Navel Gazing (and I Don't Mean Oranges)

  • Curses

    I recorded myself for the accent vlog that everybody’s doing these days (lemming!  lemming!  find me a cliff of of which I may fling myself!), but now I can’t find the cord that transfers the video from the camera to the computer.  Nor can I find the cord that transfers our pictures.  These cords are obviously chilling somewhere together, perhaps in a not-quite-fully-unpacked suitcase, perhaps in the bottom of a reusable grocery bag, maybe in the back of some drawer.  Assuredly, however, they are not where they belong.  Curses.

  • Tune Up

    Ah, bein’ old. My old thyroid thing is acting up.  The diagnosis was just within the last year, so it makes sense that it takes time to normalize things.  It also makes sense that a GP who works at a university student health center is not the best source for treatment, even for a run of the mill issue like mine.  Next year when I’m working and have some dollaz, I’ll see an endocrinologist (I guess – is that who I’d see?) Meanwhile, in these povertous days, I’ve had a blood test, and tomorrow I go in to talk to that same (free) Student Health GP and convince him to…

  • Nine One One, One One

    Every single remembrance of nine eleven that I have ever read, I swear, begins with a description of the sky.  Clear.  Blue.  Perfect.  Cloudless.  Cerulean.  We expected some kind of warning.  Mother Nature’s failure to acknowledge the evil that loomed was a cruel trick. ************ This morning in church, we had a celebration for the director of music.  Last week marked his twenty-fifth year of service to the church, and they selected today’s 10:30 service to honor him.  He honored himself, actually, by hiring some brass and percussion players and magnificently directing them and the choir in the Rutter Gloria.   The first movement opens instrumentally, a page or two of…

  • Idyll Interrupted

    On July 15, the day after that last post, I took the boys on another amazing bike ride.  We waved at train conductors, truck drivers, and shipmates, and I marveled at how cool it is to live in a port city.  We rode for a very long time, passing dozens of cyclists, as it was a weekend.  Once we arrived home, I was about to write a post about yet another day of my life that seemed to come from the pages of a child’s picture book all about an idyllic summer.  And then Liam pushed the reset button on my computer several times in a row, and froze the…

  • Seven Qualities I Want

    I have been inspired by two favorite bloggers today: magic cookie and R.  I’ll answer magic cookie’s question first, and maybe steal R’s idea tomorrow, because I like them both, and it makes a change from talking about potty training! Magic Cookie is reading a book about thoughtful parenting.  It’s a book with which I am not familiar, but I like the exercise she pulled from it, which is to think of seven qualities you most want to see in your children when they grow up.  Having this clarity is meant help you parent them more purposefully. My first thought about this is – I wonder if my husband and…