Solitude

For the first time in a long time, I had to be up early this morning to work. Early early morning is my favorite time to work; I have better focus and the house is quiet, and I'm in far less danger of falling asleep over my work than if I tried to work late into the night. Before I had Caetlin, when we lived in Charlotte and I worked at the other firm, I was sleeping maybe 4-6 hours a night, and getting up early every morning to work. I remember those times kind of fondly, especially when I was pregnant. I would turn on VH1 (yes, I am old, why do you ask?) because I like- and most importantly, can ignore- their playlist better than MTV's. The summer I had my daughter, I liked most of the songs in heavy rotation, so it didn't bother me that I heard them 6 times in 2 hours. I would sit there, laptop on my knees, stretched out on the couch or in a comfy chair and ottoman. Usually one or both of the cats would curl up on or around my shins. I would sit there and work, or write in my journal (when I was supposed to be working, like now), and feel my baby moving around inside my growing belly, and I would have those pop songs running through my head all day.

It feels so surreal to me now to think about Caetlin, as fully formed a person as she is now, as she was then. I thought I knew her, because we were so close. She was always with me. I knew, intellectually, that I had no idea what kind of person she would turn out to be, but I guess I thought that we had some kind of deeper understanding of each other, because she grew from me, grew under my heart. I was so wrong about that! She's so entirely her own person, who I've come to know over the past 20 months, that to have thought that I could know her while she was in utero seems naive and silly now.

It was still the most intimate kind of closeness. I've told any number of people about what a mess I was after she was born, with the crazy hormonal changes making me weep uncontrollably, even when I wasn't sad. "Don't mind me; I can't help this," I told Bruce, with tears running down my face. In the dark of the night after she was born, with her in the nursery so I could ostensibly get some sleep before I went home with her, I sobbed because I was lonely. I missed her. She had been my constant companion for the past 6 months. I went to sleep feeling her moving around. I woke up and she was the first thing I thought of.

Anyway, I'm thinking of all of these things as I allegedly work this morning. Being here, in the morning stillness, reminds me of those times. My toddler is a busy girl, and I generally don't feel I have enough alone time. I'm caught between the pincers of not feeling like I spend enough time with my family, and definitely not spending enough time by myself. At times like this, I miss the easy days when I could be alone but not.

Vacation Pictures! Now Including the Magical Moving Kind!

The trip started ominously. This is a pic from our street. Lovely morning, right? We thought we were headed for sunnier climes when we piled into the car. In retrospect, it was only a taste of things to come.

On Tuesday, having had quite enough of the house, we ventured out into the wind and cold. Caetlin got her first taste of the beach.


Despite the conditions, she had a great time.



With all the indoor time, we had to occupy her somehow. Eebee is her current fave DVD (really her only DVD). It kept her occupied on a daily basis, though we managed not to give into the desire to have it on a continuous running loop. This is typical eebee concentration for her.


She also kept in good spirits with the books and toys we brought with us, as well as the ones that the house included.

On Wednesday, as I mentioned earlier, we were actually able to get out and go to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. The turtle and fish sculptures outside the aquarium were big hits with Caetlin. I think she could have run back and forth between them for hours.




The aquarium also included a very large tank, with several very large sharks. It was a little unnerving to see the shark swimming by so close.

Thursday was passable, if only nice in comparison to the earlier parts of the week, but at least we got to use the deck. Caetlin looooves rocking chairs.

We also decided to head back out to the beach again on Thursday. She insisted on the hat.


Friday we actually had a sunrise for once, instead of dark night simply brightening to dank day. This was taken off the deck of the house.


Friday was actually a really nice day, the kind of weather we would have hoped for the whole trip. (Someone must have tried that sunshine recipe that devon left in the comments to that last post.) I've got more pics from then, taken at the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. I've also got a whole post of pics from the Wright Memorial, which really is one of the cooler national monuments I've visited. But this post is getting unwieldy and I'm getting late for work, so more later.

