The New Look

This is how I am. In my house, I am constantly envisoning: What I could paint, what I could sew, what I could plant, where I could add on. Usually, I just rearrange the furniture: this is a cheap and easy way of making things look different. I move the things around in the playroom, I bunk and unbunk beds, I trade a bedspread from the guest house to the main house and back again. I recover throw pillows and switch rugs. It makes me happy. Somehow, I need it.

So here is the new blog, the new look. With this blogger address I am pretty limited. One of the reasons why I sometimes hesitate to read other blogs is because I am really struck with blog- envy. As you know I am not the most savvy computer user, and other people's blogs always seem so cool to me. Amazing photography, 235 comments for every post, fabulous writing that I could never hope to emulate. And here I am, on my little, hokey blogger account, with about 14 templates to choose from and no idea if or how I could stray from these, with mediocre writing, amateur photography... and actually pretty much loving every minute of it. So here it is. The best I can do. I hope you like it. I just felt so tired of the brown, it seemed so fall, and this seemed wetter, more vernal. Feast ye eyes.

This morning, Liam crawled into bed with me at about 6:30, bless his heart. This week he's been sleeping in. Some mornings he wants me on the high wire right away, but this morning he was content to let me snooze while trying to tell stories of James the conservationist woodcutter. I kept dozing off between sentences and ideas, only to be awakened by the next leading idea that my little blonde bedmate offered. Since Liam was about 2, he's been obsessed with storytelling: constantly asking for stories about various characters we've made up: Tizzlepop the fairy, Bubba the naughty kid, Tim Tuggins the tiny little 6 inch man who plays horribly on a variety of instruments disturbing the peace wherever he goes; Bob Watson the offroad dump truck driver; James the woodcutter who always keeps the peace, and there are others. It may not sound like rocket science, but constantly creating new stories, sometimes with new characters, but always with new storylines, and always with creative additions from my audience, can be exhausting work. I don't multitask well with storytelling and really bad traffic or parallel parking, for example. Sometimes I feel like I have been kind of storied out. Liam will ask me for a story, from his little cow print carseat in the back, and I feel like saying NO. I just want to listen to my music and drive! But then I always think about how much pleasure it brings him to hear the stories, and how he will always remember how his mother (and father) told him stories, and I make myself do it. I always do.

So this morning I made up a particularly lame one, whilst falling asleep between sentences, and felt pretty halfway there. But my boy, my little boy, placed on my lips a sweet, juicy kiss, laid his head on my chest, and said, "Oh, Mimi. You're the best mother in the whole world. If I had to buy you, I'd pay a million google dollars."

Oh, hi. Melt my heart. OOOHHhhhh. It does not get much better than that. Sweet morning cuddles and sweet words whispered in my ear. I felt so happy.

(charlotte's little stone by the river: reads Charlotte Amelia, we love you)

Then later in the morning, on a much different note, I went to the last gathering of the Northampton Parent Center, where they brew the best coffee in the world, and had myself 2 cups with half-and-half and sugar in it. I have taken myself off of coffee because it might possibly cause canker sores, and this coffee was so good, and made me so happy, and had so much caffiene. It left me high as a kite and so bloody happy I felt like I hoped and prayed I would get cankers anyway because I just want to drink it every day. So you never really know what's going to bring you joy, eh?

At the parent center I was wearing my new t-shirt that says Charlotte's Mama. A woman commented on it. Perhaps kind of stupidly I hadn't really thought about what I would say when somebody I didn't know asked me about my shirt. I really do have to have pre-canned lines for these moments, because I do tend to suddenly get very concerned about the person I am talking to, and about making them feel awkward, and so things just come out too fast and awkwardly. So in this instance, the woman said, "What does your shirt say? Charlotte's what?" So I showed her, "Charlotte's mama" and I just blurted out something about how I had a little girl who passed away and how we had a walk and I made the shirts for the whole family. And then kind of disengaged, somehow. I just couldn't really continue, and I felt sorry for it, because I really could have looked her in the eye and said something pretty profound and remarkable but instead I just ran and stumbled over my words and then moved on.

What will I say next time? I don't know.

(p.s. Look! I added an e-mail address to the sidebar. Now you can e-mail me and tell me who you are without everyone else seeing it. Yay! Write me a note to say Hi and we can be friends!)