Living in New England = Seeing My Friends!

About two weeks ago, I went to the Cape for four days to hang out with Kate and crew while Lisa was in New York. Much fun (and some insanity) was had. Observe:

Kate and I on the whale watching expedition, pre-feeling pukey. The ride out was great, the ride back was fine. The sitting still while the waves tossed us about? Not so much. Even talking about it later still made us queasy. But at least we saw a few whales!


Loek in the new shirt I brought for him. I also brought them homemade chocolate chip cookies, but Gus helped himself to those.


A really cool big sailboat thingy (I'm sure that's the technical term) we saw while riding the ferry back from the Vineyard. It was just so New England.

While we were lounging about on the beach at the Vineyard, Kateo (who had come down for the weekend) was reading to me from The Big House, by George Howe Colt. It was so interesting and appropriate that I requested it from the library when I got home. It came today, but I may have to wait to start it, since I seem to be reading about five other books at the moment. Isn't that just the story of my life? On the upside, I'm still keeping pace to finish 52 books by the end of the year. It's good to have goals.

Oh, and before I forget, the highlight of the weekend was Loek's new word: "poop" (said in a sweet, tiny, high-pitched voice, as one might say 'oops' to a similarly small child). I don't know about Loek, but it's totally my new favorite word of his. Now if only we could get him to say "Bunnie." I guess we'll keep working on that one next trip.

Life in the Country

As promised, here are pictures of Mom's house in South Hadley, where we've been staying for the past two weeks.

This is the front, with hydrangea bushes that are now turning blue!

Here's the side by the driveway, including the windows into the little random hallway (opposite the one Finn and Loek like).

This is the back of the house, including the open sliding glass door into the kitchen, and on the right, the hallway of windows that lead to the garage. At the moment, I'm sitting in the kitchen, looking out to where I stood to take this picture yesterday.

These are the flowering vines that live at the back of the garage.

And here's a close-up of the little birdie houses that are above them! We hear birds constantly, so I guess they like their condos.



See? They're blue! They're blue! Happiness is easy to come by, in my world...

Our First Visitors!

I've been a blog slacker due to the big move, but now I'm in Western Mass (and have pictures to prove it!). When we first got here, Kate and Loek (aka: the cutest munchkin in the world) came to visit.Loek and Finn both like the hallway with the windows.

(Note Loek's Bunnie shirt - Kate's getting him started early on (mis) learning my name!)

Loek also likes his Lamby (which he carries with him, particularly when he's sleepy) and frozen yogurt (which he wears on his face).

But he's particularly fond of his Mommy's shoes...












It's a good thing she doesn't wear heels!










Next: pictures of my mommy's house (where we're staying)!

Books that changed me

The book I'm reading right now (Walking a Literary Labyrinth by Nancy M. Malone) asks the question, "Do you have a list of books that have changed your life?" Her theory is that each book we read takes us to a new place, and it changes us irretrievably. I think she's right. If I had to make a list to answer that question, it might look something like this:

The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley

The best telling of the Arthurian legend I've ever read. One of the biggest shapers of my early spirituality. It still speaks to me about divine feminine energy and the sacredness of the earth. If pressed, I'd probably still claim it as my favorite novel.

Journal of a Solitude - May Sarton

My first trip into May Sarton's world of poetry and quiet. A love song to the work of one's soul and to New England. I am not her kind of poet, precisely, but she somehow still is my kind of inspiration.

The Long Loneliness - Dorothy Day

I first "met" Dorothy Day through Liz Carr, the Catholic chaplain at Smith. She inspires me incredibly, with her honest quest for meaningful spirituality, her care for others, her writing, her integrity. And the last two pages of the book are the purest poetry I know.

Anything by Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery

I'm particularly (still) in love with Jo's Boys/Little Men and Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom. I liked their most famous works, of course, but the slightly lesser known books were my constant companions as a child. I reread Rose in Bloom a month or so ago, and it made me realize just how much of my early sensibility was shaped by their writings. Perhaps that's why I liked Jane Austen so much when I met her (finally!) at the end of last year.

The Exiles Series - Melanie Rawn

The best fantasy books I've ever read. I've been waiting, none-too-patiently, for the final book to come out for about ten years now. And I'll wait as long as it takes. They're that good. I can reread the first two once a year, at least, and still find new and fabulous things within them.

There are a million other books I love as well, but these are the best of the lot. I imagine I read books by men, too, but just not as often. I think this year I've completed sixteen books, and only two of them are by men. They just don't tend to speak to me as well, and they don't write books about the things I need to read. At least right now. So I'll stick with these, my favorites. And keep reading. I just never know when I might find more.

