April 2002 Archives

There's a lot of stuff I wish I'd written about. Sometimes it's laziness, sometimes it's busy-ness, sometimes it's worry about what others might think; sometimes it's an inability to formulate anything coherent enough to make any sense, due to emotional or intellectual meltdown; something keeps me from it.

It's hard to believe that this remodel thing has been going on for nearly six months. Six months ago today, we had moved to our rental house and the demolition was about to begin. Now, our house looks whole again. The plaster is done and the hardwood floors started going in today. In the next few weeks, the new garage doors will arrive and be installed, the interior doors will go in, and the custom cabinets should be ready. In mid-May, the mayhem will return outside when they start on the grading and concrete work for the new landscape plan. If all goes well, we should still be on schedule to move in sometime in late June or early July.

We've posted a few new photos in the gallery; you can skip directly to the first new picture here.

Last night I had the strangest dream... Henry could turn into other animals, but only any animal he knew. So, he spent most of the dream as either a cat or a beetle. In the dream, I was really worried about him getting lost outside in either of those shapes, especially the beetle. We might step on him by mistake! Also, when he was a cat, we could see his eyes and they were exactly like his eyes when he was human, so we were sure it was him. When he was a beetle, we couldn't do this because the eyes of a beetle are so different.

On Monday, Henry had his 18-month birthday. Incredible. So much has happened in a year and a half, but it seems like it was just yesterday he was letting us know how unhappy he was about having his first bath. Now, he runs to the tub, giggling and saying "bath! bath!" Babyhood is just behind him, but it already seems that toddlerhood will be fleeting. In a smile, or a gesture, or raised eyebrows, an older Henry emerges now and then just long enough to send us for a loop. What happened to that little newborn? Now he's telling us "the story of the spider that fell on daddy." Incredible.

Also... a bunch of new pictures are now in the gallery (including some post-haircut pictures).

We've had spectacular weather these last three days. Bright sun, blue skies with wispy white clouds, gentle breezes, cherry blossom petals drifting down from the trees, mountains still white with winter snow gleaming in the distance in all directions. Henry has been out on his tricycle every day since the good weather started. All the puddles have dried up. Brad wore his Hawaiian shirt today, without a jacket. He also opened the windows and turned off the heat during the day. (Hey, here in Seattle we actually have to use our heat in the summer sometimes...) While waiting for my latte this morning, I noticed other customers ordering iced coffee drinks. Our lawn is quickly approaching jungle status. Tomorrow, the grey haze may be back and I'll be okay with it. But, it has been nice to have to wonder where my sunglasses are, to see that the stars are still there in the night sky, to contemplate an iced short 2 percent latte.