Halloween

This isn't the greatest picture, but I love how they look in it.

Being eleven is hard.

On Sunday I read an essay by Hope Edelman in the New York Times.  It was about her daughter having to do a "flour sack baby" project for school.  Her daughter is the same age as Zoe, and this quote was a good reminder for me:
"Eleven-year-old girls occupy a notoriously wobbly zone between childhood and adolescence.  A mother who's an embarrassment in the morning can be someone to adore at dinner and a pariah again by bedtime.  Yet beneath this ambivalence, girls are desperate for reminders that we love them and always will, even as they're abruptly banishing us from their rooms."

41.

I had a really great birthday.  I'm happy to be 41.  Thank you, world.

Books

I just finished this book, Listening Below the Noise: The Transformative Power of Silence, by Anne D. LeClaire.  I was especially wanting to like it because I bought it on the Cape last weekend with my girlfriends.  And I did like it.  In the book, she describes her practice of keeping silent for two days each month.  She writes about feeling selfish for wanting to have solitude and silence, wondering if it hurts her family and friends, which resonates for me.  I just love being alone so much.  I also wonder what would come up to the surface if I went on a silent retreat, or just tried to set aside a certain time to be in silence.  It's really intriguing to me.  I also love that the epigraph is from May Sarton, whose journals I've been reading lately too, and that throughout the book she referred back to The Secret Garden, one of my childhood favorites.

Things I Like.

This room.

These shoes

This poster.

passiveagressivenotes.com

Day off.

So, I called in sick today.  And yes, I do think I have gotten Zoe's cold, but mostly I'm just tired and needed some downtime.  I've been letting things at school get to me instead of focusing on the good parts -- teaching, and being with the great women (yes, they are mostly women) who I work with.  So, I stayed home today and knitted (birthday surprise for Lloyd), watched Flight of the Conchords (I have a crush on Bret), and read Whittington, our mother-daughter book club book.  And also did laundry, of course.  It was a good day and I feel ready to jump back into the fray tomorrow.