First Day of School!

This morning we woke up to an alarm. For a long time Clare herself has been our morning wake-up service. Her techniques have varied from pouncing to simply picking up midsentence with whatever conversation we were having prior to her falling asleep. It sounds lovely but in reality, it's just as brutal as having an electronic thingy yell at you from the bedside table. Worse, actually. You can turn the electronic thingies off.

But not today, and maybe not ever again. This morning was the First Day of School and from now on, for the next thirteen years, everything will be different. Clare's not so aware of this, but I am. She's a Big Girl now, for realz, even if I still can't break the habit of calling her "baby." From now on, we have a schedule, a place to be, and a place we have to be on time. And this place will be what defines her day: shaping her conversation topics, her interests, her friendships, her moods... And who knows what-all this is going to change? It's the First Day. We'll have to wait and see.

But for now, Brent is back to work after his time off, Clare is at school, and it's me & Baby Z hanging out at home, wondering what our days will look like together as we slide into our own new groove of working-from-home and playing-with-baby. Possibly on Wednesdays we might go put in some office hours at NBTS together--but not today. Today is for contemplating the First Days of School and enjoying the sound of the rain. And doing some laundry. :)

happier things

So, because lately this blog has been such a downer...

Baby #2 is due sometime mid-to-late April. Official due date at the moment, April 21. (Naturally, this falls right in the middle of Holy Week. Not the best timing for a priest, but I keep reminding Brent, Clare was 15 days post-date, so I'm decently sure baby #2, officially designated "Tinkerbell" by guess-who while in utero, will stay put till after Easter...but, of course, no guarantees.)

That puts me about 10-11 weeks along at this point, our first appointment at Avalon Midwifery went nicely, although since Tinkerbell is still snugged under my pelvic bone we couldn't hear the heartbeat. Mostly what we heard was my stomach growling...

I find myself hoping Tink's another girl, but of course it'll be awhile before we know. As a fem-cyborg-mama I am a judicious technophile--not all technological doo-dads associated with pregnancy/birth are actually beneficial--but the 20-week-ultrasound is IMO the awesomest!

in the meantime

It's old news now, but I never got around to blogging it:

Clare's potty-trained.

It was easier to potty-train the cat, frankly. I mean, show kitty where the litterbox is, and done. No worries. Not so with the humans.

But anyhow, before Clare and Brent left for TX, I decided to just unilaterally usher in the grand new era of big-girl pottying. Took Clare shopping, bought a dozen or so panties (in our house, "pannies," and Clare will correct you) of Clare's choice (Elmo, Dora and Little Mermaid) and put her in them and just dealt with the, uh, fallout.

About three days later and several pee-puddles and poopy pants later, she was as reliable as I am, and went off to Texas where other people reinforced the new regime on my behalf for three weeks.

Done!

in the hometown

First, it wasn't till I went back to middle TN that I realized this is our sixth year in NJ. That seems like a long time. We didn't, like some folks, celebrate our New-York-aversary, or whatever the NJ equivalent might be, because, well, NJ isn't NYC after all. (I do love the Garden State and all, but...) Anyhow, going back produced, like always, those feelings of simultaneous belonging and strangeness. That's not sad; it just is. And that weird limbo is familiar space to me in so many ways anyhow that it ceases to be weird, and is just...life. And, you know, I enjoy it.

Second, there will be some kind of major blog post soon, on some of the incredible moments from the CSC. And possibly some follow-ups of an anecdotal sort, taking my cue from the format of the Friday morning panel session on women's experiences within the Churches of Christ. I wish I had taken notes--but it was impossible to even think about it--the whole thing was too riveting for such a distraction.

Third and most important, if you don't know what's happening in Honduras, get thee to a TV or NPR or whatever you use for news these days and find out. Then get yourself on twitter, and follow @missionlazarus to get my bro-in-law's updates. And then pull out your prayer hankies, your prayer rug, your prayer bench, or whatever it is you use, and start haranguing the Almighty to keep Jarrod, his dad, and all those children at the Refuge safe, or perhaps just to come down and start enforcing that will-done-on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven bit. Yes, harangue. No pretty pleases or polite petitioning. Start yelling--God can handle it, and this is important.

why Facebook is awesome (and you can win a Spa Day)

Facebook is awesome, and even more awesome now that both my parental units are on it. (Maybe my dad will be a more faithful Scrabble partner than Mom? I can only hope.) But in case you're still not convinced, (Joe Hays), here's another reason to love Facebook: it will tell you things about people you've known all your life that you didn't know before (perhaps in an itemized list of 25).

And it lets you participate in people's lives in ways you might not, without it.

Until this morning, I didn't know this was happening. I rarely get to see these cousins 'o mine any longer (a shame!!!) but I have fond memories of spending some formative growing-up years on Archer Ave watching Rob on skateboard and saggy homemade ramp made of discarded plywood from the heap in our adjoining backyard with the Beastie Boys blasting loudly from the boombox. Rob was just older than me enough to be untouchably cool. Now, of course, we're all grown up, with spouses and kids and jobs. The kind of life that often gets all-consuming even while it is very contented, or perhaps because it so very contented. Except--like others I know--my cousin and his family aren't content to be consumed with themselves. Instead, they are full of the unbounded love that spills out over family walls, washing over the whole rest of the world. I love it that I am connected--however virtually--to people like this. And I love it that I can--however slightly--help make something this important and life-changing happen.

And you can too.

Brent's great-grandmother, Zada Belle Gravette, died this afternoon. Above is the picture we took during our visit this past Christmas--our five-generation picture. I like this one the best of the bunch because you can Nanny's smile. I always thought she had one of the best smiles ever. She smiled a lot, too, and it was always a kind of gift.

