Where We Were

Just about every time I've sat down to work on the blog this week, I've started out with "So...Where were we...?". It's summertime and I'm feeling scattered. John's teaching, the kids have a couple of hours of scheduled activities every week and I've got some commitments to keep--it's not that we have no schedule, it's that the schedule changes so frequently, I feel busy all the time and I want bedtime to be at 7:30 just like during the school year. 8 o'clock then. OK, OK 9. What are you kids still doing awake at 10:25? I can't quite bring myself to take off my watch and dive headfirst into summer, but it's clear it has swallowed us whole.So, where were we?

Much of the last 2 weeks has been unseasonably, record-settingly sunny and warm. Mid-70s at the coast (some 10 degrees above average for the season) and well into the 80s at our place barely inland. Acclimated as we are to very small variations in temperature (high-40s in the dead of winter, high-60s in the height of summer), this is sweltering. Especially when our power went out over the weekend and it was just too hot and sticky and stuffy to do anything but seek relief at the beach. Our bedrooms, without the fans we've usually got running on warm days, were unbearable even after nightfall so we camped out--to the children's immense delight--in our playroom downstairs.Every time we go to the beach, the kids act like tourists who have heard tell of a wonderland of waves and driftwood and seashells and crab carcasses and dead birds and sand but who did not believe that such a (sandy) paradise could truly exist. It's the most incredible, fun place they have ever been--even when we go twice in one week. These children of mine are easy to please. I'm grateful for the way they remind me to be open to the adventure and awe of it all.
Then they bicker all the way home from the beach, there's sand tracked all over the car and into the house, wet, sandy clothes need to be washed, I listen to the news on the radio while I make dinner: the mood can change so quickly.Thank goodness I took my camera. More on flickr, of course.

The Uncommon Cold

I'm in a whiny mood today. Life is not fair.

We seem to be in the only spot around here that did not get snowed on last night. It's been cold and rainy and we've had a few pretty heavy hail storms and we can see plenty of snow on the hills close to our place and chains are required just 7 miles East of us; that's all fine and good, the worst of winter in these parts. But driving Hannah to school this morning, we passed a few cars headed the other direction that had quite a bit of snow on them. There was still some snow (mixed with a whole lot of sleety stuff) on the ground at the school. It was melting fast, but still: snow. There was snow on the side of the road all the way to McKinleyville; Central Ave was one big, slushy mess. They are much closer to the ocean then we are. Not fair.

Also not fair: Jonah has another one of his awful colds. That makes, in just this month, 2 bad colds for him as well as an ear infection, one bad cold that John worked terribly hard to ward off, some sniffles and a slight cough for the wonderfully robust Hannah and a nasty cold and sore throat and laryngitis for me. That's too much being sick--especially when the sickest one is so whiny and clingy, up all night thrashing, carrying around a plastic bowl everywhere he goes because sometimes he coughs so hard he throws up (it doesn't happen much, but often enough that he's worried he'll throw up every time he coughs) . The lack of sleep and the feeling put-upon--that I'm not getting well because I have to take care of everyone else, leaving me with little energy to take care of myself--are making me pretty whiny too.

When I whined to John--in my pathetic croaky voice--a few nights ago about how I am so tired of Jonah's stupid colds and how quickly he goes from being fine to being really, really sick and how I am so tired and I don't feel good, he remarked that at least we don't have a kid with Down's Syndrome or autism. Wouldn't you know that in Monday's newspaper, there was a story about treatment possibilities for Down's? And in today's NY Times Science section there's a story about a "cure for autism"?

No cure for the uncommon cold though, besides time and rest and the kindness and patience of your mom. Get well soon, buddy. And please stop wiping your nose on my sleeve.

Slump

It was pretty easy not to post at all on Thursday. It had been a long day, I was fretting about a few things. I didn't get any down-time at all to let some writing happen until late, late in the day. By then I hated every sentence I came up with.
It was even easier on Friday not to post. I did think about how I was not posting, but, eh, it's not like you people are leaving me much by way of comments anyway. It was easy to give up on posting every single day this month, but not so easy. I didn't even turn my computer on out of feeling by turns guilty and frustrated.
Saturday, more of the same. Busy enjoying a beautiful, warm, sunny day at the Farmer's Market (shallots, walnuts, leeks and some beautiful kale), the river and home. All the while feeling like I had to make an effort to part the atmosphere around me so that I could keep going forward.

Today I feel terribly slumpy. The weather has suddenly turned cold and rainy--which helps some. The kids and I baked a whole bunch of muffins and froze most of them so that John can take them to work with him next week. That helped too. But I just do not feel like writing.

