more from the underworld.

citrus flavored fish oil burps coming up, sadness and loneliness coming in here and there, wishing we weren't all so far apart...even my friends who are in this town, sometimes we all feel so far apart.  better go on and do some of that stuff i need to do.  wood.  food.  kids who are gonna need food too soon.  wood food soon.  too bad wood doesn't rhyme with food and soon.

ever wondered where epsom salts come from?



the elephant in the room.  i am a fan of naming it.

my elephant, the one i've been living with for as long as i can remember is the unloved elephant.   it is a big elephant.  i love elephants.  sometimes, i've gone to the zoo, and only sat with the elephants.  for an hour or two.  i've made my kids do this too.  i feel like i got the idea from some novel i read a long time ago.  but i don't remember now really.  it's been a long time, though, since we've sat with the elephants....  it might be time to do this again.  i feel like it is.



to feel unloved is something i struggle with sometimes.  i think that's why i'm swirling in the underworld right now.  i've forgotten myself.  or i've come to a new place in myself, going another layer deeper in the testing of my own self love.  just how deep does it go?  can't resist.

how deep does my self love go?  self.  sweet savory self.

what if.  what if i was to let go of my inner ~ critic?  the one that helps in making me feel that i am utterly unlovable sometimes?

to let go~

to let go is not care for, but to care about.

to let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.

to let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.

to let go is not to be in the middle of arranging all outcomes, but to allow others to effect their own destinies.

to let go is not to be protective, but to permit others to face reality.

to let go is to fear less, and to love more.

~author unknown

a tiny heart orgasm while i sit and feel what it feels like to do this for my self.  i am in a place i think, of needing to recite very generic mantras on how awesome i am.  like, i am beautiful.  i am strong.  i am lovable, i am worthy.  keep coming back to the middle. i need to keep loving myself when those i look out to, to affirm for me that i am ok and lovable,  can't seem to do it quite right.  because my inner wild wisdom is just not gonna be satisfied until i can affirm it for myself.  

i did make myself dance this morning. it was such a fake~it~till i make it experience, i was surprised that it worked.  like some of you said to me in response to that last underworld post.  fake~it~till you make it can work.  often.  and i fucking hate it.  i hate forcing myself to pull up out of my misery and do something that doesn't feel authentic for any amount of time.  i guess if i was a kid, i would be wailing more.  and since i'm not wailing really, how else to churn up the stagnant energy?  the adult me has lost her instincts for dealing with the pits, somewhat.  but hey.  this is where having these minds actually come in somewhat handy.  my mind is hearing a message from my soul saying 'shake it up, yo.'  and hearing messages from my sister on the telephone line saying, do something crazy.  go stay at a hotel for a night and watch the oscars you silly (we don't have tv reception).  you'll only live this life this once.  she also told me recently, when i was whining about going to the grocery store, very embarrassing to admit,.  the banality of that chore was killing me this one day.  she told me to buy myself something fun while i was there.  i bought purple eyeliner because of her, and it has cheered me up many times since.   what is up with my sister these days?  she's one of the lines i find in this underworld.  a steady steady ever present line.   as much as some of us dis family and the complicatedness of those relationships, they are the ones that seem to be the most constant, often.  the most forgiving.   i keep wondering if maybe i'm supposed to keep all this to myself.  if being in the underworld is meant to be quiet and dark on purpose.  am i looking out for a line too much?  well just in case, i am redirecting, and looking in for the line.  and i figure writing about looking in can't hurt too much.  as long as i keep looking in.  line after line after line i am finding inside. so surprising after days of refusing to look in.   i really do find them when i look. i find what i am craving.   self~lines.  lots of them look to be laundry lines.  some are telephone lines.  there's that sister telephone line for sure.  cuz duh.  we came from the same underworld womb.  that's a lot of similar history.   we speak the same underworld language.  so it is making sense to me as i ponder, why i find her line down here in the dark.  dark dark dark.  playing in the dark is possible.  i just have to let go of the fear first.  and the amount of focus it takes too, is not to be denied.  focusing in is tricky when there are cute little people asking me to look at them a zillion times a day.  but tricky is what i'm doing.  i signed up for tricky.  making myself dance was a trick for sure.  too bad i hated it for a second, but luckily it was only for a second.  tiny contraction really.   

fuck. sometimes a woman just needs to cuss.  FUCK.  shitty ass fucking fucking fucking shit.

somehow this space too, seems to be really immersed in the dark.  this blog space.  i guess there is electricity in the underworld.   and internet lines.  they're obviously letting me use my laptop.   oh how this blog needs to be called dark and macaroni.  dark processing and stupid macaroni.  just for now.  along with its other names.  light and foxy gnomes.  chill out and shut up.  freak your brains out.  and.  stupid waste of time.  there.  that sums it all up.  what is going on?  i'm not even pmsing.

end of february contractions?  i'm taking vitamin d.

just for now.  i have to call it dark and macaroni.  it makes me feel better.  lighter.   

the earrings are in motion




boo.  eggs?

how deep?

deeeeeeeeep.

mmmm, focused and very deep.

trick

dance

i want to post a dance photo soon.  i felt that urge over come me last night.  ok?  ok.  basically i felt the urge to trick myself into dancing.

olive will be psyched.  she's such a sucker for dancing.  how cool is that?  she's been saying psyched more and more lately too.


i've been doing some tricky 'tricks' on my mind lately,  the past few nights, focusing on forgiving those ladies from my old women's group.  i've been sad and angry when i think about them, my neighbor in particular because we are so close in proximity and so i actually see her or her house and then of course i feel jaded.  but because the anger isn't taking me anywhere beyond further down, i let myself feel what it feels like to forgive them all.  i tricked myself into allowing myself to feel that.  and it worked.  for as long as i was focusing on it.  it goes away fast once i stop focusing.  that's ok.  it's a start.  now whenever i think of them, i do this.  i forgive.  aaaaah.  it's really like a heart orgasm, when i do it.  it feels better.  that's all i know.  i'm not thinking i'm better than them anymore either.  just different.  we just came to a place where it was mostly clear that we all wanted different things.  and now, when i see other women around town,  that i am friends with, i think to myself, hmmmm, she would be nice to be in a women's group with.  and that feels nice.  to at least see that there are other women in my life who i feel that way about.  lalala.

