the busy heart

Photo Source.   (We didn't take a single photo. It seemed like taking a picture of a holy moment, or a car accident. So here is a blue jay who is not ours, but is also lovely.) We recently watched our neighbors--a nice retired couple with chickens and a gorgeous garden--build an elaborate net structure around their bushes to keep birds and squirrels out. It was like a room for their blueberries, made of net. Since then I've seen birds fly into it, glancing off one way or another as the netting pushed back.  But last evening, as Henrietta and I hung out in the backyard while Sam finished dinner, I realized the bird by the blueberries didn't fly away, though he tried. And then I realized he was somehow inside the structure, flying against it from the inside again and again, getting more frantic each time.  "Birdie stuck?" Henrietta asked.  "Birdie stuck," I said. "Let's go tell Hank and Linda." I carried her on my hip an...

At two, she seems poised on the edge of knowing, of actually meeting and growing curious about the planet. Sometimes now she seems so much like an alien: by which I mean, not yet of this world. She's the most gorgeous and funny alien I've ever met. On the morning of her birthday, I talked to her as we walked, pointing out all of the important stuff: trees, leaves, squirrels, the colors of cars and houses and flowers. She participated, repeating the words she knew (tree! sqwrrl! car car car!) and asking, occasionally, "What's that?" She asked that once when we passed an animal smashed in the road, and I said, "Oh, that's nothing, nothing." And kept strolling. I don't have to introduce her to that part yet. Please don't make me introduce her to that just yet. My heart was full of her two-ness as we walked. I carried all of the days of our acquaintence around with me, and I felt sure I would weep at something. But it wasn't the dead c...

As I made the two of us a smoothie, I noticed it began to rain. It was only sprinkling, but I rushed Henrietta out to the back porch, both of us still in our pajamas, telling her we needed to save the sidewalk chalk before it disintegrated. I picked up the thick sticks of chalk--already a little damp-- piled them in a bucket, and set it down inside the back door. When I turned around, Henrietta had climbed up into a patio chair, and was looking up at the rain. I pulled up another chair, and we sat together. It was gorgeous out, mild and misty and so quiet we could hear the sound of rain falling on the tall trees in our back yard. Henrietta was barefoot, and a bit concerned about the leaf debris on the bottoms of her feet. "Help! Help!" she said, showing me. And I did my best to brush them clean. She wore her jammies with the ballerinas on them, and a grey and black faux fur vest which she's recently become obsessed with and insists on wearing at all times. I loved her...

Yesterday, Sam and Henrietta and I went downtown to the Tucson Museum of Art, and we found a little pocket of downtown Tucson that felt like a real downtown. It wasn't just a sad whisper of Boston, but a genuinely hip part of Tucson with green space and cool restaurants. This was exciting. We looked up at the few high-rise apartment buildings and imagined living right around there, in walking distance to interesting shops and cafes and parks. We were walking down the block, trying to find a place we'd heard about with good reviews and good prices for dinner, and Henrietta was holding my hand. She's taken to holding my hand lately, really holding it. Her hand is so small, and she grips mine like I matter more than I sometimes suspect I do. I hold on tight, in case she decides to dart away, but she's not interested in running off (yet). She's happy to walk right with me, connected to me, seeing the world pass by on the sidewalk. In the crook of her other arm she...

Henrietta has been sick. She's happy, for the most part. It's not the miserable sort of listless sick. She's just had stomach trouble. Explosions in her diaper. Horrifying puddles on the floor. You see what I'm saying here? It's lasted a couple of weeks, as her pediatrician told us it would, and though at first I was surprised by how cool I was with it, it has begun to get old. I'm ready for that sort of event to not  punctuate our days, and I'd really like to take her places without worrying she'll pass illness to every kid in a mile radius of the park. One night last week, Sam and I both had trouble sleeping. I was up late working on a freelance project, and after that I couldn't settle my brain down. It was nearly three in the morning when I finally fell asleep, and just after three in the morning when Henrietta woke me up, crying. Or actually, it was Sam who woke me up, saying she'd been crying on and off for fifteen minutes, and maybe we...

