light and macaroni

my law school paper

2012-02-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

ha. just the title there cracks me up. i was inspired the other day by my law school going sister. she called me, after just having finished up a heck of a paper. one that put her through more misery than childbirth it seemed. and i was there when she had her baby. her relief after finishing that paper, was so great, i got jealous. or inspired. aren't they so similar. like opposite sides of the same coin. i think they could be. jealousy/inspiration. i told her i want to finish my paper. but to finish it, i need to start it. and to start it? what the hell is my paper gonna be? how am i to create this false sense of stress, so that i can then be free of it, so that i can then feel that great relief that comes with finishing something that was worked on so effortfully, wholly, and with such pain? how funny, that i am this desperate for some sense of relief, that i am looking to up my stress, so that i can feel it lessen? i think i am insane. acceptance of that. so what's my trial's subject? sister's was about this high school kid who wore a button on her shirt saying 'the army sucks'. the school's action was to suspend for three days, along with some other bullshit disciplinary actions. sister argued that it was unconstitutional to do that, and more. and she rocked it. as far as my nonlawschooleducatedass can tell. i feel so dumb with my language here compared to my sister's in her paper. just a dumb ole house wife here. heh.

alright. so my paper. hmmmmmm. .......nope. not happening. my paper. my paper is gonna be some crazy art project. where i give myself a freakish deadline. i make myself drop everything just about, to serve the project. my family just has to understand that i'm doing this for the cause. the cause is relaxation. i need to relax. i can't relax. but maybe i will if i work my ass off on something, and then feel a sense of accomplishment, and exhaustion. i am not going to be a lawyer. but i am an artist in some way. an artist who has mostly put her supplies away, for the past ten years, in the name of raising up some cool freaker magical kids. i've tried to be artistic about the way i've raised them. but it's not the same. duh. i want to embroider 'duh' on something. yeah, it's not the same. alright. quilt project? painting? short story? what the hell do i want to get creative and work my ass off on?

hello!! hi. HEY! yep. i just had a wake up moment. how funny am i? pretty. i need to relax more. i want to relax more, so what do i think i need to do? stress out more? oh it's too funny. but i was close. with the art. just doing art. any amount, any kind, any where, any how, relaxes me. giving myself a deadline, will not work. i've even tried it. i rebel when i do stuff like that. i rebel on the self-imposed nonsense. cuz deep down i know it's nonsense. and deep down, i want what's real. aaaaaaaaah. getting closer. just naming the desire gets me closer. love. love. love.

(side note. i got the name of a new to us physical therapist for max. that is my baby step for the week. i think i am chilling out on the idea of surgery number two for a while anyways. there are different schools of thought on when is the right time to do that procedure, and so for now, i am gonna hang back, meet the new PT, and breathe and relax!)

sweet birds are laying so many eggs these days. partially becuz i've had to keep the heat lamp on, for turkey boy, who was in major recovery healing mode and needing extra support to keep that body temp up. baby boy was shivering for a while there. all that light made those hens think it was high summer. like high summer at the equator. i turned the light off yesterday, so maybe their bodies can get back into nature's rhythm now.

that turkey boy buford seems so much better. he's beat up, you can tell, but he's strong seeming. he's got a few rogue feathers from the attack still poking out. and he might have a limp, i'm not really sure. the ground has been so snowy and he hasn't been able to really walk around on the ground in a free way yet. and duck brother, who is now the sole duck, seems ok. i think? we sure love them.

i just now got an email from the bee swarm catcher. i am on the swarm list again. she wrote me the nicest letter.

the art supplies i am diggin into:

i cut into some of this fabric i've been collecting for so long. when someone gives me money as a gift, i go and buy fabric. often that's what i do. fabric, or some kind of alternative therapy. so i have this stash. an amazing stash. looking at it, planning the quilts?? i think i am planning them. still in the dream stage. but i did cut into that red and it will be a shirt soon. for me.

david got me these awesome thin gold hoop earrings for valentine's day. my new favorites.

and, today is my love's birthday. i already wrote him one of the best love letter cards i've ever written him in all these bakers' dozen of years we've been together. well, it was the easiest one to write, with the flow of pure love. cuz the love is reigning like it never has before. or maybe it's the peace. yes. the peace is reigning. sure we get in spats here and there like any animal couple will, but the letting go, and the forgiveness, those two things happen now. and the humor. and the understanding. and the awareness that we really want to be together. we knew that all along, duh. i mean we got married. but then it got hard kind of fast and for a long time. and with such intensity. i haven't been able to crank out a love letter to him, without also having to add in that 'the hard times are worth it and thank goodness we are working through them', just to keep it real, and so that he'd know it was me actually writing the letter, and not me turned schizophrenic, all of a sudden writing a gusher. and i am not bragging here. nope. i'm just reporting. or something. just telling it, and not censoring. i want to be a moon goddess. he is a sun god. i can verifiably say that he is a sun god. i told him that in my wedding vows. i am a moon goddess. he taught me. i taught him. we listened and learned. he is 44 today. his mama is in town. it is bittersweet. we are here being in the bittersweetness of it together. he is so loved. happy birthday dear kind man. happy birthday.

oh. here's his birthday hat! i just finished it last night. before he even got out of bed this morning i put it on his head. it's the botanic hat pattern.

and it's reversible.

he's been wearing it all day. how cute.

i had a dream last night that i was taking a poetry class. i walked into the class for the first time, and saw that the professor was my dad. my dad who's been dead for over 7 years now. he looked so good. i was thrilled to see him. beyond thrilled. but i played it cool, cuz i just wanted to sit in the back and watch him. take him in, in this role i'd never seen him in before. next thing i knew, he was michael scott. sounds plausible. well. that was awesome to see you dad. very very very awesome. please keep teaching that class.

and then i had a part of the dream where i kept writing sentences without verbs. and i was getting in trouble for it.

boy. grass and carpets. sunshine golden fire.

hmmmmmmmm.

good thing i am not trying to write a law school paper after all i guess.

ok. here's a rumi poem that spoke to me the other day, really really spoke to me, speaking of poetry class. a friend mailed it to me for valentine's day. i loved getting a real letter, a real valentine. i want to remember that and do that too.

Time to go Home

Late and starting to rain,
it's time to go home.
We've wandered long enough
in empty buildings.
I know it's tempting to stay
and meet those new people.
I know it's even more sensible
to spend the night here with them,
but I want to go home.

We've seen enough beautiful places
with signs on them saying
This is God's House.That's seeing the
grain like the ants do,
without the work of harvesting.
Let's leave grazing to cows and go
where we know what everyone really intends,
where we can walk around without clothes on.

RUMI ~ from: 'Open Secret' Trans Coleman Barks

making stuff with love

2012-02-13T12:07:00.000-08:00

sublime stitching

my mawmaw made all her kids and grandkids pillowcases for most of the valentine's days i remember from being alive with her.

i'm not making pillowcases this year, but i'm going with her theme, again.... zhi had the idea for us to embroider on pillow cases. we got some new flannel sheets, and we're stitching on the cases now. i'm doing 99% of the embroidering. but zhi picked up the stem stitch with one showing basically, and has done a little bit on her bird. she might do a few of her letters tonight, and then i'll finish them on up. i've had that sublime stitching book for 7 years maybe? this is the first time i've used it. yay! i'm such a novice embroiderer i'm looking up which stitch to do for lettering and outlining and just chose stem. is there another one that's better for letters? i could probably get a better needle too! mine seems really thick for this, but it's the only one that could fit that thread in the eye. anyhow. it's fun!

i just flipped through some of my old blog posts. oh my. it hurts. sometimes it hurts so bad! to miss my babies being babies. and yet, just yesterday, i think it was yesterday, i felt this huge wave of freedom at noticing how we can do things now together, in this vastly different way, now that they are so much more independent. they can all do their own seat belt buckles. zip their coats. stuff like that that takes a small but noticeable load off of me. and i reveled in that yesterday. it felt great! and now i am paining at the loss of all that is behind us. shit! pain. oh joyful beautiful pain. oh how exquisite you are.

ok. here's a report on the bedwetting alarm that we began using last summer to train zhi, and then max on night time pee~ing in the bed. report: success! we had to bribe those kids with a large amount of money, the amount of which i will not say on here, because some of you might judge me. but i calculated it out and it made sense, actually, based on how much money we were spending on night time pullups. like 70 bucks a month. this mama is not gonna put her 7 and 9 year olds in cloth at night. ha! the 4 year old trained herself for night time. that was a bonus! so the monetary prize was a big key for us, they needed a motivator. cuz getting up in the middle of the night from the deepest sleep possible, to the sound and feel of a buzzing vibrating annoying machine hooked to your underwear is not something anybody wants to do. and i had no way of talking them into doing it for the pride of knowing you climbed a hard high mountain and of the joy they would feel once they accomplished the feat. they wouldn't hear it. they liked their pullups. and now they like their money. zhi got trained in 1 month. the first week was hard. i got up with her a lot. then she did it on her own. max. DIFFERENT story. of course. it took him 6 months. him and me. getting up every time that god damn alarm went off. me and him. in the bathroom. he isn't as nimble with his hands, and attaching the little clip to the underwear while he was still in that sleepy state, wasn't happening so well. WELL. deep exhale. he has mastered this. he really has. it's been about 2 months now with no alarm. i feel ok saying he got it. he may have a relapse, but i have padding on the bed for that possibility. holy moly. what an accomplishment. i love the bedwetting alarm. i don't like the thought of how we would have done that otherwise. thank you bedwetting alarm. thank you monetary bribes.

remembering our accomplishments is very good therapy for me. cuz there's always more to work on. i think max needs to go back to physical therapy again. his walking isn't looking so good anymore. i guess i should say, it looks like it could be helped. for some with more sever cerebral palsy, his walking looks amazing. i don't know how to say what i'm trying to say very well. always worried about offending others. uncensor myself. his walking, for him, seems like it's getting stiffer, his heel is coming up again, as he is growing. we knew this would happen. he might need one more surgery i'm thinking, maybe this year. maybe this summer? a heel surgery this time. i'll just dip my toe in that for now. maybe make an appointment to meet with the surgeon in denver. that's a good first step. small baby steps here. deep breaths. this surgery will be minor compared to the one from two years ago. ( i want to update that soon. note to self. can you make that happen h? maybe after the appointment with the denver surgeon.) ok.. toe dipped. goals for this week or next made. deep breaths taken.

now. what else can i celebrate?

zhi. that girl lost a tooth last night. she wanted me to pull it out. not her dad. ha! i celebrate that. i swear those kids so often choose their dad over me when it comes to so many things. i think cuz he's gone to work so much, and he's just more novel, and he's fresh to them, and freaking funny, and i'm just this old haggard hag. ha. i yanked that tooth out, though! we were awesome. and we had a fun girl day yesterday. males went to snowboarding therapy. we all put on eye make up. i put it on for us all. eyeliner. eyeshadow. mascara. blue mascara. they were so cute and serious about it.

we made homemade bath bomb things, inspired by a blogging friend. i bathed with one last night. it was cool! i like the oily factor a lot. mmmmmm. oil bath. feels good in this colorado air. we started embroidering. we cleaned those girls' desks. we rocked. we had good vibes. that is to celebrate.

ah well. here we go. another week begun. sending a prayer to my friend whose back keeps going out. deep prayer for you good friend. i'm giving you one of these bath bombs. k? made with love.

water

2012-02-09T11:16:00.000-08:00

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.

opening

2012-02-02T13:40:00.000-08:00

knitting the last bit of the sweaters there. and making david take a photo of it.

the amaryllis bloomed.

and

da da da dum......

here they are.... out of their bags that they've been living and growing in for 10 months! i like to be quite overdue, don't i? miss zhi was 17 days late. i like to brag on that to people who are whining about being overdue. shut up. no whining unless you're more than 17 days late. and you're going for a vbac, and you've got the freaking doctor freaking out cuz you won't go into labor on his timetable. just kidding. you can whine about whatever. we're all made of different stuff. i whine about crap that would never bother others all the time.

last weekend, i finished the last stitch. wove the ends in. blocked the sweaters saturday night after the kids were asleep. then sewed on the buttons sunday morning. vintagey buttons i got on ebay, and both girls like. and olive chose to have a cat button be her top button.

the olearia pattern is what i used.

i am pretty in love with this pattern. i want one. i used some yarn that was a little thicker than the pattern asked for, but the same needles. thus, i got me a chunkier sweater and i like it. risky! looks more country or something. country/hippie/gypsy/magic.

the yarn i got at a local yarn store. it's by mushishi. the grey was left over from their dad's birthday vest, from last year. the girls each picked out their own color. there's a lot left over from zhi's, cuz i had to get two skeins. that is about to be worked into a hat for david i'm thinking....that birthday is coming up!

non attachment. attachment.

all done.

she told me that's how you look pretty, hold your dress, or sweater, up like that.

i say, nah. you look pretty just by being yourself.

mom stuff.

non attachment. attachment.

(i had such contractions after putting this post up. i sat with them for hours, and then took the below portion off. wanting to make it easy. to take all the pain of my writing away, so that others don't have to feel it. i was thinking i need to just get on with my life. get away from the pain. stop sharing that part of me. how hilarious given the subject matter. those were some serious contractions. they'll come again i'm sure. for now they've chilled, and i put it back on. ha!)

make an egg. let itgo. make another. let it go. watch them grow.

attachment parenting iswhat most of us are trying for, right? and then there's the spirituallesson of non~attachment. the paradox of doing all these things at thesame time. keep the heart connected, the bodies connected, while not clingingwith our grip, both mental and physical. it's not good to be a tightknitter. loose and easy. but not too loose. i try to donon~attachment attachment parenting. non~attachment attachment living. focusing while staying open. wide open optimally. letting myfears and sadness be seen and felt while bravely staying open and with myprocess.

holy holy sacred life.

how outrageous is all thisexperience of living on this planet? how absurd intense and outrageous?

what is a girl to do? what is a mama to do? what are we all to do? hold on whileletting go.

and contract sometimes. so that i will open. don't diss the contractions. there ain't noother way. people talk up expansion in such a huge way, it almost makesme mad. cuz you can't expand without contracting first. and i'vedissed contractions for so long, thinking the pain of life means i am doingsomething wrong. no! it's the biology of life. ain't no otherway. however, when someone encourages me stay open duringthe contractions, i try to listen. resisting the contractions definitelymakes it hurt more. so yeah, i try to stay with myself, openness, andjust groan through the pain...

aren't birthing metaphorsthe best?

these sweaters are justlittle representations of life. life on the run. life at home. they were knit in waiting rooms, in spring, summer, fall, and winter, onairplanes, at home, at parks, at a shiva, on a bus to new york city, whileplaying checkers, while watching movies with my kids, while kids are inswim class, at the trident on those days that i just don't want to look at acomputer, in bed when i'm not quite sleepy yet, on date nights when i just needto be doing something with my hands cuz when i'm like that i'm just like thatand david is cool with it mostly........ i did a little on one, then alittle on the other. that way they were finished at the same time.

i am not attached to them. i'm trying to see them as a painting. something i made out of loveand creativity, and now i'm done. they are lovely to look at. olivehas been wearing hers a lot, of her own will. and when i say i am notattached, it's partly in response to the big girl, who doesn't exactly go forthis sweater every time it's time to get bundled. i'm not saying anythingto her. which isn't really my style. usually, i'd ask her to wearsomething i made her, trying to be cool with how i asked, but just remindingher of it. she's too sly for that now. i have to lay back. and i see the sweater hanging in the hall and just love looking at it. even if it's not on her. this is what we have to get really goodat, us people who make things. making them. and then letting themgo. non attachment. and trying our hardest to enjoy the making.

i met with my best highschool friend's mom yesterday. david and olive and i went on a walk inour old hood, and just popped in, unannounced. so old fashioned of us! we visited, and when she asked how i was doing, 'i said, oh well, youknow.' and she laughed. she does know. she thinks it's funnykind-of, cuz she remembers very well how hard it is to be in the thick of beinga mom. the endless work, the business aspect of keeping home, theabsurdly tricky challenge of raising children. she really kind-of laughsat it all now. and then says, 'it all passes.' at that, icried. i said, 'yeah, i know, but i don't want it to pass, and me lookback on it feeling like i fucked up because i didn't enjoy it enough.' she got serious looking, (not because i used the f word, heh) and said, 'well, i don't know if it's possibleto enjoy it as much as you are thinking you should.' and i was relieved. can you believe it? i was relieved to hear her say that it may notbe possible to enjoy raising kids the way i am striving to. maybe it is,but maybe it isn't. that freaking relieved me. like, 'oh! soit really is this hard. i am not doing anything wrong to be having thischallenging of a time trying to figure out how to bliss out more frequentlywith all this.' it's really. this. hard.

but that said, i had abliss session recently. i don't know why, but i felt some lightness, somefun sweet lightness come over me, combined with some new music i discovered on thelocal radio station, bought immediately from itunes, a friday night, and i waskind-of blissing. just for no reason. i just felt some light. i haven't felt that way in a long time. so long it is sad, but hey. that's life. it gets sad sometimes.

it's beautiful and harsh. that's what another friend told me this week, and those words togetherfeel pretty true and poignant to me right now.

open. open to thecontractions so that i can open even more when they're done. so that i can keepgrowing and growing and growing. i'm gonna birth the biggest cranium wheni'm done with all this opening! ha!!!

hard work. here's tothe hardness of all this work!! and to birthing metaphors!!

puzzling!

2012-01-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

do you read signs? i often think i do. i want to be done with that though. really really done. in the name of sanity. k? k.

i'd like to pay attention. but not believe the stories that float by. they are often so uncreative, these stories in my mind, it's a joke anyways, how uncreative i actually am with the stories....

on my birthday, the year i was pregnant with max, some friends had a party on my birthday. david made me an ice cream cake. i had been morning sick for three months. it was about as bad as it gets without being hospitalized. i was in the doctor's once, though, and got an iv for fluids. but not the hospital. until we were in the hospital in a big way for his birth. on my birthday, though, as david brought the cake out, with the lights dimmed, the candles lit, and tons of friends singing happy birthday, the cake slips off the tray and went all over the carpet floor. the first thing i heard was a friend who was going to naropa at the time say, 'oh, how auspicious.' i reframed it all in that moment and just went with those words, for the most part. but i still worried quietly inside for a long time afterward, about what it meant. looking back, it's hard not to wonder if that foretold of the baby's birth. the baby who had to fight for his life before he was even born, because of a scary umbilical cord accident. the baby who walked away, miraculously, with the scars of cerebral palsy and hearing loss, a weakened immune system, and other stuff, but whatever. he god damn fucking lived through that hell. he is magic. he is a full on light in this world. full on. but it was a messy scary wounding experience and birth, then a slow physical and spiritual healing and recovery. i venture to say we are recovering. i guess we always will be, and that is a blessing. recovery.

side note: there is another recovery, i am venturing to say, that is happening. our turkey seems to be perking up a bit. so nice to see. so so sweet. he is hungry now. but very very wobbly on his feet. hardly any strength. not sure what his future holds, but i've had the blessing of nurturing his sweet soul this past week like a baby bird fallen from the nest, and it has been lovely to be with him. i look in his eyes. he looks in mine. i encourage him when he eats. or when he lets me finally get that pink penicillin down his throat. or when he drinks. or when he stands up. what if he doesn't gain enough strength back to walk on his own again though? don't know. all i know is now. now he is a love and he was hungry this morning and it was beautiful. i am blessed to know him. and i have lost my appetite for turkey meat. i usually eat it a few times a week on sandwiches. not this week.

back to the signs thing:

so this year. well, last year. december 2011. on my birthday, the first thing i did upon waking, was go to the bathroom. to pee. the first contact i have is with our cat spicy. i look at her butt. not because i like cat butts. but because it she is bleeding there. i wipe her up, and then call the vet. and inside i worry. for her. and for me. it's my birthday! what does it mean?

