Author: Jana

  • naked

    I’m sitting here naked at kitchen table typing away.
    Well… not really.
    [Rather, I’m wearing my favorite black t-shirt & jeans, and licking the BBQ sauce off of my fingers from the very fine riblet sandwich I just ate for lunch–YUM]

    On my first-ever blog (at enivri.com), my first post was about being naked, about revealing the ‘inner me’ to anyone who wanted to read. But honestly, that first blog wasn’t very interesting and didn’t get read very often so I stopped paying for the domain name after a few months.

    Though I don’t pretend that this blog is all that much better than my first one, I’ve had lots more ‘hits’ and have recently discovered that several old friends read my blog. In a way it’s flattering to have a bevy of readers. But I’m also nervous to have all my wierd moles and warts showing. And all of those scars that you can’t see when I’m wearing clothes–those are showing, too.

  • hesitation

    A few weeks ago the kids and spent some time at my Mom’s house. One of the highlights of visiting Mom is swiming in her pool. The kids leap right in, get out all of the ‘noodles’ and have a blast swimming around.

    Swimming in Mom’s pool brings back lots of memories. Back in my high school days I spent a lot of time swimming: either I was relieving stress, working on my tan, or conditioning for the swim team. Back then, my favorite way to get in the pool was to dive head-first into the deep end.

    But now I just can’t bring myself to leap in. I slowly immerse my body, inch-by-inch. It’s not unusual for it to take me 30 minutes to get my whole body under. I just hate the way the cold water feels and I can’t force myself in any faster.

    As I was slowly getting wet on the last day at Mom’s house it dawned on me that this must be part of getting old. No longer do I leap into the unknown headfirst, ready for the thrill and shock of the cold water. Instead, I am cautious and slow–I’m only willing to tolerate the littlest bit of discomfort and to take small risks.

  • $$$

    So the first day of school went great. The kids came home full of stories and were so happy to have been reunited with friends.

    So…now is the hard part. The part where I fill out 17 different forms for each child (all with same mundane information–where are database geeks when you really need them?? John, HELP! Calgon, take me away….). And I also pull out the checkbook and start writing. Checks for PTA, checks for workbooks, for field trips, for class holiday parties, for science teachers and PE teachers. And for music (and E has just announced that she wants to play the cello like her big brother, oh my!). I’ve been putting off the inevitable all afternoon. Avoiding the process and playing on my computer.

    Now E is hanging over my shoulder and begging me PUH-LEASE to do the forms because if I don’t then she will get a pink slip and that would be like the end of the world on the first day of school, and armaggedon will happen right here in my living room if I don’t get those forms done RIGHT NOW! ARGH…..

  • first day

    Isn’t this a great first-day-of-school pic? C was really fidgety/nervous because he didn’t really want the other boys in his class to see him posing for a pic with his baby sister. E seemed to be trying to hide the fact that her braces have lavender bands on them now.

    All in all, very grown up kids. Very cute.

  • essay

    Here’s an excerpt from E’s “What I Did This Summer” essay. It’s amazing to be that an 8 year-old wrote this:
    “The remaining three kittens were so cute! Two of them were black and white, while the other was grey. One of the black and white kittens had a black nose and a black spot underneath its mouth that made it look like it had a black tongue and was always sticking it out, but you wouldn’t guess that she was taunting or teasing you because she was very shy and rarely left her mother’s side.”

  • prosthetic

    My prosthetist Tom was himself an above-knee amputee. I met him on Christmas Eve when my knee broke. I was at home with my two children—the youngest just one-month old. I was despondent. How could I care for two children with a broken knee and I wouldn’t be able to get it fixed until after the holiday? I began calling all the prosthetists in the Yellow Pages. Tom answered his phone and agreed to make a housecall. He came by and quickly ascertained the problem. He made a quick run back to his office for parts and made the repair. When I asked him how much money I owed him, he said “Merry Christmas” and winked at my children as he headed out the door.

    Years later when I wanted a leg that I could wear kayaking and to the beach, Tom made me a pylon with a plunger-like rubber stopper on the bottom instead of a foot. I loved wearing that leg. It had no knee, no technology. It cost only a few dollars.

    Garry, my current prosthetist, was assigned to me by my HMO. He works for a growing chain of prosthetic offices. My latest leg cost $64,000—which the HMO paid for. It has a computerized knee joint and it has a battery that needs to be ‘charged’ every 24 hours. It imitates an almost-natural knee motion. I can walk down hills and stairs and on even surfaces without fear of falling. It has a lifelike cosmetic cover. I can bounce on my toe three times to change the ‘mode’ of the knee for sports activity.

    But it can’t get wet. And it makes me nervous to go barefoot because the points for the electrical charger are on the side of my ankle. I haven’t gone to the beach in two years.

  • katrina

    This is the most sobering account of katrina that I’ve read so far. An eyewitness account from someone who spent the week trying to get help: http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml

  • Make me smile…

    Rub my foot. Any time. Any where. ‘Nuff said.
    :)

  • sick

    I’ve spent most of today emptying the contents of my nose into kleenexes. Now, after a whole day of this my nose is so raw that even the lotion-y kleenexes hurt. And now the cough is starting–that ubiquitous throat tickle that keeps me feeling as if a small rodent is sitting in the back of my throat and preventing me from swallowing. I think that some rodent is storing acorns in my glands because they are so swollen and sore.

    Today I wanted to lie in bed and drink broth. Instead I cleaned house, ran errands, and ferried the kids around. Here’s hoping that tomorrow is a better, rodent-free, day.

    PS: Today the kids wrote their due-the-first-day-of-school essays. They are priceless. C’s is called “Portland” and discusses the colorful details of our summer trip (including voodoo donuts and the various odors of our hotel rooms). E’s is called “Adventures with Aunt Susan” [can I just say one more time that every kid needs an Aunt Susan who has a trampoline and a dog named Pete and a boy named Chris and lots of time for adventures]. I will post the essays soon.

  • trellis


    trellis
    Originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    I’ve loaded some pictures from my garden onto my flickr account. Click the picture above to see more :)

  • Crazy quilt


    Crazy quilt
    Originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

    For several years E has been collecting fabric scraps. This month Aunt Susan has helped her to make her vision into a masterpiece of purples, blues, reds and greens.

    Beautiful.

  • from the mouths of babes…

    Last night E told me that I’m building a house. I looked at her, puzzled. She replied:

    “Well you have AROOM and you have an Outhouse, so I guess you should just go ahead and get the whole house.”

    I giggled at her insight. AROOM is my reading/writing group (it stands for A Room Of Our Own Making–an allusion to Virginia Woolf that’s highly appropriate for our all-female group). Outhouse is what we call the group of liberal Mormons that we meet with every Wednesday night [The name came from a funny discussion about a year ago that we had about “in-house” versus “out-house” intellectuals. The name seems to fit our ragtag group of Mo’s pretty well and has stuck ever since].

    I’d never thought about the group names in relation to an actual architectural structure. But, in a way, it’s apt. For, as a result of these groups I’ve found a community of friends to call “home.”