Feeling so good and then...

I was feeling pretty good about everything when I posted this entry at noon.
Now it is 7 or so, and I just realized I put it on the wrong blog. So maybe I'm not doing quite as good as I thought. But I'm hoping a night of sound sleep will put everything right.
Full moon blessings, everyone. Here's my noon thoughts.
_________

Tomorrow is our real live moving day. Today is the day the packing guys are here - three 23 year old whirlwinds, which is why I'm typing instead of packing. In the future, whatever you have to hock it worth it to have the packing guys, fyi. Took them something under four hours to get all our worldly possessions into boxes (Including the wet towels from this morning's showers that were drying on the racks in the bathroom. Um, thanks guys.)

After all that mortgage drama, we pretty much thought it got as dramatic as it could get around here. But that was before last Tuesday, when Mr. Juniper's wheelchair malfunctioned and it stopped short, but he did not. The result was that he flew onto the sidewalk, broke a bone in his ankle, sprained something else in the same foot that makes it all very ouchie, and spilled a quantity of his precious blood on the sidewalk from a big scrape in his head. An evening in the ER and a morning at Casts R Us was just not how we planned to spend our last few days in Seattle.

Now that it's only noon and the rest of the day stretches out unexpectadly before me, I feel like I should be doing something, Maybe I should write something. Maybe something about being provided for; or about what my pal said when I called after Jeff's accident sobbing "why is God DOING this to me???"and she reminded me that everything is not actually about me; or about the sweet young couple that answered our Craigslist notice for a free loveseat by coming over and testing it out with a 15 minute cuddle and then decided to take it; or about the sun that shines on your last day in your old town.

Or instead I could go play catch with a 5 year old boy with the miraculously unpacked ball and bat. I think I'll go do that.

en route to other things...

I rediscovered the Poem A Day site. Might be, as school is starting for some of you, that you'd like to add this to your morning routine. Or not. But it's out there, just in case.

one week to moving day

In the midst of packing (Yes, we are getting help with this but I really dont want other people to mess with my books, which I have in ORDER just like I LIKE them. Man, moving sure brings out my not-so-inner inner neurotic.), making phone calls (so many phone calls), and worrying about how 2 grownups can be starting new jobs on the very same day as a child is starting kindergarten (who is going to hang around outside in the school parking lot trying to see in the windows all afternoon? hmmmm?) I have also had 5 incredible hours of bliss at the spa and three incredible hours being blessed and and loved up by good seattle friends at a party/ceremony this afternoon. So with all that good energy, i'm 80 percent doing great and 20 percent freaking out, which seems just about the best you can hope for.

Harry Potter Fan Club Member

Hey, remember how I used to be so casual about the whole Harry Potter thing? Remember how I didnt really get it? Remember how I couldnt answer that question about what which one was my favorite, because I was pretty sure I hadnt read all of them and, and the ones I had read I was pretty sure I hadnt read all the way through?

That was all before I picked up the copy of 7 I got for Jeff at Target a week or so ago when there was nothing else around to read, and 12 hours later looked up all bleary eyed and heart poundy. I havent read a book in one big gulp like that for a while. Hurrah for cousins to play with the boy so mommy can read. Anyway, before my nap, I'm checking into say:

People who say HP is somehow antiChristian are not drinking from the same fountain I'm at, unless they like their christianity without all the sacrifice and love parts. (And what's left is....??)

I would have read it a lot sooner if you all'd told me how delightfully quidditch free # 7 is. Turns out I cannot love organized sports no matter how much I try, and all that sport was kind of bogging me down.

I wish I would have read more carefully hitherto. I feel like I missed a lot of, you know, plot.

Ok, gotta sleep now.

Coming up for air

Heading into the second week of vacation and visits with family and friends.

20th high school reunion was way cooler than I thought it would be. We seem to have all turned out.

Rochester, Minnesota. Wow, it sure is hot.

Five days, one more paper signing, and approximately 657 phone calls later (including one from The World's Hardest Working Realtor that said, "The plane containing your papers has had difficulty, was rerouted and ultimately grounded. I am calling to say that your papers were moved to another plane and are in the air. I repeat: Your papers are in the air.") we seem to now actually own a house.

RE nieces you only see once a year: The difference between 13 and 14 is astonishing.

