Is it Friday? Really? Already? Yikes. Where did the last week go?
1. 5 weeks to go. Seriously, I think this kid is welcome to incubate the entire time. We're just not ready. However, when I went to my water aerobics class last night, the instructor greeted me with two sentences that struck me very differently than you might think. She said, "Stacey, you've gotten bigger [from Tuesday]. No, you've dropped!" Yes, I panicked. No, it wasn't because of my burgeoning size. I've dropped? Not good. With both Eliza and Simon I didn't drop until just two weeks before delivery. I've got five to go, people. As uncomfortable and hot and cranky as I am, I kind of want to keep it that way. Here's hoping this little guy just likes to be good and ready well before he makes his appearance.
2. My daughter's imagination both fascinates and thrills me. Today, I caught her in the midst of whispering to an imaginary baby bird on her finger. Granted, this is after I let her watch an episode of Word World while waiting for her lunch to get out of the oven when she probably would have gladly gone to take her nap. The episode was about one of the characters caring for a bird egg that eventually hatches, and the character sending the baby bird off with its mommy. Eliza had apparently adopted her own baby bird just before nap, and she was freeing it to fly away. But her words were her own, not copied from that character, and she was a little shy when I walked in and saw her. I asked her about her baby bird, but she wasn't inclined to share more than one-word answers, so I let her alone. But it's not the first time I've found her talking to an imaginary friend or role playing or some other such thing. I love to see that imagination develop, and I hope it will be a rich one. While I was not as dramatic as Anne Shirley growing up, my imagination was as rich and my life as colorful because of it. I wouldn't mind that for Eliza, too.
3. A Friday Quick 5 post from a blog I follow reminded me of an almost-forgotten graduate class. The discussion was about humor and writing, and my professor went on a little rant about intellect and humor. The essence of her speech was to contrast Erma Bombeck and Nora Ephron, the former being incredible plebeian in her writing, the other, if you were to keep to the historical terminology, quite patrician and worthy. I found the professor's disdain for Bombeck both unwarranted and incredibly snooty. I'd read some of Bombeck's books. The one that had made the biggest impression on me had covered childhood cancer; I felt she had treated the subject with grace and respect while still finding the humor in it. Ephron, I had no idea did anything other than movies, though I loved those movies. Such was my professor's disgust for the one, that she actually shuddered; such was her admiration for the other, she was practically salivating. But the only difference she could make between them was that Ephron was intellectual and Bombeck she considered "common." I walked away with this firm conviction: just because something is intellectual doesn't inherently make it more worthy. (That said, I would like to read through Ephron's writings to see if I like them as much as I did Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail. Thankfully, my professor's disdain did not instill in me one of my own.)
Grad school brings up very few pleasant memories; it was an awful year. So, let's move on, shall we?
4. I have about 12 lbs of cherries coming to me this weekend. What am I going to do with so many cherries? Well, I want to make some blueberry-cherry jam, inspired by a friend of mine. I also want to can some pie filling, as I love cherry pie. I wouldn't mind just canning some cherries in a vanilla syrup for the winter, as Eliza loves cherries and it would be so much fun to share that with her this winter (pretending it will actually behave like winter and we'd need to "pop a can of summer" to enjoy...). Yes, that's a lot of canning. In 105-degree heat. Weeks before I'm due to deliver a baby. Worse case scenario, I throw them on a baking sheet in the freezer and we have frozen cherries at a fraction of the cost of buying them in the store.
4.5. Yes, I really am hoping for a real winter. I have friends who give me a very hard time about loving cold weather, and that's not really fair (though it may become truer and truer as this hot summer continues). I like seasons. I like the change. But I also now have this big picture window in my living room. It's wonderful to watch a rainy day from, and I am already daydreaming about a colorful fall (if the leaves don't all drop of from drought) and snowflakes gliding past its open views. Granted, the views are of our neglected from yard and the neighbors across the street, but still. Right now, with the current temp of 97 being "cool" for this week, a snowy winter afternoon, an cozy blanket over my lap, and a bowl of vanilla syrup-sweetened cherries reminding me of summer sounds pretty fantastic.
5. If you stop by here from time to time, you may have noticed I've changed the template. I'd been thinking about it for some time. Quite some time. But I could never seem to be come to the point. The nice thing about it is that you can change the way you view the blog: in the upper left hand corner should be a pull-down menu where you can change it to other views. I don't have enough pictures on my blog to make some of them worthwhile (like the magazine one). One of the reasons I didn't jump to change to this template. But it's there if you want it. Also, to the right is a menu that will pop-out with all of the tags, archives, etc. Because those are oh-so-helpful on my blog. Maybe my blog needs a bigger overhaul than just the way you view it. Hmmm?
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