Not much here but Wondertwins...

Hi everybean, there is nothing much happening, but Kris just posted a boatload of blog entries from before Christmas to the present! Check 'em out.

Getting better

Thanks all for you well-wishes. I have to admit, things are getting better, and the worst never came to pass last Thursday. Kris didn't get sick, and the boys are full of spit and vinegar again - they finally adjusted to the time change.

Our furniture arrived and with it a great gust of normalcy. The kids frenzied about the room from old/new toy to toy, and Kris and I slept gratefully on our ol' bed. The crick in my neck from the "airbed" died a natural death.

Life is improving!

Something neat

For some reason, I've really liked certain paintings in this rough period and have been seeking them out for rich colors. Maybe after a month of eating "bachelor-like" I'm missing some mineral, whose need can be fed by visual stimuli? Or maybe the first actual cold winter I've been in since that season in Connecticut 17 years ago is responsible.

The things I like are by a couple of folks who lived around here: Franz Marc and Kandinsky. This painting "The Unfortunate Land of Tirol" by Franz Marc is my current favorite. He has another picture that I like called "The Dog Before the World." He was killed in WWI. Kandinsky is pretty famous. I just like the combination of rich colors with little cubes and gadgets, and the sense of depth. I think my friend James Brown prepared me for this stuff with his paintings that used even richer colors, and more elaborate bio-mechanical automatons populating a desert landscape.

The Seven Plagues

It's been plague season (small household edition) for us, as a gathering storm, feeding on itself, frenzied by declining immunities and a feeling of driftlessness, whips around our home. Unmoored from our old home, and with nothing to attach to or imprint on here, the days are long and filled with crying or heartbreakingly, a despondent silence that might be a real virus or "merely" a spirit overwhelmed. The cornerstones of our existence as a family are apparently:

1) The Internet in the home.
2) A soft floor or carpet for the boys to play on.
3) Furniture, with a soft floor or carpet for the adults to lay on.
4) The "little things," of which we have none.
5) A phone - at least we have that now, it is something.
6) Health of the adults, health of the boys, all shaky.

Tuesday I reeled in a twilight world of shivering and vomit. Work needs me every hour I can spare. Home needs me even more. I'd better pay the former to support the latter. Damn - a wasted day is too costly! Elijah might have the same sickness, he is averse to eating and usually despondent. Rowan is teary but at least hungry. Kris started feeling sick last night, getting that woozy feeling. She has summed it up with the pithy and ironic phrase: "we're living the dream."

Kris has great gallows humor.

I hope she doesn't get as sick as I did. I hope Elijah recovers today. If Rowan can hold on where he is that will be good. Meanwhile, I'm getting a sore throat. With an immune system sufficiently compromised to cause me to shiver in my greatcoat I worry about the cost of that.

Whipped by the plague winds! Battered by pestilence!

I know we'll weather the storm, but wow it's something to see.