slowly like a fat fat bear

i go around. smiling. feeling lighter as i hibernate and digest the load. in my cave, i've gone through the stuff that was weighing down the record player. i can hear music again. i am choosing what i do and don't like. i am blessed with choice. yes.

i am grateful for choice. but to make a choice, i must muster up my bravery. there are so many ways to go, and you can never get a moment back, so it is an act of bravery as i see it, to choose anything. and it is a fucking blessing to be able to choose in so many ways.

we made a grateful~for list. (above)

and we made a desire list. (below)

max wants a weather vane for our house with a rooster on it. and another computer with new games. right! well, maybe some new games, babe.

zhi wants make up. so olive wants make up too. zhi wants a pocket knife too. olive wants a puppy.

i want to feel free. i didn't write that down on that particular list yet, but in this moment, that is what i want. i am working slowly, like the fat bear, to lighten my load. it is so slow this process. so slow and healing. so eye opening to see what it feels like to let things go. it starts to feel so good after a few days. but then i walked into a thrift store yesterday and saw something i had donated, and felt a pang. uh-oh. did i make a mistake? do i have to buy that back? no. but it was a pang. and now that it's been a day, i am sure again of my choice. but i'm just saying it's not easy. and, the feeling of space is starting to show me that this is good for me. i drove around with an old antique kids' rocking chair in the back of the car for days last week. i just couldn't decide if i could let it go. after 4 days or something, i realized, that i had no particular attachment to that rocking chair, and that if, after not having it for a while, i want a kids' rocking chair again, that i could go find one. (must add: my kids have NO attachment to the kids' rocking chair. i am the one that loved it. and i couldn't even sit in it. i just liked seeing it. but i want to feel free more, and have a lot more dancing room!) that made it feel better. i gave it to our neighborhood antique store as a thank you gift, for being in our neighborhood. i love that store. and when i gave it to them, the lady i was speaking with, told me she had just been in our bakery, having soup. we all support each other in small ways and it feels good.

early morning me. look at my bed hair. yikes. going out with my boiled water to melt the chickens' ice water, and some food scraps and feed for them. i like this morning routine. now that i am not breastfeeding in the wee hours all night long, getting barely enough sleep, i can get up at the crack, the absolute first tiny glint, of dawn, and feel good about it.

max loves roosters so much now. there is something serious going on with him and roosters. we are now very sure that we have a rooster. in the past week, one of our not~so~wee~anymore little chickens has learned to cockadoodle and max is so into it. today, max carried around a chicken raising magazine we have, opened to the page of rooster photos. all morning he carried this around. he talked about which rooster he likes best all morning. talked about the idea of having 900 roosters. he then told me he wants to be a policeman when he grows up. he asked me if i would come visit him in his office. i said, yes!, and can i come have lunch with you everyday? he smiled. then olive asked if i'd have lunch with her too. of course! then max said, no, i want to grow roosters. i would personally prefer a rooster farmer to a policeman. but that's not my choice is it? olive said she wants to be a baker in a kitchen, not in a bakery. cute. zhi was with her dad, so we didn't get to hear what her plans are for a career today. last time she thought about it though, she said she wanted to do nothing. like this: 'i want to do nothing, like you do mom.' yep. that's what she thinks it is about. at least she likes what i do enough to want to do the same thing. that's a positive way to look at it, right?

zhi is standing there as the proud builder of that there fort~of~the~day. she's learning the trade, the trade of homemaking, aka doing nothing, very well! the red entry way is so right on!

we had fun with this book this morning.

why is the letter a like a flower?

think on it and i'll tell you at the end of the post.

olive wears the shirt i made her. it is so cute.

and we went to some magical friends' house this week and made cookies. they are delicious. and they turn your tongue colors with all those sprinkles.

look at this hat. it is awesome. totally rad. so her. pattern from this book. olive's and max's coming up next.....

i wander through life, feeling better these days cuz i feel lighter. cuz i am making choices to let go. letting go does not come naturally to me. it typically comes as a form of desperation. like, okay, fine, i~get~it~that~i have~to~let~go~or~i~can't~go~forward~anymore kind of thing. when something does not come naturally to me, and i can see and feel that it would be very good for me to do this unnatural feeling thing, it is usually hard work. hard and rewarding work. like, as i do it, my kids are starting to do it too. that is cool and rewarding. my mom reads this blog, and she said she is doing it too. i know we are fat americans in some sense, fat with belongings, and it is a joke that we are even pondering this dilemma, given many other more important earthly dilemmas worthy of pondering, but you know what, we were born here, in america. innocent beings born into a consumer society, and we learned, very innocently and naively, that acquiring goods is a good thing to do. well, i am unlearning this, teaching myself what it feels like to live simply, or simpler, because my society did not teach me this at all. but i am grateful that i'm having the vision to create more clear free space in our world. i am grateful that i'm strong enough and brave enough to choose to see what it feels like to truly let go. that is really what this is about. slowly, yes, but still. let go. to let go, feel the fear that i might have let go of something that i shouldn't have, and then breathe. i felt afraid the other day because we gave away the playstand. i realized after doing so, that i used it to clip roofs to forts we build a lot. i panicked and thought, what am i going to clip to now? with my cute clips i made. it sucked that feeling. i am just being honest here. it did suck. then, a couple days later, i came up with a new way to clip the fabric roofs to the lines i run across the room. creativity finds its way in. and it actually feels better. but i had to be willing to let go. i had to let go, for the creativity to come. that is one of my favorite things i am learning in this process. how much more freely the creativity flows when i am in this space of letting go. and i have to be brave to take my clutched hands off the once prized loot that is not actually serving me anymore, but growing stale energetically instead. i have to follow this fresh desire for space. not the fear which causes me to hang on.

letting go. not hanging on. oh my god. am i going to learn to fly?

i am grateful for the forest fire that woke this bravery up in me. the fire that made me feel that if 17o families can say good bye to their homes and everything in it in one moment, then i can do this thing, letting go of staleness, in many moments. i can. i am.

and you would probably laugh if you saw what clear space means to me. it's all relative.

because the b comes after it. buzzzzzzzy b.