Yesterday my littlest baby turned six.
(My biggest baby is fourteen. I often tell them, I know you’re not a baby, but you’ll always be my baby.) She woke up earlier than usual, stoked about her birthday, gave me a big cuddle, and was in a great mood then stepped on a pair of big over the ear kid headphones someone had left on the floor and that somehow gashed her foot, which bled a lot. Poor baby spent the day limping around not wanting to put weight on her foot cuz of the discomfort. Shitty thing, especially on her birthday. I was glad we’d had a good long park outing the day before. She got some Taylor Swift related gear as presents, she’s an ardent self-identified swiftie so that stuff was a hit, and she’s very cute.Also yesterday a student said she always looks forward to coming to my class (and lots of other students did big head nods too!), and another student emailed me the other day to say the same. That was a very nice part of my day. Work’s got some hard and stupid shit right now so these pick me ups are especially appreciated.
Today I was outside doing a walk and work calls and when I came home there were a ton of birds in the trees all over our block. When we take walks the 6yo and I (she’s the 6yo now! not the 5yo! my baby’s so grown up!) sometimes call them - well, mostly I call them but she goes along with it - bird clubs. Our street was home to like four or six bird clubs. Loud bird chatter, trees fizzing with birds hopping from branch to branch and looking all around when still in place, and with a pretty regular rotation of birds from tree to tree - like walking over the bar to get a drink or something - sometimes in ones and twos and sometimes in fives and tens, and then maybe three or four times in hundreds, filling the whole sky. I went in and got the fam, they came out and we watched and listened to the birds together. It was nice, the birds and also the togetherness. The 6yo was a bit whiney cuz she didn’t want to wear shoes - she says the pressure on her foot (it’s a bad cut! gotta get her to take another bath today, soaking’s good) of putting on shoes doesn’t feel good so she was in her socks, me holding her, and I think that felt confining. Then she said she wanted her mom to hold her, and then the 14yo carried her in the house. 14’s bigger than my wife now so it makes sense she can carry 6 but/and it also feeds those ‘oh my god my babies are all grown up’ kinds of feelings.
Over all feeling tired today, work stress and probly could sleep and eat and hydrate better and I did more running in shorter succession - reduced recovery time - over the last week so I think I’m a lil dragged out. Hard to be not be where and how one wants, but play the hand we’re dealt etc etc - we must imagine Sysiphus listening to Burial's "South London Boroughs" EP over and over and over.