WHAT DOES ALL THE BAD SCARY SHIT MEAN? especially when it happens on my birthday, or some other special day...like new years day.

i could make a list of all the recent 'bad' shit...but i don't want to bring us all down. instead.....

i just want to forget the idea of reading signs. if a sign is to be read, it will be blatantly obvious. that's what i've been told. it won't be up for interpretation. it will be exactly what it is. my cat's bloody butt was just a random irritation from some random crap she ate. my birthday cake falling on the floor was just david losing his grip on the tray or tripping or whatever it was. the sign i was to read about my baby boy was when i stopped feeling him move in my womb. that was clear. check that out. that's how it works. clear sign. nothing to wonder about. go to the doctor.

if i believe in signs, that means i beat myself up when i can't pay good enough attention to be reading them properly all the time. that is not gonna work for me. no more.

once on a plane, kind of soon after 9/11, i saw a couple dudes in the back of the plane with us, that looked sketchy to me. i paid attention to them, like it might save my life if i did. i can't even remember what the specific signs were that i saw, but i became convinced that plane was going down, and they had a code, and i heard the numbers 911 somehow get communicated between them. i thought i did. ha! i am crazy.

once max dropped a tooth that had fallen out in our driveway, with a million other baby tooth sized rocks. i read into that. it wasn't good.

once on another birthday, i found the best ever quilt at a thrift store. that was an amazing sign!! but i don't know what it was a sign for. just my awesomeness i guess.

i am okay with feeling lucky and all the good signs. but i am not okay with all the bad ones making me feel unlucky. it's a roller coaster throughout the days if i read the world like this.

if i get a parking ticket, it means i need to pay the meter better. a speeding ticket, i need to chill out! if i find a great thing thrifting, it's cuz someone else just gave it and i was blessed to be there when it was put out. now see, this is where i am so confused. i am reading about blessings, and how many we are showered with, and how we receive far less than we are given, cuz we just don't know how to receive them, like we are not in the frame of mind to receive them, or we are too afraid. but if there are blessings, than there are non~blessings too right? well whatever there is, i don't want to read into it. i want to flow. i want to say thanks for the blessings, and i want to give them as often as possible, just by being myself, and when the bad shit happens, i want to pay attention and learn if i need to learn, and not project it out into the future of our lives. i want to fearlessly face the bad shit. goal. not possible really, but that's the goal. to simply stay awake and notice the blessings, and know they are for the moment, and the bad shit, that's for the moment too. not for the future.

aaaaargh. i've been blessed in this past half hour with some sweet music on the waves here at two spoons. i've been un~blessed with a headache today. but none of this means anything about the future. if i go out and step in dog shit now, it doesn't mean anything except that there is a jerk out there scattering poop all over the world and not cleaning it up. and he needs a ticket. if i have a horrid day, a string of bad things all in a row, it just means, that was a crap day. if i flow and feel blessed one day, and feel good, i hope to be fully in the moment so i can drink in that yumminess.

oh my god. this whole thing is GIVING me this head ache.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN? what are the blessings? why do some things feel so un~blessing like? if the blessings are always available, what does it mean when i can't find them? someone turn off my head!!! ok. i got it. turning head off. going to go to joanne's and buy some vogue patterns that are on sale and on top of sale i have my 30% off coupon. turning head off. i'll ponder this stuff again. i am onto something. i've made some progress. i can feel that i have. i really don't feel like i'm gonna read bad shit happening as a sign that i'm doomed anymore. and when i feel obviously blessed, i'm gonna smile and take it in. and pass it on. bless. be less. ?????? bmore. baltimore??

what about when i see my favorite numbers on the license plate in front of me? what does that mean?

what about when i see 666?

come in, come on. turning off head. i am not into this game anymore!

what about stuff like this?

are they pieces to a puzzle?

no.

whatever. just working this junk out.

and randomly,

here's my new favorite cheesy 80s song redone as a folk song

and here are the lyrics, cause i like to sing along:

Oh, thinkin' about all our younger years
There was only you and me
We were young and wild and free
Now nothin' can take you away from me
We've been down that road before
But that's over now
You keep me comin' back for more

[Chorus]
Baby you're all that I want
When you're lyin' here in my arms
I'm findin' it hard to believe
We're in heaven
And love is all that I need
And I found it there in your heart
It isn't too hard to see
We're in heaven

Oh, once in your life you find someone
Who will turn your world around
lift you up when you're feelin' down
now, nothin' could change what you mean to me

there's lots that I could say
But just hold me now
love will light the way

[Chorus]

I've been waitin' for so long
For somethin' to arrive
For love to come along

our dreams are comin' true
Through the good times and the bad

I'll be standin' there by you

[Chorus]

(bryan adams)

a place

2012-01-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

a place for me. a place for us. a place for them. but for now, i am needing to see it as a place for me. it used to be that a group of ladies gathered here. a group of men still do. that group was born out of a preschool. a preschool where a dad asked all the other dads in the community of that school if they'd like to join together in a dad's group. a handful did. and they've been meeting for years now. in that space there...our studio space. that dad and i were talking once, and we both agreed it would be neat if the wives/partners of all those dads met as a group. for so many reasons. for community. for healing. you know. i asked them if they were interested. all but one woman was. so we came together. and i reached out to two other women whose partners were not in the dad's group already, but were in my semi-daily life. they both joined in. those ladies and i met together for over two years. it was so cool. we grew and stretched and cried and shook and laughed and loved. blah blah blah. eventually, both of those extra two women's husbands joined the dad's group. and then another man joined the dad's group, invited by my husband, cuz he was a new neighbor, and it was a kind thing to do, invite him. then one day, another mom from the preschool asked me if she could join the womens' group. i thought for sure. i told the group another mom wanted to join. they said no. they turned her away. a woman in need. in the community. someone had an issue with her, and instead of choosing to work it out, just said 'no, i don't want her in this group.' that was rough for me and that woman. then the newest member of the dads' group, the neighbor, his wife asked me if she could join the women's group. i brought the question to them, thinking, this is a no brainer. her husband is in the dad's group. of course she can come. they said no again. they didn't even know this woman, and they said no, again. this time, because one just didn't want to be exposed to a new person. i understand the discomfort of meeting new people, but oh my. turning people away is intense. you know there are two sides to every story. and i am not going into all details here. but this is my side. i find it shocking that the women in that group made a vote like that. twice. so i came to feel that if they really felt this way, that closed and unwilling to work with themselves and these other women, that i couldn't stay in the group in my integrity. i told them. and they still said no, we're not opening it to those women. they told me they hoped i could find what i was looking for in another group someday. SHOCKING. sad. so i left. i am not as angry as i was. but i am still weirded out and shocked when i put it down and realize they all really stood by those decisions. i feel ok. i feel in integrity. i feel lonely. i also may feel that i am better than them, which is not a good feeling. i don't want to feel better than others. i'm working through that so that i can be in even more integrity with moving through these emotions. i am not better. i simply have different standards i guess. almost like believing in a different religion perhaps.

i am not better than them. i am not better than them. i have my opinions, they have theirs. they spoke up for themselves. i spoke up for myself. i am in a clearer space without having to feel like i am swallowing my unsaid words. or without feeling like i am in a group of people who can't hear me, or just don't want what i want. they are in a clearer space without me provoking them to open up. and i am not better. i want to believe that.

but.... i don't.

i am right!!!!

and....

they suck!

i just want to say that.

they suck!!!!!!

ok. i'm done now with that story. i read recently in my book that is channeled from the pleadians, that when we tell our wounded stories over and over and over again, it is not helpful, that it actually makes us feel stuck. it's wound worshiping. they said we can tell them once, twice, maybe three times, and then to move on. i say, of course, that it all depends on what kind of ear we are telling our stories to, that determines if we feel freer afterwards, or like we just want to find a better ear to tell it to. and it depends on the story, and how deeply it fucked us up. but writing our stories out, writing. it. out., that has so often been helpful to me. i feel better now. i do. and now i somehow have to find forgiveness. i am still working on that part. i really want to forgive and not feel like running the other way when i see one of these women now. i want to stand right in their presence, in my presence, and be fine. but it's hard to be fine with someone who hurt you. it's hard. it's doable, but it's pretty hard. so i'm doing some hard work here. yippee! i'm serious! yippee! david's dad said yippee a lot. alright. now, all of a sudden, i actually feel ready to see one of them and be real and not kill or cry or hide, but be real and one with my feelings at the same time.

that space. that place though. i am wanting to reclaim it. i have some stuff to make. and some yoga to do. and dancing. and reading. we are putting in some new lights. the lights have been nonexistent in that space for as long as we've lived there. just a couple floor lamps. new lights. i remember when we had to have the roof on the house rebuilt. i was so glad. the metaphor of a new fresh roof over our heads, taking away the old rotting one, was so powerful for me. now, i am excited for the metaphor of new lights. new lights in my creative space. i am into that.

what do i want to make? i have a desire to make the kids some quilts. and myself a dress or two. the girls sweaters are almost done. so close to done i am getting panicky. finishing a project as large as this was, for me it was large, my first knit sweaters (!), is scary for some reason. remember that goal i had of finishing them by nov. 1st? hmm. funny. this knitting has become like some kind of security blanket. ha. that is funny. but they do cover my lap like a blanket now when i knit on them. i'm already planning the blog post for them. wondering what words can go with these sweaters? they haven't come to me yet. no theme in mind. maybe no words want to be with them. but it's funny that i'm already trying to write it in my mind. i pulled the steamer out of the shed, knowing it will be time to block them soon. aaaaaaaa. so strange this feeling of finishing.

that place. i love that place. that studio. and i miss it. i seem to go over there only to water plants once a week. i want to figure out how to go over there more. how to start the next project. the quilts project. the next phase that i am feeling i am on the heels of. i may be wrong. but i am feeling it out. and i do eventually want company again. i am feeling so isolated and lonely these days. i've been asked to do stuff with friends, and none of it feels quite right for me right now. for some reason or another. so i just sit with my self. my good old self. my good old grungy grubby lonely self. it seems to be what i need most of all, in this week, and probably the next few. feel a little pain, and then i'm thinking i will grow a bloom. or two or three. just sitting and feeling the pain right now is oddly what i am drawn to do, even though almost all of me wants to run from it. the lonely blues. appropriate, right? who doesn't feel lonely sometimes. but boy is that flower a gorgeous thing. i have some amazing friends. and we hardly ever see each other. getting schedules to align is too hard. i do have a date to tea and a movie tomorrow night with a friend. that will be fun, most likely. if one of us doesn't cancel.

now all of a sudden i feel like looking at winter pictures. or the actual winter outside these walls. and inside these walls. the winter in my soul right now. winter winter. splinter splinter.

and speaking of places. look at this cutie home, of one of my best high school friend's. dang. it makes me laugh at how different our homes are in some ways. but i was inspired by hers. pretty awesome details. those old trophies painted white. i keep thinking about those.

brief pause

2012-01-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

well. i just cried and cried in the principals office at max's school. i felt like a blithering overtaxed worried mom. she told me i was very articulate. she must say that to all the crying moms who come to her.

ok. brief pause.....

so, i went through some old photos. they all look so beautiful to me. i have this ability to forget the stress of the past and just see the beauty. why can't i do that with the present as masterfully as i do with the past? can you? if so, can you tell me how?

ahhh, last summer....

i danced on the patio, while the girls peeled carrots that zhi's class had harvested from a farm filed trip.

high summer photos in deep winter is very soothing to me right now.

i feel like i'm supposed to thrifting right now. i have a little over an hour till i begin the pick up from school routine. alright then. i'm gonna go thrifting. i'll report back.......

::

hmmmm, four days later.

thrifting was cool. a little bit of an altered space. i got two long sleeve shirts. two long pants. and a vintage dr. doolittle. i want to do a hemming session soon. i have about three pants that have needed hemming for a long long time.

our turkey was attacked by some predator last thursday night. through the fence the animal reached in and wrecked the living hell out of our sweet boy. he was perched very near the fence and was reachable. it is so so sad. i just forced antibiotics down his throat. i don't think he's going to make it. shit. shit. shit. max just told me his brother uses electrical fencing so this doesn't happen. max is smart. and so is his brother. (imaginary as far as i can tell, but somehow he is very very real. he actually has two brothers. he talks about them all the time. )

oh turkey boy. i am so sorry. somehow it feels like it was our fault. we chose to have you as a pet and ........... we are going to reinforce the fencing to make the wire openings even smaller. shit.

i am not going to cry at the school today. that is a goal. i will not got into a fight with max about his glasses because david and i decided to let it be his decision for now. he chooses to wear his hearing aids, 98% of the time he chooses to. i am going to count that as a blessing. and let the glasses be easy for a while. his vision is still 20/20. the glasses help with a prism thing and a slight magnification to ease the effort on his eyes. it's possible he knows what's best here. ??? we are either in our wisdom, or in our weakness with this decision. not sure.

praying and blessing is my work right now. this year is only 23 days old and i could freak on how intense and hard and scary it has been. i have freaked. praying and blessing. reading the books i've been lent. praying and knitting. and cleaning. and showering. i've showered so much lately. and cleaned little corners of annoying stuff that i hadn't dealt with in a long time. weird stuff.

david and i feel like we want to release control over how we've parenting. we aren't sure how really, but we are agreeing, that our parents gave us a lot a lot of room to be who we were, to fuck off, and there was something essential in that. balance of course. we are just looking for more. tuning into where we are to the far right.

yes on ani difrancos new album. a lot of people say, yeah, i listened to her in the 90s or when i was in my 20s, or whatever. if you want to know what i think, she is as good as ever, if not better. we got tickets with friends to her show here in march. yippee. daivd's dad said yippee a lot. it's been two weeks since he left. we are shaken. it's just hard core to die. that's what i feel. all us moms and babies, and dads too, know it's very hard core to be born. and of course this is all very obvious. but this is where i say very obvious things. it is outrageously hard core to die. max told me his pawpaw has been working with god. and that god gave him a job. that he's doing the same job he did here on earth, with god now, for all the people who are with god. pawpaw was an economist. a legendary economist in health care. he made it so all people regardless of socioeconomic status, could get the same quality health care in maryland. or he did his best to see to it that they did. maryland has a healthcare system unlike any other state in the US because of pawpaw. i told david how max told me about pawpaw having his job again with god, and david said, geez, i can't believe we still have to deal with health care financing with god. right. i guess we might. according to max. and i bet hal is whipping that place into righteous shape, though.

living is hard core. evolving is too. and so is ani's new cd. ok. i think we are going to try and get to the library to find a book on drawing cartoon faces for max. his teacher gave me the idea. i'd been trying to help him draw horses, with a step by step book on drawing them, but it was too hard and he hated it. cartoon faces is such a good idea.

we will put turkey out of his misery tomorrow if there's no improvement. david will. holy crap.

is anyone else having an intense new year?

my grandfather's blessings. it's bringing me back to a place where my mind, and heart, can feel peace, when i make a conscious effort to try. crying is the best. it really really is. and if i must, i will cry to whoever is in front of me. if it's the principal again, ok. it's really ok. when my tears come in seemingly horrid places, it is ok.

love.

there is an animal theme

2012-01-18T18:29:00.001-08:00

olive's name is flista this afternoon. her baby's name is tablisa. (tuh-bleesa). she works at a necklace store. this guy comes into her store all the time and annoys her. his name is jeek gluss. he is so annoying. his sister is so annoying. his mother is annoying. his father is annoying. she had to leave her job at this store because of these people. she just had to get away from them. what they did that was annoying, was that they would come up to her all day and ask her get them things and do things for them. she just couldn't take it anymore.

she has a new job now. she goes to school and studies, and she gets money for it. the name of her school is called 'great.' and her teacher's name is ms. beatles.

what we did on sunday....

boxed ourselves up.

box box!

adding the white for the belly fur was my favorite part i think.....

hers i predict was the tail.

girl time felting. it's a serious amount of work. olive isn't so into it. when zhi and i are in the right mood, we are!

these came from these kits, that their mimi grandma gave them.

we have a lot of kangaroo energy happening around here.

he has a plastic one. he loves those plastic animals. they've pretty much always been his favorite toy. animals. the plastic ones.

stretch break.

i have one on my hat...

i like the wooden animals. this mama and joey pair we've had for a long time now. they are on our mantle at the moments. with a dark beer. hmmm. in a glass that once belonged to david's dad's parents. then belonged to david's parents. and now, belong to the kangaroo family. we've had them for a long time, but i'm all sentimental in a newly fresh way now. ouch. but kind-of good. yes. definitely good. uuuuugh. heart. heart break. begin again.

i've been lent some really nice books in the past few days. such nice people in this world. 1 on grief. one on a woman's relationship with her grandfather, even after death. one on daily coyote. i got my free martha stewart subscription in the mail yesterday. for buying a new singer iron, it came with that. it kind-of relaxes me sometimes to stare at the clean homes in her magazines. aaaah. a daydream is nice. ha. we've been watching some funny shows. the life and times of tim. bored to death. the office again. sometimes arrested development. .....

well.

one last note. max tonight, told me he wants me to go to law school like my sister. i said, oh, well, wow. not sure that's gonna happen, but why? because i want you to be a policewoman, he says. wow!! i will enforce! i've been enforcing with him today quite a bit, pretty intense policewoman i've been around these parts. he's impressed i think! wants me to be a professional. heh.

much

2012-01-15T09:35:00.000-08:00

so we had to say bye for now, for this lifetime, to our beloved paternal pawpaw. except the kids think he may come back as a cat, or a wallaby, or some creature and see us again perhaps.....

how to know. there is no way. that mountain is beautiful. he was beautiful. after we heard on the phone, that he had gone on, i walked out to the living room of our house. we didn't have time to get back to him to say bye. it became time, and that was it. hard and fast.

i saw those cobwebs in the living room.

on a typical day, a sight like that in this house would kind-of bum me out. how interesting that those webs were all i could look at to find center. i had just the day before had my window washing party, and washed the outside of the windows on this house. i stopped at that, and said i'd do the insides another day. i sat there, thinking of my father-in-law, and feeling such strange gratitude that i hadn't washed the inside of the windows. cuz if i had, i'd have cleaned off all those webs too. a loss that was comforted so so much by webs. webs. spiders. thanks you creatures of infinity.

missing an integral part of our family. moving on without him feels so foreign and dare i say, wrong. i would be psyched if he could come back. i'm ready for the dreams where he does. they happened a lot with my dad. i feel like they will with hal too.

the jewish way of grieving and honoring dead and the bereaved amazed me each day we were in baltimore this past week. i have been feeling a lot of gratitude for being shown their way.

david. my david. it is too much. too much is just what it is.

shiva. three days of shiva. oh. no words really. and yet i press on these keys. there's max up there talking to his pawpaw's brother. max kind-of just up and adopted his great uncle this past week, tuning into how much he reminded him of his pawpaw. max just ate that man up. and it was reciprocal. their connection soothed so many of our ailing hearts during those three days.

i don't know exactly how i feel about blogging this. but when i go deep down, i feel it is necessary and good.....this isn't a part of life to be hidden. we were wide open with our grief and process with our children. it was hard and sad and max in particular jumped right on into the wailing pool with all of the bereaved adults in this family. he needed that. he really really did.

we are missing someone deeply. and i know for me, my every other thought is consumed with his spirit right now. tears just come and come. and interestingly from the day he died, there has been an element of humor, woven throughout these days. max started it unknowingly, asking if we could keep pawpaw's head. in the freezer. a friend reminded me of how helpful and healing a little humor mixed into the grief can be. her words were a healing balm. i saw max then as the wise one i know he is, but i sometimes forget he is. the humor just kept seeping in here and there by many others. it wasn't disrespectful. it was real and present. and the tears came right along with it. we are stricken. stricken in love and tears and laughter. it feels like too much to say bye. and too much is just what it is.

we have plans to go back to baltimore once again, in april. this time for a batmitzvah.

it was a long time away from this blog for me. i didn't intend that. this year started with my boychild getting really sick. on day one of this year. pneumonia to be exact. that took him and me both down. him physically, me psychically and emotionally it seemed. and then, just a few days after max started to breath steadily again, we realized pawpaw was preparing to leave much quicker than any of us thought. i wonder if max was just tuning into that, and his body was beginning to grieve before any of us knew. i feel that is probably the case. i've learned that the lungs hold the grief, and release the grief. aaaaaack. so much intensity, somehow gracefully mixed with a little light humor, and love, and i still don't know what to say.

we are back in boulder, and the boys are snowboarding again today. may max not be taken down with any respiratory ailments this time. may us girls have a nice day at home doing whatever we want. may we continue on our paths, with the memories of our beloved soothing our hearts and minds.

love. so much god damn freaking love.

and more. too much. it's part of what we signed on for. gulp.

