February 16

There are so many jumbled thoughts in my head, I want to sort them out where I can see them. Journaling helps.

1965

WABC #1 Come See About Me - Supremes

Well! V is playing in the Senior-Undies game! He'll be at the dance for sure - how I hope he'll dance with me - over and over again! I must be careful what I say - not to be too unfeminine or too timid. I wish I knew how to charm a boy. Who knows? Maybe I have! I'd better list the animals I have to make: Helen: 1 white rabbit, 1 dark brown dog. Terese: 1 orange and brown horse. Orange and brown?

YECH!

1979

Why I am gaining weight when I am working my ass off I simply do not understand. Diane and I went to the American Home Economics Association meeting all day and I am exhausted from chit chatting. 

1983

I have an evening to myself. Kiddo is asleep and Jim is at a basketball game. I turned off the TV at 8 and read pieces of two books, sipped sherry and then took a bath. I’m so used to being interrupted every half sentence that now I interrupt myself! There are so many jumbled thoughts in my head, I want to sort them out where I can see them. Journaling helps.

My life is so different. It's been a long time since I felt normal. By that I mean not feeling like I am in constant transition. Oh, we all are, I know, in a sense. But usually the pace is so slow it's like the Earth moving through the galaxy. We just don't feel it. But in the months since we decided to have a child, the months of being pregnant, then months of caring for an infant, I've hardly had time to be by myself, even in my own thoughts. Kiddo was in my thoughts long before her birth. Concentration on other things was impossible. Even now, I go shopping or take a bath or try to meditate, and she’s there. I want to reclaim some of that territory now.

I am currently sure that one child will be all for me. Or I feel sure. That may change. But the disruption, the attention required, the great changes… I think I can only take it once. Right now I'm so impatient for infancy to be over. Babies aren't as bad as I thought, but I prefer people who can talk – – – even little people and baby talk.

An evening by myself is a wonderful thing but you see how Kiddo is still in my thoughts. She's not the only one with separation anxiety!

1985 (new house!)

Well, I’m ready to move! I am amazed at how much we’ve acquired in 5 years since the last time.

To whit:

1 child and her stuff

Two dressers, a washer and dryer, a refrigerator, a sewing machine cabinet, a file cabinet, 1 sofa, a computer, computer table and two monitors, a set of dishes, a tent. Plus the usual soft goods: curtains and such. 

The biggest annoyance is that the air conditioners we bought last summer won’t fit in the stupid early 1950s casement windows we have in the new place. We will be hot this summer, I can feel it already. In the meantime, I am getting my work done at an amazing rate and reading a novel. “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant”. Books are another world. Really.

1993

It’s amazing to realize that I’m starting my third decade of journal writing. (Not counting high school and sporadic travel diaries.) It seems a long time ago that I was in my early 20s, newly married, waitressing at the Sheraton. Had you told me where I would be in 1993, what I’d be doing and where, I’d have been greatly amused. A college professor? In Maryland? In American Studies? TWO children??? Girl Scouts? Church lady??? Signals from another solar system.

I have been deeply imperfect lately. Driving the scouts into the teeth of a blizzard, too many computer games, etc. Bad, Bad Girl!

1997

Sunday — cold and bright. But there are crocuses and daffodils poking up in the yard, and on my walk yesterday I saw many buds on the trees. So spring will come.

My dragons? The biggest one is Making Promises I Can’t Keep. Having Big Ideas and letting them wither and die of neglect. (Like the book, like most of my research in the last 5 years.) It is time to get a few choice things done, if only for the sake of inner peace.

Rex, the old deaf dog, is clawing at the bedroom door. He just got in, but he wants out. He wants to lie in the sun in the hallway. I yell at him, but he can’t hear me.

2023

Amazing how we were able to downsize so much when we moved into a quarter of our old space, but the same old dragons are still hanging around. My shift from one department to another in the early 90s short-circuited my research, including a book project that never got past the first draft. Instead, I dove into my teaching, developing new courses every year and experimenting with innovative methods, from hybrid courses to service learning. Twenty years later, history repeated itself. Book idea>proposal>three chapters drafted, and POOF. Now I am knitting several hours a day while writing fewer than 200 words. Maybe I should be knitting a dragon.

(Author Kim Harrison’s knitted dragon; it’s a free pattern!)

2024

I am not giving up on Book 3 yet. Clearly, it still wants to be written.