Working out just like I planned

I knew I would still be able to write when I started teaching. A three/three course load is generous in its own way. Right after I had Zoe, I taught two classes and edited Quarterly West and went on the job market and still wrote. How would this be different?
It's not. I wrote 2660 words today.
That's a lot for me.
Just because they were all comments for student papers doesn't mean they weren't writing accomplishments.
Anyone know of a journal that would like to publish the musings of an Assistant Prof on her students' poetry?

Fourteen months

Zoe turned fourteen months old last week. She also went to day care for the first time and finally got her year-old shots. She got over one cold and seems to have contracted another. She slept for 14 hours last night.
Because I spend less time with her than I used to, or maybe because there are few people to distract me, or, more likely, she's getting even more interesting. She loves her blanket. She finds it whereever she left it last and picks it up with her teeth, carries it to the next corner of the living room, lies down on it and makes some throaty, hurrah noise in the back of her throat. She crawls around on the back deck and climbs up the stair, then back down, then follows Cleo to where she's eating grass, eats a little herself and crawls back to the stair. She can sit on the stair for five minutes, watching the squirrels torture Cleo.
She has one of those shape boxes where the plastic shapes go in through their proper holes. She knows the holes and shapes should match but she doesn't turn them around until they do match. She gets mad and lifts the lid and puts the shapes inside that way. She closes the lid up to see if I watched.
She drives us crazy with her button pushing. Thirty one wrote one of her first posts about it. I tried to listen but, oh, what harm would a six-month old do to a remote, a phone, a computer. Answer: I got a new harddrive last week and she changed a something on the remote that I can't undo.
She was great at daycare even on the first day and had a babysitter on Thursday and Monday--who both said they'd come back.
The best thing: she understands what we're saying. She doesn't obey "don't put that in your mouth" but she laughs maniacally when we tell her no. If the phone rings, she crawls over to it. If Box wants to come in, she goes to the door. If I turn on the computer, she rushes to it, punches a button and the whole screen goes blank. I tell her no. She laugh. In fact, here she is now: zFEWx]\//
She stands for almost a minute at a time. She may walk soon. She may actually have to put on some shoes.

To Complain

I wasn't going to post until I had something positive to say. But everything seems to be skewing negative. Maybe it's me but I went to this gourmet food store I'd been waiting to visit called Art of the Table so I could buy expensive cheese and baby-sized veggies. There were but a few types of cheese. There were no veggies. It was one of those gourmet stores that had a lot of jars of jam and mustard and all the cloth napkins and placemats one could imagine. It also had wine which made up for some of the disappointment--but everywhere here has wine. There's an anti complaint at least.
We got more bad news last night--Erik's mom and step-dad are moving to the 3rd worst place on the planet, after Vegas and Phoenix. They're moving to St. George. Where the Mormons pretend they don't gamble and everyone golfs. Where there is no water. They're moving to an off-the-grid solar-paneled luxury home. They're leaving the most amazing house--up a little tiny canyon, tucked so deep that everyone who drives by is either a neighbor or people going backpacking for six days. From this canyon home you can see across five other canyons, deer scratching for brush, moose. In the winter, Erik and his stepdad would hike up the trail behind the house and ski down the ridge. You could watch them turn from the living room windows. It was a twenty minute drive to downtown SL.
They're moving to where there's no snow, no water, no restaurants. Now, we have to do the couples-from-different-hometown thing and alternate holidays. We were planning on coming back home for a month or two this summer but now that we don't have a retreat to visit, I don't know if we will. I'm not going to St. George in July--at least not for more than a couple of days.
I shouldn't complain about it--they've been so good to us and I suppose we deserve what we get, having left ourselves. But the idea of going back to that beautiful house and to the mountains was one of the ways I was keeping going. I'm still looking forward to going home to see my mom and sisters and my friends--all of whom I miss more than I even thought possible--but it won't be like I'm dividing my home between SLC & GR. It will be more like a visit. I won't be able to pretend that I don't really live here. Maybe that will be good, in the end.

In lieu of a real post

Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC

"Back in black, I hit the sack, I've been too long, I'm glad to be back" Things sometimes get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get away from all the chaos. But each time you stage your comeback, it's even better than the last!

What's Your Theme Song?

I feel better already.