field | work

you can now find me...

2011-07-27T22:50:00.000-05:00

:: At roots + wings, where I will reflect on the experiences of family and motherhood, or
:: At maps + poetry, where I will reflect on the landscape of writing and reading...

... more or less. It's divisive and compartmentalized and will sloppily spill over, but it makes sense to me and I suppose that's mostly what matters.

538: roots + wings

2011-05-14T23:53:00.003-05:00

OK, I give up. I had thought two blogs made sense--one was more private and belonging to a specific subject, and then there was here, which was free for me to write about whatever. I sheared off and talked about maternity because I didn't want to bore the socks off my friends who weren't enormously interested in babies. But I've found it isn't just about babies.

And, of course, I find myself exactly where I was when I finished teaching high school. Closure. The end of something that frustrated me. And I said good-bye to that space in hopes of finding something better. This place, field | work, was about existing in a time spent in graduate school, chasing down that dream of the MFA. And I love it here, and I might come back to it. Because I'm not done writing.

But what I have learned, in the months since Maya was born, is that little time belongs to me. Little space is my own. Our house has been typically taken over by the piles of little things--little pants and little diapers and little rings of wood to teethe on. And I love it.

But it's all I can do to keep up with the photographs I take, the little narratives of progress, and since I have the privilege and opportunity to be a stay-at-home mama for a little while, I'm going to take it and embrace it. Once in a while other things will sneak in, but probably always with the context of this enormous change in my life. When I found myself closing the doors to Lind Hall with Maya in my arms and I turned to that blog to write about it, knew I would post about the poetry reading after not here, but on that blog, I knew it was time for me to set this one to rest.

I might come back. But for now, I don't want to feel guilty that this space hasn't been updated in weeks, that I've neglected to write about my surgery and my maternal grandfather's passing and whatever else. I want to relish this time I have with Maya because it passes so quick.

So I'll be over at roots + wings, and though it's essentially a mama-blog, I hope that isn't off-putting to anyone who stops by for more general reading. I'll also keep updating flickr. And I may come back here, you know, when the world doesn't have this filter, but right now, I think that blog is good, and I'm enjoying writing in my notebooks and working on my manuscript and keeping quiet.

Oh: and I'm happy. I've never felt happier or luckier in my life. And it's not just about Maya, but about the wholeness of the world, though she's made the tough stuff easier. So it's time for me to celebrate that.

537

2011-04-14T14:49:00.003-05:00

Congratulations are in order: a week ago, Kezia made an honest man of my brother-in-law in a courthouse in Denver, Colorado. Eric is Ryan's older brother, though people who learn it are often surprised, not only because Ryan's hairline is rapidly slipping back and his beard gives him a mature look, but also because Ryan has all the "grown up" accessories--the house, the wife, the child, the job that stretches back several years, and on. Eric majored in recreational management in college and can be found in gorgeous cities in the west--we've visited him in Mt Hood and Lake Tahoe, and now we'll see him in August in Colorado for his wedding celebration--where he works closely with snowboards and kayaks and is known to spend summers living in corners of the mountain in a tent with a cooler of beer. He has the capability to make friends with just about anyone, as he has the Kiefer-traited "good heart," and perhaps would make a good poster boy for the term "free spirit."

We met Kezia (who is from Brazil originally) this past winter holiday, where I spent the majority of it fatly pregnant and spewing forth illness for three solid (or, rather, unsolid) days, so I didn't quite get to know her, though I did have the opportunity to observe some very cheerful game-playing with the four-year-old nephew Jimmy, whom I adore. I look forward to more adventures and their beautiful celebration this late summer. Congratulations, congratulations.

536

2011-04-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

I know spring is on its edge here: I wake, my daughter's warm body wiggling against me, her soft fists walloping me in the cheek, peel my shirt up, and listen to the birds singing the morning hello; our black lab mix Zephyr pounds against the storm door, bolts to the fence corner near the garage where squirrels and rabbits bravely slip in to sift through the compost I pile near the raspberry bush; I have killed my first centipede from the basement and am looking forward to this year's crop even less than ever. But we still have these charming little ruts of dirty snow, little wedges in the shadiest parts of the lawn, just waiting for deactivation and a path to the basement, which flooded one year, or maybe the Mississippi, twelve blocks away and full of flood-warnings on the Weather Channel. This is the time of year our geography feels like swampland, where I wonder how the trees survive such prolific abuse, where I fantasize about a garden I'll neglect a month into it anyway (last year was the first we ever did a mid-summer Serious Weeding, where we could find the fattened green beans between the dandelions).

That little squirrel up there? We spotted him on a walk downtown, after spotting a flattened, yellow-toothed squirrel (this, we are realizing, is the best time to discover both a prolifery of soda cans and other waste as well as the bloated bodies of urban wildlife; the snow snaps back so quickly, the sidewalks become dotted), and he gripped that tree branch in such a furious panic, I couldn't help but relate. (I'm glad it wasn't to the dead squirrel instead.) There are five weeks left to the semester, and though I'm going to miss my regular socialization with other writers, I am going to be grateful to not have to parcel out naptime in such a panic. Here she sleeps in my arms, my left falling asleep below the elbow, and I cock my recent poetry collection at an angle, trying to keep my fingers from falling asleep, trying to nudge the little neon flags in the margins without waking her. I am desperate for a nap myself, but when Ryan comes home, I know I have to scurry to the dining room table and dig through the pile of flagged tomes, see if I can cobble something together that makes moderate sense while taking feeding breaks and trying to decide what's for dinner and maybe even sneak in a shower. I relish the shower. I even floss more because it allows some lingering.

(The walk downtown was lovely: we stopped at the local bookstore to take in some new-book smells and then checked out a brand new food co-op opened in a former antique store.)

I'm still coming to terms with balancing this new mama obsessed with peering at her child (see: roots + wings) and the thinking person I was before. This isn't to say my mama-self doesn't think, but it thinks in such vastly different terms, I get confused, muddled. I have been generally less and less intelligent as the years have passed; I doubt this has anything to do with reproduction. There's a part of me who wants to read every parenting book that exists and knit myself until my fingers are cramped into position and stare at her all day long, but there's also a part of me that wants to tromp upstairs with a book in hand and read while a thunderstorm rages outside and I can feel all my appendages. I'm still figuring out how to balance that out. Fortunately, all of this happening in my imagination is under one roof.

This summer, we have many adventures planned, and I'm in need. I've had a funky three-month hibernation. We have our annual camping trip with the Urtels and Chad; we have my grandmother's 90th birthday in Michigan; we also have three weddings in three disparate sections of the country--Cape Cod, Austin TX, and Denver. (Aunt, my sister, his brother, respectively.) Oh, and I have another trip to Austin in June for a shower and bachelorette party; it will be Maya's second road trip of significance and her first without her papa. We'll see how he handles a string of Maya-less days. Personally, my body has trouble if it goes more than a few hours without her; when Ryan returns her to my arms, there's an almost physical relief at her warmth and weight returning.

One of my favorite former big-bookstore co-workers has started a blog after bidding a farewell to the addictions of Facebook, and it's become a bit of much-needed amusement to my days. She has an excellent voice, a shared aversion to housework, and three boys who are much loved and much maligned. It's the kind of perfect sarcasm and frankness that I miss from our overly long breaks and my stockroom visits.

And now my little bug is awake and smiling at me with her tongue sticking out and rubbing her face and is covered in black dog fur. (Note to self: no more pets with dark fur. Blending is best.) I can't tell you how many strands of fur I've swept out of her eyes; it's amazing those blues aren't a bit more irritated or she hasn't gone blind. She growls hello to all.

535: bay beach wildlife sanctuary

2011-03-22T21:19:00.002-05:00

This weekend, we went to Wisconsin to visit our parents. There's been a lot of news from both sides of the family, which I'll share soon enough, some wonderful, some terrible, but everything, since the world changed, or really, okay, our world changed, family has become Family and it's all so warm and safe.

534: art gallery'ing

2011-03-12T23:02:00.002-06:00

As our two-month-old ages, we have begun to make more and more treks out. This was a lovely evening--dinner with our lovely friend Angie, a wander around a gallery, and my mother in town for the weekend.

I admit, sometimes I forget there is an other self, an Other That Isn't Mother. But I've returned to campus, I've had a few poetry get-togethers, and book club, and I realize I can meld these two facets, Life Before Maya and Life After.

Shawn, who did my poem tattoo and who is married to one of my dearest friends Meryl, and his friend Albie have formed a collaborative art project called Never Quiet Never Soft. That's Shawn below, holding Maya, and below that, Albie holding Sia (Shawn and Meryl's nephew, Casey and Ardeshir's son).

Maya, the little birdhouse visitor. I may have layers, and I may be remembering the wonder inside of me, but right now, what I love best, is finding the wonder in her. We're having a fantastic time, and I've been rubbing the edges of my thesis manuscript, finding ways for it to fit together properly, one eye on her slumbering or Ryan rocking her. I say it so many times, and I'll say it again: I love us as three.

533: a few photo highlights

2011-02-25T23:23:00.010-06:00

Life has been good and chaotic here. It's been quiet and painful and wonderful and all three at once with a few more in between. I've been moderately good about keeping up with roots + wings, but it seems my bubble strains to go far beyond this.

532: nikki + tim

2011-02-08T21:48:00.014-06:00

This weekend, we took our first trip with Maya, who survived a dog-paw to the face while breastfeeding in a car wash, to the wilds of Wisconsin, where we witnessed one of my dearest friends from high school get married. It was a wonderful opportunity to see more from that circle of friends (and many offspring and spouses and parents; we took up three tables, just the five of us and our accessories), though we only lasted into a few of those thumping wedding dance songs. I wish we had chances to see one another more.

531: poor penny

2011-01-26T23:07:00.005-06:00

My days and nights still revolve around a creature who weighs half of our Siamese-mix cat, but there's someone else who needs some extra love, someone who is joining me in the tender world of post-surgical recovery.

Our little Penelope, who is only five years old, blew her ACL, an injury she has been on her way towards for some time now, with her leaping and bounding and leashless adventures. Her left will soon follow, but we can only afford one leg at a time, which is convenient, because she can only recover one leg at a time.

So now, in the daylight hours, it is me, a hungry newborn, a rambunctious black lab mix who hasn't gone on his daily walks in a while, a golden retriever who is supposed to be confined, and two cats who are both needy and insist on chewing everything plastic to bits. Sometimes my eyes get a bit crossed, especially when Maya decides that I cannot move anywhere in the house without her attached, or she will wail from said abandoned post. Fortunately, I sleep in decent bouts, even if nothing else gets done.

530: peek!

2011-01-20T16:49:00.003-06:00

What do you mean I haven't been around? Why, I'm overflowing with photos and nattering. Just not here, not right now. You see, I'm enjoying the beauty of the baby-moon, and in order to preserve that bliss, I'm recording like a mad-mama, between feedings, during naps, late at night when my eyes are crossed and I've given up on all mama-trickery. And because of this, along with other obsessive blog-readings, I've decided to go ahead and make the space public again. It's one of those will-she-or-won't-she propositions, one of those obnoxious forms of waffling I take on. Ryan always knows to hold onto what he's offering because I usually change my mind--no thanks to tasting his beer and then all of a sudden, I must taste it. For now, I'm offering it up for whomever wants to read about the journey--from all those desperately hopeful posts during the infertility treatments to my pregnancy frustrations to that crazed labor story to now, becoming a little family of three. The link: roots + wings. Come say hello!

It's been two and a half weeks since the whirlwind birth (can one call it a whirlwind when it was two days of labor? things were always happening, after all) and I've finally begun to unfurl from the family bed and into the wide world of the house. Actually, I've only been back in the bed for two days, due to an infection from my surprise! c-section, but unfurl nonetheless. I'm taking on the tasks that would have been mine from the start, but Ryan has taken them on with much charm--changing diapers, doing laundry, contacting the insurance company about overly large and frightening bills, that sort of thing. One begins to lose that get-out-of-chores-free card as the wound begins to heal.

I write this in the minutes leading up to my first class, which I am not teaching. I am officially on maternity leave, though only for my teaching duties; for my studenting duties, the light has flashed on, and I have a pile of books to work my way through, not to mention an incomplete to tidy up from last semester. I'm taking two independent studies, more or less, one taking a close look at the poetry (and prose-by-poets) of motherhood and the other is deemed 'thesis credits,' which means I'll be communicating and meeting with my thesis adviser as I progress on my manuscript. This means, of course, that I need to actually progress, but I've begun generating again, and this makes me happy. Of course, I'm learning that I am both a slow writer (or a writing-in-bursts writer) and a writer who isn't in love with the editing process (fear), a combination that is tricky as I face my final semester.

It doesn't help that all I want to do is snuggle with my little babe all day.

529: Maya

2011-01-07T23:45:00.002-06:00

I done went and had that baby--an intensely beautiful experience, on January 3rd. And I will tell all about it, but for now, I have a few flickr photosets to share with you, so you can decide how you want to immerse yourself in my daughter, whose name became Maya Marjorie Kiefer:

- There is the hospital set, dedicated to her first 24 hours, and a bit before and after.
- There is her year one set, which will include every photo I take of her in the first year (that will grow so quickly and be the largest set by far very rapidly).
- There's 3, which is Maya with either one or both of her parents.
- There's Maya and..., which is the little one with friends and family.
- And my favorite, because it contains all my favorite photos of Maya.

528

2011-01-01T19:08:00.001-06:00

Happy 2011! Ryan fell asleep long before midnight, and I was reading Winter World: the Ingenuity of Animal Survival as the clock quietly ticked over. We shared an Alaskan Amber, which is a sweet selection, given how many we shared on our honeymoon. Ryan's brother brought a case back for us from Colorado.

