dual personalities

Catherine is 2 weeks old!

Two weeks feels like a huge milestone for these first-time parents. She has gained precisely the right amount of weight (now 9 lbs 5 oz!) and is off the charts for height. (The doctor says, “She’ll definitely be taller than 5 foot 4!” OK.) I feel affirmed that I have been successfully feeding her, given how unknowable it all felt in the beginning. But as everyone has told us, it probably isn’t all the advice books and frantic Googling that makes good parenting — just loving her and doing our best.

We recently did laundry and it felt bizarre to see the clothes we had worn to the hospital. A day before baby! Doesn’t it seem like a lifetime ago? Well, I keep saying, it was a lifetime — her’s!

Yes, I am that mom waxing philosophical about time passing. We are just happy that she is doing well, which means we are doing well. Here’s to a lifetime of continuing to do our best!

*Talking Heads, “Dream Operator”

“Probably because gospel music is the music of good news and in these days there just isn’t any. Good news in today’s world is like a fugitive, treated like a hoodlum and put on the run. Castigated. All we see is good-for-nothing news. And we have to thank the media industry for that. It stirs people up. Gossip and dirty laundry. Dark news that depresses and horrifies you.

On the other hand, gospel news is exemplary. It can give you courage. You can pace your life accordingly, or try to, anyway. And you can do it with honor and principles. There are theories of truth in gospel but to most people it’s unimportant. Their lives are lived out too fast. Too many bad influences. Sex and politics and murder is the way to go if you want to get people’s attention. It excites us, that’s our problem.”

Y’all, I can’t believe that no one has blogged about this yet. Last week, the New York Times published an interview with Bob Dylan. The reporter is a moron who clearly went to the Tom Chiarella school of interview writing (the irony here, is that I literally had Tom Chiarella as a teacher) which means the interview is more about the reporter and how cool/funny/smart he is.

Luckily, Bob rolls with it. He doesn’t get riled by the reporter’s stupidity. He’s used to their nonsense. They’ve been ‘not getting him’ for 60 years.

So, while it pains me to suggest you read something from the New York Times, I highly recommend this interview.

One thing that I love about this interview is the rhythmic cadence of the way he speaks. It is so unlike anyone else.

“It’s one of those where you write it on instinct. Kind of in a trance state. Most of my recent songs are like that. The lyrics are the real thing, tangible, they’re not metaphors. The songs seem to know themselves and they know that I can sing them, vocally and rhythmically. They kind of write themselves and count on me to sing them.”

I could really just keep copying and pasting quotes from the interview, but I won’t.

In other news, I’ve spent basically the last two days on conference calls and I really just can’t. I feel like my brain is absolute mush. And it’s only Tuesday!

I love this time of year! The weather (at the moment) is cool, dry and breezy and there aren’t many bugs. This is the perfect time for outside projects, and since we both desperately needed some time away from work and the news, we headed to our cabin last weekend to do some much-needed clean-up. The DH plugged away at a big fallen tree,

while I washed the porch furniture and harvested more rhubarb to make another rhubarb crumble.

This time I added a few strawberries and remembered to take a picture, although not until we had sampled some.

Back in the woods, we also took time to enjoy nature. I love the wild iris that bloom at the edge of the beaver pond. They are a protected wildflower up here, but people come along and cut them anyway, so it was heartening to see so many.

The water in the pond is high, the water lilies are thriving, and the dam has been improved — all signs that beavers have moved in. The beavers do a great job managing the pond, but because it is located next to the road and sometimes floods it, the county always traps the beavers. We will get to enjoy their presence but briefly.

It did us good to get away from our computers for a day. In fact, the physical labor was so restorative (if you don’t count all the resulting aches and pains) that we have decided tackle some home improvement too.

Today we are going to start painting one of the bedrooms here at home. Yesterday we moved all the furniture and books (so many books) into another room, washed the walls, and bought the paint. After we’ve had our morning tea, we’ll get to work. I’m looking forward to it!

If the world is making you glum, do something! Anything — activity will make you feel better, at least for a time.

Have a productive weekend!

We made it through our first week with baby Catherine and we are feeling relatively good!

How could we not, when she is this adorable?

It was a big week: we left the hospital after about 48 hours, and since then we have had 2 pediatrician visits, 2 grandparent visits, 2 baths, a couch delivery, and lots of FaceTimes. In the meantime, we have kept the baby fed and diapered and happy.

We even ventured out for a walk around the block!

Our bassinet attaches to our stroller, so I wonder if the baby just thought her bed had become a jiggle ride all of a sudden. Many of our neighbors must have observed us walking — and waddling — past their porches in the end of my pregnancy because several passerby exclaimed, “Oh, the baby was born!!”

This sweetie pie is bringing joy to everyone, strangers included.

Well, here in Mid-MO things are getting back to normal. The TJ Maxx opened and, naturally, I ventured there on Saturday. Let me tell you, it is a real treat to peruse some aisles and buy things that aren’t needs. Although, I did need that lipstick. There were some changes–a woman stood outside with a counter tracking the number of customers in the store. And there was another woman disinfecting the carts. I observed a line to get in to the Old Navy [insert the crying laughing emoji]. At all the stores I visited, the employees and customers smiled at each other. It was nice.

In other news, one of my co-workers sent me this to read. It always concerns me when this particular co-worker thinks we are similar and share interests, but I did chuckle throughout.

Here’s a song I heard on the radio this week that should really be my theme song.

Sorry this post spans the full spectrum of sublime to ridiculous but I had a long day full of conference calls. I did manage to work in a Mean Girls reference, though.