{my topography}

A whirlwind trip. Cafe con leche, late nights with friends, dancing, a fairy tale wedding, and a really long trip home.

And then… everything else. Too much to tell here, yet. Suffice to say, changes are afoot.

Enjoy the pics. I will hereby commence regular posting. Missed you all.

Shit. It was way harder than I thought to say goodbye to Bean. Damn. That kid has my heart.

This is a test from a fancy-schmancy i-Pod Touch Dh just got for our trip. Clearly we are tech obsessed.

UPDATED:
Oh yeah, and I’m officially done with school today. So thrilled. My toes are pretty. My bags are packed. We leave tomorrow.

Am packing for our trip to Spain. In the process I’ve discovered: dear god in a housedress, I live under a rock. I haven’t gone “out” in oh, over a year I imagine. I no longer know how to wear lipstick. My feet, my barefoot garden loving feet, are in desperate need of a pedicure. And I threw a load of whites in the wash with a delicate, silky PINK wrap. And now everything is pink. Everything. I have never, ever done that before. Love how I saved that up for right now.

So I’m a bit muddled. Thank you all for your love from my last post. Some days parenting just knocks my socks off. Today, Bean was still sleeping when I was getting ready to leave–so I smooched him and sort of nudged him awake and he opened his eyes, reached out and climbed into my arms for the world’s most perfect snuggle ever. I’m gonna miss him like crazy. Even though we’ll be soaking in Old World charm, and having drinks with some of our best friends ever, and generally having a blast.

I’ll try to update when I’m there, but I can’t be sure of the Internet connection I will have. Don’t think I’ve forgotten you. I’ll be taking lots and lots of pictures.

So my sister has shamed me into blogging, telling me I suck at updating and that I’m basically a miserable failure in the regular posting department. Yeah. Well. Not much to update about due to the fact that I’m MELTING. It’s suddenly summer here. The grass is knee high and I seem to have allergies. It is 90 degrees and humid and my brain feels too large for my skull.

See aren’t you glad I’m updating?

At night when Bean invariably crawls into bed he very much resembles a cross between a hot water bottle and a colt: all legs and heat. Typically I take a knee or a foot to the eye at least once a night. He seems to think sleeping perpendicular to me is fun.

Other than heat and sleep deprivation, I’m limping my way through my last full week of school. We’re doing everything we can to keep cool, but thanks to 1970s inspired public school architecture, my classroom is south facing and flat roofed. By mid-afternoon the classroom thermomiter read 92 degrees. Yeah. So. Where was I? Melting brain? How can anyone possibly expect anyone to accomplish anything in such conditions? Much less seven year olds who are hankering to be outdoors. They look at me with hot cheeks and sweat on their upper lips, and I can tell that all the words I’m saying about place value are just floating somewhere between us in litte clouds of moisture and heat. They nod, but they don’t hear me.

I’m still crossing my fingers; trying to remember that everything is good right now. Spain in a week. A gorgeous dress. Pretty shoes. Friends I haven’t seen in so long. INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL. Then graduate school. Life is good. But still, I can’t help wanting what I don’t have. More on that when I’m feeling like being less mysterious. And less melty-brain like.

Oh, and does anyone have any recommendations for making sleep more tolorable in the heat? We have a fan, but being all prissy and noise sensitive, it basically is sound torture all night long for me to listen to it whirr back and forth. I try sleeping with a pillow over my head, but then the heat, well. You get the idea. Anyone know some really good earplugs?

Enough. Hope everyone is happy and well and lovely and possibly less heat-stupored than I.

In the cool dark of the bedroom, afternoon, after work, after many hours awake and fragmented by the needs of the day, push-pull, ache in the throat, thirsty for quiet, and now I’m face down among the bedclothes and the cat comes up and brushes against my foot. Just this. Fur on skin. I take a breath.

At school, the days are spiraling down. We make space mud and go outside for extra recess where I sit on the grass and they crowd around me, suddenly towering tall, every single one yelling for my attention. “Teacher! Teacher! Look at this!” “Teacher can we race?” “Teacher! Watch me!”

I close my eyes and feel the sun on my eyelids and my pulse in my chest. The backs of my eyelids are sunbursts of red and shade. The world is simpler this way, eyes closed. Immediately I turn inward, feel my breath, remember to breathe. Eventually they stop yelling. One persistent voice keeps at it, softer now, “Teacher, teacher!”

Above us there is a sun dog in the sky. I tell them the weather will change. I tell them rain is coming, and later it does.

At home the road is slick with mud. The chickens come out from the coop and ruffle their feathers. The sky is the color of paper. Lilacs lean towards the ground, heavy with rain. Bean wakes up from his late nap grouchy, and grouchy by three year old standards seems to mean nonstop howling in indignation for a half an hour. No he doesn’t want a snack, or a snuggle, or a walk, or some milk. But then two seconds later he’ll maybe change his mind.

When he’s asleep, he looks little to me still. I see in his face the tiny baby’s face I stared at for hours, when he still made dolphin noises and his whole body could rest snuggly against my torso. But then he awakens and the turbulence childhood is there like a weather map, hovering. He looks boyish, lanky, bright-eyed, determined.

When he was two, I could distract him. “Look at the moon!” I’d say eagerly, or “Let’s go get some mango for snack,” and any consternation would melt like a popsicle on a warm day. “Okay,” he’d nod agreeably, smudging tears with the back of his hand. But three? Three is entirely different. He holds on to things. Dwells on them. And his emotions sweep over him like waves.

I remember going to the beach when I was a kid, growing up in Los Angeles. The sand was often oil specked, and the waves hit hard. If you turned your back when you were building sand castles, you’d get smacked down, spun under, your t-shirt or bathing suit twisted and wrung out. Bean’s moods hit him like that now. Everything is full throttle. Urgent delight. Intense frustration. Utter grief.

On walks I’ve started sharing my big Cannon EOS 20-D with him. It’s probably not advisable. I’m likely courting disaster, a broken lens, worse. But he has an eye for framing the most beautiful shots. He takes the camera so earnestly, the strap slung over his shoulder. And I love the way his pictures are—kid level, slightly askew.

It is hard to resist the urge to tell him how to do things. “Take a picture of this, point the lens this way, no that’s too dark,” and just see what he comes up with. But I realize right away that I’m pushing the river when I do. The kid’s got his own eye.

On a different note: I’m on the brink of something. Tilting. Can’t say yet what, but things are afoot. Possibly. Maybe. Good things. Keep your fingers crossed for me.