uncustomary rant, part 2

i never had a quarterlife crisis. have you heard of this? it's like a new fad or something, where kids get out of college and suddenly realize that the crappy job they got with their basically useless degree, plus the endless rounds of unfullfilling socializing, dishes, and laundry really are their life. well, i skipped that, and it must have been a mistake. it's like everyone else getting the flu, so you take a lot of garlic, echinnachea, and zinc and you avoid it, but a few weeks later it comes along and steamrolls you all the worse. welcome to my disgruntled world...
i'm ashamed to say i think i'm a little jealous of every woman who is just starting out, with their day to be princess still coming, and the world at their feet and basically under control. this is my pre-midlife crisis: maybe a one-thirdlife crisis. you know: where you're just realizing that you're coming up on thirty and you have a little kid and a spouse and of course you love them, but you're irritable about the chaos you dwell in and you haven't done all the big things you thought you would and are starting to wonder if you ever will and at the same time you're just coming to terms, perhaps not too contentedly, with the fact that this really is your life, that the laundry and dishes never end, that time to yourself is the ephemeral luxury of youth, that you will never make quite enough money to cover everything and still have some to save, and that if you are what you do, then you are not who you thought you were all your life up to this point....
i think perhaps i haven't gotten enough sun lately. pass the rum and apple cider.

3 a.m.

a couple of nights ago, joe woke me up from a sound sleep at about three a.m. of course, the first thought at such times is always, “something better be on fire, or i’m going to kick you as hard as i can.” joe told me i had to come outside as fast as possible, which, to my sleep fogged brain confirmed the fire theory, although i didn’t smell anything burning.
when i got outside, however, something far more pleasant than a house fire was waiting for me. have you ever heard anyone say they felt like they were standing “under a bowl of sky”? i never knew what that meant until this moment. we stood in the shadow of the house, tilting our heads back as far as we could. there were no clouds in the smell of the arctic air. the blackness of the sky was palpable. it seemed to me i could see it spread over me, curving to touch the hills at points too far away to be seen. so clear was the dark that it seemed i could see the clouds of the milky way, if faintly. the night was bright with points of light, brighter than i have ever seen-- venus to the east twinkling different colors, orion shining strong, the big dipper proud above, and the pleiades quietly watching it all. but most remarkable was the meteor shower. they fell with a brightness and frequency to inspire awe. one, the last i saw that night before the cold sent me back to my bed, was so bright that its tail hung shining for a moment behind it, visible to the naked eye, before winking out. held in the sphere made by the overturned bowl above me and the holler beneath my feet, i photographed with my minds eye a crystal moment of wonder.

uncustomary rant

it's amazing what i can accomplish when i get a normal amount of sleep. normally, my sleep schedule consists of three hours between two and five a.m. when charlie has finally gone to bed and i have finally gotten the entire house reassembled and then two hours between three and five p.m. when charlie naps. i was sick on thursday and friday last week. sick enough to call in sick to work. coughing and shivering all night sick. when i put on four pairs of pajamas and turned the heat up to "blast furnace," and drank half a bottle of nyquil, i finally got to sleep. then it was more like hybernation. but i woke up refreshed two days later*.
charlie had been unattended during this time for the most part, so he had, of course, gotten out all of his toys as well as every cooking implement in the house. he had eaten only chocolate covered mini donuts for days, had changed his own diapers with amazing finesse, and had repainted the kitchen using pink and blue highlighters. but what the heck! i had energy for once.
i swept, i mopped, i vaccuumed. i did laundry that had been sitting for weeks. i did dishes that had been sitting for weeks (ack!). i painted a copy of the mona lisa. i cleaned the bathroom. i came up with a plan for world peace. i cooked something that didn't involve the microwave. i taught charlie about wave/partical duality. i dusted everything i could reach... okay, that's a bit of a stretch.
the moral of this story is... i could be a much better homemaker if i didn't have to drive an hour from six to seven a.m. to go stuff paper in vera bradley purses four mornings a week. thank heaven i'm using that college education to my family's greater benefit. i've figured out how to market crack on ebay!

*textual note: please excuse excessive use of hyperbole

fall at the holler

fall has come to the ‘tucky hills, and artfully. the trees are a brilliant blend of rust, terra cotta, yellow-green, and a smattering of burgundy. up close, some trees can’t decided themselves what they want to be. the fall wildflowers have gotten into the act with corn-on-the-cob-yellow spears next to feathery purple stalks. bob ross would be beside himself.
autumn in the country really makes me long for pumpkin pie, apple butter, family around the table talking politics. and the holler has all the trappings of a storybook autumn: misty mornings, mild days, crisp evenings, a family reunion of migrating flocks of sparrows dinning the woods across the road. they make me glad that i haven’t seen that particular hitchcock film. it might ruin it for me. a profusion of woolly worms predict the coming weather, although northern indiana seems to have northern ‘tucky beat for woolly population this year, if the pictures of my parents’ fuzzy sided farmhouse are any indication.
this season especially, i can’t understand why anyone would want to live in the city. the only real urban indication of the change of seasons is the merchandising displays in all the stores. and considering that my bookstore is sporting tables full of halloween paraphernalia smack up next to the boxed christmas cards (where did thanksgiving go?) a person could get understandably confused.
i drove to work this morning on a carpet of drizzle-wet fallen leaves past ramshackle black barns full of hanging tobacco. the drying leaves look, from a distance, like so many chamois clothes. i always get the whimsy to walk through these open barns rubbing my cheeks against the plants. i know the plants are not actually as soft as they look like they might be from a distance, so instead i go home and rub my cheek against a two year old in footy blanket jammies. fall is by far the best season of the year.