Nearly New!

It is hard to believe this year is coming to an end and 2010 is so close on the horizon, barely peeking over the edge with its inherent possibilities and resolutions.

A recap seems fitting here, if only because I won't remember everything unless I write it down.

So, here's 2009 in a nutshell:

*First time since college without an employer and caring for a child (my child!) full-time. (Yep, it's not the same as being a nanny.) :)

*Winter/Spring was really tough. Too many doctor's visits and not enough hand washing.

*Summer was glorious. Gl-or-i-ous. Camping, hiking, beach combing, sunset watching, picnics, sunning, swimming, romping through parks. Deception Pass, Camano Island, San Juan Island (saw a beautiful pod of Orca Whales here), San Diego, Whidbey, Vashon, Bainbridge, Port Orchard, the Peninsula, ferry rides and car rides and a couple of plane rides. Lots of moments to stare out a rolled down window after a day in the sun. The best summer in a long time. Long days rule.

*Started running again! Woot! I'm excited to start again sometime next year.

*Started a novel. Still just 92 pages and counting.

*Lots and lots of restlessness. Put our house on the market (whew, that was a lot of work). Thought we'd move to an island, but didn't.

*Cora turned TWO. We partied with her animals for two months prior while listening to thousands of replays of "Happy Birthday."

*Got pregnant with #2. Yippee!

*Cooked up a storm. I love to cook.

*Rarely managed to stay within my food budget.

Which is a good intro to resolutions for 2010:

*Stick to a brand new food budget and still eat nutritious, organic food. (I am way too embarrassed to state how much we've managed to spend per month on multiple occasions; let's just say I am trying to cut it by 1/3 and eventually in half.) Consequently, I've been combing through online resources searching for the answers. I swear, I think I'm going to create an Excel file with all our foods listed out with prices next to them. No more impulse buying. No more dark chocolate and sea salt covered almonds just because they sound lovely. It has to be on The List. The Grocery List. The One I Will Hold True and Dear. I want the money we save to be a bonus, an unexpected extra amount we can reroute to other places--savings, debts, vacations, whatever. I like that we eat well; I don't like that it feels like our money gets eaten and thrown away.

*This means I need to be one of those extremely organized go-getters who makes menus and lists and shops for deals and buys in bulk and cooks nearly everything from scratch. Repeatedly. While I do cook a lot of things from scratch, the uber-organized menu-making diva thing doesn't come naturally, as I am sure I have stated before. This is not typically my personality. While I do consider price and budget, I like to browse and buy when it comes to food. However, I am going to do better. Much better. And so is Brian.

*Start a garden in our backyard.

*Invite people over more often.

*Start year 1 of our 4-1/2 year goal to become debt-free. For all you non-student-loan-bearing people, pat yourselves on the backs and be grateful. We are going to comb through our student loan debt and throw a big party in 4-5 years. I can't wait for that party. We'll serve over-the-top delicious food and beverages and give grand and glorious toasts. We'll wear top hats and sequins (ok, maybe not, but who knows?). We'll serve tiny little sandwiches and buttery crackers covered in salmon and watercress and creme fraiche and buy bottles and bottles of sparkly drinks. Our children will be 7 and 5, respectively, and we'll both be almost 38 years old, but for goodness sake, we won't owe anyone anything, except for this small thing called our mortgage.

*Maybe if I write about our budgeting/debt-paying experience, we'll have a better chance of sticking to our goals. Watch out, I might write about it here.

*Have a baby.

*Finish my novel.

*Start running again.

I feel very motivated. Spreadsheets and recipes and bulk foods, here I come. In these days of in-between holidays and New Year reflection, I am remembering how difficult it was last winter to reconcile myself to the fact that I was chopping off my salary and instead of portioning out thousands to their respective destination (nanny, mortgage, yardwork, savings), I needed to consider the dollars, the tens, the hundreds. It felt uncomfortable, pedantic and constraining. After a year of watching countless families suffer financial setbacks due to a recession and job losses, and experiencing everything I traded my salary for, I have a different frame of mind. I am so regretful that we didn't save every penny of my salary when we could, because lo and behold, we didn't need it. We just didn't know it back then. While I can't turn back time, I want to shake ourselves free of our student debt (oh what a mighty freedom that will be!), save as much as we can, continue to cook because we love to, and reap the rewards of being more conscientious about what we eat--and how much we spend on it. I want to simplify and prioritize. It feels like a new kind of freedom is ahead, one that is more directed and full of choice, less fractured by wanderlust and indecision.

Of course, not surprisingly, more than anything else this year, I am excited to meet our new family member in June. Will it be a girl? A boy? What kind of baby will it be? I've been imagining a bassinet by our bed, and the little form in there. Holy mole.

Lemon

I'm 14 weeks pregnant today and just read that the size of the baby is about 3-1/2 inches, close in size to a large lemon. I've felt it move for about two weeks, but only very intermittently.

Stretching, with Cookie--and Pictures

Cora just dropped off to sleep after many minutes of babbling and playing with her animals in her crib. Then she repeatedly announced "I'm all done sleeping!" until I went into her room and helped her settle down. This has become a trend the past few days. She waits for me to come in and rub her back until she's asleep. Soon her breathing becomes heavy and I creep out of her room.

Then I open this laptop and sit on the couch, enjoying the sight of our Christmas tree and the trees being buffeted by the wind outside our windows, and I try to get my brain moving. I eat a cookie. Or two. And sign into this blog.

Writing here is much more casual than writing a novel, for obvious reasons of course. I don't have to think about plot, or dialogue, or how to get from place to place. I'm not concerned about geography or personality quirks, or psychological issues. I don't get that hung up on grammar. Instead, I suppose I do a bit of what Cora does: I babble. This is my stretching session, I'm limbering up.

It's also my journal, or has become one. I used to write longhand in a journal every evening. I hope to begin that habit again because this isn't the same. No matter what, I know someone is reading this, and it's inhibiting. I don't feel like I can really go deep, explain my fears or vulnerabilities, the way I worry about the smallest things or can quickly be transported or made happy or upset by memories of moments that happened years ago.

So I decide to start small. Just write. And for the past several days I have started a writing session with the same sense of urgency and hope. Each day I manage to distract myself somehow--checking email, reading the news, checking favorite blogs. Today I made the grave mistake of looking at the Decade in Pictures slideshow featured on msnbc.com. Now I am so emotionally humbled by the images that I can hardly think. Once again I am reminded of the sheltered life we lead here in this house, the security and safety and calm, the daily focus on fostering happiness and love, of the teeny tiny little orb we fill on this rapidly changing planet. I am saddened and confused about how it's possible to be happy when so many are suffering. It goes against a connectedness I used to believe in as a child.

Tuesday

Until yesterday, it hadn't rained in 10 days. It was sunny and clear every day, and cold enough that everything was frozen. The air was crisp. There was clarity in the sky and air.

It wasn't until this morning that I looked out the window and realized how green it hasn't been without the rain.

The kitchen window is open and the sound of water pooling and falling is rhythmic. We don't have eaves; our windows get covered with water. I like to watch it hit the glass and merge into rivers. Rain is romantic.

I think I'm reaching a mid-Winter acceptance (appreciation?) of the rain. Does that make me a Seattleite?

I think it just means that going 10 days without something can help raise it back up to a romantic standard. I'll talk to you in another 10 days.

Cora's nanny share went well yesterday. She had a few breakdowns, mainly toward the middle and end of her three-hour stay, as she explained to me (in the third person) over lunch:

"Cora was yelling 'Mama! Mama! Mama!' but Mama no come knocking at the door." (Shaking head adamantly.)

That made me sad, but I was glad that she could communicate about it with me. I was also happy that when I arrived back at the congregation of cuteness (the three other girls in the nanny share are quite darling) she was more interested in staying and playing than leaving. She said she had a good time:

"We kicked the ball. Throw! Catch! Run run run! Ate snacks. Read stories. I went potty."

She's developed a small stammer the past week and seems to have the most difficulty with M, N, and D. It's very sweet ("M-m-m-m-ama sit d-d-own!"). I assume this is just one of the many phases of her speech, not a theme that will continue for too long.

Does parental worry ever end?

I started feeling the baby move about a week and a half ago. Last night I couldn't feel it at all and I woke up in the middle of the night worrying about it. I am sure everything is fine but it reminded me of the anxiety I felt during my pregnancy with Cora. It's amazing how stressful, joyful, incredible, and terrifying it is to have a person inside your abdomen.

I just felt it move. There you go. It's in there. It didn't just dissipate into thin air over night. It has legs.

Two

We celebrated Cora's second birthday on Saturday. It was a cozy morning party with friends. I spent last week remembering childhood birthday parties while thinking about the small details of Cora's party--things like cupcakes or cake, what sorts of brunchy things we'd serve, ways to get toddlers to dance, things like that. More, though, I was imagining picking Cora up in the morning with a full heart and a pronounced sense of my daughter's babyhood ending. I didn't feel that way; I was just so excited to celebrate her birthday--more excited, maybe, than she was.

