tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74541392024-03-13T15:14:01.991-05:00new pantsone leg at a timecarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.comBlogger292125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-22098785979861883122009-08-17T13:24:00.002-05:002009-08-17T13:33:48.518-05:00Feeding ProblemsA couple of people have told me that the feed over at the new site isn't working (particularly in Bloglines, I think). So if you're somehow still seeing this but haven't gotten any small animals posts through your feed reader for a few weeks, go on over there and check out what beauty has emerged by our kitchen sink.And try resubscribing using the link on the right-hand side...I think that does carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-45409973380810608202009-07-08T21:03:00.001-05:002009-07-08T21:04:41.472-05:00You're still here?Go to the new place, really. Things are happening there. Drama. Bravery. Inscrutable metaphors.carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-47824601830526100882009-06-26T16:35:00.006-05:002009-06-26T16:57:41.926-05:00Goodbye, new pants......Hello, small animals.I'm moving. Wordpress is prettier and easier to use, and what does anything have to do with pants, anyway?I hope to see you over there. And please (pretty please!) update your links if you've been linking to me.carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-91293886985901210882009-06-25T14:09:00.002-05:002009-06-25T14:25:00.477-05:00Help: My Life is Strangling MeOver the past month neither I nor my extended family have experienced any heart attacks, police brutality, terrible prenatal diagnoses, governmental oppression, untimely death, mysterious bacterial infection, bankrupcy, or really anything else awful. (Except for my poor brother and his ruptured appendix, but he's better now.)What we have experienced is the following, in reverse chronological carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-49366444582138928502009-06-19T22:42:00.002-05:002009-06-19T23:02:39.290-05:00Only Half HereThanks for the points about the fraught playground discussion. I don't think anyone meant harm, it was just disconcerting, especially the part where I said something innocently and didn't realize until an hour later that it might have sounded snarky. Open exchange of ideas, I keep thinking. Open exchange of ideas.Lots of newsiness here:1. Have launched into full-on M&M bribery with the potty carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-85480615551595825862009-06-15T14:08:00.003-05:002009-06-15T14:34:18.941-05:00SubtextOk, tell me if you think this conversation was as innocent as it seemed at first, or as fraught as I started to think it was an hour or so later:(K and S are sisters-in-law (of each other, not me) and are both science professors with kids five and under. We went to college together, and we see them about twice a year, including this weekend at the megaplayground.)K: So is Ingrid in preschool now?carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-23515382200880040892009-06-14T21:59:00.004-05:002009-06-14T22:19:33.154-05:00Reading, Migration, ExhaustionI've really been itching to write, but I spent Saturday at a twelve-hour wedding that was lovely but wore me the fuck out. Then this morning we drove to the suburbs to meet out-of-town friends at a blazing hot mega-playground where one hundred white children scrambled up and down four stories of ladders and chutes and their mamas sat on park benches under umbrellas reading books like Transformingcarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-27653335694405786762009-06-04T14:24:00.011-05:002009-06-06T13:40:22.140-05:00Alma MaterI spent last Saturday evening on the small-town campus where I went to college, at a retirement party for a professor of mine, Anne. Anne is amazing by pretty much any measure: a brave progressive in a conservative religious tradition, a Roman Catholic nun on a liberal, secular campus, smart as can be, and unrelentingly conscientious. She's had cancer for seven years. She refuses to rush. She carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-13610901816040661872009-05-27T21:48:00.003-05:002009-05-27T22:57:40.910-05:00An Open LetterDear Library,Before I get into the hard stuff, Library, I want to tell you that I've always loved you. You were one of my first favorite places. For you I learned to write my full name, small and neatly, at age four, to fit on the signature line of my very own library card. You outfitted me, at age nine, for my first-ever term paper, "Climate Zones of the World," with great patience. You were a carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-57724059219036963252009-05-20T21:10:00.002-05:002009-05-20T21:25:31.456-05:00LimitsTonight at bathtime, Ingrid stumbled on the concept of infinity, but, like many people staring down the unending, felt more comfortable imposing limits on it:She: ...twenty eight, twenty nine, thirty!Me: All the way to thirty by yourself! Know what comes after thirty?She: Um. Thirty...two?Me: Thirty one.She: And then thirty two! And thirty three!Me: You got it.She: (plays in the water for a whilecarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-90155837137838522492009-05-09T21:16:00.003-05:002009-05-09T22:42:08.906-05:00WebAs a kid, I loved to read and couldn't put a good book down until it was done. I'd sneak a flashlight or, later, a night light plugged into an extension cord, under the covers. I stayed awake as late as my eyes would stay open, turning pages. One night when I was six, very late, trying to reach a book on the far side of the bookshelf without leaving my bed, I fell and landed awkwardly on my carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-39174415433036106852009-05-05T21:37:00.004-05:002009-05-05T21:49:28.467-05:00What could I have possibly said to figure out what she was thinking?"Mama," Ingrid stalled as I tried for the third time to leave her room so she could start her nap. "Somebody on Signing Time signs donkey like this." She held her left thumb to her temple and flapped her fingers down toward her chin."Uhh huh," I said. "It's time to sleep, kiddo.""But! Bu-bu-but Rachel does it like this." She put her thumb on her temple and flapped her fingers upward."Well, I bet carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-22109422109300385782009-05-04T13:11:00.005-05:002009-05-04T13:52:35.970-05:00paragraphs that oughta be essays, or maybe we should be glad they aren'tI know, that wasn't fair. Grumpy list of grumpy things, followed by one of those weird