Every year, a list of a few favorite things I encountered during the year. I read a lot of books, but somehow, not a great many of good ones. Last year's goal had been to gather a dramatic number, and 228 is the largest by far, and this year, I hope to look at my list and feel as if I'd read a great many good books, books that I savored. For now, here are a few good things I read or watched in 2010:

Books, Fiction
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (re-read)
- Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport
- Push by Sapphire
- Housekeeping by Marilynne Robi
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (re-read)
- Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger

Books, Nonfiction
- This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich

Books, Poetry / Books on Poetry
- Cooling Time by C.D. Wright
- My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson by Alfred Habeggger
- School of the Arts: Poems by Mark Doty
- The Last Clear Narrative: Poems by Rachel Zucker
- The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep: Poems by Linda Gregerson
- Bird Eating Bird: Poems by Kristin Naca
- Juvenilia: Poems by Ken Chen
- Face: Poems by Sherman Alexie
- The Country Between Us: Poems by Carolyn Forche (re-read)
- Little Boat: Poems by Jean Valentine
- Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees: Poems by Julianna Baggott

Films:
- (500) Days of Summer
- The Girl in the Cafe
- I've Loved You So Long
- Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
- The Boys Are Back
- La Moustache
- The Big Question
- Babies
- Under the Same Moon
- Facing Windows

Television: We don't have cable or any reception at all, for that matter, so we rely on Netflix, and I went through The L Word and enjoyed it; we also discovered the charm of Eureka and had an oddly transfixed time watching Discovery Channel's Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment. 2010 held a brief bout with cable, and we crushed on Ace of Cakes as well as Life.

527: Colville

2010-12-31T21:18:00.009-06:00

On our last day of 2010, we took a small walk around Colville. This pregnancy and all its morning-sick glories have kept me indoors too much; most weeks, my journeys took me only to campus and back. I'm desperate for some sense of fresh air, of observation of the slow moving waters, creaking winter trees.

Ryan and the pups ventured out on the ice, and I quacked back at the ducks.

They say walking is a natural inducer of labor, so I suspect I'll be doing this a good deal over the next several days, waddling along flat paths in town. She's not due until Thursday, but at my forty-one week appointment, there is the threat of medical induction, so I'll take my chances with tea and walks and other gentle attempts. There's far less kicking and much more slithering about; she's truly run out of room.

In 2011, I'll be a mama. So strange. We'll be parents!

526: Robert Rayner, 1956-2010

2010-12-30T17:34:00.005-06:00

Memory: I am five years old, in Chicago, an enormous city. At some point on this trip, I remember wearing my pajamas in the Hilton lobby, dazzled by all the gold thread and glass chandeliers. We attend my first musical, and I am entranced, leaning forward in my seat, black shoes kicking, watching men and women dance around a stage in cat costumes. At intermission, my uncle takes my hand, and we weave through the crowds; he wants to take me backstage to meet the actors, to see the magic. I am not sure if I am a token in his own curiosity, but at five, I cannot suspect ulterior motives. Only that I want to meet the king cat himself.

Memory: My bangs are shaggy, and I have to brush them from my eyes. It is the only time I have deviated, truly, from the same hairstyle I've had since preschool: long, straight, parted in the middle. In 4th grade, I had a home perm and bangs, and in 5th grade, I am growing it back out. It is Christmas, and we are in my grandmother's home in Massachusetts, a house I love for its wooden floors and painted wooden block houses, its country charm and potpourri smell. My present from my uncle is a purple fanny pack, and inside is a New York City subway token, an exotic coin of an adventurous place I'd never been before but could only imagine. He tells me it is his lucky token and not to lose it, which may have been an untruth, he may have fished it off his dresser before flying out to meet us, but I treasure it, am flattered and honored that he would pick me to have this something. This is also the year my father gets juggling balls--was it from my uncle too?--and my father stands in front of the door at the base of the stairs and teaches himself until he is flawless, though he is long teased in the process, and it's true--my father is awkward and clumsy. I've inherited that.

Memory: In sixth grade, my last year in Chattanooga, we drive out to Albuquerque, New Mexico with my aunt, my sister, my mother. This is where my uncle lives, in the midst of mountains and dry, flat land. We take skiing lessons, drink hot chocolate, see American Indian dancers, fall in love with beaded and feathered jewelry. I wear a locket my first boyfriend gave me, a thick heart that plays "Love Me Tender," which I lose on April 2nd of that coming year, the one-year anniversary with said boyfriend. But in the videos, I see it at my neck, swinging heavily, as my family wends its way in the markets.

Memory: Some time after we move to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where my father has gotten a professorship at the university, my mother has my sister and myself come into her bedroom, sits us on her bed and tells us she has something serious to share. My uncle is HIV-positive, has been for a dramatically long while. Because he works in the medical field and because he is meticulous, he has always kept abreast in medications and trials and keeps himself alive despite the diagnosis. But we can't know this yet; this is still when AIDS is a death sentence. My closest friend from pre-school on had lost both of her parents to AIDS; my mother took me to her mother's funeral. We sat in the back. When I turn fourteen or fifteen, I begin volunteering at the local AIDS clinic, on a dangerous patch in Green Bay. I put together what are called "condom six-packs" and my first job is to de-ice a freezer with two women schoolbus drivers, one small and perky and the other large and grumpy, like cartoon dogs. We use a crowbar. I also work on Fridays in the summer, answering phones, and sorting through client forms, anonymous surveys that give out sordid details of sexual pasts, drugs. When I first volunteered there, I had never been kissed; years later, after I've been trained as a youth educator, gone to a conference in Milwaukee, I end my time volunteering with a girlfriend of my own.

Memory: The summer between 10th and 11th grade, the summer before I'll have my own mother as an AP Language teacher and bring books from her book list with me, we go to San Francisco, where my uncle now lives. I don't know why, but he ignores me blatantly and showers my sister with compliments--she is the future movie star, the adorable one, and I am lazy because I have rolled a sleeping back with the tie inside. I am surly; I am a teenager, after all. We see some of the most beautiful things I've ever seen on this trip: we camp at Yosemite, we travel to the Hearst Castle, we go to the Muir Woods, we touch the trunks of redwoods, we read on the beach, we stay in gorgeous wood cabins in state parks, we drive along the coast of California, that famed Hwy 1, to LA, where my mother, sister, and I fly back to Wisconsin. I am hurt, in a selfish way, but love my sister.

Memory: It's my 20th birthday, and I'm living in Minneapolis, my first few months away from home, going to the university for an English degree (the first of three I will receive from this institution). My boyfriend is there; he gives me a heart pendant with twenty diamond chips in it. This is his first birthday he will spend with me; eleven years later, we are celebrating my thirty-first. My parents have come out, my sister with her leg in a cast from a frightening and deadly car crash, and my uncle happens to be there too, for a medical conference. He takes us out to a fancy restaurant in St Paul, lets me taste his olive tapenade. For breakfast on Sunday, we eat at the Hilton Hotel's lush restaurant, our fruit fresh and pricey. We don't speak much, and it's the last time I'll see him; we'll miss one another on family trips to Chattanooga, to North Carolina, Massachusetts. He still seems so strange to me, speaking when he deigns to speak to me, teasing and joking about family members in his way, his face squinched on one side from complications of his illness.

This morning, my mother called to let me know my Uncle Rob passed away some time before midnight, in hospice, of pancreatic cancer. It had nothing to do with his HIV; he had beaten that already. Some time near Halloween, my mother and uncle flew to Chattanooga to be with my aunt and grandmother one last time; my mother was teaching him to knit. Near Thanksgiving, he called to let them know, "This is it," and entered the hospital, not fulfilling his vow to take pills instead of ending his days in the halls where he once worked, ushering others to the place he was now headed. He never went home. The same aunt, grandmother, mother, were by his side much of this month, finalizing what needed to be finalized, meeting the man who was not his lover but dear, dear friend, and watched as the man they grew up with began to waste away. Pancreatic cancer is one of the cruelest, and, in fact, it wasn't the cancer that took him, but the chemotherapy that weakened him. In the end, he was disoriented and surly, confused and upset. His passing after this is truly a blessing, a bringing of peace. His body will be turned to ashes, sent to his mother in Tennessee, and eventually spread in the ocean, at one of their childhood beaches.

There's so much tied up in family--so much hurt when it comes to this kind of event. We always knew he would never end his estrangement from his father, an estrangement that has extended to other family members as well (I think of myself as having two grandparents--two grandmothers--remaining, and Walter, my step-grandfather), a brother of his who did not call but sent a strange painting. There are so many secret rules and wants when it comes to the disposing of the dead's things--the intensely small condo with seven packed boxes, the closet with arrow-straight clothes. Who calls whom, how the information is disseminated in the circle of distance.

I send my love to my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, whose bravery at facing good-bye is immense, whose tenderness in those last few days was so important. It's never easy, family, good-byes, and as I think about this little life inside of me, I think of all the cycles around me, all the people who are gone from this earth in this way, how we remember the good things, how I hope Sophie can hold that goodness in her heart as she ages, loves and becomes loved.

525: the blue canoe

2010-12-30T00:07:00.007-06:00

It's actually green, but you wouldn't know it until you pull up her drapes. Ryan gave this to me a bit before we left for Wisconsin; he said he figured he couldn't hide it on the way there or even wrap it in much more than a tarp. He also told me on the phone that he had "left one of my presents lying around." Tricky boy, he is. Even trickier is how he picked it up while I was at book club, from the very home where book club was hosted; we bought the canoe from some very good friends who weren't using it any more.

I cannot wait for summer, for lakes and for introducing the minnow to the peace that is paddling along, enjoying fresh air and quiet.

It's a Wenonah canoe and cared for by the Urtels... I pity the poor thing in our hands, but I truly hope it will get to see many adventures with us, bruised or unscathed.

524: falling behind

2010-12-28T23:26:00.005-06:00

It's strange how small weeks can whip by in such frantic succession. I will give snippets:

- The semester has ended, which is an enormous relief, though, because of sicknesses and other disruptions, I may have to take an incomplete in one class with the goal of wrapping that up before my maternity leave is over. Most importantly, I got grades in--early--and finished thesis seminar.

- Just after the semester ended, my friend Emily hosted a dinner to celebrate the release of my chapbook The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake. We went to the Craftsman; I loved the Brussels sprouts. The table was filled with a dozen of us, and Emily had a cake made in the image of the cover. It's pretty remarkable. (Mmm, carrot.)

- Christmas was spent in Wisconsin; indeed, we braved the five-hour trek with my 38-week pregnancy progress, which turned out to be fine, our hospital bag strapped into the trunk, our car seat beside it. It was actually the visit that became the challenge--as Christmas Eve turned to Christmas, I contracted the stomach virus that had encumbered a nephew and a mama-in-law, though this was a bit more fierce for me, thirty-five bouts of illness in one day with three loads of laundry cycling, reducing me to a desperate child. I'm close to better now, but it certainly crushed me more than I expected, eclipsing the morning sickness for a few days.

- We've had several winter storms, one a full-on blizzard, in the past few weeks. The snow is up to our windows. The first was twenty inches, and Christmas Eve, while I was enjoying a few final moments of health, our town was getting covered in seven more inches (and several snows in between).

- I'm due in a week, essentially. For the gory details: I'm mildly cramping, and my mucus plug has begun to slip as of this afternoon. This means exactly what I could have told you without the earlier signs: labor could begin in a matter of hours or a matter of weeks. Very helpful, these early signs of labor, yes? My skin covers such a taut uterus; I don't feel as if there is any where else for the minnow to go. But I do hope she'll hold out until January, which is so very close. While my friend Michelle actually had a Christmas baby (10 lbs, 10 oz., named Crosby James McWoolery), I'd like more space from the raucous holiday.

I deeply look forward to the other side of this pregnancy. I've loved feeling her so close to me, those internal kicks and nudges, the reason why I gave her this little nickname, but I'm most certainly ready to meet her and begin this new journey.

I also deeply miss being outdoors. I know it is too cold for an infant to be outdoors for long, but I yearn for those deep tromps in the woods Ryan and I take with the dogs. I haven't been mobile in a great long while. Making it from class to class was enough draining effort, and at the shallow end of this virus, my snippets of energy are spent nesting as best I can.

523: molly mayhem

2010-12-05T12:49:00.011-06:00

Last night, the Urtels took us on a little journey to the roller derby, and after watching Whip It a few weeks ago, I was enamored. I'm really hoping Angie decides to join up; I'm ready to be a serious fan. It was fun to watch last night's bout, but without any connection to any of the four teams, I simply watched curiously, trying to understand the art of scoring and how a foul occurred. I enjoyed watching the skids, the quick moves of the jammers through the clasp of skaters, the accessories of flashy tights and elaborate tattoos.

522

2010-12-01T16:26:00.004-06:00

Keeping quiet and balanced these days. The focus has truly been on the stuttering growth of my stomach, whose fundus has begun to outpace the weeks-along. I've found myself fighting to balance morning sickness with school responsibilities, leaving social pleasures by the wayside. Some days, I feel as if all I can do is keep my jaw jutting above the waterline, and days like these, while still burdened by the scholastic countdown, I feel a bit more at peace. I cannot explain why one wins out over the other, how I let the simple breath crash against the shore.

Here is an updated photograph, taken this afternoon, of my baby-belly. You can see I still have that waffle-iron burn mark--faded, but very present. It is not my most recent klutz-adventure, but a little reminder of Ryan's declaration--to make it through these last five weeks of pregnancy, he's suggested a pill-a-day organizer, bubble wrap, and a helmet. Sometimes, I think I might just hide under the bed and wait and see. Maybe the semester can end gracefully without me.

Small, lately comforts: the word daughter, organic milk, poem treasures, afternoon naps, tracks in the snow, handwritten letters, wool and wooden needles, butternut squash soup.

521: some poetry things

2010-11-17T18:09:00.005-06:00

I wanted to make a detailed post on each, but October has given way to November and soon we'll be in December and everything will have slipped past.

DA Powell was a visiting writer on campus; he met with students for manuscript conferences, was interviewed by our literary magazine, ran our thesis seminar (this was the first session we were without Ray Gonzalez, who is on leave for the rest of the semester--wishing him a swift recovery), had a reading. He went out to dinner with some of our friends in the program too, and if Tuesdays weren't my marathon days, and my pregnancy hadn't/hasn't been slowing me down, I would have gone too.

As such, I took frantic and detailed notes when he spoke to us in thesis seminar, and I meant to type them all up here, but with the double-wrist brace and my building behind-ness at school, I won't. So many good things: about submitting manuscripts, ordering manuscripts, existing within the poetic world post-first book. We dreamed a little that afternoon, though admittedly, one of our peers has her own beautiful first book, and we know she'll have an excellent second as well.

