It’s just shy of 8 a.m., and our apartment is uncharacteristically quiet. Kate was supposed to be working today, but felt so wretched overnight that she called out (at 0530, I believe) and is sawing wood in the next room. Piper, just a day over the same illness, is having one of her rare lie-ins as well.

I’m in a liminal state, and it’s not entirely comfortable.

My job and I parted company in early January. Keeping the lessons of Dooce and the constantly-circling search engines in mind, I’ll simply refer to the exact nature of the parting as “firm, but amicable.” Journalism is in a state of flux just now, as you may have heard; unlike my years working as a sysadmin, my next job was not breathlessly waiting in the wings. That’s been a little depressing, despite my knowing the reasons for it.

Seven Days of the Week (I Never Go to Work) – They Might Be Giants from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

When I applied to journalism schools back in 2006, Kate had told me that of the cities on my list, New York was the least interesting to her in which to live, but that she’d accompany me to wherever the school search led. Coming up on four years later, we’re both feeling like we’re about Done With New York City… so I haven’t been pounding on the doors of media outlets here in town. Instead, Kate and I are looking at options in other cities. Should they come to fruition, we wouldn’t move until our lease runs out… and so even if another full-time journalism job surfaced here in town right now, I’m not sure I’d take it. I know there will be another stretch of 9-5 career in my life, but having nothing definite on the horizon contributes to feeling rootless. It’s a little like watching the status board in an airport, waiting for a long-delayed flight to arrive. Once it comes, I know there’ll be a flurry of activity and motion, but until then…

Piper’s growing and talking and picking out letters: on the subways, on my t-shirts, from her floating letters in the bath. Every day she calls out more and more of the details around her. She’s a funny, easy kid, and we’re having an absolute ball with her. One of the big upsides to not working evenings any more has been getting to see the arc of her days that much more clearly. She’s in a phase where she wants to hear the same books and stories again and again; after a week of reading the same books (this week: “On Noah’s Ark,” “Everywhere Babies”) three and four (hundred) times a day, we’ve taken to “losing” particular books for a while, just to provide an opportunity for something fresher to take hold.

My brother’s in a bit of a rough spot, and my only connection to him is via paper mail. The last serious paper correspondence I had was probably 20 years ago (Hi, Nicole!), and that was all longhand and doodles. This time I’m cheating a little and printing out typed letters.

My stepfather’s cancer numbers have ticked up again, though with the sheer number of cancers and treatments he’s had over the last decade, it’s gotten much easier to remain in a wait-and-see mode with it. The first time you hear “cancer,” it really sounds like “CANCER!”; by the six or seventh time you find out someone’s own cells have gone rogue and are trying to slowly take over the world, it sounds like something you can talk about briefly over lunch and then ignore it while you go do something else.

Recipes made recently:

• Rosemary-Olive-Oil Cake
• Leek-Potato Dill-Oil soup
• Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip cookies
• for watching the Super Bowl, with a partial-orlop contingent in Connecticut: Pierce St. Vegetarian Chili

I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing daily, and will be taking it up again, whether here or privately. It’s funny, the things I now feel like I can’t mention on my own private/public journal, thanks to technology and the increased attention it brings.

So Kate and I went over to Kathryn and Ryan’s apartment last night, for $100,000 chicken and our new favorite cookies. Piper took her second ride in a car ever, and handled it with aplomb.

So much aplomb, in fact, that she was completely and bonelessly asleep when we got to the Hechts’. We brought her inside in the car bucket, put her within earshot, and commenced to the chatting and cooking and laughing we normally pursue when we meet up with the BFFs.

And pursue it we did, until close to midnight. Piper did most of her night’s One Big Sleep while we were stuffing our faces, unfortunately, which meant a) minimal cuddle time for Piper with Kathryn and Toni and b) a frisky, lively baby for a lot of the rest of the night and morning. Both Kate and I feel like we’ve been stuck on “Frappé” for the last 10 hours.

