Feel like a virtual field trip? A trip to one of my favorite new-to-me sites is a treat. This artistic Australian family of four--photographers, designers, film-makers, gigglers--knows how to have F-U-N. The Bartholemews make me want to invite more fun + zaniness + joy into my life. See them at You Can't Be Serious here. And their Christmas card photo has inspired me...look for a little zaniness from the W clan come December.
p.s. We're getting back on our feet around here! More soon.
p.p.s. Remember I'll be switching over to http://basic-joy.com so switch your reader settings if you're so inclined...
On the third day of sickness, the swine flu(?) gave to me...three coughing people, two fevers over 102, and a feeling that we'll never be free.
(via my facebook status this morn. I was pretty proud of that and it only took me all morning to think of it:))
Okay, if I'm going to be sick and ill equipped to write my qualifying paper (fuzzy brain...oh well!) then I will try to use my quarantine time to plan and scheme...
(click here for the rest...remember to change your settings to basic-joy.com, pretty please.)
Oh, my. We've got it here, the gomboo. Fever, chills, headache, cough. I know we're kind of late to the flu party but here we are! Is there still any guacamole left? (Ugh, cancel that. Guacamole is the last thing we need at this moment. How about popsicles?)
We're all in our beds (everyone but G and Maddy), a coughing chorus of germ hosts. Books, check. Water, check. Pillows with the cool side a turn away, check. Rest time, check.
Sam, the sickest among us, groans in his sleep with every exhale, a faint little oh with every breath as he naps on the sofa. Lauren feels fine but can't shake the fever--she's been watching movies and texting and seems full of ideas, asking to go for Wendy's frosties/subway sandwiches/movie rentals/driving practice. I'm being a little productive in a slow motion, fuzzy kind of way with lots of forehead checks and drink fetching and temperature taking for the other patients. We will survive.
Finger crossed G doesn't get it. He leaves for Paris on business at the end of the week. (Here, France, is our little hostess gift to you: the gomboo.)
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Grateful for: 1. the skylight in my bedroom with the view of the tenacious yellow leaves 2. duvets 3. advil to bring down fevers
(Good thing, too, since we've had lots of opportunity for that.)
I even love thinking about change, in the abstract:
how we approach it, how to do it.
So, yes, sometimes (but not always) it is as simple as:
keep doing what you're doing or change something.
After three years of blogging + keeping on doing what I'm doing, I've decided to make some changes around here on this site: changing the wallpaper and furniture, giving several of my interests separate pages, making a friendlier template, and a brand new URL: basic-joy.com. Go browse around, open house style (lots still under construction) and see what you think. Feedback welcome!
I'll continue to double-post at both sites for a bit but be sure to change your bookmarks and feeds to the new address. (Go on, I'll wait. I don't want to lose you! Really. I'm serious. Go do it.)
[pause. whistling. sorry I was so pushy.]
Fantastic.
If you have time to answer, will you be my focus group? Here's what I'm wondering:
1. I'm thinking of changing the name of Letters to a Parent to The Parentstorialist. Thoughts? (I made up the name, which is probably obvious. Does it make sense? You know--parents, telling stories...kind of like The Sartorialist but for parents...get it?) OR should I just stick with the original--straight forward, kind of boring, but already known? The new site has an upload button to submit letters/stories directly and lots of other added goodies. I love it.
2. I'm adding a page about being a student and mom because I get a lot of emails asking for advice about balancing grad school with motherhood. I'll also use that page to talk about what I'm working on so I don't bore the rest of you (and only bore those who are interested in that kind of thing...) What think ye?
3. Also, to be unveiled later, is a page on raising children. I have been longing to have a place to keep child development ideas, links & discussions and summarize research I read. What kinds of things do you wonder about or like to read about children and parenting? What sites do you use for child rearing information?
Thanks, internet friends! Stay tuned for a sitewarming party in the future...
In our town's police log this week (an entertaining weekly must-read):
6:50 p.m. A Lindsay Pond Road resident reported a suspicious man near her home, wearing a sweatshirt and baseball cap and carrying a beer bottle. The responding officers identified the man as a teacher at middle school, who was out for a walk and carrying a water bottle.
I wonder who was more embarrassed: the caller or the teacher?
I love our town and its hyper McGruff ways. You've gotta love the suburbs
(My all time favorite police log entry was: employee of local hospital phoned police to report that co-workers were talking about her behind her back. Dispatcher advised caller that this is not a police matter.)
. . .
Meanwhile, we are prepping for Halloween festivities around here. All three kids have parties/dances tonight. We have a good ballerina (her friend will be an evil ballerina), Pop (going with friends Snap and Crackle) and a secret agent/spy attending his first 6th grade dance. G and I are posing as taxi drivers for the evening--oh for a bulletproof barrier behind the front seat (and a running meter + tips)! Maybe tomorrow I'll go as a shady middle school teacher.
Have a happy Halloween! Obligatory costume photos to follow (eventually).
Last week I was thrilled to have a visit with this wonderful lass. Liz and I met between my hometown and hers at a new tapas* bar where she treated me to a birthday lunch (don't you love it when your birthday kind of spills over into the following week?). It was fabulous (the meet-up and the food) and so much fun to sit for a couple of hours with a kindred blog friend.
I'm lucky we live in the same corner of the world. [Now I'm scheming to have my middle daughter meet her son at one of the multi-stake church dances...shhh....don't tell the kids...they tend to resist my matchmaking suggestions...]
Thanks, Liz. You're a treasure.
*when I told someone about this, they misheard me and asked "a t@pless bar?" As if.
When I think of the movie Where The Wild Things Are, I will think of Sam wiping his eyes, flat palmed with both hands, as he cried at the end.
