adult~male, psycho~female

he came home one day recently during the middle of his workday to make caramel. there's nowhere to make it at the shops i guess, cuz of some reason or another. can you think of a cooler reason for your partner to come home in the middle of the day? okay, besides that one. making caramel is definitely number two on the list. for me. what would your number two be? assuming we all like the idea of our sexy partner, who we are deeply turned on by because we are getting along so so well, coming home to get it on, best of all. i know there are times when that is the last thing we'd want, but i'm talking about when it sounds good. like back in the day, when the relationship was just blossoming. then there is that lull. things get boring and monotonous. and then that horrible phase of marriage that peaked for us at year 7. and then it happens again, sexiness returns, after years and years of therapy, and brave kind honesty and love, healing lots of problems, turning them into obvious blessings in disguise.... so when things are grooving, the partner coming home in the middle of the day, when you happen to be home too, of course sex is a cool reason. but making caramel is a really really cool reason too. he made it for the gelato shop, for the dulce del leche. yumm. but i got a jar of it for home too. we put a little on a piece of chocolate and then put some salt on top. home made ones of those are crazy. makes my heart race just thinking of them. i swear.

okay, i'm gonna think of some other fun reasons for the partner to show up at home unannounced. ok. first one that comes to mind is to take the kid or kids off your hands for a while, just cuz he was having a mellow day and wanted to come home and see his cute kid and give his hot sexy wife a break to go to her favorite tea shop or a hike or a steam shower or some time with her art. woohoo.

i've been having to work hard these past few weeks, to keep out of depression. hard. i'm finding that staying busy helps. even though everything in me wants to be a couch potato, getting myself to just get up and go out to the farm to pick up more chicken feed and the fresh milk was a good thing. the kids whined like fucking hell about the idea, and then had a seriously sweet fresh time themselves looking at the new baby cows and goats. little fuckers don't have a clue sometimes what is good for them. i don't either. i'm not judging them. i'm just reporting. i don't know what part of myself knew that it would be best to get out of the house and do the chore of that trip, but that part, maybe it's the unlazy part, was right. it wasn't like a miracle or anything for the depression, but it was good.

last night i freaked out. i don't know exactly what happened, but i'll tell you what i know. we had some friends visiting town, from kauai, so they are kind-of steeped in the aloha~vibe and that didn't help things as much as you'd think it actually would. so they came over. they have a 1 year old. the guy is an architect and his designs, david and i looked at them on his website, are sleek and clean and barebones. and very modern. all of a sudden, i looked around our crazy farmish mountain cabin house, and felt like we were the biggest slobbish pigs ever. i don't know what the hell i was doing judging myself and our house like that, but i did. and i think david did too. cuz when these friends left, david started clearing out our 'love corner'. feng shui. that ended up looking like a bunch of stuff all over the dining table at 7pm. a bunch of annoying junk that i was happily ignoring the way it had been in the love corner. i couldn't ignore it on the table, front and center, and i don't know what happened, but i went sort-of psycho at7:30ish. i had read the interview in the brand new sun, april's issue that morning, and the interviewee gave a really powerful explanation of the difference between rage and fury. he's a west point grad who's been to war and now uses his experience and education to further the peace movement. i love him. i had his words fresh in my mind, and decided i was feeling a bout of fury and outrage at the state of our dining room table. very different from rage, which is directed at another thing or person and wants to cause harm. fury just wants to cause good change, but is powerfully fueled by outrage at some situation. i was clear to all around me that i was in a bad grumpy mood, didn't explain why to the innocent little bystanders, and as collected as i could be, asked them to not talk to me. at all. i felt so so crazy. i don't know. stirring shit up in corners sometimes makes me crazy, i think. by 9:30, when the kids were sound asleep,thanks to david, it's spring break, david told me i did okay. i didn't freak anyone out too bad. he did give me fish oils at 8:30ish, though. and lemon balm tea. he was so non-judgemental on my crazy fury. i really feel a lot of gratitude for that. but it sucked so hard core to be me for those few hours. maybe it was a blessing in disguise. i don't know. but i hope that next time, i can breathe a little more when energy like that comes rushing over and through me. geez loo~eeze. eeze me into that crazy storm next time. pleeze. pleeze more eeze. anyway. that sucked, but it happened, and now i feel okay, 24 hours later. i feel good actually. david came home and made dinner tonight. i bathed the girls and their long hair that everyone comments on now, about how long it is. is it getting too long?? no. it's gorgeous. we like long hair. and i sat here and sipped tequila and wrote to my heart's content. and had dinner delivered to me in the bathroom, while i sat on the counter with the laptop. now i have to go rejoin the people. but we've decided to watch an earth video tonight, so it's a special easy night. and i'm buzzed. speaking of buzz. i picked up our second hive today and got our bee suits. the adult ones. maybe we'll model them soon.

