Hmm. Failing. Not Quite Giving Up.

So, I got sick over the weekend. Sick + Six Month Old + Sixty Hours Worth of Work that needs to be done at my job= No blogging.

Basically, my life is winning in this round. It's all wonderful and exhilarating and I couldn't ask for better. But still, I'm getting sick frequently and falling further behind at work. I think it's because there's more work than one person can do, but maybe it's just because the person trying is me.

As I say, things are really going pretty well, just tiring and sometimes overwhelming. Calamity is a charmer, and is generally loving and happy. She just sprouted her first tooth, by the way. Which of course means more fretting and up nights more. She's taken to getting up every couple of hours to nurse--hard on a full-time working mama, but I know it's what she needs for comfort, if nothing else.

We've got a sporadically recurring tear-the-house-apart project to continually cull and revise closet and furniture layout to make more living space and keep from being buried.

By the by, here's what we've got on the baby stuff front. I'm fairly proud of keeping it to what I consider a minimum--no bouncies, no rolling command central thingies, no lights and whistles. And it's nearly all thrifted, handed down or borrowed. But still, it's a lot of stuff:

a highchair
a crib
a backpack
a couple of soft cloth carriers (Moby and Babyhawk, if you care)
a rocking chair
some soft toys
some wooden toys
a changing pad on top of the dresser
a little rocking baby seat thing that she's really outgrown and we haven't gotten around to passing along
a moses basket on a rocking stand that she's really outgrown and we're in denial because we love it so
a mini-cosleeper that we've already passed on to another family

It's not that much, really. The crib's in the bedroom, the tall dresser's in the hall, the secretary dresser's moved into a closet that will eventually be Clem's little sleeping hideaway, with a futon on the floor. The highchair replaced a grown-up chair and the basket rocker sits in an alcove in the kitchen. It all fits, but not without effort and planning. We're in a 592 square foot apartment and we're quite cozy.

And even though I've failed at NablopoJuly and daily food posting, I'll make sure to get a food bit in here. Tonight we had a quick broiled salmon, some steamed green beans with basil and garlic, and Moroccan potato salad for dinner (potatoes, black olives, cumin, paprika, lemon, olive oil, red onion). And fresh raspberries and blueberries plain for dessert. Delicious. I'm determined not to devolve into snacky eating habits, and do my darndest to cook a real, good, healthy dinner at least every other day. The in-betweens tend to be slapped-together burritos, hummus/pita sandwiches and the like. But even those include home-made hummus and cooked beans from dried. I've not been making homemade salsa because we don't usually have local tomatoes, and because I'm lazy.

Calamity ate green beans for dinner. She loved them the most of any food yet. Others of which, for the record, have been: applesauce, banana, nectarine, cantaloupe, zucchini and carrot. She's also getting the hang of feeding herself with her little wooden spoon, though lots of it ends up in ears and hair.

We're going home to Virginia later in the week, and there will be a gap in blogging. Unavoidable. Mom's not on Internet at the moment. We're looking forward to the break, and to seeing all the family, including a new niece, 8 weeks old or so. It was kind of a last-minute change of plans, but I can't wait.

Day 2. I hear the crickets coming for me.

So, we had ourselves a 2 minute thunderstorm here this evening. Complete with two claps of thunder and that smell of rain on hot pavement I remember from Virginia.

I can count on one hand the number of thunderstorms I've seen here in Seattle. At home, they were how you knew it was summer--a thunderstorm every few days. Often dramatic. Quite sexy. Memories attached to thunderstorms don't fade for me the way other memories do ...

Anyway, this is food month, according to NaBloPoMe (read it with a southern accent, please).

Yeah, so I made a quick little pasta with the last of the season's asparagus and some morel mushrooms. This is one of the dishes I've made so many times over the past few weeks, while all the ingredients are in season, that I'm well satisfied and ready for them to move along into memory. Now if only the next season's treasures would find their way here. The weather here was miserable this spring, and everything's at least two weeks behind. Last year at this time I was bringing home flats of blueberries and scarfing them down. This year we've only just now hit strawberries. Luckily someone from across the mountains brought japanese cucumbers to the market this week, so we had some tzatziki with our falafel a couple of days ago (much better than the garlic lemon yogurt we have in the long no-cucumber months. And cucumbers and strawberries on a spinach salad are pretty perfect food.

But still, I'm ready for blueberries and peaches. I'm such a hoarder and so attached to certain foods that I could only bring myself to open the last jar of Italian plums in apple cider two days ago. I still have about a cup of frozen peaches, and 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries left, along with maybe 2 cups of frozen blackberries. I know I should have enjoyed them in the darkest winter, but there were still some apples then, so I was never desperate. And I have to be desperate to risk running out of plums and blueberries before the new ones arrive. So I guess the next hot day will be smoothies, and then there'd better be some fruit besides strawberries at the market. I've heard there'll be raspberries this week, so maybe I'll survive.

I forgot to take pictures of the asparagus and morel mushrooms. I'm a bit out of practice with this blogging thing. I'll get back in the swing of things soon.

By the way, Calamity wants to log her dinner here: two or so smushy bites of steamed carrot.