Sunday, March 14, 2010

This is Water

I know, I know. I haven't posted anything since last year, to which I can offer only paltry excuses. I am writing now, only because it is 3 am and I am trying to adjust my body clock to Paris time and what else can I reasonably do at 3 am? I could mow the lawn, but it's dark and the neighbors wouldn't much appreciate my efforts. I could finish packing, but I rather like the last minute adventure of wondering if I have everything I need as I'm running out the door. I could read the NY Times, which I plan to do when the clock strikes 4. Actually, I am happy to finally have the time to sit here and bring everyone up to speed. Maybe I should schedule early wake-ups more often.

I'm not even sure if I remember where to begin. Our lives have been such a whirlwind since last November that I know some periphery details have escaped me by now. If I hit the rewind button and bring us back to November, you may remember that we once again hosted Thanksgiving at our house. As usual it was great fun. We ate, we drank and we all sang to American Idol on the wii. Who knew that my uncle had a great singing voice and could rock it? From Thanksgiving we steamrolled right into christmas and new year, which seems like a blur other than Jim's cousin from Vancouver came down for a visit for three days. Lovely. We went to the Oregon coast and had one of those rare December days where it was sunny, calm and relatively warm. We had to keep reassuring Leslie that it wasn't always like this on the coast, usually we are stuffing cotton into our ears because it is blowing so hard and bitterly cold. After Leslie left, we headed to my brother's in Hood River for three days of skiing/snowboarding. The boys' dearest friend, Rachel, and her sister Hannah came with us, which was an adventure in and of itself.

We rung in the new year/new decade chilling out with some dear friends. They left by 11 pm and we decided this was a year that warranted staying awake until midnight. We snapped a photo as proof that we were all awake at the stroke of midnight and then quickly scurried off to bed.

In early January Jim and I headed to Maui for five days. Let's just say that sun, warmth and beach in January is something we'll be doing from here on out. I don't even have to go into detail here as I'm sure you can imagine the bliss of sitting on the beach, watching whales breach, seeing sea turtles bob in the waves, and basking in the love and glow of one another. After returning home from Maui we left the next weekend for Banff, Canada for a family wedding. We drove. Enough said. The following weekend we were back in the car driving to Seattle for the boys' audition for summer ballet schools. They were accepted back to Pacific Northwest Ballet school on full scholarship for the summer intensive. Back to Seattle we'll go for five weeks. The best part is Rachel will be going there as well this summer, which is just about as close to perfect as is earthly possible.

February happened. I can't recall what, precisely, took place, other than we tried to play catch up at work and on the home front. The big news in early March is that we FINALLY finished building our office which meant that we could give the boys their own rooms. Do you realize how major that is. THEIR OWN ROOMS. That is right up there with granting Palestinians their own statehood. I'm pretty confident that if we were able to accomplish separating the boys and dividing up nearly 13 years of shared inventory, then peace in the middle east is next. In fact, we have become so skilled and deft and negotiating "that's mine, this is yours" that we should probably be the ones to broker the next middle east summit. Whew, and then some.

And now, now we are only hours away from boarding a plane for Paris. A week in Paris and 10 days in London to follow. How can I even elaborate on that statement? PARIS & LONDON, people.

So enough with what we've been doing. I'm going to completely switch gears and tell you that if you read nothing else, ever, then please spend your time reading David Foster Wallace. Jim and I are on a DFW kick. Jim is working his way through Infinite Jest, and I am reading a collection of his essays in Consider the Lobster. I'm too rummy right now to even begin to describe/elaborate on what reading this genius is all about, but it's mind-blowing. If you do nothing else today, read his commencement speech "this is water". It will change your life and perspective. I'm not kidding. I want to have "this is water" tattooed on my forearm as a permanent and constant reminder on what matters most and the CHOICES that I have. Who needs self-help/positive thinking babble when you can have all of the best ideas distilled into a succinct few thousand word speech that will completely and utterly recalibrate your thinking. I realize this paragraph has come out of left field and has nothing to do with the earlier summation of the past few months, but the ideas that I've really wanted to blog about have been connected to DFW, and I'll leave my more elaborate posts for another day. Suffice it to say, that this is water, this is water.