Seven Quick Takes: Blogger's Block Edition

1. I wanted to blog all through our trip. I wanted especially to write about the tactile memories of the week. We rented a little bitty cottage on a lake, just a few yards from the beach. This was great for the kids. This also meant sand EVERYWHERE, no matter how much sweeping of floors and shaking of sheets I tried to do. That gritty crunch underfoot -- I want to remember it and I won't see it in the pictures.

2. I also want to remember the night when I walked out on the dock with the baby. There was a college class held at that lake during the week we were there, and they had evening discussions around a campfire on the beach. I felt nostalgic as I listened to them -- the smell of smoke, the gustatory memory of toasted marshmallow with oozy chocolate and crumbly graham cracker. It was all very familiar until suddenly I saw a pair of strange bluish lights. Of course -- where there are college students, there will be cell phones. It is strange to me, and usually unwelcome, to see how quickly the cell phone has become ubiquitous. Only twenty years ago cell phones were unusual and there was no Google. It makes me curious about the world twenty years from now. What do we not even know we're missing right now, that we won't be able to imagine the world without then?

3. I didn't blog any of this, though, because I didn't have reliable internet access. Sometimes we could get a wavering signal if we stood on the picnic table, but not consistently. My husband could just stand there on the table but I had to hold the laptop above my head like an internet-age supplicant. Not conducive to blogging, so I didn't blog. I came home thinking a lot about my addictive tendencies and the place of the internet in my life. These are never very satisfactory thoughts.

4. Pete asked me to pause so I could look at Mercer Mayer's frog books with him. Those books are often used to elicit language samples from kids because they have engaging pictures and no text. It struck me this time through that I bet the language samples have changed over the past thirty years. The boy is clearly grade-school age. Why is he playing in a pond by himself? Isn't it dangerous for him to fall in like that? Where is his mother? I have posted about this change before but I've been thinking about it this week after seeing this article.

5. Lissa Wiley has a lovely post up about Anne Shirley which answered a question floating around in my head. All through our vacation, as I crunched sand underfoot and swept and crunched some more, I thought to myself, "If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year..." My friend Angela and I used to memorize poetry in junior high, some of which I can still recite. (I was trying to see if I could still remember all of "The Walrus and the Carpenter" but Pete interrupted me to say, "I hate this poem.") I was wondering why I would do such a thing, memorizing poetry just for fun. The reason was Anne. She and her friends all memorized poetry, and oh how I wanted to tesser through space and time (and reality) to be one of the Avonlea girls. 

6. One of the things Anne and I had in common was our hair. My hair isn't Lucille Ball red, but it's red enough to stand out. All my life that's been the first thing people noticed about me. It is unexpected, and delightful, to see my daughter's hair looking so much like mine. It is all the sweeter since she is named in honor of my redheaded grandmother.

7. Did anybody see this thing about redheads and pain? I could have told them that! I have said for years that those -caine family drugs don't work very well for me. Drilling dentists have told me, "You should be numb by now." (Ouch.) The anesthesiologist and the OB who attended Alex's birth were surprised by how much lidocaine I needed in the epidural and by how quickly it wore off. The OB was suspicious when I insisted on a local before he repaired the lacerations (yes, plural -- ouch again and hurray for homebirth). And now I know: it's not my fault if I'm a mutant.

Which is a weird note to end on, but that's all, folks. More quick takes here.

Comments

[Amie]

Awwww, she is precious :) I would of loved for my daughter to have red hair too but instead she turned out the darkest of all my children (in hair and complextion).

I've read that about redheads and pain before. I haven't found it to be true for me though. Actually I find that pain meds usually effect me too strongly but that might be due to my size. My sister, however, sounds just like you.

Off to read about Anne Shirley.

[Angela]

There are 2 verses toward the end of W and the C that I get mixed up but I think I still get them all in.

I've started reciting The King's Breakfast to Tay :)

Boy...you surely got over your blogger's block!

[pnuts mama]

your last sentence for #5: me too!

missed you!