Mom Voyage

Go visit Stuck in Customs for one stunning travel shot after another.

Hi Missy, and thanks for the tag. I’ve been a rather absent blogger and most days when I glance at Google reader, I shrug my shoulders, and mark all items as read. There are elephants in my writing room, and I don’t know how to tiptoe around them, so ennui and neglect win most of the time in favor of any passable content.

This post will be no exception.

Seven songs that are shaping my summer? OK, then.

The first song is my near constant companion while playing WordTwist on Facebook. The opening strains of Strange Way remind me of New Mexico. I want to gallop into the impossibly blue Taos sky, wave to the black dog guarding the pueblo and duck beneath the door to a sweet little adobe, where the smell of burning pinon mingles with strong coffee and sage. This ache is not soothed by the fact that I keep reading and re-reading Natalie Goldberg’s new guide to writing memoir,Old Friend From Far Away.

The next song is one I turn to again and again. How can you not want to slip into a morning from a Bogart movie or visit a country where they turn back time, when Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat begins to play?

Similarly, a few melancholy moments ofTime Passages reminds me as I glance at my ever-changing son, that years really do go falling in the fading light.

These are the three. I wish there were seven songs. Seven loud, raucous songs that spoke of days at the beach and good times on the road, but so far, it is not shaping up to be that sort of summer.

10. Why don’t jellyfish have eyes?
9. (In Trader Joes) Where is the frozen dog? Mommy, what animal eats dogs?
8. How do worms poop?
7. When you were little, did you have to use tossitories?
6. Mommy, do you put chemicals in your mouth? (I think he means mouthwash.)
5. Not a question, but up there: Mommy, I know a dead person. She’s your fwend before college. She’s always happy and she has freckles and she says hello. Also? She’s not worms. She’ll be OK. *
4. How many books are in the library? Why?
3. When are you going to grow a beard? When you’re a man?
2. Can I have ketchup for my pancakes, please?
1. When the Mommy and Daddy do the special hug, does the placenta do a special hug too?

*Eerily close description of my friend Beth, who died in a car accident when she was 18.

Bonus just now: What is macaroni and cheese made out of?

Add your own.

And pass the margaritas.

My mother and Max, pondering the options at a carnival we found in a small New Hampshire town earlier today.

Slowly moving away from exclusive use of auto focus mode on my Rebel.

With my laptop battery almost depleted, the last dregs of coffee cold in the cup, and preschool pickup minutes away, I’m leaping back into the blogosphere.

During my break from blogging, I have sold my soul to seitan, liberated crates of tofu and cut way back on coffee. Rest assured that I still curse like a weird motherfucker, forget to shave my legs for weeks on end, and hate my neighbors. I figure that for every meat-on-a-stick, pig-roasting carnivore who finds my restaurant reviews offal, I’ll anger at least a few of my fellow vegans for bombing around the country in a big, blue SUV. Hopefully the rest of you will stick around.

As the title suggests, the focus here will be on traveling with a small child–one who eats everything, including dead ladybugs found on park benches. This week we’ll be visiting the wilds of Southern Vermont, and stuffing our sweatshirts full of samples at the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival.

I’d like to send some love to Unfit Mother for suggesting the title, and thank all of you who kept in touch.