We've been clearing out a lot of clutter in our house, and things are starting to look different around here. The other day Rachel and I went through all of the bins in her room and threw out a whole bunch of coloring books, toys she never plays with anymore, etc. and filled two boxes. Today we culled her vast collection of books. (I'm pleased to report that she said, without any prompting from me, "I'm keeping all the books that my relatives gave me." I couldn't have been more touched and impressed). I spent most of my time boxing up old books and "editing" the house, as I've come to call it, doing laundry, doing a mass of cooking (chicken, pasta and chocolate chip cake for a friend of mine who is recovering from cancer surgery), challah (for the same friend and for Rachel and me), and tonight, chicken soup, a salad for my lunch this week, and then tomorrow I'll be making pasta and sausage soup. I would have done more except that I got caught up in "Mad Men." It is my only mode of relaxation these days, so I hate to miss it.
Rachel and I have been battling colds and various tummy ailments, so we both decided to give up milk and dairy for a while. Until today, the only thing I felt like eating was matzah (!) and artichokes. This caused a friend of mine who visited today to look at me and say with concern, "Lisa, you're losing weight." Great to hear, if only for the wrong reasons.
That friend, Jen, is from synagogue and she brought her pregnant future daughter-in-law, Sara, to look at Rachel's old crib, baby clothes, changing table, car seat, etc. They left with piles of stuff and will come back Tuesday night for more. I got a twinge of nostalgia looking at everything again, things I'd forgotten we had and that were SO IMPORTANT at one time in my life and now just...aren't. Rachel keeps asking me to have another baby because she really wants a sister, and it's so painful to hear her say that. She'd be such a great sibling, it hurts me that another little person in the world will never get the chance to live with her, play with her, fight with her and love her as fiercely as Drew and I do.
Then it was off to a party for newly admitted Northwestern students, wherein people like me try to convince kids who have lots and lots of choices to choose Northwestern. None of the three kids I interviewed this year got in, which is rather sobering. There's no way I could get in if I were applying today. I did get the chance to catch up with Chris Broderick, a former colleague of mine at the Oregonian who now works for Portland State, doing kind of the same thing I do at the law school but on a much larger scale. His daughter got in to NU early decision, and I was very enthusiastic about Evanston and Chicago, even though she seems sold on the experience already. Chris hadn't seen Rachel since she was a baby (he came to the party we held after her baby-naming ceremony) but unfortunately they never saw each other today! There were two other kids at the party and they spent the time upstairs watching two "Shrek" movies, so I got some uninterrupted time to hang with the grownups.
And sometime today, it suddenly hit me that in a mere 12 years, we will be going through the same thing with Rachel. Oh, where did the time go? How come I didn't have four kids???
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