uh, no, no milk at midnight.
and uh, no popsicles at midnight or for breakfast either.
bolt, again? today? uh, no.
wallE, again? today? nah.
in bed all day watching tv? well, no
uh, no laying down and eating. no.
peeing laying down? well, no.
no, no. everyone who comes to visit us does NOT have to bring presents.
yes, we do have to take a bath every once in a while.
and please, PLEASE, stop screaming at the help!
Posted on December 14th, 2009
we had dinner of a salad and chicken and are watching Bolt. just him in his bed and me in a chair. it’s a friday night, so we normally watch a movie as a family, but tonight it’s just him and me. brian is at home. sebastien is at grandma and pop-pop’s. oren and i are at children’s hospital in our cushy room on 6a. the night nurse just came in at the start of her shift and suggested that we would leave tomorrow. but i had to say, “no, maybe wednesday, though.”
“he looks so good!” she replied.
and he does. he looks really good. he acts pretty normal. he’s a little shaky on his feet. but the past two days it has been a little easier to forget (not that i actually have forgotten) that ten days ago he hit his head, and that we spent a night in the ER where they told us he had a skull fracture. then they told us they’d keep him for a night to observe him. then a few hours later, they told us that they’d keep him one more night. one night became a few more.
it’s hard to believe that just a week ago, oren’s eyes went crossed and they had to give him a spinal tap to relieve the pressure that had built up in his skull. then they said that if the pressure couldn’t be kept down, they’d have to do surgery. surgery with a high amount of risk… of what? that oren could die on the table? “an alarming amount of risk” were the docs words.
for seven days, i have been waiting for this to happen. i have been waiting for oren’s beautiful blue eyes to cross again. i have been fighting off panic attacks every time he complains of a headache or rubs his eyes or even gets tired.
“does it hurt?”
“do they hurt”
“what hurts?”
“are you okay?”
i hover. (it’s not hard to understand why oren prefers brian to stay overnight at the hospital with him.)
but he looks good. he really does. every new nurse we get says, “oh he’s so cute,” or “we heard this little guy was cute,” or “look at how cute he is.” he is. he’s so cute. i’m so glad that i can sit here and watch a movie with him tonight. and for some reason, i’m not even slightly upset that we’ll be here tomorrow on his birthday. i’m just so glad that we get to celebrate oren’s fourth year.
Posted on December 12th, 2009
my essay “three” that is part of my thesis, mommy’s doing pull-ups in the basement again, is published here.
woo hoo!
(though i have to say, it’s kind of anticlimactic when my work is alongside those who have had “over five hundred poems published”. well, only slightly… woo hoo! i’m published!)
Posted on November 4th, 2009
while he and seb sat together on the couch and brian and i sat working on our computers in the dining room,
“you guys can talk chothers, and we can talk chothers, cause me and seb are sitting out here on the couch drinking juice and you guys are sitting in there.”
of course, it was said sans the /r/and may read more accurately like this,
“you guys can talk to chothows, and we can talk chothows, cause me and seb aw sitting out he-ow on the couch dwinkin’ juice and guys aw sitting the-ow.”
Posted on October 15th, 2009
oi! i don’t know what i was thinking. in other years when we have climbed at rifle, we’ve had at the very least 4 days of climbing in the park. having at least 4 climbing days is necessary just to get one’s head into it. climbing on slippery limestone can be a little daunting if not frightening. so i don’t know what i was thinking when i decided that 2 days of climbing at rifle would be productive. well, i suppose it was productive, per se… i productively fell off every climb i attempted. my body was productively worked, and i was sore for a day or two, which is never a bad thing. in terms of sending, however, i was completely unproductive.
the little boys got to climb some, and my friend kathleen got some pictures of them (which we’ll need to post soon). and of course, brian posted here about it.
Posted on August 22nd, 2009
we adults have been playing this game every possible evening. we’re totally addicted and talk about the previous night’s game the next morning as if we really are settlers of catan… this may be the beginning of a d&d-type craze in our family. okay, maybe not.
