Just Powers

Breakfast with Emma caught on video using our new Flip camera and uploaded to Flickr’s awesome new video service.

We *heart* technology.

Oh, and Emma.

This weekend my sister Emily came down from NYC to visit. We had a family dinner at our house on Saturday night and spent most of the day on Saturday preparing for it. I worked in the kitchen preparing dinner for that night and watched Emily and Emma hanging out in the backyard. They spent two hours exploring the yard and getting to know each other. Then Emma’s Aunt Jocelyn came over and the three of them hung out while I finished getting ready for the party.

It was sort of a surprise to feel so completely content as I chopped onions and watched Emily and Emma play. Maybe this is what being a grown-up is - finding peace and happiness in the quiet in-between moments of everyday life. I looked out the kitchen window at the two Em’s, took a deep breath and wished the moment would never end.

Thanks for coming down Emily - we miss you already!

So girls weekend is going well. This morning Emma and I rearranged the basement. Mike is going to hate it, but we had fun doing it. Then this afternoon we went to the zoo. Our friend Michelle is a volunteer there and was working in the primate house so we went and hung out with the gorillas and the orangutans for the afternoon. Emma got to see Baracka, a silverback gorilla and Kiko, an orangutan. Then while we were standing there talking to Michelle, Batang came right up to the window so we got to see her up close. Emma seemed pretty interested in the whole thing, which kind of surprised me. For some reason I thought she would be all “Yeah, gorillas, whatev”. She seemed extra interested in “Good Night Gorilla” when we read it tonight before bed, which makes sense, since it has a gorilla and it takes place in a zoo and all.

One of the things Michelle told us about the orangutans was that this morning they were, um, well, pleasuring themselves. She also said they like to, um, pleasure each other. A lot. And she has to explain it to 8 year olds. She said she usually tells them to ask their parents. Better her than me. It made me think though, that maybe we will head to the primate house when the whole “birds and the bees” talk needs to happen in our house. I know it’s a long way off, but I feel better knowing Michelle can handle it for us.

Emma’s Aunt Emily is a super cool landscape architect who just made the local paper in Ithaca, NY, for the work she has done there on the restoration of the natural habitat in an area called Salt Point. Her picture is even in the paper and everything.

We are pretty proud of her around our house for making the paper, but also for the work she is doing in environmental restoration. She’s moving to NYC soon, so the next time she makes the local paper it will be the New York Times — and I bet that won’t take long at all.

DAMNIT.

Sometimes it seems like you are just going along, living your life, when all of a sudden - WHAM! - two weeks have gone by and you haven’t written on your blog. I hate when that happens.

Went to see James Taylor in concert ten days ago. He can do no wrong in my eyes, but I have to say that he sounded even better this time than I have ever heard him before. The band was amazing and the arrangements were oh-so-tight. Brilliant.

On a sad note, I spent last Sunday afternoon with Mary Ann, Joan and Carol Anne - three good friends from college - their husbands and their, collectively, eight children. We had a great time, although I didn’t feel like I had much to offer the breast-feeding-diaper-changing-home-school-or-not-teacher-conferences discussions. That’s cool, all of their kids are great and Mike and I really relaxed and had a good time.

But here is the sad part. The next morning I got an email from Mary Ann letting me know that Joan found out when she got home on Sunday night that her father had a heart attack and passed away while she was with us that afternoon. For some reason I felt glad that Joan was with us when it happened. I don’t really know why. Maybe just because it spared her from the grief for a few hours.

This has led me to think about how life goes in phases - graduations, weddings, births, and deaths. Each phase feels foreign when it begins, and just as it becomes normal, usually shifts to the next phase. I remember the first of my friends who got married, the first to have kids etc and thinking how old I felt with each one. Now, I feel a shifting of the generations, where the parents become grandparents, and the kids (us) become parents. It feels strange.

And yet, no matter what phase I am in, James Taylor stays the same. Amazing.

My mom’s dog Jack is visiting for a week while she is on vacation. He is too little to leave alone for 8 hours, so he has come to work with me everyday. He reminds me of a teeny-weeny ewok.

Tuesday afternoon our house got burglarized. We can’t figure out how they got it, but got in they did, and stole our stereo system and speakers that weren’t nailed to the wall, a digital camera, a DVD player, a cordless drill and, wait for it…a VCR. I am actually a little embarassed to admit that I OWN a VCR, I can’t even imagine someone would go to the trouble of breaking in and stealing someone else’s.

Anyway, police were called, insurance companies were called, CSI DC stopped by, the landlord brought beer, neighbors clicked their tongues, it was a rockin’ good party. Locks got changed yesterday and we will now religiously use the alarm system.

The worst thing, as most people who get burgled would probably say, is not the stuff that is missing so much as the thought that someone came into our space uninvited. Hopefully he (I say *he* cause a neighbor actually saw someone walking down the street with a box of speakers that afternoon, and it was a he) has at least a few holes in his leg from Moose, who seemed a little confused but unharmed when we got home that night.

But as a salve to the week, the new Giant around the corner from our fortress (home) opened this morning. There is a big discussion on the local yahoo group about the parcel pickup lane out front (which IS ridiculous and completely unnecessary and BUTT-ugly, but that is another post) but overall, the store is great. Everything in the aisles is perfectly lined up and beautiful and they have an entire aisle dedicated to beer and wine - what could be better? We’ll see what it is like when all the executives lurking in the aisles have gone back to their corner offices, and it is just us locals haunting the place…

Emily asked me recently what my favorite blog is. If you have never read Julia go check out her blog. It may not be your cup of tea (wife and mother of one writing about trying to have a second child and the miscarriages and IVF cycles she experiences as a result). But even if you don’t appreciate the subject matter, it is worth a visit just to experience her writing style - full of snark and completely void of self-pity. Definitely my favorite blog these days.

Hanging out at St. Ex on Saturday with Emily, Michael, Mike, Reva, Anne etc.

I was hanging out with them, she was hanging out with a bunch of folks nowhere near as cool.

Someday soon I am going to kidnap one of the many more-technically-minded-folks-than-me from EchoDitto and lock him/her (there is a “her” joining the tech team soon, how cool is that!) in a room until this blog is a) switched to wordpress, b) very very pretty and c) free of spam.

Until then, I swear I won’t whine about the fact that I am getting hit daily with more spam comments and trackbacks than Rosie has koosh balls, or that my hordes of readers can no longer comment on my blog. See Emily? No whining here.