bullet points

• i’m moving. officially. it’s a happy move. a very happy, very much in love move. very.

• oregon country fair. at 8 pm quinn succinctly put it, ” the fair was fun. now i’m tired.” i haven’t been to fair in years, and for a long time it was a place full of shadows for me. once upon a time a man left me and went to fair and cheated on me, an act that broke me down more thoroughly than any other act ever committed by another person. i healed, but you know how those big bad scars can always heal a little more? try having a man leave me last week and go to the fair, but before he left, he scattered rose petals on our bed, then called me every day to tell me how much he misses me and loves me, then escorted me around the fair all day sunday like it was his home turf and i was his distinguished guest, and loving me in spite of character defects like forgetting where i parked my car. since blogging about it is kind of like screaming it from the rooftops: good people, i love this man.

(from left to right: a sliver of evidence of me wearing a dress that quinn said made me look “like a stranger” but he finally agreed to let me wear it if he got to be a stranger, too. hence the ears. second of three ice creams for the day. handsome man with his hair down, hubba hubba.)

bubbles!

(5 minutes after we pulled out of the fair parking lot.)

• our newly consolidated household may be facing double unemployment in the not too distant future. it feels like we’ve been lucky to avoid it this long. let’s hear it for

• free food. i just picked, pitted, and processed around 70 pounds of feral cherries. my fingers are black. i put rose petals in some of the jars. i happened to have some handy.

• stuff happened on the boat that really shook my foundation. i’m not supposed to talk about it and frankly i want to spare you. instead, i cried my way home listening to science friday in a rental car, hearing about astronaut re-entry adjustment issues (i felt i could relate, as the road rocked nautically beneath the car) and sobbing for the passing of lonesome george. i wrote some ugly thoughts in my journal (the paper one) such as “devastated and grieving” and “i don’t want to be a scientist anymore.” for better or worse, my wish may be granted soon, if the funding fairies fail to negotiate an extension of my contract. it is far from being a mb-specific issue and most of the offices on my hallway may be dark soon. watch for starving scientists in your area, coming soon to a theater near you.

• quinn lost his first tooth! oh my aching mama heart. how? when? i had a baby and all of a sudden he’s so big. he’s starting to read. it feels like time is accelerating. he wanted me to hold him and dance while brokedown in bakersfield played live at the fair and i found myself agreeing to it in spite of the sore arms and shoulders i got out of the deal. soon i won’t be able to hold that sack of sugar even if i want to…