a refreshing day at home....just the kids and mamaH

(zhi's new mama-made woolen pants!  i bought a bunch of adult sized 100% wool pants at the hospice thrift shop, washed and dried them, and then cut them into child's size pants from a random vintage pj pattern i had, sewed them up, added the cotton ribbon down the sides, and voila, they are totally awesome.  they are lined with sweet soft cotton.  now we don't have to argue about how to get her to wear warm pants in the winter.  she loves them.  i have since made max some.  his are pretty awesome too.  they turned out to look kind-of skater-style, which max pulls off so easily for some reason.....)

i loved this day.......i hadn't used my camera in so long, and i got so many nice pictures when i took it out this day.   there was hardly any fighting between max and zhi, which is the bane of my existence these days.   why do they go after each other like they do?  i had the scariest worst case scenario come to mind this morning....picturing them just beating each other to a pulp for the rest of their childhood, making our home a literal warzone, forever.  i really freaked myself out.  i am not going to imagine that again if i can help it.  ANYWAYS, this was an awesome day, and we used our swings and slides to perfection, and i marveled at the beauty of old flowers gone to seed, the beauty of seeds.  i am love with that old gumweed flower.  

ayudame por favor!

this is an old picture.  i have not had the camera out lately.  i think deleting my flickr account took some of the motivation of snapping so frequently away.  dang that flickr for being so motivating.  there was something weird going on, in a bad way, that made me delete my account.  and now i'm glad i did because i'm looking at why and how i take pictures.  i don't want to take them for praise.  i want to take them because i am inspired by what i see.  and because i want to share and remember that image.  it feels much better to get that in check.  and now i guess a little break from the rebel was in order.  

the light the light the light!  i am needing help finding the light.  it is so hard to find right now.  i am reading a book by this  woman, called A Wizard of Earthsea.  don't read the next few sentences if you don't want to know something that happens..........................................  in the book, the wizard character Ged (pronounced with a hard g)  has unleashed his shadow, and it is haunting him in the most dangerous and life-threatening of ways.  he has to basically run from it forever, at least that's his MO at the moment i'm in.  he's capable of battling the scariest of dragons with quite a bit of confidence, compared with how he feels about meeting his shadow.   aaaaaaaah.  why do i relate to this so thoroughly?  i have to put the book down and catch my breath often.  i have to take day long breaks sometimes cause i keep getting the eeriest feeling because of how closely i relate to his trial right now.  shadow work is the best, but it's also the scariest.  and when the light of day is out, we are pretty safe.  but when there is no light, it is sosososososo seemingly impossible.  ayudame elders.  tell me how this is done.

more love

david and i went to a very very very inspiring talk last night at max's school by this   woman.  i tried one of her suggestions this morning with max as he told me he didn't want to go to school.

instead of trying to logically explain why we go to school and blahblahblah, i sat on the bathroom floor with him, asked him to come sit in my lap, which he did with no resistance, and just loved him, and listened to him, and asked him to tell me about why he didn't want to go, and very quickly he changed the subject and was happy to talk about which superhero tshirt he was going to wear.   it was definitely like magic.   i am really wondering if magic is a pseudonym for love.  i immediately went into the other bathroom where david was peeing and got right in front of him, without getting peed on, and told him how i dodged a tantrum and another stressful morning by doing what we talked about in the meeting last night, and he was so thrilled, but said don't expect it to work like that every time.  why not????  heather says it never fails.  hmmmmmmm.  hmmmmmmmmmm.hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

love

what it is.......

what it is not........ 

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chaosCHAOSstress      jumbled tension-filled chaos . 

 but what if this tension, this pressure, this rushed stress-filled feeling i hate, was loved, was all of a sudden given love, and not hate or fear.  that's hard and sometimes seems like it would take a miracle to make that even possible,  for me anyways lately.   that's okay, cuz there's a course on miracles.  we could all learn this skill.  wouldn't it be nice if jesus or buddha or kwan yin came to our neighborhood and gave us a teaching that would stick for a lifetime.  or more!  can u tell i am lazy?  not so into the daily practice at the moment......daily practice.  daily practice.  daily practice.  love the stress.  ha!  love the hate.  it feels like i turn myself inside out when i succeed at remembering to attempt this, and succeed at loving any part of what i hate.  my heart center totally comes alive with the best expansive vibration!  so my little question, for the kaizen practice, is, 'could i love any part of this (thing or feeling that i'm hating) right now?  any tiny little part of it?'  could i love any tiny little part f this experience?  could i love any tiny little part of it?  (you have to repeat it a bunch for your brain to be able to remember it , and call it up at the appropriate time.....)

i need to add that...

(you must click on the picture and see it large, to see max's expression.  the water exhilarated him.  it was amazing to watch, and vibe off of.)

i won't be capable of playing a full bluegrass song until the next decade most likely (except for in my dreams!), and that is okay.  i am just getting a glimpse of what my fingers seem to want to do.  fast bendy twang.  i don't want to sound cocky, like i've got this guitar playing down or anything.  but when i have the time, i love to play it so much.  but more than that, what i love, is singing with david.   it is impossible not to smile when he comes in on the harmony part, or chorus,  of this song we have been playing together.  impossible.  and it helps that the words of the chorus are, 'tonight you're gonna lose me, i want so that i can hardly see, and i'll be wrong and you'll be right, but you're gonna lose me tonight.'  as in i'm gonna cheat on your ass, tonight!  

i cannot stop thinking about the ocean visit.  the salt water.  just the other night the kids got their first epsom salt bath, and i told them that it is just better for your skin to bathe in water that is a little salty, how it helps your body relax more.   they were totally into it, and now remind me to put the salt in.  i love that!  i hope it really is better.  i feel like it is.  we must be mermaids and mermen.

blue rap

hello dear.  i am thinking i may be a bluegrass musician.  well surely, i know i am country, but as i learn my first little bit about how to pick a few bendy notes, hammer, pull off, and walk around, something happens with my fingers and they start thinking by themselves, and making sounds that sound very much like bluegrass.  oh no!!!!!  this isn't where i thought i'd go at all.   i am laughing at the thought of me sitting around in my life playing twangy music.  twang.  ha!  this is hillarious.  i don't know why i'm acting so surprised, i mean, i have many bluegrass cds...but i also have a few rap ones which i LOVE, and i have definitely never seen myself becoming a rapper.  but now i am beginning to wonder about that too.  maybe when i write my first song of this decade, cause i used to write songs way back when i was in the early part of the 20s decade, it will be a bluegrass rap.  i am starting to see that when the inspiration comes, the words, the melody, it often just comes right out of thin air, with a total and complete life of its own (much like children), and my only role is to hear it and remember it.  so crazy how many different ways the words, the message, the sounds, the whatevers, can come in.  i just hope i get better at hearing them, cause it is so fun!  and funny to see how they ask to be sung or played.  

salt water

oh how i love thee salt water.  to bathe in,  to cleanse in, to cry out, to swim in, to play in, to search in, to gargle with, to eat from, to pee in, to love in, to rebirth in, renew in, rejuvenate in.  

the most majestic and powerful of all natural wonders to me is the sea.     yay for our recent visit.....!  thank you to the paternal grandparents for flying us out and sharing the house.