Tag: life

trailblazing

At some point last school year, I started going on morning walks with a neighbor whose kids get on the school bus with Phoebe. We have a couple of standard routes, depending on how much time we have to walk. What with busy schedules and sometimes uncooperative weather, we haven’t gotten too many walks in this winter. We did this morning, and without any planning, we headed a bit off our typical routes. We walked down a couple of neighboring streets, and when we got to the signs marking the town conservation lands, we were inspired to wander up the trail. Our morning walk turned into a bit of a hike, and an exploration. At some point, the trail ended, and we kept going, heading through the woods in the general direction of our road. With no snow on the ground, and with the undergrowth in its rather sparse wintery state, the going was pretty easy. I We did end up crossing a few creeks a few times, using stones and, in one case, a fallen tree.


A little pond, frozen over and dusted with snow.


One of the streams. We didn’t cross on this fallen tree.


Close-up of the ice in the stream.


I was quite taken with these mushrooms.


Here are those same mushrooms, looking straight on.

fuzzy-mushrooms
See how fuzzy they are? (This is a zoomed in crop of the mushrooms. A ‘shroom zoom, as it were.)


I think this tree was flashing us.


You can see here how this stream was pretty easy to cross, via that little dam of rocks.


More ice.


I like ice.


A fallen tree, whose roots have been worn away, leaving a bit of a star shape.


Stump fungi. You can see here that there is a bit of fresh snow here. The big, fluffy flakes were just wafting down lazily, adding to the ambiance.


The ruffles of this fungus remind me of a flamenco dancer’s dress.

It’s so funny to realize that this place has been around the corner the whole time I’ve lived in this town, yet this was the first time I’d ventured in these past 13 years. I hope to head back in, and bring my real camera. (Not shown are the varied shots where I didn’t quite get the focus.) I was glad I had my phone with me, though, as it not only let me take the photos, but helped us decide our path a couple of times. (It felt a bit like cheating to use my phone’s GPS, but this was supposed to be a quick morning walk before starting work, not an all-day exploration.)

I actually miss posting every day.

30 posts had November. NaBloPoMo came and went this year, and I hardly whined about posting at all. Well, there was that brief bit in the middle. And maybe I’m forgetting some whining. Mostly, though, it felt like the posts flowed.

I posted a lot of photos, both old and new, thanks in part to participating in friday foto finder. (I do love me a theme.) I got on a roll with the tomatoes, and had quicker flings with baskets and doors. (I do love me a theme.) Fall offered up a host of pretty leaves to share, and even some snow. I celebrated the 6th birthday of my blog with pants, which are always a comfy fit. I had some things to say relating to the US election, and to the Sandy recovery efforts.

I didn’t even come close to running out of things to say. I even had 2 nearly complete Themed Things Thursday posts that weren’t quite finished enough on the Thursdays for which I’d intended them, and they join the 43 other unfinished ThThTh posts that I’ve poked at now and again. (Those things take a long time to get together, what with the links and the images and the formatting and the commentary. I can whip off a list of things in a few minutes, but without the fleshing out, they aren’t as satisfying to me. But I do love me a theme)

And there are still a number of posts that have been brewing in my head for months, years even, that I’d expected to get around to. Hopefully I still will. (Plus there are all those various promissory notes I’ve left around the internets: things I said I’d post, or write more about, etc. Anyone want to call me on any of those? I respond well to external stimuli…)

This is all to say that I enjoyed the daily blogging, so I was glad I did NaBloPoMo. On the flip side, I had trouble keeping up with the blog reading, even with my much-diminished blogroll, but I’m still planning to catch up.

These are butterflies that Theo and I made one morning when Phoebe was at karate. Theo made his first, and then instructed me to make a bigger mommy butterfly using the same colors and patterns. I didn’t have any particular reason for choosing this photo for this post. Or maybe there were several vague reasons. I’m feeling rather wistful this evening, as today would have been my father’s 91st birthday. Butterflies, for me, symbolize both the ephemerality and continuity of life, especially these, given that they represent 2 generations. And Theo himself is part of that continuity. Also, we’ve had a plethora of lepidoptera, in the form of a weirdly unseasonal profusion of moths around our neighborhood. The laptop symbolizes my laptop, which is now atop my lap. It is also the means by which I post things.

Stewing

Tonight finds me cranky. There are a number of things contributing to my crankiness. A pinch of irritating interactions that struck a nerve, a dollop of research frustrations, and some generous quantities of life things have combined to make a recipe for a simmering stew of crankiness. I am the crockpot of crankiness.¹ I’ve spent much of the last few hours trying not to boil over.

