the busy heart

Honey Dewlicious Melon And then, one morning this past week, I felt settled. I cut up a melon for breakfast, and it was in the top five most delicious melons I've ever tasted. The three of us sat at the table, eating melon (or rejecting it wholeheartedly, in the case of Henrietta) and talking. The house was in good enough shape that I cleaned up easily, without stepping around enormous boxes or having to look at a baffling mess in the living room while I did it. We had all rested. We had things to do which didn't seem like pressing emergencies in order for us to live in this place. We could just be here, working out our days in this new house with the big, green trees out our windows. The view from our bedroom window I'm not sure why exactly, but so far Alabama--the place itself--hasn't been the difficult transition I expected. It is undeniably beautiful here, which I'm sure helps. On my way to Target I pass green fields full of horses and the most incre...

We're moving to Alabama. Sam landed a job teaching at a University there. This one. The move came as a shock. I hadn't planned on moving back to the South. We'd felt inclined to move all the way out here, from Boston to Arizona, and now we were going to move back across the country? And why, exactly, had we come out here? Nothing has really worked out the way we'd hoped. In fact, many of our ideas for surviving here have outright failed. Sam began to say, "You know when I found that five-leaf clover  just before we moved? I'm thinking I found it so I'd know I was already lucky. I wish I'd known I was already lucky."  He also began to suggest we name our next child Equity Dwindle, which is rather a beautiful name, right? (No, I'm not pregnant.) If nothing else, we've learned this year. We've grown up this year. We've enjoyed being close to family. And the two of us have had time to hang with Henrietta constantly for the first ...

Golly. You know how everything is going along sort of normally and then you decide to move and chaos reigns? You don't think you'll give up every single excess thing you usually do, but it turns out you severely underestimated the moving beast. Moving is a beast, right? And it's a bummer because I have all of these things I've meant to tell you, posts that flit into my head and flit back out again when I crash for the night without having written them. So here is a brief report on all of the ones I can remember. *A few weeks ago we got ourselves bamboozled into an in-home presentation from an earnest and awkward vacuum salesman. Even now I keep thinking of him carrying these little filthy filters--round white circles black with dirt--over to us very carefully, like the dirt was sacred. He did this half a dozen times--on our carpeted stairs, on our couch ottoman. He told us about bugs that live in our bed and feast on our dead skin. He told us if he vacuumed o...

On a Friday a month or so ago, Sam and I were driving to the art museum in Worcester. It was sunny and glorious outside, and we were talking, again, about Sam's dread for the coming school year. He's been on paternity leave, as I've mentioned, but he's dreaded the end of that leave every single day, and we've discussed his dread most days. The job is a bad fit for a number of reasons, few of which I'm interested in going into here. We thought that a move closer to the school would help (his commute was horrendous previously), but it hasn't, so as we talked, driving along, I said what I had started to say when this subject came up, "Don't go back then. We'll figure something out. Don't go back." Prior to that Friday, this would lead to some circling around the possibilities, and end with one of us saying, "No, it'll never work. We can't do it. We'll stay one more year and see how it goes. It's bound to get better....

Today marks three weeks we've been living in a hotel room.  While we've been here, the weather has turned to a delicious Autumn theme, which would be so much more charming if we had packed our sweaters and coats and rainboots.  Three weeks was not the plan, but it's how it turned out.  Tomorrow, hopefully, maybe, possibly, we'll actually move into our new place.  Maybe.  Possibly.  I feel like the girl who cried house.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up about it, but this morning my brain woke me up at four and immediately commenced imagining every room of that house, everything I'm excited to unpack and put somewhere, the shopping trips we'll need to take to get a few rugs and pieces of furniture.  Can you blame me for being excited?  It's been a long haul with a fair amount of hopelessness and the most absurd collection of absurd happenings I've ever experienced in a three week stretch.  Observe ...

                                                          [present house, fireplace guys] We move tomorrow afternoon, and this morning I took one last run through our little neighborhood.  I saw a family of wild turkeys (?), a mama and two baby turkeys, on the side of the road as if waiting for a bus.  We've loved our neighborhood, and not for the wildlife, since that's rare, but because it's just beautiful here.  And on my run I was thinking about all that's happened here in the last year.  A lot, that's what.  So much that it doesn't feel like there's time to go into detail before I go to work, but work is part of it.  Sam and I weathered the bad job situation here....

Moving in Boston is very strange business. Word on the street is that 1/3 of the state moves on Sept 1st, and judging by what it's been like the last few days, another third moved over the weekend. Think narrow streets clogged with moving trucks, sweaty college students hauling boxes and lamps and sometimes chairs and bookcases and couches (!) across busy intersections, and mounds of castoffs lining the sidewalks. Tonight I was introduced to another piece of moving culture when I noticed women pushing carts and strollers down the sidewalks, digging through the mounds of garbage and claiming what looked good. It's like grown up trick or treating. While I was moving the last load out to the car, a little girl in a stroller kept shouting "bangBANGbang" and shooting me with a toy gun her mother plucked out for her. When I saw them a little later, she had big hulk gloves on--you know the ones I mean? So I guess it's sort of kids trick or treating, too. But that...

