growing

7/30/9

second to last day of july, and I want to eat it up. I want it to be funny, through and through, clear to the last day of september, when I will fall to my knees and let myself mourn the end of the summer, when I cry for two straight days that I’m not going to feel warm for 7 or 8 more months, unless I am making love to my fireplace or hot water bottle. And then I will feel okay, cause I cried for so long that I can’t anymore, and somehow magic will happen and I will actually be okay with winter coming.

Happiness that feeds on itself. I’m very interested in this, like the hummingbirds are interested in the flowers and the sugar. I’m interested in it because it keeps me alive. I am barely alive sometimes because I cannot find the flowers that give me my life. And then today I had breakfast with too much maple syrup poured on. I thought I was going to throw up after I ate it all. Too much is not good. We have to be so careful to stay tuned in to how much sugar we eat or how little. We are tiny unicyclists. All of us. Unicycling around every minute of our lives. Except for when we crash. And when we crash, we just get up again, because we have no choice. Not really because we want to. Sometimes I want to rest, and stop balancing for a minute. But this is like saying I want to stop breathing for a minute. Well, a minute is all you get. And I don’t really want to stop unicycling because I know this could be my only chance for a long time. I have an awesome unicycle, and I know this is my only chance with this particular unicycle. This particular one, that was born on the 12^th day of the 12^th month, in the year 1976AD, in the Arkansas town called Little Rock. I want every moment I can get, on this unicycle named heather e cohen. I have made three baby unicycles, and they are the most beautiful creations I have ever seen. I found a daddy unicycle that fits with mine in the most magical way. he always knows when my tire needs air, or when I am getting rusty, or when I don’t like the trail we’re on, he really cares, and stops, and listens to me as I describe the kind of trail I need. And when I am easy, and can go along and follow him, he takes us to places that make me laugh in the most satisfying way. and because our baby unicycles can’t balance on their own yet, we take turns juggling them while we ride. And he is a pretty good juggler, not as good as me, but that’s just not possible cause I’m as good as it gets, but I’m impressed.. for a boy unicycle, he is a miracle. (yes, I am a little bitter toward the boy unis cause they have been very cruel to us femmes for centuries and centuries and I do not easily trust them yet) And sometimes I forget this. I forget that he is a miracle, with a heart of pure gold. (the jewish unicycles’ hearts are often made of pure gold) I forget, and I start thinking he is just a curmudgeon. I start only seeing his dents and rust, and hearing his squeaks, and thinking he is a loser for crashing sometimes. And when I do this, I look at myself and only see how perfect I think I am. how quiet I am. I get confused sometimes, and blame all my own crashes on him, or on my babies who will only survive if I juggle them, and really when I am doing this I now see and know that I am tired, and I need to help myself somehow. Here is where my luckiness comes in. I am a lucky tiny unicycle, cause I am wacky. I can come up with the most off-the-wall ideas to change things up, and help myself when I feel overburdened. I can do this cause I am wacky. And cause I have known a lot of other wacky ones. They showed me how wackiness saves the day. I got my first degree in wackiness from uni-school. It doesn’t have to come naturally. It is very learnable if it has been stamped out of your make of rubber. You can learn it and rubber is just so malleable, it will take it in, and change itself if you just teach it what to do.

Yes, I am wacky, and I am shy. this is where one of my main challenges comes in. Cause my shyness has overpowered my wackiness, and told it to sit down and be quiet so it doesn’t embarrass me. My wackiness was not stamped out of my rubber, but my boldness was. So now I am busy busy learning from the bold unis. The ones who can speak up in front of others, and not feel like their seat is going to catch fire from the heat that was churning in the fire pit of nervousness. Yeah, so this is the class I am enrolled in right now. It is called, bravery and boldness for unicycles ….my teacher is an African unicycle. he is really good at dancing and music and smiling, and it seems like that’s all he wants to teach us shy ones. He doesn’t make us feel stupid for being shy either, which makes us all love him.

Unicycles never stop going to school. School is what keeps us upright. No choice there either. Balance and school. Our requirements for staying alive.

she is 5! he is toothless!

i made this little summer shirt for my baby, for her 5th birthday. she is a horse rider and friend, a chicken lover, an egg gatherer, a flower picker, and a plant tender.....this fabric was meant for her! thank goodness it turned out, cause i was planning on making a skort, you know shorts with a skirt front, to go with it, and i read the pattern instructions wrong, and once again asked the husband to help see where i went wrong. and after a solid 30 minutes of us both studying the directions, i saw it. i can't even explain what i did wrong, it hurts my brain too much. but you know what i learned? that i KNEW i was doing something wrong at that step where i strayed from correctness, and i just plowed through ending up in a world of incorrectness, that i could not backtrack from in any way, an hour and a half later. so, i learned that unless i like that world where skorts don't come together, i better listen to myself when i KNOW i am doing something that doesn't feel right. so there.