today has been hard.  so was last night.  sometimes the heaviness just comes and really weighs me down.  playing  i mind (james blake again) as loud as i can take it in the car, so loud that i know other cars can here the base even in winter with everyones' windows up, and no,  the kids are not with me when i do this, but doing that with that song today was helpful.  and now, i sit with tea and ponder how else i can trick myself into some lighter space.

telling myself only things that i feel are healthy and whole about my children.  refraining from picking them apart and worrying about how each of them is going to be wrecked, or is already wrecked, because of my wrong~doings, or because of the culture's wrong~doings....  refraining from that kind of horrid thinking is a definite assist in getting me closer to the light.  and these whole and healthy aspects of my children, i do not take credit for that.  nope.  i seem to only take credit for how they seem messed up sometimes.  geez, heath, you seem to have a devil complex now.  try ing to balance out the god complex.    you really know how to take yourself DOWN.   yep.  i do.  but on the flip side, i am looking into this trickiness of how to take myself up.  UP UP UP UP.  just cuz the weight of being so far down starts to hurt after a while.  there are things about being down that i sometimes feel are helpful to my humility.  or my sensitivity.  my humanity.   i guess i mean, i know i can't, or don't want to be, but really, i can't, be a person who is just up.  the underworld is kind-of etched into me.  was i born there?  maybe so.  i can't lose the knowing i have of being from the underworld.  but i do start to get gnarly and twisty and can't grow toward the light, when i'm under so much weight.  i can't even sense it,  or feel it, to know which way to grow towards.  i've lost sense of direction.  this happens to me sometimes.  guidebook?  friendly mole or rat around here to tell me where i've wandered to?   tunnels.  caverns.  my world as of late.  making me want to read the wizard of earthsea books again.

telling myself things that are whole and healthy about me could be a good trick too.  hmmmmm.  that idea makes me move my mouth to the side and wonder, a lot.  what are those things?  what is one thing even?  lips/ mouth are very far the right.



i just don't know.  not right now.  that's not a trick that i'm interested in for some reason.  not into me so much right now.

anyhows.

i've been wearing zhi's sweater.  i've been feeling a little strange wearing my daughter's sweater, but it's not stopped me.  cuz you know i like strange.  there's something about me that i feel is whole and healthy.  my strangeness. there.  but yeah,   i really love it, the sweater.   it fits me in a fine way i think?  zhi doesn't mind at all.  she said it's fine if i wear it, and she'll wear it sometimes too.  yeah.  right.  i think she is a girl who won't wear wool.   scratch attack.  it's soft wool.  she's a prima donna lately.  but how interesting that her sweater, kind-of fits me.  i like the neckline so much.

three quarter length sleeves are cool.  feels kind of free.


sometimes i even wear that hat i just made david, at the same time as this sweater,  and then i look funny and very matchy since they are from the same yarn, and i feel like a person who gives a present and then takes it back.  a funny matchy present~taker~backer.  now don't you want to feel that way!   i'd much rather them wear these things.  but if they aren't, well.  ok.  i will then.  ha!  watch out if i ever make a baby sweater for somebody and i see it's not being worn!  i'll just squeeze myself on into it.  i'll find a way.  just like i am determined to find a way to dig out.  i think my point earlier was that i know i'm not going to fully get free from the underworld stuff.  and when i feel really high, i've pretty much learned that i can't stay there.  i don't want to stay there.   i'd float away and i'd forget to eat and feed the little munchkins.  and when i get too high,  which i don't think can even happen anymore,  i've learned that i need to go and find something to weigh me down.  put some rocks in my pockets.  when i'm too low, i haven't learnt this one so well.  (learnt is a cool word and i want to spell that in scrabble too.)   but that's where i am at right now.  traversing dark tunnels.  i have been lighting a candle more at home.  exercise would be smart.  maybe i could run these dark ass tunnels with my candle in hand.



when i'm too low, low low low, what comes to mind right now, as i ponder myself and my relationship to nature and the seasons, and all i know, is trust.  like i trust that spring will come.  i really trust that (ha).   i  can feel deep inside me, some trust somewhere in me, that i know how to handle this dark stuff.  and i'm gonna know when it's time to poke my new green growth out of these purply tunnels.

i am wearing my preppy wool pants that i got thrifting today.  david asked me what business meeting i am going to.  it's true.  i look businessy.  i'm taking this tunnel work seriously.  getting down to business amongst the roots and mysterious richness and trapped nitrogen, working on some law school papers and some very important plans.  where are my fake glasses?  i need them.  and more.  i need more.  more more more.  more.

snake

swim lessons this morning for olive and max.

before that cleaned the kitchen pretty good.

david and zhi went up to ski with her school.  her school goes skiing for pe class.

m, o and me ate lunch at the diner.

took max to school.  his three hours of school.

errand for david.

got new license plates for the new car.  i think i like the new digits.  i think?

sit and drink coffee with olive till it's time to get max.

browse the internet cuz i have nothing to write.  feel stupid for wasting time like that.  i need a new knitting project.  let olive play games on the phone.  feel stupid about that too.

i need a life david would say. (endearingly sort-of??)  like a life for these spare moments where i'm not sure what i'm supposed to be doing.  or where i don't use my time wisely.

coffee is my friend right now.  i've noticed that after my dad died, and now david's, coffee is good for me. have i already said that?  i feel like i have.  how weird my relationship with caffeine.  how thoroughly weird.  or is it wired?  aaaargh.  whatever it is, it is nice to be friends right now.  mmm.  coffee.