anyhow

2011-12-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

december

making forts lots and lots

december 2011

making cookies just once so far. i am so over sugar.

max had an abscessed tooth two weeks ago. it was simply pulled out of his mouth and i was told to be glad it was a baby tooth. i have been a paranoid (?), or smart (?) freak about sugar since then. and i've been physically sickened by it too. weird.

winter break

i like breaks.

no school, no pressure, no alarms, so little driving

aaaaaaaaaaaah

i recovered these dining table chairs. they needed to be recovered so badly. like a year ago they were looking nasty. the red and white fabric is some awesome vintageness i scored on ebay. thick and gorgeous. i hesitated using it on a chair that will get messy, but i went for it in the end, deciding the joy i am going to get from seeing it in use a few times each day will be worth the shorter life span. right?

the teapot fabric is just divine. i think i got from purlsoho. can't remember now. i've stashed it for a year or so now. perfect use!!!

these chairs below got covered in some thrifted pieces.

nice nice very nice. listening to dan mangan still. i love.

and here are some tiny pics from my phone from some things we did last week....

a little neighborhood bonfire and caroling

caroling is so weird. watching my jewish husband and neighbors sing about baby jesus is funny. and fine. i'm not in any place of judgement, just loving the weirdness and the oddity of it all. i love it. i hang back and photo and enjoy the randomness. i sing a tiny bit. like on the frosty song.

at my mom's

with my ninja hoody boy

a la casa de mi amiga mejor para xmas eve

david played the box, after playing light my fire on the piano while max and i kind of tried to sing along. ha! max actually became obsessed with getting everyone else to sing the song. shouting out, 'come on, sing it!' to everyone like if they didn't they might get killed. such intensity. so funny. it was a perform if you want to party. so cute for all these kids, and then for these grown ups who can make some serious delicious music.

we had fun. i am grateful to people who have parties. someday we will have parties again. i know it. i know we will. we will have rocking ragers! our snooty neighbors who hate us for asking them to bring in their barking dogs will call the cops on us i bet. we will rock it out. maybe we will even invite those snootheads cuz i'm getting really into this forgiveness stuff.

anyhow. zhi recently was reading an email over my shoulder as i wrote it. i wrote 'anyhoo' in it. she was like, 'anyhoo?' she said 'don't you mean anyhow?' i was like, 'yes. yes i do. thank you!' and from now on, i doubt i will be writing anyhoo. seeing it through the eyes of my 7 year old put it in perspective and i am just not an 'anyhoo' type writer anymore. love that she woke me up to that! so. ANYHOW. it's been pretty fun and mellow. lot's of sinking in at home beyond those few outings. yay. sinking in at home rocks, when it hasn't happened in a long while. we watched the dark crystal yesterday. awwwwww. thanks to this girl, for reminding me of it the other day when i saw she'd made some gelfling concoction for her cold.

i am torn between scheduling times for the kids to play with friends, and just keeping us all in and going deeper into the home portal. i will find a way to do both perhaps. seek and you shall find.

love.

oh. and thanks to t his girl for helping me make that new header photo the kind of black and white i was wanting. thanks!!

give forgiveness

2011-12-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

i enjoy decaf americanos. and sometimes these days, i enjoy caffeine again too. but what's different for now, is that i don't feel like i am missing out if i have decaf. that is really different. i can really enjoy some decaf drinks!! making progress.

striving to keep it so so simple for these little munchkins.

look how much they like simple. ha. literally they are nuts online there in that photo.

time at a friend's house yesterday made me so inspired to come home and spiff our house a little. not that hers made me feel like mine sucks, but it inspired me. i love that about going to friends' homes that i haven't been to in a while.

can i come to yours next?

it is hard to think of my own home as being inspiring to others, though. too often, i just see it as a pit. i can take good photos of it here and there, but overall, it overwhelms. want to reframe that.

my house is my house. it is full of all aspects of myself and my children and my husband and quite a few pets. all aspects. perfectionism, and chaos. creativity and banality. books, and mud. musical instruments, and dust. a shower that was just cleaned and windows that are a joke at how dirty they are. window cleaning party happening soon.

well. i have been worrying about my boy a lot the past few days. parenting a disabled child is very different from parenting a non-disabled child... however, it is not the only cause for worry, cuz after focusing on max for a while, i then start worrying about my biggest girl. oh her shyness. then olive flips out and acts like the most entitled prima donna ever, and i worry about her. then i start in on myself. will i ever find balance? and then david. is insomnia just his karma? and then my sister. can she please feel and find more support? and then my friends. is she gonna find her dream? is she gonna relax into more honesty? is she gonna ever keep a plan? it's a train. a train of worry that i seem to catch regularly. oh, is it 11am? it's time for the worry train. i think it goes something like that. i have an annual pass to this train. i commute daily from peaceville to worryville. it's my job.

i want to quit my job.

i'm quitting. or could i just get fired? that would be cooler. how could i get myself fired?

i'm stumped. so i guess i'm gonna have to quit.

it's such an unconscious thing i do. getting on that train. and before i wake up and realize i'm on my way, the train is going at top speed and i can't get off. i look around, and everyone seems to be scared shitless. we hate this train. but we keep getting on in our sleep. it is so damn tricky to catch myself in the split second that i step on the train. if i could, i would turn around. i know i would.

don't worry. i just read this post from almost two years ago... don't worry.

i want to embroider that on a pillow too.

anyhoo.

i had a weird dream last night. i somehow lost hold of my cell phone. i was standing near a huge dumpster full of fermenting compost. the phone dropped into it. i looked around wondering who might be able to help me. i was NOT wanting to step into that dumpster. i don't even know where i was. then, out of the blue, my second stepdad appears. this man who i've held a grudge against for some years now. 6 i guess. he made me mad six years ago and i've taken all this time and space away from him in the name of anger mostly. he just jumped right into that dumpster and grabbed my phone so easily, wiped it clean and handed it to me. woah! thank you michael. that was very cool of you.

forgiveness is in the air. a friend recently suggested we start a forgiveness group. i am not in my old women's group anymore. i am needing and wanting to find forgiveness in my heart for the women in that group who i am stuck in some place of anger with right now. i wanted new members to join the group. they did not. i brought it up twice. two different women. over a span of six months or so. each time the idea was rejected. and it was complicated. but also simple. they said no. so in the end, i said i'm leaving if you're seriously not going to reconsider and invite these other women into the group. they said 'ok. it's been nice having you, we hope you go on to find what you're looking for!' and now i'm pissed! i don't want to be pissed. i want to be empathizing and have no qualm. i had a lot to lose. being in a womens' group is not something that you have an opportunity to do very often. i started that one, and i could probably start another, but that's a lot of work and i'm not ready. i have been invited to another just last week. but the chemist in me wonders if it's the right formula. i just want to forgive. i have therapy tomorrow. phew. gonna go straight to work on worry and forgiveness.

i wish i could start a womens' group with some of my blogging womyn friends. how dreamy does that sound folks? can you all move to colorado? we'll meet once a month. in the middle somewhere.

okey dokey. i need a worry mantra and a forgiveness mantra. stat!

those are the bee quiliting squares i won on ebay! maybe the bees can help me with these emotional/spiritual hang ups i'm having. i am loving the bees so much this winter.

chop chop

2011-12-15T11:54:00.000-08:00

oh.

so sorry to be such a downer last time. but you know i will lift myself back up again, right? oh yes. have faith ye dears. have faith in the phoenix that i am. in addition to being a phoenix, i am also just a not~yet~realized song-writer, and a lot of my songs are sad ones. or the mellow kind. not all. but probably half. like lots of song writers, right? nothing wrong with that. in fact, it's quite the opposite. i am so grateful to all the songwriters of sad songs. so so grateful.

this sweet song is making me and a friend i shared it with recently pretty happy, in that weird way that sort-of sad music makes us weird girls happy. i bought their whole album on itunes and i am very glad i did. sometimes david gets in the car and hears music i've been playing, and says it's basically like taking a razor to the wrist. how opposite i feel it is. he likes spazzy jazz though, which i feel is like putting my head in a vice grip while being forced to chew bubble gum, which i do not like the flavor of. so there. we are worlds apart in some ways.

my husband is going back east to visit his parents for two days today. i miss him already. isn't that magic how instantly we can miss someone when they've just left 5 minutes ago. i notice i often do this with the kids. i leave them with a babysitter, and all of a sudden i feel i can't take it how much i miss them, whereas just 1 hour before, i was pulling my hair out.

this morning, as i drove big o to preschool, i look in the rearview mirror, and see her thinking with a sweet look on her face. i asked her what she was thinking about. she said, 'i'm thinking of the wonderful dream i have been having. i've had it lots of times.' i say, 'can you tell me about it, i love wonderful dreams.' she says, 'well, it's not finished yet. so i can't tell you about it.' pause. 'actually it's not ever going to be finished. so can't tell you at all. ' and she is so dreamy as she says this. it gives me goosebumps, and i stand in awe of this child. i believe her. oh yes.

i am challenging myself and some friends to stop using cell phones in any way whatsoever when we are driving. even at red lights. even at red lights. that's right! let's say it again. even at red lights. i like to be radical. even at red lights. red lights are the gateway i feel. and they're making us too ADD. i should speak for myself. they're making me weirdly addicted to the looking at the phone during them. actually i don't know if it's harmful to entertain myself while i'm at a red light, but i just want to feel what it used to feel like to have a little bit slower pace. and this is a start, right? i'm going to ponder what else could slow things down for me....

repeating this mantra to myself, ' slow and steady as the turtle, will get me over the tricky hurdle.' nah. what about, 'i am a beautiful steady goddess.' i would love to say that to myself more.

2 days later....

today i am being fed by this singer, dan mangan. a super good friend gave me his cd. that song i linked to first, is dreamy. are we cool now? are we cool now? i want to embroider that on a pillow. max and i loved this song too on the way to school today. listened to it twice. this summer, we heard it for the first time at the folks fest. the whole crowd was singing how 'robots need love too.' i want to embroider that on a pillow as well. i am a robot sometimes, and i need love when i am for sure. more than anything.

i am seeing how weridly hard it is to not use the cellphone in the car. at stop lights in particular. of course. i knew it would be. it's like my hand just goes to it at every stop. it is weird and disturbing and funny and maddening as i try to stop. i don't want these kids to grow up driving and texting. or talking or reading or whatever. how am i gonna expect they learn it's not the way to drive if i do it ALL THE TIME?

my husband is home again. it was a good short trip for him. i feel like he will be making that trip quite a few times over the next few months, with us joining him a couple of those times i guess. take it as it comes. he did good though. he made up a sweet dinner, and asked that only his siblings came, no sister inlaw, nieces, or granddogs were invited. he made notes of memories and feelings he wanted to share, to start a vibe, and a roll for conversation, for the talk over the meal. he said it was better than he hoped, how they all responded. i find that so beautiful and visionary of him. i know that his parents and his siblings are feeling so much gratitude for that time at the table together.

here are some photos that are making me happy:

in bright light, you see my sun spots. i am vulnerable.

i just had this necklace restrung. i wore it at our wedding. it made me happy to wear it this morning.

for mary. i told her i'd show her my altar if she'd show me hers. so, i am showing you an altar of mine. an altar that reminds me to honor the mountain lion. to keep my fear of her in check with my reverence of her. i tend to fear her more than anything. she has cannabis leaves pressed into her face. i like that. i got her at the oregon country fair. she is magic. right? duh. there is sage. a sweet faerie plant. and a magnet board to put whatever i need on. like a reminder to take a freakin bath when you don't know what else to do. a little cleansing power corner i guess.

a journey to my mom's to saw a sweet fir tree down. i am partial to them for christmas trees.

then the lights went up. birds were let out of their cage.

we think we have a boy turkey now. he has been posturing. i am glad! how interesting it is to watch. he is so sweet. and i think he's a good flyer. it seems that yesterday he flew over the 8 foot fence. i got him back in easily. he seemed nervous when i found him out of the fence away from the rest of his bird family. he was just standing on a big stone up against the fence as close as he could get to it. cutie. i am wondering if he's been trying to mate with the hens though. something fishy seemed to be going on the other day. i think we need to get him a lady turkey.

since the house is built into the earth on the back side, the birds run all over the roof. it is pretty funny.

i planted us an amaryllis last night after the kids were asleep, and david wasn't quite home yet. it was hard for some reason to get myself to plant it. it felt like a chore. but once i touched the dirt, it was so different. what the hell.....resistance to things like that baffles me.

i de~stemmed some dried sage and rosemary from the summer. i saved the stems and put them in that pot and the whole house smelled so good that morning.

olive's bird feeder she made at preschool. it makes me really happy. and those chickadees too.

the couch pee~er. i have totally forgiven her. i actually never held a grudge. david did, but not me. not this time. not that i'm immune to grudges. no way, unfortunately. but in this case, i understood so well. she was sad we were gone and not being met in a comforting enough way by our house sitter. she was scared. and mad. hello. the couch seems to be coming around now. nice.

while in baltimore that last time, when we all went, i had an ebay party one night. i bid on maybe 7 or 8 things. all vintage low priced fabrics. i won a 5. i should show you them all. here is one. it is our new curtain. i am happy by it.

i have hoped the musicians will be bringing more music into our world.

more homemade music.

another little altar. owls. a poisonous frog. a turtle. a tarot book. a faerie plant. a tiny buddha a friend gave my daughter. photos of children. a peek at some leaves in a bag that my soul sister mary sent me to aid in my creative block. thanks again. i appreciated that more than you know.

yay. a mostly gratitude~filled happy post.

up down up down up down. yin yang yang yin. light shadow light shadow. hmmmmm.

12/12 er

2011-12-12T16:02:00.000-08:00

what was i doing that whole month, or was it two, that i couldn't knit. i couldn't pick up the needles. it would have been forcing something and i couldn't do it. and now, that i am knitting again, because i want to so bad i can't not do it, i can't really understand why i couldn't do it before. it makes me cry. why couldn't i? what was i doing instead? i was feeling pain. so much pain it was all i could do to be with it and only it. and that makes me fucking sad. my daughters went a few more months without their sweaters, in their lives, they won't have them as long, because i had to sit and feel some pain. god. that sucks. this life sucks ass so hard sometimes i just feel like i could do something so crazy and bad. it's so sad sometimes.

well. i don't know what to write now. i have so many feelings..they run all over each other and make so many colors and it's so chaotic. not always though, right? but often, i can feel some hard horrible sadness, except for those random times that i laugh out loud, or that i am in that state of pure contemplation that feels so exquisite. or when my kids grab my attention in that fresh way. and it seems when those other feelings vanish, that sadness is just there. so there. my baseline friend sadness. how am i gong to explain this to my kids? i don't want them to have to know sadness like i do. i don't want that. no thank you. fuck this. that's what i say. i want to teach those kids to say FUCK THIS and get up and walk out of energy that is just too much to bear. we can take it for a while and for some reason we seem to have to, but then after that while, like when you realize you've had a parasite sucking on you and you are just discovering it, you can get up, pull that fucker off, and get away from that energy. right? yes.

we just have to do what's good for us and no preaching. david said that to me just after i wrote that all up there. he saw me look up from the computer screen weeping, and i told him what was going through me. he is cool.

2 days later.

today i be 35.

yeehaw. i am psyched.

i am really really blessed and love living. from the eagle's nest, it's all so lovely and magical and seems to almost make sense. shadows aren't scary anymore. they are so simple from up high. i must visit this nest more regularly.

love.

i love. i love. i love. i fear. i grow. i brave. i cower. i speak. i hide. i dance. i beat. i sing. i whisper. i be. crazy. simple. crazy. wild.

yah.

heat

2011-12-06T13:10:00.001-08:00

that picture breaks my heart. i love it so much. david took it this morning.

i like plaiting up zhi's hair.

i want to clean up that corner of toys.

here is my oldest favorite sweater. i bought it right after we got married. some things you just remember. i got it at a department store, which is pretty unlike me. i just fell in love with it. so weird. i wore it for years and years and years. and then it just wore out and shrunk and got a few holes and lost its shape. waaaaaaaa. isn't that what happens to all of us. ha. that just cracked me up.

i cut it up this morning. i used the back and front to make a pillow. a little car pillow. do you know i am short in stature? some of you may not know just how short. i am 5 feet even. driving a car has always been a little stretch for me. often i can get the seat up close enough. but it's come to my attention lately, that my body is not down with my posture when i drive. so i need a driving pillow. and today, i used it for the first time. it felt so funny, and good. i look normal and tall to other drivers. woohoo. i'm as tall as you are. you think!

cute little pillow. i love you old sweater.

and here is david taking ants on a log to new gourmet levels. celery with almond butter and figs.

holy moly. it was so good.

i found this article in the nytimes interesting today. and a little freaky of course. i bounce back and forth between the ant's eye view, and the eagle's eye view. what the hell view is this, that we have such knowledge? the neighboring galaxy's view? the hubble view? the space dragon view? i don't know if i'm cut out for integrating that view? aaa, i am. who am i fooling? i once had a dream, where i was looking from outer space, at the earth. the earth looked back it me. it became a big eyeball. just one big blue eyeball.

i'm going to go buy a new iron now. my iron bit the dust yesterday. it's headed for the largest black hole on earth. the dump. bye old iron. we had such hot times together. it always got so heated between us. we had such burning chemistry. it was intense. love.

ratmice and a couch

2011-12-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

one day last week, i tried to drive her to the bus stop. we slipped all the way down the one mile hill to be there on time. we were. the bus never came. i forgot to check the website. it had alerted us to the morning run being canceled. won't forget that again on a snowy day i bet. we went home, just the two of us. david had already left with max and olive for the morning. it was a school day for olive, and a go-to-work-with-daddy-morning for max. i made some hot tea, preparing for the drive up the mountain this time, for the 4 mile hill up to her school. we got 2 miles up. i did not like what it was feeling like, at all, to drive up that hill on those roads. i called it. i heard a sigh of relief from her, and a huge relaxation come over her body, and mine, the second i said, 'screw this, i'm turning around.' it was a good feeling to call that, and feel her response. i had an idea, as we were headed back down. i remembered the gift my sister had given her for her birthday in july. a felting kit, to make little felted mice. (oh my, look at this one i just saw!! and this one!!!) once home, i asked her if she knew where that was? she did! right under her desk in the abyss of little girl stuff. we parked it by the fire, for one hour, and started poking at wool, with a step by step guide of what to do. it was really divine. after that hour, it was time to go get the boy, have lunch, and then take him to school. once he was at school however, we had 2.5 hours to spend, continuing on with our felting. neither of us could wait to get back at it. we went to the trident of course. a friend came to visit with us while these cuties were being born, and acted as baby ratmouse doula, for she has much experience with needle felting, it turned out. and another friend, the one who just happened to be there to doula both my girls' births, came to the trident at that same time. a little synchronistic convening of birthing helpers. thank goodness for that snow day i called! thank goodness for intuitive gift givers like my sister. thanks goodness for craft~loving little 7 year old girls. and thank goodness for doulas and friends. there are plans to make a slew of ratmice over the weekend, for the siblings and the parents. at home. by the fire. with tea. and cookies.

tis now after the weekend. two more little fuzz balls with long tails were born.

olive's lady mouse wanted to bow for the camera.

at first these were rats. now they are mice, zhi has decided.

look at that sweet face. zhi is so crafty. and morbid sometimes.

these mice get tucked into bed at night by their caretaker. they are very loved and it melts my hard cold heart (heh) to see how sweet she can be.....i am wondering if the mountain moguler might bring some of those other kits for this angel.

ummmm. and here is our new couch. we got it used at the consignment store. so i can blog about it. it's like it was thrifted, right? our old one is gone. gone into a higher state of being i hope. it was too wrecked to even be donated anywhere. it was a very good couch. i'm wanting to honor it properly. it was such a good brown couch.

we were gone for that thanksgiving week. our sensitive cat, lily, apparently didn't like our house sitter this time. she peed on the new couch twice. it's so weird how strong smelling cat pee is. david and i actually fought about this whole happening. he started calling the cats vermin, which he does here and there when they're bugging him. i couldn't stress out about a couch, and the fact that he was, sent me into a crazy place. so i stressed about him stressing about it. it's ok now, between us. and i'm working on the couch. this is my fourth attempt to get the smell out. i used bac-out three times. this time i put a baking soda paste on it. it vacuumed off perfectly. there is still a smell there. but it smells like sweet bac-out and vinegar, which i put on too, i forgot. it's gross, but better than cat pee. it would be cool to air the couch out outside.....but it's snowy.