The thing is, her birthday party wasn't on her actual birthday; she was born two years ago today. So I was a little surprised to feel all those feelings this morning. She sat across from us in the kitchen, spooning oatmeal and yogurt and wearing beads around her neck, and I stared at her while remembering pacing around the Seattle University's track near Swedish hospital, trying to get my contractions to speed up. And now she is a little person with opinions and stubborn behavior who is able to gracefully maneuver a spoon of milky oatmeal into her mouth.

She's growing up.

To make matters more oddly emotional, I dropped her off this morning at the new nanny share we're trying out Monday mornings for a few hours. I'm tucked away at a bookstore trying to get started on the next chapter of my novel, and a baby is crying nearby. A woman just walked by with her bundled seven-month-old who is placidly sitting on her hip and staring at everything she stares at--no squirming, no begging for down, no sudden launching into space and beyond with strong legs.

It's not that I am sad to see her grow. It's that the growth is sometimes astonishing, and I wonder if I'll ever get over the growing pains from the joy of watching her turn into herself.

Thumpityswish thump thump

We heard the little plum's heartbeat on Monday. There's nothing more thrilling; it gets me choked up every time. I am becoming so excited about this new little person.

We officially told Cora about the baby on Monday, too. While I feel quite sure she'd already figured it out from the peripheral conversations going on around her, we had a "real" conversation about it in the doctor's office and showed her pictures of babies in bellies. She heard her sibling's heartbeat, too. She's been wandering around the house the past two weeks periodically slipping a doll under her shirt and explaining it's in her tummy. When asked if she wants a brother or a sister, she gives changing answers--sometimes a brother, sometimes a sister, no a brother, no a sister. I'm glad she seems so flexible about the idea.

My ability to concentrate is generally nil. Writing? What writing? Time is slipping away and very little has been done. I find myself periodically searching for classmates' names on google and discovering their recently published piece of writing, or I see a sudden facebook update announcing an upcoming novel. Sometimes I worry that writing is just one of those things I'm fooling myself about. I become either melodramatic or realistic (we won't know which that is until my life is over, I suppose. See? Melodrama.). I imagine turning 50 (or dying at a ripe old age) and having nothing to show for my own endeavors except a bunch of cluttered piles of paper and unfinished manuscripts, and diary entries in spidery, arthritic script. When I'm feeling optimistic, it's arguable that I'm feeling way overly optimistic because I imagine the path opening up before me--the manuscript finished, edited, and rewritten very easily, and the publishing process a success.

It's easy to become discouraged when nothing is getting done. That said, I am feeling better. I don't feel the need to sleep away the afternoon, so perhaps I can take back a few of these afternoons for productive work.

I am, however, slated to spend at least the next 20 minutes trying to read my last chapter draft while imagining a BABY in my belly.

Gratitude and an oversize lime

Once again, after taking a hiatus from writing here (and, alas, writing in general), I feel a bit tongue-tied. That's what happens when I take a break. It's like living in a new city and knowing only a few people, hiding away and being quiet for days and then showing up at the grocery store and running into an acquaintance. Talking at a time like that can feel canned, like you're listening to your own voice and wondering whose it is.

Where do I start. Ooh, I want to dive right in but instead I think I'll take a more meandering path, by starting with the fact that this fall here in Seattle has been a wrinkled experience. Unlike my sentiments in my last post, I have settled into the reality of not going to the park with Cora and running three miles in the sun on a daily basis. Still, I remember the summer enough to be sad about having to say goodbye. I really miss running. It made me feel happy, and strong, and incredibly motivated. I've also become more accustomed to the rain and even willing to listen to people explain to me why they like it. I especially like listening to it at night, drumming on our rooftop and windows and reminding me how content I am in this house while Cora dreams in the room next door.

I've been cooking a lot more, too, which is characteristic of this time of year. I've made a fair number of soups. Chicken soup, noodle soup, chili, tortilla soup, vegetable soup. And roasted vegetables, tamale pie, lasagna, enchiladas, noodle casserole, baked mac 'n cheese and quiches, salmon and potatoes.

Oh, and amazingly delicious gluten-free bread based off this awesome recipe from Gluten Free Green Mommy. It's really good and worth the long list of flours and baking agents.

We've been using the oven a lot more and it reminds me that it's one of my favorite ways to cook. Right now I'm thinking about diving into the world of sauces--white sauce, brown sauce, reduced sauce, balsamic, mustard, curry. Sauce.

All that cooking would lead one to believe that all I've wanted to do is eat, right? But no. I've been mainly dragging through the days, dealing with a fondly remembered phase of life, one that involves feeling tired and sick in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening. Sound familiar? That leads me to the big news: I'm 11 weeks pregnant and aside from a yucky cold, I'm feeling much, much better. I just read that at 11 weeks the baby is the size of an oversize lime or a plum. How cool is that?! That's the reason I haven't written; I haven't had anything else I wanted to write about but every time I sat down to talk about being pregnant, I remembered there were still a number of people who didn't know, and it seemed unkind that they'd find out on my blog. So I'd delete the post, log off, and take a nap instead. There are still a number of people who don't know, but since this forum is meant to be very much of a diary for me, I've decided not to worry about it so much.

Eleven weeks. We decided to have another baby, and then I was pregnant. I felt pregnant pretty much immediately, and took a pregnancy test six days before my period was due. I will never forget reading the results in the morning and shrieking out to the kitchen to hug Brian, then Cora (she had no idea why, but she was excited nonetheless).

As any seasoned parent knows, being pregnant the second time around is fairly different. I'm certainly not seasoned, though; it's a new world to me. For one thing, I've just been a heck of a lot more tired. Keeping up with Cora, carrying her, hugging her, chasing her, tickling her, cooking and cleaning, and doing it all day long while feeling close to vomiting is more physically tiring, for me at least, than it was working at a full-time office job. However, I do get to take afternoon naps, which has been luxurious.

Also, this pregnancy has been more physically challenging in other ways. I've had spotting and cramping, which can be more common in a second pregnancy, particularly an active one, and there have been days when I have been so tired I haven't known how to approach the onset of another day. I haven't been running and the early-morning writing I loved so much has been nixed for obvious reasons (the notion of rising at 5:15 sounded about as lovely as eating a dirty shoe, and anyway I can't drink all the caffeine necessary to make it work).

Luckily, my all-day sickness started to wane at about 8-1/2 or 9 weeks, which was much earlier than it was with Cora. And, lo and behold, we've seen the heartbeat of our new little bean. There is nothing more miraculous, me thinks, than the image of a tiny person in my abdomen, lodged there cozily, with a beating heart. I've reentered that stage of going for a walk with my small family and suddenly realizing that there are four of us present. Disbelief still reigns sometimes, and June 18th feels like a long time away, but as my faith has grown that this little person will, indeed, be sticking with us, I am getting more and more thrilled to think about the things to come: butterfly movements, an ever-growing belly, elbows in the ribs, kicking and turning, and silly food cravings that must be met. More than anything, I am looking forward to dreaming about who this little person will become, what its little hand will look like against Brian's, and how it will be for Cora to hold her sibling for the first time.

For now, I am trying not to think (too much, at least), about the sleep deprivation and 2-hour feedings, the challenging world of nursing an infant and trying not to fall asleep while entertaining a 2-1/2-year-old, and all the roller coaster rides associated with becoming a bigger family. That's why it takes nine months. Plenty of time to get as adjusted to and prepared for the idea as possible.

Meanwhile, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. You'll find hundreds of gratitude lists online these days. I have deleted this list several times because it feels embarrassingly narcissistic to yammer on about my life in a list (because, ultimately, I'm not going to list things beyond my own personal microcosm). And also because the list somehow sounds a bit like the dedications I made to people my Senior year in high school. However, I'm stubbornly keeping it here for the sake of posterity. And because it fits with the premise of this blog--to be openly thankful, and to dream. So, I am joining all those other online lists sending my gratitude up to the sky to mingle with yours and season the months and years ahead.

Gratitude for:

*Cora's hands, her wit, her sensitivity, her bright eyes and mind, her nearly-2-year-old response of "No!" to nearly everything I ask, her desire to party with her animals all day long, and her ability to dance and jump at the same time.

*This new babe in my belly, working so hard daily to rapidly divide its cells and become a PERSON.

*Brian's love and patience, his depth of creativity and his ability to work hard on anything he sets his mind to. Especially how he manages to come home smiling every single day and be funny and silly and sweep Cora up in his arms and give her a huge hug. He's making memories for Cora every time he does it, and I love him dearly for that.

*The ability to have choices in how we construct our lives right now.

*Brian's job. I am so grateful that he loves what he does, that he has found a good company to work for, and that he lives out his dreams in small and big ways each day.

*This house. I like the way the living room feels at night when we wrap our feet under blankets and read books or talk. I love tucking ourselves into our bed and listening to the wind and rain.

*My family, immediate and extended, especially for my mom and sis who live nearby and are so invested in being close.

*My friends. I miss many of them and wish we saw each other more often, but I love following their interesting lives and seeing where our paths intersect.

