and because my brain is everywhere at once today, and because if I don’t go with the random I may well never blog here again, because I do seem to be losing the blog habit.
1. Rabbit, Run by John Updike. It’s a rather well-known book, yeah? A million and three people have read it before me, and I know at least ten of them, probably more. I picked it up because I somehow got the feeling I should read the Rabbit series. You know how well those “should reads” often work out. How could I have lived 37 years surrounded by readers and not have known that a baby gets drowned in this book? How did that never come up in bookish conversations before? Or better yet, “Jesus, Cari, do NOT read that book if you can’t handle a baby getting drowned and I know you so I know you CAN NOT HANDLE A BABY GETTING DROWNED.” I was reading Rabbit, Run. Then a baby got drowned. I am no longer reading Rabbit, Run. This is not to fault the book in any way. And bonus points to Updike for being able to fill me with such absolute grief and horror. But also, fuck him. There are things I can’t handle. That scene is one of them. Looking forward to the day when it leaks out of my brain and is gone.
2. Kiddo turns five tomorrow. FIVE! He rides a two-wheeler bike now. He does little pop wheelies on it and can stand up to pedal. He can hit a pitched baseball really well. He can throw a frisbee like a teenager. He can write his friend Atticus’s name. Where did my baby go?! Here he is at his school’s May Day celebration. Teenager, right?
Okay…so maybe not a teenager yet. How much longer will he be willing to wear flowers in his hair?
3. The baby is now 14.5 months. She can say Mama, Dadda, Kiddo’s name (minus the final consonant), cat, ball, ne ne (nursing), hi, bye, yes, eat, nana (banana), this, and that. She can feed herself with a spoon. But she absolutely refuses to walk. Why should she walk? With a face like this, she gets carried wherever she wants to go:
4. The weather has been weird, so the garden is grumpy. Photos when it perks up a bit.
5. The standing desk has worked out really well. I often have to work until one a.m. or later, since I can’t get to work until the kids are asleep. With my traditional desk, I’d wake up with the kids the next morning feeling achy and exhausted. With the stand-up desk I still feel underslept the next morning, but it’s not nearly as bad, and my overall energy is way better.
Yesterday Billy took the kids so I could sneak out to a cafe to work on the novel revisions. I worked for four hours. Four hours! It was bliss. And then I stood up to walk home. Ugh! I’m not used to that much sitting anymore! My legs were stiff and tight, my back hurt… It took the whole 30-minute walk home to loosen up. I think I need to find a cafe with a bar or counter I can stand at, because I don’t want to feel that way again if I can avoid it.
Yay, you’re back!
I *just* noticed my cafe has a bar, and that people work standing up at it. It’s like a secret, this standing up thing, that I’m just waking up to.
xo
1. Your children are absolutely beautiful. I am in awe.
2. The other day, while compiling a summer reading list for Peter’s 16 year old daughter, he pulled out “Dance of the Happy Shades” as his choice for her best introduction to Alice Munro’s work. When we realized the story “The Time of Death” was in there we both shuddered and groaned out loud, because something happens to a baby in that story that is so horrible and haunting that we cringe at even hearing the title. So it’s on her summer reading list but I really don’t want to have to discuss it with her. Of course only the very best writers can haunt a person like that, but really, for all its beauty, that story just doesn’t bear thinking about.
John Updike gives me a pain. Your children, on the other hand, delight me.
DO NOT READ ANY JOHN IRVING BOOKS!!!! At least not until your kids are grown and have kids of their own.
Just trust me on this one, okay?
There should be a pill you can take to wilfully erase certain things from your brain. They can call it the Updike when they invent it.
I hear what you’re saying about the Updike book. I was reading “Still Alice’ while nursing my first child (a girl), and I HAD TO PUT IT DOWN. I tried again seven or eight years later, and I still can’t read it. I don’t think I’ll try again, maybe ever.
Love the photos of the kids.
Damn, I’m glad you posted that about the Updike book. I’ve been meaning to read the Rabbit books for a while, but I definitely can’t read a book where a baby is drowned (that no one ever mentioned to me either). Thank you for the warning!
Not “Still Alice”, I meant “The Lovely Bones”. That’s what I get for staying up too late!
Thank you for the warning. I have recently started several books that failed to mention the death of children as central plot features, including one branded as light hearted and bittersweet. Perhaps we need a classification system similar to that used by the BBFC (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/recent/films/- I particularly like ‘mild comic threat and flatulence jokes’).
Anyway, here’s to happy reading and Happy Birthday to the boy!
Yuck! I’ve never read Rabbit, Run either, and now I’m not going to! We should have read it in high school or college, before we had babies of our own. Back then, babies were so hypothetical, not chunks of our hearts wandering naked in the world, unprotected and vulnerable. I still feel haunted by Sophie’s Choice, and I read that years ago.
Your kids are BEAUTIFUL, by the way!!