THE NEWEST SLEW

A veritable deluge of word, image, and rain.

JUST NOW
Thunder and light-flashes encircle the sky, soaking the earth that will not be filled with garden seed this year. Millie rushes from the bedroom to breathlessly say, "The bedroom is full of light, Mom!" and when I tell her it's just the beauty of a dark spring storm, crashes and spidery flashes, she says, again breathlessly, "Then we'll have to make a fundertake, Mom! We have tomatoes AND strawberries!" If it wasn't her bedtime and if I wasn't a weary old codger, I'd take her up on the suggestion. (For an unwearied codger with good eyesight, here's the recipe. Millie and I love Patricia Polacco books. She's top-notch.)

ONWARD, ON
A move from our Buffalo's back moves close. Of the four biggest considerations-- church, family/friends, land, and job--we've got three. It is strange that a move to my old homeplace is in the works. I'd stopped entertaining even a glimmer of that possibility three years or so ago, until John, out of the blue, brought it up as the best option for our family a month ago. He, big-city lover, is the definite one, sure that a move to this wide, open-fielded place is best for children and all. I, lover of this same land, knowing its nooks and crannies, its trees and cricks, am in inside-out fashion the reticent one, cautioning, "Yes, but..."

I am wholly grateful for him. He is the most beloved beloved.

We are still in the thick of figuring out particulars both large and small, but it seems likely that the farmland I threaded through in exploration and play in the past is also in our future. It's exciting. Moves are exciting, anyway, but having our own plot of land to grow a behemoth garden and begin some halfway homesteading makes this move even more so, especially when it's bordered by my parents' land, waiting to be explored anew. Not only would this move provide us with land through the hand of my parents, but family is nearby, and a church that practices weekly communion and fully accepts our children as members of God's covenant is close enough to join. The last, most sticky part of the move (the missing three of the four) will be finding a job before we move, and then, Lord willing, a librarian position within the next few years.

Now I'm all in a scurry-flurry, trying to learn things of which I'm entirely ignorant-- summertime tents that lead to trailors and cement pads (a pad made of cement?) or homes sewn with loans before they reach you (pre-fabricated?) or loans in order to build our own house (our own!)-- things that hold so many other things inside that my ignorace seems limitless. Details held within details. So many little tasks and more I'll discover, down to asking firemen to burn entirely a half-burnt house, the shell of which my brother Luke and I used to occasionally slip into, finding miraculously whole pieces of tile in a charred fireplace filled with the cinders of the house that housed it. I'm getting sidetracked. And, believe it or not, all of this requires money! Who would've thought.

GREAT BIG BIRTHDAY WISHES
Happy birthday, Luke!

BIRDING NEWS, FOR ALL YOU BIRD WATCHERS:
SLEEP PATTERNS OF WILD WRENS
Susannah seems to have slipped into a pattern. She falls asleep between 11 and 12:30 o'clock most nights and only wakes up once during the night to snack. Then she sleeps until about 9 o'clock. Her self-created schedule would be heavenly if not for the fact that after I fall asleep at midnight or so, Millie wakes me up between 5 and 6:45 a.m. Now if only I can get them to agree on a happy medium, I'm set! Neither Millie nor Annie slept like this. They awoke bihourly forever. Susannah is first-rate, and we're definitely keeping her. (That is not meant to imply that we're not keeping the other sweet two. They're first-rate, too.)

MILLIE SPEAKS
#1. I'm elbow deep in dish suds. Millie calls to me from the living room, voice laced with concern, "Mommy, Susannah has frow-up......[long pause for deep thought]........or butter on her mouth!" And now you know why she's gained weight so swiftly. I feed her butter.

#2. John is on the phone with Scott, figuring out land-preparation costs and discovering that concrete costs its weight in gold, when I overhear Millie muttering to Annika as they crawl under the table, "We need to 'scape from Unka Scott and he doesn't like us because he's the...wicked witch...and we have to trawl to Talifornia, and it's very tool." (Sorry, Scott. She likes you lots in real life, but when it comes to imaginative play, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.)

ANNIKA ENDS IT AND A PUN FOR MY POPSY
She thinks her baby sister is so "yute." So very yute. I think living in a yurt, one of John's long-shot dreams, would make her even yuter. (Groan.)

Until next time,
THE END.