zhi turned me onto ABBA the other day. last friday afternoon to be exact. i walk into the movie room, and the kids are all watching the honey honey video. how cool were those people! zhi has officially entered the age of loving music videos. she told me at school, they were checking out some chipmunk videos, and then their teacher decided to get in on it, and showed them the honey honey song. they study bees and insects a lot, and honey is a theme. how have i never gotten into ABBA though? that is weird. they were so slick and hip i think. (below, she has just given her rats a bath in the bathroom sink, and is carrying them around in a towel while they dry. i have declared the bathroom sink no longer the place for rat baths. a ton of poops were left all over the place. we also just watched a youtube video on how to introduce your rats to water. i think she threw them in a little too abruptly and they got scared. baby steps we are learning, are what these animals want when learning how to be around big bodies of water.)
max asked me yesterday if i'd like to be a taxi driver, to make money while i drive so much. i've noticed him thinking on things i could do for a job lately. very interesting. is there a job knocking on my door or something? those kids are so tuned in. i wonder if he's hearing something that i'm not?
olive was telling me recently all about booboo yoogoo, who is baba yaga's child. i was so amused. i texted david cuz i thought it was so funny of her to name baba yaga's child that. well, it turns out, david made that up, one night, for part of a bed time story. it's still very funny to me. especially to hear olive spin and spin the tale, and to say booboo yoogoo over and over. leonard got tagged as booboo yoogoo during the story. sweet guy was very willing to play the part. i'm thinking that might become a nickname of his.
olive was very proud of her hair~do this day. she stood in front of the mirror for a long time, working and reworking the clips, until she got it just right. she then wore it like that for a few days. feeling and acting glamorous.
she owns glamour. barefoot wild and free glamour. how inspiring.
after my last post, i had this strong experience of jealousy over another woman. i don't even know her, but from my perspective, from afar at the playground, she seemed perfect. like the person i'd be if i weren't so f'd up and challenged at every turn it seems. it was so painful to sit there trying to knit, having to listen to the internal chatter about how she is better than me. what's so disturbing is i know nothing about this lady, other than what she seemed like at the playground that day. i seem to be on the lookout for ways to berate myself! i guess i would have been smart to just close my eyes. i then later in the afternoon, met up with some other trident going moms, and chatted for a bit. one of them shared a profound gleaning she'd had recently in relation to feeling less worthy than another woman. i didn't even bring the topic up. she did this all on her own. so weird! she said she'd been struggling with looking at how she measured up to this other person. and then, suddenly, at some point in her struggle, a clear voice came through her, that said, 'there is no comparison.' she said it stopped her in her tracks. it spoke so directly clearly and deeply to her that she said since, she has not struggled one bit. she now is able to hold onto the knowing she has of herself as a strong beautiful worthy woman and stops there. no comparing. i was so in love with her sharing of that. it felt like powerful healing medicine, so of course i want to share it. my mind wants to travel around the world comparing sometimes. i'm over it!! or i want to be. the words, 'there is no comparison', feel so accurate and True to me, i just want to say them like a mantra to myself when i find myself boarding the plane that takes me to tanzania and back, checking out how i either do or don't measure up to other women in the world. what a waste of time for one! and what a cruel thing to do to myself, and others, for two! if i'm going to go to tanzania, i want to enjoy the trip! i want to simply notice. notice. notice. not compare. 'which one is different and does not belong?' ani's line there pops into my head often these days. so here's to a new mantra. and a sweet friend who shared it with me. one more thing on this: i don't feel that the words there is no comparison, mean it in the way the saying does. it's not that 'i am clearly better, so there's no comparison', it's there is nothing to compare here. you cannot compare people like this. we are too different for it to be relevant. we are to be taken as is, not as compared to another. as is. (
as is)
here's a nice little interview with ani that i just stumbled onto.
and so. yeah. what else to say here with these fifteen more minutes i have this morning till it's time to pick max up from a reading lesson, take him to pick up orca batteries (they give people free hearing aid batteries at the center where he goes for his hearing tests and ear molds. we just go in every few months and they give us 24 more for free each time. that is cool.), and then perhaps go on a therapy walk where we practice walking with the heel toe pattern a bit before lunch and then his afternoon school session. i spend a lot of time with that boy. i feel lucky for the most part, when i am not feeling either guilty that i can't spend as much time with the middle child because her school days are full day (olive is only in preschool two days a week), his are just three hours,
and when i am not feeling the need to put on my noise canceler headphones because sometimes the nonstop talking takes me into this weirdly crazy place inside myself. lucky. this is just how it is. this boy has many many unusual needs. this is what our life looks like, taking care of him in the best way we know how. i am so lucky as his mama to be able to take him to all the therapies and lessons i do. crazy lucky to have these resources. to have a child like him and not be able to get help, i can barely take the pain of that thought. there are many conversations about roosters and eagles, rottweilers, and cerberuses we have through out the day. often the same ones, many times. he can't run like the other kids you know, and his teacher told me something so uplifting last week at a meeting we had. they play capture the flag during their breaks lately, their recess time. max loves to play whatever the other boys are playing. even if he has no idea what they are playing, he will just jump in and run around just to be feeling like he's a part of the game. yeah. well, his teacher decided it was time to help him learn the rules. he took them in after a few days of digesting what all the words meant. territory was a new one for him. whose territory are you in? he then played properly for a few days and i guess was falling down a lot. well, he stormed into his school after getting fed up with falling, walked into the principal's office, and declared to her very matter of factly, that he '
was done falling down in capture the flag!' his teacher reported to me that he really did stop falling after that. something about that story makes my heart so happy. that he has it within him to make a decision to stop doing something that is very hard to stop, and then to do it. it's kind of a miracle. his other reading teacher told me last week it seems his eyes are losing focus a lot again. i might be taxiing us out to denver again weekly for the vision therapy i'm guessing. maybe he needs a refresher course. remind those eyes what they need to be doing. oh this boy. he has to work so so very hard to walk talk hear see think relate. it is perhaps the most inspiring thing in my life. how cheerfully, for the most part, he does what he does. and i get to be with him for most of it. that is lucky. that is the best way to look at it. what he does not have to work hard it is imagining. that is amazingly lucky. his inner life is so rich most of us can't even fathom the plethora of good deep goings on in there.
yay for that. an elder friend told me last week, when i was worrying for him and his challenges with social connections, that he is gonna be served immensely by this rich inner world as an adult. that it may interfere a bit, ok, a lot, with his relations now as a kid, but that as an adult, it's gonna serve him hugely. soothe me with words like that please anytime.
it's interesting to me that i am going on about max on this post following the words about comparing being a waste of time. i'd say sometimes i suffer more from falling into comparing him with other boys, than i do when i compare myself to other women. for sure. so this is big for me, this lesson, this work and practice on not comparing. for him. for the way i want to accurately see him and hold him in my vision. and heart. for just WHO HE IS. even with a child without any extra challenges, it can be hard to do that. max is max. he is a lucky vibrant creative child living a very unique life. i am me. i am a blessed wickedly spiritual wild woman with buckets of love and happiness at my every turn if i choose.
alright. that was fun. sort-of.
now i am going to post this, and move on to writing on the bees.
