Made Me Chuckle

Looks like someone corrected this as quickly as possible. Maybe even before jobs were lost. But still, it's funny to think about student groups ordering these up en masse and receiving them and writing with them and learning with them and supporting McCain with them. And while I'm not currently feeling very political and/or mean-spirited I must borrow a line from Nelson and say, "Ha, ha."

Big Day for Sesame

I'm sitting in the mud room/computer room at the computer while the kids watch Sesame Street. First Cole tells me that Jack Black is on. He knows that I like Jack Black. I get up. I walk out to the living room and I watch Jack Black count the sides of a stop sign. "It's an octagon," he says. "Octagon." I laugh. Cole laughs. Aidan laughs. Thea says, "That's Jack," though I think that she might be referring to my brother, her Uncle Jack. Who knows.

I return to the computer. I read. I type. I do stuff. Then I hear that ipod commercial. No, it's not the ipod commercial. It's Feist. And she's singing with Muppets on Sesame Street. I get up again. I watch Feist singing and dancing with Muppets.

I return to the computer to type this up. To tell the internet--if it doesn't already know--that Feist and Jack Black are on Sesame Street today.

To August birthdays...

Making Sense of It (whatever it is)

There are days when it all makes sense. Today was one of those days.

Happy Birthday Cole.

Love,

Your Mama

Hummingbird, Wilco

His goal in life was to be an echo
Riding alone, town after town, toll after toll
A fixed bayonet through the great southwest to forget her

She appears in his dreams
But in his car and in his arms
A dream can mean anything
A cheap sunset on a television set can upset her
But he never could

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

His goal in life was to be an echo
The type of sound that floats around and then back down
Like a feather
But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans
No one could hear him
Or anything

So he slept on a mountain
In a sleeping bag underneath the stars
He would lie awake and count them
And the gray fountain spray of the great Milky Way
Would never let him
Die alone

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

A hummingbird
A hummingbird

Seven

Today is Aidan's 7th birthday and I am over the top sentimental about it. I have been trying to remember myself a few days before she was born, the way I waddled when I was over nine months pregnant, August heat, my parents eating Chinese food with Tad downstairs in the yellow dining room of the new house while I labored upstairs, Oh Brother Where Art Thou on the t.v. for distraction. I have been trying to remember her birth, her face, her cries. I have been trying to remember the person I was before my children were born--the teacher who could not stop talking about teaching, the book freak, a more patient, gentler, kinder me--so I imagine.

Our memories of things often fail us, or help us, depending. We remember what we want to--and this is the best way, sometimes. A bit of sadness wrapped up in sweet fondness makes for nostalgia, the kind that sits on our throats like a cat.

Of course I am very much in love with and proud of my baby girl. So much has happened in seven years that I couldn't possibly write about it here. O.k, yes, I have already written about it here and it is these memories and images that swirl around me and disappear into now.

Big B, little b, what begins with b?

I've been having vague notions of giving up writing here. Maybe because this blog (with a small b and I can hardly type this word) has fulfilled its purpose. It was useful for venting, raving, keeping track. For a while.

But now what? It's become a bit of a gnat for me. I try to shoo it away or swat it or catch it with a dustbuster--the same way I have been trying to catch houseflies. For the record, I have caught two flies this way. They were at the window screen and unsuspecting. Catching flies midair with a dustbuster is a different kind of occupational feat. Or hazard. Or sideshow (ask the kids).

I like writing. Or, more accurately, I like writing in the way that a lot of people who write love and hate it. But do I like writing here? Anymore?

This is a question that I am trying to answer. I probably won't make a decision one way or the other. I'll probably let go for months-or even a year--and then I'll be back. Like visiting an old friend. And it will feel like time hasn't passed. The blog and I will embrace and kiss on each cheek as people in Quebec City do--and we will go on as before--plodding, plotting. Always plotting. Always plodding. Because that's what people (and web logs) do.