*Our collective health. This has been an odd health year for Brian, Cora, and me, but I think in many ways it has been valuable. It's helped me to focus on the power of the mind and the importance of being positive, the relative strength of the human body, and the ability to repair oneself.

*The ability to fill our refrigerator with nourishing food, and to know there are friends who will join us to eat, celebrate life, and fill our house with laughter and giggling children.

*Last, but not least, the enduring interest in writing. The book won't be done by the end of this year, but I know it's still there, waiting to be written. I'm thankful the idea is percolating and willing to wait.

Thinking, I guess

Ah yes, Friday. Rainy, drippy, overcast, gray gray gray Friday.

As I drove through Seattle today, I composed letters in my head while Cora kicked at the back of my seat with her rubber boots. "Dear Summer," I'd begin. "You tricked me." Writing letters to summer seemed so...cliche, desperate, sad. I'd stop, fiddle with the music, stare at taillights in front of me. And then I'd let loose. "You lead me to believe I lived somewhere else. You made me believe in the integrity of parks and beaches and meadows, in running and playing and walking outside whenever I wanted to. You made me think it was easy to get strong and sturdy in the sun. You inspired me to wake early. Now it is different. I see six months of this unfurling itself before me in its gray splendor and I am not amused."

Blah.

Also, I'm just really tired these days, sleepy dopey tired. All I want to do is sleep in and roll out of bed for a cup of tea or a giant mug of milky coffee. Getting up at 5 with a pot of tea is more complicated than it was a few weeks ago. I feel angry with Autumn for making all the trees look so gorgeous but then putting on such a torrential drippy show that I am not that interested in going out to walk.

So there you go. How's that for negative negatron thinking.

Of course, I know something. I know it's all linked. I'm not getting up early, so I'm not writing. I'm not writing, so I'm irritable. I'm irritable, which makes me depressed. I want to take a nap instead of doing anything productive, but instead of doing either I look at email and facebook and the news and while away the 120 minutes of me time that could be used to pen my opus. (Obviously, I like to say "pen my opus," because of the tongue-in-cheek nature of it. The work to get there, to finish this draft, feels daunting to say the least.)

Also, I spent the first few days of this week stressing out about our refinance, mainly just because I seem to have a knack for anxiety over such things. To add to that nervousness, our agent called last Friday and convinced me to let some people look at our house a second time. Somehow I thought that being open to the possibility of people looking at it would help her feel less resentful towards us for taking it off the market. I wagered that since we'd had it on the market for 40+ days without a written offer, we wouldn't get one out of these people. So after a really long discussion, I told her they could look, but she should tell them it wasn't a sure thing. Of course she didn't say that. I think she said something like, "You can look at the home before 11 or after 4." She didn't explain to the agent that I was having the house appraised at Noon and that we were moving forward with our refinance.

Anyway, they looked. They were a younger couple and they were talking about where they'd put the TV, and how Cora's room would be the office/den, and they reminded me of Brian and me when we first looked at this place, but I didn't give it too much thought until the next morning when the agent called to set up a final showing because his clients probably wanted to buy our house. And I explained that we had the wrong house for his clients, that we had decided not to sell it and we shouldn't have let them look at it again, that we'd spent the week being homeowners, not sellers, and we couldn't switch back, and that we wouldn't accept anything less than a full-price offer anyway so they should look elsewhere, blah blah blah. He continued to explain that they probably wanted to buy our house and they would likely write us an offer that day. I said I'm sorry, and got off the phone shaking. Something about the offer staring at me in the face undid me a bit. And now our agent is peeved and rather sour with us, which isn't our fault in the end because it's our house--something that was surprisingly easy to forget when it was on the market.

I still like our house. Yep. I do. I even love it. So here we are, in our house. When we opened the door after walking in the rain, I was actually just thankful for a dry, warm place. It's amazing what rain will do to simplify things. I'm writing in our office. Cora is sleeping in her room. I made a quiche for a friend this morning in our kitchen while Cora ran around the house and entertained herself with her toys and her music and her growing imagination. I actually often stand in our kitchen and feel grateful all the way down to my toes.

At lunch, Cora presented me with one of her teddy bears. I asked his name and she said "Warren Tomtin." I shook his paw and she busied herself with feeding him some quesadilla and soy milk. Warren seemed pleased.

So this rain. It's still out there. I just pulled opened the shades and confirmed its presence. Yep. Even though Cora and I splashed through the puddles today in an arguably cute presentation of the super fabulousity of being a Seattle child, I am still not convinced. I mean, a man just walked by with an umbrella and a little dog. The little dog was dressed in a bright blue rain suit. It had two belts and red trim, and the sleeves went all the way down to his paws. I mean, really, right?

Choice and contentment

Sigh.

You know when everything in life is going at a mad pace--frenetic, confused, a bit disconnected, but nevertheless productive--and then you make a decision? You turn your life from one direction down another, and the first thing you notice is it's more quiet there? You're walking down this new path and you start to notice things, like it's breezy and there's room to sit on a mossy rock and observe the ants. It's a sort of drawing in, a simplification.

That's what this week has been like. After weeks of indecision, this Monday morning we called our agent and took our house off the market, and we're refinancing into another 30-year fixed at a lower rate. Cora and I drove up to our place this morning and the sign was gone. I heaved a sigh of relief. I felt so grateful. It was actually, if you can believe it, like buying our house all over again. Only this time after what feels like years of searching we found a house pre-packaged with memories of our first nights sleeping here, of months of landscaping the yard, refinishing the basement, painting every wall ourselves while eating take-out from restaurants in our new neighborhood, re-grouting the bathroom floor, conceiving a child, working from home, sewing curtains while 8-months pregnant, going into labor, bringing Cora home from the hospital and introducing her to each room....

(I'm getting choked up remembering it...yep, my eyes are swimming with that memory. Tiny 5 pound 8 ounce Cora wrapped up in our arms, little newborn eyes opening briefly to look at our kitchen, at the living room, at the bedroom we had taken such pains to decorate for her, while our hearts brimmed over because we were able to tell our daughter that this was her house, her cupboards of food, her clothes, her little bed. It wasn't the fact of the house, it was the fact that she was here, that we could explain to her that she would be alright, that we were going to do everything in our power for the rest of our lives to take care of her. The kitchen, the house painstakingly cleaned by her aunties, and all the bouquets of flowers from friends and family heralded the start of her life.)

I feel a great deal of relief to be able to say that right now I don't want to live on an island and I don't want to move out of my house--not yet anyway. We want to continue making improvements, finishing other spaces in the basement, and enjoying our cozy Northeast Seattle neighborhood. Even if it means sitting here in a depreciating market, or realizing that someday, indeed, our desire for more space (indoor and outdoor) will become bigger than our little house, still, we're fine right now. The present is more apparent to me right now than the future, and the past feels like it's rolled out behind me with an odd feeling of pattern and plan.

I am reminded, too, of how I made the decision to quit my job last year. It took signing the offer letter and spending the weekend in that new life to realize it wasn't the life I wanted. Maybe I'm just one of those people. I need to live some of it a little bit to know if it's for me. Maybe I needed to give our house away to everyone who walked in the door before I realized I didn't want to.

And also, of course, it is nice to live in a house that is relatively ordered, clean, slightly more updated, exactly how I thought someone else would want a charming old 1942 house to be.

And so I have to pause for a moment and consider, full circle, the story here. Gratitude for what you have. Not because you have to work hard to be grateful, but because it fits, and it works, and it is nice. Quiet. Contented. Sitting still and honing in on other things, like thoughts and friends and family, and weeding the yard and going on local outings. Taking care of the details that get shoved away when everything else is made distracting by the desire to be somewhere else, doing something else. Digging in. It fits with winter and as we enter these colder days, I am happy to settle in to our warm and happy home.

Autumn

I know how boring it can sometimes be to listen to the exuberant exclamations of people in love with the weather. But bend an ear my way just for a second because it's one of my favorite times of year (stiff competition with spring). Cold, crisp, sunny and clear. Leaves are dropping, frost is forming, temperatures are falling, and we're eating some of the best Gala apples we've had all year. We pulled out an extra blanket for the bed at night and even turned on the heat. Oddly, despite my constant protestations as our beautiful summer visibly waned, I love it. I can't wait for the bursts of color and the baked dinners, and a reason to make pie.

Cora and I made cookies this morning and met friends for a play date at the zoo. Our children zoomed around at full speed while all the other animals seemed to be in pre-hibernation mode. The two 850-pound bear brothers were fast asleep on their rock perch, one with his enormous head resting on an extended paw. The otter den was filled with two, entwined otters with eyes tightly shut. The lions were piled atop each other and snoozing in the sun. An elk was asleep on the ground in such a pose as to look, well, permanently there. The fox was in his den and the wolf was nowhere to be seen. Only the giraffes and shiny-eyed eagles were up and about. The kids' cheeks were rosy from an abundance of giggly shrieks and fresh air.

