End of October
Hot girl walks, homemade baby food, bad book reviews
This week has felt like a betrayal, a pointed, intimate betrayal.
A betrayal of the weather, for it’s so warm, so unreasonably, so unnecessarily so. My air conditioning hasn’t stopped running all day, my potted pansies wilted and my mums brittle. In the mornings, I stand in front of my wardrobe, itching to pull out leggings and a sweater far too large, but forced to acknowledge the reality that I’ll come back from our neighborhood walk red-faced and in need of a glass of ice water. It feels so incredibly unfair that my family was born to the state of wet heat and winters that last mere weeks, summers that consume the entire year. Me, with my deep rooted hatred for weather above eighty degrees.
Oh, how desperate I am for a rainstorm, a cold front with a little more substance than a day or so. For the money for a sprinkler system, so falltime at my house wouldn’t just be the color of beige, dead grass and leaves fallen too soon.
A betrayal of time well spent. I found myself so very frustrated, so very angry at people I do not know this week. Namely, the cast of Love Is Blind season 7, namely Ramses and Hannah. Also the judges on Dancing with the Stars, namely Derek Hough, who just gets on my nerves and always has. But really, how in the world did Jenna and Joey’s dance score the same as everyone else’s? Riddle me that. (Although, I do have to say how much fun I had Wednesday afternoon, watching with no commercials on Disney+, the familiar sound of the announcer’s voice and the background noises and the judges’ scores and Carrie Ann Inaaaba, all sounding like watching as a child in my grandma’s living room.)
I also found myself itching to respond to one star Goodreads reviews on the book I finished this week and rated five stars: Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister. I finished Just Another Missing Person over the weekend, and immediately found another of hers because I just couldn’t get enough of her writing style, her storytelling. Her writing reminds me of Lisa Jewell’s, an author I’ve read two books from and have officially cut myself off of until I go to Barnes and Noble next, because I want to own these masterpieces, not just click through them on my Kindle. I’ve decided I feel the same way about Gillian’s books, too. I want to write a big blog on all the books I’ve read this year (so far, 49) in December, so I won’t say much more on this, but I did go to read what other readers thought on Goodreads, and…I was stunned to say the least. It sent me into an English student rage over misunderstanding the point of Gillian’s storytelling and writing style, wanting to type in all caps and bolded that YOU AREN’T UNDERSTANDING HOW WRITING, HOW STORIES SHOULDN’T ALWAYS BE CONFINED TO TRADITIONAL SENTENCE STRUCTURE, how you can write run-on sentences and still be grammatically correct, but even if you aren’t, and beauty was written, WHO REALLY CARES? And my gosh, have you ever been a WOMAN before? (May be too niche of a comment, given you, my very own readers, didn’t read the dreadful review. Haha.)
Who in the world knew how opinionated I could be over book reviews written by people I’ll never meet?
Moving on.
A betrayal of time passing. Because, apparently, Kit grew up this week. Just woke up, her sweet little head with curly fuzz on top that smells of shampoo and laundry detergent, and decided she was no longer a tiny baby. We’ve spent all week on floor of the house, following her around as her army crawl gets faster and faster. (I had to order a batch of long sleeve onesies to protect her little forearms from carpet burn.) I’d leave her in the library to go make coffee or switch the laundry over, and I’d come back to her sitting up, somehow finding the strength to do it on her own. And on Wednesday, as we listened to Hoda and Jenna, rolling around on the playmat I put out every morning, I saw it with my own eyes: a little twist and push, and she was sitting up, looking very much like Pooh Bear, her tiny tummy a thick, steadying trunk as she wobbled back and forth, deciding where to go next.
That same morning, I sat Kit in her crib so I could check the mail, bring some packages in, and when I came back, she was standing. Her little hands with soft pads of skin on the back gripping the spindles, her knees a little bent, but she was standing, smiling and proud of herself.
We started feeding her solids last week, out of the miniature version of our real ceramic bowls, warm milk mixed with cereal. I expected her to just love it, to lean her head hungrily towards the spoon, but she hasn’t been especially interested. We’ve gone to mashed avocado with a spoon of formula, and no luck with that either. So I steamed some zucchini and blended it, letting Price serve her a tiny bowl while I finished making our own supper, and I’m not sure if it was the lack of formula or the way Price fed her with the spoon sideways or the fact we all were in there at once, me cooking something for her to look at, or the zucchini itself or maybe just the fact it was her daddy and not me…but she has now loved it two nights in a row.
Yesterday, I left her and Annie in the library as I went to warm up a bottle and refill my water bottle. As I stood at the fridge, waiting on water out of a slow filter, I heard the sweet, slow slaps of tiny hands on the hardwoods, and then I saw Kit’s tiny head peek around the corner, her eyes searching for me, and when they found mine, she grinned so big, and I stood there in the cold and couldn’t help but cry. I scooped her up and carried her back to the middle of the room, nestling her in my lap and rubbing Annie, who has been very, very attentive to my tears since the first week she came home to us.
I just ache for Kit to be a baby forever, for Annie to be two years old forever, for my house to be the perfect size small forever, for Price to ride his bike home from work forever, for it to be fall forever, pumpkins and Winnie the Pooh and Mrs Meyers fall leaves scent and Gap hauls of matching sets for Kit and cotton sweaters for me.
This morning, I’m waking my house up early to go take family pictures with my tripod and a Bluetooth clicker, and I am so hopeful I don’t betray myself, because oftentimes, my patience with photoshoots runs thin, breaking out into a frazzled and frustrated sweat when I begin to feel awkward posing, resulting in batches of pictures I deem worthless.
But family pictures feel even more important now, with a little girl who decides when she wants to grow up on her own time.
And then it’ll be nearly Halloween weekend…nearly November…nearly time for me to decorate for Christmas far too early.
Talk soon!