I woke up this morning to the insane news in Boston and spent the day hearing about places not far from our old house mentioned on the news, and receiving updates from friends via Facebook. Stuck inside, they reported eerie silence aside from near-constant sirens and circling helicopters. Some had law enforcement run through their backyards carrying machine guns. Some had them knock on their door and ask to search every room. The suspects lived a few blocks from friends of ours. One of them attended the community college Sam used to teach at. Right now we're listening to reports of police zeroing in on a house that's a two minute drive from our old place. I've been thinking of Boston all week, feeling like I couldn't possibly speak to what happened, not directly. That all I could really do is speak of my little corner of it, while acknowledging what a very small corner it was-- which is what I tried to do on Monday , but it didn't sit right with me, didn't fee...

Usually the mean voice in my head shows up in the evening, when it's almost time for bed. And I start to despair and say really hopeless things, and Sam has to practice remembering that I don't actually think they're true , I'm just exhausted. And exhaustion manifests so much like sadness, for me. But today she showed up much earlier, while I was getting dressed for the day. I went to get a dress from my wardrobe, and I told Sam, "The mean voice in my head came out early today." "Did she? What's she saying?" he said. "Do you really want to know? Like, what she's actually trying to tell me?" "Sure," he said. "In the last two minutes, she's said the following: My thighs are disgusting. I'm a worthless human because I haven't vacuumed yet. I should stop blogging because it doesn't matter anyway, it's not really writing. I have neglected to mail x and scan and email y and write to z, and I...

Not the first, and not nearly as wide as the first, but close to the first smile of the morning. (P.S. Aren't humidifiers beautiful?) Sometimes in the early morning, when it's clear that Henrietta is not interested in sleeping in her crib any longer, I bring her into bed with me in hopes of getting a bit more sleep. She nurses while I try to doze, and eventually she nods off too. After awhile she wakes up and wants to nurse again, and I help her latch, and this time she's ready to be awake for the day. This is how I know she's ready: she pulls off,  and when I look down to see why, and she's smiling at me. It's my favorite smile of the day. Later smiles are silly and squirmy, but this one is quiet. It's wide and deeply content. She's a strange little creature then, a bald and armless green glowworm in her swaddle. In another context, I'd be sure an alien was sucking the life from me, smiling maliciously. But it melts me when she smiles that ...

photo by the lovely and talented jen gibson, at London Bridge Creative I'm not beautiful. I mean, I'm not ugly. My looks do nicely enough. But I'm not drop-your-jaw and turn-your-head, look me up and down, holy wow, how-is-that-creature-walking-this-earth?, sort of pretty. I'm okay with that. I don't think I'd like being that kind of beautiful. It appears to be sort of a hassle. Lately though, I feel like I'm getting a taste of what it might feel like to be that beautiful, though the attention I garner is in its most innocent form: I have a beautiful baby. She turns heads. Or maybe it's just that I have a baby, a little baby. And though she absolutely is beautiful, there's something about her being a baby--any baby at all--that softens the world, makes it turn and coo and exclaim and comment. I walk into a store, and an older woman holds the door open for me, exuding sympathy for my awkward maneuvering, as if she's momentarily pr...

We eat a lot of kale around here. Tonight we sauteed it using more or less this method , then put it over rice and pinto beans with a bit of sour cream, and, friends, it was an awesome meal. Lately, about once a week, I make an enormous kale salad, and, miraculously, it lasts and lasts. The salad I make is inspired by this one . I stay pretty true to it, but I'll walk you through what I do, because, seriously, if you want masses of veggies to get inside of your body, this is a salad worth making. Let me back up to say I recently went through a phase of thinking I didn't like salad at all. I was perpetually disappointed when ordering them at restaurants, and though there were some salads that other folks made that had me heaping my plate high, I couldn't seem to figure out what the common denominator was, and I was getting discouraged. And you know what I think? I think I love salad, but I'm extremely picky. And one thing that will kill it for me faster than anyth...

