About Place

I'm excited to share with you my essay "Catch 22" in The Future of Water issue of The Black Earth's Institute's About Place Journal. 



This is an essay that I've been working on, in different guises, over the last couple of years, and I'm pleased it's finally found a home. Though now that I've been away from it for a couple of months, I see more things I'd like to change. Isn't that always the way?

Anyway, if you'd like to read it, you can go here. And then check out some of the other wonderful pieces in the current issue.

Weekend Things

This weekend I finally shucked off the mantle of procrastination, shut myself in my room and got serious about revising the last few stories for my thesis. I ignored all regular housework, kept my mind off the archive boxes in the back of my car that I bought for organizing 12 years worth of kids' artwork and memorabilia, paid no attention to the lovely blue sky (Saturday), and even resisted the siren song of National Clean Out Your Fridge Weekend (actually, that's a lie––I did clean out my fridge, but not until Sunday evening, while I cooked dinner).

As a result of my diligence, I totally rewrote two stories, tweaked another six that were mostly done already, and did some initial note-taking and thinking about one last one before I ran out of steam altogether. That one's on tonight's to-do list. I'm super excited to be on the home stretch (draft thesis due this Wednesday, the final, after one or two more rounds of revision, is due December 20), and I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out. I'm not entirely satisfied with the endings on a couple of stories. But that's the hardest part, isn't it? The ending? That is, after the beginning and the middle.

Amidst it all, I did manage to cut one boy's hair. He was extremely unhappy with me (thus, no "after" picture), but I am going to be so happy to have to contend with those snarls anymore.

And I (almost) finished one Christmas present (weaving in of ends and felting still remain to be dome):

I have been meaning to make E and Z felted mittens for years now, but have somehow not managed to make it happen. Then, last weekend, I discovered I had already knit the right mitten of one pair. They're made with Noro Kureyon (to match this green hat, which has gotten lost since I bought the yarn for the mittens) and some locally-spun sagey/minty green I've had hanging around in the stash forever). Last Sunday, while riding to and from our hike, I cast on the left mitten and knit up through the thumb gusset. That night, while watching Masterpiece, I discovered I'd knit a right thumb gusset, not a left, so I ripped it out and did it again, correctly.

Then, this past Friday night, after we got home from open mic, where M did a duet of "Hotel California" with a friend of ours, I watched an episode of "Ripper Street" (I discovered this show on the airplane home from Ireland, and I love it!) and knit up half of the hand part. I finished up the hand and the thumb on the drive to and from a Portland Pirates Hockey game Saturday night (I used to go to hockey games all the time in high school, but I hadn't been to one in years. I forgot how much fun they are!). As always, one mitten came out looking smaller than the other (perhaps the huge gap in time that usually occurs between knitting each half of the pair is to blame), but hopefully they will even out in the wash when I felt them.

Last night, I wound my yarn into balls and started the cuff of a second pair. Just a couple more nights of television watching or a long car ride and I should have two Christmas gifts in the offing. Unheard of!

Major Organization Versus General Chaos

This American Life had a program this weekend about the seven topics of conversation that are far too boring to bring up at a dinner party. Fortunately, cleaning and organization did not make the list, so I can continue to post about my efforts to reign in entropy at our house.

This weekend, I decided to tackle the boys' room, yet again(and again). It is the time of year when I go through the bins of hand-me-downs in the basement, and change out the summer clothes for winter, add the next size up, get rid of the too small, and assess what's needed for the season ahead. But before I took on this project, however, I wanted to get E and Z a new dresser, one big enough to hold all their clothes, with smooth-sliding drawers that would make it easier to get out and (ha-ha) put away their own clothes. Also, we need to add a loft bed to accommodate Z, who has been sleeping in the sun room since spring, so we needed a dresser low enough to fit underneath said bed (which does not yet exist.

So, after a trip to the unfinished furniture store, and an entire day of moving, shifting, and rearranging, that led inadvertently to a throughout basement cleaning, finally we got things in order. I'd like to add some artwork a little nicer than ratty old maps (how many world maps does one room need, anyway?).

M is in his closet office in the above picture, cleaning up, and he wanted me to share the "after" photo he took, so you can see the improvement over last week's picture.

Every time I get this room sorted out, I think to myself, "There. Now it's so clean it will stay that way forever." No such luck so far, but maybe this time...

Weekend Things

This weekend involved a great deal of housecleaning and not nearly as much writing as it should have (I'm procrastinating so hard it hurts).

But we did get a bit of a break from both the housework and the stern stare of the computer.

M and I went hiking Sunday with friends. 

E and Z opted to stay home with C, and I'm getting better at not trying to cajole them into coming and doing every fun thing I want to do (or maybe I'm getting tired of trying to coax them to do anything at all).

In any case, it was a beautiful day––gray and Novemberish, with a bit of a chill in the air, but beautiful no less, and so nice to get near the coast (this is actually tidal river, so not officially coast, but beachy just the same).

And since it was a glorious three-day weekend, we got to stay home and enjoy Monday's return to sun and warmth.

E and Z's friends came over, and while their dad practiced guitar with M (they're doing a duet of "Hotel California" at open mic Friday night), we took some airplanes to the neighbor's field to fly.

I seriously doubted we'd even make it to the field with planes intact. E threw his into no fewer than four trees, and their friend stepped on one on the way down the driveway.

(I resorted to speaking to them in a teacher voice, "Hold your plane in your hands, please, until we get to the field." It didn't do much good).