so it sounds like my husband has been a rock star lately. gratitude. acknowledgement. adult~male can be for real. and psycho~female is for sure sometimes. i need to go have some of those caramel salt chocolates....

reflect

why do we challenge ourselves like we do, with becoming better? for me, better gardener, better mother, better knitter, better more disciplined mind-trained human, better lover, better everything just about. definitely better cook. shall i talk about how bad i suck at cooking lately? hmmmm. i will reframe that in the interest of loving myself better. see, better lover. ok: shall i write about how i've chosen to hang back from the pressure of cooking us food lately, while i am in this new routine driving max all over most days of the week for extra lessons? shall i ? nope. don't want to talk about it. but i did make a good snack here. it's the little things all the time for me lately. oh, you bathed 2 times this month, max, zhi and olive? awesome! clothes not folded, but are washed, in a few weeks. perfectly awesome! maybe we should buy stock in annie's frozen pizza, and the kale farm. and the yarn store, that i am choosing to frequent, way over the grocery store. yes, kids, your handmade sweaters from gorgeous italian wool, are much more important than your growing bones. you're hungry, tiny love? go outside and find some dandelion roots! they are super good for you this time of year.

places where it's at.

(what is it? peace. reflection. mind-training possibilities. )

1. knitting
2. bathing
3. bathing children and brushin out their tangles
4. sitting up with my partner throughout most of the night while he breathed through a panic attack. gotta have those sometimes.
5. cleaning the litter box area

i want to learn how to brush my old dansko clogs and oil, maybe stain them.

i have these ideas occasionally to make short films. here is an idea for a scene....there is a woman. she's approached by a friend, asked into conversation, with an unusual, shocking, provocative, random, or inappropriate statement (exciting!). the woman responds somehow. then there is a take two. she responds another way. and then another. and on and on for as many ways we think of that are interesting. and then there may be other scenes, with the friend approaching her with a different statement.

i am so into that!! i need someone else who is all into this to play with me and act with me in front of the video camera.

max wanted a dictionary. max got a dictionary. a cool kid's dictionary. he earns a lot with how hard he is working. he has spent 7 hours so far of his spring break doing extra reading lessons. he is a hard worker. he gets fun rewards. i am a hard worker too. (my work seems to consist mostly of keeping the peace, being places on time, and feeding children snacks that aren't full of white sugar. simple sounding work that is fucking challenging me to the core!) i get fun rewards too. wait till you see my beehives and the little cage we are making for them to protect from bears.... and i am about to order the bee suits. rewards. maybe tonight, while the kids are having an overnight at the grandparents' hotel, i will be rewarded with a long hot bath and a long slumbery sleep.

(i was. ahhhhh. )

spiritually grounded. a friend just got me thinking on this oxymoron. it is a favorite. kind-of reminds me of when we saw pema chodron talk a few years ago and she kept talking about the groundlessness of living. spiritually grounded. groundless living. there ya go. that might keep us on our toes for a few minutes till we are sucked into some melodrama that gets us totally mind-identified again.

here. adult male turned up one corner of my mouth. as did mildly psychotic. david would say that describes me. just mildly. and wilderness management. and happily married. however they also have unhappily married on the list. what could you put with married that would not be an oxymoron? effortfully married!

ok~ so if you feel like it, tell me a place where it's at for you. and/or an oxymoron you like.

goddess child ladybug

oh my goddess. they grow and grow and it is good. and i love photographs....

this is so beautiful to read. i just read it on the dog~eared page in this month's sun magazine.

struggle? struggle.

i can't believe i put a question mark there, as if struggle were a choice. there. fixed that. this full moon is pulling on my womb's bloody waters. i like it. power. red. flow.

i went out last night to get the knitting needles david picked up for me, that he left in his car, and to close the chicken coop. the scene of the flashlight and my tequila made me laugh. it was an awesome little nighttime adventure i had with those two in hand. i stared at the moon last night for a little bit while sipping on the fire. mmm.

cheers.

