My Move

We spend a lot of time looking for houses. Online. Driving around. Just looking. Sometimes it's just a form of retail therapy; the shopping. Sometimes I am ambiguous about moving, though I know it must happen fairly soon. Sometimes I feel I cannot spend another night in that house. Lately, it's not so much disliking where we are, rather, it is an intense desire to be elsewhere. Where we are is not bad, but it is not where I want to be. I have taken everything from the city that it can offer me. I think. Now my whole soul screams for days spent gardening and the sounds of children and crickets playing in backyards in the evening. I don't remember a "nesting" phase while I was pregnant. Maybe this feeling is that phase, belated. (Why is every phase in my life "belated"?)

I had the opportunity, over the summer, to revisit my former self. I made a cd in September and and spent quite a few hours rehearsing in practice rooms at the NE Conservatory (not my conservatory, but close enough). Sometimes the best part was simply getting to and from my rehearsals. It was a feeling of freedom I once took for granted, but had long forgotten. Just me. Doing my thing. But of course, each rehearsal ended up with me at home, in this new life... which is a good life... but a stunningly different life from the one I had before... and the contrast has made me more aware than ever of this nagging feeling of being in the wrong place. Where we are doesn't match the life we're living. I feel like I can't be happy in this life unless I am also happy where I am living it. Maybe. Maybe I just feel like I'm performing a play on the wrong set.

Of course this is all wound up with my job. Which will take me slowly nowhere.

Time is wasting.

Released

Stingy New England April has finally managed to give up a couple of warmish days and we've been able to take K to the playground.

She explodes onto the playground, shrieking and laughing, climbing everything in sight as fast as she can; hurling herself down the slides. You'd think she had been released from 10 years in a dungeon!

"You can't get me..."

I've caught some of the smaller kids watching her with a fascinated admiration... "Look, Mommy... Look what that kid can do!" Then I watch the mommy in question swallow hard and hope that her kid doesn't try to follow K's lead... but they always do. :-)

She's like a flame, this little girl. She grabs your attention and you can't look away.

Bad Lamb

So, I'm putting Kassia to bed last night and we're reading stories and being silly... the usual stuff :-)

She reaches for a stuffed lamb that she's had forever, but never paid much attention to, holds him up and says "He's a bad lamb."

I say "A bad lamb? Why?"

And with an evil little grin, she says in a deep voice...

(are you ready for this?)

BAAA HA HA HA HA..!

Laughed so hard, I nearly choked.

Blue Monday

Damn! I knew I should have taken that picture when I had a chance... But I couldn't bring myself to look like a tourist on the T by digging out the cell phone camera..!

I was on the train, on my way into work. The "red line" comes above ground long enough to cross the Charles River from Cambridge into Boston. (The view is a favorite with tourists... hence my reluctance to break out the camera...) Anyway... it was about 7:15, and the sun may have been up, but through the blizzard that was Boston's morning, you couldn't see it. You couldn't see Boston for that matter... or Cambridge... or even the river! Everything beyond the bridge was completey obscured by the snow. What you could see was blue. That's it... just blue.

Kinda like the background color here... but mistier.

A little creepy actually... but very, very cool. Usually nobody even looks up from their "Metro" when the train comes above ground. But this morning, a whole car load of jaded commuters sat staring out the windows with their mouths half open. And that, in itself, is something to write about!

Dialog

The scene opens on Kassia experimenting with centrifugal forces by spinning her macaroni and cheese bowl around on the counter with her fork... Mom watches dubiously.

Mom: Be careful with that... it's going to go flying.

Kassia: (starts singing to herself; continues spinning bowl which does, of course, go flying...)

Mom: (getting down on hands and knees to clean up the macaroni and cheese) Grrr. Are you a menace??

Kassia: Yep. That's ok. That's my job! (resumes singing)

End scene