Congratulations…

to Maia, Ryan, Spike, and Bell JiFang on becoming a family of four…go see, go see!

Maia’s also doing some yeoman blogging from Nanjing on what to expect for future families….

West Wind

The Pull of the Ocean and other sundry tales…

Off…

We’ve been a bit…um…crazy here at chez SBird. Tomorrow, we’re off to the beach, to introduce The Bee to ocean, sand, salt, and sun…in Florida…Key West. My college roommate lives there and owns a restaurant. I haven’t seen her since the mid-90s…

Sophomore Year…1985…

(forgive the requisite pearls…it was the 80s, after all)

Graduation…1988…

I’ll try to post a little from the beach….

Neither Here…nor There…

Anyone curious about how Homeland Security is taking care of your dams?

Here are the latest developments on the Hoover Dam Bypass-Colorado River Bridge project, slated for completion in 2008. The bypass will allow vehicles to cross the river without getting anywhere near the actual dam (right now, you drive across the top of the dam). It is very high–so high that I don’t expect you will even be able to see the dam once you’re up there, driving across the new bridge.

Last year, there were only large cranes and no actual pilings up yet. This year, there are many pilings up on the Nevada side…

and a few up on the Arizona side…

with a very large gap still to be…well…bridged…

And the dude who waved us through the security “stop”? He ducked back into his booth right as we coasted up to the stop sign and waved us on without looking up from his…er…Slurpee. No, I’m not kidding. It was a Slurpee.

And, just for good measure, here is the bathtub ring on the Colorado River this year–it’s the deepest ring (the lowest water level) I’ve ever seen there…

Holes.

Vegas or bust?…Bust, mostly. Let’s just say the best part of the trip this year was the two hours we spent at the Shark Reef…now that was cool beans. In fact, I think I had what amounts to a spiritual experience–as close as I get anymore to said experience–way down in the “ship wreck” room, in the darkest hole of the reef tank. You walk into this Disneyfied room that’s made to look like a sunken ship, complete with hull-like curved glass walls and glass floors, and the ship prow “sticking out” into the tank itself…and so sharks and fish and sea turtles are swimming over, under, and around you. Oh, and there are sound effects. As if you’re under water. Which you are, of course, but it’s so disorienting that you have the momentary impression that you’re actually swimming with the fishes (so to speak), not just walking through them.

Anyway, so there I was, down in the deep hole, and the sandbar sharks are swimming by inches from my face, and their skin catches the light and is…surreal. Just. So. Beautiful. It’s silver and metallic and shiny soft gray, but with a very slight–slight–hint of pink underneath. It made me draw my breath in very fast. If I could, I would say sharkskin is my favorite color. But then you would think I sounded hungry (in an exotic locale sort-of-way). Or nuts.

The Bee had fun, too. This exhibit had a lot fewer people wandering through than the National Aquarium we visited in July, although it didn’t have dolphins. Just predators. Lionfish, jellyfish…

piranha, barracuda, water monitor, crocodiles. She got to be very close up to the animals for a long time…

Otherwise, the trip was stressful. Drive stress on the way there, involving some wackadoo who hit a utility pole and dragged it into the highway right in front of us. Work stress for R., including a weeping employee at lunch. Palate stress for Mama. It looks like The Bee has a tiny fistula, right in the middle of her palate. Sometimes these re-heal themselves. Sometimes they don’t. At the moment I am desperately trying to keep food from getting stuck in it. Can anyone say Water Pik? Saline drops? Squirting water bottles? Hot liquids?

Some holes are better than others.

The Bee, on the other hand, spent her hotel time lounging in front of her beloved Signing Time DVDs…

The Bee To Buzz Sin City…

So, we’re off this morning, on our annual trek to Vegas for the trade show (sellin’ those palm trees…). You’ll remember if you’re a longtime reader that I spent my 40th there last year…

No shoes like that this year…we spent my birthday yesterday in the big city down south, where it was only 96 degrees. Okay. So, the doctor’s appointment…

The Bee has totally normal hearing!!! Yippee. The tubes are looking great, no infection, no blockage, in place…and the hearing test put her completely in the normal range. One down. One to go (palate surgery follow-up is scheduled for next week…).

The best part of the day was that this was The Bee’s first day back on solid foods (albeit soft solid foods), and, boy, did she make the most of it! Mac and cheese at lunch, followed by chocolate ice cream, and then eggs and cheese and pasta for dinner, followed by coconut-cream pie for dessert (that was my birthday cake…I’m a pie person, rather than a cake person…).

She’s laughing hysterically in a post-pie haze and, also, because we made a little book together last night, cutting out graphic and colorful pictures from magazines–The Bee got to choose the pictures–and then fitting them into the pockets of this little photo book. She loves it.

So, we’re looking forward to some Lazy River sojourning in Vegas. The ENT doc said The Bee “can only go down in the water to a depth of four feet.” Darn. That’s really going to put a crimp in her scuba time. Heh.