We always get balsa wood airplanes for Christmas, and after the initial flight (if it's not too wet and snowy to fly them at all), the ones that survive get put up on top of a cabinet and forgotten about. I decided it was time to wear these ones out before another round comes this Christmas.

M joined us after his jam session, 

and we added to the mix a basket full of paper airplanes.

They had been hanging around the perimeter of the boys' room ever since M built them from a paper-airplane-a-day calendar he got years ago.

We finally decided to put them to good use. Unfortunately, none of them got destroyed, so we've still got a basket full (perhaps taking them out on a rainy day, or to the top of a high cliff, next time...).

I didn't get in as many things as I would have liked to this weekend, but E, Z, and I put in a mega reading session Monday afternoon (still chipping away at Harry Potter). 

How was your long weekend?

Wanted: Library

Next time I build a house, I'm going to make sure it includes a library. Our house, which does not have a library, has books in every room.

The living room.

The stairway.

The landing.

My bedroom.

And my bedside table.

The kids' room, on E and Z's side.

On M's side.

And in the closet (this portion of the closet M refers to as his "office" and is probably the closest thing we have to a dedicated book room).

Books on random pieces of furniture.

The only rooms that don't have books in them are the bathrooms––I've never understood the concept of books in the bathroom (although I do read in the tub––I just don't store by books in there).

Wouldn't it be nice, though, to have a whole room big enough to hold all the books, where you could organize them all by subject, or author, or color (it drives C crazy when I organize books by color)? With a nice cozy reading chair or two?

Urgent Cushion

For as far back as I can remember (at least since college), whenever I have had an overwhelming amount of homework to do, I am overcome with an irresistible urge to clean my room.

So, with a big thesis deadline looming, and since I'd given up on cleaning, sorting, and organizing the boys' clothes, I decided to tackle my own drawers Saturday, and switched out my summer for winter clothes, tossing out a few items along the way (and can I say how depressing my winter wardrobe is? Why didn't I bring home half a dozen sweaters from Ireland? And also, who's incredibly stupid idea is skinny jeans?)

After I finished the clothing side of my room, I moved on to my sewing corner, but instead of cleaning it, I became overwhelmed with an urgent need to replace the ugly cushion on the rocking chair immediately (the chair we inherited from C's grandparents when they moved to Florida ten years ago. The cushion, which was mostly flattened and covered in a faded and stained super-seventies fake-quilted print in orange and gold, had always been ugly).

A while ago I had bought a scrap pack of Joel Dewberry Aviary prints in orange, brown, and turquoise (that is a racket, if I've ever heard of one, selling your scrap fabrics, but I was suckered in), and they served the purpose perfectly, with a few other fabrics in complimentary colors thrown in. I had just enough brown Roman glass fabric left over from the TV cabinet for the backing.

I'm fairly pleased with the result, and I think I have enough scraps left for a pillow, next time a making urge overtakes me. And it felt good to shove that old cushion, with its crumbling foam filling, into the garbage. I feel like I'm slowly circling in on a new couch, one little bit of living room furniture at a time (almost there, I think).

Weekend Things

Yes, I know Halloween wasn't technically the weekend, but we operate on a bit of a delay around here.

This year I was a total Halloween slacker, and brought home an armload of black sweatsuits from Old Navy that the boys wore with their demon ski masks (which my sister brought back from Peru a couple of years ago), along with various capes, cloaks and light-up glasses from the dress-up bin. It rained Halloween night, so we couldn't do our traditional hay wagon ride. Instead C took the boys and their friend N and his dad around in the Volvo and my friend T and I hung out at home and drank wine and made some of these caramels (because, apparently, I am incapable of sitting around doing nothing, and because they are delicious).

I had big plans for the weekend––trips to the unfinished furniture store, and cleaning, sorting, switching out summer clothes for winter clothes, but then a friend of mine invited me to a craft fair. And then, when I told the boys to go clean their room in preparation for the organizing, M went upstairs and started writing a song, E decided to teach himself to play the piano, and Z went down to the basement to play drums. Who am I to put housework ahead of art?

I took my camera along to the craft fair, but I was too shy to take pictures of the lovely wares there.

Afterward, we went for a walk in nearby park and out for a drink (I had lemonade, because I think I've figured out that alcohol seriously interferes with my sleep).

On Sunday, E taught Z what he'd learned on the piano the day before ("Mary Had a Little Lamb"). Yes, these are the boys who were fighting like wolverines last week.

I love the day we switch back to Standard Time. I purposely don't set the clocks back, so that every time I look at the clock, I get little jolt of surprise as I subtract an hour. Instead of it being twenty minutes to noon and I'm still vacuuming, it's barely ten-thirty and I'm almost done vacuuming. It's the one day a year I become a glass-half-full sort of person, and each mental rewind of the clock is a little reprieve, a temporary stay of execution, holding Monday morning off just a little longer.

Sunday afternoon, C took the boys out on a project he had to work on and I had the house to myself for a little while.Last week, I was talking to a friend about the noise in my house, and she said, "But it's quiet when there aren't voices, right?"

She meant that we don't have the TV or radio running as background noise all the time, which is true, but it is almost never quiet. Five voices make a lot of noise, not to mention two electric guitars, a mandolin, a piano, a drum set, a record player.

Nope. Almost never quiet.

When all those noise-makers got home Sunday evening, I went for a walk down to the river in the darkening evening, to find that November is really putting in an appearance around here.