The Days Are Just Packed

The road to blogging more often is paved with...Idleness? Is that an actual character in Pilgrim's Progress? We are reading Little Pilgrim's Progress aloud right now. The kids protested, but they seem to be enjoying it. We finally finished the Wilderking trilogy, which took forever because the last few chapters kept causing me to weep and lose all ability to croak out any words. The series was delightful, and very funny, so I think I wasn't prepared for the battle, as it were. We also read the third Harry Potter. We have been reading one per summer. I don't actually think they are very good, but I decided they were enough of a Cultural Thing that reading them together, and slowly, was probably the right course for us. I have been letting the older 2 read them on their own as they age with the kids at Hogwarts, so Harper had read book 6 within the first couple of days of summer, and Hudson book 4. Harper has read an additional 30 or so books since then, and Hudson has been strolling through Calvin and Hobbes, the Happy Hollisters (or, the Hippy Hallisters, as we call them) and The Lord of the Rings. Helena has finally started to really enjoy reading on her own. She also likes the Hippy Hallisters, and just whizzed through The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane one morning this week.


We've been watching The Great British Baking Show, which means everyone wants to bake all of the time. Harper made some ginger cookies (so many ingredients, so messy, but good), Helena made banana bread, and today, Hudson made pound cake. I have been trying to read a little poetry aloud every time we sit down for our treats, which has met with occasional success. So far, we've read some Frost, some Tennyson, and today, Walt Whitman joined us for our pound cake.

We adopted a replacement Sasha the weekend after Father's Day. We finally settled on the name Boo Radley. It is APT. He is strange and grumpy and terrified and possibly more emotionally crippled than Sasha ever was. We are trying to love him into our Kingdom. Helena gave him one of her stuffed animals, a small hamster named Harrison, and I am sorry to tell you that fatherhood has only served to emphasize Boo's irrational paranoia and fear. He hides his baby away in his bed, and keeps one paw on it while also growling in a very menacing way if anyone (other than me) comes into the room.


Our house has been back on the market for around 10 weeks now. We've had over 40 showings. I found this note on Helena's toy bin last week:

I think she has coined a portmanteau of 'touch' and 'tough.' I pretty much feel EXACTLY THIS EXACT WAY when I think about 40 sets of strangers forcing me to clean my entire house at their whim and fancy, then insisting all of us march out of it for hour-long increments, inevitably at the most inconvenient of times. Father's Day? YES. Fourth of July? Definitely. I am thinking of making some cute bunting to hang in our entryway that says, by way of greeting: "WE PUT THE 'REAL' IN REAL ESTATE!" Think that would help?

Backblog: October 2017

Walk with me down Memory Lane to the fall of 2017. We had settled back into routines. I woke up on Mondays and Wednesdays at 5am in order to leave at 6 am in order to arrive at school at 7 am. The husband drove the kids to school the entire year, and picked up Hudson and Helena most days as well. I really enjoyed working as an aide in a kindergarten classroom and in P.E. I taught a 2nd grade drawing class at the end of each day, and it was mostly delightful. I got a beautifully illustrated Christmas card from one of my students that read, "MRS. H YOU TEACH GOOD ART!!!!!!!!!!" That might just need to be my epitaph.

Halloween involved a torrential downpour, a very late dinner with friends at Escalantes, and trick-or-treating after everyone else in their neighborhood had long gone. Hudson was a ninja, Helena was a blue Morpho butterfly, and Harper was a bald eagle. She made her own costume, and it was quite something. She generally continues to amaze me with her artistic endeavors. Here are her wings:

 Our crew, still going strong, since 2008:

 London cityscape, for her art class:

Brace yourself

This is the summer of writing revival! It's is going to be a touch confusing, because I am going to play fast and loose with linear time. Today, I am going to remember that both of my girls got braces (the sort that go on teeth, not the sort that hold up trousers) in March. Here are the before pictures. It was very sunny:

And the after. Yes, they both look like teenagers:

 Right now, we are in full summer mode: books, Legos, swimming, and water balloons. On Friday night we got home from a 12 day trip to Colorado, and our air-conditioning promptly went out. Apparently we needed a reminder that we were SUPER NOT in Colorado anymore.

