February 2013 Archives

Today is my dad's birthday and I wanted to do something -- something other than cry on and off all day and raise my 2 ounce shot glass of whiskey to him later on tonight when I'm all done driving kids around.  But I couldn't think of anything good.  

The kids are out of school this week.  Sophie came home early from selling Girl Scout cookies on Saturday with a headache and a fever that went up over 103 for a couple of days.  She was so sweet when she was sick, wanting me to be near her and hold her hand.  Scuba went out and got her ginger ale and popsicles and movies.  Last night she was feeling better, so she made dinner and then wanted me to sit and on the couch to cuddle and watch a movie with her, something we haven't done in such a long time.  She put on Brave which I hadn't seen, and I curled up on the couch with her, and Scuba, too, but I was too tired to watch the whole thing.  I promised I'd finish it with her today, maybe at lunchtime, but lunch came and went and there wasn't any chance for me to break away from work long enough.   

It rained today, hard.  Willow started feeling sick, too, with a headache and a little bit of a fever.  The girls set up a tea party for their stuffed animals.  They watched a movie.  They played Mario Cart.  They put photos on Instagram.  They talked about putting on rain boots and stomping around outside, but decided it was too cold.  They ate cookies.  Finally Sophie came into my room around 3 and started in on me for not watching the end of the movie with her.  She told me how much I'd like it, and said that I'd promised.  And, she was right.  Honestly, normally I would have told her it would have to wait.  That maybe we could finish watching it after dinner.  But I spent all day wishing I could spend time with my dad, so how could I say no when she just wanted to spend some time with me?  I brought my computer out to the living room, set it up so I could see if any new email came in, and spent 45 minutes with my girls in the middle of the day.  They both kept leaning on me and patting me.  It made me feel a lot better, too.     

So, Dad, Happy Birthday.  I didn't do anything for you, but I did sit and hug on my kiddos.  Brave was pretty good.  You'd have loved watching it with the girls and me.  Some popcorn.  Beer for us, ginger ale for them.  I wish you were here with us.  You should be.   

If, back when I was in the 7th grade, someone told me that in thirty years I would voluntarily come back to my junior high and run 2.16 miles on the track I would have slapped them.  Okay.  Revising.  I was mostly too polite to slap people, but I was the kid with the note to not run in PE.  You know that kid.  The one with exercise-induced bronchial spasms?  Yeah.  I would have been aghast.  But, there I was Sunday evening, three and a half months after starting the Couch to 5K workout app thing, running my Week 5, Day 1 on my old junior high school track.  

Nate and Sophie go to that school, and I know that both of them would be *horrified* to find me out.  My incredibly cool running playlist can't make up for my blinding pink running shoes and oversized headphones that I wear to keep my ears from getting too cold and achy.  Also?  I was wearing one of Nate's old Vans thermal shirts to keep me warm.  The whole time I jogged/walked, I was cracking up about it all, and that, too, would have sent both of them into an hour-long eyeroll.  Or, you know, maybe they wouldn't care too much.  Yesterday the boys were checking out Kraftwerk videos online, and as they both were saying how cool they were, they said they figured they weren't telling me anything I didn't already know.  Still, I think I'll keep my jogging to the park and the treadmill at the Y.  Once around the junior high track for old times' sake was good enough for me.  

(This one kept developing after I photographed it, and now it's hardly got any blue left in it.  Phooey.  Good thing I got Susannah Conway's book in the mail yesterday.)  

When I was a kid, my dad explained to me that part of what we, people, are made of is stardust.  That some of the elements we are made of, and that we need to even exist, came from stars.  They aren't elements that came from earth, so we literally have stardust in our, what? DNA?  I'm not phrasing it nearly as well as he explained it to me, but I understood what he said and it really stayed with me.  Plus, it's really cool, isn't it?  To look at the stars and know that the same thing that makes them shine is what makes us alive.  

So, when I was on Facebook last Sunday and I saw that Amy Rice had added this new print to her shop, 

I had it in my cart and paid for as fast as I could work my iPhone.  The star charts in the antique atlas that she found and used to make the prints were first hand-drawn probably just around the time my dad was born.  Or when he was just starting to discover the night sky himself.  The first published version of the atlas came out in 1948, and he was born in 1944.  Anyway - I love it and can't wait to get it framed and hung up.