curious.

who’s still loitering around this abandoned lot of a blog?

and if you’re still here, what are you hoping to find?

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oh hi.

hello there, everybody.

thank you for all of the gentle admonitions to write a fucking post already. the last thing you knew was that i got married in boston. then silence. sorry about that. here’s a little of what you missed:

we had a lovely time with our friends in boston–a post in itself, which will hopefully be written before our first anniversary.

then we flew home. the kids did great. i only got peed on once.

the following weekend, ziggy got sick. a virus, we thought, probably picked up somewhere in our travels. fever 103. not a big deal, we thought. babies always have high fevers. that saturday night, however, i was awake with him in the middle of the night. he wouldn’t stop shuddering and moaning. i took his temperature at 4am: 105.6!! at that point, we rushed him to the children’s hospital, where he was catheterized, xrayed, and generally messed with. he didn’t cry or squirm for any of it.

tests all came back normal. we found out that we were under-dosing him with children’s ibuprofen. oy. his fever finally came down to an acceptable 101. we were discharged. the next day, he broke out in a telltale rash. it was roseola, all along.

…zig is fine now, btw.

upon my return to work, i received this “yay! you’re married!” cake:

the following weekend, we made the heartrending decision to have lucy, the matriarch dog of our fambly, put to sleep. she was 14. over the last several months, her back legs had become severely weakened, which made it difficult for her to escape children, she was increasingly incontinent, she had to be carried up the stairs, etc. forgive the cliche, but it was simply her time.

there really are no words to describe this loss, though. h had had lucy since 1997. lucy was a constant in the story of our love. she bore witness to it all. she held vigil under our bed for the birth of our children. our home is not the same.

this is the first death that jude has understood on a deeper level. we tried to discuss it from a “doggy heaven” perspective, but that was confusing to her. she thought that lucy had gone to a new family, like charley.

and so we shifted gears. we laid it bare: lucy died. died means she is not alive anymore. not alive anymore means she stopped breathing, stopped moving. her body doesn’t work anymore. but we talked about spirit: spirit is how you feel, what makes you happy, what love feels like. and you don’t need a body for that. and that’s the part of lucy that didn’t die, that will never die.

so go the conversations with our deep-feeling daughter. she asks why and why and why and why until she moves on to something else. it is exhausting, but it is important.

meanwhile, our son is 11 months old now. wtf. when i contemplate this too deeply, i cry. because i am so fucking busy. i work such long hours these days, and have to be more intentional and protective of the time with my kids than ever. (hello, neglected blog: don’t take it personally.) and still, my son has succeeded in becoming less of a baby every day. some nights, there is a part of me that is pretty sure the 4 month old ziggy–the one i left when i went back to work–is still around somewhere, hiding. and when i realize he isn’t, i weep.

there isn’t much time for weeping, however. my burgeoning boy is too fast, too into everything, for me to rest on my laurels and grieve.

and so that, my friends, is what you’ve missed this month.
i do hope i can write again soon.

x

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