It's My Birthday

And there you have it.

I am 35.

I celebrated in part by buying regular incandescent energy wasting light bulbs yesterday for my living room. Because the other bulbs were hurting my eyes. Sorry. That's just how it is.

I have gray hairs that are starting to make a visible appearance (to me, anyway) and while I wanted to age gracefully, I think to myself "these hairs were not supposed to show up for another 10 years!"

I have 4.5 kids.

I have a fabulous, fabulous husband.

I think I might take a nap.

And then go and buy a book.

And maybe make some key lime pie for a birthday cake. We'll see.

At 35, a lot of things are flexible and optional.

That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

image found here.

Everyone's A Critic (An Olympic Post For Tress and LorFlor)

Note to Yevgeny Plushenko (and all you other quad jump whiners):

Dude.

Your program just wasn't as good.

Yes, you are a power house skater and that's great. It's fun to watch your jumps. And quads? Yeah, the risk! the excitement! I'm all for it.

But the idea that power should trump grace and other technicalities just because it's more powerful...let's just turn all sports into Rugby, please. The finesse is always part of the game. Especially in figure skating. You need both.

Also, your program last night was a little messy and slightly unbalanced. You landed the jumps. You were lucky. Also the pandering to the judges (hip wiggle wiggle kiss)? Cute. But no cigar.

Evan landed his jumps in spectacular and graceful fashion and had a beautiful program. And if you think it's a bunch of men keeping the sport alive by waiting anxiously before the television screen to see you amp it up, let me tell you my husband was asleep and I was the one watching. Someone said something like "People watch skating because they like to watch warriors." That someone is drinking kool-aid.

I want both. And last night Evan Lysacek was better, and better to watch.

That's all. Be a good sport about winning the silver. I know you say you like to have enemies and to be considered the bad guy, but you'll be happier if you learn a little bit about being not just powerful, but graceful. On the ice and in defeat.

Lenten, maybe

It's not that I don't have things to write about; I do. It's that I don't think about writing about them.

Instead I have been thinking about finding a really good key lime pie recipe and wondering about names for boys. Which will be harder do you think?

I think it will be the boy name, hands down. The pie I can always do over. And over. And over. And eat a lot of pie (Mmmm). And gain some weight (but I'm doing that anyway).

But naming a baby? That one is going to stick.

In any case, I may be sparse here in the blog area for awhile. Not that I haven't already said that awhile back.

And not that I am not pretty sparse already. Things are sparse here in blog land.

I don't really celebrate Lent. I love the idea though, and I am going to put away unnecessary computer stuff for awhile. I still have to pay my bills and occasionally check my email because that is how business gets done. And I may blog as regularly as I have been because it's not so much blogging that is the issue as other stuff. (Like reading your darn good blogs. And the NY Times online.)

Of course, a million things may suddenly force me to write about them as soon as I publish this post. But lately I feel too connected to my computer and I have this intense desire to turn it off, even as I want to check my email again. So not so much about the blog as everything else.

In the meantime I am going to make some really good key lime pie, consider a good name for this baby (boys are harder to name than girls, I think), and comfort my daughter whose life has become a WWF wrestling match with her brother. (Not that she doesn't dish some of it out herself.)

And now, off to the dishes.

Because, why not?

Ben has been reading the girls an old Nancy Drew book of mine. By old, I mean, it's old. It belonged to my mom or one of my aunts.

There is a catch to this old Nancy Drew mystery (there always is, isn't there). It's missing the last two pages.

In order to remedy this problem Ben went to the local library to pick up a newly released copy of the book. Now we may find out if Mortimer Bartescue is truly the cad he appears to be and what did happen exactly to Margaret Judson.

But guess what. In pursuing the newer copy containing this story of the young, attractive titan-haird sleuth, Ben discovered that it has been abridged. The story is about half as long.

Honestly.

Honestly?

Honestly!

WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY FEELS THE NEED TO ABRIDGE A NANCY DREW MYSTERY???

CAN WE NOT HANDLE THAT KIND OF DEPTH?

I'm sorry. I'm going to hibernate in protest of my culture. Ben is going to look for an authentic copy on Abe Books. And then maybe one of us can call Carson Drew to get a good, decent, slim and fit for his age, good looking lawyer with noble ideals. I'm sure he'd be interested in how this has happened to us. Also, his eighteen year old daughter may be able to help.

A Bowl of Warm Air

Someone is falling towards you
as an apple falls from a branch,
moving slowly, imperceptibly as if
into a new political epoch,
or excitedly like a dog towards a bone.
He is holding in both hands
everything he knows he has—
a bowl of warm air.

He has sighted you from afar
as if you were a dramatic crooked tree
on the horizon and he has seen you close up
like the underside of a mushroom.
but he cannot open you like a newspaper
or put you down like a newspaper.

And you are satisfied that he is veering towards you
and that he is adjusting his speed
and that the sun and the wind and rain are in front of him
and the sun and the wind and rain are behind him.

–Moniza Alvi

I read this poem yesterday while sitting in a waiting room next to Ben, who was reading the third book in the Fablehaven series. It was the poem for February 2nd in one of my daily poetry anthologies.

I flipped through the book picking out a poem here and there. It can be hard to concentrate in waiting rooms. Then I got to this poem.

Reading it was like receiving a small premonition of the future.

A few minutes later we were ushered in to the ultrasound room by the technician where it was pronounced that who we were expecting was a perfect baby boy. Someone falling towards me. I am holding out my arms to catch him as the warm season filters in, the beginning of Summer, a bowl of warm air.