Another springtime sunday where I find myself confined to the library, but it's mitigated by the fact it's acually more like he pacific northwest out there today and not at all springtime in Chicago (as if that can acually be defined.) So far today, I've laid out and designed a cover for Melissa Eleftherion's second book with dgp, have reseached a couple of journals I might be submitting to, and done some general writing related clerical tasks. I wanted to actually do some writing, but I'm a little scattered and chilly with A/C cranked up in here, all of which makes it hard to concentrate on any one thing.
We are going into the final week of the semester, so I have one more weekend shift next Saturday and then I have an entire summer of free weekends--well mostly, at least once June rolls around. It's been a rather swift ride since early April, so I'm looking forward to getting back to my usual routines. Since everything has been catch as catch can since winter and my ever present behindness, I'm also looking forward to getting back on track with some crafty stuff for the shop and some new more hands on visual projects.
It's also Mother's Day, and I've been watching all the posts on social media over lost mothers, the estranged mothers, the neglectful mothers and feel lucky that I actually have a pretty good relationship with mine (once I was over that teenage angst period and she was much less crazy--or maybe I was crazy and she was angsty). I also feel like more and more I am becoming my mother, not so much in the details of life, but in my attitudes and gestures. The things I find myself saying. Our lives are vastly different and I realize occasionally that at my age, she already had a teenage daughter. Two daughters. Had been married to my dad for almost 15 years. Had gone back to work after my dad was laid off. Had battled diabetes and cancer and the loss of both her parents. And yet we look the same. About ten years when I was going through an unfortunate perm phase, I had cut my darker hair a bit shorter than I was comfortable with and the resemblance was rather terrifying. (so much so that I vowed to keep it long from here on in.) As toddlers (above), we looked much the same, though her hair would darken eventually while mine stayed blonde. The crazy thing is that while I would say my sister looks infinitely more like my dad and paternal grandmother, there is also something very similar in her and I that has made people suspect we were twins on occasion (though I don't see it beyond our occasionally similar hair color exploits.) My maternal grandmother was raven-haired and slender and yet every year, my mother looks more and more like her, so I suppose maybe so do I (or at least I will twenty years from now), but again, I don't see it. Perhaps it's a little like genetic legos, different combinations, but all the same pieces.