Transitory Amusements

Here I am, blogging again, and it's only taken me a week (or so). I'm sitting in Bongo Java Roasting Company, working on various computer-based activities and listening to U2 on Pandora. Transitions went off decently on Sunday, though those stubborn buggers wouldn't just break down and cry, damn it! Jessi did a little, but that was it. I even (mostly) held it together when I read them the rededication portion, with the roses and everything. Lisa followed them around with a camera the entire time, which made it harder for them to be all sappy, because they were making goofy faces at her the entire time. Claire and Jessi are way obsessed with Lisa. It's cute. Luckily, the pictures came out beautifully. This one's my favorite:

That's during their first stop, Play. We didn't actually fill the pool with water, so they should be grateful. And if we're going for strange, this one's pretty great:

While Claire and Marguerite hug, Danielle is actually smelling Claire's hair. And some mystery hands are wrapped around Danielle's waist. It's the Dani-and-someone hair-smelling monster! Bizarre. And then, of course, there's the series of weird Claire faces (made at Lisa, of course):


What can I say? She's a charmer, folks! I hope the good folks of Iowa are ready for her. She'll be taking Grinnell by storm come fall. Jessi will luckily be a bit closer to me, at Dartmouth. I've already offered up my services as chauffeur so that she can go see the BF at Brown. Then I have an excuse to go see Lexi and Katelet! And quality time in the car to hear about life in the Iveys. It's a win-win.

In other news, my house is still being taken over by workmen trying to make it pretty to sell. Hence I am hiding in various coffeeshops around Nashville. Hopefully it'll be all ready to go within the week, and then we'll sell the sucker. And then...to Massachusetts we shall go! Whoo! Yeah, I'm not excited. At all. Clearly.

How I Say Goodbye

Words: 46,003

Well, it's been ages since I touched this "new" blog. I need to get back into it, I think. Since last I wrote, I did manage to buy myself a copy of Little Earthquakes, which has been living in my car and making me happy. I even made the kiddos listen to it on the way to the thrift store during our lock-in last Friday. They didn't whine, so I figure they must have thought it was ok.

Earlier this evening I was listening to The One Who Knows by Dar Williams and making myself tear up. I'm working on a slide show for the youth group, and Dar is for the section covering Transitions (when we say goodbye to seniors) and Youth Sunday. It's going to be very sweet. Of course, I can't finish that section until after Transitions, which is Sunday. I still have to plan this year's route out. Luckily, all the written parts have survived from the last two years, so only a little editing will be required.

It's been so strange to start the goodbye process. I'm still so wrapped up in getting these last big events accomplished, that I'm hardly noticing how quickly it's all going by. My last youth group is in 13 days. I know that, intellectually, but I'm not feeling it yet. Once it's all over and I'm gone, I'll feel it. That's how it always is for me. That last morning at TIP, crying all over Angela. Getting into my car after I got back to Orlando after Smith graduation, only to find that damn Thank You song (the one Lexi and I could never escape) on the radio. Listening to Ben Harper (Walk Away) as I drove down 91 and away from Rowe one last time. I mourn best in private, when I can turn over all the memories in my mind one by one, noticing their intricacies and beauty. Then, I store them away, fodder for the words that come later. I'm good at living in retrospect, with occasional forays into the present. And somehow, I'm ok with that. The present, when I'm here, is good. The past gives continually, and the future holds promise out for me to grasp.

So I will say goodbye, in my own way and in my own time. And years from now I will still find something of value from this moment and all the moments that have made up my time here.

The power of radio

Words: 43,897
New Words: 1,617

Yes, that's right, folks, she's started a new one (story and blog, that is). It just kind of wandered by some time in December, so I grabbed it and wrote it down. I suppose I should contemplate them both sometime soon. I also decided that a new blog sounded like a good plan, so here I am. Poems and whatnot are still up on the old site, so you can find them there if you know where there is. If not, tough luck. Or you can ask me about it. That works too.

I'm in a pretty damn reflective mood tonight, mostly owing to weird happenings on the radio. Music can do that to a girl. This afternoon, on my way to youth group, I heard, of all things, Tori Amos's Silent All These Years, which took me right back to being fourteen and stupid and emotional and meaningful. The thing I loved most about that era of my life, I think, was my total abandonment approach to music. I lived it, I drank it, I ate it, I became it. It became me. So, of course, when I got home I had to break out my old Tori cds. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have Little Earthquakes, but I do have the Winter EP, so I've been listening to that practically on repeat, feeling all the things that I thought were lost forever. The precise memories are mostly gone, but the emotions behind them come back full force with that distinctive piano melody.

I suppose I could break down and listen to Boys for Pele for a bit, but it's not the same. I remember feeling that way when the album first came out. It just wasn't the same as Little Earthquakes, the one I fell in love with around the same time I first fell in love. It's the same with the Indigo Girls. Swamp Ophelia, as pristine and impressive as it is, will never be able to compete with Rites of Passage for sheer emotional impact. Rites of Passage was a performance at TIP, holding hands with that first crush, lying on the floor in the living room with Erin for hours while we memorized the lyrics, years of hoping fruitlessly for Amy to just sing Romeo and Juliet damnit during one of the ten concerts I've seen. Swamp Ophelia is great, but Rites of Passage is woven into the fabric of my life in an indelible way. Romeo and Juliet patently changed my life, by demarcating childhood from young womanhood. If pressed, I'd probably still say it was my favorite song.

Funnily enough, even if it's my favorite song, it's not really my favorite Indigo Girls song. How ironic that it's a cover, and I really hate the original version. Language or the Kiss is my favorite Indigo Girls song, and which album is that on? Oh, that's right: Swamp Ophelia. I make no sense.