Ok, that's enough for today. I will be back soon!

And by strange you mean AWESOME

Let the record show that I am still sad about that dog who used to live here. Tears have abated to about once a week, but they are still coming. When I walk in the door, I have to stop myself from saying, "Hi pup! We are home!" We just were not made for death. We were designed for eternity, and it is good and right that the separation from those we love (both human and otherwise Animalia) should grieve us. I have realized that the deep sadness with pets is that they don't ever hurt you, or do any mean thing, so the 'missing' is really uncomplicated and acute. I MISS that puppy girl who had decided that her sole purpose was to be in my lap, even if she had to fight for space with a book.

I have lots of Events that I need to write about--important things that have transpired over the past few months--performances in plays, trips we took, and things like that. I will get to it. For now, I will just write about today. The weather is DIVINE. When we woke up this morning, a little groggy from spring break and day light savings etc., I said to the kids, "Let's get the schoolwork FINISHED so we can go be outside!" We did our best, picked up bagels for lunch, and ended up at the nature trails near Harper's piano lessons. We saw a BALD EAGLE soaring over the tollway while en route, which I took to be a Very Good Sign. (n.b.: when you see a bald eagle, and you are driving on the tollway at 70 mph, it is probably not prudent to attempt to get all three children to actually SEE the bald eagle. One-third is actually a decent statistic.) When we got there, we were sitting near the feeders eating our bagels when a guy walked over, wearing Houston Audubon garb. We chatted a bit, about kinglets, and Cooper's hawks, and female red-winged black birds. "Are you an ornithologist?" I asked. And he confessed he was. He said, "I heard your daughter whistling to a tufted titmouse, and I thought, 'Hm, that's strange!'" I replied, "And by 'strange' you mean 'AWESOME.'" He conceded that YES, we are awesome. I then asked him many nosy questions about Earning a Living as an Ornithologist, while the kids roamed around and climbed over log bridges, and also whistled at birds and talked to turtles and petted lizards. Harper at one point came over with a Polyphemus moth draped over a stick: "It was stuck in some pond muck, so I fished it out!" and we watched it free itself and fly away.

These days are as good as it gets. Here is a picture Harper painted of some burrowing owls. Clearly, that is the Daddy to the far right, and his owlets are saying, "What is the MEANING of all this?"

Sasha With Us: February 2010-January 2018

Sasha got really sick on New Year's Day. She rallied for a few weeks, but couldn't recover. We had to have her put to sleep on January 19. I have had a hard time of it, and I still can't really talk about it or think about it much. Last week in p.e. a kid hurled a bean bag that accidentally smacked me at full force directly on my heart. It almost knocked me flat. That's basically what it feels like when I realize she isn't here any more. She was tiny, but she took up a lot of space. I am just going to write down a few things that I don't want to forget, and then I plan to get back to blogging about the living that is going on here.

Some things I miss about Sasha:

1. I miss her being curled up in my lap.

2. I miss how when I would get into bed, she would go over to the husband's side for a little while, then once I got settled, she would make her way over to me, pretending like it had been AGES. She would then snuggle in as close as she could possibly get, and finally let out a long, rather dramatic, contented sigh of relief. Every single night.

3. I miss her happy dance of jubilation every time we walked in the door. If we'd been gone 5 minutes, or 5 days. It was the same joy.

4. I miss the little nervous yet excited yelp she'd make when she heard me cracking an egg. Scrambled eggs were her favorite. Also popcorn and honey nut cheerios.

5. I miss how she'd leap out of bed in the morning when she heard the kids pouring their cereal.

6. I miss hearing the kids and the husband and my Dad talk to her in the special voices they used just for her.

7. I miss how she would sometimes race around the house, doing laps and then leaping on the furniture like a crazed billy goat. We referred to this as her "reaction."

8. I miss how I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night because she and the husband would be snoring in unison. Sweet little symphony.

