as much as is in you
September 9, 2009 | Filed Under familial | 1 Comment
rain today, later, after a few hours in the rain-promising yard. jude has taught lola to play in the mud so they made mud and played in it.
i’m feeling paranoid about spiders, reclusive spiders, widowed spiders. ernie found a black widow in the garage. i searched the books carefully before bringing them into the house.
we went to church tonight and did choir and other churchy activities. jude’s choir director told him his name was a good name because it was in the Bible. he told me that his sunday school teacher had also once shown him his name in the Bible. i felt bad that i hadn’t told him this before. sometimes things like that slip away from me, they grow too quickly from not caring to know to loving to know.
when it finally rained there were big raindrops, south carolina style. i was in it, driving, out of it, dashing, watching it from the window in the kitchen.
soul, turn orange colored
September 8, 2009 | Filed Under ordinary | Leave a Comment
henry has started reading himself to sleep. last night he attempted to read until jude fell asleep, as well, which should have worked as his read-aloud voice lacks any kind of interesting inflection, as yet. soon enough. i like tucking the books away and turning off his lamp at night, pulling the covers up, taking small toys from the bed, little cowboys that he played with between books when he knew he was being quiet enough.
the zoo today was nearly empty, just us, our friends. the baby monkey is growing, no longer mostly bald. he flips on the rope clumsily and lola appreciates this. we stayed until the zookeepers shooed us away, their khaki shorts and sunbleached french braids attesting to a long day of mucking and scooping and feeding.
sharon’s baby is one today, her other girls are tall and free. my boys, her older girls, other girls, are on a merry-go-round kind of thing and we can hear them laughing clear across the park. the sun is hot, the end of summer hot, the one last burning kiss before heading home until next year kind of hot. like kids at camp, new mown grass on the air, strong and sweet, making them confuse the waves of summer with the waves of first love.
i do not worry if longer nights grow longest
September 6, 2009 | Filed Under inspired, ordinary | 1 Comment
some days would be better if they were left in the bed, the rumpled parts to come left under thrown over covers. today was one of these, until i made pizza and lola took her sorry gums and went to bed.
i do not worry if longer nights grow longest, i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
please give your children their tickets
September 5, 2009 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial | 4 Comments
the unpacking and cleaning and moving stuff around never ends. never! ever! i feel like most of my thinking is in lists, what to do in what order. i am easily distracted by all there is to do and it’s hard to just pick one thing and do it without getting sidetracked by some other task lurking in the corner. it’s a relief for the night to come, for everyone else to tuck their eyes under their lids and dream again, to cut paper and be done with the moving of things from one place to the other.
it might be the brightness of the bathroom lights in this house. it might be my actual age. it might be how tired and overwhelmed i often am. but whatever it is, i am looking old. i can see it everywhere and it’s very startling. “i should really drink more water,” i tell myself in the morning. “i need to exercise.” “i need to sleep more.” “i need to eat less.” more things to add to the list, to line up like bowling pins in the day for the flinging of heavy balls for a roll and a crash at the end before dark.
pics in this post are from our trip to pennsylvania, wherein we adventured to many places, including knoebel’s, a great little amusement park in the trees. a few more images can be seen on flickr if you care to meander in that direction.
peaceably
September 4, 2009 | Filed Under familial, inspired, lists, ordinary | 1 Comment
grammy taking a wall painting break to do some lola toe painting. lola really likes it that her toenails are painted red.
enjoying
teaching jude to read
the gas stove
butterflies all over the front yard, and these amazing butterflies under glass
not being obsessive
lamps all around (though not the work lamp due to missing! that! piece!)
henry’s hilarious sense of humor
expialidocious mary poppins remix. so beautiful. i was smiling throughout. you will, too. hat tip, dearling husband
the many painted walls of the house, painted by aforementioned husband, his mother, his brother, and a good friend, matt
the cat deciding to be a normal feline cat
this clean desk
those tidy shelves
the studio floor, vacuumed
catching up on hel-looks (great things this summer, especially her!)
thinking ahead to the morning coffee (should probably not admit to this)
considering scarves, even though the heat came back again today
i sleep lengthwise
September 4, 2009 | Filed Under familial, ordinary, royal buffet | 1 Comment
it is not safe to say that summer is gone, but we’ve been saying it all the same. the kids have spent most of their days all this week being and eating and playing and squabbling and hooting and hollering in the Yard with Amazing Grass that we now have in our new backyard. today we did half of our bookwork on a blanket in the grass, ate (too much) fresh brioche (bread book of wonder, how did we get along without you before?) on the same blanket, later, after reading and math and illustrated butterflies, and watched lola follow a bird on clumsy tiptoe. seventy degrees and the like, the wind coming everywhere from nowhere, cut grass on his back, through one window and out another.
we worked to organize the studio last night. i spent most of the time looking for a little piece of plastic that attaches to my cheap ikea lamp in order to make the lamp stand up at all. it was a futile and violently frustrating search. the lamp was $8, i should not be too upset, but nothing is more frustrating than finding one of the two pieces (in my moop) where i know that i put both of them the day that we packed and moved. i hate searching for things, hate it, but i certainly do spend a lot of time doing just that. the studio, though dimly lit, is coming together, i’m happy to say. ernie and i both have lots of studio stuff, but good shelves and desk space seems to help. it’s fun to share! though i do still have my worries. i am a paper cutter mess maker and even though he says to just keep his keyboard and mouse clear of my paper mess, i know that he really doesn’t mean exactly that.
a few new-ish things in the shop already, including these friendly birds on wire. i’ve also some new mobiles that have been trying to finish themselves and appear in the shop. soon! there are just so many things to do.