so, i made a pillow to help cheer things along. it's soft. cashmere soft. good for winter snuggling. while you smell that gross smell. mmmmmmmm.

at least it looks cute.

how crazy that we go and buy a new to us couch and then the cat just about ruins it. david says he'll sit on it once a week, to see how it's coming along. i might just hang a hammock in the living room.

lovers rock

2011-12-02T11:26:00.001-08:00

the value of the personal relationship to all things is that it creates intimacy.... and intimacy creates understanding.... and understanding creates love.

the role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

i disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. i refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. to enter ordinary relationships. i want ecstasy. i am a neurotic - in the sense that i live in my world. i will not adjust myself to the world. i am adjusted to myself.

~~~~anais nin wrote all three of those above quotes

i drew the lovers card yesterday. how weird. or how perfect? david and i have been fighting all morning.

what are the benefits to fighting?

in the end, when the resolve happens, we are closer than we were before the fight.
stuff that was bottled, gets out and has room finally.
hope returns once resolve has occurred
a lot of tears get shed, which is a good thing
deeper relaxation follows the making up
if the fight really was in the interest of truth, both sides feel very heard, which is everything
if you are fighting, you are not alone (this can be argued both ways for sure)
the clearing
the clearing
the clearing

oh my word.

i love that saying.

what are some things i love?

listening to my deepest inner desires, and simply dreaming about them, if that's the closest i can get to them
forgiving
sometimes forgetting, but not always. sometimes remembering is what is necessary to move forward into that new higher state of awareness. you know, so you don't keep doing the same dumb ass thing over and over and over and over and over and over forever.
how despair can turn upside down into hope with a little time, a lot of breaths, and putting one foot in front of the other
the miracle of how i manage to put one foot in front of the other, most of the time, refusing to dwell in the place where i am stuck like a tar baby
how did brer rabbit get unstuck from the tar baby? with cleverness, finding a way to get himself pulled out of it, even by his nemesis. here is a fun read on the tar baby, and more.

random notes:

on the plane ride back from baltimore, a woman wearing a ton, a TON, of perfume sat next to me. i stood up instantly and just stood there leaning forward into david's row. so i could breathe. david said something to her. he said, ' i need to broach a sensitive subject with you. the perfume you are wearing is very strong. would you mind moving?' the lady got so mad. it was surprising how mad she got. but she moved and cussed under her breath as she did. it was awkward, but that awkward discomfort was so much preferred over having to breathe her perfume the whole flight home. i was so grateful to david. i could have spoken up myself, but he just did it for me. guess who sat down next to me next?
the dreamiest kind of person. a young music student, who wrote on music paper and drew those fancy S things at the beginning of the bars and wrote pretty music notes the whole time. aaaaaah. so nice.

if i could do anything right now, i'd go home and sew. but i can't. i have children in school to wait for. and my husband has given me some space for a bit to come and write it out instead. (another benefit to fighting.)

winter is really here. yesterday, on december first, we arrived home after a snowy day out and about, made a fire, made tea for all of us, put the kids in front of a movie on the couch, and then i went and stood as close to the fire as i could, and did some yoga. aaaaaaaaah. very nice. actually before i did all that, i went and stood by the space heater to get a little warmth so i could get myself moving enough to do all those other things. our house heater broke. our house heather broke too. the parts for the heater will be in in a couple weeks. when will the parts for heather be in? sometimes it's cool to break. we do things differently when something breaks. we have to improvise. it is an inconvenience, and it is refreshing. i LOVE refreshing.

we are losing our second grandpa. my dad died over 7 years ago. being in this space with the dying is so god damn trying and intense and beautiful and i am fearing that it is beginning to happen faster than we want it to for him. it is sometimes hard for others to know how to be around those who are losing a loved one. when i find myself in the space of a person who doesn't know how to be around the pain, i want to get far far away from them. they take away from the depth of the pain, and make it trivial. which hurts even more. i had a run in with someone the other day who did this. i hated his response to me saying that david's dad is sick. i wanted to throw up at his stock reply, and then his statement that he had a meeting to be at, so he'd better get a move on. he really did nothing wrong. i might have done the same thing to someone years ago. he hasn't lost a parent. he has no idea. no idea. i had NO idea what this terrain was like before losing my dad. i mean, obviously. how could i have known? it's unfathomable. oddly, weirdly, similar to how unfathomable it is that having a little baby will turn your world as upside down as it does. how unprepared are we all are for becoming parents, no matter how much we prepare? birth and death rock us. ROCK us. there's kind of nothing to do but smile and cry and feel. and choose your company carefully. be with everyone's feelings, and cry when the tears offer themselves. i really wish we could go and live with david's parents for the rest of his dad's time here. i would do that. i don't think it's realistic. i wish it was.

TGIF. actually, TFGIF.

i am not ready for a christmas tree. i'm just not. i want to wait till next weekend. i saw one today at the retirement home we go to for swim class, this christmas tree that reminded me so much of my mawmaw's christmas trees. it made me feel her. how beautiful is that? anything that makes me really feel her is beautiful.

what is this beautiful song that just came on in here?

who likes mustaches? i am noticing them popping up like mushrooms these days. i cannot imagine taking david seriously, EVER, if he had a mustache. i would like him to try it out, just so i can laugh a lot.

my hair is so dirty. my outfit sucks ass today. it looks like something you would pull out from under the bed, cuz that's all you had time for. that's what it is.

i am drinking white pu-erh tea. detoxifying i was told. great.

birth and death are mystifying. as they should be. right? uuuuugh. it's almost too much to think about.

again, TFGIF!!!!!

after reading this, i feel nervous that my words could be received in a shallow way. words are never enough. but what else am i going to type? i want to erase the last sentence. instead i just rewrote it. i could rewrite it forever.

exposure

2011-11-30T08:28:00.001-08:00

i totally freaked out last night after rereading that last post! how hard is it to expose ourselves sometimes? it's crazy hard. and i'm feeling some small part of it hurting so good, a very small part, so i'm gonna move with the feeling, not away from it, but dang is it hard. i went and edited a bunch out of that last post, only to hear from my sister that what i took out was her favorite part. the part about led zeppelin and zhi. what the hell? who are we? what are we doing? turn off my head and my ability to be embarrassed please!

whatever. i'm just glad i have another chance, and hopefully many more, to embarrass the crap out of myself over and over. yep. i do hope so.

anyways. trying to relax the ol' shoulders, the neck.

just had to save the cat. she was hanging on the rail in our living room by her two front paws. max had swatted her away from his computer and she fell like that. so sad! i caught her. and then i made max check in with her and apologize. all is better now. he did a good apology. good boy.

isn't it all just a blur in so many ways.

tis.

and tisn't. but tis.

hi.

i am being a bad girl.

not going to elaborate on how cuz i'm done with embarrassing myself. but it sure feels good to be bad.

max and i carried five buckets of water over to the duck pool this morning. the hoses are all disconnected for the freezing nights, so it's a chore to carry that much water over. but one of the ducks was so dirty, we just had to help him out. it was a lovely chore. i made max do it with me. i have to make my kids do a lot of stuff. that's just how it is here. they do it though. and i don't have to be as wicked and scary as i have in the past to get their asses up and being helpful. wicked and scary.

alrighty then.

last day of november. 13 days left till i'm 35. i'm trying to get myself all together so i feel so good about me on that day. right. no. but i am doing things here and there to boost me up so i feel better about myself. like clearing off my desk. slowly doing that. mailing my sister's package yesterday helped. the post man was so nice. why is it so much cheaper to mail books than clothing? i almost lied, but then i didn't. beeing honest everywhere.

having a birthday is such a huge assessment process now that i'm older. kind-of sucks. did we assess where we were and how successful we felt we were at 6 or 10 or 18 or even 30? not like i do now. get off my back pressure! get off. i'm going to hiss at you! and spray vodka in your eyes. get away.

it won't leave if i do that will it? will it? my shadow doesn't typically respond well to me beating her up. she is mother strong and kicks my ass so much harder when i treat her poorly. do i have to invite pressure into my loving arms? cradle baby pressure? little sweet baby. so scared. uuuugh. that means i have to sit and feel more hard feelings. fine. for two minutes. i'm going to do this. cradle baby pressure.

bye. love. then i'm going to get back into being bad.

bee honest

2011-11-29T12:06:00.001-08:00

hello.

here i show off how i almost opened up one of the hives the day after we got home. it was warm! so warm, that the other hive was buzzing all around. they scored the sunnier side of the bee yard.

(that bunch of sage there is their entrance reducer for the winter.)
see. they are so jazzed i guess. tons of flying bees outside that hive. but not the other one. it was clearly not getting any sun though. just 5 feet over, and it's a different world. in the summer though, they are happier i think. that hive in the shade, did much less bearding on those hottest days. it'll be interesting to watch and see the differences in these two hives and their placements with regard to the sun. assuming i keep them as they are. i am pondering moving them a bit. going to ask the bee guardian teachers about my idea of moving them though, before i do it.

so i went in and thought i was going to move that one comb, that i posted about last time, how i gave it from one hive to the other. i need to move it in closer to the middle of the hive so the bees don't have to travel so far to get to it on the coldest days. sweet things, don't want to have to move very far. god do i relate. i really feel i might be a bee in a human body. it's hard to feel that way. and magical you can imagine at times, but dang, this human world and the way it's set up. all the driving. anyhoo, 'i'm making the best of the situation, before i finally go insane.' (ha! i just took the words right out of the song from layla that is playing here right now, they fit too well.)....

well, i went in to check on this hive and had intentions of moving that one bar up in to the middle more. like my outfit? my pjays, tucked into socks, in cowgirl boots. nice.

i'm not sure what i was showing david here.

i loosened up the top bars, cuz you know the bees seal them in pretty well with propolis. such good insulators.

this is when it hit me, it was not the day to do this. i pulled up a couple bars an inch or so and just peeked in. they were active in there. 4 cute cute ladies crawled out on the top of the bar, looked around a sec, then flew back in through the front entrance pretty quickly. something came over me and told me this was not to be done today. i was going to attempt this maneuver without my usual bee suit and hood on. i went into it really feeling it. really feeling at one with the bees. i don't know if it was me or them, though, but it became so clear, it wasn't the right time after that small peek in. i shall wait for the next sunny day > 65 degrees. david was nice and tried really hard to be patient with me as photographer. i pulled him away from some other thing he was doing. he whined a lot, but he did it. ha. thanks d. i like the photos you took.

here's one pic from baltimore. cousins. i love the cousin connection now that they're older. it's so easy and fluid. there are some real bonuses to these children growing up. i have to remember that as i grieve their babyhoods being a thing of the past. yah. to be alive is to grieve every other second or so, right?

and those in between seconds, rejoice. hallelujah. look how beautiful everything is right now. how perfectly extreme it all is. i am about to be on the moon. it's all very extreme today. my poor sister. i just mailed her a package and the letter in it might make her worry for me. or laugh. i don't know. but don't worry, cbear, ok? i just vented. i've noticed, when reading back through this blog how much i vent on here. it is embarrassing. but you know, venting though writing is maybe what keeps me from going insane. i mean, if i'm gonna be pissed and blue, to 'make the best of the situation, before i finally go insane', that would mean sitting down and writing it out. (layla again). that's my way anyways. but reading back on here, the number of times i have vented and freaked and let it all hang out, really made me shudder. i don't know what to do. we'll see. at least i'm aware of how often i do that now, though. i mean, i knew i did that, i just never really realized how often i did it. i'm just so fired up when i'm angry and sad, that's when i have energy to write. poor you guys. my dear friends. poor sister. i hope you just laugh, or maybe cry when you read my letter. crying is so good. i cried today and felt very different afterwards. thank god for that. thank god for salt water.

a good friend sent me a link to an inspiring talk this morning. it arrived in my email box, just after i typed out that crazy letter to my sister listing all the things i hate. i was in such a mental box, it really felt like my head was in a box of metal, hating every living breath. i played the talk right away. it was so inspired and perfectly suited for my energy. it was medicine. the best kind of medicine. soul medicine. i want to finish listening to it, and then i'll link to it next time maybe. i'm just saying this because, i love the timing of stuff like that. i love the way people reach out to help each other. the simple easy ways we help each other. often just by thinking about each other. without forcing it, but just because we can't help it. i love it. i often wonder if fairies are involved.

we came home from our trip and baked off some of that apple crisp, from the wild apples growing behind our house. magical.

last night, olive unearthed this package of tracing paper i'd bought so long ago, i don't even really remember buying it, and the staggered trio of my womb, set off on a grand adventure discovering the magic of tracing paper. olive was just fascinated by this paper that was see~through, when she came to show me what she'd found. she was holding it like it was china. it was sweet.

so. olive chose to trace that book. she has no idea what it really says. their grandpa read it to them once, cuz david and i slipped it into the reading pile as a trick for him. he rolled with it, while chuckling to himself, and improvised. sweet man. that's a funny picture though. olive tracing that book cover. all on her own. i had nothing to do with it, except appreciating the humor of it all. humor on top of humor. ha. i'll take humor on top of humor any time.

the kids watch a lot of pink panther cartoons lately. and then humm the song. david ordered the sheet music and has been playing it himself to add to the ambience. he is wanting to teach a child to play it. but he isn't pushing. we are both waiting and hoping these kids show some interest in playing music. are you guys freaking ready to learn to play an instrument yet? ok. your dad won't, cuz he says that is not a good way to be introduced to music, but i am going to force you into music lessons soon, so please, just come on and say you want it! nah, i don't know if i'd force it. i really should just force myself back into guitar lessons, and play all the god damn time, and then david would play more, and then the kids would be begging to play too, cuz they just want to be involved in whatever juiciness is flowing in the moment. why don't i just do that? tell me, why don't i? why do i not do the things that are so good for me? that is a very good question. WHY?

i love how zhi reads. it's awesome. she loves it.

and so. the words are beginning to return. today anyways. nothing to do but be honest here. the truth does set us free. yes it does. biggest cliche in all the world perhaps, but it is true, right? i've felt very free, in an odd way, though the past month or so, going into my personal darkness. maybe because i was honest about it. here and in my personal life. and i was met with nothing but love. i sought out support. we went to therapy so david would not be freaked out by my latest descent, and it's been fine. i followed my intuition and read a novel, and started another. i put aside all pressure to be a crafty inspired homemaker and tended to my soul. pressure. it's such a tricky force. sometimes it's necessary to push us through some precipice, but other times, it's incredibly forceful and inappropriate. it's up to us know which kind of situation we're in. i feel like the way i know which situation i am in is to check in with how the pressure feels. if it fucking sucks through and through, it's probably not the right time for pressure like that. it's probably some sort of self-inflicted ego pressure. if some part of it, any part of it, feels kind of good though, like it hurts~so~good, then it's a good pressure. it's a pressure that is very likely pushing me into a higher state of awareness. that's my formula for today. that's my way of avoiding all unnecessary pain. and my way of sneaking in a link to see john mellencamp thrust himself. ha. you have to watch that link through minute 1 at least. and then reenact it and sing it to your children later today. k? i keep looking around here in the trident completely paranoid someone can here that song playing through my headphones.

love. i drank white tea. i am able to have a little tea here and there. i think. we'll see. my body will bee honest. that is some truth.

the flower seekers

2011-11-23T13:39:00.001-08:00

here is what i did. sometime in july, i removed a bar with honeycomb from the first swarm's hive. the one on the right. the hive was full. i had to. i saved it however, and did not process it.

in october, on the very last warm day before our first snow, i gave our two hives their insulating panels. before i did that, though, i put that built out honey comb, into our second swarm's hive. that swarm came to us later in the season and their hive might not have been full enough to feed them through the winter properly. so their neighboring hive gifted them. how sweet they are.

it's only half full of honey comb. a little brood there in the middle. but that's cool. it's perfect honey. we tasted it.

i am so grateful for these bees. before we left on our trip out east, i went to the hives and gave them a gentle tap. i just wanted to say bye, and hear them buzz a little. just to check in. you know, like how you check to make sure your baby is breathing when asleep. each hive gave me a sweet buzz, just loud enough to hear with my ear up to the wood. i hope they are enjoying their restful months. in that eery, etherial, dreamy space of this time of year in the northern hemisphere. i hope we all are tapping into that space, as we go deeper and deeper into the darkness. the time of year i was born into. in some ways, i am more comfortable, oddly, in these dark seasons. so weird. they feel like home. spring and summer, i feel like a visitor, on a splendid blissful holiday. a holiday i look forward to all fall and winter long. but i really do feel at home now, with the trees bare, my depression front and center, asking me to chill out and cozy up under the shelter of our human hive. this depression, for me, my personal unique manifestation of it, is seeming to point me in a specific direction. i am listening this year like i haven't before. it is fucking hard to sit and let go, so that all the feelings can finally flood in. once i do, i am finding i am not afraid of the slumber. the winter. the dark. oh it's so f'd. the resistance i have to stopping. it's this culture, i am sure of it. it doesn't stop for winter. no mam. well, i must resist that. i am resisting what is not me, and embracing what is me. i am eating honey, and staying warm next to my mates. and you know, our house is kind-of in the same shape as those bee hives. pretty much.

i love.

i love.

i love.

look what i just bid on.

ha!

if anything, this weird holiday is cool for waking up the gratitude in us. i just say, let's take it deeper. somehow, take it deeper.

roots

2011-11-17T12:38:00.001-08:00

the root of happiness.

what is it?

something about not resisting. because resisting is the root of suffering.

i can be a good resister. like i can win contests in this category. no wonder i fall down into the pits of depression like i do.

but still, depression will come for me like a cycle, i predict, no matter how close to enlightenment i get. HOWEVER! the less i resist it, the lighter it is. then i can mess around in the fodder it has to offer. the fruits of depression. there are some.

this morning, max and i sat together at the table. we chopped the tiniest apples up, from the sweet tough trees behind our house that the girls and i picked a while ago, which stored very nicely in the cellar up till now, into pieces for some pies. we, meaning, i, listened to a pema chodron teaching on fearlessness while we knifed. it was some kind of peaceful bliss. max moved on after 20 minutes, and then came back and did some writing work as i continues on the chopping block. right at the end of the 80 minute cd, he declared we were listening to some boring stuff, and can we please change it. ha. how'd he make it that long? makes me laugh what i put my kids through sometimes. (like demanding they wear corduroy on a random day just cuz i say. haha!) i did change it. we listened to some music from my magical swap partner. and as it happens, she got her package from me. yesterday. what the heck happened there? that's about a month in transit. i was sure the box was confiscated cuz i sent some dried sage. but no, yay!!! maybe soon she'll post on it and you can see some of what i sent her way. i'd just begun putting together her second box. you almost got two there girl!

(shoot! i just realized i forgot about making vinegar from the scraps! poo. i threw them out for the birds.)

here's a good article that relays some of what i was listening to this morning. if only i did a practice like this daily. hmmmmmmmm.

look how much turkey girl has grown.....so sweet.

cleared out the freezer of some old peas. the birds and the rats were very into them.

david yelled out the door this morning, to me in the chicken yard, 'where are olive's monkey socks?' like it was a serious thing, but i could tell, he was aware at the same time, of the hilarity of this question, and it was a funny moment that stopped me, and made me laugh. i knew where they were, like all good moms with virgo playing heavily. olive was relieved. it was not gonna do to have any other socks today.

you know, i've been in a state for a while now. a reflective state. at first it was depressing. but then it became rich. rich with light and weight and me and slowness. a big part of this state, was about me not wanting to make anything. i all of a sudden was completely averse to knitting. to writing. to putting any energy out. i saw how much pressure i put on myself to put out. why? because often, putting out brings me joy. i put pressure on myself to find the joy! taking the pressure off, mostly i think, by slowing down and living without caffeine, which for me, is just ONE of my personal ways of resisting myself and my world, was cool. it was sad too. it's sad to not be able to meet my highest dreamiest expectations of myself. but by stopping activities that had pressure infused into them, i started to feel myself in this way that has been pretty nice. i'm not made of pure sadness. no. but i am tuned into a lot of sadness. and then around the corner comes a child, or a funny husband, or a sister or friend on the phone, or a caring mom/grandma, or a friend to have tea with, or a fun friend who introduces me to a fun new photo app, or a good song on the radio, or another. along come these butterflies of energetic change, and i feel happy. it's the nature of the game, right? my personal game anyways. don't resist the sadness, and then miss butterfly is bound to appear sooner or later.

