The internet’s out, so I’m typing this into a text edit file, to send later.
The internet’s out, so Tanner can’t call into his 12pm meeting, so he’s putting the baby to bed for nap.
It’s the week between “camp” and “school,” so the baby is home.
The baby has a probable case of hand foot & mouth (mild, if so), so even if there were school, he’d be home anyway. So at least I’m not losing a week where I’d expected to be able to work. I’m not sure that helps much, though. Last weekend we prepped for the storm with a feverish baby, joined the flood of “well they’ll be closed tomorrow so let’s go just in case” trips to urgent care Saturday afternoon. When we got home and he rode his bike outside and drooled, google told me it was a sore throat; he’s eaten a lot of popsicles.
They tell you routine is important for toddlers, so they know what to expect, so they get in a groove. I’ve realized this week how important it is for me, too, not just the routine of being at my desk, able to work, fitting my editing into regular hours instead of nap and whatever scraps I can catch, but these baby days, too—wake, breakfast, play, snack, play, lunch, nap. This week it’s been wake, cry, popsicle and TV, wander, play, graham cracker, play, nap. At least he still naps. (Am I jinxing it as he cries from his crib right now, outraged that, without internet, Tanner had to unplug the lamp instead of asking the lady in the tube to turn it off?) So today we woke up and had breakfast—at the table, in the high chair, instead of on the couch or in my lap. And, thank god, we left the house after snack, he’s over enough of his contagion for that, and drove to the park that has a little farm, and looked at chickens and bunnies and cows and pigs.
The pigs were in a big round pen in the middle of things, wallowing in mud and chewing on sticks and sparring with each other. They looked so happy and beautiful, I wanted to watch them forever. Another mom with another little kid also wanted to linger there more than her kid seemed to care for. Something about those pigs made us want to stay—their bodies just a little more like our bodies than any others at the farm, but their pleasure in the mud something totally inaccessible to us, wearing our clothes and chasing our children and all that. If I were to write Nightbitch I think the mother would turn into a sow instead of a dog, my inner animal doesn’t want to bite down into a rabbit’s neck, she wants bare warm skin in the sun and in the mud, the crunch of a stick between strong teeth.
(The baby has settled; the internet is still down.)
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I was on the radio yesterday, my local, with the how-did-they-snag-that call sign of WNPR, talking about my Slate piece about how we can see Earth as an exoplanet, you can listen to it here.
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