more shadows and also scenes from birthday chaos life with surprise cookie at the end

here is a letter to you, dear friends. thank for birthday wishes i am sorry i haven't replied to them yet-- if you in your busy lives have even noticed my lack of reply and lack of presence here on this blog (unlikely!). but here i am back for a brief window of breath and hello! the good news is the thing that has kept me super-busy up to today was the preparation of a teaching portfolio that is the equivalent of a first interview for a full-time teaching job i applied for at the college where i currently teach. it is exciting! also i received the news that i made it to this first tier of interviews last week! and then it was that by today i had to gather and order and contextualize those teaching portfolio materials! and i did manage to send it off today, by the skin of my teeth as per usual, after spending way too much time going through every single sheet of paper i've taught from and graded in the past 5 years. . .f***###!!!!^^@@!!!! actually, it was fun. but i am just slow at these things. i did my best. i did my best. and i was true to who i am as i completed, gathered, and wrote what ended up being a 60-plus page document. . .

on my 34th birthday i went with finn to the natural history museum and met w. & e. there, then went to lunch at delicious fairgrounds;;; and then did pleasurable errands like buying myself a star lamp i've wanted and a caterpillar/butterfly poster and an iowa native plants poster and a good speaker to play music through my computer;;;and a sleepytime cat made by a fabulous grace, and more than all this i feel rich and blessed! to be honest i was afraid this year i would be very sad on my birthday but indeed i was not:::the day in its ordinariness still had the special birthday feel.


here i am doing goddess pose as a shadow:: this is how you should think of me, how i am, at age thirty-four::::::;--;;;;::::::::::

then finn in this next shadow series runs up to me::::;



love of sun on water, sun on water, sun on water, changing things:::::

went to the kid's museum:::finn painted::::he painted a moving castle, which is the only thing he paints, talks, and thinks about:::he murmurs moving castle moving castle (no scary parts!) in his sleep (( howl's moving castle is his favorite movie))

also f & e played at the lego table, so did the mamas, because legos are the funnest:::::::

this is what my bed looked like on my birthday::::notice how new sleepytime cat loves to curl up with sleeptime owl:::::they love each other::::and we all love maira kalman, jon kabat-zinn, anne carson, h.d.& barabara guest and being uncertain as the main quality of our lives:::

the lamp i love::::

birthday room of chaos and strewn-about papers (which matches the surrounding decor of house with strewn-about toys, pee-d in pants and undies, dog pee, fleas, 55ish unread ungraded student papers, book piles, undone dishes with crust, and general pleasing hairiness with dirt salt and snow, perhaps a little more pee or snot, somewhere, and a poop cookie ((as finn said today--not trying to be gross, not even understanding really what grossness is--this was in the midst of our list of other kinds of cookies; we were making a list of cookies as we drove to home ec to get a cookie, dreaming of all the possibles: fig cookies,peanut butter, raspberry, chocolate chip, poop cookies))


and thus ends my letter to you my friends! it is refreshing to write and be back here with you! love blue

shadow-play and snowmelt creek::::::in days that the sun came out, last week. . . .

we discovered so much at hickory hill park, this day last week which was a little window into spring. everyone got excited about spring. . .and then it snowed again, you know, last couple of days. i was going to get myself some tulips, said to myself: i must have some tulips for my birthday. today, went to get myself the belated b-day tulips, and they were a sad sight at our iowa grocery store, let me tell you: browned at the edges, sickly looking. no. instead i got the red berry-like flowers, not sure what they are called. but they are surely a february flower. . .and i was, after all, born in february. as were several amazing new babies, i've heard (welcome rowan! welcome curran! so glad you've arrived safely you little february baby boys!!)::::::


also, finn discovered his shadow in a big way in the park on this day. he really wanted to know where it went to when it was gone. it was interesting to try to explain how light works, and where the sun goes, etc. quite a job, this mothering thing! also yesterday finn put his arm on my lap and said, mama, play with my arm please (usually, it's some little animal that's plopped,and mama, play with this horse, or this dinosaur, please)

the latest in his bath documentary: bath at 2 and a half!

the way we play, lately

we play with hedgehogs in this dollhouse, picked up at a garage sale when finn was a little baby. . .& lately peter and i both add little embellishments; he's been fashioning paper fireplaces, clocks, fridges; i cut out little pieces of blue felt and made quilts, pillows, a rug--

finn is into the animal imaginative play now, so into it. he still plays with his trucks and cars, but now he loads them up with animals. or else he creates characters for them as well, always starting the conversation with something like "hi! are you? I am a car! want mac-n-cheese baby?" (ordino, penguin, cow, hedgehog, etc.) yes and his "how are you" is always missing the "how". . .

affirmations, drawings, creatures [there was a woman so ecstatic her belly was clear and you could see inside it and there were babies in there]

i have found myself recently drawing lots of doodles with babies inside bellies;;; i kind of can't stop. it makes me realize how much i yearn for next baby, if ever there is to be one. not very soon--if ever there will be one--but o, not very soon.

it's okay. here we have winter going on. last night i listened to the show on "being" called "the soul in depression". . . i am going through lots of self-helpy steps towards getting out of mine. it is working! here are some of the results of some of the steps i've been going through--

blizzarded