Saul Good and Co.

Hobbled and Bobbled

I finally saw my doctor yesterday and she confirmed my suspicion that I am experiencing plantar faciitis in both heels. Which means I have to see a podiatrist and invest in orthotics and give up running (and everything else, basically) until they have a chance to get better. This bums me out indescribably. It's a very tiny problem in the history of world problems, but it is a blow to my overall well-being. I do have the green light to swim or stationary bike, which will require a gym membership. Depending on how long the healing takes, this might be in the cards. Oh well dudes, if nothing else, it will be an interesting experiment in maintaining a positive self-image.

I've noticed there are a few things I usually talk about that I haven't been talking about, maybe they are conspicuous in there absence to those who regularly read here, maybe only to me. Regardless, a major one is baseball. If you are a Red Sox fan, or if you follow baseball at all, you know why. They are GARBAGE this season. I still love this team, I still watch them, and I will always, always root for them. But right now I don't want to talk about them. 

The other is So You Think You Can Dance, and that is only because I've been away a lot. Last night was the performance finale, and next week a winner will be crowned. My favorites from show #1 remain: Ricky and Valerie. But any of the four could win, and I would be psyched. They've all earned it, and last night was one of the best shows I've ever seen. Everyone is so good, so versatile, so on point. I might be the only person who still cares about this show, but I care A LOT. It thrills me every damned time.

So there you have it. Work now, then what promises to be a super spectactular long weekend.

I Like to Move It

I am fall crazy and am not even a little sad that the summer is coming to an end. It was a great summer. It was a short summer, every year feels shorter. But we went places and saw people and ate foods and swam in oceans and even if we didn't cross every little thing off our list (it looks like we don't have a single weekend left to take HR to Story Land this year), we lived it. Now the next thing.

Vacationing with Mike's family at the end of the season is such a proper book end. We get to spend quality time with that side of the family, explore different beaches, totally relax. This year was no different. I'm grateful for the time HR gets to spend with his cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

It's great for all of us, and when it wraps up, it serves as a harbinger, for me, of summer's end. It will be hot as blazes for at least another month, and we have to first scale the dreaded peak of Evil September, but it's OK. Because change is coming and change is good.

In a little more than a week HR begins every day, full-day Pre-K. It will be a huge transition for the whole family, and nobody's ready for it. But also, we're all ready for it. It's going to be a completely unknown thing upon which we embark for the first few weeks, I'm holding no expectations. But once we get going, it'll be great. I know it. We are thrilled with the school, and it'll be so good for our boy. It'll be good for Mike to have some Mike time. It'll affect me... in some way I'm sure. It's not without emotional heft, no doubt there will be tears all around, but this is life, baby. Bring on life.

I've got one last hurrah left in the summer of 2014, and I'm gonna hurrah it good this weekend. And onward and upward.

Escape Artist

I have the uncanny ability to go on vacation a split second before everything blows up at my workplace. Holyus molyus. I'm back now and elbow deep in the debris, and it all seems to be mostly ok now but I do feel a bit guilty sometimes when these things happen. Not guilty enough to not totally enjoy my time in the sun with family and lobster and outdoor showers, I mean, it's still me we're talking about, here.

Stories from my latest adventures tomorrow, I hope. And now back to the business of business. This is obnoxious as hell of me to say, but I think after all the R&R, I'm really ready.

So long, summer. You were a good one.

Oh, This Jerk Again

You know when you just get back from vacation, then you have to turn around and go back on vacation again? Don't you hate that? Really.

I am the worst type of person. That is, the luckiest type. As of tomorrow I'll be back on the beach, in another state, with Mike's family. The good life: sign me up.

Less good: I've been experiencing some crazy heel pain lately which on paper sounds like plantar fasciitis, so I'm taking a running break at least until I have a chance to make a doctor's appointment. This is making me a little crazy. It feels weird to be doing...nothing. I do a little weight lifting, but I'm not sure how to negotiate the cardio part on bum flippers so I do nothing. I guess it's a good opportunity to re-commit to yoga, so we'll see. But I do so miss running and its effect on my mind/body balance thing. It's a sanity keeper in a lot of ways. I don't think I'll have to hang up my trainers for good in any case, but it's amazing what an impact an injury makes on your whole psyche. And the fact that I'll be in a bathing suit for the next three days (also a whole week in less than two months) isn't even at the top of my list of why it bums me out. Sure it's a consideration, but I'm always, always working on ways to make peace with my almost-40 mom body as is, and if the beach isn't the place to be an unapologetic living-in-the-moment healthy human person, then you tell me where. Conversely, one handy thing about having a kid is if ever you do get self conscious, just plunk 'em in your lap. Voila, nature's cover up.