i have writers block. what the hell. winter of the mind go on. it's springy spring time. bounce bounce. buzz buzz. oh well. if it doesn't happen, oh well, but i'm gonna just try to fake it till i make it. i am remembering my yin yang streak i had last year. i was so inspired by all that. i wonder i if i need to go back to the mom's group i had been going to that put that whole idea into my mind. the leader of the group, or facilitator, whatever you want to call her, she is so inspiring. i might need to go back. but in the mean time, what was it we talked about in the women's group i am still going to recently that was very inspiring????? hmmmmn, memory. let me probe you. it was something about recognizing how when we set out to do something, we often do it. i shared with them how badly i wanted a community of women to meet with and get really really really really really real with. and how i put it out there, which was not easy, cuz what if they rejected my idea, my invitation? but they didn't. i had been lacking consistent connection with women pretty much since my college friends and i all went our separate ways and then i met david and i had a new relationship with a man to occupy my time, but after a few years, i started craving women badly. and then motherhood came. my best dream. and i blissed out often, and still had the craving for women. i wasn't getting met in the way i needed by other women in my life. i would try with some new potential soul friends, and for whatever reason, the chemistry wasn't there for years. it wasn't there in the way i craved. that real raw brave way of being with each other. but i didn't stop praying for it. i mean this went on for years. it was so sad to feel so alone. i always had my sister to connect with over the phone when she lived far away, and that was my lifesaver. and my friend sunday would roll into town here and there from new mexico and hawaii and i always had her in my heart, but the daily, or weekly connection of meeting with a friend was missing. MISSING. for a long time. it hurt. i had some experience of being in this kind of place before. i had to move across the country when i was twelve. changing schools at 12 years old was hard hard hard. it took me over a year to make a friend that i really connected with. but i hung in there, and it happened. and so i seriously pulled from that experience to get me through this yet again as an adult, this time with little babies in my arms. i would write in my journal about women i'd meet who i felt were possibly the kind of woman who would want to talk and connect the way i like to. meaning women who would want to share and connect around the rawest stuff in their lives. that was all i wanted. somebody who would go there and not be afraid. i'd done so much therapy at this point that i was normalized to talking about what's really going on down under the surface. the surface stuff was not interesting to me. it made me sleepy. unless you were using it as metaphor to talk about deep dark hard stuff! but so many women seemed like they didn't want to go there. and i am the world's worst small talker, so yeah, you can guess where those conversations would end up. (maybe i am just super dark and that's why i'm harder to connect to? maybe i'm scary. whatever it is, it is what it is.) i stuck to my journal. i'd also find myself in the situation sometimes, with a new prospective woman friend, where i'd get talked at a lot, and i couldn't find my way into the conversation. i am a good listener, and maybe not such a good match for someone who is a good fast talker. i would get lost and the balance was all wrong. then there came this one friend, who the second i met her, i could tell she was just right. she had this sensitivity, and strength, and humor, and sweetness, and edge, and bravery, that i just knew she would be exactly the kind of friend i was looking for. but i'm shy. so it took about three, yes THREE, years before the energy built enough for us to begin connecting in ways beyond the running into each other at school drop off time. and i was so right. she is such a good friend to me now, and i feel like i am to her too. i am so grateful that she and i both pushed through the uncomfortable parts of the beginning, we each had our own thing. mine was shyness and fear of rejection, hers was fear of opening and intimacy cuz it just wasn't something she let herself do with people. the loneliness finally pushed us both right into each others' space and it was fun. and such a relief. we can be dark and real and somehow it is easy.

and now i see my son struggle with this. he's so little to have to feel these kinds of feelings. i've always wanted to take his pain away. he's had to struggle so much. today i was daydreaming about him having a brother. like that would fix it all. it might. but we can't make that one happen. and so i pray and try to be as real as i can with him. he's so unusual. as am i. it takes other very unusual birds to connect to us. but they are out there. and i trust myself now to know them when i see them. or feel them. it's not a sight thing. it's a feeling you get when you're with them. it is the best feeling. it's like this song. i hold that possibility for my son. i know him and i know he is capable of the most fabulous raw inspiring connection out there. but it takes that special certain rare fit to make it all happen. oh. it feels good to remind myself, and feel that fearful protective ice slowly melt, that he is amazing and that he will get to feel met by a special friend. he has so much to overcome. so much to work at to just get to a point where he can communicate in a way that others relate to. well, kids anyways. adults seem to have the skills necessary for getting him usually. creative adults. he really is so unusual. and it so so good. but the rare bird struggles. undoubtedly. we get pruned. hard core. our root system is the most important part of our whole. it must develop first. we must be able to depend on our roots, us rarities, or we will certainly get blown over by the fierce winds of change that keep coming to us. over and over. we are forced to change, or we die. i love him so so much. in my life.

