Choices

If I focus on the sparkles set off by my new mobile and not the murky window behind it, perchance I'll get through this term brilliantly?

#Self-bribery #StartOfClasses






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Big A and Bebes

Our new term-time normal, I guess.


The show-off-y corn behind Big A is his too. 









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Away they go...

Nu's hamming it up in their first day of school outfit.

Also, it was the first time I publicly tried out the gender-neutral pronouns Nu had requested.















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Tiny tomato

School starts this week, and this tiny tomato in my planter box is the culmination of some of the best moments of the summer: The outside; children's laughter, water-fights, reading; sunshine; Huckie content in the sun; Scout instigating me to chase him...

Hello school year!






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Coping

We were on our way to Harry Potter Night at the Lugnuts game (A A-D-S's birthday celebration)...

Nu cried twice before we even left the garage. At was packing for college. Nu sprinted upstairs for more hugs and came back to the car feeling a bit better.

I had a headache all evening, was crying as we pulled into our street, and full-out bawling by the time we rounded the bend in the driveway and his car was gone... He was supposed to leave in the afternoon, but kept getting delayed, and I think I kinda hoped he'd still be there...

Big A is in YS for LH's funeral service, so Nu and I had a sleepover with the puppies in the rumpus room.

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Faerie

L suggested that I take Nu on a fairy tour later this weekend to cheer her up after At leaves for college.

Noted.

#RadiologyGardens










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Getting Stuff Done

Puppies are groomed; Nu's broken glasses are replaced (super cheap and super quick at L.O.); Nu's Doc Martens are bought; the random and weirdly suggestive license plate (0690) has been exchanged; the syllabuses are coming along...

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Tough Mother

I kept thinking back to our weekend walk today.

I had SIX meetings at school, and wouldn't get back until really, really late. The first meeting was the Title IX interview and I was hoping it wouldn't drown me in all the fear and sadness talking about the bullying brings up.

I think I did ok at the other meetings. It helped that I started and ended the day with CF's support and had JG's hugs to look forward to in the afternoon.

I get by with a lot of help from my friends.

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Sighing for those skies

Summer is slipping by: my days, the skies, children's hugs... everything is set to change.

I have to remember I've made it through the school years and winters before...










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Reminder

An Epistemology

The planes and birds just fly past
the long conversations
from our history

In the doorways amongst trees
we are getting bigger by
one more breath

With loud shouts, are shared maps
for the future, showing us all
the three ways to survive


      
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Team Work

I am the one taking most of the family pics... but this morning, when At came down to breakfast, he took this somewhat dreamy picture of me strobed in a ray of sunshine.

And then Nu added some psychedelic pixel art and gave me a twin..

Pic-nic Pics

                   

So American!

I went to a baseball game (second time) and ordered a burger at Burger King (first time) yesterday.

Am I American yet?

Or does the fact that my picture accidentally ignores the game and that I ordered an "Impossible Whopper" discredit me?




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Suddenly...

...or so it seems, everyone is the same height in group pics.

Grandpa R and Grandma C are on their way to OH, and we made them road trip snacks and filled them in on our summers.









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A moment

I have sweaty socks Hucky is loving on; Big A is slumped post-run and post-shower; Scout is smiling because he heard me say his name; the human babies are still asleep upstairs; we're in the hanging chairs At assembled all by himself years ago; the plants in the tea garden are happy because they've been freshly watered; and I'm happy that I don't have to worry about them for another week...

I will come back to this moment when the madness and busyness descends.

Onwards...

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Whose woods these are...

It's difficult to tell--

after all, they might as well be 

back by our compost heap.

But these are the trees I ran past 

this morning with Big A 

and then found waiting for me

when I walked back 

from paperwork 

at the English Department.

#MSU

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Early Birds

Grandpa R was in town for a volleyball ref. convention and then took all of us out to sushi at 3 pm. Linner? Dunch?

It's how we do this, apparently.

#Sansu #NoLeftovers








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One More

L gave me these mega hydrangeas from her garden when I walked her home after dinner with us.

Another green spot to keep me going this week...















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Summer gardens

Earlier this summer, Big A built these planters--one for each of us--to grow veggies. We're all not that outdoorsy, so I didn't know how it would take... but the kids love it.

I have never heard them watch or discuss the weather so much or show so much solicitude for things in their care. It has been so affirming all around.

