Thursday, June 21, 2007
Thunderclouds are looming, the sky is rumbling and there’s a tornado warning in effect. All appropriate for the day, as far as I’m concerned.
This was the Biggie’s last day of first grade, her last day with the teacher who so lovingly nurtured her through kindergarten and first grade, who brought her from reading single words to off-the-elementary charts grown-up books prowess. She has taught her so much, all better than I ever could, and the Big loves her to the point that she often calls me by her teacher’s name. What more could I ask from the public school system? But we have moved, and after faithfully driving the Biggie ten miles into town every day since December for school, we are transferring her to our neighborhood school, a sweet place but definitely different; bigger, less crunchy, with less of a neighborhood feel. I’m sure I’ll come to love this school too over the next six years as the Big and then the Wee move through its corridors, but right now it’s an unknown, and as I get older I deal less and less well with uncertainty. You can take the girl out of New England, but you can’t take the New England out of the girl.
To add to the emotional upset of leaving Big’s school, our dear friends Monica and Paul and their four sweet kids left town today for the greener shores of Eugene, Oregon. I’m happy that they’re headed for a better situation (don’t get me started, thinking about the supreme coolness of Oregon and Eugene in particular), but the small, selfish part of myself that lurks in the barred-off recesses of my mind is deeply bitter. These guys are so cool; they see every challenge (surprise twins, then an even bigger surprise, one of the twins has Down’s Syndrome) as just another reason to do more and be more. There is no getting these guys down. As someone who lets herself get down on an all-too-frequent basis, I benefitted from having such a great example of kick-assedness around. And now they’re gone. Luckily we can follow their adventures on their web site organichaus.com, link coming soon (when I get up from being down).
Well, the tornado has passed as I’ve been writing, dumping epic rain and twisty winds up here on the hilltop. The late-day sun is out and the hummingbirds are zooming around the feeder again.
Not such a bad day, after all.
This was the Biggie’s last day of first grade, her last day with the teacher who so lovingly nurtured her through kindergarten and first grade, who brought her from reading single words to off-the-elementary charts grown-up books prowess. She has taught her so much, all better than I ever could, and the Big loves her to the point that she often calls me by her teacher’s name. What more could I ask from the public school system? But we have moved, and after faithfully driving the Biggie ten miles into town every day since December for school, we are transferring her to our neighborhood school, a sweet place but definitely different; bigger, less crunchy, with less of a neighborhood feel. I’m sure I’ll come to love this school too over the next six years as the Big and then the Wee move through its corridors, but right now it’s an unknown, and as I get older I deal less and less well with uncertainty. You can take the girl out of New England, but you can’t take the New England out of the girl.
To add to the emotional upset of leaving Big’s school, our dear friends Monica and Paul and their four sweet kids left town today for the greener shores of Eugene, Oregon. I’m happy that they’re headed for a better situation (don’t get me started, thinking about the supreme coolness of Oregon and Eugene in particular), but the small, selfish part of myself that lurks in the barred-off recesses of my mind is deeply bitter. These guys are so cool; they see every challenge (surprise twins, then an even bigger surprise, one of the twins has Down’s Syndrome) as just another reason to do more and be more. There is no getting these guys down. As someone who lets herself get down on an all-too-frequent basis, I benefitted from having such a great example of kick-assedness around. And now they’re gone. Luckily we can follow their adventures on their web site organichaus.com, link coming soon (when I get up from being down).
Well, the tornado has passed as I’ve been writing, dumping epic rain and twisty winds up here on the hilltop. The late-day sun is out and the hummingbirds are zooming around the feeder again.
Not such a bad day, after all.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Why, oh why, again with the waking up at 2 a.m.? Sigh. I lay there in the pitch-dark, utterly awake, when I heard a sound that reminded me of a long-haul trailer shifting as it goes up a big hill. A low hum, it shifted pitch and faded in and out. I realized it was the wind running through the contours of the many arms and hollows of our little glacier-carved mountain—the hill was singing.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Brought To You By Insomnia
Well hey, folks—it’s been a long time. Excuses? Nothing good, just unpacking/working/kids/lameitude, the basics.