posts that no one knows what to say about.Thank you for saying nice things to me after that grumpy post. Especially girlfiend, who I hadn't even known was reading, who gave me some type of award on her blog, which I'll pass on sometime soon, when I get to it.Mostly I was grumpy because of the reentry thing, carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-82750086236030189942009-04-28T21:11:00.002-05:002009-04-28T21:25:42.889-05:00Summer PeopleThe spring we were waiting for Ingrid to be born, the end of April was just the perfect time I’d been envisioning. Whenever I hauled my big pregnant self up the stairs in our house, I could see, through the sky-blue room that would belong to our baby, the whole white-framed window full of the pear tree outside and its plump blossoms against the sky.I’d folded stacks of onesies and assembled a carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-78964671563473349212009-04-15T10:35:00.005-05:002009-04-15T14:29:48.101-05:00So far this week:The new $70 USB-powered hard drive I bought for work but didn’t have the heart to ask my struggling employer to reimburse me for wouldn’t work. A fixed it last night after I accused him of making my life less efficient. Glad he could do it, but felt incompetent. And guilty. My iPod wouldn’t work for some reason, then mysteriously started working, but with no clear connection to any of the five carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-85856473356723168522009-04-13T13:10:00.008-05:002009-04-13T13:25:02.062-05:00BackA got home Thursday night. I am relieved, tired, and suddenly more prone to complaining than I have been any time in the past two and a half months. Also, catching up on emails, and hoping I can now squeeze in more writing time than I've been able to lately. Phew.carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-10176511182630627432009-04-01T21:09:00.003-05:002009-04-01T21:36:13.536-05:00Brag and Plug: Because I Love HerLong ago, back when I feared I might never have any children, I wrote a poem. I've written a medium-sized pile of poems in the five—no, wait, six! God!—years since then, but this is still one of my favorites.I'd never published a poem, or even tried to, but late one night when Ingrid was just a little chunky thing, I saw that Shannon had published an essay in an online journal called carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-14814458452668143772009-03-28T13:41:00.004-05:002009-03-28T14:42:58.856-05:00With A AwayFor a while it made me feel mighty. Packing everybody up on work and school mornings, in charge of every sock and toothbrush and lunch bag and favorite lovey. Or muscling us all back into the house after a trip to the grocery store, a toddler flailing under one arm and a week’s worth of groceries slung over the other. In private, I practiced my barbaric maternal roar. I can do this! By myself!carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-75467883242579076252009-03-26T08:59:00.000-05:002009-03-26T08:59:01.001-05:00Word Fog(Melissa nailed it: grapefruit. If I asked you to guess the age, would you say three months? You'd be right. Thanks for playing.)I typed a representative sample of the stuff I say over and over and over into Wordle, and here's what I got. Sheesh. I need to calm down and take off my watch for a week or two. And then I put my blog url in. First reaction: Oh, crap, I spelled fuchsia wrong. Second carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-65631744080015706252009-03-24T15:58:00.000-05:002009-03-24T15:58:00.503-05:00Can you guess what it is?I know I promised no more compost photos for a while, but I love the texture and weight of this. And besides, I found it—ahem—in my fridge like this. The compost bin is just where it happened to end up.carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-21936654982539671252009-03-23T15:48:00.000-05:002009-03-23T15:48:00.610-05:00Mittens for My Favorite Almost-4-Year-OldA tiny bit of thumb weirdness aside, the mittens were much, much easier to knit than I thought they'd be. Quick, even.I made the "Small" size, thinking it would work for a smallish adult, but it turned out they really meant small, so I ended up shortening the pattern a bit to make them fit Ingrid. They're pretty long on her, but that's good. It'll keep the snow out of her coat. Unsurprisingly, carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-82783954925361298082009-03-21T21:26:00.003-05:002009-03-21T21:35:42.733-05:00Surprise EquinoxSpring is a marvelous time for the faithless. You believers know all winter long that one day the snow will melt and we’ll all voluntarily hang around outdoors without our coats. You picture the tulip bulbs hoarding their little lives under the frozen ground, and you’re sure that in a few months you’ll see those first bright leaves push their way up. Me, I picture sunken patches in the soil undercarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-25083066996809292412009-03-15T21:15:00.003-05:002009-03-15T21:33:23.129-05:00GoldenI vaguely remember taking this picture a few months ago and deciding not to post it. I don't know what that stuff is. Something caramelized—maybe broth that boiled over? I decided not to use it because I was ashamed of the surrounding mess. You know, that...stuff in the center of the burner, and ew....what is that?But lately I've been coming across a lot of blogs that are just too lovely. carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-2517079650669404572009-03-10T21:42:00.001-05:002009-03-10T21:52:13.537-05:00LuxuryOne time I peed my pants. It was December 1994. I was in Kathmandu. I’d spent the past month in the mountains in western Nepal, a long bus ride from the capital to a lowland town, then a short flight to a mountain village, then a three-day hike to the cluster of huts where I hung out for those weeks, chilled, often homesick, usually lost, and mostly unsuccessful in the little research project I’dcarohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7454139.post-1709698285652433062009-03-07T14:48:00.003-06:002009-03-07T15:00:27.991-06:00ScarfThis will be a gift, probably for my grandma, who loves the whole family of colors from fuschsia to purple and who this week sent me a birthday card with a photo of a cat on a bar stool licking the back of its paw as if preparing to do a tequila shot. You’d think I wouldn’t have time to complete a knitting project, considering how whenever anyone asks for something useful out of me I go on carohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04771333861395563193noreply@blogger.com2