Invincible Summer

Having a baby is not unlike accidentally slipping into a science fiction universe, everything you know is so completely upended. I wrote an essay about how my sense of time shifted out from under me in the first months of my daughter's life. 



Excerpts in italics are from the essay The Beginning Of Time, by Stephen W. Hawking

1.
The time scale of the universe is very long compared to that for human life. It was therefore not surprising that until recently, the universe was thought to be essentially static and unchanging in time.

The Longest Shortest Time is the name of a podcast on parenting that I heard about several years before becoming a parent and filed away mentally. “The days are long but the years are short” is another phrase used to both comfort and cajole new parents. The implication is that parenting shifts your experience of time, as if life simply advancing in years wasn’t enough to do the same. One hour of an infant screaming inconsolably after her two month immunizatio…

...it just happened. Life happened. A lot of it.


I revised and revised and revised and then finally finished my novel, and am looking for a home for it.I did a lot of trail running, neither fast nor fancy, but it makes me happy.I read many good books, not all of which are still intact in my memory.I left my job.I am grateful to have my flash fiction, The Lost Howling, included in The Fictional Cafe's first anthology, The Strong Stuff. It's wildly affirming to see my writing in print after such a long hiatus. Oh, and I had a child. A really jolly little sleep thief of a child. 

I've missed my little blog. I have a few things I want to share so I plan to return to it as much as I am able between the infinite tedium of preparing itty bitty tiny meals for an eight month old and getting her to and from the world of naps.

It's been waaaaaay too long since I posted a Quarterly Reading Report. I'm about to amend that situation. I have lucked on some pretty spectacular reading in 2018 so far--some recent publications but most not--and I'd be a bad friend if I didn't share these titles with you.

In the excellent crime detective/thriller department, we have Yrsa Sigurðardóttir's THE SILENCE OF THE SEA, which I've already posted about. It was the perfect book for atmospheric Iceland. I also loved Tana French's THE TRESPASSER. Set in Dublin, Ireland (I think 80% of what I love best about a crime detective/thriller is that it is placed in an incredibly interesting setting), the protagonist is a difficult (and therefore interesting) woman in a man's world working the hardest case of her life. The writing is super in this engrossing page-turner.

I got to fill in some sad gaps in my consumption of books written in the 80s and 90s and early Oughts. Also a thriller, Peter Hoeg's …

The exciting (or at least the inevitable) conclusion of Part One and Part Two of Icelandic awesomeness....


Day Six: Ekra Cottage/ Lagarfljótsvirkjun to Höfn
This day was all about epic scenery. Kilometer after kilometer of stunning beauty. The ever-shifting sweeping views afforded us herds of wild reindeer, giant snowy fjords, a mossy valley, snow blowing across the road like dry ice, lava rock, waterfalls. It was a total feast.













Our halfway point was Djúpivogur which houses a collection of giant roadside marble eggs, each one fashioned after a particular type of bird's egg.



We arrived in Höfn and checked out the harbor and the free museum (a welcome respite from the windy harbor) before checking into our guesthouse. Which we had all to ourselves. We made one last meal of fusilli and bell pepper (fusilli meal #4 for the trip for those keeping track - I'll be taking a good long break from fusilli now) and read. I found a left-behind copy of The Silence of the Sea by Yrsa Sigurðar…

I'll wrap up my last post about my tripsoon, but in the meantime I want to share some of the fabulous street art of Reykjavík that my brain feasted on during my 24 hours there. These murals inspire. 












Hope you enjoyed! And a special shout out to all those in this world who are building beauty in it through your street art: you make a real impact and I hope you keep doing what you're doing.

The adventure continues...
Day Four: Akureyri to Ekra Cottage/ Lagarfljótsvirkjun (via Myvatn Nature Baths)
We began the morning in "old town" Akureyri, which turns out is not that old. And as none of the museums were open (what with being the dead of winter and anytime before 1pm), and all the hustle and bustle of civilization after our night on Grimsey was making me twitchy, we resumed our journey into wide open, unpopulated spaces.
Images from Akureyri:



Our four/five-ish hour drive to that night's accommodations was happily bifurcated with a stop at the Myvatn Nature Baths. They were running a funny special: Dan got in for half-off just for being a man. I found out many days later that it was Husband's day (Wife's day is in February), which slightly abated my irked feminism...slightly. This lovely spot is significantly less crowded than the Blue Lagoon (there were only about 15 other people there, 10 of whom were a hilarious tourist group who spent the entire time…