We came home last night from my in-laws’, aiming to beat the Sunday end-of-holiday-weekend traffic. (We also had some projects we needed to take care of, including something Phoebe had to do for school for Monday). That all went well, but I was up too late, my sleep was further peppered by a nagging cough I’ve had for over a week.

Today, I spent a ridiculous number of hours trying to tame the gigantic pile of art supplies, craft kits, and kids’ art projects in various stages of completion that has taken over the breakfast nook² portion of our kitchen. This is not the first time I have spent hours trying to tackle this mess, a fact which is also seasoning today’s stew of crankiness. I actually took a break from this task to do some work. And now I have to get back to it. I will tame the beast, or go down trying.³


Here are some other odds and ends that surfaced on our visit to my in-laws’. Phoebe and I had a little sewing project, and we needed to dig out a needle. This image has nothing to do with anything that I just wrote about, but I was amused that this sewing tray contained both a tomato (in the form of a tomato-shaped pin cushion) and a basket, thus handily tying together two of my recent themes. (cf. basket, basket, tomato, tomato, tomato)

¹ The crankpot?
² Really, I don’t know what to call this area. It’s the part of the kitchen where we have our table, and where we eat meals, including, but not restricted to, breakfast.
³ Should I toss the beast into the stew?⁴
⁴ Wow, this is totally not the post I thought I was starting to write. In fact, I changed the title. And then even deleted my original first paragraph. I was going to write about various things I’ve said I’d do but haven’t yet done. Which is often a source of crankiness in itself. But I won’t go there tonight. Hopefully I will have simmered down by morning.⁵
⁵ Happily, few things cheer me up more than getting carried away with a metaphor.

nightmare

I was at a conference, and the family came on the trip with me this time. I was at some sort of event that involved mingling, perhaps a coffee break, and having some in-depth discussions about some aspect of the phonetics of intonation. John and Phoebe were off somewhere together, but Theo was there with me, and getting bored and impatient. I suggested he go back to the hotel, and continued my conversation.

A bit later, after the discussions had wound down, I realized that I had sent Theo, barely 4 years old, off to wander the streets of some strange big city. Of course he didn’t know how to get back to the hotel by himself. I had no idea which way he’d gone. I started to look for him, and in the flexibility of dream space, I looked on many streets, in many directions. I asked countless strangers if they had seen a little boy, walking by himself. I became convinced that I would never find him again and fell apart. Not only had I lost Theo, but it was my fault. It was through my carelessness and inattention and self-absorption. My worst fears had been realized. I cried and moaned in my panic and grief.

I woke up in the dark, at home in my bed, my heart racing. My throat felt tight as if I had indeed been shrieking. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t actually made the loud noises I remembered making, that I still heard echoing in my head, as John was there asleep next to me. I curled up towards him and let myself go back to sleep.

When I next woke up, there was light coming in under the window shades. This is never a good sign, as the alarm typically goes off at 6:00, while it is still quite dark out. Last night we’d had a power outage, and while I had correctly set the alarm on our ancient radio alarm clock, I had managed to set the time wrong. By 12 hours.

It was 7:30. Happily, there was still time to get Phoebe ready for the bus. I could take Theo to his preschool after the bus instead of before. We should have rushed, since time still tight, but I climbed into Theo’s bed and held him close, curling myself up against him, warming his cold feet. I called Phoebe down from the top bunk to snuggle, too, and we snuggled, the three of us, until the bickering over who was taking up too much space and the jabbing elbows got the better of me. I got up, got the kids up, got dressed, and started the rush to get breakfast, finish packing lunches, and get us out the door.

I should have felt more rested today from having gotten that extra sleep, but I’ve been feeling shaken by my dream all day. I know that I would never really send Theo off by himself like that. Or Phoebe either, for that matter. (Though there was that one time that Theo did wander off outside by himself, while John and I were engaged with Phoebe, arguing over a lollipop. Theo had followed some friends who had visited our house and left. Our friends noticed him following them, and walked him back. And there was a time at the beach a couple of weeks ago when Phoebe wandered off looking for shells and got disoriented in the crowds of people and umbrellas. She couldn’t find us, and we couldn’t find her, for far too many minutes.)

