Slowly screwing my way across Europe

Athens, 2009

I got into an old box of photos last night after my husband got home from work. Sometimes it’s easier for me to go upstairs when he gets home, because the girls are more laid back when I’m out of sight.

I’m fairly certain I’ve lost a huge amount of photos because of a stupid decision I made with my iCloud account several years back. Since it’s painful for me, it kind of haunts me, and I haven’t just called someone at Apple to confirm or deny this loss. But here in an old shoe box were a few precious prints of my time in Greece (and some from France and Sweden, too). I think if this is all that’s left, that’s OKAY. It’s like a small win of the hundreds of others are gone. I mean, when my husband did a gap year (through the same agency, but 15 years before me) he didn’t even bring a camera. I have to remember, in this age of constantly capturing and “remembering” through screens instead of eyes, it can be okay to pare down.

It’s still heartbreaking, though, to lose images and sometimes memories with them, but I’m learning maybe it’s an opportunity for gratitude. To focus on what I have, and not mourn what I have lost.

More thoughts on that here

Dreams

During Aquarius season have been intense and vivid. I was biking around an affluent neighborhood in California. I was running on a sidewalk with teenagers (I was a teenager, too), and watching a boy gain on us from behind. It was terrifying, but he ran past us and was clearly after another boy who was just ahead of us. There was terror in the eyes of the boy being chased. I didn’t know what to do. Nobody had weapons, but I didn’t feel capable of breaking up this fight between two young men who were bigger than me.

The baby has been crying and babbling on and off since just after 4. It gets earlier and earlier. I’m exhausted just from typing about the baby every day. She keeps falling asleep again but now, at just last 5, I think she may be up.

I haven’t been on Instagram for almost a week now. I almost can’t imagine going back, really, but I’m sure I will. I hope it will look different, the way I interact with it I mean. I think a lot about how I’ve had two kids before 30 and most of my friends aren’t even thinking about children. I think, to them, my posts and writing must seem foreign and boring and annoying. But then I’m immersed in another land of blogs or accounts of women with children and I feel like compared to them I’m an outcast too. It doesn’t really matter where I fit into all of this, it’s more that I’m trying to figure out where I fit it or where I want to fit in.

It’s been surprising to me (although understandable) that since I’ve been taking this break from Instagram I rarely hear from friends. I understand Instagram is a catch all and where people check in and interact, but I need a break. It’s so strange to feel isolated further just because of not using an app. We all have phones and ability to text or call immediately, but you can just dip out of this app and people forget you ever existed on that space. I know this is coming off as narcissistic or whiny…that’s not my intent but that doesn’t really matter either. These are just musings of a mother about to start another long, long day.

New Moon in Aquarius

I woke up at 4:30 today so…this must be the day. Today will most certainly be the day my baby sleeps until 6 or later. It’s a new moon in the sign of Aquarius, a very powerful new moon. I am always ovulating right around the new moon which feels so appropriate as it is a time for planting and setting intentions. A time for the first seeds of growth, and then you check back in once the full moon comes and see how things are moving along. I like these cycles for my life, and I’ve been thinking a lot about passages of time and how we mark them. A year into a pandemic, not really working, looking after two kids (after birthing one of them at home during said pandemic) has lead to a particular sense of time.

The baby woke up at 5 and the day started. It’s now 2:17 and she’s woken up from a half hour nap. Passage of time during a day looks like meals and naps and deep breaths. During a week looks like meals and training with my mother in law to take over her business, and CSA pickups, and movies. During a month looks like my baby’s age, birthdays of others, menstrual cycles, moon cycles. During a year looks like pregnancies and births and jobs and birthdays and hair growth.

I am still committing to this space. I’m typing on my phone with one hand, while I nurse the baby. Dinner is prepped but I need to fold laundry and clean the house and write intentions for the new moon. In time.

Something I’ve been digging

The Baby

Has woken up, screeching and screaming at 4:58am. Again, somehow, I was already up and trying to get even more time for writing and reading before she woke. She usually wakes anywhere between 6-7. I know this is temporary. I know her top teeth are moving in her mouth.

It’s still a shitty way to start the day.

So I guess I’ll just end on something I find equally surreal, but also funnier than the baby whining and screeching before 5am. Something William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote for Universal Press Syndicate in 1996, “At St. John’s, real education is no dream”, featuring a very specific description of my now husband.

“The heat at midday was unmerciful, but George Robert Phelps didn’t suffer the burden of an academic gown. Tall, thin, redheaded, tieless, wearing eyeglasses and dragging his rumpled jacket at hip level, one wondered whether he was 17 years old or, at the most, 18. He had won a prize for an essay titled, ‘Music, Myth, and Philosophical Uncertainty in the Phaedo.’”

Was William F. Buckley Jr. hot for my 20 year old husband??

I mean, can you blame him?

5:25am

The baby woke up screaming, so this eliminates the hour of morning writing time I was hoping for. Instead, I offer this note I tapped out on my phone yesterday while trying to explain what was happening in my body:

The baby has been

Screaming at me since she woke up from her nap of just over an hour. I’m waiting for the Tylenol to kick in as my body is winding tighter and tighter inside with every scream, every strand of hair she rips out of my head, every time she turns her head away from the spoon I try to feed her with. I shake out a pile of “puffs” in front of her and this stops the screaming for awhile. I know she’s teething and I want to empathize, but I am tired. I have precious hours to myself these days. That’s it, two hours maximum. I’ve been waking up at 5 now instead of 6 so I can have an hour or more before the baby wakes up.