October is also the Twin Cities Book Festival, and Jean Valentine was one of the visiting speakers. I fell in love with her that morning--she's incredibly charming and sweet and patient. Meryl and I wandered around the book festival, filling up on letterpress chapbooks, dollar-books at the used book sale, buttons and fliers for upcoming readings and releases.

After we went to the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts, where they were holding demonstrations on the various presses. Meryl was just starting her mentorship and is now in the thick of it, learning all kinds of wonderful things about Vandercooks and impressions and all else, leaving me quite in the dust. I have great plans to catch up post-baby, however. :)

We had a late lunch with Kristin Naca too, a fantastic poet we met at Bread Loaf.

And in October, there was lunch with the poetry collective...

And another fabulous session of Alchemy: Yoga + Poetry. We drew with pastels and came up with a word to keep with us through our practice and generally felt content and full of happiness. My cup runneth over.

Oh, and Nicole Krauss came to visit campus before attending a fancy reading series, and we discovered she was a poet before she became a novelist, which might explain why I love her work so much.

October was a beautiful month, poetry-wise. And the colors and the company and so much else.

This month has been quieter, and with six weeks and one day left until the guess date arrives, I've become better at hibernating and silence. It's certainly not a time in my life to overwhelm; we have plenty at home to shift about, including returning our living and dining room to working order after Ryan's parents kindly helped paint a fresh coat of "antique lace" on the walls and ceilings, becoming charmingly paint-flecked and back-ached.

So blessed.

520: Duluth's shore

2010-11-10T18:34:00.010-06:00

Just a few steps from our room in Duluth, we tapped along smooth rocks and took photographs of the water splashing up. On the last day of our trip, we drove out to the peninsula and visited the sandy beach, collected a few stones, skipped some others, examined driftwood and the sparkle of firewood.

One day we'll have a daughter, and we'll each take one of her hands, and we'll show her this town where her father spent his undergraduate days, where our relationship was young and we knew the things we always knew--that we'd love each other for the rest of our lives. There are places like this, where we trace our fingers in the sand or look closely at the way the tide shifts, and we know there is belonging between our hearts, and now, between three.

519: 31 wishes

2010-11-07T17:55:00.004-06:00

We spent the weekend in Duluth, and my cake was my favorite: carrot cake. And it was a beautiful weekend--perfectly peaceful and cozy and I must have gazed moony-eyed at my husband and said, "I feel so content, don't you?" a half a dozen times.

I've started my 31st year, and I've been thinking about my hopes for the year ahead. Here are thirty-one of them:

1. I hope my daughter's birth is gentle.
2. I hope my grandmother can meet her too: the baby will have her first name as her middle, and I would love the Marjories to meet.
3. I hope our decision for me to stay at home with baby will come more from personal freedom and not financial restraint.
4. It would be lovely to read half as many books as I did this year. I'm working towards beating last year's list of 220, which has a meager chance in 2010. Next year, I'm afraid my reading time will be limited, but I hope to not lose it all together. I love the way you can figure out when I learned I was pregnant; there was a bit of a distracted gap where not much reading went on.
5. I hope that my mother, her sister, their mother can find peace in saying good-bye to my Uncle Rob. He has lived HIV positive for over twenty years, and is now leaving this world with pancreatic cancer.
6. I hope that my younger sister finds herself on a career trajectory that contents her. She has such talent and is allowed to present it to the world in a limited capacity.
7. I also hope her summer wedding goes as she dreams and her marriage is as lucky and blessed as mine has been.
8. I hope my thesis manuscript finds its way into being a palatable book I might be able to send out to publishers one day. As of this writing, it's potential, but a delightful and neglected mess.
9. I hope Penelope's legs strengthen and she finds herself not desperately limping after her romps on Memorial Bluff and Hay Creek.
10. I hope we can get new carpet. That's been a long-time hope.
11. I hope to make tackling a thick Russian novel a winter-time tradition around here.
12. I hope to find time to continue to practice communal yoga after the baby is born, but if not, then I hope I feel confident enough to practice at home.
13. I hope my skin thickens at any reviews that might come out in connection to the chapbook. I hope I remember so much of it is individual taste.
14. I hope to break away from my own individual taste when evaluating books for awards or reviews. I hope I grow in the ability to appreciate a piece of literature outside of my own preferences, which are for lush figurative language, a clear setting, compelling characters. In poetry, I do have a fondness for lyrical and narrative both.
15. I wouldn't mind losing this pregnancy weight and then losing that PCOS weight.
16. I hope for another summer garden, this one with a new crop of asparagus and carrots.
17. I hope to find ways to rest and relax more. I hope to repair the whirlpool tub upstairs before the baby comes.
18. I hope the transition of bringing Sophie home will be smooth, that the pets, including the baby of the family Zephyr, adapt and grow to love her as much as I have the past few months.
19. Through knitting, sewing, letterpressing, etc., I hope to make art a more regular part of my life.
20. I hope to go camping in the summer, more than once.
21. I hope Ryan and I and the baby can go on a 'big trip' this summer, one that perhaps doesn't hinge on visiting family so much as going on a vacation together.
22. I hope she's healthy. And happy.
23. I hope my thesis defense in the spring will be full of strong and helpful suggestions and will indeed feel like a celebration.
24. I hope health care improves.
25. I hope the economy unslumps. I hope my loved ones are no longer battered from the consequences of a bad economy.
26. I hope to learn to identify more wildlife--both of the plant variety and the creature variety.
27. I hope to pick a classic author and read through the entire oeuvre, in order, back-to-back, marathon-style.
28. I hope to see all the organizations I support (and that, in turn, support me) continue to thrive. I hope to not see another bookstore close.
29. I hope to start the year with good thoughts and end it there as well.
30. I hope to improve my time management and goal setting.
31. I hope I am as lucky as I am now: my heart is full and blessed with a husband who startles me with his love every day, a circle of girl friends who hold me up when I am down, two sides of the family that make me feel loved and accepted, a wee chapbook that feels like the start of something good, a final year in the MFA program, a home full of books and pets and memories. I hope that blessed is a word I carry with me all year.

518

2010-11-01T14:23:00.005-05:00

Some recent articles on the shifting world of books:

- New York Times: In Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks: I know some loads can be heavy, and the searchable features on electronic books are pretty amazing, but I still love that intimate contact with a book. And as an instructor in the literature and literature-related fields, I think we can stand to stick with the paper versions for some time. I know some universities have textbook rental, which is a nice, cost-efficient alternative.

- New York Times: Picture Books No Longer Staple for Children: No need to rush our minnow. She'll be inundated with all sorts of clever picture-books from our end.

- Wall Street Journal: New Libraries Technologies Dispense with Librarians: I'm grateful to read that our local librarian has spoken out against the shift. I love being able to wander through the aisles, going for one thing and coming away with another. And story hour and coming home with a stack, library days when I was little at the hat-library in Chattanooga. I want my own children to have affection for this place, their local library, and not a book-locker or a vending machine.

517

2010-10-28T19:55:00.002-05:00

Is it strange that this video reminds me too much of Penelope? Of course, the level of wonder and sweetness is so very different here, and with my deep, wily pregnancy-hormones, I've gone and gotten myself all bleary-eyed.

516

2010-10-27T20:54:00.008-05:00

Sometimes events converge: my book is due 12/15; my baby 1/6.

This week: edits of the proofs, so many other little details related to the chapbook, as well as a new draft of my thesis. And commenting on student poems. For tomorrow.

One of my duties was to scan and send photographs of my grandfather, in case the publisher wants to insert a few on the extra blank pages in the back. I made a little set pertaining to the chapbook, cleverly titled The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake, which is mostly photos of him, but some of the book, some that illustrate a few of the poems themselves, such as these dahlia bulbs and my grandmother at her sink, both from poems that appear in this anthology, and the silty feet from "Uniform Urn."

Here's the front and back of the book my sister designed and executed, or one variation thereof. I'm really floored with how talented she is; I think, if you need any graphic design work done, you should send her a little note, or send me one, and I'll pass it along. (She doesn't have a portfolio up online just now, but I'm sure she will some day soon, and for now, you can glance through her flickr page. You can see other amazing things she's done, like this save the date for her wedding next summer, which is two days from our wedding anniversary, so sweet).

515

2010-10-26T21:24:00.003-05:00

The Body

has its little hobbies. The lung

likes its air best after supper,

goes deeper there to trade up

for oxygen, give everything else

away. (And before supper, yes,

during too, but there’s

something about evening, that

slow breath of the day noticed: oh good,

still coming, still going ... ) As for

bones—femur, spine,

the tribe of them in there—they harden

with use. The body would like

a small mile or two. Thank you.

It would like it on a bike

or a run. Or in the water. Blue.

And food. A habit that involves

a larger circumference where a garden’s

involved, beer is brewed, cows

wake the farmer with their fullness,

a field surrenders its wheat, and wheat

understands I will be crushed

into flour and starry-dust

the whole room, the baker

sweating, opening a window

to acknowledge such remarkable

confetti. And the brain,

locked in its strange

dual citizenship, idles there in the body,

neatly terraced and landscaped.

Or left to ruin, such a brain,

wild roses growing

next to the sea. The body is

gracious about that. Oh, their

scent sometimes. Their

tangle. In truth, in secret,

the first thing

in morning the eye longs to see.

by Marianne Boruch

514

2010-10-25T18:23:00.002-05:00

I've had so many wonderful poetry-adventures in the past two weeks; I have scribbled notes in my notebook to compose here, and photos and joy, but here's another form of joy: eeking out just before the first snow is set to filter in, several juicy sweet peppers (along with enough hot peppers to last this winter and next, a few eggplants) appeared in our garden. We've had chicken enchiladas and tofu fajitas, using our store of CSA onions in the mix.

In these parts, it's drizzling, and tomorrow, we're set for a high wind warning, which will make the commute across the farmlands a bit precarious, and tonight, we took the pups to Hay Creek, which fills my heart to the brim. Those two are so beautiful when they fling themselves, free, chasing after sticks (indeed, we may not have learned our lesson, though Ryan is careful to trim any sharp edges) and pawing slender holes in the sand. The mosquitoes are still lingering, the leaves are flittering down, and I imagined the cows lowing were moose instead.

513: with new book, comes new webpage

2010-10-18T21:11:00.005-05:00

The above image is what my webpage looked like, the not oft-updated space that listed a few humble poems, was built from scratch, whatnot.

There's not so much new to tell, a few extra poems, a chapbook. We used a template, and Ryan sat down and banged out a new set of pages for me this weekend, and I do love it so.

We'll likely already update it some time after this weekend; I have a few more blurbs for the chapbook coming and I'd like to add links to Alchemy: Poetry and Yoga as well as Hedgebrook, a place I one day hopehopehope to have a residency.

And the below image. A new welcome.

512: mud creek

2010-10-15T17:16:00.017-05:00

Last weekend we made the trip to Hay Creek, a generally sandy-banked spot, but since we had those Zumbro-flooding storms two weeks ago, the Mississippi and all small expanses of water have kept banks high and swampy. As one can see in that first image, I lost my sneakers in the quagmire, one step, then the other, sunk to my ankles. Ryan fetched them, replete with worms, and scraped them as best he could, but I kept myself stocking-footed for the rest of our journey. We headed home just as sandy and damp as our pups, who actually romped.

511: revisiting a prior post (news)

2010-10-13T09:47:00.004-05:00

I finally was able to re-publish 500. The announcement is up: My humble chapbook, The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake, won the Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award, which means it will be published. In about two months, in fact, if all goes well.

The above is the cover my sister designed.

My ISBN is 978-0-9788931-7-0.

The publisher's website is here, where you will eventually be able to order copies online. I'll also have my own set to sell at readings and through local bookstores and whatnot.

Edits are coming along, blurbs are being written, and I'm thinking about author photos and short bios. Thinking about these things and impending due dates and the thumps of the minnow and writing a thesis and keeping up with grading and getting a full night's sleep. It's a fantastically busy time. I feel calm and quiet and good.

510: book club

2010-10-09T10:55:00.003-05:00

Two nights ago I hosted book club at our home, a little mussed, quite humble, but always so good. After they left, I confessed to Ryan that even after the minnow is born, I certainly want to continue on with the monthly tradition of book club--I need it, in fact--because even though I am having a little girl, she will not be able to provide that estrogen-time I will so direly need.

We read the eerie We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is incredibly heavy on the development of an unstable narrator. I read it long ago, as an undergraduate, in a class called Weird Books by Women, and I adored it then. I still skated through my reading, though I think one thing that has ruined my reading since then is the seeking of a "twist," which clearly wasn't the point of this slim novel. (I forget things, including book plots, very easily, so reading this again was as if reading it for the first time. This can make for awkward conversation if someone asks if I've read something and I say yes, because I cannot carry on an accurate review with that recently-read companion as all has leaked from my brain, love it or not. And pregnant? Forget it. I can barely remember if I shampooed and conditioned my hair halfway through the shower.)

Another quirk of mine is that I tend to vacillate in interests and sometimes, something I love more than anything in the world, must remain dormant. (Love for friends and family and pets and home and whatnot somehow escapes this categorization; perhaps what I mean is what-I-do-with-my-spare-time that can come and go in strong pulses.) I had been knitting myself into a wrist brace and frustrated with graduate school, but upon settling into the sofa, a deadline for reading my book club book, the hunger for devouring books like some great Godzilla rose up within me again. I suppose those fiber projects will collect a bit of dust while I read myself into a coma. I managed to finish Dave Eggers' Zeitoun after the ladies departed, which is a narrative of one family surviving Hurricane Katrina, told very much in a New Yorker piece style. I also started a 42-disc book on CD (My Life by Bill Clinton) yesterday and managed to not flip between The Current and the book as I had with the last two, in true ADD-style.

Our dinner--
Vegan Butternut Squash Soup:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 carrots, sliced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 small or one large butternut squash, peeled and chopped
5 cups vegetable broth
2 tbsp chopped fresh sage
1/2 cup soy milk
salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

In a large soup pot, sautee the onion and garlic in olive oil until onions turn soft, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the carrots and celery and cook for another 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the squash and stir just to coat, then add the vegetable broth and sage. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a slow simmer. Allow to cook for at least 25 minutes, or until squash is soft.

Using a potato masher or a large fork, mash the squash until smooth, or, alternatively, you can puree the soup in a food processor or blender.