Posted on August 14th, 2009
in broomfield CO for a few days now. the two days of driving it took us to get here felt … short. i’m not exactly lying through my teeth. admittedly, the end of the first day of driving at about 11p on the other side of st. louis MO seemed more like the end of the world, and we wouldn’t get to our sleeping destination for another two hours. i wanted to claw my eyes out. but after a short sleep (2a-ish until 8a-ish) in a very weird campground (that really could have been called a grass-ified parking lot), we all jumped back into our vans and made great time to broomfield.
this morning, i’m writing as evan practices piano on the baby grand that graces the living room of my oldest sister’s house (it’s her husbands house too, but i fitting all of that into the sentence didn’t sound good to me, so i’ll add it here in parentheses). after finally receiving my own piano the friday night before we left pittsburgh, i’m imagining what it will be like to play whenever i want, if i ever want to, and whether i really will. i’m also hoping that this exposure to their cousins playing will encourage seb and oren to want to play and take lessons. we’ll see… of course, i’ll need to get it tuned first.
here’s the list of things we’ve done so far:
there’s some other stuff on our agenda yet: a little mini-climbing trip to rifle sun-mon and then hopefully another jaunt into the mountains with the rest of the fam before we leave next thurs.
Posted on August 14th, 2009
i suck at painting. not artistic, pretty picture painting, although i have a feeling i could muck that up too, but your common interior wall painting. the kind of painting every other person in the whole world does on a slightly regular basis (every 5 years or so?), and oh so much better than me. i am suck-tastic at the painting, so suck-tastic that it’s like a paintball battle occurred as soon as i walked into the room and looked at the walls just to think about painting them.
alright, alright, i’m exaggerrating.
a little.
i have always been really good at coloring within the lines… all those hours during preschool and kindergarten really paid off… but i can’t for the life of me make the actual lines. specifically, i have ruined the ceiling because i can’t paint a steady line where the wall meets it. it’s such an obvious testimony to how absolutely i can’t do it right. i wouldn’t care if total strangers were going to see it, but the fact that it’s the boys’ room and all the mothers of their friends will be the ones seeing my egregious mess is completely embarassing. and then there is my father, perfectionist-painter-extraordinaire… i can’t hide it by drawing a curtain around it like i do to the bathtub since i “fixed” the chaulking. it’s just out there on that once-pristine white ceiling. (i suppose i could just call the blue splotches “clouds”.) and the other thing making it worse is that brian is awesome at the edging. so much better than me that i have designated him the top-of-the-wall edger for life, the same way i had to designate him invitation-maker for our wedding invitations even though it was my idea to make each one by hand. man, i hate being such a loser!!
Posted on July 3rd, 2009
well, i’m officially, 100% done with school. last night was the final reading for us creative writing MFA graduates. sixteen of us had our five minutes of glory, reading from our respective theses (be really careful saying this word cause if your not, it could come out sound like ‘feces’). so this is what i read:
Born to Climb
I.
Climbing rocks is like ascending a ladder, just not as obvious. Stop in between every move to look. Look up half of the time. Listen to your boyfriend, who brought you climbing, when he says to look for white chalk marks, that those will be holds for your hands. See a white mark on the rock above you. Decide that that is where to go. Hands up. Look down half of the time. Listen to your boyfriend when he says that foot holds may be smeared with black rubber from other climbers’ shoes. See little edges with black rubber marks around them. Think that there is no way your big toes will stay on those tiny scratches in the rock. Find something bigger. Feet up.When rock climbing is new to you, you often think, The bigger the holds, the better. This may be true. Some holds are so big that your whole hand can wrap around them. You hear your boyfriend calling them jugs. Jugs don’t face a uniform direction, like the rungs of a ladder would. Wonder to yourself, Jugs? Jugs of what? Jugs of water? Picture yourself pulling on big clay jars. It doesn’t quite make sense to you yet, but nevertheless, you add the word to your new mental climbing dictionary. Some holds you might pull on straight down—hear your boyfriend calling them pockets and ledges—but others face diagonally or straight up and down, and you pull on them from one side or the other—side pulls—or even from underneath—underclings. Realize how obvious these hold names really are, while you had been worried about being able to grasp complex climbing concepts. Feel relief that all the while it had been so simple. Some holds may have two sides and then you can pinch them, fingers on one side, thumb opposing on the other, squeezing. Begin to call them pinches to yourself and notice that this is what your boyfriend calls them too. Feel smart and intuitive. Grope each hold at first, eventually touching the most positive part. Grab the good part of the hold, and then your body responds and automatically adjusts its position so that balance is maintained. Consider that you may have been born to climb.
