Words, Words, Words

The other day I happened to scroll through my history of online activity and realized that all, ALL of it for the last six months was baby-related. Including this blog, which has been nothing but baby gurgles since Hunter's advent! That might possibly have something to do with the fact that since the sixth of July, my life has been nothing but baby gurgle. Baby gurgle and flour-soft baby skin and downy dollops of duck-fuzz hair and liquid blue eyes and wiggly monkey toes and lots and lots of dirty diapers.

Babies are a lot of work!

Sorry to all you moms who just snorted your coffee all over the place, but yes, that actually was a surprise to me. I did not expect the intense level of total involvement a baby needs! Granted, Hunter has a fairly high-maintenence personality, is easily bored and prefers lots of face-to-face interaction (he takes after his daddy in more than looks), plus special needs subtracts from your available time, but still! Of course, it doesn't help that I have the cutest baby in the world and I very much enjoy bragging about him.

Anyway, hope everyone likes constant baby updates.

(insert flurry of baby pics)

The only non-baby thing in my life at the moment is NaNoWriMo – which YES I was insane enough to attempt. I can see right now this ain't gonna be a 100K year. Won't be 50K either. Heck, I probably won't type my way to 25K. I knew that before I rattled out the first word, though. And it's not the point. This year NaNo is about me starting to write again.

Writing is a lot of work!

Don't be snorty this time. Writing didn't used to be work. 2009 I happily typed out 100K + and had a ball the entire time. Somewhere in the insanity of 2010 my deep, delicious resevoir of words which I took for granted dried up. Words don't wash through my mind like the waves of Lake Superior anymore. Now they hide out behind palm trees scattered in a very dry desert. I stalk them endlessly, frustrated and tired before I catch a half dozen. I found my pair of Vision Decoders the other day, which are a magic invisible pair of spectacles which, while worn, allow the wearer to constantly process what they see into words. I'm so excited at wearing them again! When you subconsciously convert life into words, everything is so much MORE – because you have to think about what's happening. You have to become conscious of the temperature of the wind, of the smells it carries, of the feel of it when it hits you. You have to taste all the flavors in the bite of marinated chicken, biting cautiously to determine texture and consistency. You have to really look at a sunset, discovering all the colors of the rainbow in the strip of last light over the ocean.

Even though the words rarely make it to paper (or the computer screen, for that matter) they're back in my life.