I've become increasingly aware that I never really talk about reading or writing on this blog--the stuff I'm doing and thinking and teaching about all the time, or whenever I get a chance. This seemed like a problem. But it just didn't come naturally for me to talk about it here. So ... time for another blog. This one you have in front of you will still cover everyday sort of happenings--my cats, my husband, outings and excurions and cookie-driven angst. But hopefully on the other one I will I'll post bits I've read that have struck me, stuff from podcasts and audiobooks I like, links to literary journals, maybe even stuff I'm writing. It's called picking up handfuls of birds , from a line by Herbert I've had on my sidebar here. In case you don't get the birds, I'll post the entire poem over there at some point, and perhaps that will illuminate. Anyway, happy Sunday. See you at the other blog, if you feel so inclined.

Before I explain, a plug for a girl I'm not afraid of: Tia, my niece. She is certainly one of the most elegant, intelligent, articulate females I know. Seriously. And now she has an etsy shop. So, go here . And buy a thing, if you like. Pretty stuff, no? Also, my sister just found out she's having a baby girl. I'm not afraid of that girl either. (Although, I think my sister might be. She had her heart set on a family of boys.) Anyway, this one time, last year, I was in the Dallas airport having some lunch and waiting for a plane. I was by myself and therefore earnestly eavesdropping on the phone conversation 9f the girl next to me. This girl was telling someone (a girlfriend), in perfect detail, the events of her evening the night before. I mean, this was thorough reporting. Something about noisy roommates and moving boxes. I don't really remember. But I do remember how it felt to follow her conversation. And how I thought, wow, someone is really willing to listen to...

What is UP with car-getting? Why is it such a gosh-darn pain to be a grownup? I mean, the plan today was just to jet over to the DMV to get the license, then dash into Manny's Auto Center to get my cute vehicle. And yet. Here it is, 5pm, and I'm still carless. Talk about your all day. Can't we simplify things, World? Why so many papers to sigh over and sign? Shouldn't there just be one all-inclusive pass that says I'm buying a dang car, I scrawl my new-fangled signature (do you know how trixy it is to switch last names? to remember ones new identity 78 thousand times?) and I drive off into the sunset? Okay, anyway, a piece of advice: When the car dealer man, Harry, insists that you try some odd object that he's calling a "chicken strip," don't do it. Just don't do it. Tell him you've never been so full.

I was on Ikea.com today, dreaming of how I will furnish my apartment when I move to Boston. I fell in love with the bed you see above. Truth be told, I don't even know if I like the bed that much. I'm probably more into the style of the bed below; that one looks like the bed of a modern woman. But that's the secret: I don't want to be a modern woman. I want to be a princess. I want to be six-years-old. I like the thought of froofy billowing fabric draped from the top of the four-poster. When I was in the midst of going back and forth between the two beds, my dad came to tell me that my cat, Sprout (whom you see below), had jumped on the roof. He said she had barely made it up in the first place: jumped from the porch railing, caught the corner of the rain gutter and had to claw the rest of way with her front paws. When i came out she was looking over the edge, terrified. My dad got a ladder and I climbed it, tugged her off. I thought she would claw my face off, b...

I'm in Texas, sitting on a hotel bed, having completed the first leg of my voyage home to Utah for the summer. Sam and I didn't get on the road until one this afternoon; we ran into snafus all morning: My laptop AND cell phone broke and then magically repaired themselves by the time I took them in to be fixed. (Thanks to prayer, I reckon.) We miscommunicated regarding some boxes, which left me in the Hattiesburg post office, trying to lift 67-pound boxes of my stuff, with this woman who kept calling me " shoog " (as in, first syllable of sugar) and dropping my precious packaged possessions into a deep bin in the back. So long, Grandma's rippled blue drinking glasses. (Yes, I know. Shouldn't have packaged them anyway. I was desperate and delirious by the end of packing--throwing out everything: cat food, sweaters, pillows, vacuum cleaners. Chaotic heartbreak.) Anyway, rough morning. Then, a few hours out, my check engine light went on. We drove through Shreve...

I begin with the beach. After I was all graduated, I headed down to the Alabama coast with the folks and Meesha. Oh, it was gorgeous. White sand, blue sky, lots of seafood. (See photo of my delicate, dignified mother cracking a huge crableg.) We walked on the beach, then read books, then ate, walked on the beach, read books, ate, then did it all over again. We did manage to squeeze in a dolphin cruise, so I'll include one of that, too. All of our attempts to capture the actual dolphins on film are pretty disappointing, so I'll spare you. So, I graduated. My dissertation committee chair, Angela Ball, stood on this little grey box and hooded me. That was really weird, by the way. Felt ... I don't know, odd. Like I was joining a cult. Sixteen other peop le graduated with their PhDs, but they were serious folks and they looked very accomplished, and all in all I just felt like a puppy. I was taking pictures of Sam making smoochy faces while wearing his cap sideways, and they we...

Okay, okay, I give in. Here. I'm blogging. See? I'm blogging! Look at me blog! Tomorrow's my very last day of classes for my PhD. Insert nostalgic sigh here. I've been going to school for twenty-nine thousand years, and as the last of it ebbs away, I don't quite feel like weeping for the loss of it. I feel the world edging open, like, like ... I'm out of metaphors. I can't even metaphor anymore, that's how tapped out I am. But it's part of that unmetaphored edging that leads me here, to a blog. It may be time to announce myself. And while I worry my life won't be entertaining enough to merit frequent posts, I'm going to do my best. For starters, look at Pierre the Penguin. Pierre the Penguin is twenty-five--same age as me, come to think of it. And Pierre, who lives at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, was losing his feathers. His penguin buddies were picking on him, and he couldn't swim be cause he got too cold without ...