Greetings, Earthlings. We're developing a routine, the lady and I. Would you like to hear a slice of it? Though she wakes up at various earlier points, she's generally ready to join the world around eight, and she cries to say so, and I creep into her bedroom and peer over the side of her crib, where she's flopping around like a green fish in her green swaddle. And at some point in her flopping and wailing she'll see me standing there, and she'll stop, and she'll look up at me and grin and flex her legs in joy--the full-body smile, my dad calls it. Obviously this is the most significant world event of the morning, this smile. I scoop her up and feed her and change her and pick out her outfit--another favorite task--and bring her down to the kitchen. She kicks and talks to me (so to speak) from her throne--a baby seat I put up on the kitchen island--and I tell her about the day ahead, talking her through the ingredients of my green smoothie and details o...

Our fourth wedding anniversary was at the end of July, right around when I hit 28 weeks. And behold! A dress still fit me!  We went out to dinner at a place we'd heard about called Craigie on Main, and it was a lovely meal. The weird part: One of their specials was pig's head. As in, the entire pig's head. We asked about it, mostly out of horror (we're both latent vegetarians, I think), and the waitress commenced telling us all about it--how they'd cut it in half for us, how everything was so tasty and we could eat all of it--the ears and the cheeks and the on an on. I think Sam held up his hand for her to stop. And we didn't order the pig's head. But we had a lovely time. Here we are, across the table from each other, clearly in love.

So, here I am, against all predictions, still pregnant. I'm 36 and a half weeks now, which just blows my mind. And she shows no sign of imminent arrival. I mean, I'm uncomfortable. Really, profoundly uncomfortable most of the time. It's a little absurd. And there have been some scares with low fluid and contractions and the like, but everything is pretty much fine now, aside from the fact that she's stubbornly breech. They're going to try to turn her next week, which will apparently be an incredibly painful procedure. But hey, if it turns her around, it's worth it, right? (Right?!!) Anyway, way back when we were worried she wouldn't even make it 28 weeks, some dear and lovely friends ( Russanne , Emily , Sarah) threw me a shower. Since I was on bed rest, they did it at my house, and the loyal Russanne came and cleaned up the place and decorated while I sat on the couch. This was only slightly awkward, since I so longed to help. But Russanne is an absol...

Me+Baby at 20 Weeks This is basically the only pregnant picture of me that exists. At least the only belly shot. And it's sort of a pathetic belly shot anyway, right? I mean, I told you I'm not really showing. And wow, looking at it really confirms that fact that I'm just looking chubby. But hey, someday I'll be glad we took it. Perhaps. Right? I had Sam take this right before my 20 week ultrasound, the one where they found my shortened cervix and sent me straight to bed rest, do not pass go; do not collect two hundred dollars. I worked from home that morning, finished up a memo summarizing a meeting, sent it out, and we had lunch on our way to the appointment. And part of what amuses me endlessly about this picture is that I'm actually not holding onto the baby at all. Did you know this? That babies ride much lower for most of the pregnancy? That if I actually held onto what is baby, you would think I was obscene? So here I am, clutching my smushed internal ...

Emily Dickinson House and Museum Last fall Sam and I drove to Western Mass to visit Emily Dickinson's house . I'm slightly (okay, really) obsessed with her. We stayed in a Bed and Breakfast in Petersham, drove to Amherst, paid for the full tour (an hour and a half of Emily magic!) and I basically cried through the entire thing. My reaction sort of surprised me. I held it together okay, but if I would have been alone, I would have really been wailing. I think a lot about that day with Sam. I was pregnant then, which is probably why it's stuck with me. It seemed like the only time we were out and about with that news, wholely happy and clear about it. Even then there were some signs we would lose the pregnancy, but it felt, to me, like we were both clinging to it, grateful to even be where we were as briefly as we would be there.  And I don't know how to explain my tears other than that. I was emotional anyway, an...

