one small corner of the universe

You know you have been away from your blog too long when your information is no longer saved in the comment area of other people’s blogs and you actually have to log in to Flickr to upload pictures. I think the original date on this post was June 19. I got as far as the title. I had planned a multi-volume series of stories and observations, and it was going to be possible to have multiple volumes because I was going to post at least 4 times a week. Right. At least this is only…what, week 4? There is still time to catch up. Except that I can’t remember the stories and observations meant to make up volume 1. Oh well.

A brief recap of the past few weeks:

• I am happy to report that my sister located a Wee Hairy Beastie at the Ikea near her house in California.
• Mia turned 6 months old. How has half a year already passed?
• My neighbor Robin was in a car accident involving a train two weeks ago. She is in intensive care in Charlotte. Unfortunately that’s all I know–she was flying to Arizona for some sort of detox/retreat and never made it to the airport, but since she is single and has no family around here, the news got back to her local friends and neighbors quite slowly. Another neighbor was planning to visit her this past weekend–I am still waiting for news from her. Please send positive thoughts Robin’s way.
• Mia had her first “vacation” at my friend Nancy’s cottage in the NC mountains. She attended her first square dance, saw her first swan, and put her feet in a real mountain stream for the first time. She also got lots of quality time with Nancy, who was one of my undergraduate professors, and who, for as long as I’ve known her, has always kept her distance from small children. But since she doesn’t have children of her own, she has sort of claimed me as her adult child and declared herself one of Mia’s many “surrogate grandmas.” Mia was out of sorts most of the weekend due to a nagging fever from her 6-month shots, so I was worried–as I said, Nancy doesn’t do little kids. But she surprised me by picking up my baby and comforting her and playing with her and rocking her. And her initiation into grandma-dom was thorough–there were lots of tears and whining and lots of snot being wiped on her shoulder, and also lots of snuggling and sleeping in her lap. She seemed to love every minute of it. Nancy’s friend Janet, who was my undergraduate advisor, came up on Saturday, and Nancy’s mother Helen (age 86), who used to teach religious studies at a small Raleigh, NC college and is still sharp and full of herself, joined us for dinner on Saturday.  A good time was had by all.
• My sister Charity visited from California for a week. She hadn’t seen Mia since her birth, and they bonded. Charity also completed the remaining square of Mia’s animal collage. (I am almost embarassed to link to the picture because it makes it very clear that I can’t use a level.) While Charity was in town, the kid and I got to spend lots of time with our family, which included a trip to the park for a very hot (but very cute) photo session to commemorate Mia’s half birthday.

• And finally, I spent several consecutive days cleaning and organizing my house. I donated so many clothes to Charity (the capitalization is intentional–before the bags ever made it to the Goodwill they were raided by both of my sisters) that I now have almost 100 empty coat hangers. Anybody need some coat hangers? All of my clothes are in MY closet, which means my kid actually has her own closet now, and there is actually empty space in it. I know it’s not perfect, but the BEFORE was so hideous, no camera ever got near it–you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is indeed a vast improvement. All the cleaning and organized was inspired by the new love of my life, my new vacuum cleaner, which is so amazing that I’d vacuum the animals with it if they’d let me. In fact, I’m going to go vacuum now.