Don’t forget your feet. When you are a beginner at rock climbing, you think, The bigger the holds, the better. Jugs, pockets, ledges are features that you crave to put your feet on. Hand holds become bomber footholds. You hear other climbers saying this, bomber. Understand that what they mean is something you won’t, or shouldn’t slip from. Think, Bomber means foolproof. Practice this new vocabulary by saying, This foothold is bomber! Feel like a surfer instead of a climber and decide not to say that again.
Hear your boyfriend telling you to trust your feet, that climbing is all in your legs since they are much stronger than your arms. Know this is true. Listen to climbers who tell you that women figure this out faster than men and therefore can be better at climbing. Feel smug for a moment, if you’re a woman. Feel graceful and dancer-like. Find holds to stand on that can take all of your weight so you can look around without your weak arms getting tired. Again, at first, tap your foot here and there on a hold until it eventually feels good and solid. Think, bomber. Think, sweet spot. (Now you’re making up your own terminology.) Be aware as your body adjusts its position to find balance, as if it knew instinctively what to do all along.
Sometimes you aren’t strong enough to hold on even though your legs have most of your weight. Wonder if your legs are weak too. Fall off. Stop feeling smug while you watch your boyfriend pull up higher than you on the rock without falling, and notice that he is rather graceful himself. Tell yourself that it’s just because he’s been climbing for a few years already. Recognize the fact that climbing makes you feel strong and weak at the same time. Feel like screaming and throwing a rock at the rock. Calm down and decide that you would rather feel strong more of the time, that you want be able to hang on as long as your boyfriend. Pull back onto the rock and keep climbing. Get tired. Fall. Repeat.
II.
A year or two go by, and you and your boyfriend climb regularly. In the spring and the fall, you spend many weekends outside climbing. Sometimes you even go climbing outside when it’s raining. Now when you go, you no longer follow your boyfriend up whatever route he is doing. Now you figure out how to climb all by yourself without asking your boyfriend where to go. In fact, you think your way has become the better way.Look in the guidebook and find a route to do all by yourself. Look for moderate routes that no longer have only jugs for hand holds. Instead, some of these holds may be small, very small—a fold, a ridge or wrinkle, a shallow dish—and there is only enough room for fingertips—a whole pad, a half a pad, a quarter pad. Sometimes less. Crimp your fingers on them and pull. You know that to crimp is something you do to your fingers in order to hold on to a small feature—a fold, a ridge or wrinkle—in the face of the rock. Holds that you typically crimp are called crimpers. Find that you also use holds called slopers, cracks, flakes. Realize how obvious these terms really are, while you had worried about being able to grasp complex climbing concepts. Feel relief that all the while it had been so simple, that you understood what these words meant without having to ask your boyfriend or read a book. It suddenly dawns on you that you know how to grab a hold that you have never touched before just by the look of it, the shadow that it casts. Look less and climb faster. Think, You were born to climb.
i read without hyperventilating (but only just barely). my hands were shaking out of control. well, i actually think my entire body was on this wierd buzz thing, pre-convulsion, never really making it to that point, thank goodness.
but here’s the real kicker of the evening… i won the “best thesis in creative nonfiction” award. i have to look over at the certificate every once in a while to make sure it’s really real. crazy. good ending to my graduate student career though, eh?
Posted on May 23rd, 2009
the most important thing sebastien learned during his fifth year of life! at five-and-a-half, little seb learned how to whistle (he gives his cousin noah credit for this), and i think i can honestly say that he hasn’t ceased since. at least i always know where he is…
Posted on May 23rd, 2009