i want to be the best mom ever ever that could possibly be for him. and for my girls too. undoubtedly. it's just that he has to overcome so much more than they have had to, just to walk and talk and read and write and make friends and just be cool. and i know his root system is getting stronger, and that's a comfort. but it doesn't help with the pain of the overwhelming desire of wanting to bloom in friendship and connection with another sweet soul and just having to wait wait wait. cicada anyone? how do they do it? wait. it feels like some kind of martial art, this waiting thing. fierce focus and composure and commitment to one's own soul, over and over. as if we had a choice.

this is a long way of reminding myself of my deep deep soul connection to my son. and it feels good and exactly like what i needed right now. i've been struggling with him. and his pain. which comes out in very annoying behaviors that everyone in his family can hardly stand, and therefor he feels lonely, even at home with his family. thank goodness his grandparents arrive for a visit tomorrow. grandparent blessings. he is met by them in the best grandparent~ly way you could imagine. a lot like i was by my grandma. my soul and hers, CONNECTED! that's how it is with max and david's parents. it makes me cry. i feel stronger now, and re~inspired to get back to the drawing board with him, and things we can do to satisfy his soul. back in those days when i just couldn't get satisfied by other women friends, i had to fall back on my connection with myself. i had to get back to the journal. the art. the cocoon. my roots were growing growing growing even though i couldn't see the results back then, i can see them now, and i can see how essential my roots' growths were to me being able to be friends with the kind of person i needed. yep.... and so my women's group, that i craved, and set intentions for, did happen. and my soul friend who i prayed and prayed and prayed for, did come. and what if they didn't? well. i guess i'd have my fucking roots to keep my up~right. i don't know. all i know is that they did happen.

i love gnarly nasty deep dark roots. they make the best flowers and buds when they eventually are allowed to. when all that hardcore pruning has paid off.

i pruned my peach tree today. it was painful, god damnit. but i had to.

what~not

yarn. most magical yarn ever ever ever that i've touched and knit with. i bought it from bloggy friend, camilla, at magnolia. it's the elf hat from that same book i keep linking to.

here's my next fun knitting project. it's going to be a sweet sweater for zhi. and i'm bout to cast on one for olive too! i had this extra yarn leftover from david's vest, that i am using for zhi's. olive's i think i will go out and buy something sweet and soft. i have a ton of wool i've thrifted, but it's too scratchy i think for wearables. i'm gonna have to start knitting purses to use it up.....so, yeah. poor me. i need to go the yarn store.

there's going to be an epic school play this week! i've been helping make some of the costumes. these dancer skirts included. these are my first three tier skirts. i used a tutorial i found through google. so nice that people make tutorials. zhi is not going to be a dancer in the play, but she was willing to model the skirt for me, and so was olive! i will share the other cutie piece i made that zhi will be wearing, after the play has happened. we are getting excited. practicing lines is a fun deal. especially watching their progress, and the associated confidence rise. my inner cheerleader has been coming out a lot lately as they get better and better at reciting their lines. it really is so much fun.

date night hiking. another magical realm. we hike separately for the most part. david likes to push himself. no leisure for him. i like to get sweaty for sure, but i also like to stop and take photos and actually, i like the space in the woods, to reflect and be alone with the clouds rains and fires of my mind. the land makes them all safe for me to filter through. we often meet up at the top and then trek down together. this is our favorite trail. dog poop is not an issue, and the landscape on this trail, the plants in particular, for some reason, make it feel more like oregon than colorado. and i like that a lot. not that i don't love colorado. but the plant world in oregon makes me so smiley happy.

i was trying to show you the reddish color in the hair up their in that profile shot. it's there. i love it. i am just starting to own it, and not be nervous that i am trying to rock a teenager style as a mom. i mean, it's cool to do that if you own it! so if that's the case, i'm owning it.

yes. i'm at my teahouse. it is lovely. for the first time in a month, all three kids are well enough to be at school, on this one day when they are all enrolled to go. i'm on my second pot of jasmine tea. last week, olive and i retested the soil. after letting it dry out for a week. same results. so i ordered us a truckload of poopy smelly compost to seriously add in some nitrogen, and then i'm gonna get some rock phosphate and something else i forgot, rock potash?, that my gardening book is telling me to add, to tweak the levels more to my liking.

i got that frame at an estate sale for 1 dollar. it was falling apart at the corners. and it had no glass. but now look. it fixed up so beautifully. i love it. i can't wait to see the kid art that will end up in it.

