1. Something rather fabulous

    I’m supposed to be in the shower.

    Guests arriving for whatever today’s football game is. Chili on. Pizza dough rising. Beer.

    I’m fooling. I know about the game. I know Newt win the North Carolina primary. I know some big famous coach died this morning, that is, after the media falsely reported it last night and Facebook barfed sads everywhere.

    I know damn well it’s time to prepare myself for guests. I know it’s snowing in Brooklyn right now. I know my baby girl ate lunch today whilst wearing socks on her hands. I know Downton Abbey episode three premieres tonight. I know last week at this time I was in Sonoma County enjoying sunshine and a sofa.

    I know I will be 35 in two months.

    I wonder how my hair will turn out. I cut it off yesterday. Rather, a person other than me cut it off. Only a little bit.

    I know how to open the door when the knocks come. I know my feet will be cold and I’ll need to warm them up. I know I forgot to register for the Polar Bear 5k and I missed it this morning. I knew I would so I ran all over yesterday and my legs are sore.

    I know you don’t care but you read anyway because you’re a voyeur and it’s awesome, this Internet stuff.

    Keep on, keep on. I’m renewed for another year.

  2. The view.

    The view.

  3. My baby is waking up so I only have a minute or so

    My baby wakes up early. So do I. We play and read books and clean ourselves up.

    Denver commercials are pitiful. I hear them in the background while the baby dolls are wrapped in blankets at my feet. The blankets are rewrapped about 20 times. Sometimes I intervene to show her how to burrito wrap the doll. Keeps it warm longer. Less easy to unwrap so sometimes she gets frustrated and the baby doll lands out in the hall or is abandoned for Elmo.

    It’s winter now. Officially tonight. We’ve already had six snowfalls. Another coming by the evening rush. A lot of my background noise turns into weather reports as my baby and I forget baby dolls and turn to books. So much more substantial, effective and training her for life. Dollies don’t do that. I found her the other morning stuffing blueberries down the pee pee dolly’s mouth. But I choose to believe reading Corduroy on repeat is giving her the skills. Everyone and everything knows how to consume. Even flowers.

    Hmm. The video monitor reveals she is only rolling about and hasn’t fully wakened. I’m surprised. She wakes up and is up. No dozing. I doubt we’ll even need an alarm clock when she becomes a teen. I never used one. I never oversleep. In fact, I rarely sleep.

    It means I have a few more minutes to record my life in a public environment.

    Once we finish with books and I need a shower it comes time to introduce TV. Little Bear is powerful. I love to watch with her. He was one of my favorites. Except the other morning Little Bear pretended with his friends and they acted out little red riding hood. The wolf actually ate the grandma in the cartoon. I felt certain they’d hide that but I was wrong.

    So, it’s a nice, peaceful distraction while I dress and load the dishwasher and stuff. But watch out when it’s time to go bye bye. I have a whole method for extracting her from the TV. It’s a fine art. I bribe her with food and joyful tales of daycare, where she is headed.

    It’s the most awful part of the day. I hate taking her anywhere I must leave from without her. Wish I could be at home with her. Wish I could be a solid educator slash life coach slash bodyguard all day everyday. But I can’t.

    That part isn’t getting easier. But the pickup is like Disney world the first time and I’m getting damn good at grocery store checkout. I might be getting my wings here. Finally.

  4. What scares me

    the most is that it doesn’t matter how much money you have. It doesn’t matter what your resources are. Cancer will kill you if it wants to. 

  5. On my run last night

    I saw a snake, two rabbits (both in my front yard), four dogs and one absolutely terrifying man who scared the daylights out of me right in the middle of evening yet daylight rush hour.

    Matt says no more running in the daylight-ey rush hour areas anymore because I’d rather see a scared little garden snake than a scary man like that ever again whilst jogging with my wee toddler.

  6. It’s funny what a crayon can do

    These days, I have a zillion crayons scattered everywhere. They seem to grow like mushrooms in the wetness and sometimes they’re pretty and other times, they are broken or their tips are gnarled or they’re colors are ugly.

    I always want my crayons sharp—even if the crayon is down to an inch or so from hard work. The sharpness makes it easier to stay in the lines. I suppose the dull ones do have their benefits, very good for getting a full on scribble and quite useful for darkening.

    But as I think about my crayoning behavior it frustrates me that I always want to color in the lines. Why? Who made that stupid rule?

    I never really like adhering to the status quo, and this is just dumb. I sit with my toddler, who scribbles to the heights of non-conforming out-of-the-lineness, and I want to color in the lines. Like a big fat boring mom!

    I select larger, easier to fill shapes in the coloring book, too, because it’s easier to stay in the lines. I shy away from the intricate lines of trees and hands. Don’t like ‘em. Prefer rainbows and symmetrical blocks and octagons and regular generic old shapes that have been taught to babies and toddlers and children since the beginning of time…

    Why?

    These are the thoughts I’ve had the past week as I’ve had full-on adulthood hit me and my family in the face. We’ve have a terrible week of life. And, we’ve come out of it now.