In other news (maybe our only news these days?), we're still here, still living in an unsold house. And I'm writing. Just tipped over the 80-page mark, so that's something. I've been getting up at 5:15 and brewing a huge pot of tea, then tiptoeing downstairs and writing until Cora wakes up and we all gather together for breakfast. I'm a little tired today, but I'm excited. I feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Happy Autumn!

In which the author dreams of sleep...and a finale

Cora's asleep right now and I am vigorously hoping she manages to get a good, solid nap today that lasts well into the afternoon. She seems to be coming down with a bit of a cold today, which isn't much of a surprise since we just returned from a trip to San Diego and I am recovering from a small cold myself. Either that or she just has a runny nose because she's teething again, as she continues to point out by poking her finger in her mouth and opening wide to show us the little tooth that's coming in. Oh, to be almost two.

Almost two. This is one of Cora's favorite things to say. People ask her what her name is and she pats her chest and says, "Cora." Then she holds up her little fist with one finger up and the rest at half-mast, her hand trembling with the effort of not putting up two fingers--yet!--and says, "Almost two." Sometimes she'll start singing Happy Birthday to complete the picture.

I am lost in a book these days, which is helpful, because I seem to be trying to hide from some more pressing realities...like, for example, that it's already September. Mid-September, actually. We have our house on the market, still, and it's nearing the time of year when we'll be bundled up in sweaters and crunching through leaves, making bubbling pots of soup and baking bread, carving pumpkins and getting rosy cheeks from the impending chill in the air. Where will those pots of soup be bubbling? Here? Somewhere else? Crap.

Where on earth has the time gone? I am nearly at my one-year anniversary of being a stay-at-home mom and writer. If I am going to show anything for this year of writing except a few first drafts of starts of novels, I need to start getting up early every morning. I also need a day or two a week of childcare so I can really focus on this endeavor. Either that, or I need to start drinking a ton of coffee. Maybe I need to try all three. I have managed to write quite a bit, probably several hundred pages of stuff, these posts included, and I am happy that I have an idea for a novel I'd like to finish, but I seem to be missing that creative genius spark, that thing that pushes people beyond their limits in pursuit of their dreams.

In my perfect, ideal picture of heroic extremism, I should be able to push myself to new horizons, get up at 5 every morning and go to bed late until the draft is done. I would be sitting here, neatly arranging the crisp white pages of my opus, primly writing comments to my editor in the margins, calmly sipping a bit of tea before writing the last and perfect sentence.

The only problem is that my spark seems to be perpetually tired.

I am sitting here with a plugged up nose, crumbs on my plate, and a house on the market. Not exactly forcing myself to the finish line in a frenzy, not quite the picture of vigor I'd envisioned. Huh.

Thus, the coffee. Perhaps if I drank more of it I could conjure up a semblance of such perplexing anxiety and angst that I could write this thing. If I had a little teapot or coffeepot sitting down here by my computer and I dragged myself out of bed at the crack of dawn (or before), and plodded through, could I manage to complete a draft before 2010?

TWENTY TEN! Two thousand and ten? Holy crapola. I need to set deadlines for myself and work toward something I commit to as singularly important, otherwise I risk falling into a pattern of distraction and lost opportunities. Oops, I think that was me falling between the cracks over there. Yep, I just checked and there I am, staring up at the sky while life goes marching by.

TWENTY TEN? Am I the only one who stumbles when I write that? Weren't we supposed to be able to drive flying cars by now? Or skip the airplane in lieu of beaming ourselves there?

Life goes by so ridiculously fast. I wish I had a way to extract every bit of goodness from it every minute of the day, so that I wasn't so afraid of finishing up short.

So, here's my pledge to myself and to you, even if you don't care: I will finish a draft of this novel by January 1, 2010. I'm not promising it'll be perfect. I'm just placing my hand down on my book, looking at the possibility in there, and pledging to get there somehow.

Indecision

Indecision is our new bedfellow. I am tired of him. He sits at the end of our bed, his back tucked neatly against the footboard, and he smokes. He's not sure whether he likes expensive cigars or sweet cigarillos, and he waxes poetic about the benefits and drawbacks of both, while puffing--sometimes slowly, sometimes hurriedly--through cigar after cigarillo after cigar. I prefer cigarillos, he says, and he stares narrowly at me, daring me to disagree. I heave a sigh of relief. At last, I think, he's decided. No more talking about such an inane topic. But, no. A few minutes later he unwraps a fine Cuban cigar and waves it beneath his nose. It's the seduction of a cigar, he says. It's impossible to resist. He tilts his head back as he inhales, and I throw a pillow over my head to escape the smoke and chatter.

Recently we made the mistake of telling him that we were undecided about where to live. Never confess such a thing to Indecision. He'll run away with your question and never give it back. He falls asleep talking about Seattle and wakes up with a point or two about Bainbridge Island. He points to land and water and boats and good schools and peace and quiet and says, Ah yes! Bainbridge Island! It is decided! Then he draws back in concern and reveals the other hand: Zoos and friends and Green Lake and an easy commute and tons of grocery stores with tasty, organic food at a reasonable price. Oh no! he says, I was wrong, all wrong! It's Seattle all the way! Get thee back to the mainland, people, where you can have a social life and buy tasty gluten-free bread!

The thing is, this is how it was for me last week on the island: I spent the first three days in a relative state of bliss. I spent nearly every day listening to waves lap on the shores of hidden beaches. Ran on a dirt road around a 90-acre park and waved at bunny rabbits in the bushes and ducks bobbing in the pond. Let Cora run freely around my mom's property without once worrying about her crashing into concrete or opening the fence and escaping to a too-busy road. One morning we all got up early before Brian caught the ferry to work and we went into town to Blackbird Bakery, an enchanting little spot with tasty treats and good coffee. (They impressed me with their delicious gluten-free berry muffins and chocolate chip cookies. That's it, I thought, they have gluten-free treats. We're moving.) Cora and I spent an entire morning calling to seagulls and sea lions and throwing rocks in the water, pausing sometimes to lay back and stare at the sky. We walked to quaint coffee shops and watched ferry boats make their lazy path through Rich Passage.

There are so many charming places where we could live on the island that it seems silly to worry about it, even though we do. We want our next house to be special. We looked at a house that had a rather uninspiring feel to it, but which was situated on a large lot about four houses up from the beach. After wandering through the house, we walked down a winding country road to the beach to find people sitting around a campfire singing You Are My Sunshine. There's a pier near there, too, and there were a number of fishermen casting and reeling with their backs to the setting sun. On the way back we saw the carolers--spanning three generations, it looked like--singing and holding hands while sparks from their cozy fire flew up in the air. Could this be any more idyllic? we asked each other. Did they hire these people to make this seem like the most romantic place to live in the world?

I mentioned this before, but I'll say it again: On the island, when you drive, you have trees on either side of a two-lane road. It is scenic and clean and uncluttered. There isn't a single neon sign on any road. This might not be a big deal to a lot of people, but you notice it over there. It's nice.

We were all set to move. It was gratifying. We thought, at least we're not crazy. At least we really did go to all that hard work to put our house on the market, and for a reason. But then by Friday I wanted more options. I didn't want to go to the same park or the same strips of beach. I wanted something different, and I didn't want to drive very far to get there. The smallness of the island felt suffocating. I wanted the option to walk or drive 20 blocks to a grocery store. I wanted Brian to get home quickly, and the boat was running late so Cora and I wandered through town for several hours, waiting for him. I wanted to get up in the morning and have a full list of options to choose from: breakfast at Portage Bay, a walk around Green Lake, a hike in North Bend, a barbecue with our friends.

Friends. That's the thing that would make the island more comforting, less small. I don't know anyone there.

Friends are locations in themselves, can offer whole worlds with their perspectives and cozy kitchens.

(Yes, I know how whiny this sounds. The complaints of city-folk can be nauseating to listen to; I'm sure mine are no different.)

But still. That's the way it is.

That's the thing that is (currently, at least) making our decision tip heavily in the direction of Seattle. There are so many things to do here--hundreds of parks with play structures, rather than just a handful. And adventure parks in the city, too--Discovery Park. The Arboretum. Green Lake. Volunteer Park with its greenhouses and sprawling lawns. Wading pools. The zoo, aquarium, and tons of libraries.

And if we were to stay, would we stay here? Would we buy a new place in the city? Would we rent? If we moved, would we rent on the island? See how it goes for awhile?

We're not sure. We're still deciding. We're creating a lot of turmoil for ourselves which is rather exhausting. We're making Indecision fat with our questions.

Possibilities

Well, I have a lot to report. It's been awhile, hasn't it?

Let's see.

We painted and re-roofed our house. I removed all the grout from our bathroom floor. Added a new floor in the kitchen. Bought a new refrigerator. Painted and cleaned and de-cluttered and cleaned and de-cluttered and cleaned some more. Re-arranged furniture and took loads of boxes to storage. Weeded and pruned and mowed and clipped and trimmed.

Our house looks wonderful, certainly better than it has over the past four years that we've lived here. It's also on the market.

All that talk of "what if" finally got to us and we're considering the possibility of This Next Big Stage: living on an island. It's funny how things can seem so huge when you're in the midst of them, personally effected by each small decision. It's a small deal in the grand scheme of the tilting turn of the planet, but still, there it is: possibility, whispering through the shades at night and filling mornings with dreams.