Rain Rain Don't Go Away

Just the second day of NaBloPoMo and the best I can come up with is the weather...
Much as I love those long summer days when we've got nothing better to do than be outside, I am happiest when it is rainy out. Fall is a funny kind of season here on the North Coast. When the Autumnal Equinox rolls around, we know that the best days of summer are still ahead of us; the mornings are very chilly by the middle of October, the skies are a pristine blue every single day and by afternoon it's as warm as it will get all year long (that's somewhere in the mid 70s at the coast, 10-20 degrees warmer a few miles inland). Come Halloween John is sick and tired of hearing me complain about how it never stinkin' rains around here. And it's true! Until we get that first, lovely, delightfully wet storm. The very one that blew in yesterday.

Forced indoors, the kids are discovering all these toys they haven't played with in a long time. They are playing together and playing alone and I haven't had to entertain anyone or break up any fights. I'm getting some cleaning done. OK, I'd be doing that anyway because we are hosting a party for Hannah's soccer team over here on Sunday, but it's so much easier to get things done when I'm feeling cheerful. It will wear off some after a while; I'll get sick of all the mud tracked through my kitchen (and my car!), sick of the clutter of raincoats and boots, the kids will get tired of their toys (but, hey, Christmas is smack-dab in the middle of our rainy season), I'll get tired of breaking up fights, I'll yearn for the days when I can send them outside and make them stay there all day long. Today though, standing on the back porch just watching--the rain makes everything much better. (Also, Lorrie Moore has a short story in the New Yorker that came today.)

About that snow

Well, for one thing, it was more like heavy sleet mixed with light snow. But it, ever so briefly, accumulated on the ground. If you didn't look too closely, if you squinted a bit, it looked just like wet snow.

It had melted within about 15 minutes, so it did little to ease my snow craving.

Still, I'll take what I can get.

And in 20 years, barring global warming, it will snow again.

IT'S SNOWING!

Right here in my backyard.
Will post pictures later.
Of course, John is at work with the car that has all of our coats in it...
I did tell him he ought to take a snow day.

I wasn't kidding...

...when I said my children are deprived living here where it so very rarely snows.
Yesterday, Hannah came home from school with this:
That's right. She made a snowperson out of a woodchip.
Complete with carrot nose, moss hair and twig arms.
I could cry.

Olympic Highlights: Better Late Than Never

I know, I know, the Olympics ended over a week ago. Gimme a break.

Jonah enjoyed watching the winter Olympics with me more than I thought any two-and-a-half-year-old kid could. The skiing, the skating, the sledding, the snowboarding, we watched most of the primetime coverage. He especially liked the downhill skiing—in particular the Super G. He did worry, he told me, that they were going too fast. He would like to try skiing “when I am a little bit bigger”.

Hannah wanted to know of the male figure skaters: “Is that man trying to be a woman?” Always with the salient questions, that one.

John, coming into the bedroom (yes, our TV is in our bedroom and do you know how many people have told us how refreshing it is to see a livingroom without a television in it?) during the icedancing, commented that “It’s really kind of lame.” Why yes it is rather much the lame “sport”, but it’s part of the Olympics so we watch. And we gasp when the man drops the poor woman. And we feel bad for the fellow that she will never speak to him again.

I’ve always liked the winter Olympics much more than the summer games. I find the winter sports to be more thrilling, more mysterious, more outrageous by far. After all, lots of people swim, most of us can run, and the javelin throw sounds more exciting than it really is. But the short-track speedskating relay? Who thought that up? And the ski jump? Drunk, suicidal Scandinavians maybe? Part of this has to do with spending many of my growing up years in a part of the world where winter sports—and Les Jeux D’Hiver—were very much part of the air I breathed. It’s not that the summer athletes aren’t amazing athletes, it’s not that their wins are less joyful. Perhaps it’s the frigid temperatures, but the excitement at the winter games is downright palpable.

I’ve been feeling kind of sad lately that I live somewhere where it never snows. We can see snow from our house sometimes, up on the hills, and we’ll get a dusting every 20 years or so. But I grew up in Chicago and then in the foothills of the French-Swiss Alps where snow—and lots of it—was never an inconvenience for a child. Snow means days off from school, building snow creatures of all kinds, familiar objects transformed into pillowy mounds of pure white, playing outside to the verge of frostbite, coming in from the cold, peeling off layers of wet clothing, hot mugs of cocoa… My poor children are deprived.