    Traveled miles and booked a dozen flights and filled out vacation forms at work and frantically flown my first solo parent airplane ride (success!)… Learned that we can stay in a hotel room and still get sleep while baby girl dozes in a nearby pack and play. Seen my husband go through pain I can’t imagine. Watched a pretty wonderful family move through the days after death and pick themselves up and greet the many, many people who came to say goodbye.

    It’s always a bit optimistic to think about traveling back east to see our family in Boston. We get the city again. We have good shopping. History. Simply delightful neighborhoods and diversity. I’ve loved it since the second my husband took me to his home and always felt peace there. This time, I filled our bags with dark clothes and anticipated cold rain. I brought the crayons out in battalions, armed in cars and planes and hotel rooms, praying they would deliver the magical distraction we needed.

    Good thing I brought lots of wet wipes.

  7. Everyone wants a piece of the pie

    Dear NYC on 9/11/01,

    I tried to watch you on Dateline last night, hoping, as I do every year, that maybe I can actually get through a segment. Alas, I failed.

    I do understand the honor required with remembrance. But, why does everyone in the world want a piece of you? Why do people feel the need to continue rehashing this solvent event and replaying it over and over? I think it’s because everyone wants to mourn you, and sympathize, and be a part of you even if just for a conversation.

    I suppose it happened to all of us. But, unless you were there, I cannot imagine you know. I will never, ever be able to explain my experience with you that day. Not in writing, not in speaking. It’s my secret. It’s the similar concept of not fully understanding grief until you experience it first-hand. Many just won’t understand how complex emotional failure can be. Many just don’t understand how your nerves feel the terror and process it and make you keep walking forward despite the pain and fear.

    Your streets were dusty and grey and you smelled awful and all of the people dying in the air above your feet… I was with you for it. And, I stood with my dear roommate Lori and we watched those people jump. And the buildings fall. And the streets fill with sirens and then with dump trucks to be filled with dust. It was warm and our window unit brought in with it a frothy, terrible smell of burn. So much that we turned the unit off and then we slept together in one bed that night. The smoke overtook the sky and it darkened.

    As I went up and down from the roof mere blocks away from this life-changing event—snapping photo after photo, unaware of ferocity and being a 24-year-old silly thing with no idea of how my life would change because of you—well, you changed.

    And everything and everyone around you changed.

    And we—all of us—are a very big, yet small population that woke up the next morning numb. But I suspect it hit us all at different points. Some that afternoon when a call never came. Some the day after that, finally allowed above Union Square and milling around a bar full of finance guys wearing suits, drunk off their heads and speaking quietly about having attended 7 funerals that day. Some the first time entering a plane again. Others when feeling the big tall skyscrapers move in the wind. Some in our dreams that repeat and repeat falling buildings. For some… it is just part of our life now.

    I am scarred from what happened to you that day. I didn’t die. I didn’t go to NYSC at the World Trade Center that morning. I didn’t know a single person who died. I didn’t get covered in dust or have to crawl out of a fire-ridden staircase. I just watched it from a very near little space on Houston Street.

    And I wish I’d have been looking another direction.

  8. Mourning summer

    It’s over very suddenly.

    And, I am surprised at my very sad, sappy and hormonal response to the past few gloomy days. Surely, we’re at an Indian summer stage and a nice warm night will return soon so I can sit on my porch and watch my baby run around.

    I hope. I know it’ll be back next year, but that’s the equivalent of a pregnancy, which is a very, very very long time.

    I cried like a sobbing silly today washing dishes and realizing that Ginger’s goofy little water shoes won’t be big enough for her next year. Neither will her navy and red polka-dotted swimsuit she carries around the house. Nor will her little terry cloth dress for wearing over the swimsuit fit.

    I’m very sad today and I don’t like it.

  9. Berlin. Check!

    Oh, to have re-embraced my books in time for fall is a small little piece of banana creme pie every single night. I even read yesterday during the afternoon while a certain little person was napping. I love to read! (But have a small problem with falling asleep quickly while reading. Mommy sleep.)

    I just finished a really well-done non-fiction narrative (probably my very favorite type of writing) by Erik Larson called In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. I loved another of his books, the Devil in the White City, which centered around development of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and a serial killer. I was in Chicago twice while reading that book back in… say, 2005 (I think), and became so obsessed with visiting the few artifacts left from that Fair.

    Anyway, of course, now I want to visit Berlin and do the same. Not anytime soon. European travel is out for us until the little girl can at least remember it.

    I’ll settle for a couch and a new book.

    It’s the worst coming off a solid reading experience with no back up or thought about what’s next. I sorta kinda might maybe think about another European adventure, but few write with the same commitment as Larson. I prefer non-fiction, but do love to read poetry and short stories. I’m not much of a novel freak. I’ll read them, yes, but I suppose I’m a journalist at heart and treasure the little *true* stories and tales and locations and bits of sometimes depressing reality. (Hm, perhaps this also feeds my skeptical nature.)

    So… Paris? Yes? Perhaps? Preferred destination and city like no other? David McCullough? Just wrote a new book on Americans in Paris… I think yes. 

  10. xojane.com

    There really is nothing quite like it out there. My new obsession and daily read. You’ll like it, too.

    Promise.

About me

This is a wee peek into my life outside the glam box.

Other Writing Spots

The Original Denverette
Runnage




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© 2012 Taryn Fort Doyle