Taking a break from researching TurboTax

...to write a blog post for March. Good grief. March 11, already, and still I feel like my feet have barely touched the ground. Big work meeting, big work move (that will cut 20 miles from my daily commute--yay), complete halt of house progress, deadlines flying at me from every direction...and the start of baseball season. Taxes.


Sometimes I feel like I'm just holding onto the Red Queen as hard as I can, running breathlessly to stay in one place. Other times I'm pretty sure I'm the White Queen, shrieking about pinpricks that haven't happened yet.


Today I went in and volunteered in Helen's kindergarten class and it was one of the best things I've done in weeks. I helped them navigate a drawing program on their fancy little kid laptops ("Why isn't is making yellow?" "What do I do next?" "Why isn't it erasing?" "Isn't this drawing cool?")

I look forward to very little these days...it's less of a constant dread situation, though, and more of a not even having time to think about lunch thing. We haven't had dinner with friends or family in weeks (unless you count lunch at Red Robin between baseball games last Saturday...which, why shouldn't we? Those families are friends, too). I read to the kids almost every night--I do look forward to that. It's my way of being a mother cat to them still, licking them to sleep with words every night. It almost doesn't matter what the book is (Oliver Twist for Silas, which I think he is tolerating out of enjoyment for the word-licking than actually enjoying, and Farmer Boy for Helen).

It's a life, though, isn't it? Crammed so full to bursting I can't even tell what shape it is, most days, and I can't stand back from it enough to tell if I like it. I suspect that I do, though, and in three years, when the boy is almost a teenager and the girl has embarked on the perils of girl power plays, I know I will back on these times with a fond and aching heart.

And, lest I forget--I meant to update weeks ago--my February New Years' landmarks:

Moon watching--I watched the February full moon rise, slightly dimmed, through office buildings. This month I intend to find a better watching spot, if weather permits.

Books--No progress on the TBR pile. I can't hold myself back at the library, and end up with a side table sagging under the weight of library books with urgent renewal dates.

Wild eating--none in Feb. It's the Hunger Moon, after all, which for us in 21st century suburbia means Chilean produce and New Zealand meat, with a side of processed treats.

Leaping, plus updates

When the kids were little, I remember their development would come in spurts--one day they'd be serenely practicing their "ba" sounds, in long unrelated streams of babble, and the next they'd wake up and say "dog" and be making signs for "flower" and "please" and "MORE NOW." This still happens, only we call it "mood," as in, "Wow, Si's mood is terrific today! He cleaned his room without being asked and played with Helen and finished his homework lickity split." Helen had a growth moment over the weekend, and even though she gets embarrassed and shouts MOM DON'T SAY THAT whenever I praise her about it, I can't help myself. We had to go to the store on Saturday, and she offered to go if we could walk/ scooter (gasp) (this from the girl who two days before had a crying fit because I hadn't parked the car close enough to the school for her to roll from the Sock Hop to her carseat). So I said yes, of course, even though it was the main grocery trip and I'd have to lug home all the cereal boxes and milk jugs and etc. Then on the way home, after I'd had to stop for the eighteenth time to adjust the damn cereal boxes, which were spilling out onto the sidewalk, she spun back on her scooter and said, "Can I help? I can carry a bag."

"Oh, that's sweet of you," I said. "But these are really heavy."

"I can take one," she said decisively, like a 22-year-old. And holy mama, she did. She took the bag with the three-pound chicken and looped it over her scooter handlebars and off she went.

I upped her allowance, of course, even though all she asked for was brownie points (I'm aware of the unfortunate racist heritage of the term, but our kids naturally assume they're related to brownies, so I don't worry about it too much).

Updates: well, our contractor is finally our of jail (I do love saying this in answer to people's chipper questions about how the renovation is coming), but not for long, so we're trying to get him to finish as much as he can before he goes out of commission. Sigh. I feel bad for the guy, even though he brought the vast majority of his troubles upon himself.

Also, Kevlar was invented by a woman.

Friday Favorites

I like February. I really do. It's lighter and usually warmer. It has Valentine's Day, which I don't actually like, but which makes for a pleasant flurry of bright-red and chocolate-flavored activity in the middle of the month. By the end of the month early finches and crocuses start pushing their way in, reminding me that winter isn't going to last forever.

Which is so, so good, because February is right about when I start to feel like this season is going to last forfuckingever [note: spellcheck suggested "bloodsucking" here. YES.]. I am ALWAYS going to be dragging myself out of bed in the pitch black dark, stumbling through the house as I pull on my coat and gloves and running shoes, shivering as I step out into the night to run. I am always going to be coming home as the last light fades from the sky and the kids start to cannibalize each other as I assemble the ingredients for dinner. If I need to dash out to the library or the store after dinner, it's always going to be in the icy dark. The back yard will always be sealed under a glacier of ice studded with summer detritus (melted jackolanterns, plastic shovels, matchbox cars).

So. A little post about my favorite things about coming home late in the dark, shall we?

1. The neighborhood looks so cozy as I pull into it at 5:30, with its blue-black streets and its rows of yellow windows.
2. The house itself feels cozy, as we pull the drapes closed and turn on the lights. It feels like the phrase "coming home."
3. If I've managed to get something going in the crock pot (ok, so far this has happened ONCE), it smells like the most delicious dinner EVER and I am so grateful--to crockpots, to my morning self who so thoughtfully set this up, to dinner.
4. If we decide fuckit, we're going out to eat, this feels like a magnificent indulgence, and I am grateful to restaurants everywhere.
5. I know that if I didn't currently have a job and I had been sitting around the house all day, I would be totally nostalgic for this "coming home" feeling, and I would conveniently forget the exhaustion, the starvingness, the kids melting into puddles of accusing misery.

Happy Friday, all!