ok. i have thirty minutes till acupuncture. what do i want to explore in my journaling here?

once again i want to honor the tea gods. i love tea. we are getting 4 baby chicks sometime in early june. i hope to name one of them tea.

i have been reading everything i can about japan and their situation. the new photos added to the front page of the new york times this morning all made me cry. they all make me cry, but the ones in particular that got it going are the one of the older ladies stretching together in the shelter, with masks on their faces. they are keeping on going. the ones that survived. the one of the family cooking food outside over an open fire in back of their home that is partially torn apart, with the baby on the mom's back. that one made me smile and cry. the ones of people paying respects to the bodies in the rubble make me cry a lot. it is so hard. i can't even imagine. but i keep crying. this article is the hardest one to read yet. i've cried in this teahouse before. it's ok. but i kind of want to wail. if i were home i'd wail and scream. i'm really taking this tragedy in for some reason. this is so hard. we sent some money to help. and my tears. i'm just so sorry for everyone. for the workers in the nuclear plants. i was reading about chernobyl last night. i couldn't stop. i read and read and read, link to link. i found the story of this girl. that is a really cool story.

i guess i might be a mope today. i feel like resting. not digging. i feel slow. i feel crazed. but i can seriously switch out of the mope if i choose. just thinking of my tea makes me shift. and then, i keep choosing to come back to this sad place to keep my heart connected to my japanese brothers and sisters. but just smelling the jasmine raises my vibration. i have a friend in kauai who i asked yesterday how she did in those days after the tsunami hit japan, and hawaii was warned to be on alert. she said she kept her vibration high, stepping away from fear. i don't really want to step away from sadness, but i do want to continue to access the higher realms. that is helpful to all around me. what the fuck is going on? this strong magical creative confusing tortured wild planet is called earth.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

acupuncture was hard. it took me forever to relax into the shift of the needles. i finally found that dreamy state i like to reach, and then it slipped away. mental. and then i had this thought that i loved, and then it slipped away. after a few tormented moments of searching for my idea, where where where what what what was that cool idea??, i just let go and let the river take me. as often happens, my idea then found me. that was awesome. and hard. i don't let go easily, or naturally may be a more accurate word for it. but practice does make it easier.

i came home and had a while till kid pick up time. i watched sweeney todd and liked it.

i needed that. no shame. i want to name one of the other chicks no~shame. and another what~not. what~not is in one of zhi's lines and we've been talking about what that phrase means. so funny. what~not.

maybe i'll try

so this, this is a letter i had to write to the school to formalize the new plan we have made to take max out of school on wednesdays now. we do not have a printer at our house. it's a weird long story. david refuses to get us a printer and it's funny and weird and he has some long technical story which he's had for years about why we don't have a printer, and this means i could either handwrite the note or use the typewriter. yeah. i bet we are the only parents, or i am, cuz david was embarrassed to sign the letter i typed, who will happily send a typewritten note to school. i was lazy and it was late at night, and i wasn't feeling like it was important that it be perfection, so i chose to go with my mistake on writing tuesday, and work it out like i did. yep. and i didn't care that i wrote the letter in singular first person, and signed it in plural.

it did the job just fine. cool me. do you think the teacher and principal judged us for this letter? i kind of hope so. rebel!

there's max's red hat, on. i LOVE that yarn color. thank goodness for him and the colors he chooses.

