Summer Vacay

6/5: L. tells me that, when G. got sick in the night, the first thing she thought when she went in his room and smelled that smell was, 'Demons.'
6/6: The cottonwood trees are so heavy in some places, they look a little obscene. Like they are shedding. Or wearing boas. No longer the dainty puffs floating through the air; now the stuff falls in clumps. The trees, embarrassed as adolescents.
6/7: The weeds have taken over.
6/8: I live in the wrong part of town.
6/9: G. watches Barney while I read portfolios. I turn the volume way down. He turns it back up.
6/10: The plastic pig, on her side, submerged in rainwater.
6/11: When I return to the interurban rotary trailhead, one other car is parked in the lot. An older man sits inside, highlighting a book. His back seat is filled with cardboard boxes.
6/12: There are bees in my chimney, and the sound, filtered down, is ghostly.

Week Ten Prequel

*I'm posting this early, since we're finishing up this week. Your last required observation is Thursday, 6/4.

5/30: Luis Urrea says no one lives in cardboard boxes anymore. Uh oh.
5/31: I call home, but the line is busy. I'm perplexed; I try again. Still busy. So then I call L.'s cell phone, and when she answers, I say, "Why is our phone line busy?" She says, "Because I'm on the phone." I say, "Oh," then hang up, forgetting why I've called.
6/1: At the lab, there's a white board on the door with the title Random Facts. Today's random fact is that shark fetuses fight each other in the womb, and the one who wins is the one who gets born. I don't know if this fact is true, but I can't stop staring at the sign while the nurse inserts the needle. I'm thinking, Shark fetuses? Really?
6/2: It's eighty degrees, and I'm overdressed.
6/3: My dreams are like watching TV shows these days.
6/4: Cottonwood seeds out the spider webs.

Week Nine, Spring Quarter (remix)

5/23: We drive to sidewalks because there are none on our street. I miss them, and I don't know where to park.
5/24: Our yard would be good for playing volleyball.
5/25: I buy a volleyball net for our yard, then can't set it up. The directions make no sense. There are lines that lead to nothing, arrows that point up and down. It's ridiculous and infuriating. I don't even play volleyball.
5/26: We play volleyball for about twenty minutes, and I wake up painfully sore in one leg.
5/27: It's astounding what we can debate.
5/28: The clouds look like meringue.
5/29: We walk outside with our coffee. There's nowhere to sit. "Want to sit at the bus station?" L. says. "Okay," I say.

Week Eight, Spring Quarter

5/16: Burrata. The world's best cheese. (This is not a joke, people. Get thee to a Trader Joe.)
5/17: A slug on the carpet. We three bend down to examine it like it is a brand new species.
5/18: Even having lived away from Florida for almost ten years, I still compare too many things to Disney. Today: when G. went across a puddle in his wagon, I said, "It's like a real life Jungle Ride."
5/19: Awkwardfamilyphotos.com. If you haven't seen it, you really should.
5/20: The notes for my new novel ending are covered in dog footprints.
5/21: I have a hard time trusting my gaydar these days. It goes off at all the wrong people.
5/22: From an interview with Sam Ligon, on the seductive dangers of over-editing: "And I think many writers rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and I think it occurs to many writers, as it does to me sort of late in the process: If I can just, finally, cut every single fucking word from this piece, it will be perfect."

Week Six, Seven....Ahhhh! (Spring Quarter Blues Version)

5/2: Mom says she's going to send butterflies. And this is the thing: I don't ask why.
5/3: The sweet woodruff on the stump threatens to open, then doesn't.
5/4: We wave goodbye to L. at 6am and make our own plans to leave.
5/5: My sister celebrates Cinqo de Mayo in Khartoum.
5/6: A tail wind shaves an hour off the first flight. During the second, we sit for an hour on the runway, waiting for a thunderstorm to pass.
5/7: The dogs refuse to eat in our absence.
5/8: We nap together in the basement, the floorboards creaking above us.
5/9: Let to our own devices, we wander, trailing an empty wagon.
5/10: A trampoline, a pond with no fish (and no water), a rusty swingset, a pool with murky water. "Let me pick up the dog poop," she says when I arrive.
5/11: When the plane landed, I thought G. was still asleep. He clapped without opening his eyes.
5/12: The popsicles are freezer-burnt.
5/13: The "family" parking space: who counts?
5/14: We drink $3.99 wine out of jelly jars.
5/15: The waitress refuses to bring us water.