My dream shows me that anxiety about separation is still rooted in my mind, planted there by too many health scares and nourished by so much time spent lately trying to focus on my work and school. With so many things going on in my life and in my head, I clearly sometimes worry that I will lose hold of what is most important to me.

hump day

Things have been crazy busy, mostly in a good way. There have been lots of year-end events for Phoebe’s school, and I found myself spending many hours last week cooking and baking for a couple of them. (My diet has such complicated restrictions that if I don’t bring food to such events, I will not be guaranteed to find anything that I can eat. Also, I am slightly insane.) Yesterday was the kindergarten field trip to the zoo. I went as a chaperone. For Phoebe’s class, there ended up being a high chaperone-to-kid ratio, but that turned out well. I had charge of Phoebe plus one other kid. It’s actually rather challenging to take charge of a 6-year-old you don’t really know at a public place full of lots of other small children you don’t know at all. I’m quite pleased to say that I did not lose any children. I am also pleased to say that I refrained from volunteering at one final school event, as I really need to spend some quality time with my work. In the 2+ weeks that I’ve been back from China, I have really only had a couple of days that have not been packed with meetings, childcare or other commitments. (I guess that may be why I’m rather tired today. On the bright side, I think I am squarely over my jetlag! This tiredness can be attributed to fatigue from overactivity.)

I have had so many things to share, a head full of thoughts and a hard drive full of photos. Sometimes, when there is too much, I have trouble posting much of anything at all. So this post is meant to help push me over that hump. (I thought about doing a Wordless Wednesday post, but who am I kidding? I like words.)

a delegate situation

Tomorrow I head to Springfield for the day.¹

You see, a funny thing happened to me a few months ago. I went to our town’s Democratic Party caucus,² and was elected as an alternate delegate for our town to go to the Massachusetts Democratic Party State Convention.

The way things work is something like this: each town ward gets to send delegates to vote at the State Convention.(Our town is small, so we have one ward, and we get to send 2 delegates, 1 male and 1 female. I don’t know how things work in bigger towns.) The delegates are elected at the town caucus. There can also be up to three alternate delegates elected. The committee chair also goes to the convention, but possibly does not have a vote.

I went to the caucus, and I happily said I’d put my name in as an alternate delegate, and I was duly elected. Unanimously. (Perhaps I should mention here that there were only 4 of us at the caucus.) A few weeks later, I heard from the woman who was elected as the official female delegate, and she asked if I wanted to go to the convention in her stead. She would actually prefer not to go. So, I’m being called in as alternate delegate.

I have now skimmed through the official materials sent to me (and you can see them, too, if you like, as they have a pdf version online), and while I have a somewhat better sense of what will happen, I still don’t really know. I suspect that there will me much time spent checking in. And much more time listening to some number of people speechifying. There will be some sort of vote, for which I am led to believe that my vote will count (or at least be counted). I suspect there will be vast quantities of campaign materials distributed.

So, tomorrow I will be hitching a ride to the convention with the other delegate and the town committee chair, and I will learn more about what all of this means.³

¹ Okay, not that Springfield. At least I don’t think so. My geography is a bit fuzzy.
² I’d thought it was the town’s first Democratic caucus, but it turns out that it was the first one organized by these particular committee members. So when they said at various times things like “this is our first time doing this,” I interpreted that incorrectly. I’m not sure how many previous caucuses there have been in my town.
³ Does this mean I will have increased conventional wisdom? You see, I can’t help it. I have this irrepressible urge to make convention puns. Would they be conventional puns? I like to think of myself as more unconventional.

(This post was edited 6/3/12 to adjust various things which I’d gotten wrong.)

image: Springfield from the Simpsons, found here.

Things jostling for space in my head.

A week from tomorrow,¹ I need to set the alarm for 3:00 a.m. when I go to bed. Historically, I’ve been more likely to see 3 am from the other side of the clock. What on earth could possess me to get up so damn early? I have to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Newark. What on earth would possess me to fly to Newark at 7 a.m.? My 10:50 a.m. flight to Shanghai. Because I am going to Shanghai.

And also briefly to Beijing so that I can see the Great Wall. (Not that Shanghai and Beijing are all that close together. But closer than Boston and Beijing.)

I can hardly contain my excitement.

However, my excitement must share mental space with my soberingly intimidating to-do list, which keeps rudely poking its elbows into my excitement.

