Lately I’ve been hanging out Mondays with my 6 month-old nephew. He’s here right now, in fact, asleep after several hours of visiting various Urbana businesses (Common Ground, Art Coop, Art Mart), eating, playing on the floor with some yogurt cups and a wooden spoon, eating some more, drooling and chewing, playing on the floor some more, trying to chase the cats, and finally succumbing to a nap while I sang “Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby”.
It’s been awhile since I’ve cared for a young baby, but I remembered quickly that all kinds of work can be done with a baby around – errands, dishes, sorting laundry, filing papers – but that the work has to be done in small chunks while the baby is playing on the floor, or amenable to being held while these other tasks are being performed, or asleep. Thinky work? It really can’t be done at all, or at least not well, especially if one is counting on naps. I’m lucky that Monday’s my day off and I can block out the time to be with the baby and get a few things done around the house. My Mondays with him will end in November when I return to a Monday-Friday schedule; he’s only a baby for a short while longer, and I’m grateful for the chance to spend some time with him.
And buy him Ugly Dolls.
And put him in Common Ground t-shirts.
There I am, in full bee regalia. I was doing an interview with some beekeepers yesterday and needed to record some hive sounds, hence the duds. Of course, I do this and then hear that national NPR has a story on urban beekeeping today, but whatever. If I did this stuff for a living I’d be scooping ’em instead of the other way around, amiright? I have two other stories in the works. I’m not very organized, so it’s been hard to keep everything straight, but I figure that, along with more writing discipline, will come with time.
The onions flopped over, so I pulled them out of the ground and left them out to start the curing process. I’ll bring them in today, ahead of the rain (I hope, geez, it seems to have accelerated once I determined I need to get them in today), to finish curing in the garage. It seems early to harvest onions, which is unsettling, but I guess we’re loping toward the end of July, after all, which is when I really begin to notice the lessening of daylight at the end of the day and a change in the quality of the light in general. I’m not really ready for this. It occurs to me that I probably should have started cabbage and broccoli under lights by now. Hm.
It was quiet in the neighborhood this weekend – all the immediate neighbors were gone but we remained, keepers of the ‘hood, working in the garden when it wasn’t too hot, yukking it up in the driveway with some beer and some snacks and some non-nuclear neighbors in the evenings. The neighbors all got home at the same time yesterday evening – Melony was in her garden, Ryan and Sarah were in theirs, and I could see Karen hunting for eggs in her yard. I was thrilled to see them.
Things are changing in the neighborhood, you know.
Brett and Bonnie are moving away – Brett in a couple of weeks and Bonnie in September sometime – to live and work in Europe, possibly for good. Steve and Erin will get married and move away in a year or two. Misunderstandings among neighbors can – and have – upset a good balance to a degree, even in our neighborhood. Then there’s the perpetual curiosity about any new neighbors – will they be able to hang, brew beer, trade cucumbers for a bumper crop of
Rattlesnake pole beans? Or will they Chemlawn the crap out of their yards?
One thing I love about our neighbors, too, is that they understand small-house living, that there is something rad about small, older houses on biggish lots, that children do not require thousands of square feet to be raised well. All of us live in cottage-style homes, or post-WW2 bungalows, and they are small. And affordable. And in my case, I love that there is less to clean. It rules.
Open in tabs:
This article about a 14 YO and her summer job shamed me into action in my own garden.
Jim and I are somewhere in
this photo – way in the back, on the left. Use the zoom tool to see! Take at the Hum show a couple of weekends ago in downtown Champaign. Taken by our friend
Gordon Pellegrinetti from behind the stage.
I’m quite pathetically excited about Soul Asylum coming to Urbana at the end of August. I know it won’t be the same as 1990, but still. I’d embed video for you to enjoy, but can’t get it to work right now.
Enjoy it this way instead!
Yay for cottage-style post-WW2 bungalows on biggish plots! Although this is the biggest place I’ve ever lived in, I’m sure it’s tiny by American standards.
I love that the cat is willing to put up with the baby just to get a bit of that blanket.
yeah, if we were neighbors we would definitely hang in your driveway. and you would join us in our garage where we sit in camping chairs, drink beer, and shoot the shit. life is good!
Small old houses rock our hood here in downtown Vancouver with a shared view of what defines good loving. I love knowing the rhythms of our neighborhood and that a wave or hello can start a great night of hanging out with the neighbors.
……I remember seeing Alex smoke for the first time-hated it.
The cig is only for show mummy.