Stir in the soy milk and season with salt and pepper to taste.

509: autumn brew review

2010-10-03T23:03:00.005-05:00

The last beer festival was so cold, so the relative warmth, the sun drifting between cloud-clumps, would have made this festival a bit more comfortable at my repeat performance as designated driver. The only difference between now and late January, specific to me, was that bulbous obviousness that is my pregnancy. Standing for four hours at a high-top table, followed by later sitting on a backless bar stool, left me a bit paralyzed in the seat of my car, a pained mold to the cushioned seat.

This year we had more company, more friends, more conversation. Less chattering. And I still tasted a few ciders, a few beers, including a cracked pepper beer that was delicious. The boys would often disappear for a period of time, and I would continue moving those harmony wood needles against one another, that amazingly slow progress of sock yarn, the intricacies of delicate needles. And these tasters would come back, Chris with her list of ports, Angie setting her alarm for a fresh Crisipin that ran out within ten minutes of tapping, the boys discussing the merits of whole breweries and various seasonals. Sitting back on the lawn, there was less of the oppressive crowd, the music low enough for comfortable conversation, the sun pinking up my cheeks.

I'm glad for afternoons like this, and only a small part of me fantasizes for next year, when we can coax a set of grandparents to come and baby-sit, when I can cautiously enjoy the tastes offered as well.

Ryan was sweet and bumbling at the end of the night, after a trip to a bar with old friend Mike and his new girlfriend Shannon. Unfortunately, despite the water I plied him with, he woke aching and spent his own time molded to the sofa, the dogs occasionally clamoring up on top, nosing into his chest for a good snuggle. He alternated between water and juice and chicken noodle soup, and my hope is that he will wake tomorrow with the difficulties of too much tasting behind him.

We're getting old, us. Growing old together.

508: a little making for a lot of love

2010-10-01T21:39:00.002-05:00

I almost kept him, which would have been naughty, and the first time I felt compelled to keep one of my own fiber creations. There's a twist along his nose, and it makes me think of my husband, who bumped into too many goal posts or heads while playing soccer when he was younger and never bothered to straighten it out (it would require re-breaking, you see). I opted for no adornments: no tail, no embroidered eyes, no fabric inner ears, no embroidered tree-tattoos (this last was my husband's suggestion). Perhaps the simple reflects more the maker than the receiver, my best friend of so many years. My heart is full of adornments when I think of her. xo, Kelly

Yarn: pink tweed kitchen cotton by Lily's Sugar n Cream
Needles: size 7, Clover bamboo
Pattern: Piggies at Play from Knitted Toy Tales by Laura Long

507: sunshine and head colds

2010-09-26T20:18:00.008-05:00

It was a beautiful day today, meant to be spent in the northern climes of the Twin Cities with my best friend and her little boy, but the first nasty head cold of the season has taken both me and my husband down: he with shivers and temperature swings; me with a throbbing head and an achy throat. I have an OB appointment tomorrow morning (complete with gestational diabetes test), so I suppose I can request a throat-peek.

We still had two rambunctious dogs, and we had a taste of what parenting will be like down the road--it does not matter how very sick you might feel. The kids must be appeased.

The sun was shining, the air was fresh and sharp. Three days ago it was raining so hard and so fast they had to close parts of a nearby highway. Today, there were mud puddles, and tall trees taken down, but mostly, one of those ideal autumn days for the dogs to romp, and two adults to zombie-shuffle along behind them.

506: new recipe: beef & guinness stew

2010-09-25T17:44:00.000-05:00

When we were little, my mother used to make us beef stew, and I loved it. I'd been waiting to make a stew like this for me and the husband, but something had always stopped me--his pickiness, my inability to dedicate three hours in the kitchen to dinner. But now, the soup is on the stove, simmering for later, and I have a recipe to share with you, from March Cooking Light:

Ingredients

2 tablespoons canola oil, divided
1 tablespoon butter, divided
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 pounds boneless chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 teaspoon salt, divided
5 cups chopped onion (about 3 onions)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
4 cups fat-free, less-sodium beef broth
1 (11.2-ounce) bottle Guinness Draught
1 tablespoon raisins
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 cups (1/2-inch-thick) diagonal slices carrot (about 8 ounces)
1 1/2 cups (1/2-inch-thick) diagonal slices parsnip (about 8 ounces)
1 cup (1/2-inch) cubed peeled turnip (about 8 ounces)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Preparation

1. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons butter to pan. Place flour in a shallow dish. Sprinkle beef with 1/2 teaspoon salt; dredge beef in flour. Add half of beef to pan; cook 5 minutes, turning to brown on all sides. Remove beef from pan with a slotted spoon. Repeat procedure with remaining 1 tablespoon oil, 1 1/2 teaspoons butter, and beef.

2. Add onion to pan; cook 5 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally. Stir in tomato paste; cook 1 minute, stirring frequently. Stir in broth and beer, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Return meat to pan. Stir in remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, raisins, caraway seeds, and pepper; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally. Uncover and bring to a boil. Cook 50 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add carrot, parsnip, and turnip. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and bring to a boil; cook 10 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Sprinkle with parsley.

(Ryan said, "Look, I cut you an alligator tail!)

I omitted the parsnip and turnip and replaced those with celery and potatoes from our CSA. We also used onions from our CSA and instead of tomato paste, I only had diced tomatoes, so I replaced that as well. Oh, and we only had vegetable oil, so I used that instead of canola, though I know canola is healthier.

We don't have a Dutch oven, though I suppose we ought to add it to our holiday wish list as we've had to maneuver before; instead, we used our copper pots, which are much-abused and very loved and part of our wedding loot.

I love any time we can be a team in the kitchen. I usually stare at the recipe, blank-eyed, the onion-fumes and the pregnancy drawing pillow-and-down-comforter fantasies as I stir. He usually chops. And chops. And chops. And chop he did: two cups of carrots, a cup and a half or so of celery, the remaining russet potatoes, and five cups of onions. And I got to go to the liquor store--the first time since I got pregnant, I think. All those rows of cider and beer... Sigh.

505

2010-09-24T22:08:00.003-05:00

I wanted to share some music I have fallen in love with. I love the bluegrass / Irish feel to it--a perfect combination for me. On repeat.

PS: Oh, and yes, I know they are from London. I still love that pub / folk music.

504

2010-09-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

The first trimester was rough, like having a hangover without the rowdy night before. The second trimester was comparatively smooth, with regular morning-sickness bouts, but minus the nausea. (Ryan's convinced my mythic second-trimester ease lasted a week.) Now I am heading into the third trimester, and already my body is shifting into an uncomfortable mode, new stomach upsets, deeper imbalances in sleep (I will be introducing the neti pot into my evening routine), moods swinging in ways they haven't swung in years. I'm trying to keep the internal peace through breathing, meditation, fresh air, making. There are layers of tethers just now, and I'm simply attempting to unfurl (and keep the casualties to a minimum).

Currently:
:: Loving prenatal yoga. I'm going twice next week. My body is sore from last night, but in such a good way. I think I moved better this time--more smoothly, and accommodated when I knew my body couldn't manage. The only position I absolutely was paralyzed on was the bridge, and that's because there is some spot on my very-lower back that leaves me immobile on my back, one of the worst pains radiating as I slowly try to roll over. I will be gentle with myself until I can manage such contortions.
:: Milk remains my strongest pregnancy craving. Strawberry shakes too.
:: Knitting more than reading. I'm still so painfully slowly making my way through Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Childbirth and Gretel Ehrilich's This Cold Heaven. I'm savoring, truly.
:: Thrilled, thrilled that Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting has been re-released. I've been lusting after it since 2004, but because it was out-of-print, any copies to own were in the hundreds of dollars. Many others must have been lusting too. Some day I will be accomplished enough to work those cables.
:: Just watched Under the Same Moon. Those last few minutes are so good--the ideal ending, hitting the right emotional note.
:: Looking forward to the weekend. I love my teaching assignment, but I find myself suddenly ready to be finished with this MFA of mine. Part of it, I know, is that my journeys are so strongly overlapping, and my brain is partly wrapped up in the trajectory of impending parenthood. So much of my body is limping along too, which feeds that desire to remain away from weighty stress.

503: away in green bay

2010-09-19T21:42:00.007-05:00

We went to visit our parents in Wisconsin this past weekend; we brought a canvas bag heavy with produce, both from our garden and from the CSA, leaving a hefty zucchini Ryan found hiding beneath the plant's enormous leaves with his parents to make bread, and a myriad of veggies, perfect for a soup or peasant stew, with my parents.

Have I mentioned how much I love autumn and its soups? I had a wild mushroom and brie chowder at Z Harvest, a restaurant very special to Ryan and myself as it is where we went on our first date, and where we went last May when we told both sets of parents that they would become grandparents (for my parents, the first grandchild, for his, their fourth).

We went to two concerts also: my father's group, Rough Draft (he is in two--the other group is an Irish folk band called Celtic Consort), had a show at The Attic, a used books / coffee shop downtown. They sang some of his original songs, and he took a moment to sing one solo, a song about Alzheimer's, and he told a story about my grandfather I hadn't heard before, leaving my mother and I both with tears snaking down our cheeks.

The second concert was close to Ryan's parents' house, a bar owned by a friend in the midst of cornfields, and we listened to a friends' band, the Carpetbaggers, a kind of bluegrass / Johnny Cash-cover playing hybrid. Danno is the bass player, and his history includes losing a foot to a cluster bomb in Baghdad, and a successful stint in rehab years later. It was so wonderful to see him doing so well, shouting out to me from his perch, "Molly, you're going to love this song so much, you'll go into labor!" and after, "So, am I an uncle yet?" in that crazed-Danno style. We also know the drummer, Dox, who played the washboard with gusto and whose girlfriend is expecting at the end of January; we know Angie, who sang with the boys on some songs and has a gorgeous voice and two gorgeous daughters of her own; and we know Scooter, papa-of-two, I believe, who played the mandolin and sang the bluegrass songs with his own special kind of guttural slur that actually worked.

(And in case you are wondering where the audience is, they're most behind, closer to the bar, but we were also there earlier, because we have a sad string of energy, one that runs out early, perhaps in preparation for parenthood.)

And to keep myself from mourning my alcohol-free status, I sipped the weak orange juice without the vodka, and continued working on my second kicking bag. Once this is done, I'd like to try my hand at the picky pants. I have a little under four months and then she is here, and I feel quite uncertain as to how my spare minutes will play out: work on the thesis manuscript, reading for pleasure or for class, knitting and sewing, laundry and laundry and dishes.

502

2010-09-16T17:18:00.005-05:00

One knows the school year has begun when I have a series of grievances, and this year, my last, seems to have piled on a few more than this hormonal pregnant-lady wants to handle.

Instead of dwelling on these little frustrations, I am going to close my eyes and think of absolutely good, good things:

:: Last night was my first session of prenatal yoga. Until now, I'd done very, very sweet and s-l-o-w yoga practice, and while this wasn't hot yoga, of the speed-up-and-fall-over sort, it did move, and I did sweat and at one point, saw little blotches dance in front of my eyes, so I slunk off to the bathroom, cold-washclothed myself, and returned to the dance. In savasana, my own minnow began her own practice, and I imagined, in our peace, our muscles singing, that most of the room felt their own minnows flickering in the dim light. Imagine, a dozen and a half pregnant women, all with tumbling babies, some overdue, some not due for months, all half-moons against the floor.

:: After yoga, homemade soup. Emily's house, sweet pups, help untangling a knotted skein of yarn, and soup. Because soup is one of the best things about autumn and winter and that rainy chill that has begun to settle over our region.

:: After soup, knitting. You see this beautiful progression? I began a second kicking bag. I ordered this beautiful yarn from etsy, in the colorway "oy the koi," which already has whimsy attached to it. I'm loving how subtle the colors are turning out as they knit up. I'm an earth-tones kind of girl, so to venture into such a bright blue, which shows on the etsy listing but not in my photograph above, is a happy risk.

:: I do love autumn. Penelope loves it so much she wants to eat it, apparently. I love the way the trees change, I love to bring out heavy wool sweaters, I love making soup, I love filling the house with the smell of baked bread, I love the sound of crisping leaves in the wind, I love the start of the school year (despite recent misgivings, I love the essence of school).

:: And the pups are sweet-as-ever. Thursdays are our special day together; I am done earlier than most days, and right now, the afternoons belong to us. Once the strong weather begins, perhaps our marches, and my belly, will be kept closer to home.

:: The minnow is doing beautifully. Feeling her move is my favorite part of each day.

:: And my husband. My husband, my husband, makes me feel so lucky all of the time. He's so kind and considerate and never perfect, but always good. He watches out for me so well, making sure we're well-stocked with apples and milk, making sure to listen when I need to vent, reading the Bradley birth books I've been stacking in his lap, holding me close, tolerating my increasing snores, celebrating the good things, the better things. Taking care, letting me take care in return. A good partner can make just about anything tolerable, I think. And to always be filled with this love, this thing that grows every day, after eleven years. No one really talks about that as much--the way a love can grow older, the way it can work.

501

2010-09-15T10:15:00.002-05:00

There is a 500th post, and it was up for a short while, but I had to temporarily take it down: the news on it, which is good news, incredibly happy news, has to be kept hush-hush until the formal announcement occurs. The contract is in the mail sort of thing. But if I keep quiet until I can re-post my humble 500, this blog will have to wait until October. And beautiful things are happening.

For instance, this past Friday I went to a reading at The Soap Factory, an art gallery in the midst of old flour mills, of the poets Steve Healey and Gillian Conoley. Beforehand, I was able to go to dinner with two of my favorite people, Colleen and Meryl, and I had forgotten how delightfully good it can be to be in the company of women who understand you, not just because they too write and love poems, but because they've been with you through two years of strange changes, and will continue to watch and support through many more. I feel so much less lonely when I am with them. The next morning, Colleen hosted us in a round of Alchemy: poetry and yoga. One cannot imagine what a perfect combination this could be, and as I moved slowly about my mat, adjusting my pregnancy girth for child's pose, learning to accept my hips as different entities than they were six months ago, I began to feel more connected with the life inside of me, imagining the way she moved as I moved and how peaceful that must be.