and those songs i searched to link to, led me to this hilarity. had me crackin up out loud in the trident. aftershocks even. yikes.

well. that was kind of nice. to sit here and mess around with myself and some words.

we are off to baltimore in a couple days. maybe i'll check in from there.....

love.

hello from the land of no internal inspiration

2011-11-11T08:50:00.001-08:00

i'm reading one of zadie smith's books. i googled her to learn more about her, and found this list she made. i like it a lot. i'm fillin up my inspiration reservoir with others' creative works. i guess? i'm hoping that's how it works.

i made my whole little family wear corduroy friday. it wasn't easy. not for olive anyways. she was so mad! she did it though, for me, and then took the dress right off. ha. zhi keeps talking about how this day won't happen again for 100 years. but, she is wearing that corduroy jacket again today. hmmm.

being off of caffeine like this is insane. i haven't gone without tea, some kind of caffeinated tea, in so so long. pretty much since max's surgery. and that was such an altered time i didn't have time to sit and feel myself really. well i am now. sitting and feeling. that is what i am doing.

it is so cute to me that max will watch fairy movies with the girls. and he enjoys himself. such an open mind! ha. i just need to get the husband on board now with watching some girly movies with me. now that my sister is in brooklyn, i don't see girly movies anymore. miss. gotta change that.

we got a new couch. i look forward to posting about it next time. david actually spotted it in the furniture consignment shop as he walked to the bank the other day. so we said good bye to our old love, big brown. our first couch. that was hard. but it feels good to have this fresh change. new color. style. it has a sanguine feeling, and color too. (zadie smith is teaching me lots of new words. david says i must not have gone to junior high. wah. i did. and i could have kicked his butt in math. but vocabulary, i totally admit i didn't even try. well, now i am. you may just need your dictionary here and there, if and when i get that sweet writing bug again.) we can still get cozy just fine on new snaguine. it's a lot smaller. we need a couple cozy chairs maybe? so we can all cozily sit by the fire. they will come eventually.

serious

2011-11-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

we really need to step it up people. on our corduroy wearing. of course. biggest holiday ever for corduroy is this friday. get it together!

okay?

okay.

yay saturdays

2011-11-05T16:19:00.000-07:00

here is something cool. i made this soup last night. it is hot pink. so many beets. the girls love it. even the girlfriend that came over to play this morning gobbled. it. up. yeah they were watching cartoons while they ate it, but last night my kids were not watching cartoons and they kept coming to me asking for me to just feed them like babies this soup. i really think a big part of it has to do with the color. and zhi is asking me what the parts in it that are cabbage are. she says she loves whatever it is.

olive told me yesterday, that 'sometimes, mom, there are really REALLY big waves in the ocean.' i said, 'yeah! .....................what's got you thinking about that?' she says, 'oh, it's just this brain. it's SOOOOOOOOOO smart.'

i said, 'yeah. it REALLY is.'

yay. for saturdays.

2011-11-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

some things. a list. to keep it simple and fun. i have lost my love connection with writing. it's horrible. and sad. it's like a death happened and i didn't even know it. it's like i'm pulling at something to come back to me and it won't, it can't. maybe i'm looking back instead of forward. oh well. i think i may need to just read. read read read for a while. that will for sure inspire and recharge me. oh yes. i'm excited to do just that. i've got my eye on a few books in particular. i'll maybe just use this space for photos and simple words and for the time being. light fun stuff. oh that would so not be my style. but it may just be a new thing i do. change. i had the change card in a tarot reading yesterday.

chamomile tea can be weirdly jazzy. i think i'm turning into a bee. just naturally buzzy. and fuzzy. and loud when i need to be. not sure.

so a list. of loves with bullets.

resting
eating
bed
handsome men
earrings
good fathers
role models
grandmas who get excited to see their grandchildren
baths
breathers
people who decorate their yards like crazy for trick or treaters
good friends to trick or treat with
slowed down mind
books

ok. here i go. over and out. my words are all dried up. but my photos are not.

love.

and may the force be with us all.

2011-10-29T17:01:00.000-07:00

go away.

when i'm grumpy, that's what i say. or what i want to say. being a good role model sucks sometimes.

i have been so grumpy. on and off. hard times.

i'm drinking chamomile tea. in the middle of the day. i can't really do any caffeine anymore. not even freaking yerba mate. it all gives me the shakes. the interesting thing is, i feel alert after this chamomile. i feel irritated by the energy in the tea house today. oh. it's halloween energy. i just want to be in retreat energy. not this energy. guess i need to get with it. deep breath. ok. not gonna resist all this weirdness. weird weird weird weirdness. i know the veils are thinner, and i swear i can feel my dad tickling me, making me lighten up and smile. ok. i get it. thanks. that does feel better. freaking chamomile. it's good. but it's not earl grey. i am changing. getting more and more sensitive. alcohol too. i can hardly take it. well. what can i do? but listen to the old bod. well, some kinds of alcohol. vodka and me can still be friends. phew.

i got around to sewing up some qyoot pants today. for miss zhi. i've cleared out the summer clothes from their drawers and there's a little room for some more. she actually likes them. so much that she wouldn't let me hem them. she wouldn't take them off. that's a bullseye! how lucky i feel. while i was working on them, she was hanging out typing on the type writer. one of the notes she wrote me said, 'look how lily looks so qyoot.' one of the cats, was sitting in the golden chair.....lounging. i used a pattern, a burda pajama pattern for these. i didn't have enough of the red velvet, so the racing stripe entered. that happens a lot to me. i'm destined to make pants with the side stripe. the velvet and the corduroy stripe were both thrifted. the pockets are some fabric, echino, that my mom gave me a while ago...been using that lately here and there. i elasticized the top of the pockets, and i'm glad i did.
they look qyoot. so. that was cool. i'm not gonna make the nov. 1st deadline with the sweaters. i keep choosing to do other stuff. my choice. i'm giving myself an extension. to nov. 15th. ha.

so. i got a package from a rad girl in ireland.
i can't even believe how lucky i got with my swap partner. i'm in love. first off, the music she sent me was like a miracle on a hard sad night as david and i processed some news we got about his dad's health. this music she sent, made by a friend of hers, was just so sweet and helpful to our wrecked hearts and minds. it's like it helped us to take some breaths or something. to relax our frames. oy. what a journey. i don't know what to say. but thanks. thanks so much sadhbh, my new gaelic friend.

but there was so much more......

like that sun catcher. it's now hanging in a living room window. zhi knew right where it wanted to go.

some delicious red currant jelly made by her parents from their land. we had a fun time having on toast for a snack the other night. such fun.
some tea, and those sweet strawberries. i'm gonna drink that tea, and get shaky, and just go with the energy and dance. that may be all that's happening. i'm just at a crossroads with learning how to work with lots of energy. in a new, more evolved, body based way. i just can't be so mental anymore.

this card, that she made, makes me happy. it means, good luck. she sent 5 cards from her own card business to me. i love them all so much. and i love that they are in gaelic.

and it makes me nervous.....i sent her a horse shoe. that's neat huh? we really were so in synch with this process. mary, you were tapped in when you paired us up! but, i'm nervous that she's not gonna get my package. oh. please get to her!! i may have sent some things i wasn't supposed to. oooooopsie. we'll see.......if so, i will wax on and wax off again, and feel lucky that i get to send her another round of love. cuz that's what this is.

and she was just all around so thoughtful.

i love her. and i love that i got to taste ireland. and i will continue to for a while!

thanks so much new friend.

i spotted this tin at a thrift store yesterday. it wasn't for sale! how weird. it said nfs on it. it's too cool for school i guess. it's funny, how i have such a relationship with that word, macaroni, now, because of this blog, and because of that girl below. she kind-of named it. i chose the word light. she told me when she was 2 years old, it also wanted to be called macaroni, when i asked her to help me name it. it was her favorite word. i saw that tin, and i swear it made my heart flutter. that word.

i've been playing along with another good blogging friend, courtney, this month, playing a umm, photo challenge thing. is that what it's called? a daily posting on flickr. i chose this one below for today's theme of home. home. sometimes it's so divinely cozy. i have lots of other photos on my flickr page too, but the ones that are labeled with a one word title are the ones for this little challenge. i want to do another one. it's been a way to sit and breathe for a moment or two every day, or every other day if have to do a make up cuz i skipped a day, and just have a simple quick artistic moment with some photos and one word.

but maybe this one below is better...

or this one?

i'm putting up three pictures of home today. breakin the rules.

control freak

2011-10-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

a swap package was just sent off to ireland. woohoo. i don't even know how late i was on the deadline. we both decided, me and my swap partner, to be lax about it and i'm so glad. cuz i had a magic moment involving that coin up there, and the final moments of putting this little gift from colorado all together into its box. these are just some peeks. can't show anymore cuz i don't want to ruin the surprise for my new friend in ireland.

girls. so curious!!

boys. always with their freaking tongues hanging out. they are so obvious! girls are just innately cooler. well, we like to act that way. but this is why i love boys so much. boy energy is in your face, sweet, and kind-of trustworthy. except for all that sowing the seeds all over the place stuff. but as far openness goes, aren't boys typically more open?

maybe i don't know what i'm talking about. generalizing is tricky. expressing any opinion is tricky for me. opinions can be so full of projections. project (pro~ject). or project (praw~ject). it just dawned on me the other day that these two words are spelled the same way and i am wondering about how they might be related. here's a stab: when we project ourselves all over the world we know and see, it's like doing a project. you might as well be making a quilt. and hopefully be aware that you are making a quilt with your sweet psyche's grip on labeling everything it comes across in relation to yourself. what a joke.

speaking of jokes.

what did one leaf say to the other?

david answered, 'leaf me alone.'

i said, 'how's it hangin?'

the answer in the joke book is, 'have a great fall!'

i have been reading jokes to the people at breakfast some mornings. it's good fun. at bed time. at breakfast. at lunch. it would be cool to become the joke queen someday. i haven't even ventured into dirty adult jokes, but i am getting ready to, i think.

stepping back. it's nice to step back and question my opinions. free the grip of the mind. i wish i had a key and i could just do this at will. unlock the grip of the ego. oh wouldn't it be lovely. doing things like plunging the toilet, walking the neighborhood slowly, putting the dishes away slowly, giving packages to others, reading jokes, vacuuming under the bed, and other things i don't typically feel inclined to do, but i sometimes just sort-of force myself to do, are sort-of like keys to unlocking the grip. it almost seems like if i am resisting doing something, like i really did not want to plunge that toilet yesterday, then that is often a sure sign that if i did it, i would come into closer contact with my SELF. is that annoying or what? it is so weird! makes me shake my head with how much i don't understand the point of it all. i did plunge the toilet. and felt sort-of artemis like afterward.

something about this whole predicament is really unsettling. unsettling my desire for control. that's maybe the point.

open

2011-10-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

this morn. a day when both sisters are at school in the morning, and max and i have some time to do some work together. he writes in his journal. cuz i make him. but he goes along with it just fine. oh, i forgot to make him wear his glasses! oops. he is writing about going to work with his dad at the bakery this morning. we had about half an hour till david was ready for him. we found a nice picnic table, that max asked so funnily, 'is this just a deserted table in the middle of nowhere?' that cracked me up. it was right downtown, just not near a playground, but sitting in this open space block park area, so i can see why he thought it was a little strange. he wrote in his journal 'max and dad werk at the bakery. max makes cookies. me and dad werk on the laptops. then me and dad make mor cookies.'

one of two sweaters i'm challenging myself to finish by november 1. i feel like squealing with nervous excitement in response to a deadline like that. it's the olearia sweater, that i learned about a while ago from tania.
i've been centimetering along all spring and summer, and now, i am inching. i cast on one for big o and one for big z at the same time, so they'd be done at the same time, and not have any hassle that way with jealousy. max is cool, he trusts he will get one next, and has no worries about it. ha. well, his will be a different pattern. i'm thinking hoodie. maybe something like this? if anyone has a good suggestion for an awesome hoodie pattern, please tell!

how sweet is that happy face?

i took this one from outside. looking in through the window. i would have liked to stay and watch them together the whole time, but that would have made max feel like he was performing, which makes him act horrendously dorkish, so i chose not to. he has been counting the days till today, tuesday, when he gets to go help dad at werk in the morning. this is something that i know has happened because of the work david and i have been doing in therapy. we are opening our hearts, kind-of centimetering along, and choosing to do things that matter to the heart, not the mind. this is such an opening for david. not that he's an unfeeling guy. not at all. but this is taking a step back, taking things down a notch, speedwise, and putting the child's wishes first. it feels good. we had our second therapy session last week. follow ups are really important for changing patterns. i could feel us slipping out of the inspired place we'd been in the first two weeks after the first appointment. the hearts were struggling to lead and the minds got so loud again. refresh. it's just the nature of being human with this giant brain or something. we are not simply instinctual. i sometimes wish we were. but not really i guess. being human brings with it so many fun possibilities. we do get to be instinctual. and so much more. like we get to bake and knit. and write and photograph. and talk and argue. and laugh crazy loud laughs. and cry softly. or hugely. and play house. and make music. and listen to music. and worry about birth control. that one is such a cluster for me these days. i do envy those sweet wild animals who never think twice, or once!, about birth control. still pondering what to do till we feel ready to do something permanent. copper iud and me were not buds. i took the pill when i was a young young woman. i might try that again. scary! anyhoo. being human! learning how to do so many things with as much grace and forgiveness and heart as possible. i am really inspired to not fear birth control. i want to be able to tell my girls that something worked well for me, besides having babies and then daddy getting a vasectomy. you know?

well.

the car is fixed. thank you. i've been getting up a little bit earlier. it is helping. i would like to get up even earlier.

and i need to get olive another pair of shoes, or two? the child has a shoe fetish. i bring her to the thrift store, and that's all she wants. more shoes. she will stare at all the shoes and choose new shoes over toys everytime. and STILL will feel that she does not have the right pair of shoes for her outfit in the morning. it is maddening when we are trying to get out the door, and she is just sitting there pouting because she doesn't feel like any of her shoes are quite right. today she finally got out the door, because i succumbed and allowed her to wear her high heeled red sparkly dorothy shoes to school. i was saying no, cuz they're not good for running and climbing, and she has a new love of climbing the trees at school. but what else could i do? she wasn't gonna leave. i guess it just wasn't a tree climbing kind of day. i fully understand. i really do. the other day i went out to the car three times, only to go back to the house three times, to change my outfit. it just wasn't feeling right. i guess it's striking me as odd, though, for a four year old to be having issues like this. culture.

unless we are hiking. the child refused to wear any kind of shoes on our last hike. look at that trail. very rocky. she never complained once. she was so comfortable and actually psyched to be barefoot. she led the pack and went the furthest. david had to finally tell her it was time to turn around, cuz he feared he'd have to carry her back at some point. but no. she walked all over that mountain barefoot. so funny her shoe issues.

(rock photo by zhi)

her sister however, has gone off in another direction. she will only wear sneakers. she LOVES sneakers. wearing a dress these days, is an anomaly. mastering the monkey bars is all that matters. traction and strength is what zhi is about right now. standing back and watching these kids grow and go through phases is so interesting. letting go of control and judgement and fear about what it all means (like, for instance, i can fret about wondering if zhi is losing touch with her feminine strength and is that something i need to work on keeping alive within her? should we be painting our nails more often?), is so liberating and honestly feels like flying. and i have done a bit of flying, in my dreams, so i know what i'm saying here. usually in my dreams, i don't fly by will though. the wind takes me and then i go with it. rarely do i go with it without huge fright. but i have. zhi has many times. she flies in her dreams regularly.

i had a dream the other night that some neighbor friends of ours came over to our house. they knocked at the door. bill had a wrench in his hand. elizabeth was standing beside him. they were both shivering. they told us their heater broke and that bill just couldn't get it working again. he was refusing to let anyone else fix it. i'm not sure what they wanted from us, maybe just some company, or a place to warm up. or maybe some advice on how to fix it? that was the extent of the dream, though. they looked like that famous farming couple that stands together steadily with the pitchfork in hand. just with a wrench and the shivers instead.

i told david the dream when i woke up, and we both thought it was the funniest thing, and laughed like crazy for a few minutes. i'm not sure why. morning mind space is open and maybe i told the dream just right, and it led to such good laughter. thanks bill and elizabeth for that good laugh.

oh! the fruitbats are my new favorite band. i heard a song on the radio the other day, and actually called the radio station once it was over to ask what it was. i haven't done that in my whole life. i usually wait for them to say what they played, or i write down a note to remember to go online and check the playlist later. the fruitbats. i don't know where i've been. but i'm glad i'm here now with their beautiful awkward lyrics and sounds. this is the song that i heard on the radio. i also love this one.

and this one. it took me six listens before it dawned on me what those cool lyrics are talking about. i can be so slow sometimes is is disturbing. 'when you love somebody and bite your tongue all you get is a mouth full of blood.' seriously. one of the truest things i've ever heard.

and for fun, cuz i'm tooling around on you tube now and did an ani search. this song reminded me of the work david and i are doing with max right now. looking for the overlap. searching for where both hearts, or all three, or all five overlap and feel each other. love. i've never listened to it and heard it in this way before.

alrighty then.

2011-10-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

written thursday morning:

olive took this portrait of me yesterday. i like it. she was telling me to smile. i told her to make me smile. she did. she is very good at that. and all the rest too.

hanging out together while max is at school is a regular activity for us. and we are often out here in the backyard patio space of the trident. it is more and more like a little paradise as time goes by. new cool features and details are attended to back there. i love evolving spaces. i want to spend some time evolving our home space.

but if i never get to that, whatever. i will hopefully still be finding time to kiss like this. she is a kisser. mmmmmmmm. kisssssssssssss. we kiss sometimes for a solid minute. because she wants to. and i do too, of course.

i wrecked our car a little this morning. i was rushing. i was stupid and rushing and rushing and rushing and rushing and rushing makes people do stupid things. i backed out of the driveway, while max's door was still open, and it caught the tree by the driveway. it was that metal crunching sound that is never really a good sound. i was still so caught up in my rushing, that i said a quick cuss word, and then told max to try and shut it so we could make the bus on time. ha. he tried to, sweet boy. it wouldn't close. not even a little bit.

david has already used his many resources as a business man and found me a good silver used door that matches the car, for the most part, and it'll be fixed soon. david was mad at me, but only for a minute. then he just let it go. and jokingly sent me a photo of a car like his with a big gashed up dent in the side. i didn't know it was a joke at first. but i figured, knowing him. joking. the theme of the month. i want to name our next pet joker.

someone could have been hurt though. i mean, i knew max was seated in the car. i knew he was all the way in. i told him to shut his door. he was just moving slower than i realized. i have to slow down. humbled. really humbled by this. put in my place. i got spanked. sweet tree. sweet boy. crazy woman. sweet sister up front. the kids thought it was quite exciting actually. they couldn't stop giggling. makes me laugh now.

as we were visiting this camel yesterday, the day before i wrecked the door, he lives near my mom, and she suggested we come pay him a visit cuz he's so cool, i was tapping into the pace of his life. big animals often make me do that. their deep eyes. life is

so

much

slower

for them.

breathe.

this sweet animal made us all smile for a nice long time. he's a baby. bigger than the horse who is big, and still just a baby boy. max came home and got out his giant bag of plastic animal figures which he has about 80 of, got out the camel and one of the horses, and carried them around with him for the evening. (and actually he's still carrying them around with him today, 2 days later.) god. everyone is so cool. but me.

i know that's not really true. but sometimes it feels like that. the kids don't run around rushing me. why do i do that to them? to myself. i mean, i know why. but i need to question this. the sound of crunching car metal isn't something i want to forget without stopping to understand its message.

oh. this world. it crossed my mind this morning that homeschooling families don't have to rush into a car every morning. the moms don't have to be stupid and nuts and wreck the cars. i am jealous.

i'm going to start waking up earlier, so we have some kush in our mornings. and so i'll have to go to bed earlier. boo hoo.

knock knock.

who's there?

boo.

boo hoo?

don't cry. it's only a joke.

zhi likes that one lately.

oh. i am so irritated. often i am irritated. i am going to see a homeopath in a bit to see if she can come up with a remedy for me that will help get me healing in a whole way.

dear pan and aphrodite.

i want some help.

we are here! we want to help. tell us what you want help with.