Some things I actually do not miss about Sasha:

1. That she would drink my coffee if I left it where she could reach it. This had been going on for months? Years? before I caught her in the act, lapping away.

2. That she would jump up ON TOP OF the kitchen table and steal food if the chairs weren't tightly pushed in. She got a bite of the in-process cornbread dressing at my parents' this last Christmas. The very last time it happened was just a few days before she died. We had gotten doughnuts to celebrate MLK. Even though she'd barely eaten in days, she summoned up the energy to leap up on the table and stole half of Hudson's chocolate covered doughnut. I didn't even try to take it from her.

3. That she would sprint out the front door at any opportunity, as though she were being held captive. The kids (especially Hudson) lived in fear that she was going to get hit by a car, and would go running out to herd her back into this terrible place where she was so poorly treated.

4. That she would bark like a FERAL BEAST when anyone knocked on the door. It was so very piercing.

There now. I did it. We had a good dog. Helena had just turned one, Hudson had just turned three, and Harper was four that day the husband opened the door and found her shivering on our porch. Familiarity finally bred love and not contempt, and we are thankful for that dumb stray dog who stuck around for eight years of our life.

Let us, then, be up and doing

Mrs. S noted a few weeks ago that seeing the image of a dead parakeet when she clicks on the blog is becoming a touch bleak. I guess we have sufficiently mourned Peeper at this point, so I will start blogging again. It is always very overwhelming to know where to start when I've stayed away so long, so a list is probably in order, though the events might not be in actual chronological order, because that is hard.

1.Harvey the Hurricane happened. Our streets were very flooded and impassable for a couple of days, but our house stayed dry. The husband was home from work for a week, and the kids missed two weeks of school. I watched way too much news coverage, and also ate way too many Kettle chips and peanut butter M&Ms. The grocery stores were closed, and then when they re-opened, there were lines to get in, and not much to buy. The kids ate countless grilled cheese sandwiches and built entire empires out of Legos. They also played lots of video games and watched cartoons aplenty. We stayed home for 10 days straight, I think. We have several friends in other parts of the city whose homes were flooded, and there is still so much debris in front of houses. It is all very sobering. On the second day after the flooding, Harper and I were sloshing through the neighborhood and she saw a catfish swimming in the street. So, naturally, she took off her Birkenstock and caught it and released it into the storm drain.

2. A week or so before Harvey, we finally put our house up for sale. Making it a matter of course to leave everything tidy and clean (and flushed) before we walk out the door, just in case complete strangers want to come traipse through, has been challenging. Also challenging: the neighborhoods where we are looking to rent if our house sells got hit really hard by the flood. I find that my attitude about all the driving I do has improved, because watching people deal with their flooded homes has created profound gratitude for a dry one, even if it isn't optimally located.

3. Four days before Harvey, we started back to school. And that 'we' is literal. I am working at the kids' school this year. I am an aide in a kindergarten classroom and in P.E. and am also teaching a second grade drawing class. It is going fine. My kids are increasingly independent on our home days, which means those days are not as energy-sapping as they have been in previous years. Though last Wednesday, after being gone from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. I walked in the door, made the kids' dinner, went to bed at 7 p.m. and slept until 7 a.m. It is all an adjustment, but being around all the great kids and grownups at our school two days a week is going to prove to make me a better human, I am sure of it.

4. Get out a map, because this one is fun! My friend Lina, who is from Lithuania, whom I met when I was teaching in Hungary, and who currently lives with her (Hungarian) husband in Scotland, came to Houston and we got to spend a few hours catching up on the last 20 years. It was one of those reunions you don't necessarily anticipate this side of heaven, and it was wonderful to see her and hear about her fascinating life.

