A friend and I were talking the other day, and realized that 1989 was 20 years ago.  (Yeah, the math department may not be too pleased to find out that their librarian is not super fast at the subtraction – luckily mental calculations aren’t really required in librarianship.  We know how to look up the answers).  Usually, if you name a year in the past, I have to do a lot of (slow) mental calculations to remind myself how old I was at the time, where I was in my school or career, and what might have been happening.  But not 1989.  When I hear that year, I immediately remember the fall of ‘89.  For all I know, the winter, spring, and summer may not have actually happened, they’re pretty hazy.  But the fall is crystal clear.

I started my freshman year of high school.

We moved to Indiana.

I had my first kiss.

The Berlin Wall fell.

They  probably weren’t all related.

Thinking back to the news that the Berlin Wall had fallen, and seeing the footage of the dancing and the celebration still fills me with happiness.  And it’s so very vivid – we had visited Germany that summer, though we never got to Berlin.  One of our relatives in Germany told us while we were visiting that something would surely happen when Hungary opened its borders with Austria that August.  And wow did it.   I did get to Berlin quite a few times in 1992-3 as an exchange student,  but by then, there wasn’t much of anything left of the wall, though the East and West divisions were certainly still evident.  The New York Times has some pretty spectacular pictures of Berlin now and 20 years ago here.

This public photo documentation wall (including the displayed image) was released and featured by the Senate of Berlin.

Zoe and I went to the opening of a nearby park.  Silverwood park is along the shores of Silver Lake, a little ways north of us.

The celebration included rocks that you could color with markers, buckthorn rounds to decorate, spinning demonstrations, the raptor center showing a kestrel and a red-tailed hawk, good food, music, performances…  Oh, and face painting.  The woman who did the face painting was good, and really fast.  All the mothers ahead of my got their faces painted, too, so I gave in to peer pressure.

At bedtime, I worried that Zoe would let me wash off the butterfly.  She didn’t want to at first, but she accepted my explanations that her pillow would get dirty, the butterfly would end up messy, and besides, we had a lot of pictures so we could look at it any time.  Her face was washed with no problem.  A couple of hours later, when it came time for me to get ready for bed, I balked.  I didn’t want my little penguin to go away.  I had to recount those same arguments to convince myself it would be ok.  I do have a lot of pictures to look at if I want to remember my penguin.

I’m as big a fan of facebook as anyone, love that I can keep in touch with friends, get back in touch with old friends, get to know new friends.  I’m pretty open on fb, but there’s still messages that I compose, sometimes even write, but I can never bring myself to click “Share.”

Friend request / invites never sent:

• It seems weird to ask to be your friend, 20 years now since you told me you didn’t want to be friends anymore.  Your explanation didn’t really make any sense to me, though if I’m honest with myself, I think its because you thought I was lame.  But I liked you, and I wonder how you’re doing and hope you’re doing well.  And I don’t think I’m lame.  But I worry that asking you to be a facebook friend will just sound lame to you.
• I wish you were on fb, or that I had any other way of getting in touch.  I wish we hadn’t lost track of each other.  I developed a crush on you the day I met you, but if I’d known that it would end our friendship when we got romantically involved, I never would have gone there.  It wasn’t worth it.

Posts I will never leave on a friend’s wall:

• I miss our talks.  I don’t know why things are different, but I’m pretty sure it’s me.
• It’s been really fun catching up with you on fb.  Thing is, I do not remember you.  At all.  We have friends in common, and went to the same school at the same time, and you seem to remember me, so I’ll believe that we knew each other, but it’s a little weird.
• It was more than 10 years ago that we talked about our plans for the future.  Both of us talked about wanting kids with our respective partners sometime in 4 or 5 years.  I think about that conversation some times and wonder about you and your partner.  Did you go through infertility like we did – are you still?  Did you change your mind?
• I wonder if you know just what you meant to me.  Every 17 year old girl should have someone who really looks at her, and tells her she’s beautiful.  I needed that at that time.  You probably didn’t know that.  But I wish we’d had more time to just talk and get to know each other.  I don’t know how to start a conversation with you now.

(I have this blog set up on facebook, so I could share a link to thispost with all my fb friends, but I can’t quite do it.)

I was tagged by Coffeegrl for this, and it looks like another good way to get me out of my posting slump.  Actually, this is kind of hard.