Today I spent hours pulling weeds and trimming while At and Nu watered and giggled and did some solid work putting some ornamental fencing up so the puppies won't wander in.

My chore-averse kids claim it's more fun than work... And they say:
"From the genius who brought you "Boss Day" comes another fun family idea."
 Me. They're talking about me.

#GardenAsTherapy #EscapeThe News
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Off-Screen

It was too painful to be around my computer today. I have tons of stuff to do, but Facebook and Twitter are so tempting and enraging...

I spent hours sweeping (meditatively, without even music) until the whole driveway was clean. In contrast to every big project I've ever undertaken, I got more meticulous as I went on...

I did manage to connect with another mom and we're planning to do a teach-in on how to educate ourselves and resist ICE overreach.



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First Day of School Fears

I still have fears of being late and unprepped to my classes, being unable to manage pick up times for my babies, anxiety about wanting a great school year where all of us--teachers, students, kids, parents will grow, make friends, learn...

I'm not special in this. The incredible cruelty of ICE raids on the FIRST day of school in Mississippi--I cannot begin to fathom... According to several accounts,

With parents no longer able to pick their children up from school, students in towns like Jackson, where children had their first day of school, according to school board calendars, were left distraught as they learned that their moms and dads had been detained.

I am so sad, and so mad, and beginning to feel a sort of hopelessness. Where do we go from here?

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Broad Smiles

Nu's friend since kindergarten, K, spent a couple of days here, and that gave us a chance to focus on fun for a while and do touristy things.

I love how Nu and K have always ended up with similar hair and clothes even when they don't  coordinate it and even way back from when they were dependent on parents to keep in touch.

And I loved how the kids loved hearing about Zaha Hadid.

#MSU #MSU-BROAD


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Fresh start

Trying to start this week over, I booked an early morning run with my favorite marathoner. We
talked more than we ran... and it was what I needed.









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Danusha Laméris: Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk 

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs 

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” 

when someone sneezes, a leftover 

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. 

And sometimes, when you spill lemons 

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you 

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, 

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile 

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress 

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, 

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far 

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. 

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these 

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

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Must Wake Up!

Dinner last night was to the breaking details of the El Paso shooting over the radio and today we're waking up to news of the Dayton shooting overnight. DAYTON. Dayton.

Checking on all my Yellow Springs people, but ten people have died, 26 are wounded--whether I personally knew them or not--there are grieving friends and family in a place I called home. Big A would have been taking care of them at Miami Valley Hospital if we still lived in YS.

Gun violence keeps getting closer. Every day feels like the beginning of a nightmare precipice...

#MSU #YesterdayThisSeemedFunny

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:P kinda day

Bitter to Sweet

Big A lovingly linked me to that lovely Washington Post article about the horrific child labor in the chocolate industry globally, and killed my lifelong devotion to drugstore chocolate. The Cadbury's, Hershey's, Mars I grew up eating, the chocolate in my office, at home, everywhere I spent more than an hour...

It was easy to swear off those products of pain and child slavery. But none of the Fairtrade chocolate bars I began buying were to my taste. I mean I still like sweet and fat in my chocolate. I began melting down all the too-bitter bars and adding coconut oil and sugar.





But it still tasted pretty nope.

Then out of a grocery store that's not our regular place, some sweet news: The Green and Black and Divine MILK chocolates work!








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I think I've found my song for the rest of the summer...

Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) sings the hook on Chance's "Do You Remember."

"Do you remember how when you were younger
the summers all lasted forever?
Days disappeared into months, into years
Hold that feeling forever."

Happy August, all of us!



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Nuclei

My heart pulses like a womb
mind races like a detective
mouth is full of seeds
and leftovers

A cardinal in a tree like a flag
I'm in tears nearby fleeing
the hardscrabble of lies
and kisses

What if the compass is my face
slowing the world with sighs
say flowers are our saints
fierce, fearsome.


------





Nu was cleaning out At's car (it cost him 5$$$), and I was keeping her company, walking the driveway with music and marveling at how green everything looks. At then went to see Chapo Trap House up in Traverse City with his friends.










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Them Dems

At a debate watch party today, they seated us on the dais because they'd run out of space.  Peek Big A and Nu at the back of the picture!

I joked to Big A that it reminded me of High Table practice...  When I was at Oxford, I attended Wolfson, which prides itself on its egalitarian hall and an absence of hierarchical seating, but back when I was at Exeter, high table was indeed a thing.

