Juno has the emotional range of an 88-key grand piano. It is large and it is loud except when it is meek, and squeaky. Her emotions strike chords, beautiful ones that you didn’t know existed. Her ‘happy’ is loud and bouncy, staccato and ebullient. She babbles around middle C most of the day, before going full Beethoven when you take away her yogurt (which, yes, it’s crusting her hair into dreadlocks, it’s under her fingernails, it’s clinging to her face for dear life no matter how many passes you do with a baby wipe) too soon.
The 900 Point Turn
Posted onThis morning, I found myself locked in a turn so tight, it needed basically 900 points to get myself out of it; and that still didn’t even do the trick. Jeremy’s new car and I are having some growing pains. Its turn radius is different than our handy dandy 2007 CRV, and it has all these fancy features that feel rather restrictive. For instance, it won’t let you back up over your neighbor’s recycling bin that’s got you locked in the 900 point turn from hell, even if you really really want to. Instead, it just halts the car abruptly with a ping that makes you more irate because someone is telling you no while you really just want to say yes, YES IN THIS MOMENT I DO ACTUALLY WANT to plow over my neighbor’s recycling bin, send debris into the collective alleyway, ruin relationships with my neighbors forever, and dent the new effing car. Damn this smart car for denying me this freedom.
Juno Moon
Posted onI put dinosaur decals all over Hudson’s walls at Christmas-time. I actually wondered if they might scare him, and made sure to put only herbivores close to his bed. The ROI has been minimal, particularly since we recently put an offer on a house down the street, and if anything, the decals probably distracted from this home’s showings.
My recent C-section and the immediately subsequent birth of our daughter, Juno, has kept me largely bound to the top floor of the house we just sold, so I was there when Hudson recently announced with utter glee that when you turn the lights off in his room, the “dinos move a little!”
Barraged, but Not Under Siege
Posted onHudson, age 3.75, is currently fixated on being “the good guy.” He suits up with imaginary bows and arrows, sticky splats, and “shooters” (his workaround because I don’t like guns) and goes to imaginary battle with all ranges of bad guys all day long.
For the Average Person Living Exceptionally Hard History
Posted onOne time, too late, I tried to ask my grandmother with dementia what it was like to live during WWII. Either because of her imperfect memory or mine, I don’t remember her having much to say about it, except, “oh well, times were tough.”
“Love Matters”
Posted onBefore I got married, I’d never said “I love you” to someone who didn’t choose me.
And for years into mine and Jeremy’s marriage, the words didn’t tumble out organically when speaking to my in-laws.
Let me be clear. I always liked my in-laws a lot. And in some ways, I had the privilege of choosing them where they really only had the option to accept me.
Tired Conversations
Posted onI’m not a victim of gun violence any more or less than we all are.
Maybe It’s Not the Moment to Slip into my Itty Bitty Box.
Posted onMaybe it’s not the moment to slip into my itty bitty box.
If you read my last post, you know that I’m currently grappling with the intellectual quandary of my own voice. It’s not that I don’t have things to say; it’s just that there are so many of me saying the same thing, and how valuable is that? Or how valuable is one voice with imperfect knowledge? How valuable is one with a spotted record?
Voice in the Void
Posted onThis wasn’t supposed to be some artsy photoshoot. It actually lacked any intentionality. I don’t even know what a lip mask is for, really—it just came in my FabFitFun box, and I put it on obediently so that, you know, beauty could happen.
It is coincidental at best that I am wearing a lip mask that presents me from speaking while I have been shaking out my bedsheets, trying to find where my voice is hiding. I’ve been thumbing through the pages of literature, like Peter Pan looking for his shadow. Scrolling online to see if my voice is lurking on a like button.
It isn’t.
Hibernating
Posted onThis morning, as soon as our nanny arrived to take Hudson, I made my Friday march down to my basement office, wadded up a hoodie for a pillow, and decided to sleep on the floor.x No, I wasn’t booting up my computer and reviewing my incoming emails, but I felt like, through the absence of actual work, my proximity to work might be enough. Maeby, who is unaccustomed to me being quite so literally on her level, responded gamely—gamely in the sense that she flopped right beside me so her whiskers could twitch against my cheeks while we both tried to rest.