Eight things I am looking forward to:
1. The end of the school year.  I like the change of pace once we hit summer.
2. Our CSA (farm share) starting up and lots and lots of good veggies.
3. Heading to DC to see my brother and sister-in-law and our best friends.
4. Fresh tomatoes from our garden.
5. Harry Potter movie this summer. (I stole this one from Coffeegrl, but it is true)
6. Starting the great pizza grilling experiment – we’re going to play around with different crusts, sauces, and toppings, I can’t wait.
7. My birthday (in only 2 weeks?!).  Even if I have to work, I’m still looking forward to it.
8. Swimming at the lake now once it gets a little warmer

Eight things I did yesterday:
1. Yoga (last class of the session, sadly)
2. Answered a reference question about the Web of Science and EndNote
3. Did a lot of work on Little Four Eyes
4. Realized it was June.  What?  When did that happen?
5. Read a bit of From Dead to Worse, a wonderfully fun and light vampire romance.
6. Drove the van pool because our fearless original driver/benevolent dictator has left us.
7. Failed to answer a reference question about an obscure Byzantine patriarch (I’m a science librarian for a reason)
8. Ate sushi

Eight things I wish I could do:
1. Write easily
2. Get pregnant without medical intervention
3. Enjoy exercise
4. Convince myself to go to sleep early
5. See an active volcano
6. Get up north (northern MN, that is) some time this summer
7. Draw well
8. Sing well

Eight shows I watch:
1. America’s Next Top Model.  (what?)
2. 30 Rock
3. The Office
4. Leverage
5. The Amazing Race
6. Make Me a Supermodel
7. Top Chef
8. Project Runway (ok, so I like the reality tv)

Eight favorite fruits:
1. Strawberries
2. Apple
3. Pear
4. Mango
5. Raspberries
6. Peaches
7. Clementines
8. Dates

Eight places I’d like to travel:
1. Antarctica.  Really.  I’ll get there some day.  I would love to work there for a summer.
2. India
3. China
4. Spain
5. Hawaii
6. Alaska
7. Iceland
8. Space.  Even though I know I’ll never get there.  I really would like to go.

Eight places I’ve lived:
1.  Minneapolis, MN
2. Edina, MN
3. Northfield, MN
4. Keitum auf Sylt (in Germany)
5. Kaputh (in Germany)
6. Ellettsville, IN
7. Greeley, CO
8. Sioux Falls, SD

I know I’m supposed to tag, but I’m horrible at tagging.  I’m afraid I’ll upset someone by tagging them, or by not tagging them.  It’s a silly hang up.  But I’ll never actually publish this thing if I spend the time trying to decide who to tag so I’m just pushing publish.

My aunt, me and my mom. Mom is on the right. She made my dress, my shawl, and her filmy top.

My mom can do wonders with all things textile.  Seriously.  (I’m bragging, but it’s not just bragging, it’s true).  She made my wedding dress.  And my wedding shawl.  She sews, she knits, she weaves, she felts.  Heck, she’s made money bags out of shredded money and hats out of dog hair, she’s even spun silk made by silkworms that she raised from eggs (they’re dumb little worms, by the way).  She has a master’s certificate in spinning (the kind where you make yarn, not where you pedal a bike to nowhere).  She’s a well-known teacher and author.  Basically, if it has to do with textiles, she’s all over it.

Somehow, though, I missed out on that gene.  I never even learned to sew.  Until this week.  Now that’s a little misleading, I can sew a button on by hand, and I understand the theory behind stitching things with a needle and thread, and I can knit, but I’d never worked a sewing machine. But recently, I was feeling like this was something I really ought to learn.  I should know at least the basics of sewing and clothing repair.  Enough to fix seams, to hem pants, to maybe sew a simple costume for Zoe.  So while my mom was here for a very short visit this week, we went out and got me my first sewing machine.  And I’ve taken a few lessons from mom, who by the way, is an awesome teacher (I was feeling like I hadn’t bragged on her enough this paragraph).  So far I have hemmed three pair of pants, sewn three buttons on, and darned a shirt.  I have to admit that I scoffed at the idea of sewing a button on with a machine.  I mean, it’s not hard to sew one on by hand.  But wow!  It’s so much faster with a machine.  And kind of fun, when you get past the terrifying, will-I-shatter-the-button? phase.

It got me thinking about why I hadn’t learned earlier.  Why didn’t I take advantage of her while I lived at home, where she has a great sewing machine, tons of fabric and all the tools to do all sorts of fun things.  Well, mom did try introducing me to it once in middle school, I think I sewed one piece of cloth, and that was it.  Mom says that it’s a matter of teaching when a person wants it.  It’s pretty similar to the “just in time” teaching philosophy that we talk about in the library sometimes.  No matter how much they’re going to need to know how to search an online database, no one is going to actually bother learning it until they know they’ll need it.  It’s one of the reasons I have such a hard time teaching in classes where the professor hasn’t yet given the students an assignment that will use the library’s resources.