Tonight, my dear friend Emily and I will be attending our first Blooma Yoga session. It is yoga designed exclusively for the prenatal woman or they also host sessions of Mommy + Me type yoga.

My body has gone through so many amazing things in the past five months or so. From the multiple-daily trips to the bathroom to the restless legs to the strange numbness in my left hand, there have been low points, and I've learned to maneuver myself back up out of so many places, with my stomach a strange collaborator with gravity. I am learning to live with myself more whale-like, and I am in awe over what I hear this body will do come January. Prenatal yoga should help me get closer to grace when moving through those motions. And as evidenced in the recent past, I certainly can use all the help I can get when it comes to getting by without so many bruises. Sometimes walking, for me, is a contact sport.

500

2010-09-07T12:15:00.007-05:00

What lovely news for a 500th post: this morning I received a phone call, letting me know my chapbook manuscript, The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake, won the Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press Poetry Award (which comes with a cash prize!). My brain is, of course, abuzz, with this news, with my lack of sleep, with my first day of teaching, with five months of incubating the baby, with the I'm getting a chapbook published celebration in my head. This afternoon, I turn in a first draft of my full-length manuscript. I feel as if I'm on a trajectory I only imagined when I was younger, as if I'm doing all those things to make myself A Poet, and I've stepped out of myself, a little trembly and enthralled.

499

2010-09-06T21:16:00.002-05:00

Last night was the program launch, where all the poets and non-fictioners and fictioners and professors get together, have a few drinks laced with vodka, leave ice rings on the tablecloth, eat celery and meatballs on sticks and talk about the year to come.

For us, of course, there was a little tremor of excitement in that this is it. Our final hurrah. Tomorrow afternoon, strange dreams notwithstanding, I will turn in the very first draft of my manuscript, and in April, I will turn in a draft I'd hope wouldn't be far from publishable.

The chapbook continues to receive good news, as if this early-September everyone's cogs are shifting. This time, an editor emailed me and asked if I'd be willing to tweak some poems in order to help it become a better contender for the prize. Indeed--I think any poet would be willing to consider those changes. The nature of the poet's relationship to his or her own work is strange--we can be defensive about specific word choice, we can be such stumbly puppy-types who would sacrifice our lambs entirely in the face of publication. One must tread carefully; one must also feel grateful that any editor would be willing to take the time to dust off a manuscript, to help it become a stronger book.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes; today I spent some time leaning over the warm photocopier, watching my syllabus slip through the machine, staple, staple, staple, staple... the poetry packet for the next class, little binder clips, straight and organized in my expanding folder. My thesis isn't quite so well lined up, but I have a four-hour gap between teaching and studenting, and though I have errands, I know how the time will fill. Collations and binder clips.

498: random bits

2010-09-05T12:57:00.007-05:00

:: My recurring nightmare this week: I am a ways from campus, usually somewhere on the commute, and I'm already late to thesis seminar; I have not printed out copies of my thesis for the first day. I look at my watch again and again, frustrated and helpless.

:: I've been having a Robert Bly marathon, preparing for a packet, beginning my project of introducing a new local poet to my students each Thursday. I finished my syllabus too, and because I am the sort who likes to plan out the scheduled readings, it took a little while. I'm using two books-on-poetry: The Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes and Not Feathers Yet: A Beginner's Guide to the Poetic Life by Lola Haskins, which meant I had to synthesize the topics. And make sure we had enough workshop time. And in-class writing time. And time to read full-length books. And student presentations. I don't, by any means, miss teaching high school, but sometimes, when I look at that five-day-a-week contact with students, I feel envious, that luxury of time. There's so much I had to let go of in the want of balance.

:: Minnow moves so much now. Little tail flips and flickers. I cannot wait to nuzzle her.

:: We are a healing household just now. Penelope's front paw limp is fading, though it's mostly because we've had to keep her home when Zephyr romps the bluffs. Ryan will bring her upstairs to nap in bed with me as compensation. Zeph continues to be oblivious to the hole in his throat; Ryan has peered into the maw and claims no-hole. I hide his plastic-coated pills in gobs of peanut butter, and I have not yet lost a finger. My left hand tingles less, but I am reading thinner books. My burn has a bandage on it now, slathered in aloe, so I cannot know the color, if it is still ripe or not. Ryan is robust, though he is about to mow the lawn, and after I spent some time out there in the garden, I warned him of torrential mosquitoes. We shall see if he gets one in the part in his hair as I did--top and front and itchy--and three on the elbow. I am delicious and stumbly.

:: I dropped my poetry workshop in want of sanity for the fall semester. I didn't need it to fill any slot on my "tan form," though I wanted to work with Joanna Rawson before thesis credits in the spring. Instead, I have prenatal classes at the hospital and prenatal yoga classes with Emily. Now I'm only a grad student and a half; I still have an overload of credits. Manageable. Needed. Spring is going to be easier, save the whole baby-thing.

:: I'm so excited for this book to come out. (Congrats, Stephanie!!)

:: My chapbook received an honorable mention at Accents Publishing. Another editor emailed me telling me the chapbook was close. That's two runner-up type nods and two notes saying it was close. My quiet wishes in my head involve it finding an acceptance by the end of 2010. That sand in the hourglass is fast running out.

:: I'm amazed at how quickly the calendar is filling up. I'm most looking forward to Colleen's alchemy: poetry + yoga event. Also the Healey and Conoley reading, but still, mostly Colleen's event. Last autumn, we went to see Kate Greenstreet and Norma Cole read at Micawber's and it was amazing. It helped that I had fabulous company, and autumn was in the air with the best sort of energy and potential.

:: Autumn is most often my favorite season, mainly because I love going back to school so much, and the summer has done its job recharging me. I love wool sweaters and fall leaves and chowder soups and baked bread. It's all rooted in seasons for me; I think this is a turn the manuscript might take in revision, finding its way into a stronger sense of the full year.

497: klutz

2010-09-03T13:43:00.007-05:00

They say, with pregnancy, your sense of gravity, your center of balance, is now officially off, particularly as that fifth month settles over you.

I would argue, however, that I was hopeless from the start. Case in point: I "broke" my elbow when jogging on gravel with the dogs, just two months shy of my wedding.

When Meryl and I were at Bread Loaf, some insect bit me, and the itching and whatnot swelled the ankle up so much that when my husband emailed the photograph to my mother and his, they thought I had broken it.

Upon returning from my Vermont adventure, I jokingly asked Ryan how many times he thought I'd "bump" baby's head into doorways; I have a habit of shoulder-checking them as I walk through and hip-checking any countertop or dining room table. I used to come home from work at the bookstore with little bruises, and it took me a while to place them--oh, those tricky sharp-edged display tables at the end of the bookshelves.

I sprained my ankle off a two-stone ledge while moving into the house we had just bought. I sprained my ankle again a few years later while walking the dogs. On a sidewalk. On a clear autumn day.

The top photograph: I don't know if it was too much knitting or too much book-lofting (my left hand being my "reading hand," after all--my right being the one for page-turning) in the past week or two, but suddenly the fingers on my left hand tingle whenever I do anything that involves pressure on that hand, and when I wake, it feels as if I've beaten my lovely new pregnancy body pillow to tufts of fluff.

The bottom photograph: One of my favorite kitchen appliances, the waffle iron. We were having breakfast for dinner, and when I reached back to pull the plug, I caught my arm. I'm mildly amused at the dividing line. And I also must note: this burn is not, by any means, new. I've had it for nearly a week now, and it's still an angry brick-red. Ryan says I've been branded.

When I was in elementary school, my friend's mother asked if I was a dancer because my calves were so muscular. No, my mother told her, it's because she walks on her toes (like a weirdo), just like her father. My legs are useless, just pretend-strong. My legs are cloaked in pants, long skirts; I will never wear a cute sundress, unless I also wear high high heels. And we all know what kind of a danger that could be. No, I've never been a dancer, cannot dance at all, even though there was a period in high school when I loved to go to the gay bar on "juice night" and wiggle with my girl friends (and girlfriend), all of whom actually had a sense of rhythm, and I had no sense to be embarrassed. I'm sure I danced enough on my wedding night too; I still have no sense of shame.

I don't mind my lack of grace; I make up for it in other areas of passion. I'm amused more than anything else, so much so that I take photographs of my blunders, and with a total of six bits of evidence thus far (think of how much I missed by simple neglect), I've even created a photoset on Flickr, for your amusement. This also includes the photo where I decided that canoeing in quicksand was a wise plan. (This, said with an edge of sarcasm: I actually got out of the boat to pull us from a shallow spot and hadn't realized how loose that silty sand was, which began to suck me under; fortunately, we were very close to shore, so I literally swam through the lake's bottom--in a lightning storm, no less--and clamored back into the canoe.)

496: blueberry recipe: coffee cake

2010-08-30T16:50:00.005-05:00

Of course my own mother makes it better. But for my first time, it didn't turn out terribly.

I remember pulling off pieces of the crust when I was little, removing little wedges of cinnamon and sugar; fortunately, the cake beneath is delicious too.

This is my mother's blueberry dessert recipe. I love that we used blueberries from picking together, something I hope will become our own family's tradition, and I love that we are using her recipe, an infusion of generations. She's going to be a grandmother soon, and right now, her gift of ingredients is keeping my babe content.

Blueberry Dessert (Yum!)

Bake at 375 degrees for 45-50 minutes

Topping - crumble on top of batter after the batter has been put in pan

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 cup melted butter

Batter (put in bowl in this order and mix after each addition--I use a mixer except for the berries which I fold in with a wooden spoon)

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup softened margarine

1 egg

1 cup milk

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt (I usually leave this out since I don't think it matters and we get enough salt in our food normally)

2 cups washed blueberries

Combine in order given. Put topping on top of batter (I usually do it with my clean hands in order to disperse it evenly). Bake in square greased and floured pan at 375 for 45-50 minutes.

We still have a large mixing bowl full of blueberries to finish off. I have my eye on a few more recipes, including a cream shake (minus the whipped cream; I am not in love with the stuff, which, along with not liking Jello, makes me feel a bit un-American, or at least un-Midwestern; neither do I love marshmallows, though I do very much so love them in hot chocolate) and muffins. I do love muffins and cake-breads, such as banana and zucchini, both of which I'll need to make soon.

The pan, of course, is no longer full; I've already had two slices and I only made it last night. Ryan tasted it and declared it delicious for a fruit dessert, though I suspect it will be up to me to finish off the rest. Which is fine by me.

495: rush river blueberry picking

2010-08-28T13:55:00.007-05:00

Last night, my darling husband spent two hours with me in baby-chaos, registering for all kinds of baby-shaped items, our eyes sleepy, a box o' crib bungeed into my trunk. He lugged that one hundred pound box out of the trunk and up the stairs, giving Kelly's ant comparison credence.

And this morning, Ryan woke me with this adorably wise plan to pick blueberries. Inside the car, I discovered he had filled up my tank with gas. Halfway to Maiden Rock, he said to me, "You're not terribly observant, are you?" Oh woe is the poet who cannot see the world so clearly. It turns out he took my car in and replaced all the tires--and there, none of the previous vibrations or shaking or car misalignment.

And now, I am winter-safe, full of blueberries. We brought three and a half pounds home, and I have plans for a crumble, muffins, freezing some to go with the raspberries that will become smoothies in winter. In Minnesota, it's all about winter-preparation. This one is going to be magical.

494: this is what it means to be home again

2010-08-26T19:46:00.003-05:00

Hay Creek at dusk is difficult to photograph, especially if your subjects are whirling dervishes of adorable energy.

On the morning of our ultrasound, Ryan took the dogs up Memorial Bluff, where he played his standard fetch, using a stick he'd found along the trail. Zephyr, who is a champion stick-fetcher, apparently was simply trotting back to him when he somehow got the stick lodged in the back of his throat--not the roof of his mouth, mind you, but the very back, sensitive and tender. Zeph fought to get it out, but couldn't on his own, and Ryan confessed he even had a little trouble dislodging the troublesome stick from our dog's maw. There was blood, of course, but Zephyr didn't seem fazed; they continued their walk, and we continued our day, cooing over our injured friend. That night, the dogs slept with us, because my mother was sleeping on the futon, and we didn't want her disturbed by our overly-friendly pups, and at four in the morning, we awoke to this strange chuffing and snorting. I turned on my bedside light and Z was pacing the room, trying to dislodge the injury; we decided to call the vet. There was a furious red spot in the back and in the center, something gray or brown, and the only way I could get the kind doctor to see it was by shoving my fist halfway down his throat, holding it open myself; I'm fortunate that our vet allows owner-participation, as I don't think any of them were tempted to dangle their head in front of the lion. She suspected the spot was still stick, and while I rubbed my hands vigorously on a towel (oh, how I loathe saliva and how I need to get over it with a drool-machine on the way) while she went to get a sedative--Zephyr was cathertized in his leg and put into a stupor-sleep, his fat tongue lolling onto my jeans, drool pooling in my socks. Apparently he needed his mama at his head, me constantly telling him what a good boy he was for not snarling or fighting back. There was nothing there, fortunately, and we were loaded down with antibiotics. He's perfectly fine, save the struggle it is to give him plastic-coated pills (we use peanut butter); his energy hasn't waned a bit.

I feel fully home again, what with Zephyr getting into things, leaving me an empty box of Triscuits to vacuum up before my mother arrived, selecting random double pointed needles made of bamboo as chew toys. He's our boy, through and through, that ridiculous happy grin and waggy tail, that propensity to fill us with frustration and love simultaneously.

Meanwhile, I am reading books that are too easy to put down, catching up on Netflix (currently: Discovery Channel's Human Body: Pushing the Limits) and thumbing through a baby name book. (I'm sure the process of settling on a name will take some time, but I promise we aren't keeping it a secret until The Day.) I am feeling baby flicker inside of me, loving every moment, precious, thinking about what I want to do with these last four months before freedom is revoked and my world takes on a new tilt.

493: grrrrrl

2010-08-24T22:47:00.005-05:00

And there it is: our daughter. Daughter. What a strange thing to be writing, to say to one another, when we had especially anticipated a boy--from the conviction of friends' "vibes," to the dreams both myself and my mother had, to the timing of the conception, to the way I kept calling her a "he." And I'm relieved to report that, though shocked, and asking the doctor, "Are you sure?," I really, profoundly discovered I would have been happy either way. There were moments when I thought of the adorability of Jack and Jimmy, how another Kiefer boy could charm just as easily, and there were moments, such as the Vida panel at Bread Loaf, when I felt all fierce and feminist and wanting a girl. But ultimately, either sort, or anything in between, would have been welcome and beloved.