Week Five, Spring Quarter

4/25: We eat veggie burgers at the Tulip Festival.
4/26: I find a live, green tree frog and a dead mole in the front yard while pruning ferns.
4/27: E. is holed up watching internet TV in an apartment in Sudan. There is another girl who's been there for two and a half years.
4/28: She calls to tell me she's bought a piano at a garage sale. Except it wasn't a garage sale. She asked a man if this was a garage sale, and he said no, but he did have this piano he wanted to get rid of. Then she bribed some random men to drive it home for her. When they showed up, the men said, 'You didn't tell us it was a piano.' She said, 'I didn't?'
4/29: I expected the sand we bought to be whiter.
4/30: Emails today: budget crisis, swine flu, illness, irritability. Things are bleak in my inbox.
5/1: We are washing our hands, washing our hands, washing our hands.

Week Four, Spring Quarter

4/18: The ownership of the waterfront here still surprises me. The beach is empty save for a single man on a cell phone. We don't go three feet before seeing the first sign: Private Beach. Private. Private. No Trespassing. Everywhere we try to go, the water is being owned.
4/19: We're an hour early for the ferry, so G. plays on a run-down playground on the reservation. We watch kids fly a kite in the yard of a discount fireworks store.
4/20: The Canadian radio loves this day.
4/21: I talk to my sister about her upcoming trip to Sudan, and when I ask if she's scared, she says, "I used to be." She wants a recommendation for a funny book, and I can think of none. When I ask what, exactly, she'll be doing there, she says, "Researching stuff." I laugh but don't pry. All the NGOs have been sent out of Sudan, but here is my sister, heading in.
4/22: My mom threatens to fake cancer to keep my sister home.
4/23: My baby sister leaves today for Sudan for six weeks. She loses her cell phone just before she goes.
4/24: Today, when I wake, I wonder where she is.

Week Three, Spring Quarter

4/11: At the market, the balloon man takes one look at L's dad and says, 'Is it Republican day?' I laugh and laugh.
4/12: It's Easter. We don't go to church. We sit around eating peanut butter eggs and preparing ourselves for loss.
4/13: The clouds spite us, stubbornly refusing to move until it's too late.
4/14: The car is rusted underneath. The bottom half of the body is covered in white dust. It looks like it's fading out.
4/15: Inside the package, there are falling-apart books and pieces of candy.
4/16: A huge bumblebee gets trapped in the house. I'm interested in things that get trapped inside: birds, bats, mice, lizards (in Florida). How desperate both the people and the animal are to get it back outside, and how impossible it seems to make that happen quickly.
4/17: G. wakes at 2am, ready to play, for no apparent reason.

Week Two, Spring Quarter

4/4: Mutant Berry Slurpee doesn't sound good.
4/5: A guy outside Wasabe Sushi hocked a lougie on the window as we left. A few minutes later, we heard him do it again. And again. We turned around, watched him keep doing this all the way down the block.
4/6: It's like a street party here when the sun comes out. People swim in the lake, even though it's too cold. The air is filled with footballs and volleyballs and soccer balls. The children run deliriously around the playground.
4/7: A guy on Holly wore shorts and a trenchcoat.
4/8: G. and I run up and down the hotel hallways in our socks.
4/9: I come home to find the aloe in pieces on the floor. This aloe has been with me for a long time. I called it Grandma because it produced so many aloe babies, who had more babies, and I ended up with dozens of mini-aloe plants. I couldn't give the things away. But I was always kind of proud of Grandma. So when she got thrown in the trash today, I was sad.
4/10: Along the road, someone has lined up eight grocery carts. They stand there like tourists, unsure where to go next.

Week One, Spring Quarter

3/31: G. wakes up in the night saying, "Chocolate cake."
4/1: Growing up, my mom used to make us prank lunches to take to school. Raw potato slices in our sandwiches was one. Napkin sandwiches was another.
4/2: My dad reports that in Orlando, more and more businesses are closing up. A new one each day, it seems like, he says. It's eerie. Like he's living somewhere else.
4/3: Being a night owl is considered a sleep disorder. It means your circadian rhythms don't work like everybody else's.