Spring has just about spent her bloom here, and summer is looming like a thunderhead. We’ve already had a 90-plus degree day, though it doesn’t get so bad here on the windy hill. The garden is bursting; we’ve planted tomatoes, basil, blueberries, lettuce, pumpkins, melons, squash, and sunflowers to complement the parsnips, garlic, asparagus, herbs, strawberries, and onions that appeared when the snow melted. I joined a CSA (community-supported agriculture) group, where we pay for a share of a local farm’s crop and in return get more produce than we can eat. One of our farmers lives right next door, and there’s something satisfying about knowing that my investment is staying so close to home. Moving to this close-knit community (which has welcomed us with open arms), so entrenched in nature, makes me much more conscious of where I spend my money and place my carbon footprint, especially since I am driving so much more than before. There are so many easy things I can do to help reduce the amount of energy we use that I’ve hardly thought of as energy-conserving before, like buying local produce instead of air-shipped strawberries from California and apples from New Zealand. It just makes sense, as well as tasting better. And if I buy items from the local farmer’s market, I’m helping support people I know, like the sexton at our church who makes jewelry, my old friend’s dad who sells organic seedlings, and the cute Eastern European pastry man. Plus nothing there has been shipped 10,000 miles (except maybe the pastry man). Anyway, maybe being up since 2:30 is making me loopy, but I think the gist of this paragraph is: Me happy, settling into little community, figuring out place in world and how to impact it less negatively; fresh strawberries and pastry, mmmmmm.
The small people are thriving, physically and mentally. Biggie can now read everything, which seems great until she gets ahold of “Oprah”—I don’t really want her to know about what’s happening to women in the Congo, or how great sex can be after 40. The Wee One is still wee—at 3 and a half, she is wearing the shoes Biggie got when she was 20 months old, and people still give me funny looks when she clambers to the top of the climbing structure, somersaults over and hurtles to the ground like kids twice her size. My mission for the summer is teaching them both to swim and ride bikes.
Work is going great, that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been posting as much. I went to an all-company conference in April and finally met the people I’ve been talking to on the phone for two years. I was impressed with how educated, energetic and down-to-earth everyone is, and with the company’s mission to make it the best place to work.
The husband’s job is going great guns; he’s criss-crossing the country talking to potential investors and they just opened the new lab in a renovated typewriter factory here in town.
The alarm just sounded, so my time’s up!
Well hey, folks—it’s been a long time. Excuses? Nothing good, just unpacking/working/kids/lameitude, the basics.
Spring has just about spent her bloom here, and summer is looming like a thunderhead. We’ve already had a 90-plus degree day, though it doesn’t get so bad here on the windy hill. The garden is bursting; we’ve planted tomatoes, basil, blueberries, lettuce, pumpkins, melons, squash, and sunflowers to complement the parsnips, garlic, asparagus, herbs, strawberries, and onions that appeared when the snow melted. I joined a CSA (community-supported agriculture) group, where we pay for a share of a local farm’s crop and in return get more produce than we can eat. One of our farmers lives right next door, and there’s something satisfying about knowing that my investment is staying so close to home. Moving to this close-knit community (which has welcomed us with open arms), so entrenched in nature, makes me much more conscious of where I spend my money and place my carbon footprint, especially since I am driving so much more than before. There are so many easy things I can do to help reduce the amount of energy we use that I’ve hardly thought of as energy-conserving before, like buying local produce instead of air-shipped strawberries from California and apples from New Zealand. It just makes sense, as well as tasting better. And if I buy items from the local farmer’s market, I’m helping support people I know, like the sexton at our church who makes jewelry, my old friend’s dad who sells organic seedlings, and the cute Eastern European pastry man. Plus nothing there has been shipped 10,000 miles (except maybe the pastry man). Anyway, maybe being up since 2:30 is making me loopy, but I think the gist of this paragraph is: Me happy, settling into little community, figuring out place in world and how to impact it less negatively; fresh strawberries and pastry, mmmmmm.
The small people are thriving, physically and mentally. Biggie can now read everything, which seems great until she gets ahold of “Oprah”—I don’t really want her to know about what’s happening to women in the Congo, or how great sex can be after 40. The Wee One is still wee—at 3 and a half, she is wearing the shoes Biggie got when she was 20 months old, and people still give me funny looks when she clambers to the top of the climbing structure, somersaults over and hurtles to the ground like kids twice her size. My mission for the summer is teaching them both to swim and ride bikes.
Work is going great, that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been posting as much. I went to an all-company conference in April and finally met the people I’ve been talking to on the phone for two years. I was impressed with how educated, energetic and down-to-earth everyone is, and with the company’s mission to make it the best place to work.
The husband’s job is going great guns; he’s criss-crossing the country talking to potential investors and they just opened the new lab in a renovated typewriter factory here in town.
The alarm just sounded, so my time’s up!
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