miss me?

i haven’t had an internet connection at home for over a month. i think i’ve handled it rather well. but, get excited, i should be back blogging in july. can’t get better news than that, can you? and if you just can’t stand not hearing from me, read this instead.

deep breath

sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

topsy-turvy

as you can imagine, my life is complete chaos. chaos in my head. chaos in my house. chaos in the kitchen sink. chaos in the kid’s room. chaos. i have this gigantic list of things cleveland i still want to write farewell to, but everything is so chaotic i can’t seem to dredge up enough love to get down to business. so, instead of my love, i’ll give you a list of things henry has lately declared his love for, in no particular order:

• blue vacuums
• lawnmowers
• uncle pip
• cheesy shells
• monkeys
• digging in the dirt
• worms
• the month of may

i still haven’t made the list, but i’m crossing my fingers.

cleveland 12

i can’t believe really that in two weeks-ish we won’t be able to hop in the car and drive out to cuyahoga valley national park when henry asks for a “long drive.” i love this place. i love the tinker creek gorge in the fall. i love walking along the canal trail. i love waiting for the train to toot by. i love talking over everything with joe. i love the little picnic table that we lay on to spot stars. i love the trees in winter. i love the trees in spring. i love teaching hal to identify trees - he nows calls all trees with blossoms “olia trees” [i.e. magnolia] and all trees without blossoms “oak trees.” and more recently we discovered the heronry along bath road. if you haven’t seen hundreds of nesting great blue herons in the dusk of evening, you haven’t lived.

[ps - the book trail. so. i really like one hundred years of solitude. it's fascinating and perverse. but, i have to admit, with little sleep and a move on my mind, i can't give the sentences the attention they need. i'm only about 200 pages in. i'm determined not to give up. in the meantime, i'm rereading harry potter and hoping that some packing fairies will appear.]

interrupted

i’m interrupting this cleveland love-fest to tell you why i’ve been sort of non-bloggy lately. yeah. joe was taking his board exams. i’m pretty sure (i’m checking… i’m checking… yup) that i have never been so anxious, high-strung, and downright nervous in my entire life. i wasn’t sleeping. the babies weren’t sleeping. i couldn’t eat. i ate too much. i had a constant headache. a constant stomach ache. i mean, really, i shouldn’t have been so worried, right? he was just trying to get his license to practice dentistry. no big deal.

it’s a little shocking to think that it’s ending. i  remember pulling into cleveland in our big yellow penske and moving into that apartment on murray hill and thinking, “this is never going to end.” but it is ending. it’s ending. we’re going to have to be grown-ups. funny thing is, i always thought grown-ups had everything figured out. now i know the truth. the difference between being grown-up and not being grown-up is that grown-ups don’t get to sleep in on saturdays.

[i feel like posting an embarrassing picture of joe dancing in the kitchen in his scrubs on the first day of school, but i think he might not like that. just imagine it. it's joe. and he's dancing in the kitchen. the scrubs are blue. and yes, he has pens in his breast pocket.]

postscript: if you’re into getting things for free [i like to pay for things, myself], little birdie secrets is hosting a giveaway of some of my sister sarah’s awesome stuff. and trust me, she makes really awesome stuff.