We Are Silly People

The other night Rob and I were playing around with my computer’s camera, which has all these FUN special effects. I haven’t giggled so much in a long time. Here is a mere sampling of the hilarity. Yes, Butterfly, you have silly, silly parents!

Birch

Every year, Rob has given me an anniversary poem written on that year’s symbol: the first year, it was paper - pretty traditional. The second year, it was inked onto a beautiful piece of cotton, and the third, etched leather.

The fourth year, the poetry was an adorable baby wrapped in soft linens.

This was the year for wood, so my gift Friday was painstakingly carved onto a lovely piece of birch. Here’s the poem:

Birch

We weathered a dry summer that’s for sure.
The grass yellowed, the earth began to crack
in places, and the air even felt foreign-
an invader from some remote despot
sent to take our very breath as fealty.

A thirsty tree, the birch, its roots go deep
in such times, but also out twixt others
in its stand, and sometimes you’ll see two fused
seemingly at their base, where some dry time
in treey youth conspired them to join.

Married for five amazing years, to the most interesting man alive...a blessed woman I am!

Leading Up To The Big Day

Friday is our fifth wedding anniversary. Five years is a long time...if you count the blink of an eye a long time. I just can’t believe how fast it has flown by.

Why, I know it was just a few months ago when I was so giddily riding in that carriage, wondering if the horse was going to drag me, my father & brothers, my flower girl and my ring-bearer into the ditch in a desperate attempt to escape the bagpiper summoning me to my groom. I actually tried to get out of the carriage, thinking I could just walk down the hill, across the field and down the aisle into the arms of my awaiting prince-groom. Thank heavens for the prevailing level head of my daddy, sparing me a certain un-princess-like tumble down a sizable slope, convincing me to have patience with the horse, who did overcome his fears and deliver me to the top of the aisle...eventually.

Then, immediately, it seems, there was that first anniversary of paper, at Peacock Hill Inn, exchanging gifts of hand-made art on the porch of our tiny log cabin. And then the second year again with the Peacocks, but in a different room with cotton bearing the poetry. Then the third, shortly thereafter, leather bringing the verse and the fabulous Fluevog boots in Boston. And not five minutes ago, the fourth brought a baby swaddled in soft linens, the most perfect gift of all. Now this year it’s wood...a new house, wood floors, book shelves...what else?

Here’s the poem Rob wrote on cotton for me that second year:

Softer

Soft, your skin next to me,
softer than the Egyptian cotton sheets
so smooth in their threadcount

Soft, your arm wrapped in mine,
clinging like my favorite pair of jeans,
made yet softer by time

Soft, I hear your heart beat,
softer, your heart of love for me, beating
time with mine together

Soft, our home of colors,
from pastel plates to eggplant cotton throws
gives comfort from the day

Soft, your eyes smile at me
gilded with their extravagant lashes,
a spring sunset, shining

soft through young, fresh, wet leaves,
amber through green, rimmed with soft black shadow,
telling of light and hope

Soft, your voice, speaking life
and promise, whispering secrets to me,
secrets of the future

Soft, your skin next to me,
softer still your heart beside me, beating
time with mine together

The Scent of Shampoo

If you didn’t know already, we moved to a new house last month. Except that it’s not new, but very old - built in 1926. We are renovating it, and it’s so cute and clean and cozy...in our mind’s eye.

We were prepared for the significant task of making new the old; we were told that it would cost more than we thought and would take longer than we imagined. Yes, we knew what we were getting into.

But then again...

We were not expecting the burglar who broke our window and took my computer and the camera off the couch (but handily left behind fingerprints that sent him right back to jail because taking other people’s things and trading them for illegal drugs is a parole violation. He obviously does not watch C.S.I.)

We were not planning for the monthly pest control visit (and bill) to banish the hundreds, nay, thousands of creepy spiders decorating the outside of our house like horrific haunting halloween ornaments.

We had not foreseen the need to put out two kitchen fires, dousing one with an over-zealous and obviously malfunctioning fire extinguisher which exuberantly emptied it’s entire contents in our kitchen, creating a terrific yellow chemical dust-covering in the newly arranged and cleaned room.

We did not have a system set up for chopping vegetables while simultaneously keeping tiny sugar ants off the cutting board - the ants, or as Rob describes them, ‘the construction workers of the insect world,’ who have invaded our kitchen floors, countertops, and ingeniously, the dishwasher. What are they building, I ask you, other than resignation and patience in me? (And gratefulness that at least the spiders haven’t found a way inside.)

And most surprising of all, we did not know that Rob would be allergic to the house, having asthma and terrible allergy issues for 6 weeks straight, leading up to a nasty sinus infection for the last 2 weeks of that.

But now, finally, the glorious dawn is breaking, thanks to our new fabulous (and gigantic) air purifier and the volunteer doctor at the free ($40) clinic who prescribed beautiful pricey drugs.

So to my great delight, and even more so his own, yesterday he could again smell the shampoo.

FANCY AIR PURIFIER: $795
FANCY DRUGS: $110
BEING ABLE TO SMELL THE SHAMPOO: Priceless