that was friday.


this is tuesday.  i've already had coffee.  and oatmeal.  now i have some oolong. (that would be fun to spell in scrabble.)

the kids are swimming with their grandma.   i'm feeling guilty for not swimming with them.  gonna try and let that guilt go very quickly.  it's okay that i want space.  it is okay.  it's okay.  ...........

i'm daydreaming  about getting personalized license plates.   it's a dumb fun thing to ponder.  what would it say? today i keep thinking of the word avatar.  mmmmm.  loving that word.  we need more avatars.  but that would seem really conceited and cocky of me to have it on my license plate.  i'd need an addendum added somehow that it's not me who is the avatar, i just like the concept.  i just think about avatars. i guess i'm getting into bumper sticker territory now too.  my bumper sticker would say, 'i like to think about avatars.'  heh.

thinking on how contractions are necessary for openings again, i mean, as far as i know,  in my tiny experience of this world.   and then last night i was reading, those silly pleiadians again ( i just love them sometimes), i saw that i could apply confusion and clarity to that same concept also.  often before clarity, comes confusion.  it doesn't mean i'm doing anything wrong to feel confusion.  it's natural.   and so is clarity when it comes along.  and if the confusion is feeling contraction and painful like, well, i can just sit down, kneel down, look up, whatever, and pray my butt off if there's no other bright idea coming on how to deal.  that's always an option, just pray.   i have such a fear of doing things the wrong way.


 i have such a love of being shown and taught, over and over again,  how doing things imperfectly/wrongly is just part of the processssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.  that doing things wrong is not wrong.  it's kind-of sort-of right.



such a sneaky snakey life this can be.  so elusive the mastery of the lessons we desire to tuck away under our belts.  or in our boots.  or in our bras.  or wallets.

tonight is david's mom's last night here for this trip.  i am hoping that after dinner, or during dinner, we can sit and go around taking turns sharing memories we have of pawpaw.  and i will write them down in a special book i got for this purpose.  i hope that is in the flow for us tonight.  and i want to make collard greens.  and rice and beans.  mmmmmm.  simple.

i'm going through a phase with exposure.   it comes around my parts every now and then.  right now i am sitting in a more exposed part of the coffee shop.   i don't like it.  i'm going to move over a table and get more comfortable.

aaaaaaaaaah. so much better.  what the hell took me so long?  i sat there for 20 minutes trying to get into my groovyness and it was all contraction.  instant relief.  a friend and i had to do that the other night when we went out to dinner.  first table we sat down to was too exposed.  we moved over to a corner booth and it was an instant aaaaah.  sometimes i feel like our home is too exposed.  it's all relative i know, but we live on a corner in a mountain neighborhood, and it's like a juncture, an intersection where we live.  lots and lots of cars, relative again i know, and bikes (it's the most popular biking road in town i think) go by our house daily.  compared to all the other neighbors' homes in our hood.  for people who chose to  tuck themselves away in the hills, it's not really tucked.  it's more like, hi!  here we are, living on the hill.  and then there's our livelihood.  we have storefronts.  i certainly didn't bring that reality upon us, but i did most certainly join in to it, knowing full well what i was signing up for.  and then there's motherhood, to children who are entering into the social world.  schools.  no tucking away going on there.  it's a full on outward expression with lots of hi's.  i'm slowly being nudged out of my safe~feeling turtle shell that i tucked myself into since about the time i became an adult and could somehow be that way and still have my life.  like i chose an adult life, pre~children,  that was hermit like.  i chose a social life that was kind of like that.  and now, by the circumstances of our lives that we then chose and created, i am having to come out.  boo.  luckily it happens slowly, sort-of.  but if i were left to my own doings, oh what a hermit i would be.  david too.  i find it confusing and hilarious that we have created this outward life.  that we live at an intersection.  (and oh how hilarious it would be for some of you to see what i'm referring to as an intersection.  but still.  come on.  relativity people.  we feel it.  and just so you know i'm not the only one, the people who lived in our house before us, had issues with this too.  the guy bob who lived here before us, used to yell out obscenities at the bikers who ride by having loud conversations  out loud all the way around our house, telling them to shut it up.  he did it in front of us once.  like a 'shut the fuck up' kind of thing, yelled out with no apprehension at all.  ha.  it's just an anomaly of mountain living, this one house in particular, is just right there asking to play with the world all the time.)   i am cracking up at this.  my sister in brooklyn is probably dying at the words i'm writing here.  to her, we are tucked.  TUCKED.  but anyhow, i've got a desire to tell it in the way that i experience it sometimes.  i like the elusive corner.  hiding.   i like burying my head in the sand.   i like pulling my head into my shell.  but then, the winds change randomly, and i don't like hiding all of a sudden.  how slithery and confusing is all this?  what the hell are us hermits who are being urged to step out of our comfort zone, when we aren't feeling it,  to do?  the moon never has to go off her sweet course.  she is only full when it's time.  right on time.  be brave sweet hermits.  just be fucking brave.  there's a part of your soul wanting to come out, yah?  we are humans, not the moon.   the clarity will come.  and there are often nice hidden corners to go into before those winds of change come and make you want to go out and play.



i gave the kids a large dose of elderberry syrup yesterday.  and myself too.



our mom is so old.


evening now.

dinner was chaos.  not the time for what i was hoping to do with memories.  i will just start the book more organically.  write down things the kids have been saying lately.  things i remember.  we will add to it as it happens.  we will bring it on our next trip to baltimore perhaps.  love.  i went with the flow and didn't force more into the chaos that was dinner tonight.  crazy.  at one point, i look at david's mom and say, 'is the micromanaging just too much?  how can i do this differently?'  you know, referring to what was needed tonight to keep our kids from spinning out completely, from going to the land of no return which they sometimes do and it sucks so i micromanage the hell out of them sometimes to prevent that whole absurdity.  but then the micromanaging feels thoroughly absurd too.  she said, 'there are no short cuts.'  i love that she said that.  thank you.  my wrong is not wrong.  it's just this hard.  and i'm going through the crazy chaos at dinner with my machete in hand, whacking away for us a path to get to bed in one piece.  phew!  such hard work sometimes.

