blogs

 Note: in case anyone is interested, my new personal blog, which covers non-child-related things as well, is at http://www.plasticsnappythings.blogspot.com/.

 I couldn't sleep last night, so instead I lay in bed, listening to the snow plow.

This morning the streets were clear, and so I got a good, three-and-a-half mile run in before everyone woke up. It was beautiful, but gray clouds still hung ominously in the now-warm air.

Last night was my tenth high school reunion, but this isn't about that, because I didn't go. I went to high school in San Francisco, and the class officers had decided most people would be home to visit during Christmas. We went to Oregon instead, to visit my family's new home -- which, actually, was probably a better use of time.

I have been thinking a lot about time. In some ways, my life in California's Central Valley seems like Narnia -- like an alternate universe I wandered into -- and that someday I'll wander back out and still be living in the Bay Area, still doing the exact same things. Which, of course, is precisely the reason I moved away to begin with -- to see what life might be like if I took the chance to do something totally different.

My friend Janet (not her real name) got engaged yesterday. Freckles and I had been thinking she might and we were really excited to hear about it. We like her fiance very much, and he seems to really love her. I wish them all the happiness in the world.

If I were religious, I think it might be easier sometimes. I could say, "oh, you meet so-and-so at such-and-such time for a reason -- God wants you to." I like the simplicity of that, even if it's not in line with my belief system, which is much hazier. I don't know why things happen in the ways that they do, but there's a part of me that wants to impose order and meaning on everything -- that wants to say, "we're here and there's some reason for it." And a big part of me thinks that there is a reason, that we do have a purpose, even if I can't say I think it has to do with a spiritual power.

And then sometimes, I look at Baby J, who is beautiful and trusting and wonderful and more perfect than anything I could have ever imagined, and I don't want to leave my self-imposed Narnia, ever.

And I think about this potentially factual book I read about women in China who put dog collars on their children's necks, in the hopes that somehow, some way, the spirits would find them so insignificant, so meaningless, that they'd simply pass over them -- that they'd let them live and just have their lives, for whatever they're worth.

That thought gives me a purpose. On a rational day, I think that's why I'm here to begin with. To use my own essence, body, and core to let my son discover his.