but look at her in this shirt down there. what a sweet july shirt. for a sweet sweet amazingly precious july girl.

those are the presents i had all wrapped up and ready to hide. ever since zen shorts came into our world, we've given each child a present, on all birthdays. the birthday kid gets a little more, but everyone gets a little somethin. it's just more fun.

my son's vampire nature revealed itself on this day too.....just kidding.

one of his top front teeth just fell out of his mouth. all done with its job. his man tooth is coming on down. my boy is becoming a man, slowly, slowly slowly. . she is painting her nails just before her party starts. is she a girl, or what?

and here are her candles coming to her .....

and this was one of my favorite things at the party.....the children were loving hanging out of this window, and then climbing in and out of it. i don't know why, i just loved that. and here i am listening to zhi as she hands me a dime, and tells me to give it to noah, who is in the forefront of the picture, with the batman cape. the girls were giggling away, scheming up funny things to do, like give coins to the boys. these children are precious.

okay, and now i want to show the cutest party favor bags. i was in love with these. i bought these little canvas bags at joanne's, and filled them with everything you would need to take yourself out and be ready to water color whenever. when the kids started checking them out, they all looked at the tincture bottle, and thought we'd given them medicine. they started dosing themselves gladly, with water. pretty cute. i bought a large pad of watercolor paper, and just chopped each piece of paper into little squares, tying them up into a bundle with string. i also bought two sets of water colors in tubes and put three different colors in each bag, along with two brushes. and the dropper bottle for adding your water with precision! and then the cloth i used to wrap the paints in can be used for wiping up any spill or mess. so satisfying. all this cost less then $5 a bag. pretty awesome, i thought.

homework

i have a lot to do. someone is having her fifth birthday tomorrow....who could that be? well, she's having a pretty special birthday party too, and there's a bit to do to prepare for it. and then there's the women's group meeting tonight, with a very specific topic chosen for tonight's discussion. guess what it is.

yep. the one and only......sex. i am not nearly as shy as i used to be when people start talking openly about sex. in fact, i am not feeling very shy about it all anymore. and you know what is kind-of funny, sex and the city really helped me through that prude phase. yay! it feels so much better now to have normalized sex in this way so that i can sit with friends and really explore the challenges we go through to find ourselves having a happy and fulfilling sex life. and i feel extremely blessed to have found this group of women who i trust, respect, and feel kindred with, to carve out time twice a month to do the healing work of focused discussion and exploration about anything we want. it sounds serious, but it's not all serious. laughter escapes and runs out through the window to the owls' and lions' ears throughout the evening, i promise. it's not scary. it's nourishing. tonight we are going to sip wine and tea, and just explore. we ask questions of each other, but we don't give advice. we share experiences, and relate however we each individually do, but we don't give advice....unless it is asked of us. i love this. so i am needing to do my homework, so that i can get clearer on my specific relation to sex and the challenges i face in finding the sexual harmony in my marriage. maybe it's cause i have been nursing or pregnant nonstop for 8 years now. yeah, but i'm looking deeper than that. and i'm not going to go there on this public blog, but my point is, i need to be focusing on that, and i'm playing around here instead. i need to be out doing errands for the birthday girl's party, and i am playing here. being self-indulgent, thinking about how great i am, and how great my life is. one of my favorite songs just came on. mmmmmm, so grounding for me, so integrating for me. i was starting to get a little inflated there. take it easy girl, don't forget your anchor or you'll be out to sea in no time with that ego running the show. i love that movie so much too.

okay. here i go. homework time.

i just want to play. for a little bit first.

outside

what what what to say.......outside is cool. outside is magical. outside is the mama. my kids need to play outside more. but we live in mountain lion land. they pretty much have to have an adult with them all the time when they are outside. i remember being allowed to go outside from morning to night, no bothering at all about where i was or anything. i lived in this safe little suburb called maumelle in arkansas, and i had the whole town as my playground. it was little and i could ride a bike from one end to the other, and the little pharmacy was a favorite place to go buy candy and covet the first aid kit that cost $10. i wanted it so badly, i saved up for months, and finally got to bring it home. i didn't turn into a doctor, at least not the stereotypical kind that has a first aid kit with a white cross on it in my bag. my first aid kit these days consists of :

