Hibernation

I keep thinking of things I want to post about, and then when I get a chance to post, I can't remember what I was thinking about. But that's not conversation, is it?

We've been pretty housebound since Christmas, going out as we have to for school and work and then scurrying home again to the warm fire and layers of soft, comfy clothes. I've been making soup as often as I can get away with it in my soup-ambivalent household, crocheting and learning more about ways to use that new skill on the internet. Come the apocalypse, I will be keping everyone's heads warm. I am dying to unravel an old sweater or something so I can start building a reclaimed yarn stash. (What is happening to me?!) I have been sort of plodding through The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter off and on since Thanksgiving, but my new craftiness has seriously cut into my reading time. That's partly because I decided to make a bunch of Christmas gifts, and partly because the book is good but just not particularly compelling to me at the moment. I decided to go ahead and start reading the book I got for Christmas, A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True. I'm only a few chapters into it, but I like it. It reminds me of History of Love, which I adored. I've been listening to Regina Spektor's Far until the songs fill my head to the point that I have to not listen to it for a few days. In addition to just liking the songs, it always feels so...I don't know, life affirming? to find someone who is truly original in what she does.

I feel like I've turned a corner with Genevieve. I think it's partly that she's now closer to four than three and has passed through the worst of the horrible three-year-old-bipolarness, and partly that I've just had to stop and force myself to pull water from the stone in terms of my ability to be patient with her tantrums. The older kids are getting a little slap happy from spending so much time indoors, much of it in front of the television or the Wii. It's finally warmer today and BD has big plans to get them outside breaking in the new basketball hoop Santa brought, so we'll see how that goes.

Mostly right now I feel like I'm lying fallow, dreaming of Spring, letting thoughts and ideas ripen and swell.