so. here i am. carving out some time to write. it is like carving out of hard marble. i'm assuming marble is hard to carve. geez. it's been a month since i carved time out to write. really write. get in a zone kind of writing. ignore my children to find the zone. and their pleas for more honey. i am completely ignoring. not even looking up from this laptop that is sitting on the table that i just cleared off of a week's worth of crumb and stuff, and now has a been-clean-for-10-minutes tablecloth on it. mmmm. i am home and attempting to write with children very close by. as in the next chair over. making noises. often directed at me. and i ignore. i told them straight~up before i sat down that i would be writing for the next half hour or so, and i would not be talking to anyone while doing so. and then i just heard some largish sounding noises from the roof. that means there is probably an animal running around on it. the girls ran out to check on what it might be. our cats i predict, somehow making themselves sound really heavy. i am letting them out in the morning now. without leashes (the cats, not the kids). i am nervous to do this, but i am weak right now. before we had our fence, deer used to come right onto our roof and prance around on it. it was loud. sometimes they did this in the middle of the night which was always annoying. before we had even moved in, as we were in the contract writing stage of buying the house, i would come up here and sketch the house for an art project, and just hang around outside. i came up maybe 6 or 8 times like that, and i think half of those times, there was a fox that would be here. often sitting on the roof. right at the apex of the roof. she would just stare at me as she sat on top of the house. not even flinch or move or anything. so calm. and i would have my camera and i have the photo of her sitting there. somewhere. i loved her so much. that first summer we lived here, she would visit us on our patio, get kind-of close to us, like within 10 feet. david fed her once from his hand. we were dumb. we were in love with this wild world. now. now. it's been 8 years since we've had wild animals dancing on our roof. well, a bear did get in the fenced area, somehow once two summers ago and pooped on the roof. we built a fence the second summer we lived here, to keep the deer out of the yard, the mountainous area around the house, that i was spending a whole lot of time clearing and digging and gardening in. a LOT of time. i would come home from working at the bakery, or at the studio of the photographer i built frames and cut mats and framed for, or from the cu school of fine arts where i was going to school. i would get home in that first spring and summer, and go straight to my gardening shoes and gloves, get some water to drink, and head out to the garden. it was so easy. there was no depression that summer. (zhi is reading over my shoulder. i told her i can't have anyone reading over my shoulder. how hard is that, to stay in your zone with someone hovering over you? it's hard for me.) the world was so easily magical for me. i was reading harry potter in those days too. and books about fairies and flowers a lot. and animal spirituality. it was so easy to get into a zone. i would just come home, run to the diving board of the lake of easy magical zones and dive on in. i gardened so so much. there are these strong clumps of grass around this house, that spread quickly, and they had taken over so much of the arable land, that before i could plant anything that i wanted to grow, i had to first spend a lot of time and use a lot of strength, to clear them out. that part actually wasn't a lot of fun. but it did make me strong and taught me about clearing spaces. about how claiming your space is hard work. there are so many living things wanting space. if i am going to manipulate this wild land to do things that i have in my mind, i am going to have to work for it. i am going to have to be clear about what i want. i am going to have to do some hard work to get it. i am going to have to put up a boundary in some cases. this song.

yeah, so i just lost my inspiration thread there. it's hard to keep it with the girls still trying to see if i will talk to them every 30 seconds. no, i won't. i have a virtual fence around me right now, a fence that i was hoping would keep distractions out completely, but it's not doing a stellar job. earplugs would have been a good idea. mental note for next time i do this at home to use earplugs. noises directed at me are hard to tune out. but i feel good about my fence right now. i deserve to sit inside a fenced area sometimes if i want to. have you ever thought about the idea, that maybe some animals at the zoo or some other captivity scenario, actually like their enclosed world? here's a cool thought, maybe in a past life, some of the captive animals, the ones that aren't at the top of the food chain, got sick of living in the wild, the constancy of having to watch their backs for predators. maybe they are psyched to have this relative vacation, where their meals are provided, and they are not asked to watch their backs anymore? they're getting a break! you think? and that idea would also make sense with how the big cats and bears are usually the animals at the zoo that seem perturbed and angry. they never really have to watch their backs in the wild, right? but here's where i was headed....we've now, fenced this land around our home, to keep the wild animals that used to come and play on our roof, away. now we have chickens that walk around outside the house. if i were to see that beautiful fox on my roof now, i would not feel relaxed about it, nor grateful for her visit like i used to.

now we even have a fence inside of a fence! novel idea, huh? for when you are serious about not wanting distractions. earplugs.

and i am now pondering on ideas for how to keep bears away from the beehive we will be guardians of soon. stone wall is the idea i like the most. but a stone wall that would keep a bear away would have to be so sturdy. talk about a boundary. hopefully it could have a few little tiny windows? boundaries. boundaries in the wild west are intense. we all need boundaries. i need them from my kids. my kids need them from me. boundaries. we all need them. i think we do anyways. it's nice when we can let them down, and be completely naked and vulnerable with others, very very nice to do that, essential to our health i feel, but when we need our boundaries, we need them. i am so losing my inspiration on this topic, though.

what i'd rather talk about now, and what makes me smile and breathe more deeply, makes my body move and stretch a little, is my english breakfast tea. with some honey and milk. and the idea of getting dog someday soon, when we are finally mellow enough to feel like it wouldn't push us over the edge. speaking of which, this book, we read last night, and i love it so much. because of the story mostly, but also, in big part because of the drawings. the parents are hipsters, or alternative cool people, or whatever you want to call them. the mom has a nose ring, the kind through the septum. the dad is scruffy.

