Straight From the Bottle

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• My Little Fire Fighter

  We've had the news on pretty much 24/7 this week as the fires continue to sweep through Southern California. My parent's house spared but it feels weird to be relieved. For every relieved family there are plenty of ones in mourning. Homeless, even though home is so much more than a house. Doesn't make it any easier for those who return to smoldering ashes. Families. People I know. It's especially hard to be away from home. Even though Los Angeles is technically where we live. Eight years since I've lived in Encinitas with my parents. And even though Los Angeles has been burning as well, we've been separate from the horror... seeing only smoke from afar. North of us. West of us. East of us. South of us.   It would feel weird for me to blog about anything else this week. So I haven't. The world has sort of stopped these last few days and even though the majority of the fires are extinguished, I've long been refreshing my browser. Waiting for news of quiet. Peace. Watching the news. Getting annoyed when the same news gets repeated. Nothing new.   I've been on edge all week. Watching footage of my hometown on fire. Calling my parents around the clock. My siblings. Old friends. Waiting for the fires to end. I go in and out, leaving Archer, sometimes alone in the living room, with the news on mute.  Doing dishes. Making phone calls. Checking friend's blogs to make sure everyone's okay.   Today, I called for Archer, forgetting the TV was still on in the other room. On mute. He was staring at the screen. At the fire. And he was blowing on it. Blowing with all his might, like he does when I light candles. Except somehow he understood that this was so much bigger than a candle. So much bigger than a million candles.    "Archer? What are you doing, bug?"   Archer looked over at me wide-eyed and then went back to the TV... Flames spread through the hillside and the smoke billowed out of frame. He continued blowing. Huffing and puffing until the news segment ended. He then, looked back at me, thrilled. Like he had done something tremendous. He clapped and he clapped. "Yay!" he said.    "Yay!" I said. "You made the fire go away!"     Read More... Posted Oct 25 2007, 08:33 PM by GirlsGoneChild with | with 14 comment(s) Filed under: the best age ever, encinitas, fire fighting, southern california fire

• The Quirk of it All

  I feel like I am always saying this but it's true: This is the greatest age.   Archer, now twenty-months old, is rich with absurdities. He plays with his hair in the mirror, is obsessed with his belly button and just for fun, likes to run into things. He laughs when he hears other people laughing and poops in the coat closet with the door closed. He insists on sleeping with all of his shoes next to him in his crib. He climbs into the dryer when I'm doing laundry and likes to eat cheerios out of a bowl, next to the dogs when they eat their breakfast and dinner.   He only drinks water. Only eats fruit outside. Only eats the very tippy-tips of asparagus and only in the middle of the night, when he wakes up and decides he'd rather sleep in one of the dog beds.   Instead of saying "hi" he says "how!" He's obsessed with all things the color red, which he hoards in large piles in his bedroom. My red coat, Elmo, his blankie, fire truck, Legos, red-letter magnets. If and when he catches you watching him he gets down on all fours and tilts his head like this:     Read More... Posted Feb 06 2007, 01:24 PM by GirlsGoneChild with | with 15 comment(s) Filed under: Toddlerhood, the best age ever