Yearly Archive: 2010

14
Aug
2010

STARS & (ZIGZAGGY) STRIPES

Two days ago we had a rattle-bang thunderstorm come and sit on our heads right as evening was falling. Karin is scared of thunder, though I think part of it is just attention-getting, and I keep trying to coax her out of it, because thunderstorms are, mostly, awesome (in the true sense of the word), even when they’re frightening. The thunder kept rumbling and the lightning kept flashing up around the house like an enormous strobe light. Karin and I got blankets and went out on the porch. We moved the two chairs together, facing each other, and then she...

10
Aug
2010

AND ONE TO GROW ON!

So, THAT was a good birthday! Woken to roses, singing, hugs and presents: everything I wished for and then some! Martin got me a silver book bead for my Pandora bracelet. Karin gave me the latest Katie Melua CD, and together they gave me an ACTUAL box of rocks, which cracked me up completely because whenever one of the kids EVER, in all their lives, asks what they’re getting for their birthday/christmas/gift-receiving-holiday, the answer I invariably give them is “a box of rocks.” They even made the box themselves! My kids are great. And Anders? Even greater. He took my...

08
Aug
2010

NOT WATCHING, BUT NOTICING*

It’s been raining most of the day. On and off, harder and softer as if it can’t make up its mind or its intensity, but it doesn’t stop for long. In the street the raindrops make small white circles for a split second as they smack into the asphalt. It’s like watching an animation: vertical white streaks, then small sudden circles. The street is shiny and black except where the rain lands. Sometimes it rains so hard it bounces, even off the grass—the impact makes a mist rise and hover off the ground. On the back deck, which is slick...

07
Aug
2010

BOUQUET BREAK

Despite being late in the summer, things are still blooming around here, both inside and outside. I have pelargoniums in the pots outside, most of them extravagantly fuchsia, some red, and the roses keep popping up and blowing open with beauty. The lavender is almost done but the bees don’t seem to have gotten the message. We don’t have a lot of flowering plants otherwise in our yard/garden…mostly I subscribe to greenery that comes back every year and except for the lungwort and the stonecrop I haven’t had a lot of luck with flowering perennials. I fill the pots in...

05
Aug
2010

THE KIDS OF SUMMER

Martin’s eyes squinch up when he smiles so that they nearly disappear; mine do the same thing. I must have taken a dozen shots of them from one side and the other and I couldn’t get any of him with his eyes open and smiling simultaneously. This is the summer when Martin suddenly shot up and caught up to me in height; he’ll have passed me before the equinox. This is the summer when my feet became the smallest in the family. The summer when Martin’s voice dropped an octave and Karin started putting her hair up with barrettes and...

02
Aug
2010

THAT TODDLING TOWN

Pulse and passion, verdant parks and sweltering sidewalks, every restaurant a delight, every face a smiling or interesting one. This place is in my blood, in my bones, in my dreams. Turning to my husband, the sun beating down on our heads, the buzz and thrum of Navy Pier behind us and the blue of the lake stretching out as far as the eye can see: blue blue blue with white dots of sails, of clouds, of whitecaps, and saying, “Can’t we move back? Don’t you want to move back?” I do. O! I do. Cracking Me Up: The Problem...

31
Jul
2010

CORKED

A whole week goes by, not even in a flash, and I think about writing but I don’t. I read a book, and then another, and I nap, or play a computer game or clean or run errands. I cleaned the fish tank and bought fish. I picked up the kids from the swimming pool. I bought new late-summer flowers for the pots and dead-headed the baby roses. I even went for a couple of walks and I updated my books-to-buy list and my library inventory and I talked to my mom and wrote emails and went to sushi night,...

27
Jul
2010

GALLINIPPERS & GOLLYWHOPPERS SURE SOUNDS BETTER THAN SLUGS & SNAILS

I am such a slug. If I was any sluggier, I’d have tentacles and leave a trail of slime behind me as I VERY SLOWLY slithered about. In order to check to see if there were any usefully named parts of a slug for the previous sentence, I was forced to google “parts of a slug” and now I’m all icked out. I’ve been on Wikipedia a lot lately; Google consistently leads me there. I learned the other day, just by random chance, that the bugs I have always called Daddy Longlegs are not, in fact, a Daddy Longlegs spider....

24
Jul
2010

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE

I tend to like photos of people and faces better than things and places. My husband and my daughter both take photos of things around them: a flower, an interesting statue, the city skyline, someone’s dog; not me. I DO take photos of flowers and trees and such, when I’m out walking or when it’s springtime and everything is blowing my mind with its beauty, but usually it’s the photos of friends and family that I want to have to remember vacations and trips and happenings by. My sister’s son, Bryce in his summer ‘do. Second cousins once removed: Martin,...

20
Jul
2010

PLAYING WHILE TRIPPING

When I was growing up, we went on a lot of road trips. We had a huge purple* station wagon first, and then a big wood-paneled brown one that we came to call The Bomb. We 3 kids sat in the back seat, and sometimes (it being the 70s), one of us would be lying in the very back, or sometimes on the floor in front of the back seat. Road trips are very boring, if you are not well-prepared and if you have the type of family that doesn’t entertain itself by bursting into frequent song. My dad and...

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