water

olive is big.  i actually let her use my camera this weekend.

she took these photos:

her cute style is to tell people to say cheese.  cheddar cheese  or goat cheese if you want.

i'll teach her about backlighting soon enough.


i took this one:

in her new little prairie shirt i whipped up.  she picked out that ribbon trim.  someone can teach me about overexposure anytime!

i planted some offshoots of a friend's spider plant yesterday.  that felt really good.  a little new growth, new light, was good therapy.

made soup in crock pot.  flavor packet in pan first.



i really enjoyed these flowers david brought home after we had a fight.


and water.  holy water.



and family sledding:



and  then i got something in the mail.  a friend sent me some bulbs to force.
 or plant.  whatever you want to call it.
grow.  sweet friend.  along with some bubble bath things.  a handwritten letter with thoughts and words that soothed.  thanks so much.  i love you m.

2 days later:

today i woke up and we did our usual morning thing.  however yesterday, i began giving one of our ducks antibiotics.  it was a last ditch effort.  the poor guy just went into major sickness, probably pushed over the edge by this latest storm.  seemed like pneumonia.   he was dead this morning in the coop.  max and i gathered both ducks up yesterday and put them in the coop, thinking that might help.  and they need to be together, they are best friends. max and i went out there together this morning after breakfast.  oh it was so sad to see him laying there on the floor.    god!!!!    i am really wondering if i'm not cut out for the reality of many pets and creature caretaking.  i feel like such a failure when death happens.   i'm trying to look at where i might be having a god complex, as if it were all MY doing,  where i am just learning by trial and error sadly, and when i just royally fucked up, which i guess is like the god complex, but more human, in that i played an ignorant~human part, not a god role.  last week i realized we, or i, cuz it was my fuck up, lost a beehive.  they needed more supplemental honey to get through the end of winter.  i didn't know it.  i had assessed their stores and felt it was ok.   DUMB!  or just novice, as my therapist says much more kindly.  she says i'm gonna be a good beekeeper.  that i'm just inexperienced.   she happens to be a professional psychic too, so i'm a little soothed by her words.  i wrote to the bee teachers to ask if i could get on the swarm list again, and i haven't heard back yet.  wah.  i'm scared they won't give me another chance.  and oh i hope the other hive makes it.  of course i've given them some more honey stores now.  and i hope our other duck handles his grief with his health in tact.  we've already begun the search for another duck to be his new friend.  he needs a friend.  at least that's what we were told when we first brought these guys home.  ducks need buds.  and the way those two hung together, it seemed obvious.  so i guess i question if i'm worthy of being the caretaker of these sweet beings, and then i seem to just keep on going.  looking for more bees, more ducks.  learn learn.  my farming old blogging friend, who just up and quit blogging a while ago, soothed me with her wisdom on all this farm kind of learning.  trial and error.  keep on going.  learn more every year.  last year's death feeds this year's new life.  i know this stuff, but learning it in this embodied, real time kind of way is really intensely sad at times.

there's this movie david and i watched the other night.  please give.  it is my new favorite movie.  for so many reasons.   basic dull review there that was.  that's all i've got.  i'll also say i guess,  that i just keep thinking about it.  for days now. the subtle karmic stories, and the way the parents in the movie LOVE their flailing teenage daughter.  that was so beautiful to see.

i just did the whole night time routine on my own.  (i feel sheepish saying that, with the single moms in my life.  yeah.  bah bah.)  david was out with a new friend.  he met a man on the plane ride back from the trip when he went and visited his father for the last time.  the guy he sat next to, i guess they chatted it up the whole 4 hour ride back.  ha!  that is weird.  i never do that.  he doesn't either.  they've met up now twice.  and have plans again for next weekend, getting the rest of their families together.  wives and kids.  uh-oh.  i'm gonna ruin the whole thing with my anti-social behavior.  sorry d.  well, that's one version of how it could go.  we'll just see now,  won't we.  i'll let you all know.  ....so after i got the kids to bed, i planted those bulbs that love friend sent me.  after max's and my semi~traumatic morning of finding one of our ducks dead, he went to a reading lesson, and then he and i went to mcguckins before his afternoon of more schooling.  needed more potting soil.  and we got some fun amendments.  volcanic rock, charcoal, and earthworm castings.  why not.  we were trying to cheer ourselves up just a little.  it felt better.  well, to me.  he couldn't care much less about the soil amendments actually.  but he could tell i was into it, so he was sweet.  then i took him to the toy store.  he wanted a little duck figure.  you know those plastic animals he's so into?  no duck he approved of, the one they had had a base on its feet and he's not cool with that really.   the legs aren't free.  you know?   they need to stand on their own legs.  so he got another rooster.  he can't find his other one.  i got the girls a new animal too.  olive got a baby lynx.  zhi got a babyish raccoon.  (side note, max and i saw a lynx yesterday, crossing the road right in front of us.  olive was looking down and didn't see it.  zhi was at school and not in the car.  but max and i totally saw it.)  those little guys were 2.99 each.  felt a little better.  however tonight at dinner, we lit a candle and the 4 of us thought about our duck, sunshine, whose spirit is somewhere else.  we're guessing.   zhi said he's not come back to planet earth yet.  max said he wants to name our next duck sunshine too.  olive and i said sweet prayer after sweet prayer for him out loud, cuz that's what she wanted.  me outloud, then her.  it made max emotional.  sweety.  he is so in touch with his feelings.  it is lovely.



