I keep meaning to write, but when I look up from whatever it is I am currently working on so I can cross it off my to-do list, it’s after 10 and I need to go to bed. I keep meaning to read, but that darn to-do list squeezes out new items when I’m not looking and grows again. I keep meaning to get things done, but first I have to do this, and before this, I have to do that, and before that, well, let’s just say that it squeezes in both directions. Every time I looked out the...
So much for NaBloPoMo this year…it’s already the fourth and there’s no way I’ll manage now, especially with going to London for 3 days this week. What’s on my mind lately? So much disjointed stuff, that I really feel as if I have no control over anything. Work has been so completely crazy that I can’t decide if I’m more relieved or stressed to be gone for 3 days this week. Last week, since the kids were on fall break, and I didn’t have to drive anyone home from school, I ended up working late every night. Thursday I worked...
I’m down to the last few things to do with the diminished boxes of Lego left on the dining room table, but I have to admit I’ve been a little obsessed fascinated with trying to figure out what sets the pieces we have left might belong to. Several of our pieces are really old, from the 60s and 70s and a few are only inventoried in a couple of esoteric sets that neither Anders nor I remember having had, so we can’t figure out where they came from to begin with. Martin picked up at least 3 or 4 bags...
Another sign I’m getting old…oh hell, who am I kidding…just one of many in the seemingly endless rank of signs that I am getting old: When we arrived in Boston and took the shuttle over to the car rental place, after completing the paperwork, I was handed my contract and told that my car was in space B18 with the keys in it. We found the car, a compact little Ford Fiesta in bright blue and threw our suitcases into the truck. But upon getting into the car, we discovered the “keys”, which it took us a moment to find,...
I haven’t written about the hay bales and how they glow like giant golden random bocce balls in the fields. Or how the fields themselves have gone from rippling oceans of thigh-high grasses to overturned, churned chocolate earth. I haven’t written about how time has speeded up again and thrown me full-speed into autumn even though the trees have yet to turn. I haven’t written about the rosy color across Karin’s cheeks from days spent on the soccer field and the funny conversations Martin and I keep having. I haven’t written about how upset I was over the hackity haircut...
OMG halfway through August and where have I been? Busy busy busy and obviously not writing. I haven’t even been online that much though I have tried to keep up with reading as much as I can. Kicking back into work routine has consumed most of my mental energy and what hasn’t been occupied with that has been eaten by Lego. No, still not done. I will never be done. Last night, Martin and I went out with sweatshirts and mittens and blankets to lie on the trampoline and watch for shooting stars. It was super clear as I drove...
There’s a new book out that I just saw going by as I was skimming my RSS feed. It’s titled You Are Good at Things. I didn’t stop to read anything more about it because it sounds suspiciously like a self-help book and I can’t be bothered. I have never been interested in self-help books; mostly they strike me as a bunch of glurge aimed at ridding your gullible pocket of several dollars that you could have saved by using your head. Self-help snob, much? Anyway, in that split second that it took the title to register in my brain,...
I haven’t been wanting to come here and write. I haven’t been wanting to write anywhere. It’s spring, and the sun is shining nearly every day and the sky is blue and the crocus are up and the daffodils are coming and I don’t know what is wrong with me. I’m lethargic and grumpy and full of something that smells suspiciously like despair. It’s completely idiotic, and I know it, but for whatever reason, it keeps overpowering me. I feel old and slow and uncool and worried and tired and fat and helpless to make others happy. So. Here’s what...
Some days I can’t settle at all and others that’s all I seem to be doing. I look at the backs of my hands and think how much smoother they used to be. The crosshatching has always been there; I remember it clearly yet it seems so much more prominent now. The knuckles knobblier, the grooves …groovier. I still bear, here and there, the tiny white scars of cat scratches from long-ago, they’ve faded a great deal. The veins, on the other hand, are not fading, quite the opposite. My hands are still smooth, but not when they are bent...
Did you see the moon smiling at us tonight as it rose tonight? I wonder what it saw that made it so happy? The sky was so clear and black and spangled with stars and that cheshire-moon grinning down. If he’da had fingers, he’da snapped ’em! The other day at work, one of the product marketing managers came over to ask me what the correct measurement term in English was to use for a length that was longer than feet but not into miles. “Yards,” I said, “Football fields are measured in yards, and that’s a long distance,” but then...