nurturing love

first we have the folks festival.... a perfect day, i say.

the new tablecloths, made from a bolt of really wide fabric i picked up in a clearance bin at a cloth store. perfect! got 2 tablecloths out of it, for like 7 bucks, which is hard to do with a table this size.
the hummingbirds come and sniff my new apron out that my mother~in~law just sent me. i love it so much. i never wear colors this bright, why not? it is an awesome feeling. and this is the perfect way to do it. with an apron.
we made the sweetest fairy garden. i had found these little jars of sand that someone had brought back from their travels at an estate sale a while ago. i was drawn to them, but wasn't sure what the best use of the sand was.....well, the other day, we poured them into little bowls and made the fairies some magical beaches. there is no better use than that, now, is there?
first grader's first day
kindergartener's first day (check out the tiny bit of bias strip showing on her vest...)


we got to go to a wedding. guess who was really excited to go to her first wedding....and guess why. cake.

i'm going to indulge in what i love right now......mmmmmmm.

• this summer mountain wedding setting.
• the clothes we wore.
• the wildflowers.
• the hopeful idealistic place people are in when they decide to marry.
• a weekend of estate sales, and magical fabrics found. i might get into making doll clothes?? it would be the best use for antique linens and lace.
• how mellow and laid back the husband was at these sales, actually enjoying himself, just looking around like everyone else. this is rare for him, he's not such a good shopper unless we are at a mountaineering store.
• vacuumed floors. why don't i do this more? i love clean carpets.
• sewing into the wee hours of the morning last night.
• my first bias tape making, from the sweetest vintage fabric. and sewing on the edges of everything in sight. well, potholders and a vest for the kindergartener's first day!!
• pu-ehr tea. i'm getting into it. the yogurt of teas!
• seeing gillian welch last weekend. being at the festival all day, and late into the night, with the kids sleeping in our laps as gillian and david sang to us under the stars. dreamiest of dreamy dreams.
• fun with henna!
• being forgiven for freaking out this morning at the toddlers behavior. oops, again.
• the support i find from other women in our community, at our school, in my life.
• women in general
• sister stories
• that the husband can figure out any harmony i ask of him. ask and i shall receive in this way. mmm, such a nice bonus of having a musically talented man in my everyday life.
• funny friends. humor is the BEST medicine. never hesitate to try humor on me....
• how the birds listen and watch. they really do.
• the museum at CU with the dinosaur bones we all tripped out on yesterday.
• the fire was sassy. the line to a dong, i mean song, i'm attempting to write....oh god, am i writing a dong? shit. sometimes i pay so much attention to random accidents like that typo that i'm scared now.
• uninhibitedness , come on!
• indian summer

8/20/9

olive wears her sister's flip flops all day today. they are a few sizes too big. she puts them on the wrong feet and they don't fit her. they fall off every 10 minutes, or she trips every 5. but she screams if i try to talk her into another pair of shoes. and now at the end of the day, as her dad has somehow lured them all out of my space for a while, i see her tromping around in them, and feel guilty that she doesn't have flip flops that fit her properly. i feel guilty for not being psychic and knowing way ahead of time that she is going to have an urge to wear flip flops and that i can't manifest the perfect size instantly. i begin the process of beating myself up, for not being perfect and psychic. my sister is so right about me being too hard on myself. so is my therapist. i am too fucking hard on myself. i just saw it so clearly as that awful, dark cloud of guilt came over me, guilty for not having goddamn flip flops in a children's size 7, right now.

8/21/9

i am crazy. and i love it when other people share their unique version of craziness, lay it out for others to see. share their imperfectness, shine light on their imperfections. make fun of their imperfections! seriously, i am so so grateful when others reveal themselves. it is so refreshing. so i make a practice of doing it myself. this is why i love anne lamott. and amy fusselman. and ariel gore. (please tell me more who are like this if you know any...)