 after reading them the night time story, which right now is mrs. frisby and the rats of nimh,  maybe my all time favorite kid chapter book yet,  i got to planting those anemone bulbs on the floor of the kitchen, with my headlamp, cuz the house is small, and any light on would flow into their room, and the girls weren't quite asleep.  max was OUT.  i relit the candle, cuz zhi blew it out, and i planted some stuff.  that felt better too.  and now, i sit with the candle and blog.  weird.  i never do this at night.  with a candle.  i hardly ever light candles.  right after david's dad died, though,  after i stared at the spider web, i bought some candles on line.  real fast.  i just decided it needed to happen.  some colorado beeswax tapers.  i had this urge to start lighting candles more that morning.  thinking of him.  i want to remember that.

i aslo took some notes tonight.

olive:  mom, what does 'psyched' mean?
me:  it means to feel happy.  and excited.
olive: do you know juniper (her 3 year old cousin) likes to be naked all the time?
me:  yeah i did know that....   ... ......so, where did you hear that word psyched?
olive: you.  you just said it.
me:  oh.  yeah, i did.

ha!  i don't listen to myself very well.  well, she sure does.  next she's gonna ask me what fuck means.  and i'll be like, 'where did you hear that, young lady!?!?'  ha.

i noticed tonight also, as i was putting things away, like hanging up my jacket in the closet after going to get firewood in super deep snow,  where no path had been made yet, cuz we got enough to get us through the storm up until that night,




 i kept feeling like mr. rogers.  that neat peaceful vibe as i put things into their place.  that's not typical of me.  to put things away peacefully.  ha. i'll take it when i can get it though!   i often felt mr. roger's energy from david's dad.  it was something about the way he spoke sometimes.  mmmmmm.

then i pondered what i'd do tonight if the power went out.  that always gets me going.

i also got a call from the homeopath.  we're still working on finding my remedy.  she feels she's getting closer.  i hope so!  we do phone check ins a few times a month it seems.  just for a few minutes.  little check ins.   i've seen her in person 3 times now, in 4 months.   i love her.   we are targeting my depression.  it is helping i'm pretty sure.  i like homeopathy.  it blows my mind.  david can't really stand it.  he likes to make fun of me and we even fight about it.  we have to agree to disagree basically.  two hard heads.  sometimes when he's really suffering, he lets me give him something.  that cracks me up.  he opens then to the possibility, but he says he's just humoring me.  this man and i hold such different extremes and possibilities.  the fact that we make it work while being so different is kind-of amazing.  and kind-of maybe totally due to all the couples therapy.

ok.  back to now.

glorious now.

i've been reading this quote a lot, cuz it's up on our mantle next to a picture of david's dad:


~accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment.  it is part of the is~ness of the Now.  you can't argue with what is.  well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.  ~  eckhart tolle.



it's been helping a little.  maybe a lot.  i don't know, but definitely some.

love.

how random is all this on this post?

here are my new thrifted pants.  i hemmed them this weekend.  by hand.  haven't done that in forever.  hand hemmed.   i like.  wool.  preppyish.  fun.  couple bucks.



and then next day~~~

working on ingesting swallowing taking in receiving eating the truth of my awesomeness.  with humility of course.  but nonetheless, i need to swallow the reality of it.

the moon card in my tarot deck found me.  she told me to do that.  actually she told me to make a choice if i want to create a new reality.  so i'm making that choice.  to embody my awesomeness.  she also told me to stop censoring myself.   straight up, the card said that.  i've not pulled this card before.  my tarot book sometimes seems to me to have the most wisdom of any book i have ever read.  i seriously feel it is on the same level as the course in miracles, which i didn't read firsthand, but david read it for a while, and watching him practice those teachings was enough to show me that book has some deep wisdom.  how some people feel about the bible.  oh how i want to censor my words when religious stuff comes up.  david said that the only time the conversation with his new friend, from the airplane, didn't flow, was when religion came up.  friend is devout christian.  david is jewish.  scary stuff it can be to build a safe trusting bridge.  or to cross it, i guess.    i feel as long we as all respect each other's choices, and give each other lots and lots of space and don't try to convert each other, peace reigns.  and magic.  we all came from the same place.  earth.   well, now, scientologists don't think that, so uh-oh.  can't say anything about religion without getting myself in deep water.

swim lessons.  i need swim lessons.


i don't know.




that's a good place to rest.  in the unknown.  actually, it's a hard place to rest sometimes.  but it's a true place to rest.  for me.