Welcome Back

Hi, there. It's been a long while, hasn't it?  I've had a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head this summer and even opened up a new post once or twice to let them out but chickened out, or got lazy, or something.
I want to find my writing voice.  Not like, be-naked-in-the-woods-hippie-retreat-style find  my voice, but more prosaic. More exercising the mind, more disciplining the thoughts, more wrestling with the words, more tinkering with sentences, more writing.  When I want to say something, I want to be able to say it.  I have an old textbook here, 'The Everyday Writer,' and just reading the table of contents gives me a sense of happy anticipation.  I think E.B. White also has some very helpful and interesting things to say about writing and I plan to track them down.
I turned 30 last week and it feels both big and like nothing at all. The days are full, and busy and graduating into a new decade of life seems too theoretical to be of much interest.  My family surprised me with a week long visit and it was a better gift than anything I could have imagined.  The whole time I kept thinking, I will remember this for the rest of my life.  The easy evening sunlight, the sound of the baby cousins running and laughing and running, the games of Rummikub, shopping with my sister, talking with my dad, and the inevitable family skirmishes because sometimes we're all jerks, even to the ones who love us the most. I felt like I was on vacation in my own house. It was wonderful.
My son at 16 months is an absolute joy.  I can't wait for him to wake up and when we sit together in the mornings, I rejoice in the tickle of his hair against my cheek, his weird baby/not baby smell, and his sturdy little body. This summer has been one long, sunny plateau for us.  He's been sleeping through the night since his first birthday, our bedtime routine is locked down tight, he eats everything, he takes two 2 hour naps on a predictable schedule, and spends the rest of his time running and exploring.  I love it.  He grins when he sees something new, giggles at his favorite books, points out every airplane passing overhead and waves bye-bye, and he loves to floss.  How can it get any better? And yet, I have complete confidence that it somehow will.  Likely it will get worse until it gets better until it gets worse until it gets better again and again.  They say a roller coaster wouldn't be any fun if it didn't go up and down, right?
All this is just to say, I plan to write and share here more often.

30 :)