pressure on the woman!

i'm tired. and i have to make dinner now. how am i going to pull this off gracefully?

yes, we're making brown rice pasta cuz yer daddy wants us to go easy on the gluten these days.

and yes, i don't wear a bra. hardly ever. they are uncomfortable. hmmmm, maybe a shoulder stretch along with a jaw stretch would feel good.

mmmm. yes. that is helping clear some stagnation.

okay, i'm feeling more into my body, i'm noticing my breath again. feeling more powerful. i can make this dinner. i know i can.

what is up with the pressure in this world? it's nature's pressure. that's all i can come up with. and yet, even under all the pressure of the matter on the surface of the earth, she has her integrity underneath, and is able to maintain large cavernous crystal worlds, massive underground rivers, flowing lava, and i am excited to learn, or just imagine, what else! look here. today, when the pressure feels and seems to be too much, i want to remember these places, that are right under my feet, existing in harmony with the pressure all around them.

and i want to remember something we talked about last night in the women's group. about meeting energy coming at you that feels like an attack, first with dodging, blending, or harmonizing with the attacker and his/her energy, and then with redirecting their motion. it's the basic aikido principal....i think. i wish i had someone to teach me. maybe my little boy will help with that now that he's studying a martial art.

i went shopping yesterday for only these things. they were just what was on the list. when i got home, i found it very funny that i got these particular items. all about cleaning... one of my challenges in life, to find the balance between dirty and clean.

and here i am, trying to do what the box is telling you you're supposed to do with these gloves. but throwing in some martial arts defense posture. don't mess with me and my hot pinks. on the back of the box she has on her panties and high heels and is laying down looking at her beautiful gloves. is that what we're supposed to do after we do the dishes? oh yes. and let me run a bath for the man, add some epsom salts, and get the kids to bed while i enjoy my heels and gloves some more. and then let me pleasure the man after he's nice and relaxed from his hard hard day at work. and then, i will take the gloves off, and feel great about how they protected my hands from a woman's work. uh-huh. ugggg. i think i might barf just from imagining it. what does sex have to do with these gloves? don't anyone answer that.

loving

• this new arrangement in the kids room. i cleared out a huge black trash bag full of stuffed animals and other toys. that made a big difference. they actually started playing in there right away. i have noticed, that all i have to do to bring a space back to life if it has been abandoned is to clean it, clear it, or move it... but i have to remind myself, that order is not everything. chaos has it's most important place in the divine scheme. don't forget this h, on your quest to organize the world.
• even the daddy will play in there now. (D put the blanket over the playstand and there are some monsters, or bears, or a hulk family in there i think....)

• mmmm, beer while cooking is fun

• when they are being read to

• baby eggplant from the farmer's market. i finally got our butts out of the house on a saturday morning, which is not a natural thing to do for us because of the monday through friday scene. but i am so glad we did. i was drawn to these little purple fairytale vegetables not having ever eaten or cooked them before. they are awesomely easy to prepare and cook up. i added black beans to the mess after these veggies were done cooking and the grub was complete.

• fresh local garlic and lots of it.

• the baby shower lynn and i gave christy.
• after 10 years of praying for a baby to come to her, it was a very special and fun girly time.

• that we finally mailed our thank you notes for zhi's birthday presents. 2 and a half months later. and that is so fine.
• that today is going to be in the 70s. tomorrow is going to snow. we must bring in some wood. i'm not really loving that snow part. but the kids are, so maybe i can vibe off of them. follow their lead. probably the smartest thing i could ever do.

inside outside

la la la la la la la. i did not want to get out of bed this morning. something to do with the moon blood flowing that helps me relax so much, and then how i was startled awake by M and Z arguing in the night over the light M had turned on....and just how cozy and tired i felt under the covers this morning. one of the best feelings ever. that warm snuggly relaxed feeling. i'm going to seek it out all over the place over these next three goddamn cold seasons.

and now, a funny thing, that was not funny at all when it happened:

we went on our pretty usual saturday hike before our dinner date this weekend. i have been hiking with the ipod lately, enjoying getting lost in songs or audio books while i huff up the mountain.