Week Ten

3/7: On the radio, a woman says whenever she takes a shower, she feels something like fingers pressing on her "tush" (her word). The problem? She and her dog are the only ones who live there. And she said this happens a lot. She doesn't know whether to be offended or terrified, and is maybe a little of both.
3/8: I have to explain to the babysitter: "I don't usually wear this much eye makeup."
3/9: We are sick and disgusting all day, camped out on the futon while it snows outside.
3/10: I consider how wonderful appetite is.
3/11: Our yard stays covered in snow longer than anyone else's. It's melted on both sides of us already, but G. can still sled in our front yard.
3/12: In the post office, there's this display behind the counter: three poinsettias, an American flag, and a stuffed Mickey Mouse. The man in line behind me smells like beer.
3/13: The crocuses opened. It must be spring.

Week Nine

2/28: We look awkward and silly in our street shoes on Mount Baker. None of us ski. Mom wants to know if there's a better gift shop, and no, the clerk says, there is not. We are nervous on our feet, Southerners who haven't lived north long enough to trust snow. It's still a hazard, not recreation. We arrive too late, stick out like foreigners. We copy what other people are doing for our photos. "You went skiing once, right?" Mom asks me. "Once," I say. We point out the snowboarders to G., and he laughs when he watches them, already someone else, this kid who is eating pizza on a mountain, who wakes each day among the cedars, who refuses to dress warmly enough for the weather. I was twenty-six the first time I saw the Pacific Ocean. He may never be as easy in the heat as his parents.
3/1: Sometime in the very early morning of this day, I wake up to G. puking. It is the first time, and this has been the joke about me -- will I be able to stand it enough to help him?
3/2: A thicket of trees that looks like smoke.
3/3: A boy at the bus stop sings pop songs in a falsetto. The guy riding a bike barefoot laughs.
3/4: A Pepperworth Plumbing truck passed me on the street. The driver was lighting a pipe with both hands.
3/5: Though I don't have a pass to park here, the security guy just smiles and keeps on walking when he sees what I'm pulling out of the back seat.
3/6: Half the kids at G's school are out sick, and I can feel the next illness coming, can almost see it, like a storm blowing across the water. Ugh.

Week Eight is Late

2/21: The coffee house is like a lodge. We eat muffins at a long table by the water.
2/22: When the babysitter fails to show, the night outside seems to get darker.
2/23: E. is back from Ethiopia, and when I ask how it was she just says, "Good."
2/24: We find the Toys R Us, but it's been boarded up for two years.
2/25: When we ask G. what will happen on Friday, he says, "Presents."
2/26: My mom feeds Girl Scout cookies to the deer.
2/27: Two years ago on this day, at 5am, I became a new mom. Today, I have a sick toddler, and I walked into my house to find my mom, fresh from Tampa, building the biggest sand box I've ever seen in my living room. And that's why this blog update will be late.

Week Seven

2/14: Snow sculptures wait under lights across the street from my hotel.
2/15: The plane feels like it's descending too quickly -- it always does, but especially today -- so I keep talking like my voice alone will keep us in the air.
2/16: No one seems to know when spring comes to Bellingham. July, some people tell me. It's already here, others say.
2/17: The word Olentangy conjures both the river -- the muddy water, the yellowish froth -- and the mini-mall.
2/18: G. has a fierce fast-ball, and he can aim, too, and when he aims at you, you're in trouble.
2/19: A girl with curly hair at the childcare place is throwing a fit when we arrive. The other kids mostly watch her, and one boy keeps going down the slide over and over.
2/20: Peeling corn at the counter, and throwing the husks on the floor.

