• are we done here? •

It it time to tweet the blog fantastic? To put an end to halfassedmama? I am addicted to the catch-and-release of Facebook. But how best to preserve my thoughts and memories, without returning to journalling? On the pro side of online personal essaying, there is brevity. When you aren't curled in private pen & paper, you don't tend to dwell. Catch and release. xox

•emerging•

What I've been up to for the past year.

Busy, beautiful, bothered--these are all choices. I am working on not complaining in all areas of my life (and I'm certainly not complaining right now, as I take full advantage of my maternity leave), but it is so tempting to use the get-out-of-jail-free card that is "baby." Fact is, I've been an absentee blog-mama for longer than my pregnancy. My negligence predates our move last summer into co-housing, and even my acceptance of a full time position at That Grocery Store. But! I'm prepared to shake the 2012 cobwebs out of these knuckles, and tackle the "long form" of blog-postery again. Too long have I indulged in an abridged literary existence, aided and abetted by FB. (Fortunately for our correspondence, Amy also succumbed.)

I've learned a few blog-worthy things over the past few days, so here I go back up on the horse:

• 64 pigs-in-blankets is the right amount to serve a party of 11 (if one is a nursing infant).
• It is possible to bloody one's own finger when biting into the first BLT of the season. (And for some reason this is surprising enough to note in a blog post.)
• Our baby is 10 weeks.
• Our cat, Jack, is 10, and Penn will soon be a seven-year-old boy.
• I like numbers in blog posts. I might just like numbers, period. Admitting this is evolution.
• "Talking a blue streak" refers to profanity, not pontification. So I'm not talking one.

Troy has been clamoring for more Tot Blog postage, and he has been such a delightful partner I must oblige. I've been collecting entries, just not posting them. As for the latest addition to our family, I figure we have at least another 18 months before a Baby Blog becomes necessary. Hope I didn't just jinx his speech skills... 

xox

Hammock Stone

Sun setting over hills, clouds rolling in through twilight, dark sliding over trees, earth smelling of night. 

My Etsy Shop!

Oh, Half-Assed Mama community--I am so, so happy to announce the opening (finally!) of my Etsy shop, amymorgan jewelry. Please come visit!

California Stars

Homesick all weekend. I've sat here for almost an hour now, trying to write about that, but the words won't come. I've felt in limbo since I got here, and such a non-place seems to defy description. Things aren't bad here at all--I love my job, my students, the many friends I was too far from for years. But now there are people (and dogs) on the other side of the country, and I can't really think about that distance too deeply, because I need to be able to function.
 
And there's the place itself, that other side. Maybe we only ever really find our place in the place where we find ourselves, whenever and however that happens. Maybe it would have happened here if I'd stayed. But I left before something in me was fully formed, and something about California helped me grow, expand, free myself.

All of this has been spinning around in my head. And then I heard this song tonight while I was driving, and suddenly I was on a cliff along Route 1, a damp, freezing wind blowing in hard from the Pacific, the scent of the ocean mixing with eucalyptus and coastal sage. And off to my left in the darkness there's a halo of light hovering over San Francisco, but it's nowhere near close enough to interfere with the millions and millions of stars in the perfect night sky.

Saturday Night

On the corner, a gaggle of young men and women waits for the light. In 50 degree weather, four women are dressed identically, in shorts so short and tight and Lycra-ey they may as well be underwear, button down shirts that fail to cover the underwear, four-inch platform sandals. The weirdest part: I don't think they're in costume.

Eavesdropping

Up in the air it's uncomfortably warm, and my neck and shoulders ache from craning my head upward as I cable lights. Down below me, six or seven young people are talking and laughing as they paint. Some have spent all day with us, and one bribed herself to finish a paper by telling herself she could work in the theater once it was done. My coworker, in the air with me, has been listening to them too. He turns to me, smiling and gesturing at the students, and says, "This makes me happy." I'm calculating how long each of them has until graduation. I'm already sad at the thought.

End of Day

Bare trees are silhouetted against early twilight, windows glow in the old stone; French drifts out from the family in the front apartment; cutlery sounds against china as tables are set. All around the complex, people settle back into these homes, birds returning to nests.

Everyday Travel

The majesty of every bridge. The way every city glitters like Oz as it rises in the distance.

Saturday Morning

The storybook ideal of fall: A neighborhood of large, old stone houses and vividly colored trees. All around a maple, the ground is carpeted with orange and red, and the sun slants through the tree's remaining leaves.