Thanks, day twenty five

Today I am thankful for my parents. The older I get the more appreciate just what it is they built. They both came from divorced homes (in the midwest, in the 50s, the scandal!). They met and married at Earlham College, a nice Quaker school in Indiana. They moved to Pennsylvania, my dad's childhood home, so he could go to graduate school. They bought a condemned 18th century grist mill out in the country (for $2000) that had no roof or electricity, and on their weekends and holidays they built it up into a working home. Then they had four kids in five years, me number four. They continued to work on the house, and made it lovely, preserved the history of the place and in general a magic place to grow up. They took us around the world. And all without help from their own parents and very little money. It wasn't perfect, of course, but they truly built something from nothing. Now they have been married 45 years and are still supporting each other against whatever comes their way. They raised us in a house with no television, and taught me about family dinner, about reading aloud, about Scrabble. About scrapple and shoofly pie. About homesteading. And books, they taught me so much about books. My dad told us the Canterbury tales as bedtime stories. My mom taught me to bake from her cookbooks from the 1950s when baked goods invariably involved that wonder ingredient, Crisco.


Now that I am a parent myself, they give me so much more than what they had. More help than they had to do less than they did. Help with child care and building projects around the house, moral support, treats. They accept and love the man I married. And most of all, they are still together and still teaching me to be kind.

Thanks, day twenty four

Thursday is bubba's first birthday and in my fantasy world when you check here Thursday there will be a birth story for the ages and a video montage of his first year to make you cry cry cry and go, oh NOW I see how much she loves her bubba. I GET it. But his birth story locked up inside me and it won't come out. And I still haven't picked music for said video montage. And other thoughtful posts seem to be backed up behind that there clog. I need some writer's Drano. So. I like it when other bloggers post mundane details of daily living, it is like taking a walk at dusk and seeing into people's windows. Want to see in mine?

Today, "later" arrived to clean off my desk. Here's the before shot:

I read somewhere that there are two types of organizers. First, the ones who file everything as soon as they are done with it. And then there are the pilers, who let things accumulate to some sort of breaking point then sort everything at once. I am a piler (to state the obvious). The article also said that filers have neater desks but their files are often difficult to navigate because there is a lot of unnecessary stuff there. And pilers, we have messy desks but our files are pristinely beautiful and easy to navigate because they only contain the essentials.

So today I am thankful because I do actually have the capacity to sort and file! Here's the after shot:


Not bad for a piler. I found the lens cap for the camera, and some loose change, and I recycled a lot of paper that did not need to be filed. I kept these, though:


And in the spirit of remembering the first year of motherhood--since that birth story may or may not be forthcoming-- I found (and kept, for now--it was just so intense) the literature from the lactation consultant after bubba "failed" to regain his birthweight.


See it there, in fine print, where it says "you are a terrible mother who is starving her baby"? Just after "if he were born on the tundra ten thousand years ago he would die because you cannot nourish him" and before "all women who make enough breast milk are better than you." Then a little further down: "if you had only tried a little harder you wouldn't have to give him formula which I guess won't kill him but see above." I could have sworn it said that the first ten times I read it last December. That part about bub's newborn days, I don't miss that. Falling in love with him? That was better.

And one more thing, a postcard that I bought because surely I will send it to someone someday. Here! I'll send it to you. Wish you were here! XOXO, Nora

Thanks, day twenty three

Today I am thankful for low expectations, because Thanksgiving went just FINE. Sheesh, what was I worried about? It was totally fine. I'm also thankful that my family is not big on Christmas presents, because I feel no pressure to go out and shop. And my man is home from work for four days. Yay!

I think we are going to BREAK THE LAW and take bubba out for his first drive in the front-facing car seat tomorrow. He is not officially one year until Thursday, but he past the 20 pound mark at six months. I can hardly believe he is almost one. Where is my eight pound baby??

And I have a cold, which has put a serious damper on my creativity. Snuffle.