battle hymn of the tiger mom. that book i read faster than any book i've read in the past 10 years i think. i read it on one day last week. somehow. mostly by staying up really late. often reading at bedtime puts me to sleep. this book totally kept me awake in to the dark dark dark of the night. that's my review.

i have misplaced my camera. it is somewhere in the house, but i can't find it.

the boys are snowboarding.

david has been suffering and every word that's come out of his mouth for a week, maybe two, now has been a complaint about something. i need a fence from the complaints. he understands. i'm not being uncaring. i just can't jump in his boat when it's sinking. i'm gonna stay in my perky boat that has no hole in the floor, and is in calmish waters, and even if my calmish waters do mix with sad sad depressed waters kind-of regularly these days too, i prefer them to the waters he has been in lately. i'm not going over there. he can come to my boat, but i'm not going in his. i have some supplies he can use to fix his boat too. and i will even help! but i won't get in his boat when it's in that condition. boundaries. he knows all this. he doesn't judge me. but he does seem to keep trying to get me into his boat. i wonder why.

my depression. my weird weird depression. it comes like clockwork sometimes. it is so powerful. i wish i loved it. maybe i'll try. a friend in my women's group recently said something that i've thought about a few times since. she said when she was entering the older teen years, and her depression started showing itself, that her mom had a talk with her and told her that her depression, that part of her, that ability to feel that kind of feeling, was a gift. what a rose-like gift.

i am not getting to where i want to get with my writing time this morning. it just hasn't happened for me. it started to. but i blame the constant interruptions by the girls, testing to see if my boundary is real, for making it impossible to keep my inspiration. having to repeat that it's a real fence, really does take my energy away from what i am trying to focus on. so here, this morning, i have seen, that to find my writing zone, i pretty much have to have space and nobody talking to me. DUH. i tried. it was better than nothing, that's for sure. but i don't feel that sense of closure that i often do after a trip to my teahouse~love in town.

here are some photos from my phone that i love, from the last week...

so the girls just got into some beeswax shaping. aaaaaah. they are being so creative and i am finding a small zone here for the moment. oh how i need this zone like i need oxygen to feel refreshed. oh how i want to bow to this zone. and oh how i have to carve it out of marble to make it happen. it is not like carving out of beeswax for me. it is hard hard work to find time for myself these days. hard work that must be done, or my waters get so calm, they are scary. scary calm waters mean something crazy is about to happen in nature right? carver. i'm a carver among many other things. a carver and fence builder.

and a woman with some red and purple hairs mixed into her wild brownish hair now.

ahhhh. i need to refresh.

love this song live.

bits...

here we are in a newly improved room for the kids. we have them sharing a room still. it is so sweet, and they want each other nearby when it's time to sleep, so it's really perfect. we are on the lookout for some bunkbeds i think, but for now, we are happy with this new set up. really happy! it is such an upgrade from what was going on before. max was still sleeping on a crib mattress. is that child abuse? he wanted to sleep at the foot of our bed, and the crib mattress is just what fit there. olive was sleeping on the floor, on a pallet, next to her sister's bed for the past few months. she just up and decided one day not so long ago, that she no longer wanted to sleep in my armpit, and wanted to sleep by her sister. that made it so david and i could sleep together again, because he had been sleeping in this room with zhi, because nobody wanted to be all by themselves in a room, when everyone else was together in another. whew. we have had many many sleeping configurations over the past 8 and 3/4 years. i really loved them all. mostly. there was a point where our main bedroom was a king mattress on the floor with a full right next to it. one huge bed. it took up all the floor room. it was so sweet. all 5 of us cozied up. i doubt that's how david remembers it. but now, now, we are like this. and i think david and i will put our mattress back on it's frame soon. we've been down on the floor with kids all this time. i'm gonna make sure this new arrangement is sticking another week maybe. and i know things shift suddenly sometimes, but it seems like our bed moving up in the air may be on the horizon. with max having cp, it is hard for him to self-regulate and that includes soothing himself back to sleep if he ever wakes up at night. so this is a huge deal for him to be sleeping with his sisters and not us. we leave the doors open, and the bedrooms are right next to each other. and we have a mirror in the hallway so he can look into it and see his dad's sleeping head whenever he wants. so sweet.

fresh change. it feels so good sometimes.

her first time needing a belt. she asked me what the beltloops were for, as her pants were falling down over and over. how intuitive of her.


