15 Monday Apr 2019
Posted in Journaling My Days, Pondering Quietly
Another liminal stage of this unexpected life. Ah, nothing like a perfect word. (Thank you, Anne, for giving it to me.)
First note, when we moved to Madison twelve years ago, it was to be our permanent home. David and I had given up an east coast replant and saw Madison as the just about perfect midwest place to be for-almost-ever. Okay, there were the winters (100 inches of snow our first winter here) but other than that, it has been pretty perfect place for the three of us. Continue reading
11 Thursday Apr 2019
Posted in Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days, Pondering Quietly
So much change, so fast, none of it bad but all of it pushing over the edges of comfort. I start and scribble and then leave it. And then, change again, making what I scribbled about before irrelevant. Compassion, especially for myself, is my current practice. I need to go to the gym, pamper myself some, we need to go to the movies and indulge in ice cream. I can understand Julia’s ups and downs; I need to understand my own.
Julia, by the way, has good and bad days, needs to check every day that we are taking all of her books and stuffed toys, and that she will finish the school year at West High, but she is doing pretty splendidly.
Right now, I am always tired. Transition is exhausting. Continue reading
20 Wednesday Mar 2019
Posted in Journaling My Days
Done and done!*
House sold.
Nineteen viewings and an open house beginning Friday evening and ending Monday around 5:15. Rather unintentionally, I met the buyers just before I left the open house on Sunday. I showed them the garage and we talked a bit about the gardens. I hear they stayed for the entire 2-hour open house. Monday morning, they came for a second viewing at 8 am and just before midnight the house was theirs. Continue reading
17 Sunday Mar 2019
Posted in Journaling My Days
Art by Duy Huyn
Strangers are walking through my house. My very clean and pristine house. My almost not-my house. They did it yesterday for hours and hours and we stayed away. They did it yesterday with their Real Estate agents and no one with any connection to the house was there.
I know it’s done that way. I’ve done it. Still, it’s creepy.
Today, open house. My agent is there. Much more comfort knowing that she can . . . . I’m not sure what? Protect? Defend? Make sure it is safe? Direct traffic. Continue reading
15 Friday Mar 2019
Posted in Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days
Tags
Not at all what the house looks like today, but my favorite picture of my home.
House on sale today. The listing.
The House: Staged. Stripped of it finery. My finery. Even the periwinkle walls of my bedroom are bleached white. Adorned with ersatz tchotchkes and fake ferns. Upstairs hall echos when I call up to Julia in the morning. The ethos of the house is a disturbing dream of a home I have abandoned but not left. Dali or Esher-like?
Me: tired, grumpy, stressed. Discovering how home is rooted in the art on my walls and the books on their shelves. Terrified that the pace of change is picking up. Yes, I know, I pushed that stone down the hill. Continue reading
01 Monday May 2017
Posted in Growing a Daughter, Travels with a Daughter
Sitting in front of the Capitol.
I miss writing about our travels, but of course, we haven’t been anywhere for awhile. Browsing the NYTimes Saturday morning, I found an article about Genoa and I melted with the memories of last year. I added my favorite restaurant and B&B whose owners took such good care of us to the comments but I was ready to sink into my grumpy, petulant child self because there will be no travel like that this summer. And then, after breakfast Julia and I bundled up and went to the Madison Farmers Market and I decided do some writing about the pleasures of Madison and surrounds from now until the next time we board a plane.
So, the Madison Farmers’ Market. Correctly titled the Dane County Farmers’ Market began in 1972 and is America’s largest producers-only farmers’ market. It hosts 300 vendors and completely encircles the Capitol Building. Continue reading
19 Sunday Jun 2016
Posted in Growing a Daughter, Journaling My Days
Tags
The week passed very quickly. It was Thursday before I realized the Tuesday had ended. We did lots of “things.” We both struggled with the transition from school life to vacation life. As much as Julia has transition challenges, my transmission faulted time and time again and I did grind the family gears repeatedly as we sought the new normal.
During the week, I finished the big spring garden job of mulching. With Julia’s help and forbearance. On one hand, I hate the specificity of the process–clear all weeds, dig the defining trench and heap on the chips hauled in black plastic bags from our free town mulching site. On the other, I get to make many garden decisions–what is weed, when is overgrown, what is taking over. I get to edit my garden. And I get to interact with every plant–congratulating the delphinium in glory, enouraging the new hollyhocks, clearing space for the little holly in the back garden and appreciating the bed that is growing up surrounding David’s bench. To do all of this, with Julia either helping or sitting doing math and reading near by is no small task. And we did it. Continue reading