The clutter and detritus on the surfaces around the apartment is starting to encroach a little; the urge to just sweep all of it into garbage bags and then toss the lot is running high, but I suppose we’ll sort the fruit and cats from the envelopes and stick blenders before throwing them out.

I’ll be putting all of Piper’s pictures up on Flickr — the brave, foolhardy, and related by affection or blood may follow along here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamhirsch/tags/piperrose/

Not my picture, but the content is too astounding to let pass.

Worth clicking through and viewing at a larger size: it’s Kate, bowling (and exulting) like a pro.

I mean, putting a single frame easter egg of yourself into your own movie trailer is fine — hell, I’d probably do the same thing, if I were ever to make a movie — but if I wanted to combat a growing public perception of myself as a full-on crazy person, I might consider a single frame which didn’t make me look like Santa’s psychotic meth-addled nephew. Just sayin’.

As to the Whimsy Problem, I realized at the last minute that I’d brought back Indian formalwear from my trip to Bangalore, two (three?) years ago, and had never had such a great chance to wear it. It took some advising from Marcie, some rapid web searching for instructions, and some sewing from Jeanne, but Kate’s sari looked awesome on her.

Also, what’s more whimsical than a borrowed Volvo?

We had a blast at Mark and Sabrina’s wedding, even though I left both my camera and audio recorder back at Jeanne and David’s house. Phooey.

So long as we weren’t in direct sunlight (where the dark colored silk really drew the heat) we did surprisingly well in our finery, and Kate in particular drew many admiring comments. (One friend: “You know, it’s really rare that I think white women can get away with wearing a sari… but you make the cut.”) Potluck food, a beautiful ceremony with lots of laughter and applause and Sabrina asking for a program early on (“Because we really don’t know what’s going on here”). We ate pie and drank beer and laughed and talked and didn’t leave until dusk, having had a surprising amount of time with Sabrina and Mark, who were both radiantly happy, sweating, and exhausted.

This morning we had a big brunch with Colin and Nadra and David and Jeanne and Eli (who became very fond of Kate this weekend). I cooked my sourdough waffles with mind beams:

And Kate waved her hand and made hashbrowns and eggs with spinach and feta appear, as if by magic:

John and Mike hosted a 4th-of-July party for our neighbors on Bean Road. We grilled everything in sight, dodged bugs, and socialized with people we hadn’t met before. It was a smashing success.

There were a ton of fireworks to set off, and John discovered a tomato freak-of-nature, which Larissa documented. Pyrotechnics and an omen of the apocalypse in the same day! How much luckier could we be!

While I like Larissa’s pictures of the event better, I got some shots that I liked.

Lucy seemed pretty confident that if the new diversion gave her any trouble, she could just bat some sense into it with her paws. And you know what? She was totally right.

Sphinx-like, Lucy then prepared to ask the snake a convoluted question involving a mysterious animal who walks on different legs at different times of day. Sadly, shortly after this was taken, Kate brought Lucy inside to spare the snake the consequences of its inevitable failure to answer correctly. Snakes, after all, are dumb as posts.

It wasn’t just a snake that day, though. Lucy’s currently got not zero, not one, but two, count’em, TWO goodsized mice/voles/somethings out on the back porch. (Thoroughly dead and vigorously dismembered, of course. “The Quality Goes In Before The Head Comes Off” seems to be her motto, this summer.)

Because I don’t particularly relish high resolution pictures of mangled rodents, I’ve used one of the chocolate mice John and Mike got us for our anniversary to provide a dramatic re-enactment of one corner of our back porch.

While we were sitting and talking at dinner tonight, Kate’s mom, Sally, suddenly said “Oh my god, the moose!”

My camera was handy, thankfully, and we managed to open the creaky front door and take some pictures before the adolescent male moose continued his sunset cruise.

While I crept outside to take pictures, Carlos (who’d also been outside) sprinted around the corner of the house and as far away from the moose as he could, clearly in full-on “What the hell is that thing!?” freakout mode. I suppose that indicates a decent amount of self-preservation instinct.