Anyway, Nu paid careful attention to everything, since L has generously said she will vote for whomever Nu suggests. This is the lovely L's way of offering a voice to Nu's generation who will--after all--be the ones dealing with the climate change policies of the next administration.

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Greece Love

Picked up Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles at Sam and Eddie's last week and it's giving me pleasurable nostalgia about my trip to Greece earlier this year. Especially that first day in Athens climbing the Acropolis all windblown, stumbling upon the completely deserted woods to the north of the temple, feeling I had slipped back through millennia, and then a late and leisurely lunch at the museum within view of the Parthenon and still swooning.

I'm so glad for that trip--I'm reading now without that pang that previously accompanied any mention of Greece.

(And yes, the Miller really does remind me of those Mary Renaults I used to devour and mid-century Mary Stewart must bear responsibility for my Greece love too.)



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I Did This! (2)

The groomers couldn't get them in until late August (how is it almost August, anyway?!), so Nu and I headed to Target for some clippers and... Now the puppy babies look less like lion-bearcubs. 

My first time using clippers (if you forget that time 19 years ago when I tried to cut At's hair; please do forget that time!).

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On a Road Trip for Two

Big A and At are both working tonight, and Nu and I didn't see the point of rushing home. 

So we took a few detours: First the Dayton Art Institute (DAI) with its impressive collection of contemporary work with Grandma S and Grandpa J, and then a stop at the Neil Armstrong Museum (NAM), to appreciate that giant leap for humankind. 

Nu loved the DAI, of course and my phone is full of pictures of artwork she means to revisit; but I suspect she was a bit underwhelmed with the NAM. I am such a sucker for soaring music and emotional biographical details, but I'll admit it was a bit dated despite its inclusion of the "Hidden Figures" mathematicians in the timeline. At one point, I was going to dig out my Aldi quarter so we could feed the machine that would tell us our weight on earth, the moon, and Saturn--when Nu stopped me--"Mama, it's ok, I'm sure we can google it" quoth she, and truer words were never spoken.

But look what a good sport my love is!

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Back to the Present

And here's Nu again, and all's right with my world.

And appositely given all my baby bird thoughts, their verse in the Eco-Camp song this year was "and in that nest, there was a bird..."






    

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I Did This! (1)

Somehow I had never mown a yard.... Big A set me up, and... voila! (I plan to finish the rest tomorrow, but I'm awfully proud of that demarcating line today.) Mowing with headphones in (I didn't even make it out of my Prince playlist!), gave me some time to process the difficult conversation with our Title IX coordinator too.

       Before we moved here, we loved that there was no "lawn," but we do need an occasional mow down in the summer to keep it safe for the puppies.

I did it! I am certifiably grownup!

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"Oh, you're a cool guy, huh?"

7/23/2019

At and I have been saying, "Oh, you're a cool guy, huh?" to each other since we heard it on the radio, so we were happy to go see Hannibal Buress with Big A.

(At took the picture, but didn't want to be in it... what cool guy wants to go to a comedy club with their parents, huh?)

Here We Go Again

I took this picture just after I dropped Nu off at "The Owl Logs" and turned around for one quick picture yesterday.

I had a ton of stuff planned for this week: writing dates, hangs outs, planning a party in our old house with S, and on and on.... But I haven't been in this town by myself ever. And everywhere there are reminders of the babies when they were babies--schools, childcare, parks... and aaaaarrrgghh. I can't stand it.



A ton of super-emo texts to Big A last night and I'm headed back to Lansing today where I can baby the puppies and At and Big A (whose Boss Day it is!).

I-75, here we go again...

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And Off We Go!

Nu's all checked in for Eco-Camp and reaaaallllly ready for me to leave :)


















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Baby Birds

These wild turkeys and turkey chicks have been wandering through the place every morning. Turkey parents seem way more relaxed than duckling parents, FWIW.

Out on the front porch, I was surprised that a hanging basket was faring so poorly until I saw a parent bird transfer a wiggly worm from its beak to its baby's, and their nest is right in that planter!  I've seen this scene on film so many time, but never from two feet away... I don't think?



And in other baby bird news, Nu and I will road-trip over to Yellow Springs all by ourselves, spend the night at MIL's. Then Nu's off to Eco-Camp for the rest of the week, and I will be doing all the YS things with old friends...

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