Dislocation

Last week my workplace moved, and this week marks the first regular work week in the new place. For most of the people I work with it's a bad change: we're 20 miles away from our old building, so people's commutes have doubled or even tripled. There is a lot of grousing and many people have suspiciously puffy eyes when they come in every morning, as if they maybe spent some of the drive in tears. Some people have gone from corner offices with wall-to-wall windows and close views of the nearby rocky ridge to windowless caves. Other people have had their job duties completely upturned and their daily work routines disrupted--"I feel like I've taken a totally new job," said one of my coworkers. "Everything is new." I try to keep pretty quiet. I think I technically live the closest to the new office (five and a half miles away, but still: the closest). I also have a bigger, brighter, newer office with new furniture, and what's more, the move was an excuse to toss out all my predecessor's files and books and knickknacks. So I am unobtrusively thanking my lucky stars/ office politics/ the powers that be for my situation. Nevertheless, it has been an adjustment. I find myself thinking idly of the walk I will take at lunch--and then remembering, with a small pang, that no, that walk is 20 miles away. People I used to see every day are located in offices I can't always reliably find. Everyone in my department has their own office, now, so that instead of being grouped in out former cozy circle we are spread along a wall--the casual interactions we used to have don't work anymore. It isn't bad. It isn't something that we won't all get used to and find the new benefits in. I, for one, am already right now reaping the benefits of having 30 to 40 minutes less commute time every single day. But the adjustment is still surprisingly difficult and it reminds me of how much of our internal equilibrium is based on external cues we're almost unaware of--like geography. Like circadian rhythms, which are going to change based on which way our offices face and whether we have access to circadian cues. Like...is this possible?...external vegetation. Our new office is located out in the midst of warehouses and rugged old ranchland. There's very little out here in the way of plant life except knapweed, scattered weedy cottonwoods and siberian elms, and occasional strips of bluegrass and landscaping trees. There are no houses and the offices tend toward the utilitarian. There isn't much in this landscape that is thought out, or that reflects attention to place. Or interest in place. I go for my lunchtime walk and it's beyond barren: it's desolate, windswept, neither human nor nature but some drosscape in between. I catch sight of my office building at the top of the hill and I have a little lurch of affection for it, like I'm sighting my covered wagon after foraging for buffalo chips. Aw, we're pioneers, I think, even though we're literally sitting between two demographically identical office buildings. It's interesting to think about the animal basis of all this, how some animals are so sensitive to changes in light, termperature, or smell that they'll up and leave a place if it changes too much. And even if humans are more akin to noise-and-change-loving house sparrows and racoons, we still get all discombobulated and grumpy when it's suddenly brighter or our room faces north instead of west. One problem with noticing the animal basis of my response to changing geographical location, though, is I start noticing the animal wrongness of my daily routine. Driving! Desk sitting! Working away from my family! It makes me want to up and leave, some days, and go in search of a daily routine that feels biologically better suited.

Life with a Fourth Grader

Saying goodbye to his best friend: “See you Monday! Unless my house gets hit by a giant meteor!”

Friend: “Or someone drops a nuclear bomb on you!”

Silas: “Or World War Three starts!”

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At bedtime: he sets up his big fluffy white bear next to him in the bed, the self-holding ammo nerf dart gun propped in its paws. “To protect me from monsters,” he explains, matter-of-factly.

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Skiing: proceeding down the mountain at what could generously be called a conservative pace, he notes how much faster he is, now that dad’s taught him “that thing with the turn.”

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When he gets mad at us, he storms into his room and turns up the volume on the only CD he owns: Beethoven’s greatest hits. Heh.

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When problems arise, he takes matters into his own hands and often prevails. Except when he spectacularly doesn’t. See: attempt to remove superglue from beautiful new dining room table.

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He can be stunningly responsible, like when he packed school lunch for himself and Helen the morning I was out of town and M was still in bed. He included fruit! And carrots and snap peas!

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He comes into my new office/ hotel room/ etc. and within two minutes has discovered two drawers I never noticed, found the keys, locked them and unlocked them, and set the TV to some channel I'm not interested in. "Aigh! Don't MESS with everything!" I say, but don't press it, because, really, he's fine. Moving a million miles and hour and getting into everything, but fine.

Sometimes, raising him, I feel like I don’t really have a plan—like I’m not trying to shape him and guide him the way I ought to be, that I harp too much on low-consequence stuff, like video game time and the ratio of carrots to goldfish in his diet and not enough on helping him improve his friendship abilities or his staying power or his internal motivation. Other times I think I have too many goals for him, that I don’t listen hard enough to what he’s trying to be.

Other times, I think: he's fine. Just keep on going, and things will be fine.

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.

Men who cry

Good morning on this glorious wintry Monday. It's hard not to be in a good mood when the sun is out for the first time in a week. (Or so it seems, and I know that for my Midwestern contingent a week is NOTHING. Still: GLORIOUS.) Last week, with the cold and the snow and the wow-really-MORE? snow, it felt like everything was in hibernation. The kids had two snow days, one of which was for cold (WIMPS, that school district. WIMPS.) (Okay, the high WAS -1 and they were worried about buses not starting). M and I, on the other had, had business-as-usual days (ARGH), so the snow days were 48 hours of frantic scrambling. Our builder, too, seemed to be asleep--he was in a fender bender on his way to work on Monday, which was followed by 7 days of silence and complete non-progress on the house. We finally tracked him down at his mom's house. Apparently his girlfriend had broken up with him and kicked him out of their house. Sigh. We have a very....emotionally connected builder, which I appreciate on the good days but not so much on the weepy ones. On those days I am reminded of Nora Ephron's warning about men who cry: "they're sensitive to and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own."