i made this apron. my mother-in-law brought the wool striped panel back from a trip to nepal. it was an apron originally, but the ties fell off. so i remade it and added on my own super~strong ties and nice pockets. there's one of my new red items, the checkered dress, from thrifting recently.

i cleaned a lot yesterday cuz my friend told me it was the thing to do to prepare for the tibetan new year. i'm so glad i did. i scoured the shower and then max came home from school friday with the barf bug. i like having a really clean bathroom when i'm barfing, so i was so glad for him to have a clean space to clear his guts out in. and then olive followed. yay for the scoured shower for my babes to wash off in after working so hard to clear their bellies of that bug. and yeah, i know that's not the shower up there... i scoured the sink too. and a few rocks and shells. always therapeutic to wash stones and shells. random and healing, i swear. i've done it at a few workshops, at the beginning and end of the week, in new mexico, and it has always stuck with me, the powerful healing crazy feeling of washing stones.

i'm hoping to get this mountain garden growing strong this year. i tested the soil for the first time. ph is good, but nitrogen tested low. i'm going to retest it, though, cuz the soil was wet when i collected it and that can affect the results....

don't i look like sue sylvester here? i just finished that hat. max's hat redone. take two. the beret wasn't fitting quite right. so we made the ribbed hat standby from that knitting book we all love. oh, and there's another of my red thrifted items. a little red wool zip up vest. cute. my sister wasn't so into it, but i was feelin it. when you like something and your thrifting partner doesn't, and you still like it after they've told you they don't, i think that's really fun. rebel!

there's my next project.....yay. a gray and red dress.

sometimes i just almost can't take the pain of how everything changes. of how these children grow up and lose that babylike way. oh fuck. i will just pray, that even though they must, they HAVE to grow up, i want them to grow up, that they keep their special way of being that only they have, that they had from the moment i met them, that they love themselves even more than i do (is this possible?), and that they continue to smile as brightly and freely and innocently as they did as babies. oh it hurts. it hurts so so bad. but there is serious beauty in who they are growing up to be. it is not bad what is happening. it just hurts. this life hurts so much sometimes. everything hurts in some way sometimes. or lots of things do. birthing and being born hurts really really bad. the only way to get anywhere, to change, metaphorically/spiritually/physically/mentally/ emotionally is often often often gonna fucking hurt. aren't you amazed at our strength? our pain tolerance? geez.

watch me sink in with a lot of help from: knitting, joanna newsome, breath, the fresh feeling of having the video camera aimed at me, my youngest child, and dancing. i know it's 16 minutes long and no one, but myself, may ever want to stare at a video of me an olive for that long. but i LOVE this video. i want to remember it. i love how i really did sink in, and how clear my eyes are at the end. thanks to all the good sinker catalysts. i was dealing with a big hard energy yesterday and the day before. thus the need to breathe and cry and do all the funny things i do in this video.

ok~~ the video is too long for blogger to upload. oh well. it's probably for the best. i was probably going to embarrass myself unknowingly..........

rebel

i just like this picture from a few weeks ago. it makes me feel zenned out. and i like my posture. and red and gray can't be beat. still going strong on my red love. oh. that makes me want to delay posting this so i can show you what i got thrifting this weekend with my sister. so much red. i think it must be all i look for. i will just share that another day....

max's box of flashcards of reading words. he is so so smart, watching him learn to read is a trip. i mean, he gets it, it's in there, but getting it out is so tricky. we're trying vision therapy next. a very controversial therapy. good. i like controversy. after feeling lots of pressure to make an informed decision on how we spend a lot of money for therapy not covered by insurance, insurance company which considers hearing aids cosmetic so of course any therapy we want for him would be considered experimental and frivolous at best, if not considered downright quackery, i am decompressing in the bath, blogging this out. yay. feels kind-of better in my head right now.

here's to the rebel. the rebel against mainstream know~it~allness. us fringers need to stand tall and not forget who we are and what we know. paradigm clashes are frighteningly stressful sometimes.

lately i've been overwhelmin and dippin in to depression here and there, just dips, but geez. the max therapy discussion can be so serious and heavy feeling sometimes. that's when i'm not zenned out. and sometimes even when i am zenned out, it can feel like more than i can handle. i called david today in the middle of the work day to meet me cuz i was losing it. i couldn't be nice to the kids for the life of me. i wasn't mean, but i was NOT nice. they were cool and gave me space. i hope to teach them that skill of knowing when to back off, and it looks like i am. ha.

i'm gonna need some new music for the new denver trip we'll be making soon, weekly. that boy is taking me on yet another healing and learning adventure. how exciting. seriously.