Here are some of the tasks weighing on my mind:

Work & School stuff:

  • finish a 12 to 15 page book review (because it’s already several years late)
  • prepare and practice a 15-minute talk at the conference (because that’s why I’m going to Shanghai)
  • read a large number of articles related to my conference presentation, especially given that the authors of those articles may be at the conference
  • rework images for a journal article by my research group

Trip prep stuff:

  • figure out transportation to and from airport on this end
  • Sort out as many details as I can for home and schedule in my absence (to minimize the hassle for John’s solo parenting. Yet another 11 days for him.)
  • find my multi-country travel adaptor doohickey I got for Hong Kong
  • dig out the unlocked cell phone I got in Hong Kong
  • (Happily, I already have my passport and visa squared away, and hotels, flights, and conference registration…)

Home stuff:

  • Finish dealing with thank you notes for Phoebe’s birthday party, which was now over a month ago. Gah!
  • Pack up a pile of books to donate for the town library’s book sale.
  • (Screw all the other household stuff that’s been clogging my to-do list for months. It will all be waiting for me whe I get back.)

Stuff I want to do before my trip.:

  • Plan out and read reviews for places to go and things to do and eat (this sort of thing is what distracts me the most when I’m supposed to be focussing on work)
  • In addition, I’d really like to finish writing about, and sharing photos from, my Hong Kong trip of last August. (I’d love to get these write-ups written up before I leave, because clearly I’m going to have a lot more to share very shortly.) I owe write-ups of:
    • Day 5, part 2 of my guided tour and harbour cruise from hell (I posted part 1 in November.)
    • Day 6 my fantastic outing/hike with YTSL (YTSL posted about it herself back in August!)
    • Day 7: last day of the conference and conference banquet (actually, there’s not too much to say here, so that should be quick)
    • Day 8: excursion to Macau (This was a big day, and full of minor (mis)adventures. I have a lot to say.)

All of my plans are being further irritated by a new cold or spate of allergies, which is leaving me wanting to sleep. A lot. Or curl up in a ball and groan. (You’ll note that curling up in a ball and groaning is not on my to-do list.) And other typical daily things like laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, kid shuttling as well as other family and social obligations, plus occasional attempts at personal hygiene, are also vying for my time and mental energy. (What, I have to brush my hair again? And find another pair of clean socks?)


Yes, I am seriously flying back to Asia less than a year after my trip to Hong Kong last August. I was hoping this conference wouldn’t end up in Shanghai, because I didn’t imagine that I’d be able to swing two trips of this magnitude in less than a year. But end up in Shanghai the conference did. Seriously, if the deadline for the conference submissions had been even in October, I would have said “no way.” But by the end of November, I was already thinking, “well, maybe I can do it.” And then my paper got accepted for a talk, and then I thought, “Hell yeah, I’m going.”

¹ I don’t remember when I started this post, but I’m pretty sure that this once said “in just over 2 weeks,” then various shrinking amounts of time since then. Here’s hoping that I manage to post this before I have to say “a few weeks ago…”

spring fever

Spring has definitely arrived here. Possibly with a vengeance.

I’m not generally prone to seasonal allergies, but there have been a few times in my life when I have wondered if I’ve been beset. This being one of them.

This week is Phoebe’s school vacation. On Tuesday morning, we had Phoebe’s annual check-up scheduled. (Almost 2 months after her birthday. We’d had to reschedule a couple of times.) I was going to take the kids to the dentist in the afternoon (way to vacation!), but the hygienist had to reschedule, so we had an unexpected free afternoon. It was a beautiful hot, sunny day, and I thought we should spend some time outside in the window between lunch and Phoebe’s karate class. A trip to the town playground was in order!

We got ourselves together and over to the park remarkably quickly, given my reduced ability to nag. (And I totally felt like a responsible adult when I remembered that we should wear sunscreen. I have to pat myself on the back for these rare moments.)

The kids had lots of fun. Phoebe dug up a worm and picked dandelions. Theo climbed and jumped off rocks.They slid on slides and swung on swings. Both kids ran around and interacted with other kids.

But I was zonked. I think we were there for a little more than an hour, but it felt like an eternity. I tried to occupy myself by taking some photos, something that can usually keep me quite content for long stretches of time, but I barely had the will to focus, what with all the coughing and the sneezing and the blowing of the nose. I fantasized about being at home, curled up on the couch, box of tissues at my side. Happily, Theo started to get overheated! Yes! I suggested we could go home and watch an episode of Scooby Doo. This was effective at luring Phoebe away from her enjoyment of the great outdoors as well.

So we went home to sit inside and watch some TV.¹

Brought to you by Great Moments in Parenting.

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¹ For the record, I did decline to give them bowls of candy and potato chips to munch on. And I hardly let them have any beer or crack.