After telling Kelly, I'm slowly waiting for the ringing to die down from my ear, my own mother's hand clamped over her mouth at the news, which she received at the same moment as Ryan and myself. There it was--a mover, a manipulator. I wanted the wand to still so I could simply stare in wonder as her fists moved in and out of the cave, as she touched her face, as she bicycled her legs. In the follow-up appointment with the OB doctor, he also noticed the frolicking, the kick into the device that listens for a heartbeat, the having to chase it about to keep it steady. Oh, and how that heartbeat looked like the mouth on a puffer fish on the screen, already mocking me, telling me I was wrong to not let her stay out past curfew and that I just don't understand anything at all.

I'm completely, head-over-heels in love already. I was before I saw her face, but this makes it even more miraculous, that monkey-love, her limbs climbing about, her nose and lips jutting. I keep calling her my minnow; I think this might be baby's first nickname.

My mother and I have been busy making: she made me a second pair of maternity pants in tan corduroy, she also worked on the first version of cloth diapers, I have been knitting the kicking bag, and I finally tamed the bobbin and started making soft stacking blocks out of leftover quilt fabric. It's our sweat shop; Ryan asked me if Santa had arrived in August. I feel that push even more, the desire to make things with my hands, when it's specifically for her. Love, love, love. So much of it, right here.

492: last bread loafian day

2010-08-20T15:15:00.002-05:00

Meryl was kind enough to take a photograph of me reading my poem in the Little Theatre during a Blue Parlor one-minute-marathon event. We bullied each other into doing it, and now we can say we read in that famous theatre. While you are at it, see this post on her blog and drool over that last photograph.

This year has been more difficult than last in so many ways:

The obvious is that bump that is ever-protruding. I watched the curve of the desk get closer and closer with each workshop day. The greatest delight (and I hate that this word is so banal, but it's exactly what my heart is saying, exactly with that "light" at the end, the lit-smile radiance) is when I feel the tipsy babe roll in my stomach, a little fish below the surface, skittering around. It's a beautiful sensation, and more than makes up for my trips to the bathroom, my little winces over toilet bowl. And despite the long, dark hallways at night, I'm still grateful for the plumbing in the middle of sleep, when I wake to my shrinking bladder's wails.

I'm also approaching the last year of the MFA program, which means I've got a book manuscript to worry over. In one frenzied morning, I collected all of my wandering poems that are thematically linked to the thesis, and another was spent tinkering on the organization. I had a conference with a famous-writer, and for the first time, I experienced the tinges of one aesthetic dominating my own. I'm used to instructors who will help guide me toward my own vision, but some of the suggestions completely unmoored me, in some ways a good thing (while I might not take it word-for-word, I do realize I need to use some of the suggestion injection), in other ways it threw me, and Meryl had to remind me to stand firm, that my vision was my own and that it had merit in the world. It's been hard--I've felt in turns deflated and elated while here, and last year, it was so much more even-keel. I'm not sure if I should attribute that to the rollicking pregnancy hormones or the urgency of a full-length book as opposed to individual poems that could come or go.

What's really shook me this time around is the invasive feeling of homesickness. I hadn't felt this on any other writing retreat; this is the first time I've felt achy inside. I miss my sweet pups whose noggins knock me about, I miss my chubby cats who wedge themselves into me when I read in bed, I miss my own bed and the shape and color of my house (so much yellow and green shutters here) and the kitchen and abundant milk, I miss my husband, I miss my husband, I miss him. I miss how he is such a firm comfort: I can wedge myself into his arms when I am upset, I can have him talk me down from crazy ledges, I can cry openly and plainly. It isn't quite the same, especially when you've had this comfort for eleven years.

This is all so very whiny and complaining and I hate that, especially since this experience has been such a gift. I love these mountains, I love these old buildings with their dysfunctional doorknobs, I love the daily conversations about poetry, I love being able to ruminate with one of my best friends, I love falling asleep and being able to turn the lamp off when I want to, I love the freedom to not worry over dishes and what to prepare for the next meal, I love the bookstore beneath our room, I love the books and books I've been reading. I love that each time I come here, it transforms me, pushes me into a new phase of being "a writer" that would have taken so long before, love that I have gotten so much work done and have been given so many things to consider, love that there is some measure of hope that the thesis will become a manuscript will one day become a book.

I'm just ready to come home, to carry this experience with me, to love and love and love.

Oh, and all week, I didn't do any knitting on my little kicking bag (oh, the baby just moved again, just as I was writing this!), but today I picked up the needles again, knowing I was returning home, a little rise in domesticity.

And one more thing: I do love that I didn't have to leave my child behind and miss it fiercely. I could carry it with me this go-around, bring the little secret self onto the journey. Next year, I won't be able to fly across the country; I know I wouldn't be ready to leave that expanded family for ten days. It's truly been a good "last hurrah," especially having the company of someone you love (and in this case, yes, baby could count, but I mean dear Meryl).

491: hello from bread loaf, happy 3 year anniversary

2010-08-11T15:12:00.007-05:00

Meryl and I arrived safe and sound in Vermont; last year, I was trapped at the Newark airport, changing gates, finding out how many rotations of planes they couldn't give us (mechanical, mechanical, mechanical). Of course, it sounds as if Meryl might have gotten the bad luck--her husband's car decided its engine would no longer work, so she lost her four a.m. ride to the airport, the trains were slow, and she just might have been the last person boarding the plane, which certainly kept my knuckles quite white.

Instead of going straight to the conference, we spent the day and evening in rural Vermont, on a large swath of land, mostly wooded, complete with wild blackberries and toads, where Meryl's old college friend lives. Her aunt owns the property and lives in a house with her five adopted boys, and Heather lives with her girlfriend Lori in a camper at the back of the lot. Camper is, of course, being a bit liberal: the inside was plywood floored, the bedding was a camping mat and sleeping bag, the lighting was candles, and the toilet was the woods. Needless to say, it was quite an adventure for me, and I think I could have managed mildly better if I weren't pregnant, but everyone was so extraordinarily kind and generous that the surprise roughness of the accommodations didn't fully phase me. We had plenty of excellent vegan fare, a campfire, a rainstorm, and plenty of storytelling.

Here at Bread Loaf, I will be slowly updating this blog on the trouble that Meryl and I get ourselves into, though one qualm is that I have lost my dear camera battery charger somewhere in my summer travels, so I am not certain if I will upload pictures as I go. The toad above was actually found in our backyard before I left, as opposed to the wilds of Vermont, but I will let it substitute charm you in the meanwhile.

I am tired but content. From what I remember of last year, these ten days feel both an eternity and the briefest flash of time. It's a good way to end the summer, even if the baby sometimes decides it's a good time to wallop me with a sad stomach. I've been warning the other women on the floor that if they hear someone getting sick, it isn't a drunk at ten a.m. or a bulimic, but instead a four-and-a-half pregnant person who can't seem to get into the swing of things. (And for the record, my only moment was still at the camper, just after the sun rose, and with the sweating and trembling and urgency, it felt more like the flu than morning sickness, so I'm not sure if was something I consumed in the past twenty-four hours or the heat, but I'm grateful I have managed to gracefully survive campus without any upsets.)

I already miss home, but I think that's the wonkiness of the hormones; once the conference begins to swing, I will be too distracted to think of how much I want to fall asleep next to Ryan or tell him in person about my day and how today we are missing being with one another on our three-year-wedding anniversary (Bread Loaf, by the way, is having its 85th anniversary, so they are winning), will vaguely think it would be better with Penelope by my side or Zephyr to entertain me, will only ache a little for the cats to curl up in my armpit as I read volume after volume of poetry in bed. This year, too, I have one of my dearest friends with me, which is the biggest gift, since this is my last hurrah for some time. Baby will keep me planted, which is fine. I have a book to write.

xo

490: two birthdays, a dinner on the farm

2010-08-09T11:54:00.007-05:00

Last night we joined the Urtels and Chris for a dinner on the farm (a summertime organized picnic where chefs and sustainable farms are paired together for an evening of education and good food) at Thousand Hills Cattle Company, located in Cannon Falls, where the cows are not only grass-fed, but sustainably-so. The cows only graze one or two days in an area of the pasture, and then that grass is allowed to recover, and with the natural cow-fertilizer, there is no need for additional harmful fertilizers to be added to the mix. Todd Churchill, pictured above, is especially interested in raising cows that produce gourmet-quality beef, and though I am taking a break from vegetarianism during my pregnancy, I do want to be more mindful of the meat I consume while I'm journeying into the world of rich proteins. Aside from the sweat bee and ant stings I acquired, and that sweltering walk up a hill (oh, out of shapeness!), it was a gorgeous evening--I felt pretty cozy and content.

For Lane's birthday, we headed into the farms of Wisconsin to Dave's BrewFarm, which is wind powered. The boys got tipsy after their eight-drink sampler, and yes, I did take one sip of each, and I do have a favorite, and I tell you, this baby needs training early for alcohol tolerance anyway, so no worries.

For Angie's birthday, of which I have no photographs (earlier in the pregnancy--was feeling pretty ripely nauseous and had to focus on being present), we went to Nosh in Lake City, a fancy seasonal restaurant, where I tried squash blossoms for the first time and had the best potato soup ever. After, we went to Falconer Vineyards, which has recently added a back deck and has applied for a permit to sell wood-fired pizza, for a Justin Roth concert.

489: michigan in july

2010-08-08T11:56:00.010-05:00

We went to Michigan for the 4th of July; the 5th of July was my grandmother's 89th birthday. I love going to this lake: I meditated at the edge, wrote some poems, canoed at dusk, cooked dinners with my husband, many with vegetables straight from my garden and hers.

488: up memorial bluff

2010-08-07T12:59:00.015-05:00

One of the million reasons I have such a big continual crush on my husband:

We tried to take a photograph of the dogs together in the grass.

They just wanted to play. Or eat the grass.

These photos were taken a little over a month ago, when I was wallowing in nausea and completely drained of energy. Ryan convinced me to head up to the bluff with him, just a wee walk, to get some fresh air, which felt so good, even if I came home to drain. I love this guy so much.

487: two anthologies

2010-07-31T11:28:00.005-05:00

There are two anthologies I want to call your attention to:

1. From Orchards, Fields, and Gardens, edited by Kerstin Svendsen, which will be available in mid-August and is $4 off pre-orders. Of course, I'm extra-excited about this project because I have three poems inside: the title poem to my chapbook (which is still making rounds, but I promise an update, even when it's a bridesmaid again) "The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake," as well as "Kitchen" and "Palming Earth."

2. The other is a collection being published by Harper Perennial, and my tattoo, done by the lovely and talented Shawn Hebrank, will make an appearance in its pages. You can read more about my specific tattoo in this post, and you can check out the book's webpage here. It will be released October 12th.

486: still here, still quiet

2010-07-26T17:58:00.002-05:00

I will write soon, again, I promise. Somehow, between keeping my lunch down with this pregnancy (sixteen weeks and five days today), preparing to teach a class that started today at The Loft, my own studenting as a platen letterpress fiddler, reading poetry volumes by authors at Bread Loaf and test-driving various books for the Intro. to Poetry class I'll be teaching this fall, traveling to Michigan, book club and writing group, weeding the garden, baking homemade pretzels, oh and morning sickness morning sickness morning sickness, I have found myself remiss in this space. I didn't mean it to be a blogging break; I'd be so constant about it for so many years, and here I am, my eyes aching from tiredness, the summer blooming around me, and all I can think about is bedtime and if I have my photocopies ready for tomorrow. (Please note that in my list, I did not write 'writing my thesis,' as I've only been writing individual poems and cannot imagine facing that file of 'body poems' that need to make a cohesive unit by the end of August.) For now, I'm just going to drink my iced water with lemon, read the anthology for my poetry students, and prop my eyelids open with toothpicks. I miss being here, but sometimes the quiet is good too.

485: becoming private

2010-07-07T12:12:00.003-05:00

Above, those are my parents, and that's my me in my father's lap. The other two are cousins from my mother's side of the family. My mother is younger than I am in this photograph, as is my father; I love how radiantly happy they look.

While I was away in Michigan, I began to work with a template on a new look for my official webpage, one that I could update, instead of asking Ryan to add something every time a poem got accepted. What makes me sad about this independence was how much of a gift it was to have Ryan maintain something for me, something that said yes, I know that writing is more than a hobby for you, and I love you so much that I will use my own more-than-a-hobby programming abilities to make something for you. He is still willing, of course, but somehow, things have become more urgent and important to me to make certain I am updated and existing a little bit differently on the web.

Which led me to my debate, the one I carried in my pocket for the long weekend: I want to be a bit more private in this strange open space. I have had some moderate success with publishing individual poems from my chapbook, and while the book isn't getting published just yet, it's had some positive feedback--runner-up, a note from an editor telling me it would find a home one day. And while a chapbook calls very little attention to the writer or to the work itself, I still have begun to realize a bit more fully that if I am to one day have a presence professionally, as a poet, a reviewer, a photographer, and interviewer, a scholar, a college instructor, I might be best off pulling the shades in some places.

The blog where I kept track of my infertility journey, where I now write about the woes of pregnancy (it's getting better!), where I will eventually write about parenting and show images of my child on a regular basis has already gone private. Roots + wings won't change in any way, but it seemed best to keep this experience protected, so I've invited a string of friends and family to follow along, if they so desire, and if I have forgotten to send you an email, or it's confusing to join, please let me know, and I'll try to do something about it.

Eventually, I think this place will go private too: it's dedicated to my everyday life, and while I don't want to quit either blog, I think it's also like those living room curtains at night--it's time to draw them in. It will take a little longer, I think, to get ready to do that, mainly because I don't want to exclude any readers who I might not know from the "real world," but through words and images and encouragement and all else, are just as good company as those I might be able to coffee with. Not that I can drink coffee just now, but figuratively.

