Poetry Friday: "Looking at the Sky" by Anne Porter

I missed Poetry Friday last week. If you did too, check it out at Tanita Davis's {fiction, instead of lies}. The Poetry Pals used Jane Hirshfield's "Two Versions" as a mentor poem and crafted their own takes (inspired by Hirshfield's theme, structure, or lines). They created some stunners, so do hop over and read your way through those beauties. 

This week, Carol at The Apples in My Orchard is hosting. Carol has been caring for her aging father, spending 16½ hours on the road (in one day!) and dealing with a lot (I see you, Carol!) Send her some virtual hugs and love today and enjoy all the poetry she's rounded up for us here. 

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I missed PF last week because we spent Thursday and Friday out of town. My daughter and her husband hosted Thanksgiving. My middle daughter, whom I blog-named "Betsy Ray" (after our beloved Betsy in Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy-Tacy books) was nine years old when I started this blog in late 2005. She was NINE. And now she and her husband are killing it as Thanksgiving hosts. We had a marvelous day and a marvelous meal. (I told her to marry a man who cooks, and she did. Yay!) The only parts of the meal we provided were the pumpkin pie (my mom's extra-spice recipe), gluten-free/dairy-free biscuits, and gf/df chocolate chip cookies. Anne-with-an-e (who was twelve when I started the blog — TWELVE!) and her fiance brought the dairy-free mashed potatoes, which Ramona (who was THREE when I started the blog) pronounced the best ever. When she was three, she didn't like "mashed-potatoes-with-the-skin-on, eww" but her culinary palate expanded over the years. Sadly for her, a few years back, just as she was perfecting the ultimate pepperjack grilled cheese sandwich with marinara dipping sauce, she needed to go gf/df, as Betsy had to a few years before. We're still working on perfecting the gf/df diet but overall we've made huge progress.

Aaaaaanyway...that's where I was last week. Enjoying the many pleasures of spending time with all my favorite people. Counting gifts and blessings. Giving thanks for beauty seen and unseen. "Looking at the Sky" and getting my thirst for a touch of heaven quenched. (Stealing the imagery of a thirst quenched from the last line of the poem. It's a short and perfect piece.) 

Looking at the Sky
by Anne Porter

I never will have time
I never will have time enough
To say
How beautiful it is
The way the moon
Floats in the air
As easily
And lightly as a bird
Although she is a world
Made all of stone.
....
(Read the second part here.) 

Photo courtesy of AdamNir, Pixabay.

Bits and Pieces of Our Days: A Good Rainy Morning

 

This isn't my actual window (I'm a mediocre photographer so I'm thankful for Pexels) but it could be. This is the drizzle of our day. 

It will be punctuated by the sunshine of hot coffee and breakfast-out somewhere, to kick off the school year for Ramona and me. Anne-with-an-e and Betsy are free from work/school today and can join us, which is a delight. 

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Work, as always, is keeping me busy. I'll be teaching two six-week sessions of The Writer's Jungle Online for Brave Writer this fall. (There are still spaces open in the Oct. 29-Dec. 7 class, but the Sept. 10th class is full.) I've also been getting to tinker with just a wee bit of behind-the-scenes writing for Brave Writer, and that's a lot of fun. 

I might have a new book in the works; I'll keep you posted as things develop.

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I've mentioned our swallows before and wrote here about our resignation to their stubborn beauty.
And of course, you've heard of swallows returning every year to San Juan Capistrano?
What I may not have mentioned recently is our fear that the Edmisten home is turning into Edmistrano.

I give you Exhibit A:

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One night in mid-August, about 11 pm I think, at the height of the Perseid meteor showers, we drove out into the country to get a better look. It was worth the drive, but we actually ended up seeing the most spectacular shooting star after we got home. We were lying on blankets in the backyard when we saw one that looked like an amazing special effect. 

Again, not my photo. Again, thanks, Pexels.com. 

It was a needed bit of beauty in a rather hard month. 

There are a number of health things happening at Edmistrano, but one that's currently front and center is Betsy's autoimmune disease. 

In December, I shared that she'd been diagnosed with a chronic illness, but I don't think I ever shared the details. Betsy has Crohn's disease (I have her permission to talk about it -- oh, for the days of thinking only about cute kid quotes!) We thought it was being well controlled with a biologic that she's received every 8 weeks, since December, through an IV infusion. Although she'd had to leave school in the fall semester of 2017, she was back at it last semester, and went into the summer feeling good. She was in clinical remission, but testing in early August showed that she's not in endoscopic remission and symptoms were beginning to flare. So, after too much waiting and some stressful phone calls with the insurance company, she started a new biologic, which we hope will work. The girl who a year ago was deathly afraid of needles not only learned to deal with regular IVs, but now will learn to give herself injections. 

