Holland Boo Hoo

[What? No winnies?]

Yes, the mood was glum after last night's World Cup finale, where after playing it out to 15-15 extended play, Holland lost 1:0.

To top it off, this morning, while Mommy was upstairs stuffing the sofa cover into the wash (minor chocolate emergency during excited game watching), Emily was brattily ripping up the cushion stuffing downstairs.

!!!Daddy LOVES his sofa!!!

Mommy thinks grabbing the Boo and running away from home is a viable option. Bumily's not worried. She's already checked out new parent candidates.

Strange things...

... I've been wondering if my recent malaise, the ups and downs of blue funk that pulls me under, is not completely writing-related, and might have something to do with age.

And children. (is that why we want a dog so badly right now?)

I've never wanted kids. After years of thinking it over (and as my husband notes, "you bring it up every day"), since I was a kid myself, there wasn't ever a time when I wanted that baby, the way I wanted love and a relationship, graduate school, figuring out life, writing a book. It might be the case where if we do end up with a baby, we'll love it and fall in love with it, but we're not actively longing for one in the abstract.

I just don't see a child in our lives. Luckily, the husband is on the same page. We love our niece (and nephew), but I'd like to keep them the primary kids in my life right now.

Yet, I love reading mommy-blogs. The warm and cozy feeling I get there makes them my new secret lurker fandom. I love reading about their taking their kids to day care, and what they fed them, and their kid-conversations, and frustrating bits.

They bring up the oddest things, stuff I couldn't imagine (is it a good thing we can't remember too much about our babyhoods?). Today: kids bite each other.

How bizarre, and um... kind of scary and cute. In a kind of brutal way, I guess they're more like puppies than I thought.

Quotes to get me through

In my seventh year of grad school, when I was trying desperately to finish my dissertation and defend before the summer, I had this typed out and posted on my monitor, under the cartoon of the elephant pushing the bunny in a wheelbarrow, which had been the illustration on our Thank you notes after the wedding. Both of them cheered me up, even on those "writing even one sentence is good enough" days. So, it turned into my favorite quote.

From Anton Chekhov's "Lady with the Pet Dog":


"And it seemed as though in a little while a solution would be found, and a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they still had a long long way before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part was only just beginning."