When I wear this hat, I somehow feel like a little brown bear. It changes my personality, makes me milder. (I guess I'm thinking teddy bear, not actual bear.) Is it silly? I don't even care if it's silly. It pleases me. I once got a compliment on this hat, shouted out at me by a hipster Harvard student. "Excellent hat!" he said, as I crossed the street, headed for the giant Anthropologie. That was a pretty good moment. As was apple picking last weekend. Simple little orchard about an hour away from our house. And the day was just right for it--a bit crisp. And the yellow of these trees is just what I love about a New England fall. We came home with two enormous bags full, and we're making steady progress. Apples with every meal! Baked apples! Crisped apples! Apples! Apples! Apples!   

Sometime earlier this year, I got an email from Tyler Chadwick, who asked if he could include several of my poems in Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets , to which I said, um, yes yes you may. The book is out now, and I just got my contributor's copy this week, and I have to say that it's beautiful.  I don't mean that my poems are beautiful, I mean the book itself, as an object, is gorgeous.  If you're so inclined to see what's going on in contemporary Mormon poetry (and how could you not be?! ;), I recommend this book.  On a related note, if you're more interested in seeing what Mormon fiction is up to (and again, how could you not be?! I hope it's clear I'm kidding ...mostly), Dispensation: Latter-day Fiction was a great read.  In all seriousness, I can say that Mormon Literature goes well beyond Jack Weyland.  There's some really good stuff out there.  If you're interested in recommendations, shoot me an email.

I got an iPad some time back, and I am loving it.  But I needed some kind of cover for it.  There's a little special cover that they sell with them, but it flops open if it's in your bag, and I can't have that , so I was using a plastic gallon-size ziploc, and thinking I would have to buy another cover and thinking it was going to cost me 40 bucks or something to get a decent one, and then it hit me: I sew!  I know how to do that thing.  And I have fabric that I fell in love with sometime back and haven't put to use.  And 30 minutes later, I had an iPad case.  I can't describe how happy this made me.  To have a problem, and to have made my own solution and carried it out and had it be pretty to boot.  I kept walking around my house saying, "I made a thing!  I made a thing!" and Sam kept saying, "Yep, you sure did."  It was a happy evening. I took pictures.  And Sprouty insisted on modeling.  She is the queen.  We mu...

I've been thrifting lately, too.  If you come to visit me (and well you should!) I will take you to some gems.  A friend took me once and I am hooked.  Absolutely hooked.  If I could, I would go every stinking day.  I feel my insides get sort of restless and look around and say, isn't it thrift-o-clock yet?  Don't we need more vintage skirts?  Don't we don't we? I mean, I found Prada shoes, my friends.  Prada.  And a long wool bright fushia pink skirt that will be my best friend come winter.  And and and.  Lots of stuff.  When you get rid of your entire wardrobe because of its too-big-ish-ness, you need some new threads.  And buying all those new threads, even on the cheap at my usual cheap joints, is pricey.  Which is why I'm into four dollar shirts.  And seven dollar dresses.  (If those prices seem high for thrifted stuff, remember we are in Boston, after all. Those prices are miracle...

There once was a shirt.  It looked like this: It grew too big for me.  Much too big.  But I liked the pattern so much--look at those delightful, firework-y bursts of white!--that I saved and saved it, thinking I must someday do something with it. Yesterday, I did something.  Before work I took that gathered bottom of the shirt and turned it into the top of a skirt.  This was very exciting.  I used the sleeves to give it a bit more length, at which point I had the following:  [I'm shy about the pictures, so I'm posting the awkward ones ...] Not too bad, eh?  I rather liked how it turned out.  I may have gone a bit crazy adding color, but I'm having way too much fun to tone things down.  The skirt is actually just the top piece.  I also made the little lacey petticoat type skirt over the weekend, which is what's underneath here.  I've been wearing it under skirts and dresses that are just a...