Weeks Five and Six

1/31: In the museum parking lot is an upside down car, like a sculpture.
2/1: We sit in the basement and pass around 3-d glasses for the commercials.
2/2: A whole flock of thrush appear in the yard one day, tons of them, in the bushes and on the roof. Creepy.
2/3: I get an email from something called Babycenter.com, the subject of which is "7 Signs Your Baby Loves You." I delete it right away.
2/4: Brown lawn, ficus trees, pine needles covering the front lawn and threaded through all the bushes. All the houses look like Metairie.
2/5: In the restaurant, the wind blew through the brick wall behind us. You could put your hand down and feel it. I ate my catfish with my coat on.
2/6: We drive an hour to see a movie, then eat Italian food in a place that has autographed posters of Michael Bolton and Cheap Trick on the walls.
2/7: A band in Tupelo called -- I kid you not -- White Noise.
2/8: At the bar, a woman told a story about speed dating and how she ran into her student. We drank Blue Moon.
2/9: The presents: biscuits and a kid's cowboy hat.
2/10: We are all trying hard to breathe.
2/11: Home remedies that don't work: salt water, apple cider vinegar, grapefruit extract, chamomile, steam. Over-the-counter medicine that doesn't work: all.
2/12: A woman on the shuttle has come to Chicago to see a lawyer. She doesn't say what for. Just that she needs a hotel near Indiana Street because that's where the lawyer's office is.
2/13: I hear about the plane that crashed into a house from the TV in the elevator, between floors, and I gasp and cover my mouth, a reflex, and then get off on the wrong floor and wander the halls for a while, wishing I was home.

Week Four

1/24: I heard that in Mansfield, Ohio, someone keeps a herd of buffalo off I-71.
1/25: We run into this one former babysitter everywhere. At the movie theater, she's passing out popcorn.
1/26: Tape, it turns out, doesn't stick to brick.
1/27: There's some sort of firefighter training today. They all look at me as I pass like I'm eavesdropping.
1/28: I'm imagining that G's cough has taken on a life of its own. It's another resident in our house. It demands a lot of attention and wears everybody out.
1/29: Outside my window, deer startle at the sound of the jackhammer.
1/30: Kinds of weather I haven't yet written about: hail, avalanches, auroras, tropical storms, eclipses, Nor'Easters, heat bursts, tsunamis, volcano eruptions....

Week Three

1/17: A group of people walk down to the beach at Larrabee at sunset. They are wearing hoodies and carrying plastic cups of wine. The cups are full. The people are somber.
1/18: The phrase "double bird strike" sticks with me.
1/19: More than the pain, it's that feeling of falling that stays with me all day. That moment when my brain was trying to correct what was happening as it was happening, as if I could just revise this scene and right my bike. Like when my dad would take me on the Tilt a Whirl, and my sisters and I would lean, lean to make it swing the other way. Falling is what remains. Not hitting. The ground has disappeared, replaced with my steady movement toward it, a line forever approaching zero.
1/20: It is so cold, this day when everything changes. A woman's breath hangs on the shoulders of people in front of her. Her cheers are all wet and light. They don't float so much as climb.
1/21: The room is packed, and the guy sitting in front of me smiles at everyone. Like he's thrilled to see us, me, people he's never seen before. Like we are who he's been waiting for. After I read, he grins and claps, and he is so dainty, and he is so lovely.
1/22: There is a page on Facebook for fans of Aretha Franklin's inauguration hat.
1/23: Graciela's brother died of appendicitis, so they are returning to Oaxaca. Mom showed the girls a map of where they were going because they didn't know. She tried to point out all the places her kids live, but her map didn't have Africa so she couldn't show them where Erin was. They were disappointed.

Week Two

1/10: At the fish store, everything is expensive but the fish.
1/11: A woman in skull pants carrys a baby all done up in pink.
1/12: There's nothing fast about fasting.
1/13: A man on the bus with a sweet-looking guide dog talks on a cell phone. The dog's collar says it is a therapy dog. "Yeah," the man says to his phone. "You going to tap that?"
1/14: This morning, everyone walks through the heavy fog with their heads bowed, silent until the seagulls cry out, as if in alarm.
1/15: Someone in Bellingham is selling advice for $5 on craigslist.
1/16: My commute: from Oriental Avenue to Indian Street.

Week One

Each Friday, post a list of the observations you've come up with that week. I'll list mine, and then you can post yours as comments. Since this is a short week, you'll only have three.

Week of 1/8:
We pack the last of the snow into snowballs, and we stand in the rain and aim at the trees.
On the news, a man stands with his hands in his pockets while his house floods.
G's plastic rocking horse is creepy because 1) it has no teeth, and 2) it neighs even when no one else is in the room.

Welcome to the 451 Project

The 451 Project is a class project where students post a single observation every day.