james blake.  lindisfarne I and  lindisfarne II is my favorite song right now.  sending a whole cd of his music to a friend tomorrow.  just burned it for her.  she needs some lovin.  i hope it helps.  it sure helps me lately.  how can this cover he did not help us all?

my law school paper

ha.  just the title there cracks me up.  i was inspired the other day by my law school going sister.  she called me, after just having finished up a heck of a paper.  one that put her through more misery than childbirth it seemed.  and i was there when she had her baby.  her relief after finishing that paper, was so great, i got jealous.  or inspired.  aren't they so similar.  like opposite sides of the same coin.  i think they could be.  jealousy/inspiration.  i told her i want to finish my paper.  but to finish it, i need to start it.  and to start it?  what the hell is my paper gonna be?  how am i to create this false sense of stress, so that i can then be free of it, so that i can then feel that great relief that comes with finishing something that was worked on so effortfully, wholly, and with such pain?  how funny, that i am this desperate for some sense of relief, that i am looking to up my stress, so that i can feel it lessen?  i think i am insane.  acceptance of that.  so what's my trial's subject?  sister's was about this high school kid who wore a button on her shirt saying 'the army sucks'.  the school's action was to suspend for three days, along with some other bullshit disciplinary actions.  sister argued that it was unconstitutional to do that, and more.  and she rocked it.  as far as my nonlawschooleducatedass can tell.  i feel so dumb with my language here compared to my sister's in her paper.  just a dumb ole house wife here.  heh.

alright.  so my paper.  hmmmmmm. .......nope.  not happening.  my paper.  my paper is gonna be some crazy art project.  where i give myself a freakish deadline.  i make myself drop everything just about, to serve the project.  my family just has to understand that i'm doing this for the cause.  the cause is relaxation.  i need to relax.  i can't relax.  but maybe i will if i work my ass off on something, and then feel a sense of accomplishment, and exhaustion. i am not going to be a lawyer.  but i am an artist in some way.  an artist who has mostly put her supplies away, for the past ten years, in the name of raising up some cool freaker magical kids.  i've tried to be artistic about the way i've raised them.  but it's not the same.  duh.  i want to embroider 'duh' on something.   yeah, it's not the same.  alright.  quilt project?  painting?  short story?  what the hell do i want to get creative and work my ass off on?


hello!!  hi.  HEY!  yep.  i just had a wake up moment.  how funny am i?   pretty.  i need to relax more.  i want to relax more, so what do i think i need to do?  stress out more?  oh it's too funny.  but i was close.  with the art.  just doing art.  any amount, any kind, any where, any how, relaxes me.  giving myself a deadline, will not work.  i've even tried it.  i rebel when i do stuff like that.  i rebel on the self-imposed nonsense.  cuz deep down i know it's nonsense.  and deep down, i want what's real.  aaaaaaaaah.  getting closer.  just naming the desire gets me closer.  love.  love.  love.

(side note.  i got the name of a new to us physical therapist for max.  that is my baby step for the week.  i think i am chilling out on the idea of surgery number two for a while anyways.  there are different schools of thought on when is the right time to do that procedure, and so for now, i am gonna hang back, meet the new PT, and breathe and relax!)



sweet birds are laying so many eggs these days.  partially becuz i've had to keep the heat lamp on, for turkey boy, who was in major recovery healing mode and needing extra support to keep that body temp up.  baby boy was shivering for a while there.  all that light made those hens think it was high summer.  like high summer at the equator.  i turned the light off yesterday, so maybe their bodies can get back into nature's rhythm now.

that turkey boy buford seems so much better.  he's beat up, you can tell, but he's strong seeming.  he's got a few rogue feathers from the attack still poking out.  and he might have a limp, i'm not really sure.  the ground has been so snowy and he hasn't been able to really walk around on the ground in a free way yet.  and duck brother, who is now the sole duck, seems ok.  i think?  we sure love them.



i just now got an email from the bee swarm catcher.  i am on the swarm list again.  she wrote me the nicest letter.

the art supplies i am diggin  into:

i cut into some of this fabric i've been collecting for so long.  i have this stash.  an amazing stash.  once i had a dream where my grandma and i were shopping for fabric.  in the dream, she told me to always buy whatever fabric i want.  ha!  sometimes i justify my fabric habit with that dream.  yep.  it really works.  she told me to!!!!  so i'm looking at it, that stash,  planning the quilts??  i think i am planning them.   still  in the dream stage.   but i did cut into that red and it will be a shirt soon.  for me.



david got me these awesome thin gold hoop earrings for valentine's day.  my new favorites.


and, today is my love's birthday.  i already wrote him one of the best love letter cards i've ever written him in all these bakers' dozen of years we've been together.  well, it was the easiest one to write, with the flow of pure love.  cuz the love is reigning like it never has before.  or maybe it's the peace.  yes.  the peace is reigning.  sure we get in spats here and there like any animal couple will, but the letting go, and the forgiveness, those two things happen now.  and the humor.  and the understanding.  and the awareness that we really want to be together.  we knew that all along, duh.  i mean we got married.  but then it got hard kind of fast and for a long time.  and with such intensity.   i haven't been able to crank out a love letter to him, without also having to add in that 'the hard times are worth it and thank goodness we are working through them',  just to keep it real, and so that he'd know it was me actually writing the letter, and not me turned schizophrenic, all of a sudden writing a gusher.   and i am not bragging here.  nope.  i'm just reporting.  or something.  just telling it, and not censoring.  i want to be a moon goddess.  he is a sun god.  i can verifiably say that he is a sun god.  i told him that in my wedding vows.  i am a moon goddess.  he taught me.  i taught him.  we listened and learned.  he is 44 today.  his mama is in town.  it is bittersweet.  we are here being in the bittersweetness of it together.  he is so loved.   happy birthday dear kind man.  happy birthday.