My daughters repeatedly teach me what real bravery looks like. 

Which brings me to the kitchen. 

I'm helping Betsy investigate an autoimmune protocol (AIP) diet, and these ladies are fast becoming my new best friends: Mickey and Angie, at Autoimmune Wellness, are a wealth of information and recipes. (Many thanks to my dear friend who steered me their way.) I've been listening to their podcast, too, which is super-helpful. I've been talking about Mickey and Angie so much that Atticus suggested I just refer to them as McAngie. 

For a vegetarian who was leaning toward veganism, learning to cook with high-quality proteins is a challenge, so wish us luck. And if you have any AIP diet stories to share, hit me up. 

In short, if I've been really quiet on the blog, it's at least in part because I've been so busy in the kitchen. 😮

Happy Christmas Eve and a Happy Update!

I'm about to go hide in my room and write my annual Christmas-themed Harry Potter fan fic (a tradition started by Anne-with-an-e in 2008 -- so this is our 10th year! -- wherein we each write a Harry Potter story sometime during Advent, then read them to each other over Christmas Eve dinner.) But, before I do that, I wanted to share a giddy update:

Betsy started a new treatment a couple of weeks ago, and it is working. We have seen an incredible change in her, especially in the last week/ten days. (I could almost say that the last four months seem like a bad dream, but the dream is still too vivid, so... nope ... not there yet.) She is actually starting to feel relatively normal again. We're getting our girl back, and we couldn't be happier.

I'm not feeling very articulate about all of this -- all I can say is, "Happy! We're happy! We're so happy!"  😃

Betsy Finished Her Novel!

Betsy finished her NaNoWriMo novel early, on Monday night, after a long, productive day (with interruptions for an outside class and homework.)

Her final word count came in at about 50,500, and she logged more than 8,000 of those words on Monday! I'm positive that's more than I've written in one day, ever.

This is her second year to tackle this hyper-speed writing project. She finished last year, too, and in her pre-NaNoWriMo days, she completed two novellas, bringing her total book count up to four.

I'm so proud of my novelist!

Top Ten Reasons My Blog Has Been Languishing

10. It's been hot this summer. Everything is languishing.

9.  My friend Paula was visiting from Chicago -- I was busy with her and Ramona was busy with Paula's daughter. I begged to accompany was forced to go with Paula to a cool old furniture shop and consider buying a gorgeous cedar chest that I don't really need.

8. I didn't buy the cedar chest but the mental wrangling took all my energy.

7. We had a bat in the house. Eeeeeek! We had a bat in the house! The screaming, the running, and the  feelings of disgust took all my energy (and just after I'd regained it following the cedar chest incident. Not fair.)

6. We have been shopping for a car for our teens. We've made do without a teen car so far, but we're finally all going in too many directions.

5. Visiting used car dealers should qualify us for an enormous discount off our time in purgatory. (This doesn't technically qualify as a reason for blog languishment. I just had to say it.)

4. We've been finishing up various summer activities: a cool "outdoor classroom" hosted by the Game and Parks Commission (in which Ramona romped in a delightfully big mud puddle), horseback riding, the water park before it closes. I'm trying to remember the meaning of the words "cook dinner" and we've been adding and dropping classes at the college for Betsy's early enrollment: Spanish! No, French! No, Spanish! (We've just registered, and this is crazy, but pick a language, and call me maybe....)*

3. I had to clean out a closet and put up some new curtains in the dining room because, you know, when you're writing a book it's easier to invent unnecessary organizational and cleaning projects that make you feel you're accomplishing something than it is to stare at the screen and ponder just the right word for that sentence in chapter seven.

2. On the subject of writing, a book, well, I'm writing a book -- and I have only so much room in my brain/time at the computer, and often I've spent it all on the book, which leaves my poor little blog out in the cold (or is it languishing in the heat?) If I spend entire days and nights at the screen, Ramona looks like this:

and asks, "Mommy, don't you love me anymore?" 

1. I wonder if that cedar chest is still there....

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*To be fair to Betsy, a fair amount of the switching was my doing, covering bases in case one or the other of the classes doesn't take off due to low enrollment. In other words, I'm making my daughter look indecisive for comic effect. This is totally unfair of me, although (in all fairness to me, as long as we're going for fairness) she did waffle a little, due to various considerations.  But it's my blog and it's hard enough to find things I can share about my teens without violating their privacy, so when I find something I can say, I say it. Even though I fully expect to hear, "Mom!"