Thanks for the vet

Sheesh, I am so behind in my thankful posts. Running on fumes over here.

We got a puppy!! And he immediately got sick 😭😭 likely from eating something he shouldn’t have. Matt took him to the vet today, and I’m hopeful that after some fluids and medications he’ll be back to his puppy antics in no time.

Thanks for the training

I trained hard for my first marathon—which was yesterday—and it paid off. I was lucky to have great weather and to be in great health; I was nervous I would be sick because Covid and other viruses are going around! Plus allergies etc.

I can totally see how people catch the marathon bug. The training was hard but doable. The race was super fun. Miles 22-24 or so were a little rough; but running down that last downhill half-mile to the finish line, I felt like I was flying. I felt like I could do anything. Maybe I can do anything!

Thanks for the sun

“Everything the light touches is our kingdom…” (please say this in your best James Earl Jones voice) 

Is it a little prosaic to be thankful for the sun? MAYBE ☀️ but I’m thankful for it anyway! I love the thin tired sunlight streaming through orange leaves in late fall; the dubious sunlight peeking through bare branches in midwinter; the hesitant sunlight poking through buds in early spring; the harsh and glaring and burning noonday sun pounding straight down on me in the middle of summer! I’ll take it any old way and I’ll soak it all up like a lizard on a rock. 

Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, won’t you please shine down on me??? 🎶 

Thanks for the breaks

The kids had a 4-day weekend for the end of the quarter + Election Day. I feel like we’ve all been going-going-going for about 3 months now and it has been really nice to take a little break!

Don’t look away

Interrupting Thanksblogging for an important message…

I have been meaning to write a fully fleshed out blog post about this with citations and everything but haven’t made time for it. It’s like my brain refuses to settle down and do it. Maybe I will do it in a few weeks…

I want to try to articulate why I think it’s difficult for some white Christian Americans to vocally protest Israel’s war against Hamas… what feels different about this decades-plus-long conflict. 

It’s speaking up about two oppressed peoples at war with each other, when you don’t have a specific personal connection to either people (aside from Jewish and Arab friends or family, as many white Christian Americans do have, and that almost complicates things).

It’s jumping in to a conversation where you’ve heard a summary of what came before but suspect you may be missing something.

It’s talking about politics when you don’t want to talk about politics (because sometimes it’s just not worth it).

It’s “both sides-ing” in the most gruesome way that a faraway spectator can.

Gabrielle Blair’s article about it a few weeks ago was helpful for me in framing my thoughts. https://designmom.substack.com/p/two-groups-at-war-and-both-are-marginalized

Melinda Gates’s quote from several years ago that I have never forgotten and that has echoed in my head every day since October 7, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts. “when you see a mother and her children suffering in another part of the world, don't look away. Look right at them. Let them break your heart”

 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6496686-the-world-is-full-of-what-seem-like-intractable-problems#

Reading experiences of Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts. (This is what I mean about citations, I would like to add these later)

Reading about the stages of genocide has been helping for me in framing my thoughts.

Reading about the histories of Palestine and Israel, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts.

Thinking about the legacy of colonialism in my own ancestors, and holding it up next to my own deep-seated patriotism which is still alive and well in me and which I intend to hold onto anyway because two things can be true, has been helpful for me in framing my thoughts.

Seeing the photos and videos coming out of Gaza, has NOT been helpful in forming any sort of thoughts. 

Seeing these has wiped away every rational thought. 

Seeing these has torn my heart open. 

I am not a crier and yet I have shed tears every time I see a mother holding a dead child, or a child crying for his dead mother. Every time I see a traumatized child in shock as he goes through a medical exam, a traumatized child looking for her siblings.

As part of my job I teach students to question their emotional reactions to information and to trace the sources. For the most part, the images and videos I have seen can be traced to very credible sources.

I am a religious person and that is why I say unequivocally that this war is terrifying on a biblical level.

Speaking of my whiteness (lol) I’ve been thinking about a quote from Murtagh, my favorite character in my favorite pandemic-era binge watch (IYKYK). “There’s always a war comin’.”

I grew up in an era of American prosperity, in a location and demographic that could comfortably move through life feeing grateful that all the wars were so long ago or so far away.

Until I visited the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum as a new mom and learned about how people have thrown red paint on the Enola Gay, https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/controversy-over-enola-gay-exhibition/

I literally never thought about the impact that the atomic bombs had on the children and families of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because I had learned that those bombs made the world safe for democracy, and I had learned that the collateral damage was necessary. 

