try writing cursive

Friends! It's been awhile. Great things are happening, and I even started a new blog that I was fittin' to tell you about and invite you over to see, but then a potential Job Opportunity That Could Change Everything stopped by instead. So, things are changing, and no matter the job outcome, all feels good and ripe and ready for spring. Positive energy in February? Who would have predicted that? I hope your winter has been one of good possibility, too.

keep it simple

The first week of the new year wore me out: waves of office politics and mama bear frustrations crushed me into a melancholy mess this weekend. What a waste of a perfectly good weekend. I tried exercise, including an embarrassing session of what I now call "anger swimming." I tried martinis. I tried counting my blessings, even when they smelled funky and kept asking for more food. I tried telling myself that my current problems are temporary. Patience. Patience... patience... I'm terrible at patience. Oh 2012, I think you're gonna make me work on that one.

holiday rigarmarole

Merry Christmas, almost! This weekend will find us at a Hanukkah latke party with assorted Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim friends & colleagues, then the family Christmas celebrations and maybe a midnight candlelight service on Christmas Eve, because I love those, and then we'll wrap it up with a baby dedication at the nearby Hindu temple on the 26th. Remember when, in high school, I used to complain about how white-bread and boring Kansas was? Funny to think about that now.

Once we have the religion tour squared away, I'll be ready to practice my personal favorite holiday tradition: The making of the New Year's Resolutions. Top of the list, because it has to be, is getting our finances in order again after three years of unemployment dips & assorted crap. BUT then what? The list gets better:

2. Improve my three swim strokes (free, breast, & back)
3. Relax: About work, the economy, my achievements (&/or lack thereof)
4. Be firm but compassionate in my mothering
5. Work hard, play more, make a plan to go skiing someday soon
6. Paint the damn chicken coop a color I like
7. Save money for a new bike
8.
9.
10.

Need inspiration? Tracy tracked down Woody Guthrie's resolutions from 1942. Also, the NYTimes reader-submitted remembrances of loved ones who died this year will humble you & give some perspective. It did for me, anyway. Hope all your holidays are happy!

talisman

When we stop fighting, when we give ourselves over to the things we can't control and finally decide to "just go with it," where will we be then?

Will we have sheets for the beds? Will I care that my sweater has fresh moth holes? Will the vegetable steamer still be in the backyard sandbox?

When I think about the whats of later on, I think about you, and holding your hand, and being older and calmer, less loud. Less effusive. I'll still hate the paint color I chose, and I'll still be dreadful at things like horseshoes and French. But the things I worry about now don't even register on my visions of then. Then of back then, and the then of down the road.

hello!

Last week that big, fat, full October moon said goodnight as I walked home from work.

And it said good morning to me the next day as I headed back. Why does the full moon always look so small in photos?

In writing class, one of my students is wrestling with a self-doubt monster. An hour and she'd written seven heavy, forced words. Not knowing what to do, I asked her if she could figure out one of my typewriters, because the T sometimes adds a space, and sometimes does not. T wenty minut es lat er, she'd writ ten an ent ire page! This was not by design, but I wrote it down to remember for next time.

On Saturday we went to the re-purposed art/recyclable store at Wonderscope. Tim loaded the trunk with potential project supplies for his classroom, and it only cost $5.35. Get out of town!

I taking a sea-bath

As Melville would put it, I've grown grim about the mouth. Meetings this week and all I want to contribute is, Do we believe anything we're saying? And other questions I don't want to ask, like, To what end are we working? Like, Where's the true heart of your life? Because if you were all wearing hats, really, like Ishmael I'd want to walk the room and methodically knock them off. We're all good people here. I think it's high time we get to the sea as soon as we can. Let's put that on the agenda.

Bob Cassilly & the City Museum

The City Museum in St. Louis is a mash-up of salvaged, re-purposed, and re-imagined building demo scraps welded together in a crazy amalgam of chutes, slides, rides, tunnels, and ladders. It's a wondrous place: inspiring, creative, open, fun, breathtaking. (And for my fellow administrative killjoys, I'll admit to a little wonder regarding the zoning and permit stories behind the scenes.) The museum is truly one of our favorite places in the world, so we were saddened to learn that its visionary founder Bob Cassilly had died. In tribute to him, here are a few photos of our visit from earlier this month.

The boy in an onion at the end of the world.


A bus over an airplane (or two).


A rebar climb up a three-story dome.


A rooftop Ferris wheel.


A rooftop bus.


A rooftop story.

Thank you, Bob Cassilly.