Steph – Page 39 – Stephanie Sicore

September 24, 2007January 15, 2008

summer’s end for fall

Now that I’m back, I notice that Leslie has tagged me for a meme. I kind of need to be forced to make a list. This fall is off to a chaotic but downright joyful start, so it’s right to sit down and prioritize.

Gotta start with a fun project. The boys and I are going to hack our way through this book and write about itÂ 😉

Now that the canoe is christened for the season, I want to slip it in here and camp out later here.

And make costumes for them and me. I also want to take the funk up a notch around here, and variations on these would look fantabulous around our house.

The motherf#$ing gophers have me planning my defense, graced with these, finally,
among some of these.

Time to grab a board and suit , finally, and learn. Or die. I’m tired of being curious.

Inevitably, I’ll envision what I’d like to stock a few acres with when we move back to Texas in a few years.

The rest is business as usual. Yadayadayada.

What about you? What’s on your autumnal agenda? And have you been tagged yet (not having been online much lately, I wouldn’t know)? If you haven’t, then here! Now you’ve got the baton.

September 20, 2007September 20, 2007

argh!

I can’t keep up! Backlogged weeks in iPhoto, the garden has been torn apart by gophers, laundry is still brimming from suitcases; blogging is trumped by life this month and I’m not going to fuss over it much (so neither should you, mom!).Â Longing for more time to read all of your posts, much less write my own. Cheers!Â I promise to be back within a few days (my first weekend at home in over a month!)

September 11, 2007January 15, 2008

tales of a duffel bag, part 1

I’m sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of our bedroom, and the soft yellow lamplight bathes the tousled bed and the the daisies on the bedside table, both closets stand ajar, with light spilling out the doors. Ford’s drawings, tacked upon the wall here and there, rise gracefully off the wall under the occasioanl breeze. It’s quiet, nothing but the drone of the window unit, but I can still hear my ears ring. And that, my friends, is the peace my ears deserve at the end of an afternoon with my own children.

I finished unpacking our bags from the past month’s travelling, all piled upon the floor and covered, by now, in a smattering of white dog hair. The clothes from one bag drained coarse sand in its wake as I walked to the laundry room; those were from our paddling trip up Mendocino. They smell of campfire and redwoods and ocean. I already want to drive back.

Mendocino is like Provincetown, Mass, minus the saltwater taffy stands; everything about the town digs up vacuous memories of freshman orientation in Cape Cod: the ageing middle class, tie dyed tee shirts, burgeoning blocksful of B&Bs, cottage gardens, picket fences, and storesful of kitch.

But we only spent an hour or so downtown; we camped at Russian Gulch state park.

We practiced knot-tying and sm’ores-eating and echo-making

boat-ramming and sea-dogging

It’s the kind of place where, if you have a plank to paddle upon, you can skim your way mellow up Big River; listen to eagles and the drift of seawind weaving through swaying flats of saltmarsh; look down past your oar into cleargreen depths of bull kelp and eelgrass,and let your eyes guide you up beyond mammoth timber moorings (once used by Russian pelt hunters).

And when the tide returns, you can drift seaward, out of the gentle, giant embrace of coastal redwoods and into the wild expanse of the Pacific. It is a place to feel very small and, among all ages, full of wonder.