5. The kids and I are just finishing up two series. I have read the Wilderking trilogy by Jonathan Rogers aloud at night, and we have listened to the spectacular audio of the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander in the car. We have loved them both, and I HIGHLY recommend them. They go together like peas and carrots, though I didn't know that when we started. The audio cds each have an intro read by Lloyd Alexander at the beginning and he sounds as though he was around 145 years old when it was recorded. It's like The Ancient of Days telling you all about his books. I really do recommend the audio book for that series because there are so many diverse characters with crazy British accents and strange names, I think it would be challenging read aloud. Though, not to brag, but I have actually rather perfected my Feechie accent for the Wilderking books. It's kind of Welsh-Scottish-Southeast Texas.

6. Sasha would like to state that she hates numbers 1-3 on this list. She hates Harvey. She hates the Mommy at school business. She hates the STRANGERS IN HER HOUSE SHE IS IN HER CRATE THE MOMMY IS NOT EVEN HERE THE WORLD IS CLEARLY ENDING selling the house business. She sleeps to forget.

One last picture I just found that makes me happy. It's my dad and Helena just taking a bike ride around a year and a half ago when he was staying with us.

Well, I think that is enough to prime the pump. I'll be back soon!

His eye is on the parakeet

It is 9:45 pm on July 5, which means that, for the fourth night in a row, I can hear fireworks outside. Sasha has shown her great displeasure with this fact by excreting in various places throughout the house: we've had vomit on day 1, poop on day 2 (particularly galling because she had woken me up at 3:30 am to let her outside, then still proceeded to leave a trail of poop on our bedroom carpet at some point before? after? RIDICULOUS.) and urine on day 3 (on my upholstered rocking chair. I have just finished wrestling the newly washed slipcover back on the seat cushion, cussing all the while.) I am not sure what she has left in her repertoire, but the night is young.

We had a low key holiday. Harper made a patriotic dessert, we went to the pool, and the husband spent around $40 on some fireworks that were very noisy and also bright. We have some new neighbors across the street who are from Pakistan, and their little girls seemed to really enjoy the sparklers. Our Nigerian neighbors also came down. I asked them if Nigeria celebrates a day of independence, and she affirmed that indeed they DO (October 1, I think) and that it is even louder and more raucous. Our next door neighbor, who was an officer in the South Vietnamese army during the Vietnam War, did not come out. He experienced the real thing, at very close range, which probably makes the facsimile a touch jarring.


While we were at the pool, there was a little bike parade at the park. Someone had set up some speakers, and they played a John Philip Sousa march to start, and the little kids were riding their red, white, and blue festooned bikes along to the patriotic beat. Then, inexplicably, the next song was the Elvis Presley version of "How Great Thou Art." The kids looked a little confused, and by the second verse the neighborhood DJ had switched over to something more authentically patriotic. The husband said, in a loud voice, "I CERTAINLY HOPE WE ARE NOT CONFLATING JULY 4th WITH CHRISTIANITY." I mean I love Jesus, and America too, but "How Great Thou Art" for a parade seems...not quite right. Maybe it was a Pandora station gone rogue?

Well, one of the birds died on Monday. Our dear Peeper, mother of both Hobbes and Bitty. Harper had taken the cage out in the morning to clean it, and when I realized it was getting pretty hot after lunch, I went to bring the cage in and there was Peeper, lying still on the bottom of the cage. I grabbed her out and tried a couple of things to revive her, but in vain. The kids were upstairs playing with the neighbors, and I held her for a few minutes, not wanting to tell them just yet. It is a mysterious thing for a living creature to pass from life to death. She felt heavy in my hand. We had a little funeral service, and buried her in a Williams-Sonoma peppermint bark tin, right next to Timmy the Turtle. YES, I cried a little. SO WHAT? Harper wrote on the tin in Sharpie: "Here lies Peeper. Beloved bird of the H- family," and Helena made several little grave markers that are very precious, and full of misspelled descriptions of Peeper memories, like how she would, "barc at Sasha, and liked to eat milit." May heaven be full of millet and friendly Chihuahuas, Peeper. Thank you for the joy you brought.

We will end on a high note. Hudson is playing baseball for the first time ever. The team has won both games so far, and Hudson scored his first run after walking to first, then stealing his way round the bases. He even got to slide into 3rd, which dirtied up his white pants very nicely.