i want help with finding balance. and abundance. a slower more satisfying pace, where i don't feel like i look back on my days only to realize i was just going through the motions. a pace where i feel like i am here, and finding the altar so many times a day. and more than that. i really want to make an altar too. to have a solid sense of somewhere i can put stuff that's symbolizing the soul work i do. i want to have a sense of myself that feels deep and knowing and does not cower or question itself just as a habit. i want to be a little more like those animals. strong. slow. knowing who i am and what i am here to do. what am i here to do? i feel like if i just knew that, i'd relax more and be more of myself.

ganesh. he can help you with this. that's the first message for you. let's look into the question of what you are here to do. okay? you are here to evolve. and evolving is work. it doesn't have to be so hard though. it's not going to be easy all the time, but it could be more enjoyable much of the time. and it could certainly happen even more efficiently at a slower pace. your personal evolution is so very unique to you of course. your desire to bring humor into daily experience is so great. it is helping you to release some rigidity. helping you to have a more forgiving heart. helping you to trust that you don't need to figure everything out in the ego. we love you just the way you are. and we love that you want to work on yourself, that you know in your soul that the way you are is not fixed. let's talk about slowing down.

okay. but first, let me ask something. if i wake up earlier, i will probably get less sleep. i just will. will that be a bad choice?

hmmmm. no. your body is such a strong guide for you. if you begin to wake up earlier, your body will simply ask you go to sleep at night when it's time.

remind me why i have this insanely loud fast talking ego. why? why am i so willing to listen to it so often?

it's just a measure of your fear. in fear, ego talks loudest to protect you from whatever you are fearing. in love, heart is easy to hear. the ego makes you have to consciously choose to bring the heart into play, which is a good good exercise.

honestly, i am sort-of hating that exercise. it's so uncomfortable to breathe sometimes. so much panic, so much fear can make simple breathing so intense. why so much fear.

why so much fear? why so much fear? mostly past trauma. the homeopath you are going to see is going to help with this. seeing the bigger picture at play is her specialty. we are done now. put a link to some song you like at the end of your post, and then be done with this one.

thank you pan and aphrodite.

this song/soundtrack is what me and the kids were listening to this afternoon. it makes me cry everytime almost. i can't seem to play it loud enough. such magic. cry!!!

rippling

2011-10-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

oh my. sometimes i get myself in a circle. of wondering. and fear. i am in it. it is a circle that eventually radiates out, like i threw a rock in a pond. it goes out and touches all the layers of me. all 899 of them. as it goes out, the fear seems to go away. but at first! it's so intense. ouch.

i wonder why i blog. sometimes it seems like i really don't know why, cuz as fun and sweet as it can be, it is hard too sometimes. opening the blogging door is asking to be seen. and i don't like to lie. so i show a lot. and maybe each time i show something new, i get into a circle of fear. it is so uncomfortable. and then, i notice, cuz this has happened before so many times, that as the circle gets bigger, i start to relax and then i get comfortable again for while, until i throw another rock in the pond. i keep throwing them in there. i just can't stop. making. ripples. i get too uncomfortable otherwise. why do i do this? if i don't make ripples i feel i will die. if i do make ripples, i get uncomfortable and have to breathe. that's a little of what i know. or i think i know. i'm not real sure of much when i'm in a small circle. but i know it's about breathing when it's small. so i'm just gonna breathe here now.

breathing.

and feeling the restriction of this fucking tight circle.

there are so many circles.

the moon.

the cervix.

the sun.

breathing.

flowers from the garden. i thought it was going to freeze.

i think it did.

pennies.

why is it a good idea to save your pennies?

it makes good cents.

fall nettles. i've never cut fresh nettles in the fall. maybe i was never paying attention. no. there was something different that happened with the patch in the lower garden spot this year. there was a whole new fresh little bounty to harvest out there. thank you stinging plant creature. my forefinger stung so much sunday. you got me. i let you. pride. and truth.

someone put the fairy's horse in there with her, and promptly removed spiderman. i don't know who. but i understand. i will put spiderman back in as soon as i find him. mess. mess with them. mess with yourself.

breathing .

thank goodness. even if breathing is hard, thank goodness. right?

steve jobs. thank goodness.

music. breathing music. eating music. drowning sometimes.

swim lessons.

circles within circles within circles on circles under circles. dirty circles. to become clean circles. to become dirty. and then clean.

dirty. dirty girl.

dirty nasty raunchy filthy poorgirl.

poorgirl needs some time.

some time. some time. some time.

right now.

the altar is everywhere.

i go to find it today. i still cannot find it. until i need to dust.

i dust with something sacred. sacred to me. but not you. unless i explained why that cloth was so fucking sacred. even then, it's just sacred to me. as it should be.

then i ease myself by remembering the fire. this could all burn tomorrow. or tonight. or in an hour. so go. go on. go on in this moment, it's really all you really have. be with it cuz it's here and it's real. it's changing.

wash the sacred cloth. continue to love it till you can't. then freak out and burn it when it scares you so you can't take it anymore. it's really sort-of just like a hair cut. and those can be intense. that's just a bit of what i know. what i've known.

thank goodness. i've had time to practice.

love.

i mean, serious and silly together.

2011-10-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

seriously.

i mention i want to be silly more, and guess who comes a knockin....

mrs. serious.

of course. she wants to play too. i guess. i'm not sure what she wants. seems like mostly lots of baths. and to cry quite a bit. we watched a sappy country music movie today, together....

i need to figure out how to laugh and cry at the same time better. cuz the second i lay out a goal to laugh more, that serious lady in me came rearing her head up like she was a locust on her 17th year cycle. she was not messing around.

i am so tweaky tonight.

but i will look up a few new jokes for us in one of the childrens' joke books we checked out from the library the other day, thanks to my october silly month challenge for myself. i will. i swear. i will try to add some light to my dark state. why? because it seems like i owe it to them. those people i love so much. that have to see me and feel my intensity. so hot. i owe it to myself too. to try. if we get one laugh out of the jokes that will be a win.

::::

an hour and a half later

the jokes were a hit. a few before bedtime books, we're reading halloweeny ghostly monstery books from the library too, and then a few jokes after the stories. falling asleep, to the sounds of laughter, instead of my cranky voice, is good. thank you pan. i really appreciate that. here are the favorites jokes of the night:

what size tshirt does a 2000 pound egg wear?

eggs-tra large.

harharhar

and, the one that got the loudest laughs:

why did the candle fall in love?

because it met it's perfect match.

amazing!! why didn't i think of that one?

but the one they adored the most:

what does a bird call its parents?

mother and feather.

(umm, hey anon, is that you guys or what? ha!)

so sweet.

thank you jokes.

i did finally start to like myself a little bit after dinner tonight.

this is what i did when i realized i was liking myself again, it was so exciting to feel that way:

self~portrait

well.

wednesday, we had a visit with isis, while mary was visiting with horus.

another neighbor came walking along and said he's lived here in hte hood for twenty years and had never seen a snake before. i was so surprised. we've seen dozens. i concluded he doesn't garden, or go outside. sweet snake lady, was pissssssssed at me for shooing her off the road with a stick. i kind of thought she was gonna strike at me. but no. the kids were funny in the car, all of them at some point hanging out the windows.

this was a large one i thought.

isis has her camouflaging thing going on as well.

her hiss was as intense as mine was today. maybe she was trying to tell me something. duh.

i made pesto out of our garden chard. chard is mainly what i grew this year. and a handful of cherry tomatoes. and a ton of herbs of course. but foodwise, just chard was happy this year. so weird. most of the squash i planted would fruit out, yes squash is a fruit, and then die. i need to learn why that happened. i have a couple little guys that lived on and grew, but just a few.

after last week's elderberry syrup making, with dried berries from a store, i got it in my head and heart to search out an old elderberry bush that i met 12 years ago or so, but that i hadn't been back to visit since. i called up my friend in hawaii, to ask her where that was where she used to give me alexander lessons. that's where the bush was, at that house where she did her alexander teacher training, where i went to be her student. free lessons for me! that was cool. side note, i then had another friend who when she was doing her pilates teacher training, i got to be her training student. such scores on the friends, huh? so, she told me, she remembered the exact cross streets. i went. i found these sweet berries so perfectly ripe. my heart was so excited. it was a love affair. i wrote the new owners of the house a note and asked if i could pick them. would they mind? they called me back that evening, and said i was welcome and to have fun. i was so grateful for nice people when i heard the yes. i will share a jar of cordial with them. it felt like that bush was calling me, the way i went out and searched it out and made it happen. i mean, i know i can be a doer, and a go getter when i'm inspired, or when i just have to, but this was different. i watched myself go along the path to track that elder girl down. thery cool, as olive says. i lady elder an offering of white sage, at the base of her trunk. it was raining when i went today to gather the berries. edgy and cold picking elders. perfecto. i am thinking i want to plant like 6 bushes and really go for it this fall with attempting to create an elderberry grove up here on this land. sounds like a plan. the blueberry bushes i planted in the spring died. maybe elders will be happier? we'll see.

this picture just gets me. those legs. dear deer. what am i gonna do?

welcome in mrs. serious and miss silly and see if they want to play together more. that's what i'm gonna try and do. cuz i think i'm learning, that if i forget to invite one to the happenings of my inner, and outer, worlds, while i actively seek the other, the left out one will show up and act like a big fat baby till she is seen and heard. oh man. makes sense. so much to learn, huh?

2011-09-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

i made some elderberry syrup. i used this recipe for the most part. i used dried elderberries, so i let it simmer for a couple hours. it smelled so good in the house. mmmm. magic. witchy. it tastes so so SO good with the spices and honey. yikes. too bad i didn't add a little alcohol. i could sip it like a desert wine at night. it is so yummy and deep and full of magic. i'm pretty sure the elderberry plant is one of the most magical of plants. something a little eerie happened while i was brewing this up. a ghost was for sure in the house. a sweet ghost i'm assuming. that's me telling myself to not look down, basically. but if i need to clear the house of something not nice and friendly, i surely will. but this one was funny. messing with me. like a rascally fairy. i need those to keep me fresh and alert and clued into the important stuff. namely, being silly and looking for any opportunity to be silly. that will be goal, mantra, quest, for october. silly october. ha. ending with a great shabang on halloween. perfect.

so this photo below is totally silly. i want to remind myself that sometimes i really do cook. i make stuff from scratch in the kitchen. i do. sometimes. here, i can remind myself that i made homemade chicken stock, my first time. i bought a whole chicken. i can't kill my own. not sure if i will do that in this lifetime. i will if i have to, but i don't right now, so i'm not sure if that will happen. if i read animal vegetable miracle, will it make me feel like i must? i haven't read that yet.....we are currently, and have been for some time actually, reading books like the china study, and thinking a lot about getting further and further away from animal proteins in our diets. we started watching this forks over knives documentary the other night too. geez. how convincing are these researchers?

anyhoo, i made chicken stock, and then chicken soup. that was huge. we have an apple cobbler in there, that the girls made at the preschool's little harvest festival. and then i have my elderberry syrup. oh, and a jar of the nourishing traditions' fennel leek potato soup that i made too. (could nourishing traditions and the china study be more opposed?) what a predicament i am in. no. just a place of research and choice. and trial and error. and someone please just tell me the god damn answer!) i made it so so garlicky. we were needing some protection. i felt.

so. i'm sitting at the trident. the people next to me just leaned over their table and kissed. i was okay with that. completely. until i started hearing these squishy wet sounds from it. uuuuuuuuuugh. just a reminder that that is gross people. in public, only dry kisses please. ok? am i being an old fuddy dudd? whatever. i was playing around cleaning up some houseplants and freshening up some, starting some new ones from cuttings. this one turned into a little fairy superhero garden. love that. bridging worlds is a passion.

hi.

how's it going?

i hope it's well.

on this yellow october 1st.

i ate too many cookies.

he is really that cool.

that is from my bath the other day.

ha!

i was so so dirty.

no. i took a clay bath on purpose. i bought this amazing clay from wyoming. called pascalite. its healing properties have me spinning. i've eaten it, bathed in it, been rubbing on david's sore feet at night for him to sleep with, feeding it to plants, did a hair wash, and used it to clear spaces. neat. david's feet are feeling better. so far. he's hiking now.....that's improvement. i'm not sure what happened to his feet, they just got sore or something. we're always working on something. aren't you? we are anyways.

this article about how amorous we humans are for our apple products in the ny times cracked me up today.

so. to the thoughts.

do we do our best? maybe i want to speak for myself. do i do my best? do i look for art in every possible moment? does it save my life when i find it? or when i make it? what is more fun, finding it or making it? whatever. i am working on making myself an altar at home. i need a space, for my sacred work to be symbolized, for me to see, and be reminded of. to come back to again and again. to freshen and change up as needed. to clean and meditate with. to use as a tool to get closer to what is important to me. i will put something on it to remind me of my mantra for this month. something really silly. what is the silliest thing i could put on my altar? maybe some jokes. i need to start telling my kids jokes. my dad used to have jokes up his sleeves at all times. they would have loved that about him. i will try and carry that part of my paternal line on. my dad's dad was the same way. i remember pawpaw loving jokes so much. telling them, and getting my mawmaw to laugh in a way no one else, except my dad, could. she loved their jokes, even though they were sometimes a little, ummmmm, raunchy? she was a good sport. a prim and proper good sport. mmm mmmm. such a good role model for me. with little girls under foot, i am striving to keep an air of properness, and at the same time, an air of silly messiness.

mess. mess. mess. i have a friend who named her shadow, in a shadow workshop, as in shadow of the psyche, we did, missy, because her shadow was so messy. that always cracks me up. such a fun way to embrace that negative aspect of her messiness. finding creative ways to love the shadows we've got running around fucking things up, is a good thing to do. i recently dreamt about that friend three nights in a row. i called her after the third night. we hadn't talked in too long. i love that my subconscious made call that happen. LOVE that. here's to being guided more by the wisdom in the magical underworlds of our psyches. love. and to october.

oh. and here's a GREAT song to leave you with, as you go on, on your own journey into october.

fun

2011-09-27T07:59:00.000-07:00

i like this way of doing nails. i plan to make myself and my daughters and maybe even the boys, sit and do this soon.

really cool doll ART:

here.

and here.

hilarious balaclava action here.

ok.

having fun.

this is cute right?

right! so so cute.

the shirt, i mean. but she is over the top.

she will wear it at home. her school style, though, will not allow this. cutie.

but at home, she loves it. there is something about that that i like. and something that i don't. and not so much i can do about it. so that is that. home is where the heart is! nah. i mean it is, it's just that home style is sometimes different than worldly style. worldly second grader mountain school style. i love the big sleeves. i cut this from a pattern that asks for the sleeves to be bunched up with elastic at the bottom. i didn't do that, cuz i thought the drama of the big sleeve would be up her alley. it is definitely a selling point.

i like the tag.

another bonus feature is the way you can fit a cat inside.

this one is for tania. my iron's face. i never saw it before, but i just looked down while working on this shirt and the iron was looking back at me. it kind of looks like woody in toy story, max and i think. i will not name my iron woody though. no way. that sounds like a fire waiting to happen. what should i name it?? hmmmmmm.

and to keep with the green theme, here is my friend who sits with me when i sew. i hope to sit with him more soon. i'm craving time with him, now that i had that little afternoon taste.

straight

2011-09-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

i got my hair cut a little. and blown straight. it is so fun to have straight hair for a few days. david thinks it's boring, and asks me what happened to my hair. ha. max looked at me, and then asked me why my hair was down. i guess it is pretty rare for it to be down. zhi and olive have been with me to get this done both times i've gone recently for a hair cut, so they see it happen. the magic straightening process. they won't talk to anyone in the hair salon. they act like mutes.

today, while max and olive and i were eating lunch at one of our favorite sandwhich spots, this grandma woman was pestering max. i swear. she wouldn't leave him alone. he was pretty clear in his language, both verbal and body, that he didn't want to talk. he downright told her, 'i don't feel like talking.' but, she wouldn't stop. so he then moved over another seat at the bar, to be further away from her. i couldn't believe her inability to listen to him. i spoke up for him too, saying 'he is wanting to be quiet right now', thinking she would listen to me. adult to adult, you know? after she still, STILL, wouldn't let up, he tells her he is not allowed to talk to strangers. he was trying to be polite, and give her a good reason to shut up. ha!!!! i was loving him so much in those moments today. really admiring him. his sensitivity to her feelings, and his knowing of and respect for himself and his desire to get away from her. you rock son. i love how you think. i know you act like a royal pain at home a lot of the time, but when i see you interact with the world like that, i breathe easier and smile and feel waves of relief at how you know yourself, and how to speak up for yourself. you know how to take care of yourself.

the therapy session david and i had, to talk solely about this boy and our struggles around parenting him lately, was divine. we were both brought to tears. our minds exploded, at the realization of how closed they'd been in regards to this child. this culture can really get us people stuck in the mud in terms of thinking the direction the mainstream is going is the best, most important, and pretty much the ONLY direction worth going in. not that we are thinking he can't partake in mainstream culture now, we just got our heads out of our butts in regards to thinking his behavior, which can be so out there and triggering, is nothing but unacceptable. it turns out, and i had been feeling this for a while now without knowing how to explain it, our responses to his behaviors were unacceptable. we have been encouraged to focus on building him up emotionally for now. while he does the work of 'claiming his world.' we can still set boundaries, blah blah blah, but instead of feeling disappointed when we see where he's at in comparison to other kids his age, or whatever, we are to cheer him on like he's doing everything so so SO well. yay! how fun does that sound? talk about trust. so much to trust here. him especially. but the therapist that gave us this advice. i do trust her. and myself. my inner guidance. it can feel that this is good goodness, rich divine advice. maybe sharing examples of how we do this in the coming weeks as we re~pattern, would be helpful in explaining what i mean here, cuz i feel i am not articulating it all very well.

he's been wearing his glasses really well so far the rest of this week. he gets a reward for doing so now! rewards for this child are key. rewards for me are key too. key. the right key. what kind of reward do i deserve today?

hmmmmmmmmmm. i want some time at home to blast out some lynyrd skynyrd and feel really really free. that's all. yep.

these keva blocks make my kids happy frequently on saturday and sunday mornings. it's so cool. we had to get into the second bag last weekend. for the first time, they all three used so many, they needed more. luckily i planned ahead when i bought them, and had another bag in the closet.....

i love closets.

zhi's tower:

happy weekending.

lion king 3d anyone? that's what max is looking forward to.

freaking freaker

2011-09-19T12:15:00.000-07:00

so. you know i just have to sit and write when i'm seething. it helps me. it also makes me one of the world's least popular bloggers. but whatever.

i wish all i had to do as a parent was just scream my guts out when my kids don't listen, and that would take care of all issues involving defiance, disrespect, disobedience, and overall general resistance to my authority. if i could just scream at the little disobeyers and they would actually then start obeying, it would satisfy my love of screaming, and get them in line. two birds one stone. that is a gross saying! it would be so great. but you know, i've tried it, many times, and it rarely rarely works. it typically just makes things way worse. for me, it makes me feel like an idiot and a scary mom, and for them, it scares them and makes them forget about what the issue at hand is, so we just end up going backwards anyways. it's the worst experience, yeah?

time.

so today time is what i need. i didn't know how to handle max's defiance to my command to wear his fucking reading glasses at school. i'd been letting him off the hook the past few weeks, and then today, we had his last vision therapy appointment. for the time being anyways. he could use more, but we can't pay for that and his new school really, and we're hoping he's in a place now with more control over his eyes, where he'll be fine and not suffer or get too tired from doing school work. he totally agreed, to the deal i made with him, that i won't make him go to vision therapy anymore, if he'll start wearing his glasses at school. then. we get to school. he acts like we never had that talk. he throws a 9 year old temper tantrum, which i swear is 100 times worse than a two year old tantrum. i resort to threats. i won't buy him that new book he's wanting, if he won't go along with the deal. i'll make him go back to therapy. blahblahblah. he tells me he hates me and that i'm an idiot. he says, 'mommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, you're so pushy.' i leave him, screaming that at me out the door. and now i am therapizing myself and making a plan for how i'm going to get the little boy to wear his glasses. he says he thinks the kids at his school will think he's dorky with glasses on. ugh.

i feel for him. he has so much to deal with, so much to think about in terms of measuring up to other kids. i hate it. but in the long run, if i don't push him to work at stuff like reading and writing, he's gonna be way dorkier than he can even imagine, you know? david and i have a real therapy appointment tomorrow with our tried and true couples therapist, to help us get on the same page with parenting max.

