Mea Culpa
Saturday, April 26, 2008
I won’t bore anyone with a recounting of how many times I started to write a blog post and became overwhelmed or distracted by something else going on around me. Needless to say, it was often. I can’t tell if there is just that much that goes on in my life or if I am becoming increasingly more senile and unable to perform even simple multitasking. If I still chewed gum, I’d start to worry that, soon I’d be forced to choose between Juicy Fruit and Birkenstocks as, clearly, I’m getting too old to be allowed both simultaneously! The State of California did, however, just re-issue me a new driving license (with the second most horrible photo that has ever been taken of me.) So I guess I’m not yet officially too dimwitted to do a athree-point turn.
One thing to note is that we’ve had very erratic internet access and that is affecting my blogging. I have scanty reception right now and am trying to post this before it vanishes. For the next few days, we’ll be hanging out at their “country” place in the mountains near Santa Cruz. Definitely no internet there, so I may be incommunicado until next wednesday except for emergencies. Maybe I’ll be able to catch up on the writing parts though and do the posting when the lines of communication are available again. Hope hope hope…
At any rate, Veronica finally had the baby on April 10th (which was also Lena’s birthday.) I had the privilege of being on hand for the happy event, but the real front and center positions went to the new parents and to Veronica. And of course, to baby Eleanor who came in at such a hair under 8 lbs that a good, deep inhale topped her up and put that weight on the official records. Bright-eyes full of interest and curiousity were noticed by everyone, even the midwives and staff who have seen more babies than I ever hope to. She also had a great, hearty set of lungs and the strongest suck reflex I’ve ever seen and managed to demonstrate both at once. I’m convinced that little girl has a career waiting for her playing the digeridoo! Surrogate mother, excited new parents and baby are all healthy, happy and doing fine as of this writing. Everyone - except Miss Eleanor Elizabeth - spent the week following her birth attempting to catch up on all the sleep her false alarms caused us to miss. We spent an awful lot of time in and out of the birth center - usually in the wee hours of the night.
Since the birth, things have been in a fairly steady state of motion. Lena left the day after E’s birth to give a weekend teaching in Napa Valley then went up to spend a much wanted day with our wonderful old friend Phyllis (making me very jealous - I want to see Phyllis too!) She flew back to Oregon just in time to do laundry and then, together, we drove down to the San Francisco Bay Area, a 2 day trip with an overnight stop. Arrived just in time for me to do the weekend workshop with Stephenie Gaustad (at least an entire, glowing post in itself, I promise.) Since then we’ve stayed a few days with Lena’s cousin’s Pat and Bob in Berkeley. The brightest part of this was getting a few days to spend with members of the family who we always wanted to know better and whose company we thoroughly enjoy. Today (Friday) we headed coastside to stay with another cousin (Lena’s mom, Ruth had lots of brothers and sisters and they all had kids.) Diana is the sister Lena never really had and probably the closest living relative of all. I’d be jealous because Lena has such a terrific family, except that she shares them all with me.
