*kendraspondence*

One of my classmates, the one I suddenly discovered is actually kind of hilarious to tease, was telling me yestereve that he was going to spend his summer “finishing my novel.”

And my impulse at that moment was to pull all his hair out from his nostrils and rub his sternum with sand paper and bark in his ears THAT’S WHAT I’M SUPPOSED TO GET TO DO WITH MY SUMMER! I SAID MY SUMMER! DO YOU HEAR ME? MY NOVEL MY SUMMER MY TURRRRRRRRRRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.
But instead I just gave him a high-five, like a white girl does, meaning I kind of missed his hand.

***

I’ve been getting up at 6 a.m. to write my thesis. Meaning I’ve done it once, on Monday, and it was beautiful. The birds were twittering their motivational thesis fight song, and my head was so clear I could write a symphony with my eyes closed and I can’t wait to do it again tomorrow.

***

After I put this thesis to bed, I’m dying to work on my novel. Meaning the one in my head, about all those multi-faceted characters that I’ve been inventing throughout my life who are going to intersect in a way that is masterfully orchestrated by my brilliant machinations. I can practically read the acclaims that will cascade across the hardcover stock: “Stanton Lee writes with sensitivity and charm; her words are like nymphs alighting their scattered flight in a deep rich forest of plot…she is the Frank McCourt of her generation….”
***

But for the rest of the day, what I really want to do stock my freezer with Fla-vor-ICE and find some girlish flip flops and summer skirts online. Hang with my two favorite people and pursue literary narcissism another day.

Today was a day that I just could not seem to enjoy. I realize I don’t feel this tension very often. After all, Baby Girl has some kind of Doppler voodoo power and whenever that face spreads into a big play-dough smile, suddenly the most ominous gray sky is casting rainbows and sunbeams all around me. It is so hard to stay in a funk when she is always shooting cupid arrows everywhere and reminding me that the object of the game totally is to ring around that rosey and eventually we all fall down, see? All of us. We all fall down. But today, although a gorgeous sunny one with a yummy-smelling breeze, I felt like the only one down.

Now, one of the hot water tanks in our building did crap out last night, precluding any of us from showering. And I do so love to bathe, even with Baby Girl as an audience who likes to bath bomb me with the leftover ch-ch-chillay water from one of her bath buckets.

That wasn’t what was bringing me down, though. I was thinking about Baby Girl’s appointment at Children’s Hospital this afternoon. She was assessed with “failure to thrive” at her last doctor’s appointment, which anyone who looks at her can see that’s complete bulllllogna, she’s completely proportional and developmentally way ahead of the curve. But she’d dropped percentiles in the last few visits for her weight, so the doc referred us to Children’s so we could rule out a giant malaria-infected tapeworm or another pestilence that could be causing her weight gain to become so sluggish. So of course I was dreading it in a pouty sort of way. It just seemed like such a waste of time.

However, as we strollered our way to the waiting room of the nutrition clinic, I realized what a blessing the visit was going to be. Children’s hospitals, I had forgotten in some impossible way, are where children who are truly sick are treated. I saw so many children being wheeled through the halls, several of them who probably required constant care, and especially to feed themselves. I thought how much strength their parents must require to get through a day, how little help they may receive sometimes, and here I was complaining that I had to go to an appointment *for my child* that would be a waste of *my* time.

Nothing conclusive came out of Baby Girl’s appointment other than that she is clearly perfect and has a special penchant for taking off her shirt to assure every clinician that she has a belly, yes, this is her belly, right here, do you see it? Belly. I also know one other thing, and that is that my child was able to ride home with me from the hospital and feed herself dinner. Maybe it was a hot dog, and maybe it wasn’t the whole thing as the doctors would have liked, but right now she is sleeping in her own bed. I hope she is dreaming pleasant dreams about all the children she saw today, about their being made well, if not in this life then surely in the next, where there will be no more sickness and no more malnutrition, and maybe the slides will be made of rainbows and sunshine and play-dough. I can only hope.

***

Sometimes some of it makes it into her mouth.

You’d be blowing through the calories if you were this busy, too.

This is why we’re drinking Mystery Tea lately.

How is it already Wednesday? And mid-April? When do I get my tax refund? I only have one more month of classes? Who’s writing my thesis? Wait, I have to write it myself? What will I do after graduation? Who will hire me? Can’t I just blog for profit from home and populate the interwebz with pictures of my favorite birthday bunny and wee little bunny as a career???

C’mon, Baby Girl. The hat’s not THAT bad…

Bunny cake for my 30 y.o. Bunny

30 y.o. King for a Day reading his birthday memory book

My friend Stef is putting her condo up for sale which she did not consult me about, rendering me embittered, sulky, and tying a POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS around her building so no one will want to buy her unit and she and her adorable fam will have to be my neighbor forever.

But I’m happy for her, especially because I know she’s moving to a more junior town for all the right reasons. “We’re not saving anything living here,” she said, “And it would be so cool to be able to be saving, to be able to explore Montessori [for her daughter Mbel].”

It really would be cool. Would it be cooler than cool?

As I look around our place with the spiral staircase which Baby Girl is inevitably going to take a skate down since I myself who has mastered steps over 28 years have already skated down…As I consider the attributes of our home’s location: Close to the T, within walking distance to everything you could want, a 10 minute drive to the airport, I begin to consider all those attributes as part of our Cool Urban Life. I love the life we have cultivated here, but the priorities are shifting, sometimes rapidly, sometimes as slow but large glaciers roving over the peninsulas of my twentysomething desires.

We have no plans to move any time soon, but I feel its imminence in a way, and I’m okay with it, I have to be okay with it. I’ve got a cool girl to be providing for, and she’s worth the sacrifice of a spiral staircase.

Even if she is not a genius…

she’s a cute little Easter egg, isn’t she?