Thanks, day twenty two

Here, in case you run out of things to talk about with your relatives:

Ten pound hairball removed from woman's belly

Many happy returns of the day. Do you think it really looked like this?

Thanks, day twenty one

Is it twenty one or twenty-one? Hyphen or no? My mother-in-law arrived today. That's all I'll say about that for now. We are having Thanksgiving with both Jeff's and my family all together for the first time since our wedding. Could go either way. Each family's insanities could cancel each other out and it could be fine. Or, they could multiply, like bunnies in Woodland Park. I am now happy that I have done fuzzy good-person posts about cats and hunger, it's like a free pass, right? I just put a speedbump on my road to h#ll. In case there is a mean ol' post brewing in my soul.

If it gets rough, I'll just focus on the stuffing. Yay! Large plates of it for all! Yum!

I'm thankful for Thanksgiving. We have people who get on planes to come see us, that is a nice thing indeed.

Happy happy day to all.

Thanks, day twenty. TWENTY!

Today I have decided to be thankful for our abundant food supply. I went to the grocery store today to buy celery. I bought more than just celery but that is the only thing I need for the big day on Thursday. My parents are hosting Thanksgiving and I'm in charge of the stuffing because it is the best comfort food ON EARTH.

But I digress. It was a madhouse in there! You would think there was a blizzard coming or that a hurricane just hit and that people were scrambling for their very last meal. There were cart traffic jams at the ends of aisles, people glaring at each other to get to the broth or turkeys or whatever. I got to the celery display before it was too depleted or who knows what I might have done. If you were at the store today too you wouldn't have said, oh look everyone is so cranky and mean except that vision of beauty and serenity over there buying celery. No, you would not have said that.

It really was kind of gross, all that consumption just for one meal. There was totally enough for all of us in the store. If all katrillion of us had been shut in there we could have eaten for weeks, even as crowded as it was. (Hopefully I would not be the one stuck in the mayonnaise aisle should that occur, but who's being picky?)

There is a lot of hunger in the world, and a lot of people who live that every day--fighting with each other, probably with their own friends, for some food for their bubbas. Probably fighting for not enough food, at that. Life would look very, very different standing from there.

What do I say? That we should help them? Of course we should. That I'm glad I'm not one of them? That's really stupid, because it is, and because it could be any one of us, any time. I'm ashamed I don't remember it more often. For today I will just be thankful for the pile of groceries in my kitchen and for how easy it was to get them. Slightly less easy today than other days, but really shamefully easy. So easy that if I wanted to (and some days I do) I could CHOOSE to make it harder and more expensive by going to buy local organic unwashed celery.

You know what else? I have also decided to believe that at least some of the people in the store with me felt the same way after that store experience and are thankful this evening too.

Thanks, day nineteen

Today I'm thankful for my cats. They have been with me for a long, long time. I got them when I was 21 and they were babies, eight weeks old, in 1995. They have been lovingly at my side through about eight moves, four cities, many tears, much angst (my whole twenties, for heaven's sake), a couple roommates, a husband, and now a bubba. Who, I might add, they are very gracious about even though they are sure he is a troll and would much prefer I take him back to the troll store now thank you very much. It takes some serious grace to go from first most important in Nora's life EVER ever ever to second, there's that guy around all the time there goes having a crazy spinster cat lady for a person, to third (troll) without so much as a pee on the rug in protest. These cats have some serious class.

Bubba is bigger than this cat now, but it took him awhile.

They have taught me about unconditional love, and about the importance of just sitting there sometimes. Like my sweet amazing cat did with me through every minute of two days (TWO DAYS!) of labor. I'm thinking this was not that fun for her. Seriously. She even let me squeeze her during contractions. I love this cat.

I can't believe I'm posting a picture of myself in labor. These were to go into the vault of pictures never ever to be seen again. Perhaps the vault of pictures that should never have been taken (my man had to do something to amuse himself for two days, eh?) THAT is how much I love my cats.