Vacation reading: Grace Eventually (AL is hilarious again. And still so smart and real.), The Elephant in the Boardroom: Speaking the Unspoken About Pastoral Transitions (This had some good ideas. I skipped the parts that didnt seem to apply to me. Which made me wonder if maybe I could have just read an article instead of a whole book.), Murder on the Orient Express (Worth re-reading, even though you know the ending, you spoiler-haters), Cant Wait to Get to Heaven (Read about 50 pages, left it on mom's porch, 1300 miles from the library where it is due back sometime.) and Harry Potter (Now on page 112! This really IS the best one! Even though I know what happens! Hey, what am I doing on the computer? I could be reading right now!)

The Perfect Gift For Moi, In Case You Are Feeling All Christmasy In August

yesterday, today and tomorrow

We made and received about a dozen phone calls yesterday from the title company, the realtor and Bill the Notary about the mortgage of the house we are still buying. It all started like this: We signed for a house on Monday, the same day our mortgage company was bought out by someone else, so they could not do our loan after all. (Also, lots of the nice people are out of jobs.) After some back and forth, another company was found who would give us the same deal, but we had to re-sign all the papers, so at 8 pm last night Bill The Notary came to my mom and stepdad's house to help us with that. After 45 minutes on the phone with the realtor about an extra $721.45 which had appeared on the new documents, then another 10 to clear up whether our new address ends in STREET or AVENUE since the papers say both in different places, we were finally done. Today, our only mortgage task is to wire some money somehow from our bank in Seattle to the title company in Portland. Which will have to wait a couple of hours since we are still in Minnesota, in central time.

Even though my body is on Pacific Time still, I was awake this morning at 6 am. Instead of going to back to sleep (tempting) I went for a long walk along Skyline Drive, saw the sun rise and a white tailed deer and gazillions of birds including one round bright blue one I couldnt recognize and a pair of goldfinches. Then my family was still dozing, so I got in the car and drove to the co-op where I used to work, back when I thought I was going to be in the natural foods industry forever. They've moved to a new space now, and I didn't recognize anyone until I bumped into Jim (have I told you about Jim? the conspiracy theorist who made a replica of the grassy knoll out of legos? yeah, he's that cool.). I re-introduced myself - I've been gone for ten years, after all, and I've been living high on the hog since then so I'm definately rounder than I used to be be in my lean co-op girl days. Also grayer and wrinklier. But he remembered me, and said he always thinks about those days when we used to goof around with Rebecca in the back room of the store as really good times. I agreed.

I feel so different now, not just in the rounder and grayer category, but also I seem to have turned into the kind of person who talks about her mortgage on a cell phone while at the beach with her son. Mostly, I like who've I'm turning into - I'm a lot calmer for one thing, and a lot kinder to other people and myself. And it seems like, at almost 40, it's appropriate and even joyful to have more responsibilities now that I did then.

But. Still. And. However.

I keep starting sentences, but I cant think how to end this, something regretfully nostalgic doesn't seem quite right, and neither does a repudiation of my former life in favor of the way things are now. I'm looking back, I'm looking ahead, I'm trying to stay in the present somehow too, and I'm trying to love what there is to love about all of it. Maybe that's all we're supposed to do anyway.

Things Fall Apart

On Tuesday, we landed at the Minneapolis airport and drove north on the freeway.
Almost exactly 24 hours later, in the middle of rush hour, a piece of that freeway fell into the Mississippi River. Our local family and friends are accounted for, but things are uncertain for so many this morning. If you're the praying kind, prayers would help just now.

Water Wings

Once at a hotel pool, I saw a woman speaking with subdued viciousness to her children while they prepared to swim and then tried to follow her many directions to not run, not splash, be nice to your sister. But when asked, she bent tenderly over the stick-thin arms of her little son and blew into the valve of his water wings, so he could float.

Ever since, I've wished I was a poet, so I could write a poem about it. About how the mother bent her head over the son, how the movement of her breath reminded me of the suckling that had sustained him once. If I was a poet, I would know if that was a good metaphor or not.

I would know how to write about how, even on the days when our resentment is deepest, we feed our children with our bodies, and then later hold them up with our own strong, ephemeral breath and then, last of all, send them out into the water to feed and breathe on their own.