Heh. In addition, our compassion is strained by also finding out last week, via a legal notice informing us that we're responsible (legally we are, it appears) for the unpaid bills to some of his subcontractors. LOVELY. I would be more distraught about this disturbing turn of events if a) the amount we're being requested for was larger and b) if I wasn't pretty confident that we could meet that debt by selling his damn stuff, which is still in our house. (Just kidding! that would be WRONG. As would some of the fantasies I entertained over the weekend of kidnapping him and not letting him leave our house until the trim was done). Anyway! It seems like he's come out of hibernation and will be coming to our house to face the wrath of M. I do not envy him.

In lighter news, Si's fourth grade class has begun their biography project. "Oh, who are you doing?" I asked with interest. Ben Franklin? Buzz Lightyear? Amelia Earhart?

"The man who invented the bulletproof vest."

Of course. One of the great minds of our times. I resisted sarcasm, however, and just said, "Oh! Great!" while making a serious effort not to sound like a pin had just punctured my mom balloon.

January progress

Today was the last night of skating lessons and I just must say that I have NEVER been so glad to see the end of lessons in my life. Between the frantic dash after work to get home, pick up the kids, eat something, stuff Helen into her snowpants and gloves (which usually entailed dragging said snowpants and gloves out of their hiding place in the winter clothes bag), and convince both kids that yes, the lessons were still on and YES, we really are going, yes, even you, now get GOING, I would start dreading it three days in advance and it would kind of mar my weekend.

On the plus side, between skating, basketball, and run of the mill busyness, January passed quickly by and here we are on the brink of February. It's time for a little assessment of the resolution situation. Let's see. I resolved to read a TBR book a month, watch a moonrise, take the kids to nature and eat more wild food.

Let's start with the wild food:

Berries of the Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) growing in our backyard (it TOTALLY counts.)

Pork roast studded with juniper berries.

Waiting to eat the pork roast. And the chocolate-pecan torte (mmmm). And the roasted potatoes and steamed carrots & snow peas. (Can you tell I'm a little happy to have a kitchen back?)

I'm not totally sure that I detected the flavor of juniper berries in the pork--I mean, basically it tasted like pork, right?--but oh, I felt downright self-sustaining and virulently virtuous, collecting the berries that were scattered in huge heaps in our yard (we have a very fecund juniper). Next I'm going to try roasting the berries and using them to infuse milk for ice cream. I'll let you know how that goes.

Book: I read Tender at the Bone. Okay, fine, it had been sitting on my TBR pile for all of about 14 days when I picked it up, but still: off the list. I have to admit that the book made me quizzically jealous--so, wait, she just sort of stumbled into this dreamy life as a food writer? In which she got to, say, decide on the spur of the moment to travel to France to learn about wines? Some essential piece of this puzzle seemed left out. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book immensely, drooling as I read (lots of recipes).

Moon: well. January 15, the night of the full moon, was totally socked-in snowing. The next day Helen had her kindergarten program during the moon rise, and the days after that I sort of forgot (but did happen to be walking the dog shortly after the moon rise). Fun fact: the January full moon is called the Wolf Moon.

Nature: took the kids and a friend down to the creek at the bottom of the street. The friend fell in; Si and Helen also got suspiciously soaked. They also had to be dragged away from the creek, despite it being a) twenty degrees out; b) getting dark and c) a sopping-wet clothes situation. So I'll rate that one a success.

Next: February!

Ahh, the bowl fight

Yesterday our builder hooked up the kitchen faucet, which means that except for the really actually minor items like caulking and grout, the kitchen part of our house is D-O-N-E and we celebrated by baking a batch of cookies, which we haven't done since 1984. I mean, August. Helen was beside herself with chit-chattery excitement, spinning from mixing bowl to counter to oven and back again with a constant running commentary: "Aretheydoneyet?WhencanIlickthebowl? But Silas can't lick the bowl, right, because he wasn't here? What's that for? Are they done yet? Did you do the next batch? When you do the next one can I lick the bowl? Just me? I'm going to get a spoon. Just for licking, right, ma? What are these spoons for? Can I lick the spoon? But Silas can't, right? Are we going to have parties now? Whoa."

Meanwhile M and I were trying to have a conversation about how great it was to finally stand in the kitchen and have a conversation, Costi was trying to make the point that we hadn't fed her her after-dinner snack yet, and the birds (oh, the birds) were back in the living area, making their happy-to-be-here noises, and it was all so cheerful and noisy and warm that there was really no excuse for feeling tired and irritated, even though that's what I was mostly feeling.

Life is creeping back toward normal, in other words. Hurray. This was really brought home by the kids who, immediately after the celebration cookie baking, got into a fight over who got to lick the bowl (note: they BOTH get to lick the bowl. For Pete's sake.)