Yanked out of self-pity

Finally, after two months, our schedule is starting to get to me. Because Squeeze is working nights and sleeping during the day, he must keep this schedule even on weekends to keep himself in the groove. Effectively, for me, it is as if he works 7 days a week; I have been alone with Starbeans until 4:00 pm every day since the beginning of March. The good side of this is we (Squeeze and I) actually get time together alone; whereas when we were both working part-time, weeks could go by without us ever being able to connect as a couple. That was really tough. We also feel much more balanced, which feels so good. While we are both happier with our current schedule, it is still far from ideal.

Knowing that everything is temporary helps, but Starbeans' teething and the seemingly constant fits and crying this week sent me into a downward spiral of despair. One that only my girl Barbara Kingsolver could yank me out of. During his nap today, I sat out in our sun-filled porch with carrots, cheese, and hummus by my side and soaked in the first three essays of Small Wonder. Finally, something to bring me out of my myopic focus on my own frustrations. Not necessarily trivial frustrations, but ones that I was allowing to effect me in a greater scale than should be. Barbara Kingsolver has a way of writing that incorporates the world at large. I particularly enjoy the way she looks at this through the lenses of biology and history. She reminds me that not only are the problems of the world much greater than mine, but so is the beauty, ingenuity, and stark grandeur of life on this planet, throughout all of its systems. I really appreciate her voice, much like the writings of Wendell Berry. She speaks so clearly.

With my remaining free-time, I looked for her online and found that she has a new book coming out May 2007, called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. In it, Kingsolver chronicles a year that her family ate only what they grew or raised themselves, or what they could buy locally. I can hardly wait! With her usual insight into life, I'm sure that she will knock me flat. It's gonna be awesome.