• flower essences
• lip balm
• deep breaths
• remembering to pull my shoulder blades down and back
• loving myself instead of beating up on little old me
• crying occasionally when i am overwhelmed
• taking salty baths
• playing along with my children more and more and more and more, and instead of wondering why it took so long for me to do this, just being glad and grateful that i am doing it now
• taking guitar lessons every other week even if i don't practice in between as much as i'd like, but keeping up with the lessons anyways, cause the momentum will build on itself, i tell myself
• pretty regular couples therapy and pretty regular date nights
• celebrating my children a lot, which includes licking them
• changing and improving something in our house when i start to feel stale
• refusing to let someone tell me i have to wallow in their bad vibes with them
• putting new music on the ipod regularly to listen to on my....
• HIKES
• walking through the retirement home, feeing the love and gentleness from (most ;)) of the old ones, somehow feeling closer to my own grandma who i miss so much, while my kids take swimming lessons in their warm therapy pool
• loving myself and taking care of myself first....putting on my oxygen mask first
• watching my left foot
• getting lost in fiction, a lot
• turning up the volume until it makes me want to dance
• doing something a little bit scary, pushing myself out of my comfort zone, kind-of regularly
• popcorn and movies with my sister
• horses horses horses and donkeys
• learning from my mistakes, and then being so grateful for the lesson

i have a very full first aid kit these days, and it's only getting bigger.

heart in art

this article.

i made a dress from one of his patterns before. one of my favorite patterns ever.

i liked him before for his art.

i love him now that i have felt his heart.

but its funny, because as i write this, i am realizing that i can feel someone's heart, or lack of, in their art most of the time. and what i'm always drawn to is art that touches my heart. that seems so obvious a thing to say and i feel silly writing it.

i NEED to be more disciplined. why so hard.

superheroes must gather

my boy is deep into a love of superheroes. he told me they were having a dad's meeting. hmmmm, kind-of like what his own dad does every so often.

twas rainy last week. weather man says this week will be very different. my sister and i mostly made up, i think. all that was needed was some whisky and a walk through the alleys. oh, and a small break from her baby...just a little break. we ALL NEED little breaks.

they turned out flat. i'm not sure where my mind was (and i just thought of the pixies song after writing that), given that i knew the recipe didn't have any flour in it. they are oatmeal raisin chocolate flax coconut honey cookies. i was sad when i saw what they looked like when they came out of the oven..... i am a little embarrassed to admit this whole thing, us owning a bakery and all. that's really david's specialty, i'm learning for the first time over here with flourless cookies. to my credit, i've made a zillion pans of flour cookies that turned out perfectly, back in my baking-for-my-living-days. but guess what? these ones tasted GOOD. (i also learned to talk in arkansas. just kidding arky! you produced me and bill clinton, so you are forever awesome in my book.) we all ate them with gratitude and were completely satisfied on this summer afternoon, so it was all good in the end here on this cookie afternoon.

wondering

how a person creates intentional, positive change in their life. is it always hard to do? is it ever a no brainer, or just a breeze? and this then leads me to a favorite question, how does a person, or an animal for that matter, come to live and know themselves at their highest potential? the first thing that comes to mind is mind training. for me, that means not listening and giving credit to MANY of the thoughts that wander around my mind. many many many of them. when i am setting out to weed the poisonous plants, i mean thoughts, that don't feel supportive and good for me to be having, it's almost like i have a sword in hand, and i am intermittently slaying the ones that are attempting to take me down. i kind-of feel crazy, like i'm in the old asteroid game and there are all these asteroids (thoughts) coming at me, and it is a matter of survival that i blow up every one of the potentially dooming asteroids coming my way. i mean, it just happened, where a friend came over to say hi to me at the coffee shop, and he asked what i was working on. i said, oh, just some creative work. he said, oh, like a blog? and i took a big scary leap, and said yes. i have been so shy about this project. after we had our brief little, hi how ya doin watcha doin, i became bombarded with thoughts and feelings about what a dork i am, how lame it is that i am shy about it and that i get uncomfortable exposing myself. well, because i was in the middle of writing about slaying the negative thoughts as my practice for taking myself closer to living at my highest potential, i started slaying away. it's taken about 8 minutes for my body to relax and my thoughts to settle down. it is work to have my sword in hand ready for battle, but it is helpful beneficial work, and given the two options of letting the thoughts bombard me, or eliminate them as they appear, i definitely like the latter better. the amount of energy i use up when i let myself take the hits actually requires a lot more work in the end, putting myself all back together and getting back up. but i have done this countless times, and i am sure to do it again. i just hope i start tipping the scale more and more toward my higher potentials, and less and less toward my lower potentials. it is work, i tell myself again. it is always work waking myself up, but it always feels better compared to the alternative life of sleepwalking.

work work work work work. and then there are periods for play, usually brief but whatever.....when i find the time to sit and play right now, i am playing with these fabrics in the picture (i stocked up on solids. i had used them almost all up in my stash.), and looking at the pattern next to them. fun. and i look out that window, and watch the trees move, cause their limbs are in constant motion but not their roots, and i love how nestled i feel in my little corner of the forest.

next time someone asks me what i'm working on, i wonder if i can say, my blog, without feeling embarrassed that i do this. i wonder if i can feel a little more confident and okay about this. because it makes me happy, and happiness brings me toward my highest potential like nothing else.