But knowing now how much easier it is with a machine to hem my pants and sew on buttons – I really wish I would have been interested earlier.  And I have spoken with students who say they wished they’d learned to find things in the library before they were panicking about a paper.  Hindsight and all that, I guess.

Any skills or knowledge you wish you’d learned from your parents?  Or any skill that you hope to someday pass on to someone else?

There was discussion the other day of an environmental studies major at the college where I work (it’s currently a concentration).  One proposal was to let students decide on a focus within the major.  One of the foci was “Food and Agriculture.”  It was like a shock to my system.  I want to go back and study that.  (Funny thing, too, Chris and I had just had a discussion about how happy we were not to be back in college.)  I don’t know that it would change at all what I would have ended up doing – probably not, I love being a librarian – but I really wish I’d been able to take more classes in that subject.

Any subjects you would study if you had the chance?

Chris and I went to a will-writing workshop last night. It was kind of cool, actually, it was community ed, but taught by a lawyer and a notary, so at the end of it, we had a signed, notarized, legal will. So, if you were looking to inherit all our riches, well, 1 – we don’t have any riches, but 2 – they’re going to Zoe (surprise, surprise).

Actually, the distribution of non-existent wealth was the least important part. The more pressing matter was naming who would be the guardian of Zoe if the worst would happen and Chris and I were both gone. I’m not going in to our choices here, but suffice it to say, it’s not really a mental fantasy that you want to indulge yourself in. But it was really hard for me to separate myself from that line of thinking. For the rest of the evening after we got home, I found myself thinking of the next year as if Chris and I were both gone. I’d think about where Zoe would go and who would do what. Not in a “what-if” hypothetical way, but in a this is what will happen sort of way. I finally figured out what I was doing and managed to snap myself out somewhat. Sobering. But I’m glad we have that taken care of.

The one funny story of the night: Through the whole class, the instructor – who had a very dry, sarcastic sense of humor – would use the college where I work (which happens to be the college I graduated from) as the example of some place you could leave your money. But he did it in a strangely droll way. So at the end, when he was notarizing my will, I asked him if he went there, or if he just liked making fun of it. “Oh no, I hate it,” he told me, completely seriously. “Ah, excellent!” I said, because that’s what I say when I’m completely surprised and don’t know what to say. Then I added, “I’ll wait for you to finish notarizing before telling you that’s where I work…” He immediately told me it was a great place, and I laughed. I grabbed a class evaluation form and went to fill it out, and looked up. “Hate is a strong word for how I feel about it,” he told me glancing at my evaluation form. That just cracked me up more. I needed something silly like that to break the mood.

This was a really cold January.  For the first 30 days, we never got above freezing.  It’s probably a (sad) testament to a person’s adaptability that when I first hear this, I thought that didn’t sound too strange.  But I spent some quality time searching through NOAA’s climate records for Minneapolis, and it appears that it’s been 30 years, since a January has gone so many days with no thaw. Our average temperature for the month was 8°.  Fahrenheit.  We got below 0° F on more than half of the days in Jan (16), and below -10°F on 5 days.  All of which make it a colder than normal January, though not record setting.  January of 1875 sounds brutal.

And on the 31st day, there was thaw.  We got up to 46°.  It was glorious.  We tied for a record high for that day.  People were out walking around without heavy scarves or hats.  There were smiles all around.  Dogs were giddy.  Children actually got to go outside.  As hard as the winters here can be, the first warm (-ish) day really is a sight to behold.

But it makes us stupid.  The next day was still relatively warm.  It got up to the low 30s.  Then came Monday.  It started out not so bad: 20°.  But that was the highest, and that was at 1 AM.  It dropped from there.  By the time normal people would be awake and going through their day, it was down to 5° and it didn’t get above 8° the rest of the day.  But we were all still living in the weekend.  I wore my lighter-weight pants, chose my second warmest coat, grabbed my light scarf and hat on the way out the door, wore unlined boots.  Basically, I dressed for the low 20s.  And I wasn’t alone.  Everyone I talked to said the same thing:  They forgot a scarf, or long underwear, or chose lighter-weight clothes.  We were all miserable and freezing. I’ve come to the conclusion that Minnesotans aren’t somehow hardier, we just know how to dress for the cold.  Until the thaw comes and makes us stupid.

Oh yeah, I forgot my scarf today.

