thanksgiving, 2008

sorry it's been so long--the keyboard had laryngitis. happy thanksgiving, everyone. this morning, when adding leaves to our gratitude tree, these are the things adah said she was thankful for: "apples and leaves, books, trains, blocks, grandmuhs, and my moms." thinking of abundance. love to all of you out there!

sunday morning in a tent

anne and adah, the inseparable love birds, are upstairs camped out in a tent that we dragged up from the basement, while i am at war with the APA style guide. which looks like more fun?

the light of a saturday afternoon

spent the afternoon nursing a friend's broken heart, and playing all sorts of things with kiddo. anne, specifically, as i was trying to get through the swamp of a lengthy literature review.

jubilance and novembering

first off, the election. holy shit, people. i know people have been saying this for days, but i really didn't see it happening in my lifetime, this electing a black president business. as my friend jonathan said, i didn't think it was in our country's DNA to let that happen, so i was quite wow-ed by the reality of it. whether or not we have hope that members of the government can exact the kind of radical changes we need in this country, it was indeed a monumental moment.

adah will one day ask, "where were you that night? what were you doing?" and i'll have to tell her that i was taking a bath and reading a novel while mccain was giving his concession speech because woops! i thought i had time for these things before more results were revealed. anyway, we spent the rest of the night rather glued to the TV, listening to the rowdy cheers and fireworks in the street. i exhausted myself with moodswings: excitement, followed by paranoid assassination fears, followed by more fireworks. it's not difficult for me to work myself into a tizzy. i felt kind of emotionally battered by the end of the week, and due to a lack of sleep, and trying to keep up with work and school and life, some christmas bulbs began to grow in the back of my throat. i was worn out.

so i decided to call in sick. this act used to cause me great anxiety, but i'm getting much better at it-- this act of declaring that it's important to take care of myself. i not only wanted the 7:30 a.m. sleep-in, but adah has had a couple of difficult weeks and the level of interventions required to get through the day without us both crumbling to the floor in tears told me that she needed some extra lovin', so i declared friday, november 7, 2008, a mama and adah day.

it was lovely. we lounged in bed reading a stack of books until we finally decided to eat breakfast, we painted, baked bread, went on a nature walk in the neighborhood to collect sticks and leaves and flowers for a project, and met joanna and zanna at the local soaking pool. pretty much a perfect specimen of a day.

now that i'm all relaxed, and am determinedly not catching the severe cold that anne brought home, i can begin my happy november hibernating. i love this month...

election day: november 4, 2008

i thought i'd post this to get a little rise out of my anarchist friends, and to also proclaim a little bit of excitement for this historic and nerve-wracking election. :) adah spent the morning at the obama headquarters with her grandma bonnie, doing who the hell knows what. i asked her what she did there, and all she said was, "i was eatin' some lollipops!" anyway, this ordinary cynic (me) is both hopeful and biting my nails tonight.

HELP!!

i have no idea how many people regularly read this blog , but for those of you out there who do check in from time to time, we need your help. if you are a regular visitor here, or are in our lives in general, you already know that zanna, who makes regular appearances on this site, is adah's bestest little friend. adah loves her some zanna. so here's the deal: zanna and her parents (who i admire so much for how well they genuinely listen to their child) need some help getting to china. go here for more details and please do whatever you can to help them out!

a halloween menagerie

i wanted to post these pictures right away, but i'm still kind of at a loss for what to say because this experience, this trick or treating adah and zanna style, was over-the-top-cute, with their stops for carrots and apples on sidewalks, their faces both glowing and exhausted amidst the lit-looking leaves, their especially evident happiness and curiosity. i loved watching their demeanor and vastly different personalities as they experimented with knocking on doors and saying those things you're supposed to say on holidays like these. it was another heart widening and grinning experience, to say the least.

http://zannababy.blogspot.com/2008/11/happy-halloween.html

some street lights are lesbians

we spent the afternoon celebrating a 2 year old friend's birthday, hunting down a new bread machine from craigslist, looking at nests of homemade pasta at pastaworks, drooling around the cookbook section at powells, and finally, having lots of lap time in the kid's section. bug picked out halloween books solely.

on the walk back to the car, she saw this streetlight in the fred meyer parking lot and said, "look at that funny streetlight!" i said, "yep-- it has three lights..."

to which adah replied, "it must be two moms and their baby!"

well, of course. what else would it be?