Catching Up…

So, clearly I can never go away again…it just takes too long to (1) transfer underwear from the rummaged-through pile-of-a-suitcase to the drawers; (2) get through all the laundry without running out of soap; (3) find my cellphone again (what does it mean that my cell went missing for 10 days, and, when I found it again, there were no voicemails, no missed calls, no nothing?); (4) get through Bloglines–OMG, people, we’ve been home two weeks, and I just finished looking at your stuff this morning; (5) move into our newly-renovated quarters–I can’t tell you how good it feels to be back in my bed…and Emme has a room! Now if I only had time to take pics of the new space, I could post them…; (6) get the dogs back to their pre-kennel weight; (7) nurse my daughter’s somewhat damaged emotional wellbeing back to normal from all the upheaval and frayed days we’ve been experiencing. Really, I’m beginning to think vacations just aren’t worth it. Yikes.

I’m just going to throw up some pictures of the past month and leave it at that…we had a great time back east with the cousins. We went to the Baltimore aquarium and saw sharks up close and a dolphin show; we put our feet in a stream and touched the waterbugs; we ate blueberries with our cousins on the three matching chairs my mother bought her grandkids; we went on our first tube-slide, over and over again; we insisted in the big pool that we go ALL THE WAY UNDER over and over again; we celebrated The Bee’s second birthday–TWICE. Once in Maryland on the actual day, and then again when we got back here, with her brothers and the ‘big presents’–a sandbox and a water table and a trunk for dress-up clothes. She has now met both sets of grandparents; her aunt and uncle (she only has the one set); and her two cousins, whom she loved getting to know. So, along with her brothers, that’s the whole family, save a few great aunts and uncles.

Random photos from back east:

Photos of the Birthday Party on the actual birthday:

Photos of the birthday party back at home:

The Bee has her first surgery–a very minor one, for ear tubes–on Friday. But I’ll try to post more before then…we had some very cool houseguests this past weekend, which I need to tell y’all about…

And in the category of: WTF?

I give you the following exchange between R. and myself, which took place in the car on Monday, driving home from the disgustingly-hot low desert…

R.: I could live there.

SB: Huh?

R.: I could live there, on that hill.

SB: What hill?

R.: THAT hill. That elegantly-shaped hill.

SB: [Still not sure what he’s talking about] You mean THAT hill? That thing stuck out in the middle of nowhere?

R.: Yeah, that lovely, lava-rock, black hill, in all its isolated splendor.

SB: [Choking] You have GOT to be on drugs.

R.: No. Why? Whaddya mean? [Pause] I LIKE that hill. It’s a great hill.

SB: It’s tiny. It’s like a pinpoint of a hill.

R.: That’s why I like it. It’s elegantly-shaped.

SB: Whaaahh? Elegantly-whaaahhh? If you stepped outside your door, you’d plunge 100 feet into sharp malpais rock. It’s unliveable.

R.: I could take a helicopter in. Land on my roof.

SB: Key word here being “my.” YOUR roof. YOUR house. Not mine.

R.: Why are you snapping pictures of it if you hate it so much?

SB: [Snort] Are you kidding? I can already see the post’s title now: “And in the category of: WTF?”

R.: Well, if you’re going to blog about it, then I’m going to say something quotable…

SB: [Thought bubble only: “like you haven’t said plenty already?”]

R.: It’s shaped like a scoop of Hagen Daz ice cream.

See You On the Other Side.

I leave in two hours. I woke up this morning feeling a bit queasy, in that way that fear, anticipation, and excitement can make you feel. Oh, and there was a four-ton elephant on my chest. So it goes.

I have been debating what to leave you all with for the four weeks The Nest here will be absent, and I finally decided on something contemplative…a poem or two. This poem, by John Ashbery, is one I’ve thought about for years. He’s a so-called ‘language poet,’ so isn’t really supposed to make logical sense…you just let the words and sounds wash over you and make grabs at meaning.

I like this poem because (for me) it speaks to that situation where people arrive in your life, having lived their life parallel but unbeknownst to you, and it seems as if they’ve always been there. Of course, that’s on my mind as I travel to meet The Bee.

At North Farm

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzard and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow
passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings?

And here’s my response to Ashbery’s poem, which I wrote a few years ago (long before the adoption). I was playing with the idea of how seamless your life and someone else’s can become, even though there was a before time when you didn’t know each other:

Poem Coming On

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzard and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow
passes.
John Ashbery

Ashbery’s sense of it—the stranger, always moving
toward you across the next rise, all the people
you haven’t yet met, don’t yet know,
but who are coming on. The sense of someone
out there, moving in a life, now washing the dishes,
now pruning the roses, now talking on the phone.
They cry and make love and laugh out loud
without you. Bury their mother. Stop for coffee
at the corner and glance at the morning
headlines. Show up at the family barbecue.

When you do know them—when the point
of meeting finally does arrive—your life
and theirs no longer remember difference.
Perspective shifts. You see the two lives
as a painter sees the hay bales sitting in the fields:
black boxes against green. No dimensions.

See you on the other side–of the world, of parenthood.