{my topography}

Tidbits

Bean said, “Mama, why do we wake up instead of down?”

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My spine feels looser after yoga. I had fun, watching him, hearing his breath, moving through the sun salute.

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We bought pfeffernusse cookies today; a holiday tradition from my childhood.

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Snow is falling in fat, wet flakes outside.

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UPDATED: My brain = mush. Too little sleep. Too many words. I’ll resurface on Sunday-ish. Until then, tell me what are three of your favorite things to receive in your stocking?

A positive counterbalance

It’s the end of a week off and I feel at once relaxed and utterly frantic. I keep trying to remind myself not to let amorphous anxiety paint the backdrop for the entire day, and to instead pinpoint the underlying fear that causes angst to spread like a dark stain over calmer moments. This week my fear is that I won’t have enough time. My writing deadline looms at the end of the week, and although I love the work I’ve been producing I haven’t had the undivided time to sink back into it in a week or two, and this week is particularly busy.

I have decided to focus on the positives this week as a counterbalance to the stress. I am excited because DH and I are starting a new class together: a beginner series in ashtanga yoga. I can’t wait for my new yoga pants to come in the mail, and am looking forward to bring more attention and focus towards being consciously in my body next to DH being consciously in his. We’ve missed each other like crazy for the past couple of weeks. Bean has been sick, and this always results in him cozying up in our bed, needier than usual and full of toddler snores. We had an afternoon napping date yesterday, and though not a lot of sleep happened, we’ve been grinning at each other ever since.

Small good things that make me smile: my orchids blooming again on my windowsill; chai tea with sugar cubes and milk; discovering new settings on my camera today; carrying around a list notebook in my back pocket (instead of obsessing about the things I’ll otherwise forget); the first green and blue eggs from my Ameracuna chickens; and my new subscription to Cookie magazine. What are some things that make you smile?

Hello winter

I’ve blinked and it’s winter; the lush carpet of crumpled brown and yellow leaves is obscured by downy blanket of white. I sit at the kitchen counter, my back to the wood stove, watching snowflakes drift to the ground. My mind slips into a reverie, tracing the twirling track of individual snowflakes as they fall; the view straight from a Courier & Ives postcard. I take a deep breath. Hello winter.

It would be a lie to say that I’ve been looking forward to winter. I love the snow, and the first flakes falling every year make me giddy, and certainly I am eager to haul out the sleds and the snow shovels. It also helps that this winter I have toasty warm Sorrels to keep my feet snug, and a new powder blue down jacket. But winter brought out the sharpest edges last year, and it’s a bit like getting back on the horse after being bucked off to return to these cold months where the sun barely slips between the cloud cover for a few short hours, and in the night the mercury slips below zero. It was this time last year that my relationship with DH felt like it was imploding, as it underwent the fierce growth of a relationship moving past the seven year mark.

In my writing I’ve begun to explore how dialogue always overlaps. How really, there are only a small handful of moments (if any) when two people talk and both of them are actually talking about the same thing. Last winter, we were a caricature of this, aching to be close to each other yet sparring endlessly, our words the serrated objects of separate agendas. I still can’t put a finger on the pulse of the pain we caused each other: what it was for, or why. Most of it was reactionary; the product of external stresses from work and life that became distilled into the small orbit of our love, but it was also the product of a hundred small things: a cold house, anxiety over dreams unrealized, a toddler with insistent needs and disrupted sleep, and an accumulated lack of time to ourselves.

So the trepidation is there, if only faintly perceptible when I stop to take my own pulse. A slight blip. A snag in the fabric of these early winter days with snow falling and warm firelight and laughter. Every small argument bears undue weight, even though I know we’re so far from there, our love like maple sap grown dark and sweet in the heat metal evaporator pan.

It’s strange how the seasons bring things up. How certain days recall others; and for the longest time I’ve hated November. In college, and for years after, I’d get stir crazy. I’d try to break up with my boyfriend, or move to a new state, or write reams of dismal poems. It makes sense in that context, that last November marked the beginning of a season of angst, and it thrills me to no end to realize that I’ve actually this year I’ve bucked the trend. November was full of yellow leaves, a filigree of frost, and page after page of prose written with more confidence than I’ve ever had with a purpose and a deadline driving each paragraph towards completion. It’s all about climbing back on the horse, and then asking it to be Pegasus, and expecting to fly.

I failed NaBloPoMo

I didn’t even mean to. I simply forgot to write yesterday–amidst snow falling and my father-in-law’s birthday, and conferences at work and, well, life. Now I’m torn. I can either revert to my pensive ever-two-days posts, or continue to bombard you with daily chatter.

