the air and over the land, just like lily.
ticket is the story of a girl and her magical hat that helps her to fly through the sky and danger and beauty. the book is a wordless storybook which i personally love because i enjoy hearing my kids tell me what they think it’s about and ask me questions about what they see. my boys are six and four and they did tell me that ticket was creepy, so if you have young children you may want to save your copy of the book for when they’re a little bit older. you can read the how and why of the story on cory’s blog and there are also a couple of original paintings available and whispers of posters being made. lovely!
great work, cory!
farm boy
July 25, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
we spent wednesday in north carolina at ernie’s grandpa’s farm with grammy, cousins, old and toothless, young and toothless, lots of fish, a breeze on the back of the heat, fire ants in colonies bigger than the farm, cows that won’t hush, much patience from grandpa when it comes to that golf cart and all of those kids under 7, meat here and there, coffee once, ice cream cake (so good, i love sweets), and talk that lasted into the darkness, a thunderstorm green and clean, lightning sparks and the long drive home.
more photos from this short visit can be seen here!
it’s gracen’s fault . . .
July 24, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
that i’ve not been blogging every day . . . (but i don’t blame her, of course).
more beautiful wedding-ness can be see on ernie’s blog!
joy, gladness, beautiful
July 22, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 14 Comments
thirty- three, double numbers, a multiple of a tidy, slim eleven, one third of the way to the last double, a century, then, a mere twelve months and four seasons away. if i live to ninety-nine my baby will be a grandmother herself, her choices and much of her life things of her memory. my husband will still be younger than i am, although i suppose when you are “in your nineties” it doesn’t matter who is older and by how much, does it?
in thirty three years i’ve managed to grow up, love coffee, wake up early, be well educated, eat too much pasta in italy, marry the most handsome, funny and wonderful man to ever walk the planet (except for maybe william shakespeare . . . perhaps?), give birth to three extraordinary children and pass my mad freckling skills on to at least one of them, make music, not be embarrassed just for being looked at, learn to apply eye makeup well, and to just, in general, to be aware of my life, who is in it and what they mean to me, and how fast the next thirty-three, the next sixty-six years are really going to go.
cheers, it’s my birthday!
on horseback
July 17, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
lola in the short grass, not knowing she shouldn’t lean back or she’ll roll down the hill. jude in the long grass, moving like the wind from top to root, bumblebees regardless, lola’s knee with a sting i worry about until i am reassured. henry running fast, a blur of blue and curl, his face glowing, a sparkler in those green eyes. there’s a wind in the air that makes summer worthwhile, a wind through a window and up and under the snips of the latest haircut, out and back on its way again. i buy impractical shoes that make me very tall and klomp around the house but don’t wear anywhere yet because i’m sure i’ll drop the baby, a dish, twist an ankle this way or that, being that this is how i am, especially in impractical shoes. they’re just such great shoes, though, yellow here and there, turquoise, red.
another day, we park here, this van in all its glory waiting in the sun. i remember kelly raymond, her dad (steve?), her very white skinned brother, the girls, michelle and her teeth, that mike boy we all had a crush on, all of us hanging upside down on our seats, no seatbelts, of course, playing cards, singing obnoxious songs, whispering so that steve and kelly’s mom couldn’t hear us, chewing twizzlers, steve driving us in his van, much like this one, carpeted inside, cupholders, middle seats and swiveled, through the hot of the summer to the sticky sweet woods of camp where we would stand around and watch the boys, cry a lot, throw our sticks in the fire, and cut bangs in crooked fringes across the foreheads of each other.
pretty people
July 16, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
the other night, at the store, a mother was holding a new baby, a boy, he was sleeping, tiny, “sixteen days old,” she said. he had black curls all around his head. lola watched me looking at him, talking to the mother. i think i get this kind of your-baby-is-delicious boldness from my mother, she always stops to ask, fawn, beam, and i’ve started doing it too, almost without noticing that i’m doing it. it seems that new life connects us all and is a subject that even those who keep to themselves can be bold about.
my sister in law had another baby, another girl, just a few weeks ago. in a couple of days we get to meet this little greene olive, very tiny, barely five pounds at her birth. nichole always has those little babies, though this one is the smallest. all babies seem really tiny, even henry who was ten and a half pounds when he was there in my needled arms looking up at me with those little curious eyes, he was small to me. jude was miniature, pink and blonde, and he was more than a pound bigger than this little olivia, just born. i tried to make jude grow small because i didn’t want another c-section and no matter my attempts at not eating too much ice cream or cheese and other silly notions, he was still big for being born five weeks early, an emergency, terrible and frightening. lola was a good sized baby, too, early herself, planned and born on a schedule that hooked me up to ivs, insisted on an empty stomach, a room of shiny sharp things, the doctor’s smile evident only in the wrinkles creased near her eyes. small babies and easy births make for more of the same. i wonder if my body could do another surgery like that, if lola is my last baby, the last one to swim the small dark red ocean, to be born with a scream and relief, to cry out in the night, learning about laughter, grass, the world blue and spinning.
thirty three years after my birth
July 13, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
my birthday is coming up in a mere nine days so i started wishing and telling so that those who want to know, will know . . .
delicious felted scarf by etsy seller karlita
behemoth spoon (i might just eat that ice cream with that spoon. . .) by etsy seller scrumdidlyump
ruffled arm warmers by etsy seller treehouse28
books on this book list
poster that should be my mantra (if only i could find a “serenity now!” poster….)
chemex eight cup coffee maker and the filters, too!
a lovely way to serve the salad
deviled egg apron (on sale! can hardly be made for this price! has the words “deviled egg” in the title!)
graveyard of buried hopes
July 12, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 1 Comment
last girl standing
July 11, 2008 | Filed Under ordinary | 3 Comments
someone has fancied the couch that i want! maybe it will rain a lot tomorrow and they won’t be able to make it to the shop to fall in love with it and buy it. maybe they will be hampered by traffic, busy schedules and gas prices and will somehow let us get the thing first. if i don’t get to have this couch i will be full of woe. no one could love it like i could. (and, yes, i’m still reading anne books and have more dramatic feelings and phraseology than usual.)
we tried a new park today, new and under a tent, springy faux painted mulch underfoot. ladders and webs and a merry-go-round of sorts, skate gliders, climbing walls and the hope for swings. it’s located at the park near the zoo, which was very full of very yellow shirted day campers. i’m glad that the boys didn’t even want to go into the zoo today, even though we could hear the bellowing of the monkeys from inside. lots of day campers are not my idea of mama taking us to the zoo tomorrow. jude found an inchworm that inched along on his shirt and hands until he most sorrowfully lost it somewhere on the playground. henry is sure that ten year olds are really talented on the skateboard glider. lola napped well, which has not happened the last few days, at least not good naps. spiderman and his brother and mother were there, too, muscular suit and all. it was hot but the tent at least gave the illusion of coolness and it has been decided that it is the new favorite park. we shall see. it is a little sad that a park henry calls the “skater park” would be more loved and favored than the “tree park,” isn’t it?