I want peace and safety for all of the world’s people. I want to renounce war and proclaim peace. Despite any complications of such a view, despite any assurances from Antony Blinken or other politicians I respect that Hamas will only become more dangerous if given space and time to regroup, I believe that a ceasefire is the only way to stop our hearts from hardening more. 

I want a ceasefire for those mothers and their children. I can’t look away.

Thanks for the leaves

This weekend we filled 40+ bags of leaves and there is no end in sight. But I’m still very thankful for the changing leaves! (Maybe check with me in a couple of weeks and see if I still feel that way. :)

Thanks for my neighbors

Our longtime neighbor’s dog, Ruthie, died this week. She was 15 years old and it was time but it was so hard for her family and hard for all the kids in the neighborhood who grew up with her. Some of those kids (including one or two of my own) have been grieving like it was their own dog that died.

This family is such a special family; the mom babysat Polly for all of her toddler and preschool years. The dad is like an uncle to all the kids in the neighborhood. The daughter is friendly and kind to everyone. And the dog was just the nicest dog I’ve ever met.

I’m thankful for the proximity we’ve had with this family for all these years. I’m very sorry for their loss, but I’m also thankful that we knew Ruthie, and because they shared her with us, we grieve for her like she was our own too.

Thanks for my house

I have done thankful posts in November for several years now and I always say thanks for my house. It feels so weird to say thanks for my house, in my new house. The new house doesn’t feel like home yet. Frankly it is a huge mess. 😂  I am reminding myself to be patient and enjoy the journey. And despite the chaos I am very, very thankful for this house!

Thanks for my health

I almost forgot about Thanksblogging!

I’m not sure if it’s Blogger, the BlogTouch app, or Google Photos; but my photos keep disappearing. One of those days I’ll figure it out.

Earlier today my sister Bonny said something along the lines of, “you have nine million problems, until something happens with your health, and then you just have one problem.” It’s so true. Whenever I get sick it’s like nothing else matters! And certainly doubly true for big things like bone breaks or chronic disease or surgery.

So today: I am very thankful for my health! I’m not a superstitious person, otherwise I wouldn’t mention the fact that I somehow have not once gotten sick since I started marathon training. Just 10 days to go! Hold strong, Eliza’s immune system!

And thank you!!

Look, you’ve started across already

Ok so we are officially out of the townhouse after two furious weeks of packing and moving, and two chaotic weeks of unpacking and losing things, and now that I’ve had two seconds to breathe, I have been thinking about why I had such strong feelings about leaving the townhouse.

We bought the townhouse when I was 26 years old, our first home purchase. Theo was 3, Ida was 18 months, and Lars and Polly were tucked away in the “don’t even know that I want this yet” corner of my dreams.

We bought it from a bank, who had taken it from the divorcing couple who could no longer afford the payments. In 2010 there were a lot of homes like that: mortgage defaults after the house of cards fell in 2008 and families had hung on as long as they could.

The first year in that house was a rollercoaster. I mostly have really happy memories of it. Just Theo and Ida and me, doing our thing, free as little birds.

By the end of that first year, I was heavily pregnant with Lars and back at work during the day. After the furnace broke during a cold snap and the AC broke during a heat wave, we replaced the HVAC. 

Because of course, you have to have a huge expense in your first year in a new house that you already couldn’t quite afford.

When Lars was a baby we had a few more major things in the house, like a big basement flood which impacted three rooms of carpet and baseboards.

In the next several years we updated the bathrooms and the kitchen and added one more baby.

In the next several years after that, we replaced all of the siding and the windows and gutters, reconfigured the yard and the plants a zillion times, dug out a dead tree and planted a new one, and added a fourth bedroom downstairs with a new window and new carpet.

And everybody grew.

You might know that I like to keep records. I have always kept a journal (and/or a blog), I print my instagram into Chatbooks, I make videos every year for my kids’ birthdays with sentimental songs attached. A tradition we’ve kept up at each kid’s birthday has always been to watch all the old birthday videos of that child.

Right around the time we bought our new house, I discovered that the hard drive I had kept alllllll of my data on… including all of the photos and videos I’ve created, audio interviews I’ve done with parents and elderly friends, everything… had malfunctioned and was totally unusable.

“BUT DIDN’T YOU BACK IT UP?!” Well of course I did, but I was not scrupulous. I have some of it in iCloud and some of it in Google Photos and some of it in Amazon Photos and some of it on another hard drive.

And… some of it, apparently… nowhere else.

NO. WHERE.

I have tried Geek Squad, who, after giving it the white-glove clean-room treatment, pronounced the drive dead.

I am going to try a few more companies and see what happens, but I am not optimistic.