Because it is related to the presence I do hope to maintain on the internet, that of publishing poems in online literary magazines and having a named webpage, I will keep independent study public. And I'm not sure what to do about Flickr just yet. I'm a month behind in uploading photographs anyway, so I'm not sure how concerned I am--we shall see. For now, I will keep sharing images and memories and thoughts and eventually I'll do the same, just with a very limited readership; perhaps I can let that coincide with when I change over the main webpage--it makes sense, transition-wise.

484: welcome to the world, Kayhan Siamak DePasquale

2010-07-05T21:11:00.003-05:00

(Photos snatched from the new aunt and new papa's Facebook pages.)

Isn't he handsome? Casey, who is sister of my dear poetry-sidekick Meryl and member of our book club, was due five days from now, but instead, in the wee hours of July five, Kayhan came into this world, now sharing a birthday with another of my favorite people. My grandmother, owner of great chunks of my heart, turned eighty-nine today and of the new one, she has given blessings.

I know that Casey and Ardeshir will be the best sorts of parents, great models of patience and humor and clever experiences. I will happily amused to listen to the stories, the follies, and the love that bursts from their loft in the big city of Minneapolis. The first of a string of much anticipated births over the next several months--hers also the first of three pregnancies in our book club, which will certainly shift the dynamic.

Oh, I can hardly stand to hold this little one! I wonder if they can hear my sounds of squee all the way across Lake Michigan, across the state of Wisconsin, across the Mississippi River...

483: at least my knee is getting some action

2010-06-28T03:32:00.002-05:00

This past weekend we did a tour of Wisconsin: Green Bay to see both sets of parents and Milwaukee to visit our friends BJ and Lynn, whose rabbit Herbie is not "fixed," and therefore, fell amorously in love with my arm. He also liked to rearrange my fuzzy pants, and I have to say: I had a little crush on him too. Not so much that I would "mark" him with my chin-glands or ready myself for a little humping, but enough that Herbie's nuzzling was a highlight of our visit.

Missouri was somehow easier on me; I was safely ensconced in a five-day hiatus from stomach unrest. This Wisconsin trip had Ryan pulling over both to and from, which is never terribly pleasant, though being outdoors, centered in such a strange way, was kind of peaceful. The dogs were a tad distracted, panting out the window, desperate to run around in the tall grass.

I have to say this, above all else: I have been blessed with such a kind and caring partner. This early pregnancy has not been easy, as evidenced by my many pregnant friends who are chipper and enjoying themselves. I'm pathetic and miserable, but I do have a husband who will bring home six different cans when you ask for one of chicken noodle soup, a husband who will experiment with the CSA goodies when I cannot fathom opening the refrigerator without detouring to the bathroom, has been sympathetic and patient and listening. I just know he's going to make a fantastic parent, which makes me very lucky indeed, because I know I will go into this with coltish legs. We both will, but he has that calm that will keep me steady.

482: the sky on the way to missouri

2010-06-26T21:40:00.009-05:00

481: missouri

2010-06-25T21:26:00.010-05:00

We visited a pair of friends who live in Kansas City, where they took us to Boulevard Brewing Company (and the boys doubled up on beer tokens while the wives sipped water) and for a lovely Irish dinner.

Exhausted, I took two naps on Saturday, listened to thunderstorms roll through the night. I'll post the sky photos I took on the drive to Missouri next--I finally caught my goal, which was to capture lightning in a photograph. Next goal? To take a spectacular photo of lightning.

480: some more hay creek

2010-06-24T19:02:00.014-05:00

This last trip we took, I got in with the pups, wading around in the cool water, grateful for the quiet and still as the baby groaned about within.

479: first csa box

2010-06-23T19:43:00.000-05:00

Our first CSA box arrived a bit ago, containing: a rosemary plant, broccoli, dino kale, scallions, kohlrabi, purple top turnip, summer savory, and spinach. We missed the second box due to a doctor's appointment and the third was much like the first, with cabbage and snap peas.

478: jonsi

2010-06-22T22:41:00.002-05:00

Soon, I will share images from our weekend in Missouri (much of which I napped through, desperate for a string of decent sleep, and watching thunderstorms, and tasting the various beers my husband had), and soon I will bring another collection of Hay Creek images to you, but for now, here is a song I heard reviewed on Musicheads, and even more:

Today is Christian's second birthday. (For those who don't know, he is my oldest friend's son; I was present at the birth, and I hope she can manage to be present at Baby Kiefer's in January.) We went to a restaurant called Space Aliens, I had a lot of bad food, and he is looking more and more adorably like a little boy, which is so flatteningly strange to me. He's charming and sweet and perfectly hers, which makes me so happy. I hope our own alien offspring is parented as well as Kelly does to her son.

Happy birthday, little C. I love you so.

477: fruits of my (un)labor

2010-06-17T18:15:00.004-05:00

Today was the first heartbeat appointment, so if you are curious about that and our befuddled financial future, you can read this post over on roots + wings.

I promised myself that I would keep the baby-posts to a minimum here, small anecdotes and check-ins, but otherwise, everyday life ought to dominate, despite the fact that my brain is dominated by baby-thoughts and first trimester-recovery. (One week left...)

Outside, the trees are whipping a little faster, the sky is getting angrier, and the interactive weather map shows an ominous storm approaching our little town and the cities to the north. I love a good storm. A frisson--a wonderful, happy chill of tormented weather, angst, buckets of rain and crashing of thunder, bright lightning, all that is good in gothic novels such as Wuthering Heights. We have no moors around here, only prairies and bluffs and the Mississippi River, so I take the moody where I can get it, especially when life has been so cozily good.

Our garden is a weedy mess, as it often is after a string of drizzly days and me cooped up indoors. I'm gaining strength and appetite and was able to mow the lawn for the first time in weeks (fortunately, the husband has been picking up my slack). Our backyard grows thick and fast, and after that rotation, I was happy to plop onto the sofa with ice water and my most recent novel.

Within the garden, though, are little treasures, such as those above: two tart strawberries and a trio of raspberries went down my gullet after my doctor's appointment today, little bursts of flavor from an otherwise flavorless series of days. Green beans are emerging, little tendrils, little bits surviving my neglect, incredibly. We had our first CSA share last Thursday, and I'll share some recipes we used soon.

476

2010-06-16T14:44:00.005-05:00

Not long ago, I glimpsed out the window a collection of ducks--a mama and five little ones--toddling around in our newly fenced in yard. My photos come from the window, that rain-blurred barrier, with no sense of decent perspective, and what I really wish I could capture was that sound--the sweet cheeps of baby to mama. Our little backyard on the corner of a four-way stop can be a magical place, indeed. I've been known to see deer in our yard too.

Life has been epically quiet in these parts, mainly because I struggle through the many layers of my first trimester. If it isn't nausea and bathroom-runs, it is restless legs or insomnia. I am grateful the baby is healthy and that when I do feel miserable, I am doing it in the best of places--in the beauty of summer, as a graduate student who doesn't need to be anywhere else but soldiering through, with the kindest of husbands.

Our home is so very slowly transforming, bracing itself for the major shifts. I have finally and officially finished the attic--it is an organized place, complete with bookcases full of knitting and sewing books, bins full of old clothes and dishes, a few mementos I could not part with. Ryan has begun sifting through the sea of paper that is his little computer room; eventually, that will be painted a fresh coat, and I will move my poetry bookcases, my desk, my futon from the second bedroom to these more cramped quarters, and Ryan will have the reign of the basement (which is fine by me--some glimpses here, but this is really the vortex-of-hell, as opposed to the two rooms that are legally a bedroom and den). The great room-shuffle is well under way, much to my absolute surprise.

Currently on my nightstand: Let the Great World Spin. I just finished Little Bee last night, which was very interesting--a smooth read, not without flaws, but one I'm glad I paused to read. I've been trying to write a little something each time I read a book, and you can find those little blurbs on my Good Reads profile. It's nice, when your memory is as shot as mine is, or when you read too many books in one year to maintain any semblance of differentiation, to have a few quick notes, and I know I appreciate reading the notes of others.

475: remembering

2010-06-14T15:30:00.003-05:00

It's been six years now, since Yvonne Fraley passed away. I wrote about it here, three years ago, and I know now that my perspective has shifted. Yvonne was a second mother to my sister and myself as we grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and here I am, beginning my own journey to motherhood. I hope my own children will know love as much as I did when I was with her. I sometimes find the same two letters she wrote me, cry quietly at how she pinned the word "proud" on me, how she signed them "Your Second Mama."

Today also marks four months without Callen in the world.

I don't know what it is about good people going too soon, but here these two are, their stories wrapped in one another, the one of the second mother whose passing made me stronger facing the everyday, the one of the former student who led me to forgiveness. It's strange how loss leads to living in one's honor, how loss triggers what we should have done already: love more fully, live lives we can be pleased with, shed all that drags us down. Perhaps it's something about the fullness of the hearts of these people who have gone before us, a need to embrace everyone hello.

474: good fences make good neighbors

2010-06-07T14:26:00.004-05:00

There are so many interpretations of Robert Frost's "Mending Wall," that it isn't surprising one can get tangled up inside. Conservatives like to use the phrase, "Good fences make good neighbors," in relation to foreign policy, or even in honest relationship with literal neighbors.

But what did Frost mean? Yes, there is tongue-in-cheek, a sweet humor in his poem, but there's also that undertone that Brende brought to Better Off, which was how mutual work can bring forth community. I prefer to consider this interpretation when I look out my window at the newly-erected six foot fence ringing our yard; last weekend, I was able to peer out the window, alongside Zephyr, and watch as my husband bonded with our former neighbor. We hired him for the project and Ryan certainly could have stayed indoors, in the air conditioning, sipped his beer, futzed on his computer, but he chose to be outdoors, to turn his forehead red as he knelt in the grass and did the entire row of bottom screws.

The fence is sturdy because our dogs burst through the old one on a regular basis. It was patched together in an embarrassing way--little boards found in the garage, mismatched and facing odd directions, holding the rotten wood together. At four feet, Zeph was capable of barreling his weight into the fence, barking and, thanks to a little trick we've taught him, fully capable of frightening the passers-by at his leaping powers.

It's also six feet tall because we live in a fishbowl, and this hermit needed some privacy. We're on the corner of a four-way stop, a little playground kitty-corner, a popular route to the ball park. Our neighbors peer over in spring, criticize, gossip; not all, of course, but enough that I wanted to pull the comforter over my head and never venture outdoors. I don't mind that my garden gets a little weedy after several days of rain, or that our dogs tear patches in the dirt. I don't mind lying about in the grass on a blanket, reading in the afternoon sun. But I don't want to be peered at while doing so behind twitchy curtains. In this sense, the misinterpretation of Frost comes into place--this boundary, this selfish hoarding of land that isn't really mine to begin with, this belongs-to-me attitude rears its ugly head. I love when neighbors are good friends, when we have bonfires and share beer, but I've always been overly sensitive to criticism, a deep, deep weakness of mine, which can be damaging to a place that is, in many senses, sacred and beautiful.

473: rain camping

2010-06-06T16:22:00.015-05:00

Day one: Settling into camp. Laughter, bonfire.

Day two: The rain started around noon and went until past dinnertime. When the sun arrived, for such a brief moment, the mood rose up.

Day three: Today was bright and sunny, though we didn't stick around for much longer after breakfast. It began raining again; as I write this, there is thunder and lightning.

Also see: a few thoughts on camping pregnant / camping with an infant on roots + wings, my "baby blog." (Or rather, my "parasite blog." Wah!)

472: the sweetness of a baby shower

2010-06-04T12:15:00.001-05:00

In the heat of a May afternoon, one dear friend hosted a baby shower for her sister, who is another loved member of our book club. The sweetest, of course, were the handknit outfits made by Ardeshir's mother. I'm grateful to have family members who are willing to (anxious to!) make things by hand for our own coming baby. What a blessed gift to have that kind of art in your home.

And if I were Meryl, after observing Ardeshir's family for just two short hours, I would be thrilled to see my sister married into such a sweet and loving family. (Casey's family is out in Connecticut, so I can't enthuse at the same level, though I'm sure they have their own set of charms!) I can say from experience that having such open-hearted in-laws is a vast blessing; I love my husband so so much, and it only makes sense that he comes from a beautiful family too.

Happy baby-coming, Casey. You and Ardeshir are going to make such absolutely wonderful parents--that baby is one lucky little guy.

471: a little hay creek before camping

2010-06-03T23:07:00.017-05:00

On our way to the creek: wouldn't you want to come along too, if you saw that happy face looking back at you?

We've gotten some sad news in regard to Penelope. She has a partial tear in her crucet ligament, which explains her massive limp, her lifting both feet from the floor at times, raised up on her front, which is such a strange sight. She does fine in our small neighborhood walks, but after going leashless on the bluffs or at the creek, she has trouble getting around. The difficult part is that the tear will need surgery if it is to be repaired, and that surgery costs over three thousand dollars. Ouch. I'm a graduate student; I make less than the poverty level. Ryan's job allows us to keep the house, to pay the bills, to have a baby! But we're going to save and save and hope we can get there one day, before it becomes a complete tear. And in the meantime, we'll encourage her to keep it easy, but look at that face. Zephyr clearly needs the exercise; could you leave Penelope behind?

We're camping this weekend--it's an annual tradition, same weekend each year--with our dear friends the Urtels and Chad, friends that date back to Ryan's own graduate school days (well, and mine too, though that was the first go-round for me--Ryan knew when to quit). We're going into the wilds of Wisconsin, and we plan to fish (I hope to catch something! and clean it myself! and cook it! we'll see--), and I've, of course, given the added twist of first trimester-ness, so we shall see how the adventure goes. Last year, it was cold and rainy our entire Saturday, which was awfully miserable, especially since I came off the end of a flu-bout. Ah, the tricks of nature within nature. I'm just glad to get outside; I'm in need of a small change of scenery with good, good company.

470: some magical things

2010-06-01T13:52:00.007-05:00

- Shari's photo of dandelion seeds falling.
- Flossy-p's video of a mural in the making.
- Maria's p2p Wee shop (how many onesies does Baby Kiefer need? Many, I believe!)
- This photograph Angie sent me reminds me of / makes me long for my childhood.
- The memorization of the epic poem "Paradise Lost" amazes me
- Ella (whose creativity astounds me) had her baby!