OK, good talk. Lots of work to tackle before I make my next escape so better I get on it.

 

 

 

Time is a Flat (Dorky) Circle

From the wayback machine, circa 2008:

I realize that today is the 11-year anniversary of being at my job, and when I think about the goals I started out with, I guess I didn't have any. I was like, a salaried job with benefits and paid vacation? Whee! Where do I sign? Who the hell knows what else was going through my mind. As always, I was living in the present. I've tried to examine my idea of who I was as a person, and I know I've changed in fundamental ways, I've gone through so many things, done things I probably never would have imagined (going back to school, for one), done things I expected but in unexpected ways (buying a house), and didn't do things I took for granted - for example, I think my nebulous view of the future would have put me in a mom role a lot earlier than this. But it's all worked out to my liking. And even if I couldn't have boiled it down and articulated it when I was a dewy lass of 22, I think deep down I've always wanted the same basic things:

-To keep priority on nourishing and enjoying the relationships I have with my amazing family and friends

-To be open to new experiences and travel and adventure

-To finish at least one novel and get it published

-To have at least one healthy baby

-To produce one thing in my life that is as cool and defining as Exile in Guyvilleor Hedwig and the Angry Inch or Tiger Eyes/Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself/Are You There God It's Me Margaret.

And even if not all of these come to pass, I think I can always count on the first two and that's what's important. But having the rest to work toward gives me purpose. So I'm getting there, every day it's about getting there, and making the most of the journey. I sometimes look back and see 1997 me as a total stranger in some ways, and I can't help but think that 11 years from now I will feel similarly about me at 33. I don't want to change much about my life right now, I think I'm the happiest I can be, but it's entirely possible I felt that then, too. I'm not in any rush to find out how it turns out, but from experience I can only look ahead with the confidence that even with the occasional bout of hard times, it's just going to keep getting better.

Six years later to the day (not 11, I'm not that patient), and aside from the whopping, notable exception that was bringing my very healthy boy into the world, hardly a thing has changed. 17 years at the same job, I mean, what else would I even do if I wanted to? And I'm still plugging along at my denied masterpiece. In most ways, if you don't count loss--not that it's not significant, but you can't anticipate it, just leave room to work it into the fabric of an otherwise positive life--I do believe life has continued getting better, every fragment of every day. For all my nostalgia, I'm not a backward looking person. Always forward, for me. Always upward. It's how I do it.

Also unchanging: dorky selfies. I think I invented them so throw your concept royalties this way.

2008 dork

Present day dork

Happy anniversary to me! And my armpits.

Nothing to See Here

A Few Curious Factoids About This Guy:

-If I were a kajillionaire, one of the first luxuries I'd spring for would be a driver. I would never ever drive again. Also: a hair-washing sink and a person to do the washing. It's not like it's a hardship to wash my own hair, just that it feels so good when I get it done at the salon. And while I'm at it, a home yoga studio and instructor. Would a masseur/masseuse be too much? No, I think not. I don't mind doing my own laundry or whatever, but special services like that are very attractive to me, things that aren't the same when you do them for yourself. Stuff, not so much. No solid gold toilets, or a big pointless backyard that gets watered unneccessarily. I'm not a total arsehole.

-I am hyper judgmental about what people name their kids. I'm not public about this, because I acknowledge it's actually none of my business. But I met a set of twins yesterday named Alexis and Alexandria, and I mentally incinerated their parents (both names are fine on their own merits, it's that it is just not cute to name twins almost the same name).

-In other name related news, I have an automatic, inexplicable affection for grown men named Casey.

-I love coconut everything and always have. When I was a kid I cleaned up on chocolate-giving occasions because nobody wanted their Mounds, Almond Joy or the coconut cremes from their Whitman Sampler. I even genuinely like coconut water, but over a lot of ice. Coconut-almond Kind Bars are my new favorite coconut thing. Give me your coconut stuffs.

Well now I'm just babbling. One would guess I was avoiding thinking about every horrifiying and depressing thing in the news. Oh hey, here's a dress on which I'm currently fixating.

Not a Recap, but Something

I once said that I didn't remember the last time I saw Memere. And at the time I really couldn't bring it to mind. But now I remember. Of course I remember. It was on the beach, on the island, on the day every year when we all join forces for "breakfast on the beach." It was a gray and chilly morning, and Memere--possibly the world's greatest sport--was bundled in sweaters and blankets, holding court on her makeshift throne until it was time for her to leave. We all kissed her goodbye, and her sons walked her off the beach. A perfect exit for a perfect lady. Really, how could I forget?

