A Very Pondering Post

Home from work and sitting on the porch letting the kids watch too much TV so I can drink some caff tea in peace.

It's a beautiful day.

I have, without a doubt, been spending entirely too much time inside lately, and so every time I am not inside my sense of smell comes alive and gets all happy.

I am wring out by the rollercoaster of the week-- per usual on Saturdays-- and so sitting on the porch is as active as I can manage. Maybe tomorrow I'l make it to the garden, or take the children on a hike, or something.

Maybe we'll go dig up little baby trees at the farm and plant them along the driveway, or wherever we want.

It's ours now.

As much as I love our bright and cheerful and airy house, I am severely tempted to move the necessities into the dark and old-lady and rather awful new house so we can begin settling there. It'll take forever. We're not even sure what we should do to fix the house, or if we should just build a new one, and so until that's clear in our heads, we'll just be puttering around, working on fields and the barn and whatever else strikes our fancy.

K's there now, lucky dog. On his tractor no doubt.

Despite the financial worries of the store (will they NEVER end???) and the lack of time to do anything besides work and child-mind, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

When I was growing up, I worried about two things pretty incessantly:

if I could be happy. If I was fundamentally lazy.

I can be.

I am not.

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The children, ages 3 and 4:

-Annaliese slipping into our bed right after dawn. Caspian (recently) already there, pulling back the cover for her and tucking her in beside her and hugging her with his free arm.

-Annaliese, telling us that one of her friends is a cheerleader. That she wants to be a cheer leader. "I want to do everything," she says brightly. And means it.

-Caspian, starting a conversation on the produce run, strapped into his car seat in the passenger seat of the BTC van: "Do you like tigers and bears? I do."

-Caspian, during most of soccer, kicking the ball once every game and running off the field for a congratulatory hug. Not a competitive bone in his body. He did enjoy hugging his pretty coach, though.

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K., vibrating with impatience about this farm. He is like a coiled spring set loose. It's very gratifying, him taking over this ambition of mine, because i don't have enough hours in the day and I love it when he does projects I wish I could do.

I realized recently that we think of each other as such a team unit that it doesn't really matter who actually does what: it matters that it gets done. Maybe because we got married so young and basically grew up together? I don't know. But I like it. Not that we don't keep bitter score of domestic trivia-- unhelpful and unavoidable-- but in the big picture, it's us, checking off the master list of the things we think are worth doing.

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I turned 30 this year. It was my least fan-fared birthday and probably my happiest. I ate dinner with K and the kids on the porch, partook of a ridiculously wonderful applesauce 6-layer cake K made, got cards from my mom and my sister, opened a few presents.

I'm 30 now. It feels momentous, but in a good way; like when you begin something you've been anticipating, but you're ready, you're rested, you're prepared.

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Plans this weekend: eating fried chicken! With Dixie and K. Sleeping in. Working on the book. Being at the farm. Taking at least one solo walk. Cooking these fancy sausages i bought. Getting to the library on Monday. Welcoming Mom at some point for a visit.

Sounds good.