When she’s quiet I can try to regain composure. She’s very cute and funny and learning a whole lot, but she’s so fussy and needy, which means I usually have to hold her or strap her to my body in a pack. That’s okay, I know it’s temporary, but I can’t begin to explain the toll this takes on my body, physically, but psychosomatically as well.

I get a letter from a friend, the second letter from this friend. The first I meant to respond to and it didn’t happen. What am I supposed to say in a letter right now? It’s been a year of a pandemic with two small children and no childcare and taking over a business during nap time and those naps are so short now because two top teeth are coming in. Maybe it will look like: doing pretty well, how are you?

Practice, Practices, Practicing

Perhaps inspired by the piece I recently submitted to LaTonya Yvette or the new piece I’m working on for a zine, or the recent jump from Instagram back to her old blog that Julie Letowski made, I’m overwhelmed with the desire to write, as practice. It’s worth mentioning, too, that I just finished Getting To Center by Marlee Grace and the idea of practice, practices, and practicing have been on my mind. So I’m committing to showing up here daily. Is this a rebound to the days of LiveJournal? Anyway, my mind has been whirring lately, and we’re in the midst of another Mercury retrograde, so it feels appropriate to start COMMUNICATING on some different level. I’ve also committed to what I’m hoping will be 30 days off Instagram (today is day three). So I’m shifting the way I communicate, I’m slowing down and working with more intention. I love Instagram and I don’t think it’s evil as long as you don’t let it get the best of you, but I feel like I was letting it get the best of me. Just clicking the app aimlessly, not needing to see anything, filling the void. It’s been surprisingly easy to let go of this, a huge relief, even. I had to log on to retrieve something from a message, and the brief flash of seeing a post from a friend before clicking into the messages filled me with anxiety and stress and, I’ll admit, FOMO.

I’m still taking pictures I would have posted on the app. Taking pictures isn’t bad, and sharing them isn’t bad, there’s nothing inherently bad about any of these steps, but I was feeling bad (and I know I’m not the only one).

I very recently learned I was born during a Mercury retrograde, April ’91. Marlee Grace was also born during a Mercury retrograde. She’s a Gemini, and as she said in an interview with Autostraddle, “I have my Sun, Mercury, Venus, Midheaven, and Chiron all in Gemini. So I’m truly here to be a communicator and a messenger”. I have my Venus and Midheaven in Gemini, too. My 10th house of career and authority is ruled by Gemini. Gemini is ruled by Mercury-the messenger, the communicator, the little wings on the ankles.

Anyway, the baby woke up, the day got away, but I’m committed. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Looking Back: quotes from my archaeology professor

All quotes are from Kurt Rademaker, professor of Archaeology at The University of Maine, Orono.

Let’s talk about Atlantis today-everybody loves Atlantis

Stone pointy things

Towers made of stone-same source, right?

They’re big pointy things-it’s true

There’s a bar on the boat…I’m told there’s music in the summer months

You could film a zombie apocalypse in East St.Louis and you wouldn’t have to do anything-it’s perfect for it

Even god…himself…

Piltdown man is not any of the men in this photograph….he is also not the goose

Oh you english archaeologists are just pebble collectors hon hon hon

What a crock! This is really ancient racist thinking

That means someone robbed a grave and used a skull…which is creepy

We had a goat boy that lived in the woods

Did anyone else live in a place that had a local beast?

We’re gonna be talking about weird America, you know?

There’s also The Jersey Devil

A lot of people don’t know….that might be…not sure

And who is this lovely young lady on the right?  Snooki…Snooki with an I

Is Carl Sagan sexy? I don’t know

I would sign up for a moon trip in a second

I think it’s dogs that ate the brains

Looking Back: things to remember – a note from my old laptop

k’s lullaby

wild beasts

twin shadow

twin shadow&hooray for earth

the anniversary

ryan bingham and the dead horses

ryan bingham-the wandering

april smith and the great picture-movie loves a picture

get high-tayyib

take me home-young the giant

stand up all night (KMT mix) luda vs. janet jackson

intro-the xx

soul savior-for the widows in paradise

liquid sunshine-pfunk

les savy fav-one way widow

“the fates will find their way” book

heartbeats movie

cave of forgotten dreams-werner herzog

stereo total

Looking Back: a list of concerts

interpol-portland

mickey avalon-portland

devendra banhart-boston?

pink martini-portland

girl talk and chairlift-orono

beirut and lady lamb the beekeeper-portland

maroon 5 and train-boston

lady lamb the beekeeper-biddeford

america-freeport

janelle monae-orono

eric andersen-portland

future islands-portland

quilt-old town

dr.john and the blind boys of alabama-orono

bob dylan and mark knopfler-boston

dan deacon-nantes

widowspeak-paris

death grips-paris

woods-portland

CMJ 2013

heliosequence

eleanor friedberger

father john misty

lucius

cults

au revoir simone

elvis costello-orono

queens of the stone age-bangor

steely dan-bangor

mac demarco-portland

beach house-portland

edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros-portland

unknown mortal orchestra-portland