Time speeds up as you get older. I can remember when I was a kid, a school year was an eternity and when it ended for the summer, I couldn’t visualize Labor Day. It was a lifetime away, a lifetime of trips to the pool and the park, bike rides with friends, trips into Pittsburgh with my mom to see museums, occasionally a few days at my aunt’s house, a couple of weeks with all my cousins at my grandparents’ place. Long about sophomore year of high school, I realized things were moving a little faster. After years of waiting for it, then end was in sight, and there were five million things to be done before I graduated. Then college, where time is compressed into two 16 week semesters. Then I moved to New York City, the place that moves at the speed of light on a daily basis and did a sixty credit graduate program in two years instead of the three it would have taken at another school. Getting a job that I was doing to pay the bills rather than for any great love also made the time speed by. Mondays drag, then it’s a slog through to the weekend that is done in the blink of an eye. “Working for the weekend” makes the months fly past. And goddess help you if you either have kids or know kids, because that will make the time go even faster. The Oldest will be starting her senior year in the fall and is busy checking out colleges and acing the SATs. The Youngest will be graduating from 8th grade in two weeks, which means she’s starting high school in the fall. I guess at almost 17 and almost 14, I can stop using the pseudonyms and just call them Amelia and Sage now, can’t I? Especially since I’ve been calling my littlest girl by her real name on the blog since she was born. Speaking of that little girl, Samang’s going to be two next Monday. Unbelievable.
So with all this time speeding by, I’ve been resorting to things that move in more “manageable” chunks than an unwieldy blog entry. Twitter, Plurk, Ravelry forums, those are where I’ve been hanging out. Places where I don’t have to think about the craft of writing, where I can just call someone “hoar” and get instant feeback. But starting in the fall, I’m going to be doing something where the writing requires thought again, and I’d better get back into practice. In the fall, I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I work at Some College by doing so get a tuition waiver, and I’m going to start my second master’s degree.
See, I took a flying trip to DC and Virginia to hang out with my Uncle Norm back in March. It was supposed to be for the purpose of taking pictures of the cherry blossoms, but a few storms killed that (they’re very delicate, those cherry blossoms), so we went to the Capitol, the Newseum, Monticello and Mount Vernon instead. And somewhere in the middle of being surrounded by all that history, and having someone I could discuss all of it with, and quite possibly because we watched John Adams and damn, that really brought history to life, I remembered that once upon a time I had quite enjoyed history. Enough to major in it as an undergrad. And I thought “Huh, I wonder if I can take some classes when I get back” which turned into applying to the MA program in history, because I like to do things right. And I got in. So in the fall, I’ll be taking a course in historiography as well as a course in pre-modern China. I’m looking forward to it, to reading and learning again. I won’t lie, I also have moments of panic because while I’ve read quite a few books about history over the last few years, there was never any pressure to take it to the next level and synthesize my feelings about what I was reading. I was reading them for pleasure, which is great, but is a whole other can of worms from really studying it. So wish me luck, because I’m going to need it.
But in the meantime, I need to practice writing out my thoughts in more than 140 characters, so I’m going to try this blogging thing again. What the hell, the domain’s paid up for a while, might as well get my money’s worth. But since I’ve just written what Word Press tells me is almost 800 words, I need to take a bit of a break. So I’ll show you some of the other things I’ve been up to in pictures.
Samang and Thabiso at the Life is Living Festival. Samang wanted “Baba wear coat!” so he did. On his head. That’s her coat, it really wouldn’t fit him any other way.
Sage, Rick, and Amelia after Sage’s school performance in Iolanthe. Sage was the ingenue. Of course. Note how tall both girls are – 5’10″ and Sage might still be growing. At least Samang is still shorter than me.
We took this picture in Prospect Park to taunt Samang’s Uncle Lucas, who is an insane Baltimore Ravens fan. She’s almost able to say “Steelers” now, although it sounds like “Stee-ers!”. Next task, teaching her to say “Ravens suck!”
Oh, yeah, I went to visit Regan and Grace for Stitches South. Blurriness of this picture caused by wine. Which is also what caused me to rip back the shawl I was working on when I took this picture. Actual knitting content to come…soonish.
In the meantime, this was my haul from the first day at Stitches. I might have fallen down a bit more on the second day.
Oh, wait, I do have knitting content! I knit these socks for Lori. They’re her birthday present, but since she’s in West Virginia doing regional theatre all damned summer, I had to give them to her a month early. She owes me.
I love this picture so much that it’s my desktop wallpaper at work. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
And to wrap it up, my favorite picture from this spring. Don’t photograph George Washington’s dentures. They mean it.