We have the incredible luck of being able to stay in my mom's house while she is on vacation. It's a rustic old cabin/country cottage on an acre of waterfront land, overlooking Mt. Rainier and the Seattle skyline. My grandparents purchased the land in the 1930s and my mom grew up inside its tiny perimeter along with her two older brothers. Five people circled the 850-square-foot home and filled it with a history that I can feel when I stand there. It is a breathtaking place. Many things in the 80-year-old house need repair, but my mom makes it her home. I feel a certain understanding and connection to her as I wash dishes in her sink. It is true what they say: A place can ground us, it can remind us where we came from and where we want to go. It can help clarify things.

Cora loves her grandma's house. We picked blackberries from tilting tendrils and walked barefoot on the beach. Yesterday we spent hours in the sun making a castle from many 20-month-old sized handfuls of rocks and sand. We ran through a 90-acre park that I traced as a child and drove through neighborhoods tucked deep in the trees. While she napped on Sunday, Brian and I dragged our bed out on the deck and slept under the sun while cries of gulls and eagles brushed over us in salt air.

There are only a few traffic lights on the island. Most of the roads are bordered by lush, tall trees. There's a small, charming town at the center of the island, and you can reach Seattle in 30 minutes by ferry. Cora and I met Brian at the ferry landing yesterday evening. He couldn't see us, but we watched as he approached, his broad shoulders distinct against the sky on the top deck of the boat, peering out at his potential new home. Cora kept waving excitedly and then became so overwhelmed by the throngs of passengers rushing by that she ducked into my chest and could hardly say hello when he reached us.

Yesterday I walked along a road high above the water, watching waves crash against a familiar shore, and felt so excited and yet so displaced. Where would I find friends? How would I form a new community? Would I lose connection with all the people I care about because of the distance? I finally called a couple of friends and realized that just the voice of a long-time friend can calm even the most confused spirit.

Obviously, we need to sell our house before we make such a change. We've decided that the best approach is to let life figure this out for us. If we're meant to move, the house will sell. If we're meant to stay, we won't get any offers that convince us to pack our things and go.

In the meantime, we'll wait and explore and share our lives between Seattle and a possible future.

Kitchen table

We've been reconfiguring and redecorating our house a bit over the past few days. We found a set of beautiful chairs and a couch, and the addition of just those three pieces throughout our house has made things feel more organized and fresh.

My favorite change is in the kitchen. We removed an oversized buffet and replaced it with a small table and two chairs. Cora is big enough now to sit in a regular chair (esp when it has a booster seat). Today she sat there swinging her legs and munching on celery and hummus while I made us a tasty little meal of green beans, salmon burger with cheese, and cucumber slices. Then we sat together and had a little chat, with lots of comments about our food.

Things have been more crazy these days. We've been running around like mad on a ton of errands, going to a bunch of summer barbecues, swimming a lot, and trying to stay cool. Cora has been a very whiny little bean. Everything she does lately is designed to get my attention as quickly as possible, which basically just involves lots of wild faces accompanied by shrieking.

Something about that smaller table and our intimate little placement in the kitchen made our lunchtime today feel special instead of Oh Crap, Now She's Pitching Food with Her Fast Hand. Instead of wanting to hurry to the next project or task, I loved sitting there together, staring at my little daughter poke carefully at her food and look up at me with bright eyes.

Things she said:

Listening to a robin: "Mama! Baby bird singing!"

Touching the picture above the table: "Daddy's special painting." This insight was quickly followed by her trying to topple it.

Shouting at me with her mouth wide open in the appearance of great excitement: "Mama! Celery! Look!" (Showing me the strange stringy bits at the munched end of her celery stick.)

Listening to a tired crow's caw: "Sad bird." (Said with head cocked and eyes showing deep reserves of sympathy.)

Summer

Whew, so this is summer. 103 degrees yesterday and in the 90s all week. I was walking with a friend yesterday and she was commenting that we Northwesterners might just need to get used to the fact that we have hot summers and cold winters. We keep thinking we live in the most temperate climate ever, and then bam! hot days with no air conditioning and freezing winter snowdrifts without proper snowploughs.

I was looking through some of my posts since April and realized that this has already been a great summer on the weekend adventure front. We've taken day trips to Bainbridge, Vashon, Deception Pass, Rattlesnake Ridge, and Whidbey, and camped or stayed on Camano Island, San Juan Island, and Deception Pass. It's fun to have a transportable, active toddler who delights in adventure.

This past weekend on San Juan Island was pretty exceptional. For one thing, we confirmed that our tent is truly waterproof. We were lying in our bed around 9 p.m., staring up at the window in our tent ceiling while lighting flashed and thunder crashed. Cora was fast asleep between us and our whispered conversation alternated between Hey, this is really cool, to Oh wow, I hope we don't get incinerated. We spent most of the night listening to the downpour snap against the sides of our tent. We awoke at about 6 to almost 90-degree weather and spent the day in and out of the lakes that surrounded our campsite. We traveled with friends and Cora enjoyed spending time with their cute daughters, a 3-year-old and a 16-month-old. Their favorite pastime was to tromp up a grass hill and slide or run down a dusty path until they were covered in dirt from head to toe. We played tag (including a pretty hilarious game of freeze tag; imagine two toddlers trying to get the concept of standing still while everyone else runs about). And we saw whales! We took a day trip to a nearby waterfront whale-watching park and after staring forever at the water with no luck, we were stunned on our way out to see a pod of Orcas breaking the surface of the water below. Cora got swept up in the excitement and shouted "Yay Orcas!" when they surfaced, and nodded knowingly at us when they went back, "Shy whale."

Have you ever traveled on a ferry to an island? If not, you must put it on your list of Things You Must Do. Salty wind in your face, sun high in the sky, gulls circling, mind-boggling views of rugged coastlines and the rise of evergreens against mountain ranges, and when the air hits you it's so cold no matter what the temperature of the day that all you can feel is this blissful awareness of what it is to be alive, right then, a tiny being in the middle of a life.

As I mentioned before, my wanderlust is in full swing. We're thinking about more upcoming weekend adventures, planning an early autumn vacation (we haven't been out of town for longer than a few days since winter of '07). In general, I spend a lot of my wakeful moments making lists about what needs to be done to get to The Next Big Stage. In the mornings, I have distracted walks chatting with Cora about our surroundings and thinking about the story arc and next chapter of this maybe-novel I'm writing, while imagining the trees I hope we'll have in the yard of our next home, while jotting down mental notes about the projects we need to tackle in our current house. Present Moment Zen Masters would disapprove of my mental state but I can't say it's not exciting.

Sometimes I still think about going back to work, other times I think about getting pregnant and buying a hypoallergenic puppy so that it can wander through our house, shake like a dog, and not make Brian sneeze. Often I look into Cora's eyes and I can't even believe how beautiful they are, so lovely and sweet that all I want to do is kiss her, other times I dance around the kitchen trying to make her a decent sandwich while she shrieks Snack! Snack! More Chips! Maaaaaammmmmaaaa! And I have to remind myself that her job is to get my attention as much as possible, and that she doesn't have the tiniest iota of an idea that I used to exist before she did. That makes me smile.

Long overdue

Just a quick note to say we're surviving a gorgeous heat wave in Seattle. Just returned from San Juan Island for a three-day camping excursion. Cora is fast asleep in her pack 'n play in our cool downstairs room while I try to get some writing done in our equally cool downstairs office. Feel behind on writing and ready for another adventure...Summer always makes me extra restless, which basically means wanderlust to the extreme. I've got vacation on the brain.

More soon.

Natural remedies (and some more IgA info)

The reason I'm posting this is because I've noticed a number of people stopping by this site using "IgA deficient" or "immune deficiency" as search terms. So, I wanted to share a couple of naturopathic, homeopathic, and regular ol' home remedies that helped Cora weather this cold (and get through an inner ear infection without antibiotics). It's the kind of information I was searching for when Cora was diagnosed. This is in NO WAY intended to be advice that you should follow over and above the recommendations of your caring pediatrician, but I have enjoyed Cora's new doctor so much because he's been a practicing MD for over 30 years and gets rave reviews from all his patients and he and his colleagues at this office are also knowledgeable about natural modalities.

(Note: If you're reading this post and you or your child has IgA deficiency, you might be interested in reading this entry as well.)

One thing worth noting is that Cora's former doctor explained that we should start treating an infection much more quickly and aggressively due to her IgA deficiency--using higher spectrum antibiotics quickly and for longer periods of time, if necessary. I do understand this point of view. However, Cora's new doctor pointed out that, while he absolutely prescribes antibiotics when necessary, antibiotics can lower IgA. Which makes sense, because IgA lives on mucosa sites. Antibiotics can lower healthy antibody levels (like IgA) along with other healthy flora that can help a body fight infection. This is one reason why people are more susceptible to infection in the week(s) directly following a course of antibiotics.