i'm feeling so much compassion for max. being pushed into doing something you don't want to is about one of the worst feelings ever. and as his mom, with 25 years on the child, i feel i have some foresight about the benefits of what i'm pushing him to do. david and i just talked on the phone after i drove away from max's school. i cried. we want to help him see how not dorky glasses are. but come on. could my parents have ever convinced me that something wasn't dorky that i'd decided was? no. only time could do that. but they probably could have helped just by loving me and trying. i would have liked that.

once, my dad got me a scooter for christmas. a moped. when i saw that it was yellow, i cringed. and said i didn't want it. yellow wasn't cool. i was 11. my dad went off. you know, the whole spiel about being ungrateful and spoiled and bratty. he was right. but i hated him for not understanding where i was coming from and honoring that enough to keep me from feeling hate for him. somehow i got over it. i ended up riding that moped all over that little suburban child's utopia for scooters world, and having some of the most fun times of my childhood on yellow dorkmobile. max's reading glasses and my yellow scooter are nothing alike really. i'm just relating to how my dad shamed me for not appreciating his point of view. i think he must have come around in his cool way, and teased me a little into just giving the moped a try once i'd started giving him the silent treatment. he knew how to soften up and get me to open back up pretty well. but i am hoping to skip the whole shaming and screaming part. i know it doesn't work. but it's so hard when i don't exactly know what does work. the story of our lives, the question of our lives: what will work? it is helpful to know what won't work though. i know screaming won't work. i know shaming won't. i know force won't. i know negative reinforcement won't. i'm just so sick of positive reinforcement charts. marble jars. prizes. for doing something i feel he should be doing just cuz i say. it's just not in his nature to go along with the program if he doesn't like it. he is not a follower. he is a leader. i've always known this. but as a child, he has to be a follower in some regard. right? he just has to. and i have to step into the shoes of leader, no matter how uncomfortable to me, and lead sometimes. a lot of the time. what kind of shoes are they anyways? hmmmmmmm. today, they are tall, for sure. sassy. so that i keep my sense of humor about me, which i feel is essential in a good leader. they are bouncy. they are danskos! ok. will put on my danskos when i get home and we will talk. i'm staying true to my word, on him not getting that book he wants till he earns it with keeping his part of the deal. he's gong to be so pissed that i'm not caving. i will start another fucking positive reinforcement chart or jar or whatever. to go next to the bedwetting one we are in the thick of right now too. i will not turn into mommy dearest. we will get creative and at least try to get him to see how not dorky glasses are. maybe a little skit by mommy and daddy would help.

mommy, acting as a 10 year old girl: oh man. i found out i have to wear glasses. they are so nerdy. i don't want to wear them at school. nobody else in my class wears glasses. except my teacher. what am i going to do?

daddy, acting as another 10 year old girl, with tiny pig tails, barrettes, and a high voice, the kids will love that: oh yeah. that's a bummer. my brother has to wear glasses. he didn't like them at first. but then we started thinking about all the superheroes who wear glasses when they are not being a superhero. lots of powerful people wear glasses. harry potter. clark kent. peter parker. diana prince (wonder woman). bruce banner (the hulk). cyclops (xmen). velma (scooby doo). austin powers. dwight schrute. (thanks to this little page for some help on that list!) my dad and brother watched some videos to remember how many cool characters wear glasses.

mommy: my dad wears glasses. and i do think he is the best guy in the world. my mom says he is very handsome in his glasses. but i'm a girl. are girls as cool in glasses as boys?

daddy: oh yeah! have you seen wonder woman? look how cool she is! maybe we need to make up our own girl superheroes who wear glasses. it's true, there aren't nearly as many as there are boys.

and hey, look at these two cool superheroes, when they're out of costume!

well. i have a little work to do on that dialogue. don't ask me why it is about girls. i guess i thought it wouldn't be as obvious we were trying to speak directly to max's issue. just very obvious. not blatantly. ha. i bet david can help me flush it out, make it funny. he's gifted like that. i have the vision. he makes it fly. often.

anyhoo. that helped. i'm not angry anymore.

ayer

2011-09-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

while the boy was in school, which is only for 3 hours a day now, his new special school that has me basically homeschooling him in the morning, in mostly non academic, but interactive and physical ways, since his school is mostly academic work done at a desk, olive and i went to the thrift shops near his school.

we got this cute cat basket.

this sweet old rug. the one i'd had here for years, to catch fire place mess, was starting to gross me out. i like this one so much !!

a sweet cup and saucer. sure makes the dirty dishes look fun.

and a few yards of good fabric. some oldish seeming thick woven stuff with that cool oval pattern going on, and then yards of this lightweight red linen. awesome. sorry about that bad lighting....

for the morning adventure, because max's school is in the afternoon, we went to the history museum at the university. i'm really into museums.

olive, on our way there. wearing this little dress i made for zhi as a two year old. so funny. all untied in the back. olive rocks it.

i love museum lighting.

they have a little exhibit on the fire that burned on our mountain last year.

and this one on the human impact on birds in the country. extinction being a big one.

the corner of bones and antlers for kids to touch and identify.

coyote.

a photo of a cool photo.

yep ....

i'm stalling on making the first fire of the season. piling on layers. i confess though, i did use the space heater today. do you think that's lame?

we have another week of warmish weather coming, so i'll wait on the fire. and i have another bar to take out of the bee house soon too, before we are done with warm days. i never shared the first harvest we had to make this summer. i don't know why. i just didn't.

the first swarm we placed in the first hive, built out comb and got to the back of the hive by the end of july. amazing. if we don't take a comb out, and give them more work room, they will build onto the back of the hive and that's disaster. the comb we took wasn't full of capped nectar, but close to half way full. a little brood mixed in. just a little. i've been letting it sit, hoping it will mature into honey even out of the hive. it tastes very good already though, from the sampling we all took. very light and macaroni. i mean, very light and sweet.

the next comb i take, is going to be one from the far back, which will be mostly wax. i don't want to take any more of their honey stores. not till spring. we'll take their leftovers then. but i'm psyched to have more wax. salves are something i'm into lately.

i'm currently infusing some almond and olive oils with calendula and comfrey from the garden. i'll use that oil in the next salve i make with the wax.

loving project runway. i can't help it. i actually pay for it on itunes. since we don't pay for cable, it's ok to pay for this show. here i go, to watch some more.....

deep breath

2011-09-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

uuuuuuugh.

that's what i want to write. just a bunch of ugggggggghs.

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

when thoughts suck, what does a girl do?

read soulemama.

but then what?

take a sip of earl grey.

google grey versus gray.

stare around.

resist the urge to think horrible thoughts about myself. or my children. or anyone i know.

think of my heartspace and stare at the ceiling fan.

miss family so far away. on other shores. of the continent. and of life. my grandparents and my dad are dead. where are they? god i would like to know.

write a really random seeming email to a friend. make myself laugh at how she might respond.

feel sorry for everyone here who does not have an apple computer. so sorry. but it's their choice. i will not judge. i will not judge. i will try not to judge.

feel grateful for tea today.

daydream about italy. and the mellowness of that culture. wonder if maybe we can go there this year. i've never been. just the thought of it sounds so sexy.

friend didn't seem tickled by the email. i tried to tickle her again, in a reply. maybe she's not ticklish today. maybe i just need to tickle myself. yep. that's exactly what i have to do. tickle my freaking self. it just sounds so boring sometimes.

the thing is, i want to play with shadows. i want to fight.

guess who needs to bleed.

when olive sees that the moon is full now, she asks me if i have my moonblood. she totally associates the full moon with my blood. how wild woman wolfish is that?

shadowy mama. hi. you are a beast. you have two parent teacher conferences this evening and they can sometimes be intense when it comes to getting feedback about max. feedback that i don't want to hear. oh lord. please be with me. dear diary. please be with me as i sit and listen to his new teacher's feedback tonight. i really don't want to cry tonight. ok. just writng that made me cry. that's cool. if sadness needs to come, i will allow it. but who goes around asking for it? that's all i'm saying.

i have an appointment with the therapist, as in psycho, in a few minutes here. great. as in, not great. not looking forward to it all of a sudden. not into working.

now i will go to iphoto and find a photo to accompany this post.

i like this one:

that's how i feel. like her drawing. and i am wondering about that phallic symbol there to the left of the person drawing. oh boy.

i've got so much work to do. in terms of evolving.

that's why one day at a time is the sanest advice a person could ever give or take.

but also. there's the ten year plan thing. that's a pretty cool thing to do too. but you have to go about achieving it one day at a time. like knitting a sweater.

i really feel helped by animals, and their lack of mental~ness. i know my therapist is just gonna tell me to breathe. how fucking boring! i have to pay someone to tell me to breathe. i have so much work to do. deep breath. and another. breathing is not boring. breathing is the best. i just might be the most distracted person ever. that's all. i get so distracted from my breaths. but when i finally come back to them, they are all i was looking for. i love cats. i love my womanness.

to be woman

2011-09-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

i go for the nectar

i wait for it if i have to

i delight in my kids playing happily

i do not delight in them fighting

this was a great play pillow fight

i delighted

i tend to myself

in my kitchen

i soften

and move

i feed

i turn and jump and see what's behind me

hopefully often, i check my back

i am not trusting

not easily

i look at you with questioning eyes and weirdly pursed lips

what are you thinking

what are you feeling

what are your motives here

i must check you out

so i can feel safe

so i can feel my kids are safe

i pray to nature

i can't believe i get to live with all this beauty

i see beauty

i do believe it actually

i ingest it

i absorb it

i swim in it

i lather it on

i dream it

i release

i let go

i am bound to the moon

my waters

my blood

even when i'm no longer in my bleeding days

i will be bound to the moon

as my daughters are

and have been

since they were potent filled eggs inside of me

inside of my mother

inside of her mother

i polarize to man

when i allow myself to be feminine

in this culture

i actually have to allow my feminine

i have to call her out

and she has to sense that it's safe

in this culture

she has to know she is safe

or she will hide

carefully hide like a cat

while her masculine self comes forward

like a brute

to protect her puss

to be woman

i have to fight

for my safety

i have to fight in every moment

to stay awake

and maybe fight is not a perfect word

maybe it's a blend

of fighting vigilance scanning feeling probing

like an insect

like an animal

very very wild

in a world that wants us tame

but that is impossible

the ocean is not tame

she roars weeps throws and sings

she crashes endlessly into the land

stirring as much up as she can

the crashing is fun

bumpers

the feminine in me

so femme

so so femme

impulses desires

dreaming

crying

loving

reaching

staying

smiling with sisters

and brothers

women

woman

it is odd

to be a woman

and not feel feminine so often

swimming upstream we are

to reclaim our inborn right

to be feminine powers

to be dark and light

and to own it all

like a bloody woman

easing

2011-09-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

the way the eggs find their way to the edge of the pot makes me stop and see an egg circle. egg circle. egg circle. egg circle.

the sage likes to grow in with the prickly pear. there are spots where it doesn't too, but i see it like this a lot. that sage doesn't want to get picked so much i gather.

i love it.

the long mile walk home from the bus the other day. all up hill. i torture my kids. and i give us popsicles when we get home.

and then we went on this trip to see david's family in baltimore. his daddy is sick. the kids have now had to learn that their grandpa has cancer and his body is not feeling the same as it was the last time we saw him. he can't walk anymore really. it is so hard to write that. i don't think i can write more on that right now. it was very good to be there and see pawpaw and mawmaw and cousins and aunts and uncle. very good. i felt into the space and everyone's emotional states, and it felt ok for olive and me to leave for one of the days and take a bus up to nyc to see my sis and niece and have that time with them. i have some pics i know i will want to share, but they are on david's camera and i haven't gotten them off yet. here's another couple from my phone though...

battery park. i'd never walked down there. i like it.

it's so cool how quickly claire has transitioned into nyc life. she'd never even been there before. they ride the subway now like it's a walk in the park. i am really into how it feels to not have to drive everywhere you go. she is too.

and then we came home. and i french braided my hair on the plane. it is something i am finding i like to do while flying. gives me something to do to calm my nerves. especially since it takes me about 4 tries to get it right. or close to right. me and flying lately = nervous. i must remember to take drugs next time. i have to hide my fearful state from whichever kids i am sitting with. these past two flights were particularly turbulent. zhi kept asking me what it was that was making the plane feel like it was falling. i have to act totally unafraid and say, 'oh, it's just wind. no big deal.' except for when i start to get nauseous, i can't hide that so well. but i just say it's like getting car sick, and still have to act cool and fearless. that is my kind of fun!! pretending i'm not scared shitless when i really am. i was joking with david later about how funny it was to think about being completely honest in that situation, and just tell her 'being on a plane that is bumping around in the sky like this is one of the scariest feelings i know. i am scared shitless and my heart feels like it might just break my chest bones. let's hold on to each other as tight as we can in case we die soon.' she would freak. god that is funny to think about for some reason, how bad that would be to just be honest in that situation. max starts to freak out on his own, no prodding necessary, and grips onto his arm rests with white knuckles, presses his head into the seat back as hard as he can, and david has to calm him down, cuz they sat together, and it works really well. telling him it's just wind. but once we plug them into a movie on the laptop, they tune it all out and don't even notice bumps. i love turbulence. i was trying to tell myself that on the plane. i tried. but i kept thinking about how much i love it when i get off the plane instead.

anyhoo. it all feels way smoother when i take ativan. must get some of that from the doctor.

easing back into the rhythm of boulder life. and blogging. love.

oh~ the new header photo is a pic of what olive did with some calendula flowers i picked from the garden. i set them on the bathroom counter, en route to the drying rack, and she noticed them there and lined them all up like that. i thought it was cool. she is cool.

a little trip

2011-09-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

saw a bunch of east coast family. it was good.

i can't wait to blog again, and i think tomorrow is my day.

brooklyn.

scared sacred

2011-08-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

mouse. do tell all your mouse stories. the world is dependent on sweet mouse. mouse 'takes care of life's details and walks in humility,' says the medicine cards book. mouse has woken me up to some details i had been tuning out. now that i'm tuning in, it feels much better. like, my closet is now sprinkled with lavender flowers along the back wall to deter moths that found a strip of old wool carpeting and proliferated like nobody would ever want in their closet. my fun shoe collection is in the process of being organized out of the heap it has been kept in for the past few years. i still have some shoes from high school. they are well~made shoes i guess. anyhoo.

here are some of the sweet zinnias zhi and i planted that aphrodite told me to tend to.

i got real mad at zhi on sunday. then on monday i got real real mad at max. i needed to be mad and not try and downplay it. zhi's manners have been horrific. that can't be downplayed. max's incessant questioning for movies and computer games, completely drives me batty. crazy bat~ty. david told me i was scary and to go away when he came home from work yesterday. i did. but i know i wasn't scary like i could have been. i wasn't scaring myself. which i have done before. so it wasn't that bad. i think we scare each other most of all. he and i. when he starts to go over the edge, at least what i perceive to be his edge, he seems scary to me. parenting is scary. yep. part of it is. it just is. living is scary. part of it. trying to play around here with not being so black and white. i don't want to take any weight away from the scary stuff, cuz it needs to be processed. but i also don't want to lose sight of that little light that is so not scary. that little light that is so so bright of course it casts a shadow. and of course the mouse in me sees the shadow and sometimes freaks out over it, obsesses over it, stares at it like it's the only thing that exists anymore. but, that little light, my kids inspire me to wake up and let the shadow have its dance, and go mine for more light until the end of time. i do inspire myself as well, but, being responsible for children takes it a more urgent, serious, selfless level. and giving myself a few hours the past couple of days to honor some darkness i entered into, was transformative. tapping in just at the edge for just a bit, without harming others, at least i don't think i did, feels like it helped me to resource into some richness i wasn't getting before. some deep dark earthy matter that will help my green to grow stronger and longer. or something like that. i do wish i didn't yell at max as much as i did yesterday. mama went off. as he saw that i was building steam, after the first 20 seconds of loud firm talking to him, he switches off his orcas, aka hearing aids. while looking into my eyes. ha. beautiful. good on ye boy. i wish instead of railing on him for asking me 5000 times to watch tv on a day that is not for tv, as we've declared some days in our home just as a way to keep us all safe from overwatching, i wish i'd just gone a little more internal maybe, and just hissed at him or something. not in a fully creepy way, but in a way that meant 88% 'don't mess with me child', and 12% ' i love you and i am trying not to yell at you but i am pissed that you won't let it go and leave me alone about this and i am trying to not take this 100% seriously at the same time so this is my best effort at staying playful while feeling raging fucking pissed!' hisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

so there is my intention for next time. snake lady! i will be snake lady. i invoke the sweet serious snake. at the same time as the sweet mouse. how they play it all out, i'm not sure how that works internally. weird confusing~ness is how it often feels to identify with prey and predator at the same exact time. there's a mind~blowing effect too that is really good for me. having my mind blown out, takes me out of the i~have~to~figure~everything~out~and understand~every~single~happening mindset and leaves me in an open and curious state which i know is very very good for me. that rubber band is tight though, and i get flung back into the spinning of trying to understand what i cannot, pretty quickly. silly pattern that must serve some purpose, but in the interest of having a blown open mind, i will move along.

my intention for how to meet zhi, next time she lashes out with a statement like, 'you're a fuckin,' (yes she just says 'fuckin' like a noun) after i tell her that it's time to do something she doesn't want to do, is to go into the area around my heart, breathe, keep breathing, let my heart speak to how that felt to be talked to like that, and then maybe do a handstand. i could benefit from more handstands. i have no idea what will come of that, it's just what came to mind, but getting mad as all hell and giving her the silent treatment for 2 hours didn't feel good at all. not that my goal is to feel good in all horrible situations, it's just to improve. right? for sure. that's simple. it's surely not to do worse. just do better. do better snake lady mouse lady butterfly buffalo lady. spider lady.

go listen to this song, by reed foehl, now. you have to click on the play button triangle. or if that link doesn't work for you, just go get the song on itunes for 99 cents. you will not regret it. we went and saw him sunday night with the kids, a random late evening live music outing up in gold hill. reed's brother, stewart, was supposed to be opening for him, which is what motivated us to go, cuz stewart is an old friend and he doesn't live in town anymore. but irene kept him home bound on the east coast. so we rediscovered how amazing stewart's brother is, and man was that healing. i stopped my silent treatment to zhi after his soulful self sang to us. is that song, beautiful life, that i just insisted you to listen to, beautiful or what? makes me cry and feel sad and happy and crazy all at the same time. there are so many ways to interpret it you know? always so many.

here's another sweet song/video of reed.

and here is another local group, elephant revival, that i hadn't seen or heard or payed attention to, till a blogging friend in the northwest somewhere, of a blogging friend in northern cal posted about them and brought me full circle back to music in my own area. geez. i am so happy to have their music to brighten my days now. the girls and i listened to them sunday before going to hear reed and even though there was some darkness coming down, there was some good music to help us through. those elephant people are magic.

ok. stuff to do. details to attend to. time to be mouse for a bit. butterfly snakey foxy blog time has come to an end.

love.

love confusing love

2011-08-25T12:54:00.001-07:00

besides my husband being sort-of upset that i made the decision for the mice without him, becuz he was just getting to another solution as i was fucking feeding them to the chickens, i have only been met with the sweetest support and understanding. david came around quickly after my sobbing, and just gently teased me yesterday that no way are we having more kids, cuz he'd be afraid it would want milk and i'd just lose it and feed it to the chickens too. yeah. we are not having more kids anyways, but he's always looking for a reason to make it even more etched.

i spoke with our vet last night. he told me a few things that make me sure i'll do it differently if ever given the chance. i'll go with my gut, which i didn't really do on tuesday. i went with my fear. my gut was to raise them and even possibly keep a couple as pets. there are tons of articles i found about getting wild mice as babies and raising them as pets. we love pets. we love mice. the vet said he has never seen a case of the hantavirus in our area. in southern colorado he hears of it sometimes, and it's usually from someone cleaning out an abandoned cabin or basement with tons of feces. this is a vet who does house calls only and treats with homeopathics whenever possible. i like him and feel so lucky to have him help us with our animals. i asked him if he would let his children hold a baby mouse. he said he would, but he said, maybe he shouldn't, he can't be positive that it's always safe, but that that virus is just not something he worries about around here. he said he's had mice in his house though, and after not being able to get them out without killing, he and his wife killed them. it's just the baby thing. i can't stop picturing them. little babies drinking milk with hands wrapped around a fucking dropper. hands. f. f. f. i'm so sorry. the vet said i'd probably get another chance. maybe i just a few weeks, given the rate mice reproduce.

