I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they leave for their summer plans. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty, using a random date generator (from random.org) to choose the posts. Having the kids go is still really, really hard. I’ll be back soon.

A month or two ago, Calliope wrote about seeing a stork on the way to her beta and how we look for signs. There was a moment many years ago, on the Rosh Hashanah that came a few months before we conceived the twins were I begged for a sign while doing Tashlich at the river and on the walk back to the car, saw the elusive Jamocha, a bird of some fame in the D.C. area who goes by a plethora of names.

Read the whole post here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they leave for their summer plans. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty, using a random date generator (from random.org) to choose the posts. Having the kids go is still really, really hard. I’ll be back soon.

On a side note before I continue the story, before she called, I was reading about Agnes Rossi’s idea of feminisma–the female equivalent to machismo. And how we view ourselves as woman. Stacie and I have been having an interesting discussion about how breastfeeding gave her back that missing bit of feminisma and I didn’t get to have that. I couldn’t get pregnant without assistance, I couldn’t stay pregnant without assistance, I couldn’t carry to term (though fine, fine, fine, I delivered well), and then, to top it off, I didn’t produce prolactin so I couldn’t breastfeed. I am still trying to find my womanhood in all of this. You would think it would be simple. You would think that I would have felt like a woman having a child grow inside my body. But it didn’t work that way. I didn’t gather back my vision of myself as a woman from that. I’m still looking for it.

Read the whole post here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I want to spend time with the twins before they leave for their summer plans. I scheduled these posts so the blog wouldn’t be empty, using a random date generator (from random.org) to choose the posts. Having the kids go is still really, really hard. I’ll be back soon.

When I was eight-years-old, I fell in love with a boy at camp. He was older–12–and he played trumpet. We were in the camp play together. I was a tree. A non-speaking role. He was the ecologist. He saved my life when the Queen’s men wanted to chop down the trees. We went on a camping trip together. We were an hour late leaving for the trip because the boy had to have his trumpet lesson. My sister told me that this made him a loser. She was pissed that the bus had to wait for him and that we had to wait on the hot steps until he finished his lesson. I used my wish on him anyway.

Read the whole post here.

If I said to you: Miss Lucy had a steamboat…

You would answer…

The steamboat had a bell. (Ding ding!)

Kottke had a post about childhood lore — the comments are pure gold — but it raised an interesting question. How did these rhymes or games or traditions spread before the internet?

Everyone around my age who grew up in the US knows what a cootie catcher is and how to use it. I know this because people came from all over the US to our wedding, and we put a cootie catcher at every place setting that people could use to strike up a conversation with their tablemates. So instead of your fortune on the inside flap, you had a question that you could ask the other person to get the conversation started. Everyone in our age group immediately started using it. People much older didn’t know what it was.

Everywhere I’ve gone, kids have made a tugging motion with their arm while passing a truck to see if the truck driver will pull the horn. Or lifted up their feet when going over railroad tracks. Or typing 80085 on the calculator. But how did we know? I know it passed from older kid on the playground to younger kid on the playground, but how did it jump from playground to playground, across the country? Fast enough that people around the same age would know the same thing, but kids a decade older or younger wouldn’t?

It is clearly easier now with the internet, but how did those common childhood beliefs or games spread across the country or world before it?

It’s a not-very-birthday-y birthday because it’s a work day, and I’m trying to get the twins ready for their summer plans. But that’s just what being an adult is all about, kids. It’s not all popsicles for breakfast and being queen of your own bedtime. Sometimes your birthday passes without big fanfare.

Which is okay.

My birthday will still contain cake, zoolbia, and gianniotiko (with chocolate!) because go-big-or-go-home when it comes to birthday desserts.