So, without a lot of further ado, here are a few of the things that Cora's new doctor and his colleagues recommended. Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not saying these products will necessarily help you or your children--but if they do, wonderful!

The first two items are daily doses for Cora. Honestly, I don't think there's any reason why any healthy kid couldn't benefit from these, simply to help augment their general nutrition intake, or to help round out any deficiencies in their diet:

*Liquid kid's multivitamin (I use Schiff because it contains iron, but Cora likes ChildLife better--no iron, no yucky metal taste). I found this at Whole Foods.

*Kid's acidophilous. We use Primadophilus Children by Nature's Way, which we found at Whole Foods. Cora's doctor gave me a list of acidophilous products that have been proven to contain the levels of bifidobacteria and lacobacilli that can populate the system with healthy flora, particularly those lost during infection or during antibiotic treatment. A lot of products lose their potency once they hit the shelves; supposedly this product doesn't.

These items may have helped clear Cora's ear infection:

*Honey Gardens Apitherapy Honey Organic Elderberry Syrup, with Propolis (www.honeygardens.com). I also found this at Whole Foods. Elderberry and Propolis are considered powerful anti-viral supplements. The honey in this mixture is locally sourced and organic. We gave her a teaspoon of this every hour the first day of her infection, and a teaspoon every 1-3 hours the second and third days of her infection.

*Saline drops. We used generic stuff from Safeway, but there's probably better stuff out there. 2-3 drops in each side of the nose as many times a day as necessary to help clear out the sinuses. (We use a kid's safety syringe to suck out the junk.) This is Cora's least favorite therapy, but the saline solution helps clear sinus infections--which, in turn, drain into kids' immature eustachian tubes, causing a build-up of bacteria that leads to an ear infection. I remember going to my doctor when I had a sinus infection and instead of giving me antibiotics, he told me to snort salt water three times a day for three days. It sucked, but it worked.

*Ear Oil from The Herbalist (www.theherbalist.com). CAUTION: Seek the advice of a pediatrician prior to putting anything in your child's ear. Don't put anything in your child's ear if liquid or pus is draining out of her ear. If using ear oil, test the temperature on your wrist before administering it; it can get warm quite quickly, and can become way too hot to put in someone's ear. This tincture contains mullein flower, St. John's Wort flower, and organically grown calendula flower with garlic essential oil in a base of olive oil. Sound stinky? It is. But as completely crazy at it sounds, the combination of garlic (a powerful antiseptic) and warm oil can sometimes help clear (and prevent) an ear infection. I just set the bottle in a cup of warm water before putting a few drops of the oil in her ears, then place a portion of a clean cotton ball in each ear to help absorb excess oil and protect her ears from drafts. For nap and bedtime, I put her in bed with her bad ear facing up, allowing the oil to drain more effectively into her ear.

*Cora also had a mild viral form of pink eye. We treated it with Similasan Pink Eye Relief (www.similasanUSA.com), a homeopathic remedy that helps alleviate the symptoms of pink eye and deliver relief. I also found this at Whole Foods. It totally worked for her. I think I gave it to her about 4 times a day for the first two days, then three times a day the 3rd and 4th days, and now just at night.

These techniques helped ease her pain without Tylenol or Motrin:

*Warm, dry ear compresses. I used one of Brian's clean athletic socks and filled it with rice, then zapped it in the microwave for about 45-60 seconds. I placed this on her ear after adding the ear oil, then read her a book or nursed her. I also put it on her ear while she was sleeping.

*Ear massage. This is one of the most simple things to do, and aside from compresses, is perhaps the one therapy that makes the most sense physically. I massaged gently around her ear, pressing in and down along her outer cheek, and in and down behind her ear. (For a cheesy how-to video, check this out.)

Lastly, we kept Cora off sugar and fed her mainly warm foods and liquids, like chicken soup and chamomile tea.

For more detailed information on ear infections, here's a link to Dr. Sears's perspectives.

Hopefully some of this information is useful. If you have any other ideas you'd like to share, please do so.

Cora's ears

We managed to clear Cora's ear infection last week and didn't need to put her on antibiotics. Yay! She's still struggling with a lot of congestion and has now been sick for nearly three weeks, but she's stayed in happy spirits nearly the whole time. We're not sure if she got two colds in a row, or just has had a tough time fighting this one.

More soon.

The life of a child

So, Cora has an ear infection. She's miserable and I feel horrible for her. We're going to wait 48 hrs to see if it clears on its own. Right now she's asleep with ear oil in her ears and a warm compress on her bad ear. I feel discouraged and anxious about the future, but I have decided that she will be one of the strongest, most resilient little people because of her IgA deficiency. She'll develop a strong immune system and a great sense of humor. And she'll weather everything, even this nasty little thing going around called a pandemic.

I was in the doctor's office and this quote, tucked in a corner on a handmade plaque, caught my eye. I guess I'm feeling a bit emotional because it brought a few tears to my eyes:

"A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child."

If I could tell you how much I think about Cora's life, I would. But I can't. Being her mom is the most humbling experience I've ever encountered.

Tuesday and Emerson

I can't believe it's almost July. I remember as a child feeling like summers stretched on forever. This one seems to be zipping by on a freight train, flashing one month to the next with total abandon. I swear we just finished April.

I'm in the thick of this story I'm writing, taking it page by page. How long will it end up being? Maybe I'll know by the end of the summer? By the end of the year?

Cora is being quite adamant. She also is dealing with a rather long and tiresome cold, making my heart skip a beat when I remember our recent, awful winter months of isolation and sickness. This morning we bought new paint brushes and she spent the morning dabbling in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I stuck one of her masterpieces to the refrigerator with magnets. She took a bath afterward.

You've probably noticed by now that I have a thing for quotes. My mom gave me this book for my 20th birthday called A Guide for the Advanced Soul, a bunch of quotes compiled by Susan Hayward. The idea is that you close your eyes and ask a question, then open the pages and find insight.

Here's my quote for today:

"Do the thing and you will have the power."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hiding away...

...and writing. It's raining outside and the yard is filled with robins browsing the lawn for lunch. Walnuts are growing on our tree outside my window, and the squirrels keep checking them for ripeness. The apple and pear trees are showing their first beginnings of growth. I think writing is sometimes a lot like this...waiting for the rain, waiting for the fruit to ripen, waiting for the natural progression of things, and patiently watching the words fill up one page, and then another, as the story unfolds.

Chapters 2 and 3

I recently read that Barbara Kingsolver wrote her first novel, Bean Trees, mainly at night during her first pregnancy. She was suffering from pregnancy-induced insomnia. How often do you lie in bed at night tossing and turning, trying to find the right position to induce sleep? It happens to all of us at one point or another. Imagine if you got out of bed and started a novel.

One of my professors told me his friend wrote his first novel at the office, after work hours, by pulling all-nighters and showering in the locker room in the morning.

It's an interesting exercise writing a story while your baby naps. It's like 1, 2, 3 - lunch, potty, wash hands, read story, sing lullaby, snuggle into bed, kiss and - GO! Write that thing!

So, I'm off to do just that, except I'll also share this quote I have always loved:

"How much longer will you go on letting your energy sleep?

How much longer are you going to stay oblivious of the immensity of yourself?

Don't lose time in conflict; lose no time in doubt - time can never be recovered and if you miss an opportunity it may take many lives before another comes your way again."

--Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Story time

Brian took this picture on a vacation a few weekends ago after he put Cora down for the night in the pack 'n play. "Mause and Diddy" are her sleepy time must-haves.

Now it's a Monday afternoon at home. You know when you start the week with a big ho hum and sort of breathe out the sentiment Well, it's another week. I guess we'll get it started.

Hello, O Daunting Monday.

I'm a bit surprised to be able to say it's been a good one so far--and productive. Now Cora's asleep in her bed, mouse curled into her belly and piggy snuggled into her back.

And I have a story idea. It's the first one I've had in several months, so it feels like a big deal. I stumbled onto it this Saturday while walking Cora around Green Lake and drinking a very large cup of dark tea.

Fingers crossed that I can keep up the momentum once I get past the first sentence. I need to figure out a way to take this idea and place it carefully in a protective jar on my desk where I'll be able to find it whenever I need it. I want to write this thing.

Blast those mind-altering malls

I don't like malls--not in the sun, not in the rain, not in the dark or when in pain.

Rarely do I understand the phrase "shopping therapy." Today, if there was something that I should have gained from the experience, I was somehow left off the list.

I just became really grumpy.

I just went to return a bra that didn't fit, and I ended up getting SUCKED IN. Suddenly, I wanted to be insanely rich. I wanted to run out and spend thousands on a new wardrobe and new furniture for each room of the house and new stoneware for the kitchen. I wanted a FLAT stomach, the kind that requires a lot of crunches and very few crunchy chips. I remembered the income I used to bring in each month and I was swept up in this vision of all the things I would buy--new undergarments, new shoes, new hair. I wanted to wander off with all the clothes in Ann Taylor Loft.

My priorities were askew.

When faced with three levels of Nordstrom, I suddenly thought about my old job. I imagined going back to work and spending all that money on the kinds of things I just really don't NEED.