{please don't go...I'll eat you up, I love you so...}
I noticed it from the corner of my eye and tried to give him the courtesy of not noticing. But tears sprang to my eyes (these things being contagious) and I thought Well, of course. Sam is Max, pretty much. Or was. His imagination. His emotions. His wild and tender ways. His affinity for me and home (where someone loved him best of all...). His sometimes loneliness as his older sisters (although reluctantly) abandon him to play in the world of childhood & make believe alone.
Sam is well acquainted with the wild things and where they are. Spike Jonze has said that he intended to create a movie that captured the book's spirit and what it is like to be a nine-year-old boy. Sam got that. He's not nine anymore but he recognized the geography of that age and connected with it.
Not everyone in the theater did. There was a three-year-old behind us who, after the first monster scene, said I don't want to see this movie anymore (it really isn't for younger kids...Pixar it's not). A few people grumbled under their breaths as we shuffled out of the theater that it wasn't what they expected, wasn't a kids' movie, was quiet and strange*.
Well, yes. I can see that. But it made me want to ask, "have you really read the book?" and "do you really remember what it's like to be a child?" There are scary emotions and swift boats to tantrums. There are rumpuses (rumpi?) and imperfect families and journeys back to forgiveness. There's moodiness and confusion and questions and thin, thin boundaries between delight and disappointment. Everything looms large and monsterish...life so wholly determined by other people's agendas. That's The Point.
It's not like anything you've seen. It is weird. Please though, if you go, just get in the boat, let go, and let the wild rumpus start. It's a great (and trippy) ride.
*then again, there were adult WTWTA fans dressed in footie pajamas and zigzag crowns at the theater, too. They seemed happy with it.
I love October with a passion and an ache. Every time I gasp in glee at a tree's audacious over-the-topness it is accompanied by a melancholy that remembers the longlong stark New England winter ahead. Sigh.
Here's a little something for wallowing in the melancholy side of fall. I first discovered Eva Cassidy about 11 years ago when we lived in DC (she had recently passed away, sadly). She still gets to me, every time.
And here's something to appreciate the cozy, happy side of fall. Just what I needed to read yesterday during a rainy gray fall day. I love autumn, love the seasons, love the chance to change what we wear and do and think about. And we do earn this glorious colorful span of time with our trudge through the quieter winter season. Right?
Speaking of mixed feelings, today is my last day as a thirtysomething. It's been a fantastic decade and I feel very lucky to be learning the things I'm learning with the people I love. But it's melancholy, too, you know?
"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."
I had a fantastic and energizing trip to DC last week...also very humbling and overwhelming! I feel like I'm standing at a threshold of a door and taking a deep breath before stepping through (do I want to step through? what does it mean for my life and my family? what can I give? what should I hold back?)
I'm relishing the return to normal days this week. Sam is home sick with a fever (and will be fine soon) and we are enjoying being cozy and homebound for now. I'm baking a bit and lighting candles and breathing. Folding laundry into tidy squares. Ah, I love margins and space between the busyness of mothering/life.
Hey there, I'm coming to you live from beautiful Washington, D.C. I'm here for the first meeting for the fellowship and have already met (and shared a cab) with two of the other lovely fellows. Should be interesting to hear all about what everyone's doing and have the chance to discuss my project and find out ways to make it better. It's inspiring to be around all of these people who are so passionate about finding ways to help improve the lives of babies and their families. Hopefully some of their brilliance will rub off a little on me.
It's kind of weird to be a business traveler though. I've traveled before but never professionally (meaning paid for by someone else). I always imagined myself walking briskly down the airport concourse like a Charlie commercial (or is it Enjoli? except I don't bring home any bacon, really, I pretty much work for free) but instead I was sweaty and I wore the wrong shoes and I kept getting my bag handles all tangled. You know, as usual.
Speaking of babies and families, I miss mine already. (Thanks, G, for holding down the fort). Bacon for everyone when I get home! Because I might not bring any home but I sure do know how to fry it up in a pan.
Louie the dog is cracking me up lately. He's decided to become Sam's long lost brother (from a different mother). Notice how he's holding the paper for Sam's coloring page*? And how fascinated he is by the whole process? I see you're using the red crayon, Sam. Good choice. I might have gone with magenta but clearly you know your way around a coloring page. This is how he is all day long: interested and involved. I unload the dishwasher several times a day but each time, it's the most fascinating thing in the world to Louie.
Wow! Dishes go in there, huh?
And then where do they....oh....in the cupboard. I get it.
Of course, he wasn't such a fan when his collar got caught somehow on the empty dishwasher rack and he pulled it out and across the kitchen floor, attached to his neck. Unexpected! The sky is falling! He's a little more wary of it now.
The other thing that never fails to make us laugh is his response to either (a) phone messages on our machine or (b) sirens. Oh, my. He howls and howls like a wolf on the prairie. I'm pretty sure he thinks the sirens are other dogs asking for his help and advice and support. Not sure what the answering machine is all about. Maybe he just misses me.
Oh, Louie. If only you didn't still steal things from the table. And jump up on shy little Chinese students. Then you'd be almost perfect.
*we had a lovely, lazy Sunday listening to conference talks at home, eating fresh picked apples and pumpkin bread, most of us remaining in pajamas all day. Sam (above) set up projects on the floor where Louie joined him.
To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition...to know that even on e life has breathed easier because you have lived: this is to have succeeded.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light
~ G.K. Chesterton
Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her
~Luke 10:41-42
Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.
~Mahatma Gandhi
The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.
~Eleanor Roosevelt
Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something. ~Kurt Vonnegut
The angel doesn’t sit on your shoulder unless the pencil’s in your hand. ~ poet Mary Oliver
But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things ~ Vincent van Gogh