today, i really felt like i might not be able to do my job anymore (stay at home mom, hardest job i know of, btw). it SO reminded me of childbirth without an epidural, that i just started conjuring memories from those experiences. things my doula would say, like, this one's almost over. it's not gonna last forever, is a good thing for me to remember these days, because, my kids SUCK so bad these days i can't even believe i am letting myself say that. but i have my off days, and i will admit when it is i who suck. i suck somedays so badly that i just shake my head and give warnings to anyone who is unfortunate enough to cross paths with me. these past few days tho, it is not i, but the children. and now i sound totally devoid of any compassion. i'm not. i'm simply telling it like it is. they suck so bad. the 2 year old cries at any opportunity presented. if someone speaks to her, that is an opportunity. if someone looks at her, another one. if the earth turns a bit more, another one. the 5 year old is obsessed with making paper dog bones for her stuffed dogs. she draws them, and then cuts them out. well, actually, she doesn't like the way she draws them, so she has me draw them for her. today i told her i like the way she draws them better than the way i do. and i was TOTALLY serious. hers look like real bones. mine look like cartoon bones. i am just realizing as i write this that we need to start shaping them from clay. well, after a few rounds of me telling her i like hers and i prefer hers and why, and her saying she likes mine and blah blah, blah blah, she just melted down, and cried for 20 minutes at the table instead of eating her lunch. and that by itself is no problem. sometimes we just have to cry, and when it's time, it's time, to let out the frustrations of being a human. but my deal, is that the two year old had been crying intermittently for hours already, the 7 year old had just finished his most intense tantrum to date, literally looking for things to take off the wall and chuck across the room, because the two year old had put his pirate skull tattoo on her arm. he started embodying the hulk because of this injustice done to him. so hey, daddy, i feel like you owe me a bit of help here, cause showing him the first episode of the hulk show has definitely changed the way he behaves when he is angry. he also picked up his metal toy box full of toys, and hoisted it above his head and looked like he was full-force going to throw it at me. i don't know how i talked him down from that, but i did. i kind-of think he is looking for a reason to get angry so he can test himself and see if he turns into the hulk. he and the 5 year old were arguing today about what the hulk's name is in real life. max was insisting it is david, and zhi was saying it is lou. he should know better than to argue with her. she is a girl, come on. we are right 98% of the time. or is it 99?

but, am i painting the picture clearly enough? this is what has been going on for days upon days now. the 5 and 7 year old fight nonstop. the 2 year old cries nonstop. then, right after the 2 year old has settled down, the 5 year old is mean to her. then we are all so tired we take a wee break from fighting and crying, and we read a book. except, then, they have to fight about the book, and who can or can't see the pictures from where they're sitting, and which one to read, and lately, the 2 year old insists on holding the one the others want to read, and no compromise is possible for another 10 minutes while everyone cries about the new horrible situation. so after that, we are sometimes able to read a book and listen to mama's beautiful voice that she is forcing out through a rippling headache, while she takes lots of little pauses to breathe, cause this is the first time she's been able to breathe for hours.

and i love them. i am away from them for a couple hours while the grandma has them, and ironically, the husband just sent me, the wife~mama`woman, a video of the babes from a year ago, and it brings her to tears, and she is filled with so much love for them she softens and relaxes in her body quite a bit. why is she speaking of herself in the third person? we don't know. who are we? we won't tell. yeah. so. when it rains it pours. and when it's time to make a shift in consciousness, or enter into a new developmental stage, or grow your two front grown-up teeth, or realize that you can't suck on your mom's boobs forever, and definitely not 24 hours a day, or when you realize you have to practice A LOT to get good at just about anything.....it hurts. it's just designed to hurt to get born. it hurts everyone involved. the birther who has to literally stretch her bones, the newborn who has to literally have her skull squeezed into a new shape, the one with the testicles that made the seed who is being threatened to have his balls cut off so this kind-of pain never happens again, the doula whose hands get squeezed to the point of lost circulation and who is told to fuck off in the most ungrateful of ways (cause there a grateful way to say 'fuck off', you know) , and even the rest of the world who has to shift a little bit (or maybe a lot as was the case when george w. was born), and make some sort of sacrifice in order to make room for this new one. it just has to hurt. and then it happens, the contractions are over, and joy rules once again. we do this over and over and over. it's just what we do. and today, i made it. the pain didn't last forever. and i am here taking a deep breath of gratitude for the strength i found to make it through. and another one for the grandma's offer to take the kids for the afternoon. and another one for the trident for making such a comfortable spot for me to come and purge like this, and for having the best tea selection in town. and another one to the husband for sending me the video to remind me at the most perfect moment how much i love those little crazies. thank you.

it's been 10 years since august 14th, 1999, and a few days now

there have been many times i have wondered if we could make it, and so far, we have, and it is somewhat of a miracle to be honest, but miracles happen. and so does couples therapy, and couples workshops, and love and relationship and marriage books. and patience. and rebirths.

we were lucky lucky parents to get to take off and go up into the mountains for 3ish days and 2 nights. i have never experienced a hiking trail like i did this one in the mountains of gothic town. and i didn't even eat any funny mushrooms, altho i thought about it. this wilderness in the crested butte area is out of control this time of year. we spent our honey moon in the portland, maine area, driving a little red convertible all around that beautiful land and coast finding some of our other all time favorite trails, and this tiny little colorado trip was very reminiscent of the honeymoon somehow. we still know how to hang out, for the most part (..ahem, i am not going to get into the one upset we did have), and after 10 years, i am so so so grateful for that.

