Plumb tuckered out

An absolute knackering (knacking?) this day, what with the intensive cleaning of various ground-floor rooms. I have been dozing intermittently since 8:00pm. The boys, for the third or fourth time since the floor’s uncluttering, are running in circles, as in Alice in Wonderland’s Caucus Race. This is lively even by their standards – doubtless a spillover of last night’s mirth (we attended an “open house” at Samuel’s new school; I spent most of it chasing Daniel through the halls).

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I saw very little of the Olympics – none of it in “real” time – but was taken with this handballer’s story (NYT). He, too, has sleep apnea. Yes, this is what it’s like.

Earlier today I was slumped on the sofa, unable to remain fully conscious, while Samuel and Daniel crawled over me. I’d beg them to do a little cleaning. They wouldn’t. At last I rallied, was a virtual tornado for an hour and a half, and made the place spotless. The boys helped enough to earn some basement TV time. Then they came back upstairs, beheld the emptiness, and ran their first Caucus Race. Samuel tackled Daniel a few times. Daniel would urge him to stand up and keep running. High spirits.

I actually am the least tired adult in the house. Karin is pregnant again, you see.

Lord willing, our third son will be born the first week of December.

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P.S. The boys have been watching the infamous (but, to my mind, charming) Peppa Pig show. Samuel now calls himself Peppa; Daniel, he calls George; Karin, Mommy Pig; and yours truly, Daddy Pig. My parents visited; they are, respectively, Abuela and Abuelo Pig.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

Yesterday, the postman delivered these things:

(1) The latest issue of Harper’s, with Ian Buruma’s cover story, “Doing the Work: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Wokeness”;

and

(2) Elmer Gantry.

Then, today, my old history teacher, J.H., posted on Facebook about the article and the novel.

Someone has been snooping in my mailbox. …

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Daniel has been sleeping in until 9:30 or 10:00 a.m. and still managing to nap in the afternoon (today, from 1:30 to 4:00).

He’s most active around midnight, i.e., my bedtime.

Tonight he catnapped; but now, at 11:00, he’s vigorously “rocking out,” alternating between his little rocking-chair and Moby, his little rocking-whale.

Samuel is in the basement. He’s listening to nature sounds on Spotify. His bedtime routine is less eccentric than Daniel’s, but he’s increasingly particular about which track or YouTube video I play for him. He repeatedly changes his mind. Sometimes I’d like to just surrender the remote to him, but that’d be to abdicate my parental duty, wouldn’t it?

Sax infusion

Karin has been sick, and she missed a day and a half of work. She didn’t get tested for COVID – no time slots were available at the testing centers. There must be many test-takers now, what with COVID and the flu.

Samuel and I have been fine.

As I type this, it’s his going-to-sleep time.

“Sammy, what music would you like tonight? Saxophone or piano?”

“Saxophone.”

(“Songbird” is good, but the other songs are lousy – and this is supposed to be Kenny G’s best album. More often, I put on Gato Barbieri.)

“Sammy, stop kicking or I’ll put you in your crib.”

A successful threat.

He ends up in his crib anyway, but not before we’ve let him go to sleep near his parents.

Samuel’s biggest adventure in a long, long time

Well, here he is out in the yard, sitting on one of the last patches of snow. (The air hasn’t been very frigid, but this patch is especially stubborn – and as hard as granite.)

Today he had a good time crawling, standing up, and falling on the soft grass. He tried to walk, but the ground was too uneven.

(Right before we took him outside, we learned that he had outgrown all of his shoes, so we put several layers of socks on his feet.)

When we came inside, he took a long nap. It’s tiring playing out in the cold.

P.S. His napping buddy is Edward Fox.

May’s poem

Samuel now often falls asleep to this track (pun intended):

So, it is fitting to recall a poem about a train.

(Also, we live near some tracks.)

(Also, while sleeping today, Samuel smiled and laughed, as if enjoying a hilarious dream.)

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

NIGHT MAIL
(Commentary for a G.P.O. Film)

I

This is the Night Mail crossing the Border, / Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, / The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: / The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder, / Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily, she passes / Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches, / Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course; / They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no one wakes, / But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

II

Dawn freshens. Her climb is done. / Down towards Glasgow she descends, / Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes, / Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces / Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen. / All Scotland waits for her: / In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs, / Men long for news.

III

Letters of thanks, letters from banks, / Letters of joy from girl and boy, / Receipted bills and invitations / To inspect new stock or to visit relations, / And applications for situations, / And timid lovers’ declarations, / And gossip, gossip from all the nations, / News circumstantial, news financial, / Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in, / Letters with faces scrawled on the margin, / Letters from uncles, cousins and aunts, / Letters to Scotland from the South of France, / Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands, / Notes from overseas to Hebrides, / Written on paper of every hue, / The pink, the violet, the white and the blue, / The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring, / The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring, / Clever, stupid, short and long, / The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

IV

Thousands are still asleep, / Dreaming of terrifying monsters / Or a friendly tea beside the band in Cranston’s or Crawford’s: / Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh, / Asleep in granite Aberdeen, / They continue their dreams, / But shall wake soon and hope for letters, / And none will hear the postman’s knock / Without a quickening of the heart. / For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(W.H. Auden)