Lost time

It's been quite an eternity since I've had time to write anything here. Free time is a rare commodity in these parts, it's quite a rare thing to have even an hour to myself.

The last few posts, it appears I was on a poetry kick--I didn't have much time to do any writing of my own with a 6-month old baby underfoot, I'm sure. That was about a year and a half ago, apparently. (These days I've been reading mostly non-fiction--and having the ability to read ANYTHING with two children in the mix is rather amazing in and of itself. Although books are out of the question, and magazines a bit of a stretch, blogs make for good interruptible reading material.) During the time that has passed, so much has changed. I have now lived in my new house for about a year and a half. My children have grown a great deal in this time, and so many things about them have changed. Sometimes I feel like a completely different person myself...

It is the end of January. If I were teaching right now, I would probably be gearing up for Black History Month by having my students read some of the bios over at the National Football Hall of Fame (there's some really good ones on there, no joke, and it's a fun way to incorporate Black History, and the Super Bowl).

As it is, I'm on sabbatical from teenagers, and immersed in such mundane realities as diapers (and no, I guess they aren't mutually exclusive...I have worked in Special Education long enough to know that. ;)

This is a season of life that is on the cusp of change...and I've had a lot on my plate. And will continue to do so for some time to come. That is the way of things.

High water mark

Today was such an incredibly good day. And it's Monday, go figure!

I was definitely not expecting such a good day on the heels of an absolutely miserable night in the sleep department with a toddler with night terrors (nothing like being woken up by a screaming non-responsive kid at 2:30 AM. Yeah. It's as fun as it sounds.) But he obliged me by taking a decent nap after all those nighttime shenanigans.

After I picked older brother from preschool, and got everyone fed, we drove over to Clinton/Division and went for a nice looooong walk around in that neighborhood. I used to work over there years ago, and retain a bit of fond nostalgia for all the time I spent over there in my carefree (child-free) days. As it turns out, it's also a great place to haul the kids around for walks, and meets all the criteria for a place where you can kill a whole afternoon with both boys (it's a good place to find bottle caps on the ground, out of state license plates, and has a plethora of fire hydrants to amuse the toddler who is in the full throes of the fire hydrant phase), and has a few strategically placed things if you need to stop and take a break/use a restroom/get food.

So we walked around for a few hours, saw plenty of fire hydrants (apparently my toddler is not the only person on earth who is obsessed with appreciates a good fire hydrant. As far as he's concerned, we could go pretty much anywhere, and he'll happily put up with it, as long as there's a few fire hydrants/fire extinguishers around. His older brother is equally enthralled with license plates and bottle caps. (I often think I should start some sort of virtual shrine to special interests, since between the three of us, we have plenty!) We stopped and had a picnic in front of People's Food Co-op, then worked our way over to the park that's across from Cleveland. (On the way, I found a great free tie-dye shirt in someone's free box...yeah!) Apparently, the good folks over in Room 263 had the same idea, because I ran into my former coworkers at the park (who had taken their class for outside for some sunshine and fresh air on this rare sunny day in January). Quite like old times.

After catching up a bit, we walked back to the car, and hit Trader Joe's on the way home. So I even got a major errand done while completely slacking and frolicking out in the sunshine, triple bonus score! When we got home, we discovered a fabulous surprise: a mysterious package from Estonia.

After such a blatantly fantastic day, I could have ended it right there, but the cards were in my favor and I was even able to get completely caught up with Downton Abbey. Seriously, I should have bought a lottery ticket because today was just competely AMAZING. (Yeah, tomorrow's going to be a complete letdown, I'm sure).

Urban Forestry Time

Today's Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and we're cutting down trees. YEAH.

After contemplating cutting down these half-dead birch trees for most of the last year (but lamenting the logistics/time/money involved), my neighbor completely surprises me and hires someone to come do it out of the blue. Since the tree was mostly dead (no branches/leaves), and no clearance issues (no powerlines) it was a relatively easy job, and it only took them a few minutes to climb up there, cable it, cut a few deft notches, and pull it down. Since the price was right, we had them go ahead and do the other one too. So even though I was tired, grumpy, and still nursing the cold, I had fun standing there watching the crew working (and it reminded me so much of the Foresters I used to work with at AJC...sure miss those guys.) So it's time for a shameless plug for Alder Creek--As a person who spent a couple of years observing Urban Forestry training in action, those guys did a beautiful job, did a textbook perfect job, and the price was nice.

On a more relevant MLK note, I finally finished reading this fantastic book Marching to the Mountain Top that I checked out from the library (in the Children's Section) about the Memphis Sanitation Strike. It was rather comprehensive, had great information, was engagingly written, and works for a pretty wide swath of ages (upper elementary though high school, really). I highly recommend it.