None of us do. But every time you buy one of those new things, you feel like you deserve it, you feel like it's necessary for your self-esteem, you feel like those shorts will make the whole summer more summery, you feel like it's just because your clothes shrunk in your new dryer, not because you need to lose a tad more weight around your middle. It's all about Pretty Woman sitting there while the salespeople bring her box after box of iconic shoes.

The problem, I have determined, is that I am not doing enough of my own writing. I'm not being creative enough. My brain is stagnating. I'm not writing stories. So all the internal stuff is going to waste, and my mind is beginning to fall prey to the humdrum status quo. All it took was a day at the spa and a new expensive bra for my birthday and it was like someone gave me a bit of crack and said, here you go, here's a taste of THINGS.

You know what I mean? Hey, I'm not saying we don't all enjoy and benefit from beautiful things. I'm not advocating that we bring the economy to a grinding halt by boycotting apparel stores. But it is so much better, me thinks, to wander around in an old T-shirt and catalogue the wildlife in our backyard or discover a new park than to spend time breathing that mind-altering mall air.

Warren Buffet says that if you can't imagine having it for 10 years, you shouldn't spend $10 on it. I have squandered so many $10s in my lifetime on useless things.

Surprise

After shipping me off the spa in the morning, Brian threw me a surprise birthday party yesterday. It was so wonderful to see friends and kids mingling in our backyard on a warm summer day. I haven't felt that pampered or relaxed in a really long time.

Today, I have a case of the Mondays. It's just not as fun to return to normalcy when the previous day was so much fun.

So, even after a big piece of leftover flourless chocolate cake, I can't seem to muster the gumption to write much here at all.

However, I do have one small thing to say, and that's just simply that I enjoy being in my 30s. It's easier somehow. The 20s felt like more of a challenge to get through. Although, let's be honest, I had better boobs back then.

And also, I took Cora to our neighborhood park this morning and looked at sprinklers dusting the ballfield with water while Cora spun around and around in sparkling grass. Does it get any better than that?

Quote for the Day

Be realistic:

Plan for a miracle.

--Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

Metamorphosis

When I was a kid, I loved caterpillars nearly as much as I loved puppies. I think I liked them that much until I got a puppy. Their fuzzy coat was a tiny but furry replacement for the dog I wished I had. I would often put one it in my room next to a snail or a ladybug or a team of ants. I never had one for very long. I would take my pals outside for a bit of fresh air and invariably wander away to look at something else. Always, I'd come rushing back and find that they had wandered off, leaving me to look for new friends.

My mom used to read us Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. She would finish the story with a flourish--"A beautiful butterfly!" she'd say, with reverent emphasis. "Look at all those vibrant colors!" And then she'd wax poetic about how Eric Carle was a spiritual being who was able to explain rebirth to children through such a simple story. But mom, I'd say, I like caterpillars.

Today we were playing in the backyard and a white butterfly flitted past us on trace paper wings.

I thought, If I could spin a chrysalis and hide fast to a tree, I'd so do it. If given the choice between two superpowers--being invisible or being able to fly--I'd be hard pressed. But wings win. Mine would be turbo charged.

The first thing I'd do, without a doubt, would be to fly to a foreign country and have lunch. Then I'd find a tree house or a castle somewhere and settle in for a long day with a desperately good book. When I returned home I would possess an entirely different perspective on life.

The caterpillar is just trying to get there, the butterfly gets to go.

I love the idea that things are different when you escape to a different place, that you are different--and I honestly believe it to be so. Place changes us. I like it when citified people exchange their civilized lives for dirt-stained feet, and vice versa. I like struggle with redemption. But struggling is hard. There's a lot of action in there. And it can start to be a lot about strategy, not dreaming. I like to dream.

I like metamorphosis. I like escape. I like imagining you can shed your skin.

I like good endings.

But I also really believe in the transformative force of hard work, and of taking time to hide away and depend on your own resources, to dig deep and then return to life with a new perspective, even a new self.

I dated this guy in college for about six months and when I met his grandparents I explained that I was going to be studying in Italy the next semester, and staying on to travel write through an independent study I'd set up with a few professors. His grandpa asked me why I wanted to travel--and why for so long? I paused, thinking Well now, that is an odd question, but I tried to remember that he was of a generation before our world of global communication; perhaps he thought all this back and forth across continents was a bit flabbergasting. I told him I thought it was important to spend time in other places in order to better understand our world, and ourselves. He chuckled and said he thought we could find everything we needed in our own backyard, that we shouldn't need to go anywhere to know ourselves.

Fundamentally, I think he's right. We should be able to know ourselves well enough to stay put and still be okay with what we find there. It is beautiful to be able to sustain ourselves through conversations with our neighbors and a strong sense of community, by planting gardens and sharing our food, by being satisfied with long walks in the woods instead of getting on a plane or in a car and spending the trip alive with the thrill zinging through our blood that tells us our best is yet to come.

It's easy to romanticize travel, to imagine it will be all about incredible European vistas, Amazon jungles, the highs of constant wonderment. But traveling was hard, actually. It was lovely and amazing--Italy, Ireland, England, France, Spain. But it was often also incredibly lonely. There was a lot of time to dip inside. I learned more about myself in seven months than I did when I was at home worried about what people thought of me. Instead, I just thought, and I thought a lot about where I wanted to be.

I think we all have our own versions of hope and turmoil and desire for metamorphosis which beg us to move forward, even if it's simply to find a new path home.

The world is getting much smaller these days. It doesn't seem quite like the untapped treasure chest I used to imagine. I never thought I would feel so much contentment in watching our daughter play in her sandbox and splash in her little wading pool under the bower of our apple tree. I like that she is making friends with children she might be able to grow up with, not ones that she'll lose when she moves, like I did when I wandered about and left behind my little insect friends.

I am in caterpillar mode.

But still. We saw a little white butterfly flitting through the air today and I thought, Oh yes. I know I would make good use of those wings. And I like to think if I was to land on my own window pane, I'd look inside longingly.

Five Years

Brian and I celebrated our wedding anniversary over Memorial Day weekend at a sweet Camano Island cottage overlooking the mountains and water and a rugged beach. We sat in the sun, went swimming, played on the sand with Cora, and held hands a lot.

I sometimes pause to wonder what my life would be like if I hadn't met Brian 13 years ago, and married him five years ago. He has been an anchor in my life for that long, in one respect or another, and my sense of self has become permanently entangled with his existence. First and foremost, his is my best friend. But he has a million qualities that guarantee I will be perpetually hooked. He is handsome and funny and loving and emotional and smart and moody and artistic and thoughtful and adventurous and homey and he has sexy hands and he's an amazing father and he makes me feel better when I'm in a bad mood and he doesn't spend Sunday watching football, and he loves the ocean, and...he's mine.

This weekend I looked at him and wanted, as I have wanted since I met him, to paralyze the moment. I'd like to have it in my hands, a tangible thing, so I can look at the grey in his hair and the way he holds our daughter. I want to be able to watch his feet walk in flip-flops on the beach. I want to always see him standing with his eyes closed, gathering sun between his brows. If I could freeze the moment and file it away, and if I could share it, I would have a bestseller book of loveliness. People from all around the world would rush to get their share of Brian.

There are some moments that have shaped me so intrinsically I am not sure who I would be otherwise. I have pulled out these memories so often they have become polished and genetic, are probably housed somewhere in Cora's DNA, however personal they are to me.

I was 18 years old and I wrote in my journal that I was ready to fall in love. I wanted a real boyfriend, but in order to fall in love with him he would need to be a very specific kind of person. I wrote down all the qualities about this imaginary guy. I thought about him to the point that I became surprised I couldn't just conjure him out of thin air. A few weeks later, I read my horoscope and it said the upcoming Saturday was auspicious. It is possible, it said, that I would meet the love of my life. (Horoscopes had a special draw to me back then. I was addicted. I could read a a prediction and swoon with happiness, or else suffer an attack of worry.)

That next weekend, I and my five roommates hosted a party in our Seattle house. We asked some talented friends to play '50s Elvis tunes, got my of-age sister to buy a big keg of beer, and invited a few people. Word must have spread that something fun was happening in the heart of a dark Seattle winter, because soon our house filled to capacity and then some, as 200-300 party animals in saggy pants and Seattle flannel shuffled through the house and started moshing in our living room. Brian entered the house and he looked like he was glowing, like a saint among common folk. I knew him slightly, had been in an art history class with him, and had talked on the phone a bit after I'd seen him at a party. But he seemed so shy, and stiff, and organized, certainly not the kind of free-spirited fellow I was used to dating. But that night he looked like a prophet of some kind, a glowing boy, and if it was only because he had the benefit of recently returning from San Diego and actually having a bit of a tan amongst our pale compatriots, I didn't think about it then. We danced and talked and leaned in because the music was loud and all those people were shuffling around us. When we kissed, I remember feeling a lifetime flash through me, a fraction of a second in which I could picture marrying him, holding his hand, rocking in old chairs on our front porch when we were old and gray.