Vacation Dispatch

We're coming to you on location from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and let me tell you, friends, our weather is terrible. It's been cold and windy and drizzly basically since we left Atlanta on Saturday. It rained the whole way to Raleigh, where we met up with Bruce's parents and stayed the night. Then it rained most of the day Sunday on our trek to the islands. The rental house is gorgeous; it's everything we could ask for in a family-friendly home-away-from-home. It even came equipped with Duplo sized Legos (those are bigger Legos, for those of you without toddlers), wooden blocks, and a variety of kids' books- Score! There's a pool that we didn't expect to be able to use, and a hot tub that we did, but it seriously, has been too cold to even think about it. Monday and Tuesday included temps in the low 50s, and that's before the chill from the gale-force winds was included. The windows are all foggy with salt that is tossed into the air from the violence of the waves. The sky and the sea are the same color grey. Basically...yuck.

We took a walk on the beach yesterday for about 15 minutes- poor Caetlin could barely move when she tried to walk into the wind. If we walked down the beach with the wind, though, it worked okay, even though it was cold. She wasn't scared of the water at all, even though it was loud and big and cold. I was really proud of her. She just toddled down the sand, stopping to pick up the requisite stick. She did consent to hold my hand when she got close to the water, though, which was a sign of her slight insecurity. As she got used to it, she stopped wanting to hold my hand. That made me nervous, but the whole hand-holding thing was just a sop to my nerves anyway. I'm still way faster than her, and we were plenty far enough up the beach that the waves were not going to carry her off. I think it's kind of a primitive reaction on my part; I love the violence and wildness of the stormy ocean, but it scares me, too. I remember swimming in the Gulf of Mexico after a storm as a teenager, and diving under and occasionally getting caught up and tossed by waves that large. For a few long moments, I couldn't tell which way was up, which way was air. It was frightening, and that was in the benign Gulf of Mexico, on the Florida coast. It didn't compare to the vast and angry Atlantic outside my window. No wonder I was afraid for my daughter, so impossibly tiny against so much water.

Anyway, we didn't stay out long, because it was just too freaking cold. It was merely an effort at getting out of the house a little bit in any case; we're all going a little stir crazy, Caetlin most of all. She broke my heart yesterday asking to go to the park in her little baby voice. It sucked telling her no. We offered her the sea instead, and she climbed all the way up and then back down the dune that separates the beach from the house. It was pretty impressive, and wore her out sufficiently.

The wind at least mostly died down today, so it felt a little warmer, and we went to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. This was the site of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, which we may go see tomorrow (weather permitting). The island is now home to a couple of villages, and includes the aquarium. It's a small aquarium, but that made it basically Caetlin-sized, and it included lots of space to run around in. It wasn't too crowded, so she didn't bug anyone with her incredible energy. Above all, it was nice to get out of the house, even though it was still cold and drizzly, if less windy today.

Oh! Also, Bruce yesterday and his mom today have had food poisoning/an intestinal bug of some kind, which has just been peachy. Bruce is recovered, though his mom is suffering pretty badly. I have the merest touch of it- enough to put me off my food today and that's about it. I'm grateful I'm not any worse. On the plus side, I never did get Caetlin's cold, so my pessimism paid off!

Anyway, the weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow (please, Mr. Sun!), and be nice Friday. It's supposed to rain again Saturday, and we're coming home on Saturday night. Here's hoping we can fit a bit more vacation into these next couple of days.

Tomorrow: Wright Brothers Museum, possibly the Lost Colony and the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island, if the weather so allows. I'm also completely turning my Blackberry off tomorrow, in an effort to remain as unplugged from work as possible. I've been managing something that required a small amount of effort, but it was more diligent watching of the email than I would have preferred over these past three days, and it closed today. Nothing will fall apart if I tune out for a day or two, so that is something I will look forward to. I also want to post some pictures and premier a new feature here on I Was Told There Would Be No Math: video!

Do a sun dance, everyone, please. It's a beautiful house, but I'm ready to see something different!