oh.  here's his birthday hat!  i just finished it last night.  before he even got out of bed this morning i put it on his head.  it's the botanic hat pattern.

and it's reversible.

he's been wearing it all day.  how cute.

i had a dream last night that i was taking a poetry class.  i walked into the class for the first time, and saw that the professor was my dad.   my dad who's been dead for over 7 years now.  he looked so good.  i was thrilled to see him.  beyond thrilled.  but i played it cool, cuz i just wanted to sit in the back and watch him.  take him in, in this role i'd never seen him in before.  next thing i knew, he was michael scott.  sounds plausible.  well.  that was awesome to see you dad.  very very very awesome.  please keep teaching that class.

and then i had a part of the dream where i kept writing sentences without verbs.  and i was getting in trouble for it.

boy.  grass and carpets.  sunshine golden fire.

hmmmmmmmm.

good thing i am not trying to write a law school paper after all i guess.

ok.  here's a rumi poem that spoke to me the other day, really really spoke to me, speaking of poetry class.  a friend mailed it to me for valentine's day.  i loved getting a real letter, a real valentine.  i want to remember that and do that too.

Time to go Home

Late and starting to rain,
it's time to go home.
We've wandered long enough
in empty buildings.
I know it's tempting to stay
and meet those new people.
I know it's even more sensible
to spend the night here with them,
but I want to go home.

We've seen enough beautiful places
with signs on them saying
This is God's House.That's seeing the
grain like the ants do,
without the work of harvesting.
Let's leave grazing to cows and go
where we know what everyone really intends,
where we can walk around without clothes on.

RUMI ~ from: 'Open Secret' Trans Coleman Barks

making stuff with love

sublime stitching

my mawmaw made all her kids and grandkids pillowcases for most of the valentine's days i remember from being alive with her.

i'm not making pillowcases this year, but i'm going with her theme, again....  zhi had the idea for us to embroider on pillow cases.  we got some new flannel sheets, and we're stitching on the cases now.  i'm doing 99% of the embroidering.   but zhi picked up the stem stitch with one showing basically, and has done a little bit on her bird.  she might do a few of her letters tonight, and then i'll finish them on up.  i've had that sublime stitching book for 7 years maybe?  this is the first time i've used it.  yay!  i'm such a novice embroiderer i'm looking up which stitch to do for lettering and outlining and just chose stem.  is there another one that's better for letters?  i could probably get a better needle too!  mine seems really thick for this, but it's the only one that could fit that thread in the eye.  anyhow.  it's fun!

i just flipped through some of my old blog posts.  oh my.  it hurts.  sometimes it hurts so bad!  to miss my babies being babies.  and yet, just yesterday, i think it was yesterday, i felt this huge wave of freedom at noticing how we can do things now together, in this vastly different way, now that they are so much more independent.  they can all do their own seat belt buckles.  zip their coats.  stuff like that that takes a small but noticeable load off of me.  and i reveled in that yesterday.  it felt great!  and now i am paining at the loss of all that is behind us.  shit!  pain.  oh joyful beautiful pain.  oh how exquisite you are.

ok.  here's a report on the bedwetting alarm that we began using last summer to train zhi, and then max on night time pee~ing in the bed.  report:   success!   we had to bribe those kids with a large amount of money, the amount of which i will not say on here, because some of you might judge me.  but i calculated it out and it made sense, actually, based on how much money we were spending on night time pullups.  like 70 bucks a month.  this mama is not gonna put her 7 and 9 year olds in cloth at night.  ha!  the 4 year old trained herself for night time.  that was a bonus!  so the monetary prize was a big key for us, they needed a motivator.  cuz getting up in the middle of the night from the deepest sleep possible, to the sound and feel of a buzzing vibrating annoying machine hooked to your underwear is not something anybody wants to do.  and i had no way of talking them into doing it for the pride of knowing you climbed a hard high mountain and of the joy they would feel once they accomplished the feat.  they wouldn't hear it.  they liked their pullups.  and now they like their money.  zhi got trained in 1 month.  the first week was hard.  i got up with her a lot. then she did it on her own.  max.  DIFFERENT story.  of course.  it took him 6 months.  him and me.  getting up every time that god damn alarm went off.  me and him.  in the bathroom.  he isn't as nimble with his hands, and attaching the little clip to the underwear while he was still in that sleepy state, wasn't happening so well.  WELL.  deep exhale.  he has mastered this.  he really has. it's been about 2 months now with no alarm.  i feel ok saying he got it.  he may have a relapse, but i have padding on the bed for that possibility.  holy moly.  what an accomplishment.  i love the bedwetting alarm.  i don't like the thought of how we would have done that otherwise.  thank you bedwetting alarm.  thank you monetary bribes.

remembering our accomplishments is very good therapy for me.  cuz there's always more to work on.  i think max needs to go back to physical therapy again.  his walking isn't looking so good anymore.  i guess i should say, it looks like it could be helped.  for some with more sever cerebral palsy, his walking looks amazing.  i don't know how to say what i'm trying to say very well.  always worried about offending others.  uncensor myself.  his walking, for him, seems like it's getting stiffer, his heel is coming up again, as he is growing.  we knew this would happen.   he might need one more surgery i'm thinking, maybe this year.  maybe this summer?  a heel surgery this time.   i'll just dip my toe in that for now.  maybe make an appointment to meet with the surgeon in denver.  that's a good first step.  small baby steps here.  deep breaths.  this surgery will be minor compared to the one from two years ago.  ( i want to update that soon.  note to self.  can you make that happen h?  maybe after the appointment with the denver surgeon.)   ok.. toe dipped.  goals for this week or next made.  deep breaths taken.