We dated for nearly two years in college. It was like this: neither of us had cars, so dates were long walks to the lake, kissing by a river, picnicking at the beach, taking the bus, going for long runs, hiding away in the library with our textbooks and writing notes on each other's paper, finding small shores by waterfront parks and digging our heels into the sand. Whenever we went out of town, it was to go hiking or camping or on a ferry across the Sound. When we fought, it was emotional and wrenching and deeply dramatic, and eighteen.

Whenever he went away during winter or summer breaks, he would send me letters on giant sketchpad paper.

I was in Italy. We were no longer together, and I was nearly 22. (He went to Pasadena for school, we separated for two years.) He still sent me letters on giant sketchpad paper. I was wandering the streets of Rome and stopped at a magazine stand in the Campo dei Fiori. His art school was being profiled in the L'uomo (men's) Vogue. They chose a few of the art students there to participate in the photo shoot. He had said, check out the L'uomo Vogue, but he didn't prepare me for pictures of him laughing in a dapper suit. I turned each page to see his face while behind me vegetable vendors shouted about the price of tomatoes and beans.

A month later, he sent me a tape recording of Charles Aznavour, and an email that told me to imagine I was a princess in an enchanted kingdom and the world would roll at my feet. I was depressed and lonely, tired of Rome, and I headed out for a long walk. I turned on the music and listened to Aznavour's beautiful voice of butter and smoke sing "She." I can still remember that feeling of my heart high in my chest, my head down, as I walked to the Tiber and rewound and replayed these lyrics over and over and over..."She may be the first I can't forget, a trace of pleasure or regret...Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears, and make them all my souvenirs, for where she goes I've got to be, the meaning of my life is she..."

Later that year, I was back in Seattle and I returned from a run to find a letter from him. It was the closest thing to a marriage proposal I had ever received. The next day, I ran my first half-marathon and thought about that letter and about him--a boy I had felt fateful about since the moment he walked into my living room on February 10, 1996. A month later, I flew down to Pasadena and we drove up the coast back to Seattle, winding along the 101 and burrowing ourselves permanently into each other's futures.

We've been back together ever since--in the past nine years we've graduated three times (undergrad for me and Brian, graduate for me), married, lived in three cities, visited as many beaches as we could manage, made new friends, set up a house, worked at a number of challenging jobs, talked and talked and talked, and had a baby. As I write this, I remember countless times in the passenger seat with my feet on the dashboard and the window rolled down, laughing. Sometimes that's how I feel about our lives together: I know we'll keep heading in the right direction. Sometimes I have to remember it's okay to relax and enjoy the ride.

There is a list of all the little things that I could itemize, moment by moment, if anyone cared to listen. If given enough time, I could pull up all the frames that explain why I have lately started to really realize that there is a great beauty in simply being able to love and be loved. There is a wakefulness, an awareness of fragility, and a constantly renewing stream of gratitude.

Quotes for the Day

"When two fond hearts unite, the yoke is easy, the burden light." --Quote from a piece of pottery in our beach cabin last weekend.

"It is important from time to time to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply be." --Eileen Caddy

Poop

I had planned to write a romantic recap of our Memorial Day vacation on Camano Island, but instead I need to write about poop.

Cora has been potty training lately, something we didn't anticipate we would start at quite such a young age. However, she's shown such an interest in it that we're just moving forward without a lot of pomp and circumstance.

Until today. I think we've had enough pomp around this circumstance to last me for quite awhile.

Today, we had some friends visit for lunch. I was grilling the cheese sandwiches and we kept checking on the kids. At one point the oldest girl said, "Cora went poop!" And my friend said, "You know, she's not wearing a diaper."

I had dressed her in a sundress, without a onesie or a pair of bloomers. I had worried for a moment that perhaps this wasn't such a smart idea because her diaper was so easy to access and take off.

And then, while making sandwiches, I remember overhearing Cora say something about poo poo, but instead of sweeping out to the living room and carrying her off to her potty like a great mom should, I got distracted and layered cheese on bread.

My friend remembers taking Cora's diaper from the living room floor and putting it in Cora's room because she thought I had hurriedly changed her on the carpet and forgot to put the wrap in the diaper bin.

Hmm. Mental note to pay attention to such concerns next time.

Cora had been running blissfully through the house with an exposed bottom. While stacking blocks with the girls, she produced a nice little well-formed poop on our rug, which I found snuggled neatly between a block, a ram, and a cow.

The very worst part of it was that we started a search through the house for errant pieces, and found one smashed between the palms of a confused 14-month-old friend.

OMG.

Have you ever had a friend over to lunch and inadvertently fed them poop? I didn't think so. We are all crossing our fingers that the substance didn't transfer from hand to mouth.

After a wild search through the house, copious hand and feet washing, and a lot of exclamations, we all sat around the picnic table and ate lunch.

Aren't you hungry now?

Quote for the Day

One has to just be oneself. That's my basic message.

The moment you accept yourself as you are, all burdens, all mountainous burdens, simply disappear.

Then life is a sheer joy, a festival of lights.

--Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, The Sound of One Hand Clapping

Camping photos

This is beautiful, no? Water, mountains, and lots of blue:


We spent a few hours climbing on logs and stacking rock towers:



Brian carried Cora across the Deception Pass Bridge. The view was spectacular. Brian loved it. I sweated bullets the entire walk across the bridge imagining Cora suddenly becoming a ninja and springing from the confines of her backpack with superb ninja skills but then suddenly remembering she's a mere mortal toddler and thus falling like a boulder into the water below:


At the end of our weekend, Cora napped in the sun:

The rain reigns

It's raining the kind of rain that begs you to imagine waterways and deep underground wells. It's the kind of rain that runs in rivulets down dirt paths, etching out a presence there. It's the kind of rain that dredges up memories because you can't very well escape a rain like this. You're left with yourself.

I remember this rain. It rained like this when I was a kid. I used to look out my bedroom window, standing on tiptoes, at my backyard. Our yard abutted a 40-acre forest and I imagined places where I could hide from the rain, just listening to it hit the leaves above me. I used to put a leash on my dog and dress in rain pants and a raincoat and rubber boots, and go outside. Sometimes I'd bring a snack. Mostly I was excited to explore. I would often pack a journal and a pen, planning to catalogue what I saw out there. Sometimes I'd set out with a plan (find gnomes); other times I would plan simply to see how far I could go before the trees ended and I found road.

That solitude formed a part of my brain that is happiest when imagination reigns. I would sit quietly and imagine a big space up ahead of me, a life that was my own. Nevermind that I never did see a gnome or a fairy. The act of believing gave me a sense of energy and excitement. It made me feel like I could bend the ways of the world.

Age makes people stop believing in things that don't make sense. I remember a friend of mine telling me that we spend a lot of our time searching for Easy Street when in reality it just doesn't exist. This thought cracked against my heart while I sat across from her, sipping my tea and nodding my head in agreement. I might have been wearing heels. It's possible the 3-inch alteration of self is what tipped me over into a heady, sad spin. No Easy Street? But I want to believe in the idea of personal bliss. I love reading stories about people who find theirs. I love simple endings filled with a sublime sense of love, or of finding oneself, or of overcoming odds, or even of just believing in happiness enough to search for it.

I love all kinds of stories. I particularly like stories about people who refuse to believe all is as it seems. I like to think that everything gets better over time, that each small effort is a step closer to peace and satisfaction, that we become better people just be thinking about our place and by directing ourselves to where we want to be.

I think that's why I have an obsession with quiet, homey places, and the woods. I want a place in the trees that always reminds me of that sense of self that washed over me as a child, when it suddenly occurred to me that there were windows of opportunity up ahead, that destination and destiny could be altered by effort and hope.

I would like to be one of those people who deftly ties together a bunch of wildflowers from my backyard and places them in a blue vase on my driftwood mantle, where I store sand-polished rocks from the beach and spots of blue like blue glass or blue beads or an old blue marble, where everything is awash in calm, and where I know just exactly where to find my favorite pen.

I feel cluttered here. We own things we don't need. We have a junk drawer that is overwhelming. I have drawers filled with clothes I don't wear. We heard helicopters and sirens circling the neighborhood for the better part of an hour before Cora's nap time, and I thought well, now. This is not the peaceful song I want my girl to hear before she goes to sleep.

What I think I am trying to say is that I am obsessed with the ethereal. I like words like blue and sea and sky and clouds, rain and wind and magic and the future, dreams and hope and rushing and wild. I prefer to think of them than to look at the clutter on my desk or the unframed 1910 poster of Melinda's Wedding Day that I received for our wedding in 2005, and which I have been meaning to frame ever since. I continue to wash and fold my ill-fitting clothes and to look outside at the weeds.

The reason, for the moment? I have a girl calling from her bedroom. I will go open the door and lift her up and nuzzle my face into her sweet little neck. And we will go do something fun together. We have an entire, untapped afternoon ahead of us. Possibility poking its nose up from every playground and tree in town.

The first thing we shall do together? Go outside and clip some of the lilacs from our tree, and arrange them in a blue vase on our dining room table. We will put bluebells on the mantle.