the summer of my (almost) content

Hello dear sisters.

It is August 10th and I have a rare day at home because I’ve been afflicted with a summer cold. Miriam is at her grandparents’ for the week, Eve is at daycare, and instead of being at work, here I am in my pajamas on the couch, blowing my nose and coughing. It’s strange to be sick in the summer–really, it shouldn’t be allowed–but at least I have some down time to write to you all, finally.

We are in the last few weeks of summer already, how did that happen? Of course it goes by too fast every year. Summer is a tough time of year for me. I’m still adjusting to working right through it without a break. Having been raised by two college professors gave me the skewed idea that summer means months of free time! For some, it does. For most of the parents I know, it doesn’t. Homer Simpson summed it up so perfectly:

Important Finals Week Post

Hi, sisters,

I thought that today, with  finals, papers, and qualifying exams racing toward me,  I’d do my part as a typical grad student with a paper due in five hours and give you some cat pictures with dumb captions.  Cat pictures are definitely not the majority of the pictures on my phone. Definitely not.

Get outta my face.

Throwback Thursday: Stories from Childhood

Dear sisters,

I’m trying something new for Throwback Thursday. As I get ready to have a baby in 6-8 weeks (WHAT?!?!) Kevin and I find ourselves thinking about random aspects of parenting: for example, the other day Kevin couldn’t fathom what we’re going to do when our kid has to go to birthday parties/have birthday parties, and I keep thinking about the moments when our kid will want to hear stories from my childhood. I’m not particularly good at coming up with engaging stories off the top of my head. Combine that with my inability to remember more than little flashes of memories from childhood and I knew I would answer him, “Oh, I can’t really remember.” But the stories we heard about Dad and Mom growing up (mostly from their siblings/Grandma Buckwalter) are some of my favorites: Dad falling off the tractor/hay baler and getting run over was an entrancing story (that I frequently embellished in my imagination), Mom exploring the city of Belmont all by herself and playing in the waterfalls (I generally imagined Mom as Ramona from Beverly Cleary’s book Ramona and Beezus, spunky and mischievous). It’s an important thing to be able to create a history for your parents, to hear what they were like as kids and what their families were like, even if, through the telling, it becomes a mixture of fact and fiction.