Scattered Thoughts from a Tired, Busy Mama

I have a bit of time to myself, and of course, Blogger is down! So I'm composing this post in gmail, while my husband takes Pearl along to do some errands. This past handful of days has been as busy and chaotic as expected, and I'm all kinds of tensed and stressed. On top of that I have a urinary tract infection and another tooth telling me with short agonizing stabs that it wants a root canal. Pearl hasn't been sleeping well so neither have I.

But! Aside from all that, I'm doing well. The house is nice, the yard is lovely. My washer and dryer: divine. We're putting in a veggie garden in the back yard and I'm spending a lot of time worrying about the marmot who lives here. I enjoy seeing him scamper around the yard doing his marmot thing but what about the tomatoes and zucchini that will soon abound?

Pearl threw up the other night, the first time for real... not spit-up, not from gagging, but actual throwing-up. She ate something that didn't agree with her, I guess, as there weren't any other symptoms - don't know if it was food or something else, but a few hours after she went to sleep when I went in to nurse her down she wouldn't be soothed so I picked her up out of bed to sway her back to sleep and after a while she threw up all over me... so with my husband's help we got into a bath and then nursed back down... then later as I was rocking her she threw up again, all shaky, poor thing, so we took a shower and after that she was pretty cheerful and played for another hour or two, then back to bed. I had recently read Sarah's post on the initiation of a mother caring for a vomiting child for the first time and it had been rattling around my mind, what a coincidence!

She also chipped one of her front teeth. There are all sorts of new surfaces and objects to navigate. She loves toddling around the house and is delighted to play outside, playing in the water table my mom got her for her birthday, wobbling off the patio into the grass...

*****

Another bit of time all to myself - my husband has been gone all day at a motorcycle event, and Pearl is down for the night. I haven't had any adult interaction other than that with the cashier at Lowe's and am feeling a bit like an insane hermit.

Lots of unpacking, organizing. Lots of messes. Lots of laundry done. Baby gates installed - Pearl is free-range no more. Have to corral her to one part of the house or the other to accomplish any tasks without worrying about what she's up to. Lots of writer's block - I am so prolific with pen and paper, but my words tend to dry up on the keyboard. I kept tangible journals starting my senior year of high school and the next few years, one after another I filled them right up. I miss that. Blogging isn't really the same; there's an audience... which is both good and bad but the point is, it's not really the same.

I am reading a book called Possession by A. S. Byatt and it's good. It's the first fiction book that I haven't read before that I've been sucked into in a long time and I'm enjoying it, thinking about it, even in my dreams. I came across the title in this flickr photostream, which is worth checking out as her photos and stories are quite beautiful. I thought that if it was one of her favorites then it was worth checking out from the library, and I was right.

I finished putting the garden in today - strawberries, two kinds of tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant. In containers on the patio I have chocolate mint, oregano, cilantro, basil, chives, Thai basil, and rosemary. There is a strip of earth between the front porch and sidewalk where I have planted Japanese Painted Ferns (so lovely, one of my favorite plants) and some coleus. So nice to plant things in the earth. I hope my vegetable garden flourishes, I'm looking forward to eating garden-fresh food.

On the subject of the marmot, well, there was one squished on the road this weekend and today he has not been sighted. And this evening, there was a squirrel in his territory. So I'm thinking I don't have to worry about him possibly wreaking havoc on my garden anymore but what a sad way to end the dilemma.