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Today I got to give that whole I-love-roadtrips concept a whirl. Given the lead paint disaster zone that our house is, we decided it was best to get Gracie and Whit the heck out of dodge. So I drove them to Lebanon, NH to meet Grandpa. That’s 2 hours each way. And, I got 30 minutes north before realizing I had left my bag, wallet, etc at home: an extra hour right there. Delightful. Treo was dead and the minute we hit the road my cell phone beeped that it was out of charge, so I was totally off the grid for a while – kind of refreshing in a way. Then children fell asleep for 30 minutes which allowed me to snag the cigarette lighter from the DVD player to charge my phone a little.
The reports from Vermont are already flooding in: Whit apparently jumped up and down in his crib like “your everyday caged Russell male” before bed, and Gracie took a framed picture of Johann to bed with her.
Matt and I had a very romantic Saturday night. We stopped by the office briefly before having dinner at a restaurant in Terminal E. I then packed Matt off to his flat bed in BA first class before heading home to the aforementioned disaster zone.
Sweet dreams!

“Everyday life is laced with miracles …”

This evening was one of those (fleeting) moments … driving home from family dinner, a huge, full harvest moon hanging low on the horizon, all four of us singing along to You Are My Sunshine in the car. For five minutes, all was right in the world.

And then we tried to put the children down at 33 Lex and we’re still at it. The stars are now out of alignment. But, for those five minutes, it was pretty sweet.

Extra credit question: what’s engraved in Matt’s wedding ring? (and bonus points if you know what the folks at Shreve’s said to me when I asked for that message)

Friday afternoon. (picture is from spring 2002 in Bermuda – random, and wow do I look young) Today I’m camping out at Mum and Dad’s because they are putting new windows in our 3rd floor and scraping the house for re-painting, and there’s lead paint dust everywhere. So, Whit and I had a lovely morning driving around. We had breakfast with Mum & Dad at the Watertown Diner, went to Bloomingdale’s looking for a dress for Gloria’s wedding, and then played with Christina and Will at 17 Devon Road for a while. We had a Hi Rise picnic at Raymond Park with Daddy for lunch. Whit’s now screaming in Hilary’s room at 33 Lex while I sit here and listen. Week has flown by. Intrigued by Providence. Will know more in a few weeks when I go back down there for a whole day. Have had great chats this week with Hadley, Jessica, and Quincy, so that’s a good week in my book! Matt’s off to India tomorrow for a whole week again (well, India-Dallas-New York). He will swoop back into town just in time for our big TPT dinner next Friday night.

So, as promised … a few thoughts on songs and who/what they remind me of:
Maybe I’m Amazed – Matt
No Woman No Cry – QB, midnight drive from Hamptons to Bay Head, spring 1996
One – Allison Engel
Like a Prayer – Leigh Danforth
Killing me Softly – Bouff, Ivy ladies, senior spring
Sister Golden Hair, Man in the Moon – Jesse Johnson
any Shawn Colvin – 402-403 Forbes; Courtney, Kendall, Charlotte
Hips Don’t Lie – Robert Wood, Kiawah April 2006
Leather and Lace – Kennedy Cosgrove

Ahhhh … I could do this all day! The tip of the iceberg. I love road trips mostly because the random song assortment takes me on a wild trip through time. 32 years have been rich in memories, that’s for sure – who knows what lies ahead.
Thought for the day:
“We can choose whom we live with, whose hand we shake, whose cheek we kiss, but we cannot choose who in this wide world, out of the millions, we truly love. Our emotions ride air currents whose sources we cannot name. Love is an infinite feeling in a finite container, and so upsets the intellect, frustrates the will.” – Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance (one of the great books on parenting, to my mind)

And on that note, Whit’s finally quiet….. off to start The Emperor’s Children.

That’s Hair Trigger on the right. Once again, Catherine Newman is writing about my life. Living with Grace right now is like walking in a minefield. Tonight, for example. She decided she needed a band-aid, and when I inadvertently pressed one of the sticky sides to her foot she just lost it – she wanted to do that her own self. Or, the other day, when I blithely buckled Whit into his carseat before she was finished buckling. My God. Who knows what tiny things set her off? Poor girl has the worst of both of us: my incredible OCD tendencies with Matt’s fiery temper. It’s a pretty incendiary combination, and I am not particularly looking forward to adolescence.

More tomorrow about the fabulously moving christening of Miss Hannah Mead Gilheany, but I wanted to post parts of two of the readings which I just adored. Each godparent chose a reading, and Alison and Launa’s were both from poems I love and had forgotten about. Excerpts from each:

“The Writer” by Richard Wilbur (Alison Lobron)
…In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.
I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwhale.
Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it is heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

“You Begin” by Margaret Atwood (Launa Schweizer)
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.