Anyway, all of that is to say: I realize that 

(A) my whole life isn’t wrapped up in one tiny little house in a corner of the suburbs, and 

(B) my whole life doesn’t have to stay preserved in photo and video form,

BUT… I am still very sad to lose those things.

Even though 

(A) I have a new house now which I am so thankful for and so excited about (despite the pouring of money and sweat into things we didn’t anticipate and haven’t anticipated yet)

and even though 

(B) I have living breathing children who are still growing and laughing and crying and running and skipping and falling and talking and all of those things that happened in the last 17 years whether or not I took videos of it.

I guess I want to keep everything locked up where I can access it anytime I want. 

I am a little mad at myself for removing myself from that little home and VERY mad at myself for losing that precious data.

I want to snap my fingers anytime I want and watch videos of my babies.

A Bible verse that has always pulled at me: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

I think I am pretty good at living in the moment. I would say it’s one of my strengths. But I also value the past, a lot. 

And saying goodbye to part of my past (the physical walls of the home where my children learned to walk, talk, feed themselves, tie their shoes, play the piano) feels like maybe a little too much to ask of my heart right now. 

Yet it’s done. Look, I’ve started across already.

"At the Border"

by Carl Dennis

At the border between the past and the future

No sign on a post warns that your passport

Won't let you return to your native land

As a citizen, just as a tourist

Who won't be allowed to fraternize with the locals.

No guard steps out of a booth to explain

You can't bring gifts back, however modest,

Can't even pass a note to a few friends

That suggests what worries of theirs are misguided,

What expectations too ambitious.

Are you sure you're ready to leave,

To cross the bridge that begins

Under a clear sky and ends in a fog?

But look, you've started across already

And it's one-lane wide, with no room for U-turns.

No time even to pause as drivers behind you

Lean on their horns, those who've convinced themselves

Their home awaits them on the other side.

Moving day

We are moving today.

Not far. Same schools and ward and everything, but we’ve lived in this house for 13 years, which is most of my kids’ lives and most of our marriage, and it’s a weird feeling.

We have moved most of our stuff over to the new house already, in dozens of van loads of repurposed laundry baskets and half-open cardboard boxes. The movers will take over all the furniture and all the heavy boxes (books), and we’ll sleep there tonight for the first time.

As we stood and surveyed our mostly empty house last night, Ida (who does not want to move and has never wanted to move) said, “This is sad.” I said, “That’s valid. I have mixed feelings myself.” She said, “Not me, I just have one feeling.”

As for me: I feel sad, hopeful, wistful, grateful, happy, nervous, excited, and very very tired.

This has been such a good house.

Polly talk

Time for some Polly quotes

Lars, I think when you grow up you should have a big red beard and lots of tattoos and look strong.

***

The mac and cheese at school is SO disgusting. There’s only like 10 macs, and SO much cheese.

***

I’ve only peed my pants twice. …in a car.

***

I’ll never walk on Gorilla Street again 🎶

***

Me: Did you find your bathing suit?

Polly: Yes. Well, Lars found it.

Me: Where was it.

Polly: Ok, I’ll tell you but… why it was on the stove, was—

Me: What?? 😂

Polly: Why it was on the stove, was I was in the kitchen eating breakfast and I guess I left it there.

Shake it to the left, if you’re having a good time

In 2013 I embarked on a running journey as part of an effort to make “30” special. It was an amazing year for running, in terms of stretching and growing and working hard. 

Unfortunately (and not coincidentally) I also had a sort of emotional/mental breakdown toward the end of that year, which brought me on another journey which was what I’m just now realizing has been almost exactly 10 years of therapy. Whew! 

You know, I would never change it. I actually kind of hate going to therapy but I can’t imagine my life without it. I’ve been to 4 different therapists in that time, only because the dang therapists kept moving out of state. Pretty sure they didn’t move away just because of me, but who knows? 😆 my favorite was Adina. She “got” me, and she also “got” Theo (Theo and I tend to share therapists, it’s efficient). I cried when she left. She was like a decade younger than me, too, but wise beyond her years, I guess!

But anyway, now I’m 40, and I’m embarking on another running journey (marathon in November), and it feels good. I’m even slower than I was at 30, but I don’t mind. I feel strong. I feel focused. I feel my body adapting. I feel a little overwhelmed at the miles I still have in front of me, especially when I look at my Saturday runs scheduled in September and October.

Came across this post from 2013 detailing some of those same feelings when I went through that 30-year-old running year. Felt happy to see a comment from Jenn, who’s been on my mind a lot lately. https://lizer.blogspot.com/2013/08/shake-it-to-right-if-you-know-that-you.html?m=1 

Years are going by. It’s a little wild.