now.  what else can i celebrate?

zhi.  that girl lost a tooth last night.  she wanted me to pull it out.  not her dad.  ha!  i celebrate that.  i swear those kids so often choose their dad over me when it comes to so many things.  i think cuz he's gone to work so much, and he's just more novel, and he's fresh to them, and freaking funny, and i'm just this old haggard hag.  ha.  i yanked that tooth out, though!  we were awesome.  and we had a fun girl day yesterday.  males went to snowboarding therapy.  we all put on eye make up.  i put it on for us all.  eyeliner.  eyeshadow.  mascara.  blue mascara.   they were so cute and serious about it.

  we made homemade bath bomb things, inspired by a blogging friend.  i bathed with one last night. it was cool!   i like the oily factor a lot.  mmmmmm.  oil bath.  feels good in this colorado air.  we started embroidering.  we cleaned those girls' desks.  we rocked.  we had good vibes.  that is to celebrate.



ah well.  here we go.  another week begun.  sending a prayer to my friend whose back keeps going out.    deep prayer for you good friend.  i'm giving you one of these bath bombs.  k?   made with love.

water

olive is big.  i actually let her use my camera this weekend.

she took these photos:

her cute style is to tell people to say cheese.  cheddar cheese  or goat cheese if you want.

i'll teach her about backlighting soon enough.


i took this one:

in her new little prairie shirt i whipped up.  she picked out that ribbon trim.  someone can teach me about overexposure anytime!

i planted some offshoots of a friend's spider plant yesterday.  that felt really good.  a little new growth, new light, was good therapy.

made soup in crock pot.  flavor packet in pan first.



i really enjoyed these flowers david brought home after we had a fight.


and water.  holy water.



and family sledding:



and  then i got something in the mail.  a friend sent me some bulbs to force.
 or plant.  whatever you want to call it.
grow.  sweet friend.  along with some bubble bath things.  a handwritten letter with thoughts and words that soothed.  thanks so much.  i love you m.

2 days later:

today i woke up and we did our usual morning thing.  however yesterday, i began giving one of our ducks antibiotics.  it was a last ditch effort.  the poor guy just went into major sickness, probably pushed over the edge by this latest storm.  seemed like pneumonia.   he was dead this morning in the coop.  max and i gathered both ducks up yesterday and put them in the coop, thinking that might help.  and they need to be together, they are best friends. max and i went out there together this morning after breakfast.  oh it was so sad to see him laying there on the floor.    god!!!!    i am really wondering if i'm not cut out for the reality of many pets and creature caretaking.  i feel like such a failure when death happens.   i'm trying to look at where i might be having a god complex, as if it were all MY doing,  where i am just learning by trial and error sadly, and when i just royally fucked up, which i guess is like the god complex, but more human, in that i played an ignorant~human part, not a god role.  last week i realized we, or i, cuz it was my fuck up, lost a beehive.  they needed more supplemental honey to get through the end of winter.  i didn't know it.  i had assessed their stores and felt it was ok.   DUMB!  or just novice, as my therapist says much more kindly.  she says i'm gonna be a good beekeeper.  that i'm just inexperienced.   she happens to be a professional psychic too, so i'm a little soothed by her words.  i wrote to the bee teachers to ask if i could get on the swarm list again, and i haven't heard back yet.  wah.  i'm scared they won't give me another chance.  and oh i hope the other hive makes it.  of course i've given them some more honey stores now.  and i hope our other duck handles his grief with his health in tact.  we've already begun the search for another duck to be his new friend.  he needs a friend.  at least that's what we were told when we first brought these guys home.  ducks need buds.  and the way those two hung together, it seemed obvious.  so i guess i question if i'm worthy of being the caretaker of these sweet beings, and then i seem to just keep on going.  looking for more bees, more ducks.  learn learn.  my farming old blogging friend, who just up and quit blogging a while ago, soothed me with her wisdom on all this farm kind of learning.  trial and error.  keep on going.  learn more every year.  last year's death feeds this year's new life.  i know this stuff, but learning it in this embodied, real time kind of way is really intensely sad at times.

there's this movie david and i watched the other night.  please give.  it is my new favorite movie.  for so many reasons.   basic dull review there that was.  that's all i've got.  i'll also say i guess,  that i just keep thinking about it.  for days now. the subtle karmic stories, and the way the parents in the movie LOVE their flailing teenage daughter.  that was so beautiful to see.

i just did the whole night time routine on my own.  (i feel sheepish saying that, with the single moms in my life.  yeah.  bah bah.)  david was out with a new friend.  he met a man on the plane ride back from the trip when he went and visited his father for the last time.  the guy he sat next to, i guess they chatted it up the whole 4 hour ride back.  ha!  that is weird.  i never do that.  he doesn't either.  they've met up now twice.  and have plans again for next weekend, getting the rest of their families together.  wives and kids.  uh-oh.  i'm gonna ruin the whole thing with my anti-social behavior.  sorry d.  well, that's one version of how it could go.  we'll just see now,  won't we.  i'll let you all know.  ....so after i got the kids to bed, i planted those bulbs that love friend sent me.  after max's and my semi~traumatic morning of finding one of our ducks dead, he went to a reading lesson, and then he and i went to mcguckins before his afternoon of more schooling.  needed more potting soil.  and we got some fun amendments.  volcanic rock, charcoal, and earthworm castings.  why not.  we were trying to cheer ourselves up just a little.  it felt better.  well, to me.  he couldn't care much less about the soil amendments actually.  but he could tell i was into it, so he was sweet.  then i took him to the toy store.  he wanted a little duck figure.  you know those plastic animals he's so into?  no duck he approved of, the one they had had a base on its feet and he's not cool with that really.   the legs aren't free.  you know?   they need to stand on their own legs.  so he got another rooster.  he can't find his other one.  i got the girls a new animal too.  olive got a baby lynx.  zhi got a babyish raccoon.  (side note, max and i saw a lynx yesterday, crossing the road right in front of us.  olive was looking down and didn't see it.  zhi was at school and not in the car.  but max and i totally saw it.)  those little guys were 2.99 each.  felt a little better.  however tonight at dinner, we lit a candle and the 4 of us thought about our duck, sunshine, whose spirit is somewhere else.  we're guessing.   zhi said he's not come back to planet earth yet.  max said he wants to name our next duck sunshine too.  olive and i said sweet prayer after sweet prayer for him out loud, cuz that's what she wanted.  me outloud, then her.  it made max emotional.  sweety.  he is so in touch with his feelings.  it is lovely.



