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Don’t Touch

Posted on December 15, 2008

Home today as Briar has pink eye. She and I are both face touchers, I pet my upper lip when I worry, think, sleep or read. She touches her face when she colors, eats, watches tv or sleeps. We are also big on hugging, kissing and touching everyone else in the house. Since returning from the horror that is the medi-center at closing time on a Sunday, we are home with a strict no hugging, kissing or touching directive from the doc. It is awful, and yet, I am so very grateful to be home, tending to Briar. Her sisters are home as well, and though I am sure my hands will be raw from the excessive hand washing (and wringing), I’m finding deep…

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Snarky Gratitude

Posted on December 14, 2008

So, I’m not perfect, this I know. I can be righteous and demanding, expecting more than most people are willing or able to give. I am annoying because I hold myself to the same standards and for the most part I make good, which can border on martyrdom. I am alternately fastidious and slovenly. I am woefully bad at geography, though a recent obsession the girls acquired that has us daily constructing the United States, has me doing much, much better in this arena. I have a frightfully bad memory, I mean like wave your hand before my face and say, “Weren’t you there, I mean right there with us? How can you not remember?” All this said, here are a few things I’d…

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Snap

Posted on December 14, 2008

Winter has arrived, with the weariness and tension of last week being replaced by wonder and excitement. Each window frames a snow so white and trees so dramnatically laden with snow and ice, it is as if we are experiencing it all for the first time. Yesterday was a crystally blur of snowman-making and snowflake spying. No cameras, no phones, just mittens and sticky kisses. Our noses were red, our fingers frosty and our laughter unending. The girls are fast becoming stepping-stones, markers of all that I have accomplished, even as I might worry about one thing or another, they trump everything. I can nearly see the nuances in Briar’s face emerging, a line here, a hollow there. Her eyes becoming more pronounced, a…

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Next week will be better, I promise.

Posted on December 4, 2008

He said it as he was leaving, one hand one the door, his face expressionless in the dark. Another late night, back to work after another long day. “Next week will be better. I promise,” and his head sank as he walked away looking defeated. I put my own face down, burrowing in the blanket wrapped around Fin, her little hands pressing hungrily as she nursed, reclaiming me as her own after the nightly bedtime cacophony and sibling clamoring for mom. We rocked as Sean slipped downstairs. I tried to bite back my anger, seemed no use to save it as there was nowhere to point it. He worked every night leading up to Thanksgiving. He worked Thanksgiving morning. He worked Thanksgiving night. He…

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