Golden Delicious

We actually went out, not to the movies for once, and saw Mike Doughty perform last night. He used to head up the band Soul Coughing (their big hit was "Circles"), and went out on his own after the band broke up. His first full-length album, Haughty Melodic, was brilliant, and accompanied us on our honeymoon back in August 2005. Even today, when I hear any of the tracks on that album, I can see the roads we traveled through the Middle of Nowhere, Maine. I envision Niagara Falls and the stunningly pretty day we saw them. I remember the prairies of South Dakota, the mountains of Wyoming and Montana, and the weirdness of Yellowstone. It is good road music, is what I'm saying, and it remains evocative to this day.

His new album is just released, Golden Delicious. I haven't had the hard listening time with it yet, but so far, I like it almost as much as Haughty Melodic. Bruce managed to find out about a free show he was going to play, at Criminal Records in Little Five Points. He played an awesome 45 minute set, acoustic, taking requests from the audience. He was quite the stickler about people not interrupting his performance, which I appreciated. It was great- I was almost directly in front of him, up on a ramp and a few feet away, and though there was a comic book rack in the way, necessitating that I stand on tiptoes, I had a great view, otherwise unobstructed.

Driving away, trying to decide what else we would rather do, I happened to visit Mike Doughty's website, and noticed that he was playing a full set at the Variety Playhouse, also in Little Five Points, later that night. We turned right around and went back, found parking and got tickets. We had Indian food for dinner, and walked into the club about 10 minutes before his band took the stage. It was a great crowd and a great show- everyone was very enthusiastic, it was crowded enough to feel full but not so crowded that I couldn't see or had personal space issues. The band was fantastic; they played a smattering of the great old stuff, and a bunch of great new stuff too. They had a great sense of humor too- Mike announced at one point that it was a "critical juncture in the show." It was the song before the Fake Last Song. During the next song, he announced, they would do the big rock-n-roll finish, introduce every band member in a counterclockwise direction using their entire Christian names, and then they would all face the back of the stage while we clapped (or not), and then they would turn around for the Encore. They decided that facing the back of the stage was easier than walking off and coming back.

And that's exactly how it all played out. I thought it was quite entertaining that they announced it all in advance.

Anyway, it was a great show, great energy, lots of fun. Check out Haughty Melodic and Golden Delicious when you have a hankering for some great songwriting and catchy alt rock with some experimental bits.

Of Course

Because we were set to go on vacation next week, of course my daughter has come down with the first cold she's had, oh, since our last vacation. It's been a good while since her last one, anyway. She has an immune system like clockwork.

But wait, you say. If she's sick now, it means she probably will be mostly recovered then. Yes, yes she will. Selfish as it may seem, it's not really her health I am concerned about. Let's see...she started being symptomatic yesterday, I can avoid it for three days, add two for incubation... aaannnndd I predict that I'm getting sick right around Thursday of this week. Which will make my vacation just peachy.

Bruce says I shouldn't write about this, "Because it's like The Secret, only like it's a bad Secret. You'll make it come true by thinking about it and writing about it." It's the Power of Negative Thinking all the way around here these days.

Happy Easter!

My dad and stepmom came down, and we and my sister and brother-in-law went to breakfast and then to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

Caetlin had a really awesome time. We all did. Happy Easter!

UPDATE: I should note that Caetlin is not unhappy in that last picture, just tired. We walked to the field she's pictured in above, which all told was maybe a mile, and she spent most of the walk back on Daddy's shoulders. She was pretty pooped by then.

My Knees Hurt

I had this whole post written yesterday, about how I had taken a walk to a law firm up the street, and how it had turned into this big ordeal, but what it turns out I really wanted to write about was the fact that I fell down and skinned my knees. It hurt, and continues to hurt today.

Here's the relevant part:

I rolled my ankle in my heels, and I pitched onto the concrete. I ruined my shoes, scraping the leather off the entire toe of one of them, and skinned my knees horribly, though thankfully my pants were not torn. Skinning one's knees is just such a grade school thing to do, and I thought of my daughter and how she cries immediately and forcefully when she skins a knee or her hands or bumps her head. I had new sympathy for her right then- we forget how much skinning one's knee really stings, besides being a really kid-like injury.

My knees hurt and my shoes are in the trash, and that's pretty much all there was noteworthy about that.