Lately

I've been very inward.

This is a natural for me. After intense periods of socializing, I draw back into myself. Think, write, find amusement in quiet things (and I've learned to accept the not so quiet ones as well, as is necessary with The Boss - whose silence is a sign of something awry, bookshelf torn apart or fingers near electric sockets.)

In the past, these periods of quiet have led me to write here. But lately, I've not had the slightest desire. So I haven't, (save an entry about a supermarket harpist,) for fear of forcing something. Writing blather just for the sake of it...just to make sure the blog still had a pulse.

This morning is the first that I've felt a twinge of desire - perhaps it's the beginning of the long crawl out of myself. Before it goes away...

Brief glimpses of the past couple of weeks:

...Push-ups. I've found that I can do ten regular, infinite girly.

...There's a small train museum in Danbury Connecticut that will charge you $6 to walk around their depot and press buttons to activate elaborate model train landscapes and look at pictures of the olden days of rail, or their photo collage of the time that Hitchcock used their depot in one of his movies. This might not seem worth it, however, if you have a small child who has been pent up in a hotel room for a day, they also boast a corner filled with train toys that will entertain him for at least an hour. In my opinion, six dollars well spent.

...Television is exhausting. While we were away, our DVR filled itself and we've been working (and it has felt like work) to watch the programs and purge them from the machine. After reading a post about wallets and DVR's over at Trapped in Colorado I'm stunned at the number of shows that DVR allows us to watch. We record too much. If something looks like it might be worthwhile, we record it, along with our weekly recordings of our other shows. Pre-DVR, we watched maybe two or three hours of television a week - tops. And that was only if we managed to catch "our shows." Now, with the convenience of watching things whenever we want rather than sticking to a programmed schedule, we're a mess of scripted madness.

...We've begun disciplining. The Boss has reached an age of understanding and it's time to begin enforcing rules, to become (gulp) parents, in the sense that what we say goes. Because if it doesn't, then we're going to lose him down a street somewhere, he'll run off our yard and just keep going, despite our calling out after him. He doesn't listen to No, doesn't stop when we yell stop - and he's old enough to learn that he needs to. For his own protection, we need to become the bad guys. It's hard. I don't like it. But it's necessary. I'm not from the camp of being buddies rather than parents. Of course, I'm not a drill sargent either.

...I miss living near the ocean and walking along the coastline with my friends. Not some glamorous oceanfront, but a concrete sidewalk lining a mediocre strip of gravely sand - a shoreline boarding a cold ocean that no one swims in for fear of contamination. Still, it's springtime, and I miss it. Cool salty wind and conversations between best friends.

...I've seen approximately twelve ants in the past two days. Mostly teeny-ones that scurry away from my fingertips as I move down to crush them - but also two big ones, carpenters, milling around in my son's play area. I am not pleased.

...My son has just brought me an empty pizza box (perhaps not the best thing to have out considering my previous mention of ants...but I swear, he pulled it from the trash. Ugh. Now that doesn't paint a pretty picture either, does it?) Now, Lila is stirring.

Time to go, hopefully not to vanish again...