he bring of the chocolate

i completely forgot to mention that the rabbit of easter came by last weekend. he brought of the chocolate and the jelly beans, and he also brought a little cactus, and then he stayed awake all night worrying that it was a terrible idea to leave a cactus on the floor, and imagining isaac waking up and stepping on it in his bare feet.*

he also brought a handsome old-fashioned wax mustache.

*he didn't.

misheard lyrics. probably.

i was just making an appointment for minnow's annual check up, and i was on hold listening to this song, when i realized that i've always thought there was a line in it that started, "baby, am-scray..." as in scram. in pig latin. which is probably not correct.

i came here a wanderer

just in case you hadn't noticed, there's a link over on the right side of this blog that says "where in the world is zoë?" i'm attempting to keep it updated, so on any given day you can click on it and see a map of where she is, or read something about it. i'm finding china more confusing than india (so many things don't come in english! and i don't know how to pronounce anything!), but i do know that today she is in yangshuo (no, i don't know how to say that), and that there are fabulous, other-worldly green hills there. max's blog has a first-day-in-yangshuo post up!

the whole dream of these things

my brand new sweetie was born yesterday -- my nephew benjamin ewan woodbury!

david and ellen make cute babies, don't they? i can't wait to meet ben, and i can't wait to see stella in the role of big sister. in a few weeks, i'm heading down to chapel hill to squeeze this baby and his sister (and his parents)!

happy easter, scaredy cats!

for more easter fun, go here (thanks, david!).

speaking of david, i've told you the story of the time the easter bunny pinched my brother's butt, right?

pied à terre

scenes from 36 hours in cambridge (mom and dad are visiting stella and her family right now, as everybody gets ready for the arrival of stella's baby brother -- so we lounged around their empty condo for a couple of days).

colorful cacti.

isaac says this to me a lot.

smart bookstore.

punjabi dhaba for lunch!

mark and i took a walk through harvard square, got coffee and cookies from crema cafe, and sat in the sunshine with a view of flowers.

one of many buddhas.

art by me, circa 1972. this is "sunny day," and on the flip side is "rainy day," which is done hastily with a blue ballpoint pen. to depict the grimness of a rainy day? or because i ran out of enthusiasm for the project? "sunny day," as you can see, illustrates the joy of a sunny day, complete with the sun's rays shooting through the air, and bunches of insanely happy, big-eyed people wearing hats and smoking pipes.

home from cambridge. minnow's ear was in the cup holder.

the song of the world

we got an actual letter in our mailbox this week, thick and mysterious, with many indian stamps upon it! inside was this card:

my favorite, peaceful animals stacked atop each other, peacefully. and, also, a tibetan prayer flag! an authentic tibetan prayer flag from dharamsala. this isn't where it'll live permanently, but i haven't decided yet where we should put it. it's funny, because mark and i just had a conversation wherein i said something like "i really want a tibetan prayer flag, but i don't want to ask them to get me one, because i don't want to add to their mental lists or the stress of things they have to do before they leave india, etc." and look, my prayers were answered!

just wait til they have a chance to write in their own blogs -- there are fabulous stories of hindu temples in amritsar, goings-on near the border with pakistan (!), free food at the golden temple. speaking of food, they were both suffering from some degree of delhi belly the last time we spoke (they were in delhi, so.). zoë in particular wasn't feeling so good, and spent most of the time they were in delhi resting in their hotel room. their flight to hong kong arrived about seven last night (our time), and we're eagerly awaiting news that they made it and are feeling great, etc. one exciting thing about hong kong is that it's precisely twelve hours ahead of us, so it's always simple to figure out what time it is for them (as opposed to india, which was confusing).

isaac, meanwhile, returned from his camping week on friday smelling ripe and looking very happy. he had a great time hiking and hanging out in the lodges, and he came home with this beautiful walking stick he found in the woods (pictured above), rubbed smooth at the top from the 35 miles or so that he hiked over the course of the week. i totally stole this photo from some kid on facebook.

pursued by a bear

remember this?

okay, now prepare yourself for this:

is that not the most amazingly beautiful artistic representation of me and my bear that you could ever imagine? my sweet friend the checkout girl made it for me!

even though my photos are always crappy phone pictures, i must apologize in this case -- i actually took some with mark's fancy camera that i'll upload soon. just, wow. this is hanging to my left as i type, right here where i can look at it all day.

jane eyre

lovely to look at,

but rochester, like always,
is such an asshole.

chicks

yet again, mark and i get to practice fluttering around this empty nest while this particular chick embarks on a camping trip with a school group until friday. meanwhile, the girl chick is en route to amritsar.

i'm working on tote bags and onesies and word blurbs. hey, want to get a glimpse of the fruits of my labor? check out vocabulary.com and play the challenge! see if you can guess which words i wrote the blurbs for.

animals with stuffed animals. i am working on the perfect photo of minnow and his puppy to send in.

go waste even more time reading shit my students write. sample line:

"Before, women were multifunctioning objects around the house that could do that birth thing but now women are running corporations and writing great literature all the while still doing that birth thing."

what do you think of my book so far? oh okay, it's infinite jest. and the readers of yahoo answers are not impressed.

the oregon legislature exhibits the ultimate bipartisanship by rickrolling itself!

the mermaids in the basement

when i walked outside saturday morning, i thought it must be seventy degrees, it felt so warm! really, it was only in the fifties, but in april, in maine? that feels almost summery.

this morning my dancer friend bought me treats at rosemont, and we walked in the sunshine and had coffee at her kitchen table.

i spent yesterday morning with my best pal on willard beach. in every photo i took of minnow, his tongue was out, and in most of them, his eyes were almost closed in pleasure.

how perfect that my mom sent me this poem yesterday:

"I started Early—Took my Dog—
And visited the Sea—
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me—"

(emily dickinson)

now i'll sit here with the windows open and my cup of tea and get some work done that i put off all weekend due to the lure of the sunshine. mark is home from a quick kansas trip, and isaac is getting his gear together in preparation for a school camping trip next week. meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, zoë is preparing to leave india and fly to hong kong. isn't life strange and wonderful?

never let me go

the book was better,

but this was haunting, and had
carey mulligan.

see into the life of things

the way cowboy boots sound, on the sidewalk across the street.

how a certain kind of blue hole in the cloudy sky evokes the lorax, every single time.*

when the guinea pig drinks water, it sounds like someone's in the other room typing on an old typewriter. when the dog drinks water, it sounds like this: "ding. ding. ding. ding."

these eagles. the babies with their wobbly, downy bodies, the parents epitomizing calm and patience and gorgeous instinct. that nest is six feet across, and it weighs more than a ton. sometimes you can catch glimpses of rabbits or fish caught, stored in the nest, gradually eaten and fed to the chicks.

*"just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance...as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants..."

rabbit rabbit

it's april, bunnies!