i broke the law and picked some indian paintbrush, that was EVERYWHERE, so i don't feel like i did anything really wrong, and brought it home to make some magical flower essence.
we were listening to an audio book together. so good is tom wolf. that's what old married couples do.
(these smiles look kind-of fake, but kind-of real, so it's kind-of okay)

we got wed. by the grace of the GREAT MYSTERY we are still married. all i can say, is it is luck, and, dare i say, mostly, it is WORK. the hardest work either one of us has ever done. and just to keep me here in reality, it ain't over , h. the work is never over. but neither is the LOVE. it has a tendency to grow and spread and teach a lot about forgiveness. that is the other thing, that dare i say, it is a lot about. everyday pretty much, there is something to forgive, for us who like everything perfect, or think we do. we wake up, and have to remember we are humans, imperfect, beautiful humans, learning to love.

my summer salad this year, and some fun finds

on our date night this week, as we were driving to go to our favorite hiking trail, there was a garage sale. i found some nice fabrics. one was an unused king size duvet cover, that i am excited to use for a few quilt backs, or blanket backs possibly, for a project like this. i like the plaid. and the sweet little vintage bathroom towels. and the fun hot pink silk sarong i might just wear as is?? oh, and some plain cotton place mats, that i am thinking about using as the inside thickness for patchwork place mats. after our hike, i found this little hummingbird nest on the ground. i think it's my fourth one to find. i've given two of the others away to my most special people. finding these hummer nests make me so so happy. i mean, they have fallen from the tree, and won't be used again, so it's okay to take them home to admire, right? they always have these fine little gray hairs in them, that i imagine are deer hairs? how do they find deer hairs? and then little pieces of lint or string, too. one of them was built around a pinecone in the coolest way. and one had bits of newspaper in it. this one is very uniform and simple, with lots of the gray hairs, and a piece of soft string. but right before i found that, we saw something else that was a little disturbing, but very natural and earthly at the same time. a snake had just caught a bird, and was in the process of swallowing it down. i hope posting the picture here doesn't offend anyone. the snake was very beautiful. i really like snakes. in fact recently, i came across a rattler on the road coming home, and got out of my car to make sure a car did not hit it, not knowing it was a rattler cause the rattler had fallen off. i got way too close, and was just lucky that it didn't strike. i learned a lot that day about my naivete, and about the need to wake up a little, especially around wild life.

greek barley salad. so delicious and perfect for hot days, with vinegar and feta, and parsley and cuke!! and lots of other colorful foods. i'll share the recipe if anyone wants it....i tore it out of a life extension magazine that david gets.

earth and waves

i'm pretty sure this flower is a kind of wild poppy that is good to relieve pain, if i remember correctly from the herb walk with brigitte mars we went on in our neighborhood a few years ago. but it looks so much like a thistle, i'm not feeling very sure about this. i would like to do another herb walk. actually, i feel like it would be a smart thing to do every year, to educate myself, david, and the kids about the plants that grow in our habitat.

i love this tree and its bendy curvy dancy self. it is nothing like any of the trees it lives next to. not that there's anything wrong with all the perfectly straight trees, i mean, they're the ones that give us the long timbers we use to build our houses and boats and buildings. i just always feel emotional and a surge of love when i spot a dancer. i mean, look at it. it is totally dancing!

i love this planet. she is so majestic. how do i forget this sometimes, and get totally and completely sucked into the mundane hell of the mental domain so often. it is such hard work for me, climbing OUT OF DEPRESSION. out out out. ahhhhh. that's what i do. i climb out. and then i go back in. and then i climb out. and then i go back in. and then i climb out. and i surely am stronger every time. that's about all i can say about the process in a positive light. i wish i understood this particular dance i do. and how i might have more control over it. it is getting better, which is one of the things i like to remind myself of, and that my therapist likes to remind me of. and i guess, according to this new song of ani's, i'm not fucking up too badly, cause, i will say it again, it is getting better. it's just that i keep going back in for these awful little visits with dr. depression, and i guess, i am just realizing, i have some kind of expectation that i'm going to be done with it altogether some day. but i read this line in tehanu recently, that i keep thinking of, that somehow applies .....'He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it.' and this now reminds of something pema chodron said when we went to hear her speak in the spring. she was talking about her own version of pain, and suffering, and how one of her teachers, back when she was more of a student, had likened it to being thrown down by the waves in the ocean. and that the waves don't ever stop coming, but you get much much much better at standing up, and then she said, eventually , you get to the point where you don't really even mind them knocking you down anymore. like it's just all a part of life. damn, i'm really not even close to that point, but i guess i can really say i'm getting a little better at standing back up, climbing out, or through, and getting back to the air and the light. and it's so helpful for me to remember that it's NATURE'S way, to fall down regularly. damn it! but it's the master's way to not be phased by falling down. or, not to judge falling down! yes! that is it! that's why i love those masters. they have the most beautiful stories to tell. so healing, so true.

here's another really beautiful new one by ani..

(there is internet in the back patio of the trident. what is going on? the signal has never been strong enough back here, crazy awesomeness!)