33 Months

33 months old, and he says, “Mama, do you think Kiwi birds eat kiwis?” and then giggles.

When I say, “You’re my little guy” he says, “No I’m not, I’m you’re bunny, and I’m a little bit big.”

When I skip a page in a story, or skim past a few lines to speed the process up he says, “No mama, you skipped a page.” And then he’ll go back and tell me verbatim the words I didn’t read.

He is obsessed with forts. The kind with quilts on the couch are best. Boxes also have his affection. And he loves his little back pack and fills it full of treasures. “I have a wallet, mama,” tells me. “With credit cards. I can buy food and toys.” He collects pennies and keeps them in a jar in his nightstand drawer.

He loves his new snow boots, but hates nearly every winter hat we have for him. He fights us about putting on his jacket every time. “I will wear a jacket tomorrow,” he says, with the hopes of avoiding wearing one today. He also tries this with nap time. “I already napped today,” he says, head tilted, eyes twinkling.” It is 10:30 in the morning. “I will nap tomorrow again. I do not need a nap today.” Yeah right buddy.

“I want to do it by myself,” he says about unzipping his pajamas, or taking off his shirt.

“I love you and I missed you,” he says every day when I get home and we crawl onto the couch to snuggle.

He patters into our room in the middle of the night, and in the morning his arm is wrapped around my neck. “Snuggle me, mama,” he whispers in the early morning light.

He loves to paint, and just this month he started drawing his first recognizable images: a bunny, a person, a digger. He loves his Etch-a-Sketch, and makes elaborate “castles” with stair-stepping patterns. He’ll work on it for a half an hour at a time, eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

When we’re outdoors he stops and cocks his head, “Do you hear that chickadee, mama?” he’ll ask.

When the first snow of the season was falling when he woke, he climbed up onto the windowsill and watched it, eyes wide and joyous. “Snow is falling everywhere, mama,” he cried. “It’s on the trees and on the roof and on the grass.”

I am completely smitten. My kid is the coolest kid in the world.

I spent the entire day writing

And it felt good.

So good to sink into the work, to get beyond the distractions, the internal rebellions, the anxiety. Things are starting to fit together, the synapses of the story becoming evident.

Tomorrow I’m making a cherry pie; and doing laundry. Tomorrow it’s back to reality. But today was for words.

Do you have days like this that slip away into some place else? Like you never really touched down here? Today was like this.

First snow of the season

Driving home, three good songs on the radio and then perfect light. I couldn’t stop smiling.

I pulled on my new snowboots, and dashed out the door with my camera thudding against my chest.

The light was so perfect it took my breath away.

A momentary break in the clouds, and pure gold.

Everything was silent except for the wind, and the light faded fast.

Still I was grateful, so grateful, to be in the right place at the time. With my camera.

Saved by a meme

I was tagged with a meme for 7 random things about me, and since it is Thursday night and I’m exhausted, but I’m stubbornly not quitting NaBloPoMo, a meme is all you get:

• I’m a stomach sleeper.

• I feel guilty because I have never put photo albums together for either my wedding, or Bean’s first year.

• I have a weird, bordering on frenzied, dislike for any lettuce or leafy green that becomes black and slimy.

• I contributed to NPR for the first time this year, and felt very pleased with myself.

• I get nosebleeds in the winter time.

• I’ve been in bars, but I’ve never sat at the counter and ordered a drink or carried on a debaucheries conversation with a hot bartender.

• In high school and college I was a swimmer. In the past year I’ve been in a pool exactly once. This depresses me.

What are 7 random things about you?

Too short

Bean got a haircut yesterday.

Far too short.

I couldn’t stop the lady. How do you stop a lady cutting your kid’s hair once she has begun?

He looks so grown up. So serious with his big eyes.

I wanted to cry about it last night. Didn’t, but wanted to.

NaBloPoMo is kicking my butt

I have nothing to write about today because anything I actually want to write about would take far longer than the 1.4 minutes I have left to post before bed. The time, where does it go? EVERY DAY is like this. I’ve been bucking against the idea of waking up earlier in the morning to write–but I just got my Pam deadline today, and I have to have a whole lot more written by Decmeber 2. So. Up early seems to be my only choice.

Seriously, I want to know: how do you manage your day? Especially those of you who write–how do you work that time in? How do you make it all happen? I’m feeling kind of crazed about it all right now. I keep wishing I could wake up one morning and have time be the way it was back in high school, or even better, like when I was nine.

Remember that? The way it took forever to get to Saturday? The way the weekend lasted forever? The way an afternoon could be all day. What happened to that? What’s with all the business? And holy crap, how is it possibly almost Thanksgiving?