So this meme has been going through facebook, and so I finally succumbed and wrote mine on Monday.  So I’m being lazy and just re-posting it here.  My apologies to any fb friends who see this twice, but honestly, you can deal.  Oh and if any of you guys are on fb and not friends with me, let me know, how to add you and I will.  If you want.  You want me to be a friend, right?

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. (I’m breaking the rules right here and now, see the end of the post for more on that).

1. I was born in South Dakota – Sioux Falls, but we lived in a town called Brandon. I don’t remember it at all since my parents moved to another place in SD (and moved me with them) when I was 6 months old.

2. I have also lived in Colorado, Indiana, and Minnesota.

3. I love living in Minnesota, but Colorado holds a special place in my heart. I miss the mountains. A lot.

4. I’m having trouble imagining coming up with another 21 items to add to this list.

5. It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m a mother

6. As much as I love Zoe, I look forward to the time after she goes to sleep so that I can have some time to myself, and I look forward to going to work, too

7. My first big word (according to my mom) was “library”

8. My best friend growing up became a librarian, I wish I was still in touch with her

9. As much as I loved libraries growing up, and even though I worked in the library in college, it never occurred to me that I could be a librarian as a career.

10. I even considered volunteering at a library when I first graduated from college, but again, never thought someone might pay me to work at a library.

11. I’m really glad I eventually figured it out.

12. No matter how much I love my job, I have never been, and will never be a workaholic

13. Things I wanted to be when I grew up: ophthalmologist, airplane pilot, astronaut, astronomer

14. Of those, the one that I’m sad that I won’t ever be: astronaut

15. The real reason I’m not tagging people is because I’m worried they’ll think I’m stalking them or something.

16. I hate being the center of attention but I crave recognition

17. If I could, I would go to sleep around 1 am at night, and not get up until around noon. Or later.

18. I am afraid of upsetting people to the point that it keeps me from talking about things going on in their lives just in case circumstances have changed and it might hurt them to talk about it

19. When we were in the midst of infertility, I stopped talking to some friends because I was sure they were about to announce they were pregnant.

20. In nearly every case, I was wrong.

21. It took us 2 years – which included months of disappointment, a lot of fertility drugs, and invasive tests and procedures – to conceive Zoe.

22. I am scared we’ll have to go through that again if we try for a second child

23. I’m scared of failure in general

24. I hate it when people tell me, “You’ll understand once you [blah, blah, blah - have a kid, get older, own a house - blah, blah, blah]

25. I can’t believe I came up with 25 things. Even more surprising is that I’m starting to think of other random things to add, but I’ll refrain.

Ok, since I’m not tagging anyone specifically, if you want to do a list of 25, consider yourself tagged.  If not, leave a comment with 1 random thing that I don’t know about you.

Despite the wonderful beginning, Tuesday ended with me being terribly “sensitive” (that’s the word they use at daycare for “throws a tantrum at slightest provocation”), mostly due to a fight with Zoe at daycare about whether or not she should wear her jacket (it’s Minnesota, there was no question of compromise).  So Wednesday, Chris emailed me and asked if I wanted to try out a yoga class that evening.  Yes!  I did.  Did I mention that Chris pretty much rocks my world?

It was a great class, though I don’t know if I’ll have time to go every week.  Perfect pacing and just hard enough to keep me really working, but not so hard that I start wondering how much longer I have to endure.  Plus, the place, One Yoga, is a non-profit yoga studio, and has a sliding scale fee.  While we’re fortunate enough to be able to pay the full fee (which is no higher than any other studio around), I like knowing that other people are more likely to be able to take the class, even if they’re not making as much money.

It got me thinking of all the reasons why I love yoga so much.  I am not an athletic person, and never have been.  I am not fast or strong, and don’t have great endurance, but for some reason, yoga works for me, and it’s one of the few times that I feel at peace physically in my own skin.  Nevermind how relaxed and stretched and worked I feel afterwards.  It’s where I feel like my body works with me.  Where I’ve achieved something like balance.  When I lost weight a few years back, I noticed it first in yoga class, because I noticed I was moving differently and hitting poses differently.  When we were struggling with infertility, it was one of the few places that I felt like I was working with my body, rather than battling it.  I felt like I knew what was going on with my body, like I had some semblance of control.   Wednesday night’s class was similar.  It’s been more than 6 months since my last yoga class, but it felt so familiar and comforting and relaxing and kind of difficult.  But my body and I, we worked together and had a great session.  I slept well that night.  I am still sore two days later.

I start my regular yoga class on Monday.  I can’t wait.