And this year I left after breakfast on the beach. And it was one of the crueler departures from the island, because it was possibly the most glorious beach day we'd gotten in the 10 that came before, and everyone else was going to be there until Saturday, so they were just settling in to enjoy. And I went home. And I was sad for awhile, missing my family. Missing out on all the fun. But I went to work the next day and resumed my life at home and it was all ok. It was one of the shortest cases of post-vacation funk I've ever experienced. And now I wonder if I'm just in denial about it all, and it's going to come crashing down in a major way at an inopportune time. Or, I'm just getting to be pretty well adjusted. But the thing is, even after all this time, I am conscious that I haven't dealt with my Memere grief. Even after spending the time where I've spent a lot LOT of concentrated time with her over the course of my life, her special place, the place that she went for 61 years and we carried on the 62nd without her. I was numb about it. Walking the floorboards of the cabin where she stayed for so many years, this time occupied by my own mother and maternal grandmother. Nothing. I don't know what to say about it. It's unfinished, if it's anything. And I'm beginning to suspect that that's what grief really is. Closure is basically a unicorn.

As ever, it was the world's biggest gift to be with my amazing amazing family, and we shared so many wonderful memories of Memere. But I'm stuck. Emotionally stuck. This was not what I meant to write about. Not at all.

BUT GUYS. I had so much fun. And it went so fast, way too fast. Being with my favorite people, in my favorite place. Watching my kid form his own memories, something new every year. HE had so much fun. Despite the pesky bout with a bacterial infection that sent us into town for a round of foul antibiotics. He had a great time playing on WUH beach every day with a passel of kids, or, barring that, his ever-obliging aunt and uncles and grandparents. This was the year of jelly toast every morning, s'mores every night, and peeing on trees, eating wild blueberries from the bush (the ones too high to pee on) and sleeping like a champion until 8 in the mo-nin'. My city kid was ready to go home when it was time. But when he was there, he was all in for island life.

And I got to read on the beach! And play games. And look at the stars. And spend time with loved ones I don't see very much. For ten days (and frankly as soon as I left the office a couple days before that), I put my whole mindset on vacation. I ate and drank anything that I wanted, and decided not to even think about it once. I thought about it later, but that's a separate and boringly evergreen entry.

This is life on the island: no schedule. No plans. No showering, if you don't want to. And I wanted to every third day or so. We sang around the campfire, and talked, and it was so easy. So comfortable. Like one collective family home. We valiantly fought off nightly skunk invasions together. We collaborated on some pretty friggin' great meals. I got to spend real, easy, face-to-face time with Mike, and constant quality time with my boy as well as everyone else. It was a real vacation. And I can't believe it's over. But I know next year will be even better. I didn't take enough pictures. I didn't do this or do that or whatever I always mean to do. But it doesn't matter. Because I did what I did and it was awesome. And that's all I really want to say about it, after everything.

Also, I LOVE YOU, EVERY ONE OF MEMERE'S BOYS AND GIRLS (and the handful who aren't related to her, but you count as such anyway).

 

 

The Beauty Part

I've been home for a week, and it's like, if I haven't written this vacation entry by now, it's never going to get written. You would think that would be the case, but this is my blog which means I don't even have to write it! But I do want to (accordingly if you don't want to stick around to read it when it finally gets written, that's your decision and I don't blame you). I am putting it off for at least another day because I'm sad about Robin Williams dying and I'm frustrated about a work task that isn't coming together for me. Also: we hit a pre-literary milestone with HR last week and I want to shine a small proud light on it.

We were at one of our favorite restaurants eating dinner, and out of nowhere HR pointed to a sign on the wall and said, "B-I-G, big!" He also identified "R-E-D." We were both blown away, not because we think he's a genius, just because, damn, if that hasn't been one of the most satisfying parental moments yet. He doesn't know how to read, exactly. But he's so close to putting the pieces together, it gives me actual chills. I didn't want to let that happen and not get it down for the record.

Even if he never gets the hang of wearing pants, I think his appreciation of words remains securely fastened.

(I borrowed this pic from my amazing cousin Kel, de facto family photographer. It's one of my favorites from this year or any other.)

Best O' Times

It is safe to say that I had a magnificent vacation. I'm sad, but not too sad. It went crazy fast, but I definitely feel rejuvenated, which is probably more than I could ask for.

I'm working my way through the "boy did we miss YOU" pile on my desk, so words will have to wait until tomorrow. Which is good in a way, because I usually like to have some time to reflect before committing my thoughts to the ether. For now, a couple of scenes from the past 10 days.