 after reading them the night time story, which right now is mrs. frisby and the rats of nimh,  maybe my all time favorite kid chapter book yet,  i got to planting those anemone bulbs on the floor of the kitchen, with my headlamp, cuz the house is small, and any light on would flow into their room, and the girls weren't quite asleep.  max was OUT.  i relit the candle, cuz zhi blew it out, and i planted some stuff.  that felt better too.  and now, i sit with the candle and blog.  weird.  i never do this at night.  with a candle.  i hardly ever light candles.  right after david's dad died, though,  after i stared at the spider web, i bought some candles on line.  real fast.  i just decided it needed to happen.  some colorado beeswax tapers.  i had this urge to start lighting candles more that morning.  thinking of him.  i want to remember that.

i aslo took some notes tonight.

olive:  mom, what does 'psyched' mean?
me:  it means to feel happy.  and excited.
olive: do you know juniper (her 3 year old cousin) likes to be naked all the time?
me:  yeah i did know that....   ... ......so, where did you hear that word psyched?
olive: you.  you just said it.
me:  oh.  yeah, i did.

ha!  i don't listen to myself very well.  well, she sure does.  next she's gonna ask me what fuck means.  and i'll be like, 'where did you hear that, young lady!?!?'  ha.

i noticed tonight also, as i was putting things away, like hanging up my jacket in the closet after going to get firewood in super deep snow,  where no path had been made yet, cuz we got enough to get us through the storm up until that night,




 i kept feeling like mr. rogers.  that neat peaceful vibe as i put things into their place.  that's not typical of me.  to put things away peacefully.  ha. i'll take it when i can get it though!   i often felt mr. roger's energy from david's dad.  it was something about the way he spoke sometimes.  mmmmmm.

then i pondered what i'd do tonight if the power went out.  that always gets me going.

i also got a call from the homeopath.  we're still working on finding my remedy.  she feels she's getting closer.  i hope so!  we do phone check ins a few times a month it seems.  just for a few minutes.  little check ins.   i've seen her in person 3 times now, in 4 months.   i love her.   we are targeting my depression.  it is helping i'm pretty sure.  i like homeopathy.  it blows my mind.  david can't really stand it.  he likes to make fun of me and we even fight about it.  we have to agree to disagree basically.  two hard heads.  sometimes when he's really suffering, he lets me give him something.  that cracks me up.  he opens then to the possibility, but he says he's just humoring me.  this man and i hold such different extremes and possibilities.  the fact that we make it work while being so different is kind-of amazing.  and kind-of maybe totally due to all the couples therapy.

ok.  back to now.

glorious now.

i've been reading this quote a lot, cuz it's up on our mantle next to a picture of david's dad:


~accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment.  it is part of the is~ness of the Now.  you can't argue with what is.  well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.  ~  eckhart tolle.



it's been helping a little.  maybe a lot.  i don't know, but definitely some.

love.

how random is all this on this post?

here are my new thrifted pants.  i hemmed them this weekend.  by hand.  haven't done that in forever.  hand hemmed.   i like.  wool.  preppyish.  fun.  couple bucks.



and then next day~~~

working on ingesting swallowing taking in receiving eating the truth of my awesomeness.  with humility of course.  but nonetheless, i need to swallow the reality of it.

the moon card in my tarot deck found me.  she told me to do that.  actually she told me to make a choice if i want to create a new reality.  so i'm making that choice.  to embody my awesomeness.  she also told me to stop censoring myself.   straight up, the card said that.  i've not pulled this card before.  my tarot book sometimes seems to me to have the most wisdom of any book i have ever read.  i seriously feel it is on the same level as the course in miracles, which i didn't read firsthand, but david read it for a while, and watching him practice those teachings was enough to show me that book has some deep wisdom.  how some people feel about the bible.  oh how i want to censor my words when religious stuff comes up.  david said that the only time the conversation with his new friend, from the airplane, didn't flow, was when religion came up.  friend is devout christian.  david is jewish.  scary stuff it can be to build a safe trusting bridge.  or to cross it, i guess.    i feel as long we as all respect each other's choices, and give each other lots and lots of space and don't try to convert each other, peace reigns.  and magic.  we all came from the same place.  earth.   well, now, scientologists don't think that, so uh-oh.  can't say anything about religion without getting myself in deep water.

swim lessons.  i need swim lessons.


i don't know.




that's a good place to rest.  in the unknown.  actually, it's a hard place to rest sometimes.  but it's a true place to rest.  for me.

opening

knitting the last bit of the sweaters there.  and making david take a photo of it.

the amaryllis bloomed.

and

da da da dum......

here they are.... out of their bags that they've been living and growing in for 10 months!  i like to be quite overdue, don't i?  miss zhi was 17 days late. i like to brag on that to people who are whining about being overdue.  shut up.  no whining unless you're more than 17 days late.  and you're going for a vbac, and you've got the freaking doctor freaking out cuz you won't go into labor on his timetable.  just kidding.  you can whine about whatever.  we're all made of different stuff.  i whine about crap that would never bother others all the time.