thanks to my bloggy friends who wrote me the sweetest replies to that last post. i know it was intense to read. gravely intense. thanks for not looking away.

what is so weird to me, is that yesterday, the day after feeding them to the chickens, i ate meat twice. i wanted it. my body, the animal in me who has no reason for what she feels, she just feels, wanted to eat the meat of another animal. god it's so weird. reverence. so much reverence for the animals we eat. so so so much. and tears.

i just can't makes sense. has anyone ever made sense of this? do the whales understand what they're doing when they eat big beautiful fish? do the mountain lions and fox understand when they eat our beloved pet cats and dogs and deer? hmmmmm.

can i move on? i can. and i come back. i'm gonna move on. make myself for a bit. cuz i have all these other pictures of the life we've lived recently.

folk's festival fun:

i must tell you that max decided manning the trash compost recycling area, near where our chairs were, was the best fun, and he sat there helping the volunteers for 5 hours i think. we couldn't pull him away. it was precious and weird and totally fine. he caught on quick to what goes in which bin and told people like a pro. cutie.

i love my knitting these days. and the new magic knitting bag zhi thrifted for me with her grandma. three generations of thrifters. although i will say i taught my mom how to thrift. she used to shop at places she couldn't afford when i was growing up, and i remember the stress of all that. i wish i'd known sooner, cuz it wasn't till college that i became friends with thrifters. drifters. thrifters. we are family. one of my best friend's sons was with us yesterday as i was dropping off some donations to a thrift store. he said, what? what is this store? i said THRIFT STORE. he was like, WHAT? i said THRIFT. i had to tell him what a thrift store was. i couldn't believe it. his mom is not a thrifter. i hang with non thrifters too. but if i have the chance, i will teach!

we are deep in the process of helping the kids who inherited bed wetting genes, learn how to wake up to pee even in the middle of deep deep sleep. it is intense. we are using the bedwetting alarm. zhi got trained in 1 month. she is an over achiever. that is faster than average. max is currently working through the process. it is hard work. i feel like i have a newborn again. waking up so many times a night to help a child out of and into underwear and a pullup. i am a big fan of the bed wetting alarm so far. my fingers are crossed for max's successsssssssssssss.

i've been running and i'm getting stronger and it is feeling so good. partly because i love these toe shoes.

yesterday, olive was carrying around this can full of fake pearls from a necklace she cut and saved the beads in the can. she was shaking it. it flew open and a hundred or so pearls went everywhere on the sidewalk. we stopped calmly and picked every single one up. it was oddly fun. to stop. stop. and not be stressed about it.

and in other wildlife news: we had this baby bull snake come into our house last week. david caught him. looking back on it, the snake was probably smelling some baby mice in the shoe closet by the front door. david used to have a pet snake, so he's really comfortable handling them. this snake was a sweetheart. it seemed to like being held.

it went right back outside.

and here's one of the resident rats. joe.

so there are some fun photos.

and here i am. in olive's cape that she donned upon me. i am ready to do some serious good for the world.

dear ones

2011-08-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

an email i wrote to a friend this morning:

thanks. i called this morning only to assume after listening to their message that they don't take mice. and cuz the humane society said they didn't think they would. i started to feel crazy having to care for 6 tiny mice, their mother being chased in the house by our cats. while i'm thinking, if they don't catch her, we'll have to set a trap, and the live ones never work fast enough. it could take weeks with them. we're gonna have to kill her. me having to upturn our root cellar to clear it of her mouse droppings, instead of spending quality time with max, while i had him one on one. so i fed the baby mice to the chickens. minutes later david calls me and tells me greenwood will take them, that they just yesterday released 4 back into the wild.

i am crying over and over. how hard is that? well, for me it was really hard. and i'm thinking i would do it differently for sure if i could go back. and i want to be a vegetarian forever now, but do you think i can keep up enough energy?

thanks.

she wrote me back an email that made me cry more. in a good way. and she said yes, she has enough energy as a vegetarian. thanks.

f. i am so spun out by what has happened with these mice who our cats brought to us, still with their eyes closed, that i don't feel like i can even write about it anymore. but i want to i guess. sometimes life on earth seems to be the most tragic experience over and over and over.

they eat them. and they eat them. and on down the line.

eat or be eaten.

watch out for hantavirus. i went through something similar a few years ago with black widows in the house. we were a little bit infested. i had to kill. i did not have to kill the mice today, but i chose to, because i couldn't find anyone who would take them and care for them, as far as i could tell. and because i am overwhelmed already. at first it was just one mouse for a few hours, till they brought the rest of them to us, and i was up for nursing one baby mouse. but then i freaked with six. and you just can't have mice running around your house. we killed about 16 or so right when we moved into this house. set some traps and caught that many in one night. it sucked. that was before we had cats. one of our cats caught a hummingbird this summer. we eat meat. but i have never thought so hard about it. and at the same time as saying that, i feel sure i will enjoy turkey bacon again. am i on the wrong planet? where is the warphole to the faeries, that eat only honey and flower petals? i embodied as a human and i'm not feeling cut out for it. i love all things baby. nursing those mice through a dropper yesterday and even this morning was so sweet. how could i turn and just feed them to vultures like i did? well, the state of the root cellar and the shoe closet is a big part of it. and the fear of the goddamn hantavirus which is rare as hell but deadly as hell too. and then the fear of anything else taking me away from my children. namely more cleaning.

after doing that, choosing to the kill them, which i chose against yesterday when we brought them to the humane society, we brought them there because the lady on the phone said 'YES! we take them and raise them and adopt them out, even if they are wild,' but then, once there with them in a box, someone else said, 'NO. we do not take mice that little. we will euthanize them if you leave them here,' i go and search for native american mice references. i read this one first. judging myself and my decision about as hard as i could. i called a friend, and she said, the main challenge for you is gonna be to not make yourself out as evil. yeah. what the ???? that was just rough. downright.

i get really triggered with vulnerable babies. i think from my own experience as a vulnerable baby, and then my first child's. the second i saw the first baby, the very second, my sister called. i answered it, not even saying hi, but beginning to panic and then because i knew she was there for me, i started crying pretty hard. just the sight of that little thing. all alone and so in need. she was so great talking me through what to do. but then there were six. and then and then and then. i fed them to the chickens. emdr please. i called my emdr therapist actually just an hour ago. i am taking this so freaking hard, part of me is anyways. the part that made that decision to give them back to the nature out the backdoor, which ii know a lot of folks see having chickens and cats as a good way to keep the rodent population down, that part of me feels okay, feels logical and smart and like she put her family first, which is her job. but what about the whole family on earth. all of us together. eating one another. on down the line. oh my god. how do we do this, as conscious feeling beings? i am tripping. just let me trip. how do we do this? consciously. i guess that's how. ideally. and then things change, and i wish i could do it differently, and yet still consciously. but that's not how it happened...

to the 6 baby mice:

hello sweet ones. i loved you. i fed you baby puppy milk, through a dropper, from the pet store and you were all so into it. then we had a friend who reminded me of the serious threat of germs some mice carry and i got really scared. i am a mommy. i tried so hard to take care of you. i fed you at midnight last night. then at 6 am. i thought about you all the whole time in between. and of my own children and the threat of that horrible virus. not able to sleep at all. then when i did drift a bit, i had visions of mice in cages and chickens in cages. and me in the middle. it wasn't until after i decided that i could not raise you all, and i totally put your vulnerable selves out on the ground for the chickens, that i recalled the dream. maybe it was all already written out. uuuuugh. i don't like that thought. i don't like any of this. you all were so sweet and precious and your mom wrecked our cellar. however i am not mad. i am grateful to have a serious reason to clean it out. it was getting too full and of course a mouse would want to go in there. we love rodents now so much in this house. the hardest part may be having to tell the children what happened to you. well, max was there and he seems to blame the chickens, not me, which is weird. we named you all despereaux. i can't really believe that i did this to you. i just turned, and decided it was not smart to keep you in our house. you all probably think humans are the strangest creatures. i fed you and loved you and said sweet things to you, and then i fed you to my chickens. that is fucking weird. they ate you up real fast. i heard you squeal, though. i cried for you and i'm so so sorry that i couldn't do better. really really so sorry and i am crying more tears for you now as write this. i hope you are okay now. moving along in your existences as sweethearts. i hope you can forgive me. i feel i did my best, given my circumstances. i am glad you did not all die slowly in the closet and that the cats brought you to us. i hope my part in your lives was righteous. your part in mine, in our family's, was certainly righteous.

please

2011-08-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

thinking thinking thinking. squinting into the screen. scanning the airwaves for interesting conversations to spark my creative mind. i have some time!! time!! and there's nothing rumbling around my head, nothing in the forefront, i mean. there are plenty of nonsensical stressy things taking up way too much space of course, not sparking my spirit at all. just sparking my instinct to stall out. stall. stall. stall. false start. stall. i feel like people (my inner critics, so many of them!) are honking at me to go the fuck on. the light is green! i just keep stalling. i think i need a new clutch. that's no fun. maybe i need a new handbag?? i'm going to turn away from that gift my stressed out heather wants to give me, the multiple stalls and honks (why do we honk at ourselves like that?) and look for a gift that my spirited freeeeeeeeeeeee heather is holding out, being drowned out by the obnoxious horn noise of the stressy heathers. there are so many of me. at least it sounds like there are. maybe my critics are just exceptionally loud. tending to spirited heather is something i would be so smart to do more of.

duh.

sorry to be a broken record.

someday i'll get a new record.

you know who has the coolest record collection in the world? my sister. who is fast becoming a new yorker. i can hear it in her voice. no, she is not picking up a fake accent in 2 weeks. ha. i met a girl (from the usa) once who did that after going to new zealand for 2 months. she came back with the thickest new zealand accent. and she still has it. a decade later. i am totally making fun. but come on. if she was my friend, i'd call her on it, and make fun to her face. that is a funny thing to do. but no, my sister is not talking like a yankee, she's just getting herself all situated and doing things and calling me and telling me and it is so fun to hear about it all. makes me smile as i write this. i just wish she'd send me more pictures from her phone. hint hint. i want a picture of every professor. every new subway stop. every new juniper outfit. every new mama~goes~to~law~school~outfit, and all the new corners of her home as all the cute things find themselves out of all those boxes, some that i helped pack. you know what you might want to use that food processor for, the one you've never used yet, to make smoothies in! i used ours today to make a smoothie that i added a whole bunch of chard to, and the chard doesn't blend up in the blender very well, so i had to process it first in the processor. then we blended. and the kids got a big dose of fresh raw greens, and we felt a bit like super~humans after eating all that green goodness.

so, if i were to get a new record, toss the broken one, and play nice new sounds, instead of repeated honking, i would play a record that sounds like this today. we saw him last night. (he sounded so much better than that clip portrays. his magic was loud and clear in person, last night. the rainbow must have helped.) at a music festival with the kids. dancing to that song with olive in my arms was so fun. max was really into his beat boxing drum mouth sounds. zhi was into staring at him in the binoculars, and repeatedly asking me if 'we had this dude's disc?' the kids were all so into mr. sexton. he is magic. heart melting magic. with so much energy. as i watched him, i kept feeling like he is just a deep deep deep DEEP well. a well of high soulful creative energy and musical bliss. and sexiness. woohoo. we went in our raincoats. and still got soaked.

kids in raincoats are so good for photographs.

look at my new mom charms. charm me. please.

2011-08-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

on our anniversary, david and i went to the botanic gardens like i said, and it was so cool, cuz on that day there was this rose show. i didn't even know about rose shows. i am so into it. talk about high vibrations! i swear i could feel it. it was very very fun. i am totally turning into an old lady. one of my favorite ideas of fun is now going to a rose show.

i grew that chard. the chard divas are really happy with our garden this year. i love it. i eat it raw a lot.

these peppers are from the csa. one of them is so hot, i cried for ten minutes after the tiniest bite. woah. it was very powerful. cleared me out like good therapy does. and then i called a friend who is a member of the same farm, and she said the same thing happened to her. crying crying crying. such sad peppers. transferring so many tears to people. i am wondering if the earth is making her peppers grow extra hot this year, to get us cleared out more? if we are clearer, we will be more focused on what we need to be focused on. yeah?

and talk about feeling like a failure. i made this pizza. it sucked. i put some pesto on it that was from last year, just out of the freezer. i guess i made it too bitter. nice. whole pizza went to the chickens practically, except for part of half which i put tomato sauce on instead. i told david i just feel like i am being given a message to just stop trying. i am not a natural born cook. i try sometimes. and when crap like that happens, it makes me feel like i'm barking up the wrong tree. just go sew. let your family eat the regular old simple meals that take no effort and involve no creativity. david says, well, i guess that's why you're not the entrepreneur. yeah. totally! at least not in the food business. i could edit my writing, or my quilt, or my garden all day. but making a pizza three times. not my thing.

but the thing is, i really want to get myself more inspired in the kitchen. i told the kids, next time i make a pizza, one, it will not be made with gluten free crust (i am over that for now), two, it will not have pesto on it unless i make sure it is delicious ( how did i not taste that first??) , and three, i don't know. i might need mr. miyagi if i'm ever gonna get into a kitchen flow. channel that guy.

you can do it!

2011-08-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

hello. when's the last time you saw this song performed? hang in there and you'll recognize it after about 39 seconds. don't you love the lead singer's glasses. made me think of my lawyer sister. how fun is that to think of and write? we should sing this song to our kids as a lulliby. makes me feel like laughing, but the kids are falling asleep so i can't really.

i just love watching the main singer when they zoom in on him. and look how the two on the left (our left) kind of bop in synch together. and they all turn back and forth a little bit in synch too. if you watch the whole video, i swear it will transport you somewhere else. i'm not sure where, but somewhere very different. i think everyone needs to bookmark this. it ends abruptly. but that's ok.

now look how cool this cover is. i love his voice. so sweet.

i think i can is a mantra i keep telling max when he tries to draw lately. i replace his 'i can't do it', with 'i think i can,' like an involuntary reflex or something. i hope it gets in there. before he just tunes me out completely. i can't help it. maybe i'll toss that up with 'you can do magic,' here and there. hahaha. ok.. love.

buster

2011-08-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

can't seem to find the feeling of doing stuff right today. and of course when i'm going into this fun place, i color the whole past summer with this feeling, or the whole past decade if i'm really getting into beating myself up. fun!!!

i am a failure. fail ure. or something. a loser. los er. uuuugh.

moving on.

so it seems my writing time has been squeezed out of me for a while now. the kind where i really go on a journey. instead i am using my octopus arms to tend to the children the house the stuff. seems i am being called elsewhere. hmmmmm. like bed. i keep trying to write. but no. sleep is what i need. time will come when i have hours to write. maybe not this year. it's looking to be a crazy busy school year. with me shuttling kids to three different schools. olive only twice a week. max only for three hours a day. zhi riding the bus a lot, but the bus didn't show up this afternoon. you never know what you're gonna be asked to do. but mostly for me these days, it involves driving.

i am not whining.

yes. yes i am i guess. but not really. yes really. oh. headache. i love you. i love you stick shift. i love you broken radio. i love you children learning learning learning. i love you olive my sassy sidekick.

i love you yarn that gives me something to do. i love you yarn store with nice ladies who helped me understand my pattern today. i love you tea with a friend. i love you huge bill for max's school. i love you tired eyes. i love you august. i love you sister so far away. i love you sleep. i love you run that i hope to take tomorrow. somehow. how? when? at 6 am. phew. i am getting disciplined here. disciplined. or crazy. or scared. or desperate! desperate to feel better. ha. i love you toe shoes. you make my calves sore. i love that. i love you chicken yard. i love you bee yard. i love you grace that will come and make me feel like i am not a failure. that i am a human girl busting it out, full of imperfections. i love you buster.

and i hate you too. ' the opposite of love is not hate. it is indifference.' steven pressfield, from the war of art book.

so hating is not so bad! hate all you want. if you feel indifferent though, uh oh.

ha.

i love you night time.

night night.

12 :: years :: of :: being :: married

2011-08-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

when i sit down today, with my husband of 12 years, i feel gratitude.

there has been so much resistance for us. and there will be so much more.

as long as we find ourselves side by side, hearts connected, or boarded up, we will have work to do. doing our work is insane. and essential. and fodder. and really hard and scary. i have deep dark light high gratitude for you david. for the partnership you've given me in my adult life. as a woman. as a mother. as an artist.

and when we are getting a much welcomed break from the work, the laughter is the best. the love. the play. the dancing. the music. it actually does get better. all of it. matures and ripens and evolves into feelings that satisfy even more. because we do the work. not always right when it's clear that there is work to be done, often, we wait till the pain is screaming out, but still, we do eventually listen. i am a big fan of the work. and of having a partner who isn't afraid to do it with me.

yes.

this book, the war of art, is making me feel so brave and ready to dive in. to. my. stuff. to the place i go to create from. creating our own art, takes as much bravery, as staying in relationship. or leaving it, which i know is sometimes the most brave and aligned thing a person can do for themselves. this book is saying that where ever we feel resistance, that is the direction we need to go in. it's making me question the daily groove's advice. he, scott noelle, often says resistance is a sign that we are going in the wrong direction, especially when it comes to parenting....i'm guessssssssing he means we need to notice the resistance and do something to meet it, to get under it, through it, instead of just staying in it, or running away from it. yeah. so then, these two guys are not contradicting each other at all. pressfield is saying, when we come up against resistance, we are close to some action that is gonna be essential to our growth, our art's growth. go in the direction of the resistance. go go go. be brave and let your heart flip out. scary. he says being scared shitless is good. woohoo! isn't that great news! we get to continue feeling terrified of ourselves and everything and everyone else and that is a good thing. it means we are on the right path. ha. this is hilarious, yeah? constant pruning. constant reassessments. constant meeting. constant rising. constant mixing. constant brewing. constant facing. constant cycling. and there is that part of the cycle where we get to rest. the cocoon, the chrysalis phase. love that phase.

so. on i go. to the botanic gardens with this man i married. that i've worked with for 12 years. and learned about resistance and meeting and letting go and loving in ways i am endlessly grateful for. love.

she is so lovely

2011-08-10T21:49:00.000-07:00

hello.

today:

saw queen of the sun today. the world is asking us to wake up. wake up. wake up. my children know the word pesticide so well now. they had a big lesson in school last spring, in their butterfly pavillion made in the class, when all the tomato hornworms died after eating on a tomato plant that wasn't organically grown. how telling for those kindergarteners, firsts and second graders. could the lesson be any clearer than that? they will not forget that. they raised those worms up! then had to see that. deep exhale. ......i am so in love with our bees still. after seeing that movie, i feel so so grateful to have some here on this land with us, that seem to be having a very good summer. fingers crossed for winter. sweet honey loves.

olive's tantrums weren't quite so piercing for me today. i found grace a couple times and felt so grateful each time. i am needing some grace.

enjoying reading this book, the tale of despereaux, to the kids SO much. andrea told me about it after seeing that there are rats in the house now. so grateful she did. oh my goodness. i just saw that a movie was made of this story too. the kids are gonna be so excited. oh i can hardly take it. we love books. a lot a lot a lot a lot. and we love movies a lot a lot a lot too.

i saw a license plate that said grattud. or something like that.

gratitude is coming. i am wondering if the turkey is helping me tune in. you know turkey medicine? here's a bit on turkey medicine i've never read before. oh there's so much sacred life in the world.

i want to wake up at 7 am tomorrow. eat a tiny bit. drink. go on a run. be back home and ready for a therapy appointment at 8:30am. that means. go to bed ms. h. night night.

look at this that zhi had the idea to make. we did it together. so beautiful. made me feel into the ocean which i loved. i don't do that enough. she is so lovely. zhi. and the ocean. but i meant zhi.