We’re returning to the world. Sort of. Maybe. Or at least we’re trying.
You know what we’ve been up to, but here’s some picture proof that the kid’s just too darned cute to get anything done!
On Thursday our little turkey made her big arrival. Maggie Ione is here! She was born at 12:26 (12 hours and 7 minutes after labor started) and weighed 7 lbs, 5 oz (a little more than me and thankfully a lot less than Bill).
We go home from the hospital sometime today and we’ll have a Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. She’s been quite the little trooper, and we’re all learning the way things work. Learning learning.
Happy birthday, Maggie!
Three days until my official due date and I’m at eleven and a third squares. Guess I’m not going to make it to 13. That’s okay; I feel plenty big even though the measurement may not express it.
A couple months ago I undertook a project. No, not that one, another one. I’m sure many thought it would go unfinished. Or at least would remain partly done until years, or decades even, in the future. (I myself had some doubts about it ever being completed, but don’t tell anyone.) I started knitting an afghan of sorts, for the baby mostly, but also because it looked like it would result in a nice end-product.
I found the pattern in a book at the library and just thought, “Neat!” It’s a series of fish that fit together M.C. Escher-style. It takes 44 fishes for the blanket, which turned out to be about a fish a day until the baby’s due date, plus a little wiggle room. So pretty much every day at the end of the summer I knit a fish from tail to lips. Lo and behold, one day there were 44 fishes!
It was so much fun laying them all out on the kitchen table and arranging them in their fishy order, making sure no similar colors were touching and all the smiles were facing the right direction. Then started the days of sewing the fish together, tail to tail, lips to lips. And then back to stomach, stomach to back.
Since we live on a corner, we abut only two houses. One is sandwiched pretty close; only a driveway separates their windows from our balconies. The other is yard against yard, so there’s a bit of space between our two worlds. One is a single family dwelling — a nice Italian heritage family with two young girls — and the other is a multi-story duplex or triplex, like ours, with different parties on each floor. We have made contact and casual acquaintances with Barb and Louie to the east, but have hardly nodded to anyone who lives to the north. And yet, I have a connection to residents of both houses that transcends the differences between them and each other and us: I have witnessed the men of each taking showers.
The first incident was much earlier this summer, back when it was so hot that you wanted to be doing nothing but sitting and eating ice cubes. Back when you’d go outside because it must be cooler out in the breeze, but then would go inside because it must be cooler where the shades had been drawn all day. And I just happened to look out an east-facing window and caught sight of Louie in his backyard in his bathing trunks under their outdoor shower. I had no idea they had an outdoor shower out there. But apparently they do. And apparently they use it occasionally. At first I thought probably this was just a rinse-off after particularly rigorous yardwork or some such thing. No. This was a real shower with a bar of soap and lathering and stretching out of the trunks to make sure you get every spot thoroughly. I stood there agog for a couple of minutes, until I realized I was watching my neighbor take a shower.
The next unintended viewing was just a couple evenings ago, not late, but dark. As it has started to get dark at 4:30, that doesn’t necessarily mean much. I went downstairs to let the dogs out into the backyard after dinner to relieve themselves and sniff the night air. I noticed when I walked out the door onto the deck that there was a light on in a window across the driveway. And then I realized that this was the bathroom window and I was looking at the silhouette of a strapping man in his shower. The glass is frosted, but that only does so much when it’s pitch black outside and brightly lit inside. This wouldn’t be such a notable event except that the windows in bathrooms here in Quincy are good-sized windows. None of those shoulders-to-crown windows. No, they need regular window windows in the bathrooms here. So there was plenty of un-swimming-suited silhouette to view. Glad I don’t know this neighbor’s name lest I blush next time we meet taking out the garbage.
I assume this is just one of the hazards of living in a big city where you’re very close to lots of people all the time and you have no choice but to go about doing what you have to do no matter what. Or no matter who’s watching. Maybe I should feel blessed, like rain on one’s wedding day? Or maybe it’s a portent, like dropping a knife signifies a guest coming for dinner? Or maybe I should purchase one of the self-hypnosis tapes that guarantees forgetting or at least deeply repressing certain memories?
Magrilless 