last weekend, i finished the last stitch.  wove the ends in.  blocked the sweaters saturday night after the kids were asleep.  then sewed on the buttons sunday morning.  vintagey buttons i got on ebay, and both girls like.  and olive chose to have a cat button be her top button.

the olearia pattern is what i used.  

i am pretty in love with this pattern.  i want one.  i used some yarn that was a little thicker than the pattern asked for, but the same needles.  thus, i got me a chunkier sweater and i like it.  risky!  looks more country or something.  country/hippie/gypsy/magic.

the yarn i got at a local yarn store.   it's by mushishi.  the grey was left over from their dad's birthday vest, from last year.  the girls each picked out their own color.  there's a lot left over from zhi's, cuz i had to get two skeins.  that is about to be worked into a hat for david i'm thinking....that birthday is  coming up!

non attachment.  attachment.

all done.

she told me that's how you look pretty, hold your dress, or sweater, up like that.

i say, nah.  you look pretty just by being yourself.  

 mom stuff.

non attachment.  attachment.



(i had such contractions after putting this post up.  i sat with them for hours, and then took the below portion off.  wanting to make it easy.  to take all the pain of my writing away, so that others don't have to feel it.  i was thinking i need to just get on with my life.  get away from the pain.  stop sharing that part of me.  how hilarious given the subject matter.  those were some serious contractions.  they'll come again i'm sure.  for now they've chilled, and i put it back on.  ha!)

make an egg.  let it go.  make another.  let it go.  watch them grow.

attachment parenting is what most of us are trying for, right?  and then there's the spiritual lesson of non~attachment.  the paradox of doing all these things at the same time.  keep the heart connected, the bodies connected, while not clinging with our grip, both mental and physical.  it's not good to be a tight knitter.  loose and easy.  but not too loose.   i try to do non~attachment attachment parenting.  non~attachment attachment living.  focusing while staying open.  wide open optimally.  letting my fears and sadness be seen and felt while bravely staying open and with my process.

holy holy sacred life.

how outrageous is all this experience of living on this planet?  how absurd intense and outrageous?

what is a girl to do?  what is a mama to do?  what are we all to do?   hold on while letting go.

and contract sometimes.  so that i will open.  don't diss the contractions. there ain't no other way.  people talk up expansion in such a huge way, it almost makes me mad.  cuz you can't expand without contracting first.  and i've dissed contractions for so long, thinking the pain of life means i am doing something wrong.  no!  it's the biology of life.  ain't no other way.  however, when someone encourages me stay open during the contractions, i try to listen.  resisting the contractions definitely makes it hurt more.  so yeah, i try to stay with myself, openness, and just groan through the pain...

aren't birthing metaphors the best?

these sweaters are just little representations of life.  life on the run.  life at home.  they were knit in waiting rooms, in spring, summer, fall, and winter, on airplanes, at home, at parks, at a shiva, on a bus to new york city, while playing checkers,  while watching movies with my kids, while kids are in swim class, at the trident on those days that i just don't want to look at a computer, in bed when i'm not quite sleepy yet, on date nights when i just need to be doing something with my hands cuz when i'm like that i'm just like that and david is cool with it mostly........  i did a little on one, then a little on the other.  that way they were finished at the same time.  

i am not attached to them.  i'm trying to see them as a painting.  something i made out of love and creativity, and now i'm done.  they are lovely to look at.  olive has been wearing hers a lot, of her own will.  and when i say i am not attached, it's partly in response to the big girl, who doesn't exactly go for this sweater every time it's time to get bundled.  i'm not saying anything to her.  which isn't really my style.  usually, i'd ask her to wear something i made her, trying to be cool with how i asked, but just reminding her of it.  she's too sly for that now.  i have to lay back.  and i see the sweater hanging in the hall and just love looking at it.  even if it's not on her.  this is what we have to get really good at, us people who make things.  making them.  and then letting them go.  non attachment.  and trying our hardest to enjoy the making.

i met with my best high school friend's mom yesterday.  david and olive and i went on a walk in our old hood, and just popped in, unannounced.  so old fashioned of us!  we visited, and when she asked how i was doing, 'i said, oh well, you know.'  and she laughed.  she does know.  she thinks it's funny kind-of, cuz she remembers very well how hard it is to be in the thick of being a mom.  the endless work, the business aspect of keeping home, the absurdly tricky challenge of raising children.  she really kind-of laughs at it all now.  and then says, 'it all passes.'  at that,  i cried.  i said, 'yeah, i know, but i don't want it to pass, and me look back on it feeling like i fucked up because i didn't enjoy it enough.'  she got serious looking, (not because i used the f word, heh) and said, 'well, i don't know if it's possible to enjoy it as much as you are thinking you should.'  and i was relieved.  can you believe it?  i was relieved to hear her say that it may not be possible to enjoy raising kids the way i am striving to.  maybe it is, but maybe it isn't.  that freaking relieved me.  like, 'oh!  so it really is this hard.  i am not doing anything wrong to be having this challenging of a time trying to figure out how to bliss out more frequently with all this.'  it's really. this. hard.  

but that said, i had a bliss session recently.  i don't know why, but i felt some lightness, some fun sweet lightness come over me, combined with some new music i discovered on the local radio station, bought immediately from itunes, a friday night, and i was kind-of blissing.  just for no reason.  i just felt some light.  i haven't felt that way in a long time.  so long it is sad, but hey.  that's life.  it gets sad sometimes.  

it's beautiful and harsh.  that's what another friend told me this week, and those words together feel pretty true and poignant to me right now.  

open.  open to the contractions so that i can open even more when they're done. so that i can keep growing and growing and growing.  i'm gonna birth the biggest cranium when i'm done with all this opening!  ha!!!  

hard work.  here's to the hardness of all this work!!    and to birthing metaphors!!