Invincible Summer

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What To Expect When You Are Expecting A Pandemic

“When I think about all that has to transpire to get from pregnancy to the birth, I am overwhelmed by time and the unknown. It’s not useful to contemplate. There is only today, and it is good.”
I documented my move from ambivalence about parenting, to IVF, to motherhood, as well as all of Year One. I did it longhand because that’s what I did back then. So now, finally, I’m typing all those pages up, in part because of the great What If that living amid a pandemic creates. And I came across this yesterday and it is so true for the current moment, for this, the fifth week of Sheltering in Place.
Ways this time is like pregnancy:
It can make you fat. It will definitely make you crave near-constant meals and snacks.
You will swing from feeling good to anxiety-laden, angry, irritable and back again several times a day.
You will want to know how this will all unfold, how hard it will get, exactly how you and your life will be changed. You can’t know any of that.
There will be totally surrea…

Time, as understood in the fourth trimester

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…

I Didn't Mean To Stop Blogging...

...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.

The Quarterly Reading Report

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 2018 Iceland Report: Part Last

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…

Reykjavík Street Art

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.