I didn't know her well, and only got to know her towards the end of her very extraordinary life. But I liked her a lot. I think it was impossible not to.

Podkayne and Providence

Hold it! Stop the machines! Wipe the tapes! Cancel all bulletins--

WE ARE GOING TO NYC AFTER ALL!!!!

That, of course, is Podkayne again...and I am reduced to that same quite ridiculous level of adolescent emotion after the crazy ride that's finally come to a halt...and (praise God!) at NYC!

Were I even faintly and half-heartedly Calvinist this post would be about how this journey is about teaching to trust in God's Providence and whatnot. But I'm not. Not in the least, in fact. And so while I am profoundly thankful my gratitude is directed first toward those people who played their parts in making this miraculous turnaround happen. I would name them but I have a sad sense that such a symbolic gesture is quite empty; moreover, it may be something less than true thanks to associate unwitting people with this humble and occasionally blasphemous and heretical blog.

But here's how it happened. Even with the generous financial aid from Brent's home parish, diocese, and GTS, and my own scholarship from CSF, we still spent days and days trying to figure out a way for this to be enough, since living in NYC is so expensive. As part of that effort, Brent consulted a friend from church familiar with our situation and expert in financial matters, who looked over our prospective NYC budget and pronounced it woefully deficient in a few areas (for example, we decided to save money by not having any life insurance, which now that Clare's around, is more of a necessity than it used to be). And after it seemed like NYC was more out of reach than ever, this friend intervened on our behalf--the result being, we now have enough $$, even to amend our stripped-down budget into something more realistic.

What this means is, people who know Brent and people who don't know Brent all came together in order to help us out by doing extraordinary things on our behalf. The fact that these extraordinary things involve monetary gifts makes it all the more extraordinary in my opinion--this is America, and money is the bottom line: when people are generous with money, that's as generous as it gets in this culture.

Now, is this God's providence at work? I was joking with Brent (after the fact when it became possible to have a sense of humor again) that were we Calvinists our faith in Providence would have been sorely abused given the incredible reversals we've experienced over the past month. If, at every step of that ridiculous roller coaster, we had comforted ourselves with the belief, "well, if X is where God wants us to be, it will work out...so clearly X is where God wants us" then the whole thing would just be such a cruel joke: God's will is NYC--no, DC--no, NYC--no, DC--no, NYC! It's so obvious that in situations like this--which are the only situations in which this doctrine becomes really important to people--that "God's will" is completely equivalent to however it is that things work themselves out. Calling it God's will is just a way of telling yourself, it'll be okay.

So, why not just tell yourself, "it'll be okay?" I did, every day; and I really believed it.

I don't mean to say that I was completely sanguine and cheerfully indifferent to how things worked out. No, not in the least. I desperately wanted us to move to NYC. Mainly, I wanted to be near my church: I want to be able to be involved more, help out more, be able to just hang out more, with these people who really are a family. I also wanted to be close enough to PTS that if I need to I can take a train and meet with profs who might otherwise conclude (reasonably) that I've fallen off the face of the earth. I want Brent to be where he wants to be and enjoy this year of Anglican Studies as much as he can. I want to live in a place that--despite being only an hour and a half from, and making weekly trips to for years now--I barely have gotten a glimpse of. I really, really wanted it. And now that I've gotten what I wanted, do I get to call that God's Providence for me? Does God's Providence=providing what I really, really want? Would a move to DC instead mean that God decided not to Provide this time around? Would I have to be mad at God for a year, and hope God performs a little better on the next test when we move again?

So while I'll happily call it providential that we're moving to NYC and Brent will be at GTS, I don't mean that God wanted us in NYC. I wanted us in NYC. God's providence for us is not located in NYC; God's providence in our crazy ride is located in the incredible way half a dozen people (or more!) came together to do their very best--which was very, very good indeed--to make possible what they discerned would be best for Brent and for me and for Clare. That's God working in the world in the only visible way I ever see it. And if it were the case that those same people had done the exact same things and yet we still couldn't move to NYC, it would still be God's providence: people acting selflessly to provide for us because they believe it is what God would want them to do.

a sudden reversal of fortune

Oh, Unspeakables! Dirty ears! Hangnails! Snel-frockey! Spit! WE AREN'T GOING!

So fumed Podkayne of Mars, in the lovely sort of creative euphemism so often employed by RAH in his YA novels from the 1950-60's. Because, of course, nice little girls and boys don't swear. Not that this blog suffers from that kind of senseless taboo, but I can never resist a literary allusion.

Well, it seems that through a dreadful misunderstanding--akin in kind and disruptiveness to the clerical error which begat Podkayne's fury, though it does not involve the accidental decanting of frozen embryos--we may not be moving to NYC after all. It is of course ultimately a matter of money. Unfortunately, imaginary money doesn't have the same cash value in the real world as real money does, so finding out that a big chunk of one's financial aid ought to have an italicized i written next to the $$ amount is really a staggering discovery. I'm at a loss to explain how it is that funding offered as if it were really there, only not, is actually financial "aid."

[Disclaimer: the above is my ranting, not Brent's. He's a lot nicer person than I am in almost every respect.]

Unless thousands of dollars suddenly drop from the sky, NYC is out of reach. There's a limit to how amazingly miserly even I can be with a weekly grocery list.

So it seems we are once again in Limbo. GTS does seem to really want Brent, and we are now waiting to see what else they might could do. I'm not holding my breath, frankly, but there's nothing to do but wait and see.

Limbo sucked the first time around. A second helping is ever more dreary. Ambiguity tolerance! is my battle cry. (Spoken from the diaphragm like any true superhero.)

here we come!