Here I am, bookended by the two human babies who showed up randomly in their matching Christmas jammies for some Olympic-standard cuddling.
Friday, January 15, 2021
Snapshot
Here I am, bookended by the two human babies who showed up randomly in their matching Christmas jammies for some Olympic-standard cuddling.
Thursday, January 14, 2021
Pongal 2021
Most years we're already back at school before Pongal comes around and the usual celebration is something hurried when the sun is no longer high in the sky.
This year, we got to celebrate in the sunshine and make our offering at a reasonable daytime hour, with fragrant narcissus and paperwhites rounding out the pongal rice and jaggery laddu on the offering tray. To the millenary vedic sun salutation sloka*, which I was translating for the kids as I went, I added a prayer for enough Vit. D to help us through the pandemic.
Cousin P had sent the cousin groupchat a set of truly lovely pics of their traditional celebration replete with sugarcane, outdoor hearth, and silk-clad kids. So I sent this pic back to balance things out.
Not pictured: The very un-Pongal looking kids, one in the Phoebe Bridgers limited edition Punisher sweater they got from their older sib and the other human kid in the pink Mean Girls/Karl Marx mashup tee I gave them.
Tamorim Sarva Paapagnam Pranathosmi Divakaram
[You radiant as the Japa flower, heir of Kashyapa, the creator of days
destroy my darkness and all corruption I pray to you, O Sun.]
Sunday, January 10, 2021
Spoke too soon...
Kinda like I did with this holiday card, which I had printed but didn't mail... and probably will never mail at this point.
Apartment Therapy's astrology section forecasts that I will have a "fruitful social life" this year, so perhaps not all is lost? Ha.
Saturday, January 09, 2021
Peace Out
Sunday, January 03, 2021
Notes from the Weekend
- Here are At and Nu in their matching new year shirts from a unisex brand--I love the silky patterns and their very distinctive cut and fit.
- I started Duolingo-ing Spanish this week--I'd like to keep it up. And I'd like to walk the Camino de Santiago someday...
- I downloaded WhatsApp to my laptop and can now send pictures and links SO easily to mom and sis.
- Big A built me a long sofa/console table to store projects, books, and work material so I can take meetings in the living room. I love our communal study/rumpus room, but sadly, we can't all be in meetings in the same room.
- And.... I had a poem accepted today. This one! about the people in this photograph!
Saturday, January 02, 2021
There and Back Again
Friday, January 01, 2021
Beginning as we mean to go on
(Yes, it was just down the street to wish TB a happy birthday before curling up cozily for most of the evening--but I'm counting it as a tiny win for today.)
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
"But Different than the Day Before" (Part 3892772)
It was icy in the streets and a very homebound day scaffolded by all kinds of media.
A long yoga session on Mirror, hours of reading, syllabus prep, an adoring Prince retrospective online, and then stringing a video-list of Nirvana-Bikini Kill-Foo Fighters for Nu (the Nirvana and Bikini Kill were kinda for the WGS class). Nu has very limited screen time these days, so accompanying me on rabbit holes of 90s nostalgia is ok with them. (Evil parent laugh.)
Big A's "Impossible" spaghetti sauce for dinner, some Veep with At (from whom I received this puppy pic) and now I'm going to give Bridgerton a try by myself.
Monday, December 28, 2020
Ruminations in a very minor key
2) Nu announced it was National Card Game Day, and we played Rummy, Coup, and Smart Ass at various times in the day to observe it 'properly.'
3) A couple of weeks ago I gave myself some terrible bangs, but I must have decided they weren't terrible enough, so I gave myself more bangs around 1 or 2 am. Big A worked last night, and when he came home this morning, I spent like 20 minutes repeatedly yelling "Don't LOOK at me; DON'T look at me." He offered to cut my bangs next time, but we're at least four-five weeks away from being able to attempt repair. I miss going to the hairdresser, and I'm bored with my hair.
4) I can't believe I haven't brought in the hammocks and throw pillows from the backyard yet... it's not that I'm that lazy, I'm just awfully prone to wishful thinking.
Sunday, December 27, 2020
By degrees
Saturday, December 26, 2020
Small (footprint) packages
Friday, December 25, 2020
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
"Hot Ones"
Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Yays
Monday, December 21, 2020
I used to do it for hours in fancy (yoga) pants...
Made a winter solstice meal (stew, roasted veggie salad, biscuits, and apple cider hot toddies with brandy) to share with BS and EM for good cheer. We'd planned to build a fire in the firepit, but it began to hail, so we lit some candles indoor instead.
LB and TB were having their own solstice celebration and I was supposed to head over after dinner, but I stayed home, had a long boozy chat with EM and then Zoom-ed into JL's book club meeting of Mexican Gothic. I hadn't read it, but no one was talking about the book anyway. We haven't met in so long and everyone's hair was SO long!
I'm inordinately excited about yoga, and hangouts, and the two minutes of extra daylight we'll get tomorrow.
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Humdrum
A quiet day with quiet tasks (rearranging the the snack drawer, watering all the plants, laundry). Then I finished Mrs. America with At and Nu after dinner. Wow/Ow: it was tough to watch all that second-wave momentum entropy like that...
Friday, December 18, 2020
Light, Lighter, Lightest
After I turned in my portfolio, I felt so strongly that whatever the committee decided, I did deserve tenure. I have zero imposter syndrome, apparently. What I do have is survivors' guilt knowing there are so many equally--or more--deserving peers all over the world trying to make it in an unjust higher-ed system. Also moments of sadness knowing that it won't be what I dreamed since JG and KB, two of my besties on the third floor of SAC, resigned this year.
The "celebration/crybaby" present Big A had been promising for weeks turned out to be... a new laptop. Whomp, whomp. I tried to fake my way into being gracious and enthusiastic about it, but honestly--it feels like a "vacuum cleaner present." I had imagined a big ol' massage chair or a hot tub or something indulgent... Ha.
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Minding the Gaps
My Nu is amazing and I'm so proud of what they can do when they set their mind to it.
Speaking of minds, I gave the kids fidget cubes and personal copies of If You're Freaking Out, Read This as a Pre-Christmas/Hanukkah present today. If ever there was a year to pay attention...
Tuesday, December 15, 2020
Time Sheets
I saw everyone at breakfast and dinner, but otherwise, at least one of us has been on right round the clock...
Scout and Huck who snooze all day seem to be the only ones with adequate sleep and solid sleep hygiene around here.
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Tiny Notes
The tiny tree went up this weekend--powered 95% by At and Nu.
😍
While I was writing that poem about Chelli's moving day yesterday, I was trying to make the verses look like the many roofs we've been under, but it actually looks like a tree too!Also, as she said after she read that poem, I completed it "so fast!" High praise indeed!
😛
standing in beauty
I saw the most amazing early morning skies over the Maple River as I headed to work today, and had a feeling it would be the harbinger of a ...
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _
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I have the feeling that I’m going to succumb to the season and put out a list of resolutions soon. Just wanted to establish this heads up th...
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At had us pose for this pic up at Aunt R's place on Lake Huron so he could put it up in his dorm. "Don't tur...