Though I missed camping this past weekend due to wonky-stomach, we have been able to go to Hay Creek, and I've found a comfortable log to watch the proceedings. We plan to camp next weekend with friends, though it's already been forewarned that I may bow out of any heavy hiking.

My second trimester starts in a few weeks, and I have high hopes that, as promised, the morning sickness will ebb and the little baby will protrude. I feel as if I've been in the first trimester of pregnancy all my life at this point, when it's only been a little over a month of awareness.

I've lugged the sewing machine down from the basement and plan to rely on YouTube videos for me to pull off the training wheels. My mother has suggested we make the baby diapers I had planned on buying, so I do need to flex a bit; it's been a long, long, long time since I've sewed anything, and I'll need a reminder how to get that bobbin thread and the top-thread to marry one another as opposed to tangling up in a giant mess as I usually tend to do.

It's raining here, which means it's the perfect day to dig into the new set of boxes Ryan brought down from the attic. This is my second collection, with many more to go, and though it's going slower than either of us would like, it's progressing towards clutter-free, and that, in itself, is pure magic.

469: our not-so-big backyard

2010-05-28T19:25:00.007-05:00

I still have plenty to dig through backlog-wise, but outside has been so glorious these days with its minute changes; I wanted to pause in celebration.

Here's what's been going on in our yard:

I hadn't seen the ants needed to crawl along the tops of our peonies, but today, as Ryan predicted, one of my favorite flowers burst open. I cannot emphasize enough: I love, love peonies. And ranunculas, which are quite a bit more delicate.

The most surprising and exhausting change is this:

Our rickety four foot fence, the one whose panels got knocked down on a regular basis (see this loving post dedicated to Zephyr's destruction) is being hand-crafted by a former neighbor (here's a set of images of the family, though he isn't in any of the pictures)--six feet tall, panel by panel. I'm not in love with the idea of sheltering ourselves in so closely, but as I grow older, I find myself more and more of a hermit, and after too many bouts of other-neighbor judgment (small towns can be so picky), I'm glad for the added privacy. Really, we wanted something sturdier, and I like that Z won't catch every dog being walked by, every trio of kids, and I won't have to listen to the shriek of teenage girls on cell phones as he pounds his ways into the wobbly gray, patched together, disaster of a fence. It's gone now, a heap of rubble at the end of the drive.

I also wanted to share hopes for my blueberry bush. Ryan got it for me as a surprise--a kind of comfort for my pregnancy, something I'd wished for, but know they need a little extra love and care (unlike my insane raspberry bush--anyone nearby want some runners?). Above is maybe a week ago with the little bell-flowers, and below is today, these bitty blueberries coming through. I can't wait to taste.

Currently reading: Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology by Eric Brende, which is about an MIT student who brings his wife to live on an "Amish" (he calls them Minimites) homestead, complete with cash crops, a horse-and-buggy, a home birth, wells and lake ice with sawdust. I'm also trying to take advantage of my slim seven months of freedom left to read books by professors in the program, and I started with Julie Schumacher's The Body is Water and just finished Charlie Baxter's The Soul Thief.

Currently watching: Netflix just delivered Stealing Beauty to appease my urgent desire to travel to Europe; Frida because I just finished reading The Lacuna with my book club (which met last night in Casey's adorable loft and we had delicious vegan fajitas). I've seen both movies, but I've been feeling the need to return. (Next up for book club? Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. They've been picking very good books these days.)

Currently craving: my food cravings haven't wavered so much in this first trimester. I love dairy, particularly (organic) milk and (fancy) strawberry ice cream. I also am craving fruits: apples especially, but any fruit will get me drooling. I'm feeling the need to try a new muffin recipe, or dessert bread, using that fruit I crave. Anyone have a good recipe they love?

468

2010-05-27T13:07:00.004-05:00

Mother's day weekend, before we met at Z Harvest for lunch to reveal the big news, we found ourselves with half an hour of free time. We stopped by the Wildlife Sanctuary and discovered these beautiful creatures. There were many Canada goose families wandering about the premises, but none as prolific as that top couple, whose brood Ryan counted up to twenty-two or -three and joked, "She must have had fertility treatments," which, of course, made me cringe, given my own situation and risk of Clomid-twins (the first ultrasound, of course, revealed just the one peanut). Silly boy.

I love that Canada geese mate for life. I love how defensive the papa is over his brood (that middle one is a goose hissing me away). I love how sweet the young are. I love how beautiful spring can be.

467: yes, this is may

2010-05-26T18:41:00.000-05:00

A few weekends ago, Ryan and I took the pups with us to Green Bay, where both sets of parents reside. Sometimes it's strange to think we went to high school only twenty minutes apart, that we actually worked at the same inbound telemarketing place as teenagers, that he believes he can even remember me from breaks, when so many of the three-story winged building crowded out in the summer sun.

These photographs, however, do not celebrate the summer sun: instead, it is to show you Wisconsin in May, a little snowstorm we drove through. It was brief and melted by the next day; Ryan thought it was beautiful and I mourned the cold wet covering the brilliant green I'd felt so desperate for for so long.

Snow in May should feel strange, but I suppose it doesn't. Now, it's hot and humid and last night, while making dinner, Ryan and I with our separate sauces for the pasta (mine: alfredo with fresh mushrooms, shrimp, and a hot sauce/salsa; his: tomato and ground beef), the world light up, thunder and lightning, which is my undeniable favorite sort of weather. I yearn for more, even as the sun shines so fiercely outside.

My absolute favorite is this last one.

466: I've fallen behind

2010-05-26T14:25:00.006-05:00

I've fallen behind in the most desperate of ways--please don't, but if you must--picture me, wallowing in that dumb beauty of summer, on the other side, while I attempt to hold in the last meal. And now, I want to share a few things from May that I've missed along the way (June is so close!).

A few photos of the hybrid-monster Amanda drew and brought into class, myriad quotes on poetics along the body. The hybrid-monster is non-threatening and can be viewed from various angles. When I become less of a lump, I plan to cut out the hybrid-monster and make a few from fabric.

My friend Colleen had a gorgeous reading at the Rogue Buddha Gallery. It was my first trip there, and I fell in love with some of the artwork. I look forward to July first's reading, which features another of my beloved poet-friends, Amanda.

The semester ended quietly and smoothly, with full distraction. What I remember most: the last week of classes, knowing, turning in grades early but still having an essay to complete, and mostly, Meryl's defense and the lunch after at Seward Cafe, how charming she looked, how poised, how absolutely smooth it all went. I'm both proud and pleased and look forward to seeing her thesis transform into an actual book; I have faith that we will see it in bookstores in the not-so-distant future.

In the meantime, M and I have been trading poems every day, just to keep ourselves in practice, which means my thesis might actually have a first draft by the end of summer, shock of all shocks. I missed today's writing date due to a ridiculous night of discomfort, but I have faith my body will give me more freedom eventually.

For now, I read as much as I can, I write, I look fiercely forward to BreadLoaf, a gift of an experience, a perfect way to end, for now. I won't stop going to conferences and applying to retreats, but I know it will be many years before I can do that again, and if I can go with one of my best friends, then that's all the more reason to be grateful.

465

2010-05-20T16:09:00.003-05:00

Plenty of good things these days: on Monday, I saw the heart beat of our baby. Yesterday, both Meryl and I were accepted to BreadLoaf, and my manuscript The Recent History of Middle Sand Lake was a finalist at one of the presses I sent it to, and as a finalist, they'll publish my poem "I Remember My First Bee Sting."

I also found the episode where Moe and Lisa go to "Word Loaf."

464: the song that is stuck in my head

2010-05-16T22:15:00.001-05:00

463

2010-05-14T12:46:00.003-05:00

I'm trying not to let the morning sickness devour me whole, but it's beginning to be difficult to function outside the home. Fortunately, the semester has come to a close (I submitted grades today; all I have left hanging over my head is a final essay for my poetics class), so my only venturing out of my comfort zone is for pleasure--Meryl's defense and celebratory lunch yesterday (oh, Meryl, you did so beautifully!) and tonight, I head up to the Twin Cities for another MFA's wedding (can you imagine starting the week defending your thesis and ending it in nuptials? This is what Ben Doty is doing).

I'm beginning to feel more and more desperate to travel somewhere--somewhere big and new. We do have the two upcoming camping trips, we have a trip to Missouri planned and another to Milwaukee. We are working on finding a good time to go to Michigan, and after I told Ryan my maternal grandmother was glad to know she would become a great-grandmother before her mind went, he suggested we also head to Chattanooga, the city where I grew up. All these things, these visits are so very good, but what I really need is a vacation. You know, one where the geography and culture completely unmoors me in wonder, one where traditions shift completely and the vocabulary is new.

I'm grateful for the sun coming out. It's making our own landscape look new; we'd had a week of rain and chilly temperatures, making me wonder if our early spring wasn't reverting. In fact, on our way to Green Bay last weekend, we drove through a bit of a snowstorm, which was surprising. Ryan found it beautiful, and I found it distressing--all that green being buried in slush!

Restlessness has settled down on me, and I know so much of it has to do with the pregnancy. My body is fully aware its freedom is waning, my sleeping in isn't for much longer, and we'll need a baby-sitter if we want to go on a date. I'm finding there are different levels of settling in, as far as pregnancy goes: there's the thrill of a new journey, coupled with the panic of responsibility and misery of the bodily changes. Oh, woe. I am pregnant!

462

2010-05-13T00:04:00.000-05:00

Pregnancy drew me inside myself for some time: the first few days felt like a buzz, felt as if I weren't myself but a copy of myself, and I waited until I could sink back into the fullness of me. It's strange how there's that tangy chop, the before and the after. Now that I've passed day fifty, I'm beginning to feel myself unfurl: after two weeks of distraction, I am now finishing books again; after two weeks of nausea and acidity, I am now making it to the other end of the meal. Best of all, babies aren't prancing across the screen of my eyelids; I now yearn for other things--travel, mostly. Overdramatic travel, the sort that involves crossing oceans. Perhaps it's the threat of being tied to one place in a whole new way.

Pregnancy has left my brain jittering (though, I must point out, my husband would say I'm only using that as "an excuse," and it's true--I've never been a feet-on-the-ground sort of girl): It's defense week on campus, and I'm finally coming out of my cave of comforters to attend my dear friend Meryl's. Friday is a wedding of another MFAer, and this weekend, I think we may finally put those plants into the ground. I'm loving the rain and wishing for a true storm, with thunder and lightning. I've been staring down Daniel Deronda and think I will finally finish it this weekend too. It's been glaring back. I'm looking forward to two camping trips: Memorial Day weekend with my husband and two dogs, and the first weekend of June, we do our 4th annual camping adventure, this year into Wisconsin, with our friends Lane and Angie and Chad. Doula training starts soon. I'm grateful for all these things.

461: mdb retirement

2010-05-12T11:45:00.024-05:00

On April 23rd, we gathered together at the Weisman Art Museum on campus to celebrate the thirty-nine year teaching career of poet Michael Dennis Browne. As an undergraduate, I loved all genres equally, even did my thesis in non-fiction, but in those last few years, I was lucky enough to apply and be accepted into a few of his graduate workshops and seminars. I fell in love with poetry under the tutelage of MDB; we can fully blame him for my non-lucrative choice, my deep passion.

April 23rd, which happens to be Shakespeare's birthday, was also declared Michael Dennis Browne Day in the city of Minneapolis.

Among those pictured above: Ray Gonzalez, Patricia Hampl, Louis Jenkins, Robert Bly, along with many other former students as well as a full choir singing songs MDB wrote the lyrics for and some acoustic music in celebration. The three in the middle are his children: Nellie, Mary, and Peter, reading a letter from MDB's brother in England, Peter reading the poem "A Blessing."

Congratulations, Michael. We've been blessed to have you.

460: a decade or so ago

2010-05-11T22:15:00.003-05:00

In the top photograph, I am second from the right; in the second, I am on the far left. My friend Nikki (in the top, she is second from the left; in the bottom, she is second from the right) sent these along a little bit ago, which made me smile whilst on campus, shuffling through final grading tidbits and debating when I'd finally be able to focus on my own essay. These images are from that sweet time before we fully understood what it meant to be on our own, that cusp between sheltered and sheltering. It's nice to look back, especially when so many of these people are still so very important to me now, despite all those tectonic shifts, and we've continued to become who we are going to become. Thank you, Nikki, for this little glimpse.

459: the news.

2010-05-09T22:55:00.003-05:00

The news is out now; it's hard to keep it bottled up with strange forces such as Facebook and whatnot.

Because I have PCOS, I had to go on infertility treatments, which we started back in November. I began writing about the want of a little one not long after I returned from New Jersey, when helped out with my two adorable nephews (Ryan's sister's sons). The blog is called roots + wings, and I invite you to follow along, particularly because I'd still like this space to be an everyday, non-obsessive sort of place, which means I'll try to keep the baby-squealing to a minimum. Updates, yes. Everyday nattering, probably not.

The details: I'm almost seven weeks along, I'm due around New Year's, the baby is about the size of a sweet pea, and indeed, we are thrilled. Ryan likes to use the word "terrified" a bit more often than thrilled, but they both start with a T, right?

458: a pair of weekend visitors

2010-05-02T20:58:00.009-05:00

Christian and his mama came for a visit this weekend, a little bud on Saturday morning amongst all kinds of busy with end-of-semester preparation. We had lunch at a cafe (asparagus quiche for me), went to the park, and Christian even played fetch with Zephyr, the brave little boy.

And that's exactly what he is now: a boy. In just a little under two months, he will be two years old, and he's fully mobile, strangely conversant, has his own names for things, can answer questions ("Who is your favorite character?" "Cook!").

Kelly better watch out because I might steal him, add him to my collection of nephews, if only I can get Megan to truly ship Jimmy and Jack out to stay for a bit. I have no job for the summer just yet; day care could be halfway across the state--or the country--, right?

457

2010-04-29T20:44:00.003-05:00

(click on above image to enlarge)

Still buried under the desperation of the waning days of the semester, but it seems fair to pause a moment to let you know about an amazing opportunity to both help fundraise for a family to put together a accessible bathroom for their six-year-old son (who looks like quite the charmer!) and to put your name in the hat for some amazing artwork from some of my absolute favorite letterpress artists, fiber artists, and on. The link to all the items in the giveaway is here; the donation buttons are in the sidebar.