Valentine's Day yoga for me and Big A.
Fin.
Is the lesson that I bragged to soon? Bragged at all? Will Nu be able to get past this? Will I? UGH. I feel so helpless watching this child squander so many chances.
Pic is to remind myself of a less complicated, cuddlier time...
Everyone seems to need me today.
Must go!
Talked to At on Twitter and chat today; and gosh--I miss him fiercely. Spent some time settling things in his room and ended up clearing out a decade's worth of video games, Popular Science, and Make Magazine. We've been in this house only four years and only four years in the Alma house before that, so this stash somehow made it through three moves. Yikes.
Also yikes, as I leaned to get another piece of mail from behind At's bookcase, I twisted something in my knee and it has felt progressively weird. It feels... feeble now, although it didn't when it actually happened.
Finalizing all the syllabuses and diagnostics for first week today. And I'm laughing at myself because the smallest things get me excited sometimes. My latest tweak is so superficial--I changed all the font to Garamond--and I'm so inordinately chuffed about it.
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.
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.
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.
the way it settles into a palimpsest
of belonging
Children best friends puppies homes
friends in-laws all them totems
of becoming
Yet: new laughter moves me, old words
bend my mind--press guesses
into being
We can enter spaces where time fades
earth freezes or poles thaw us
into belief
Nostalgic use of family idiolect has made a comeback in a big way. At made me snort the other day, because he was 'sad' we never use the term "socker" anymore. Luckily for me, it's because the kids stopped leaving their socks all over the place.
Our governor has mandated no in-person classes from tomorrow as part of our three-week "pause" anyway.
The one thing the pandemic has given me is bonus time with my first-born. And also, somehow--the time and desire to disappear into a long, hot bath.
***
I usually buy sweets at the Indian store for Diwali (or some years it has been a bar of chocolate or an assortment of fruit), but this year I watched a few Pinterest videos and made my own versions of coconut ladoo and besan ladoo. 2020 just seemed to call out for some extra effort.
We're a difficult family to make sweets for--At is sweet averse and allergic to all nutty things; Nu can eat some nuts; Scout and Huck can't eat raisins and sultanas; and Big A won't eat anything too sweet.
I added pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, and dried cranberries to the coconut ladoo and almonds and pistachios to the besan ladoo (and given that besan is chickpea flour, that one must be pretty high in protein!). In this Diwali iteration, At could theoretically eat the coconut ones, Nu will eat both, and I can safely share bites with Scout and Huck without hurting them (as I subbed out the raisins). Big A may still not like/eat them.
We've packed boxes for LB, TB, BS, and EM, and sent proud pictures to every family chat.
A bit anticlimactic ultimately--I blame CNN's rampant use of the thesaurus for two days of headlines (Biden on the cusp, on the verge, on the threshold). On the other hand, it solidified B's lead well beyond conjecture and allowed saner Trumpers to back away (?). Don't know; don't care RN TBH.
Here, Scout is tired of election news as the rest of us watch Vice-President-elect Harris and President-Elect Biden's speeches and marvel at decency and parseable sentences and earnestness on the podium.
Big A teased me about my (presumably wide-eyed) gawking--but no shame here. Who believes in America's possibility more than an immigrant, after all? Lots and lots of work ahead to be sure, but now there's a chance where before there was only survival.
*Extra Huckie hugs*
I told my dream to Nu and we marched up to Big A and informed him that we needed a third puppy.
(I love how my brain braids things--I wonder if "Hank" is because I spent time with JL's "Henry" last weekend and "Hank" is a form of "Henry" but sounds a bit like "Huck?")
All of this made me quite anxious.
All of this made me very happy.
__________________________
I chaired the WGS sessions of the MASAL conference from home; finalized the WLC second-seven week course syllabus; worked on Nu's birthday plans; hiked with L; practiced saying "fiddly," "wobbly," and "stodgy" in preparation for watching GBBO later in the evening... Full day.
I think that was a solid vacation--it didn't feel "fake" to me at all. I had a lovely time, meeting people Big A works with wa...