dual personalities

Congratulations on making it to Thursday for your weekly dose of darling. I had one of those weeks when I felt incredibly busy but also like I got nothing done, so that has been fun. This is partly because I added more things to my plate: I have been working on an essay, which was due on Tuesday and which I now need to revise. (What? How am I doing this? I truly don’t know.) Anyway, it’s about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Custom-House, a sketch in which he pokes a lot of fun at his boring colleagues and offers the sound advice that I have quoted above.

Moving on! Katie had a pretty solid week of sleeping, eating, kicking her feet in the air, and crushing tummy time. She was declared a healthy four-month-old at her pediatrician appointment, where she weighed in at 15 lbs 4 oz (72nd percentile) and measured 25.5 inches long (88th percentile). Tall baby!

We received some more adorable drool bibs from Aunt Mary. Some are made with remnants from my grandmother Mary’s stash of fabric, which I think is really, really nice. Mamu’s basement clean-out is really paying off! The Halloween bib matches a witch costume that I wore multiple times growing up, and which I can’t wait for Katie to wear one day. For now, she can don her festive bib and make her mother feel sappy.

This weekend, we are escaping to an Airbnb on the Chesapeake Bay. This will be the first time I have taken a trip anywhere since March, unless you count our hospital stay when Katie was born. (Haha.) Here’s hoping a little peace and quiet (and a house with no chores) prove to be restorative!

I did not want to get up this morning. I woke up several times in the middle of the night thinking. And I’ve started doing this new thing where I wake up at 6 a.m. and then don’t really start to fall asleep again until it’s time to get up. It’s not great.

But, I did eventually get up to face the day. I decided to make a cup of coffee for a change and put it in a pretty cup and saucer.

And I don’t know if it was the blue and white china or the caffeine, but it did make me feel better.

For work today, I got to take a road trip to Knob Noster because the bossman had a meeting and then we got to see the B-2 stealth bombers at Whiteman AFB. It was very, very cool. I did have to climb and up down several ladders (to get an above the plane view and to get into the cockpit) but I managed to do that without embarrassing myself. Sadly, I wasn’t allowed to take pictures, because you know, military secrets.

Of course, this meant a drive through Tipton, the billiards capital of the world and home of the infamous 8-ball water tower. It cracks me up whenever we drive through.

And if you watched that short documentary I included on the blog several months ago, you know how devastating this news is:

The title of this blog post comes from a Max Lucado book (it’s more of a booklet) my mother kindly ordered for me while trying to hit the free shipping minimum on a website. Most of it is pretty duh, but I did like this:

This, to me, is the key. Anxiety is real. And there is plenty to be anxious about. But, we can’t let it keep us from living our lives. And we can’t be afraid.

One of the real joys of life is learning new things. This week I learned all about ancient glassmaking and was amazed to discover some of the wonderful objects that have survived. Glassmaking didn’t really take off until the 1st century BC when some smart bloke invented the art of glassblowing. Until then they made pretty, but rather clunky, glass bottles by working them around a clay/dung core and then scraping out the core afterward. Core-formed glasswork is believed to have developed in the Near East sometime around the 16th century BC. Here’s an example of core-formed glass from Syria.

The design comes from adding spirals of colored glass and then raking them to create the pattern. It’s certainly pretty and represents a major technological advancement, but when compared to blown glass, well, it looks more like something you’d buy at a garage sale on the table marked “shabby chic”. Look at this 1st century BC Cantharus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and you’ll see what I mean.

Sometimes glassmakers used molds to create beautiful designs. A Roman master named Ennion, working in the early first century AD, achieved the highest level of the art. Here’s an example of his work from the Corning Museum of Glass (which is now high on my bucket list of places to visit!).

And here’s another of Ennion’s works from the Met just to prove that cobalt blue wasn’t the only color they used. It’s just my favorite.

By the late Roman Empire, in the 4th and 5th centuries AD glassmaking had reached its apogee; the cage-cup (diatretum) represents the extremes to which glassmakers would go for their art. Here’s a 4th century AD example from the Heritage museum Pljevja, Montenegro.

As I understand it, cage-cups were made by pouring two layers of (often) different colored glass together and then carving — yes, carving — the outer one into a delicate cage. One slip would ruin the whole thing. They often finished the cup off with a phrase carved along the top.

Of course, the marvel isn’t just that the ancients could make such gorgeous pieces but that so many survived largely intact. I wonder what, if any, of our belongings will still be around in two thousand years? Take a look around your abode and think about it. I know I will.

In the meantime, I hope you can enjoy a beautiful fall weekend!

*Anton Checkov

4 months — can you believe it? I think that means we’ve had a pandemic-baby longer than we had a pandemic-pregnancy. Ye gods.

I do not have a whole lot of news this week, which actually feels like a good thing: Katiebelle has settled into a real routine! We are happy to know all her little cues and how to respond them.

The little babe does continue to grow bigger and bigger, and even graduated to the actual stroller seat (as opposed to the car seat, which can click into the stroller). She was thrilled to have the wiggle room and improved view of her parents and surroundings. (No way am I ready for her to face out yet!)

We are also endlessly amused by her facial expressions — Katie must take after her cousin Lottie.

She is hardcore judging us. Here’s hoping the weekend feels less like that, and more like this: