Another sixteen.

1. I have not one pinguecula, but two. In my eyes. The first one, in my left eye, has been there for years and years and years. I like the word, and have grown accustomed to the look of it, too.

2. During pregnancy with my son, my body became a repository for skin tags. My best friend attributes it to the Scotch-Irish part of my heritage, and that may be true. The dermatologist I saw to cut off the mole on my neck that was getting mangled by the seatbelt (ewww) was horrified I wouldn't pay out of pocket for him to cut all the tags off. I can't afford that kind of vanity anymore.

3. I long. And yearn. For things I can't always rightly name. Qualities or experiences. Not purchasable goods.

4. I think of myself as a very crafty girl. But I'm not so crafty at all. My very crafty friends help me see this. I can't even knit, for goodness sake. Despite Sue having taught me.

5. I grow impatient and weary of practice and hard work toward some things. Evidenced by my inability to knit as per above.

6. I can change. Oh, yes, I can.

7. I was a smoker. A really smokey smoker. So much so that my dearest friends just thought I'd made peace with being both spiritual and smokerish.

8. I quit smoking many many many times. Sometimes for years at a time. I quit for good as my husband's wedding present. It did take me two months beyond our wedding to really quit.

9. I used to have a different husband. That seems to me most days, nearly impossible. But it remains a truth from what feels like another life.

10. I have more than one dead old boyfriend. I miss them when I think of them, which isn't terribly often anymore. I thought I'd marry one, and thought I'd love the other forever. Turns out I was half right. But love isn't telling the whole story.

11.Whole stories are big. And unwieldy. I carry them around and don't really get them out to look at and share all that often. It is not out of shame.

12. I am a better mother than I am a wife.

13. I am often on the way to being the woman I always thought I could be. But I stumble.

14. I both cry and laugh often.

15. When I was eight years old, I was quite certain that I'd seen the Star of Bethlehem shining over me on St. Beatrice Court.

16. My son wants to know if I was ever Jesus, and where was he when I was in Bethlehem. I find this to be a difficult question to answer fully.

Is it meme because it's all about me-me-me-me.... ?

Another FB meme. Participate if you like!

Yes. I am aware that there are two number elevens. What the heck!


1. My husband and I had the best honeymoon ever. Seriously. An old van, a cooler full of wedding party leftovers (like Michele's carrot cake and Texas Caviar and hot chicken), a trash bag full of carved pumpkins to launch into the Universe with a prayer and a vow each night of camping, a whole lotta love and many many many miles along highways and byways. We encountered an Autumnal heat wave, cool crisp air in the Smokies, extreme fog on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a wire downing ice storm in Pennsylvania, snow at Niagra Falls. We quested to find Punxatawney Phil (he lives in the public library) and I made a song about it. We saw an Amish man buying a Yoo-hoo at a 7 11 and have laughed about it for years. We saw a camp site overrun with rabbits of every color and size, ate lots of chicken, slept in the van all crumped up under Mexican blankets with an air mattress beneath us, and had crappy coffee pilfered from the lodge at the Peaks of Otter. I loved every wonderful minute of that experience and cleave to the memory of that kind of love and enthusiasm when things are hard, as they inevitably are in any marriage now and again.

2. I knew my husband for quite awhile before I fell in love with him.

3. The first time he kissed me, he smelled like bonfire and home. A magnolia blossom burst out of my chest. I closed the door on him and nearly fainted.

4. I always wanted to be a mother. Becoming one has been even better than I could ever have dreamed.

5. If I had it to do over, I'd have started my family earlier. And I'd have had a passel of kids.

6. I still dream of living on a farm. I want chickens, guinea foul, peacocks and fainting goats and gardens and a bunch of foster kids.

7. I am still trying to find the spiritual path that fits. There is no question that this is central to my life. I appreciate that even though my husband doesn't share this in full, he supports it. I am drawn to expressions of God in nature, tradition, community. Sometimes in formal church settings, often not. Lately, my family and I have been attending Belmont United Methodist Church. My husband and I both grew up in the UMC; in the years since having left my parents' house, I have also attended Unity churches, Unitarian Universalist churches and Friends Meeting with some regularity. (There were also several months in Seattle during a difficult divorce that I attended an evening Celtic Eucharist weekly.) I am still, however, nominally a member of First United Methodist Church in Oak Ridge. Finding the answer isn't nearly as important to me as making the journey and being open to the conversation.

8. I don't think I've become who I'm meant to be. Yet. I have a lot before me....

9. I'd love to have another child. But I'm getting older, and my husband doesn't share this wish. And times are a bit trying.

10. I have always loved odd numbers.

11. My favorite number is 9, divisible by 3, 3 times.

11. My favorite time on a digital clock is 3:33.

12. That there are 3 people in our family is a lovely thing.

13. If we are to have one and only one, our boy is exactly the perfectly right one.

14. I can not believe how much I love him, and how much he takes my breath away. I tear up even typing this. I know his father feels precisely the same way.

15. I do cry fairly easily. But honestly.

16. I sincerely wish my son could have known my grandmothers, Gertrude & Zona.

17. His middle name, Temple, was my paternal grandfather's first name (after Sam Houston's son, of course) and it was also my father's sister's name. This part of his name pays homage to my Deep East Texas heritage.

18. When I was born, in Rochester NY, it was the middle of a blizzard. Gertrude came to town to help my mother with her first baby. I went home from Rochester General to the apartment my folks had in town and photographs from that time show them looking so young and gangly and happily surprised. They are both from Panola County in East Texas and were in a land far from home, doing something at that time unknown to their experience. It must have been frightening and exciting. All the same, at my father's hand, my feet first touched ground on East Texas soil. I know of two other Texan families who've done something similar.

19. I have lived in Rochester, NY; Albuquerque, NM; Damascus, MD; Danville, CA; Oak Ridge, TN; Chattanooga, TN; Chicago; South Pittsburg, TN; Mercer Island, WA and Nashville, TN. I also include Panola County, TX as I spent my childhood summers there where my mother helped run her parents' country grocery and Sinclair gasoline station.

20. I have traveled to most every state in this United States, and also Mexico, Canada, England, and Scotland. I need to get to Nebraska. And Utah, I think. (oh, also Alaska.) I'd also like to spend time in India. And Thailand. And pretty much everywhere.

21. I went to public school all the way through: three elementary schools (four if you count summer school musical theatre and journalism), one junior high, and two high schools.

22. I am FaceBook friends with almost all my ex boyfriends that are not deceased. I don't have as many of them as some. I think I have stayed on good terms with most, though I've never made it habit to be in touch in a heavy way.

23. I have always been fortunate to have really dear friends who I love so much. I have also lost some of those friends through old hurts and missteps. Where possible, I try to repair those. I am not always successful.

24. My husband still makes me laugh more than almost anyone. Lately, our "date nights" are getting up from our family bed once the boy is snoring and curling up on the couch to talk and watch borrowed episodes of Deadwood. We crack each other up with our creative use of foul language as used in the show. He rubs my feet. I kiss him as often as he lets me.

25. I try to do something that scares me each day, and to live by the Golden Rule and the twelve steps, and to practice radical hospitality. I just think they are good ways to live for pretty much everyone. I fail often. But I try try try. Again, and again. I think it's worth it.

Big Boy Time.

Ziggy and I went to the community center to play today -- he rode bikes and scooters, played hide and seek with friends, climbed the playground structure outside, and we did group bowling and ladder ball in the gym. It was the first time he'd been able to play with kids in a week since he got sick AGAIN with a nasty viral bug, and then the super gross bacterial conjunctivitis. He was thrilled.

We got home. I made lunch. He wanted to eat it alone in his room while listening to music (They Might Be Giants Sing the ABCs), to have, "big boy time." I brought him some yogurt and he told me, while crouching down to point at the floor "The carpet you bought me will get too dirty with yogurt in here." I agreed and departed with it, and gave him his turkey and cheese sandwich instead. He brought three quarters of uneaten sandwich back to me and said he was done, but that he still wanted to listen to music before having his nap. I told him he could have a few more minutes, but noted that his lids were heavy and he was running out of steam.

A few minutes ago, I went to his room and found him like this on his toybox. (Mine and my siblings' when we were children!) Underneath him was his thermos and his nightlight star turtle. The music was still going....

I couldn't help but take these snaps, then took off his shoes and tucked him into bed.

Can you believe how LONG he is? He just seems GIGANTIC to me sometimes. And I'm just bowled over, again and again, by the incredible love I feel for him, and how delighted I am that this amazing soul has come to live with us to teach us so much and to let us learn how to love and be loved better and he just blows me away.

And then I think about how other parents feel this way. And it astounds me -- the power of that.

Questioningly.

This is a little something from a Facebook meme. I don't know about how one tags other bloggers, but if you're reading this and you're a blogger, maybe you could tell me how? And maybe you would consider yourself tagged?


1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Paige was the name of the heroine in a movie called Parrish. I believe my mother saw it when she was pregnant with me. Somehow I think it may have also been a book.My birth middle name (Michele) is, of course, thanks to the Beatles. It was 1967, afterall.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? A few tears yesterday, and weeping two days ago after the mail came. But real crying? Sometime last week. Secreted away from my child. The crescendo in hurt, disappointment and garden variety tension.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Sometimes.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Turkey.

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? No. I have kid. Singular.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Yes, I would. I think I'm funny, loyal and make other people feel better about their own humanity because mine is so very evident. But maybe not the latter one so much, because my passion and outspokeness are sometimes mistaken for haughtiness much in the same way that shyness can be mistaken for unfriendliness and arrogance.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM? Rarely. Only when really being mean (to my husband or siblings or parents) which shames me terribly. Or when being very silly and obvious in my sarcasm.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? I am way past a yes answer on that one. Today's choices are far more risk averse than yesteryear's.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Oatmeal if everyday. If I'm going wacky, then I'd have to say Golden Grahams or those Peanut Butter Panda Crunch things or something. Cheerios and raisin bran are good, too. Oh! And granola.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Generally not. Most of my shoes are not lace closures.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Jenny Piper's Some Like It Hot or The Professor or Brach's Yes We Candy. Or Breyer's chocolate. Or Ben & Jerry's Super Fudge Chunk or Chunky Monkey, neither of which I've had in years.... Blue Moon when in Michigan.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Their demeanor -- aura, vibe, body language. Eyes and eye contact.

15. RED OR PINK? Both!

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? Lack of softness or give in some situations, which comes across as strident, judgemental, impatient and harsh. Oh, I really don't like that about me.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My grandmothers. And my Aunt Temple Mae. My Aunt Sarah. My grandfathers. And friends with whom I've parted as yet unbridged ways -- you know who you are.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST? Yes!

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Charcoal Grey leggings and brown and black mocs.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? A backyard full of birds, my child's prattle, an airplane flying over the house and the low hum of my computer.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Brown? Or purple.

23. FAVORITE SMELLS? Newborn baby scent. Freshly brewed coffee. Burt's Bees baby wash. Lava soaped husband. My son's breath.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My husband.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Yes, I do!

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? World Series baseball. Soccer in person when kids are playing. Football and basketball when it is particularly exciting and dramatic.

27. HAIR COLOR? A good solid medium brown with streaks of grey in front. I'm liking the grey. A LOT.

28. EYE COLOR? green-grey.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No.

30 FAVORITE FOOD? A sandwich. The kind you have to pull over for. Or hot chicken.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? The latter.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Enchanted.

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Black.

34. SUMMER OR WINTER? Each has its own pleasantness. I enjoy the ritual of change.

35. HUGS OR KISSES? Both.

36. FAVORITE DESSERT? Ice cream.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Jolie and Will.

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? Angel, Sara and Gaye (though I wish they would)

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? The Spirited Child.

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? A feminist icon "swearing" on a book that "Smart women back up their words" -- my friend Leslie (who I see far too little) gave me.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT? Weather.

42. FAVORITE SOUND(S) My child's voice. Speaking, singing, laughing. My husband talking to me or reading to me, or from my radio speakers.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Scotland, I think.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? Writing, singing, community organizing. I'm an expert on Pippi Longstocking, hot chicken, parental activism and can speak in public and sit on panels. I also give good phone, massage, know my way around a kitchen, can bark like a seal and turn a cartwheel.

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Rochester, NY.

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK? Those aforementioned. Plus everyone else!

48. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER? I called him up on the phone to ask him to send me a record he'd put out. I was a music writer. He'd never heard of me and wasn't very nice to me.

Thankful Thursday.

Today I am thankful for:

-- Writing. Not just the ability to do it, but actually following through because I have that *need* to get things down and make things with words.

-- A productive and relatively easy (when it could have been hard) conversation with My Beloved Mister earlier in the week, one late night.

-- Said mister getting enough sleep last night and finding himself content and talkative this morning.

-- Ziggy's improving health after weeks (nee, months) of one.blessed.illness.after.another.

-- Ziggy's growing bravery when it comes to the eye drops to treat the super nasty gross bacterial conjuntivitis.

-- A pediatric practice we not only like, but a primary pediatrician that Ziggy tells, "I love you" to. And who says it back.

-- The stunning and humbling generosity of anonymous friends who blew my mind with mail this week.

-- My parents and their continued interest in my and my family's well being.

-- My dear in laws who come through for things like taping the inauguration for their son, sending sweet & thoughtful packages for their grandson (sometimes laced with Perrigo outlet goodies for the household), and regular phone calls.

-- A really really good dog.

-- Finding more of the late harvest tomatoes I diced and froze at the bottom of the deep freeze when I thought we were out!

-- Finding the time to really talk with Mama Loca by telephone, not once, but twice this week, even though our slumber party and Tennessee Aquarium visit was canceled due to each of us having sick children.

-- Deadwood episodes.

-- The opportunity to contribute to our household income with a Barefoot Books commission check and some childcare hours.

It comes, and it goes.

I seem to forget about this blog, but still have the need to do something with it. I think I've fallen out of the habit.

If you'll forgive me (or even care, as perhaps no one reads and this is an exercise in futility save for my own need to write things), I think I'll be going for lists. This type of exercise works well for me, creates order of chaos where it concerns my fractured thinking, lines it all up so I can kick ass, or some approximation thereof.

I'll be stealing from Shauna (who may have stolen from someone else) and will try out Thankful Thursdays. And I'll likely post some meme things from Facebook, because I did them when beckoned and they are representative, and perhaps even a little interesting.

This blog, after all, since its beginning, has been a chronicle. For me and mine and those who care to follow. Or not.

Sixteen.

1. Misa tagged me for this exercise; years ago, I met her online through a forum about music, and then took a road trip with her (and a couple other friends from the same forum) from one midwestern city to another.

2. I sing fairly well. (I'm not really a flashy kind of soloist though, as I get unnerved; though I did sing plenty of musical theatre solos and such. I just enjoy it, and sound pretty good. I love harmony and choral singing.)

3. When I stayed with my musician brother on a long long road trip during which I toured the country in a big U, I was too anxious and shy to make recordings with him. Sad about that.

4. This same brother and I dream of making children's music and doing a family band tour.

5. I play a mean slinky. Seriously.

6. I adore musical theatre, and did a boatload of it growing up and then in college.

7. College was way fun, and I made some of my dearest lifetime friends, but the experience of studying theatre and being so sensitive sort of deflated and took the joy of actually *doing* theatre and music to a low level. (Sensitivity is a rash over simplification of a whole slew of stuff. The bottom line is that the love and joy and passion I had for something kind of died out.) I hope the bobber floats up some day.

8. I go through phases of loving and not so much caring about music in a very conscious way.

9. I met my husband because of the first Paul Burch record, which he put out on Checkered Past in Chicago.

10. Misa lived in Chicago when I first met her.

11. And I lived there in he early 90s along with several of the folks I went to college with.

12. I saw my first and only Grateful Dead show at Soldier Field -- I got miracled, and had a blast.

13. My son, at 3, is nearly as fond of Working Man's Dead as I am.

14. He, my son, is snuggled up in my lap on this cold cold morning out on the sunporch as I type this.

15. He will be taller than his tall father, perhaps as tall as my father, raised on plenty of sleep, exercise, and good food that tastes like love.

3. I make a wickedly good pot of chicken and dumplings; my husband says they are his favorite food in the world and are the literal glue to our marriage.

Lipstick.

P1030592, originally uploaded by paigelabab.

All boy.

P1030585, originally uploaded by paigelabab.

My little boy....

is so loving and yummy.

often, he tells me through the day, "Mama?" And when I say, "Yes?" he tells me, "I love you."

Also, most days, he takes my face in his two sweet hands and kisses me smack on the lips and says, "Mama, I love you. I think I'll keep you forever and ever."

Today, after the face holding and the kissing, it was, "Mama, I have enough love to keep you."

And I told him the same, snuggled him up as he said, "Fanks," and drifted off to sleep for his nap.


This same high spirited kid also hits me when he's frustrated, and picks up the cats, kicks the dog and throws stuff just because it's a fun rush. Oh, he is a delicious wonder. My heart just expands more than I ever knew it could.

Excerpted goals & resolutions for 2009.

-our household theme as a whole is stewardship in all things and in all contexts

-J.O.B. that pays for the mama. Needing that again.

* fully fund the emergency fund
*create and sustain a livable budget

-floss each day

-open and sort mail daily

-drink less coffee

-laugh more

-deepen and maintain friendships

-deepen and maintain spiritual path

-break out my sewing machine

-knit!

-declutter the house and get it to base level

-in general be more patient

-be kinder to my husband, son and other family members

-delve back into therapy

-read more

-write more (depending on your perspective, this is where you blog readers benefit. or not. I'm back after a long non-pregnant pause....)

-talk less, listen more

-complete RIP w/ the boy

-put in the garden earlier this year

-see my parents monthly

-get childcare co-op up and running

-make monthly dates with my husband a priority

-do more cool things with my family like take hikes and see the migrating cranes -- this happens when I put it on the calendar and plan ahead!!

-provide a better, more consistent framework for the boy's early education and socializing
(this may be an emerging challenge w/ paying J.O.B. again)

-begin the long haul to get fit again -- I'd like to be fifty pounds lighter by end of 2009