this weird thing has been happening the past few hikes, where very randomly, the songs will just change, after they've been playing for about 10 seconds. this causes me to stop, take out the freaking gadget, put it back on the song i wanted to hear, put it back away, turn off the random mode which just turned itself on all by itself, and pray it doesn't happen again. i did that about 25 times on this last hike. and each time i got increasingly frustrated, to the point of cussing out loud at the idiot music machine. i was overheard at one point by someone i didn't know, and had to explain as briefly as i could that i was mad at the ipod, no big deal, i'm not hurt or anything. the guy was nice and said 'no worries', in the nicest way, which was sweet.

when i made it to the top, and david was waiting for me, i let it rip. and i was very close to throwing the stupid iphone over the side of the mountain. very very close. david gently laughed, and asked to see it. he went into the settings, and laughed again, this time really belly-laughing. 'shake to shuffle' is what it's called. when he said those words to me, i laughed too. what the f***? why does that setting exist, first. and why was it turned on, second?

you just have to shake your ipod, and it will shuffle to the next song. makes perfect sense for what i was experiencing. so every time i made a big step, shuffle it! ugggggh. i can't even believe this setting. what a joke someone has played on us ipod users. whoever you are who invented this, i want to meet you and have a good laugh. and get you back somehow.

i love shadows.

and i love the blue of the sky against the back of the flatirons.

horse poop, owls, and cheerleading

this is the horse poop that olive and i collected from some neighbors to amend the garden. why won’t our garden grow? back in the day when i had a plot in the community gardens it was like butter. i planted a seed and it grew, to full term, perfectly and wonderfully. now, that i am at 6800 feet, it’s like i might as well live in the sahara as far as i can tell, gardenwise. the raspberries think they’re growing in sand. as does everything else. (i'm exaggerating a little bit, i know i don't water quite enough, it's just so tricky with water conversation guilt for me...) except the peach tree. she is a happy one. so, i’m trying horse poop. i’ve heard it makes a big difference. i will spread it around, and keep trying. i’m probably going to be eighty when i figure this gardening at altitude thing out. damn shitty mutha ‘uckin crap. that’s how i feel after all the time i’ve put into gardening so far, the past 8 years here, with sad results. so sad. and yet i am still hopeful. but honoring the sadness and frustration too, damn it! an elderly neighbor woman who has been gardening in our neighborhood for decades told me horse poop is the cure. well. here we are. we have the cure. and a really sweet horse friend, who makes a few wheelbarrow loads of it a day, and is happy to share his gold, for free! a cure like that is pretty swell.

Think for a moment what your life would be like if you were able to jettison anything that did not speak to you on a Soul level. What would remain? What then would you "hunt" because it provided for you on all levels? That is what Owl medicine teaches us to do. We find that as we begin to move through the process of what we truly want, clearing the old to make way for the new birth of the Self that is close at hand, we find that other obstacles, limitations, fears and anxieties also begin to "die" in our lives. They no longer have the hooks to remain attached to our energy fields and without our support, they must die.

that is an excerpt from this site....

http://morningstar.netfirms.com/owltotem.html

umm, i love that about as much as anything i’ve ever read. whew. that’s a reason to get an owl tattoo. or to collect owl things, which i seem to do

over the past few years i’ve noticed.

my crazy crazy crazy self. this princess inside me who wants order, and she wants it all the time. if i use the owl wisdom, and jettison all that does not speak to me on a soul level, i would clearly see that being uptight about whatever mess i am freaking about is not speaking to me on a soul level, but on a very surfacey-mind level only. oh owl. please guide me to this wisdom so that i may relax more and more into the messiness of life.

i just love order so much! what am i going to do? i am back to this age old issue of mine, yet again. but that’s what we do with our core issues, isn’t it? revisit them on the circle endlessly, hopefully gaining a little more insight, understanding, and clarity into the unseen, unevolved, darkened aspects of our relationship with the core issue each time. oh, am i looking at this one again now, or what? mess mess mess. is there a mess in my shadow somewhere? am i just an obvious mess to everyone who sees me but myself, and that’s why i run around picking up this and cleaning that all the day long, and still never getting to all the mess? and then look at the first picture. horse poop. POOP. the biggest mess of all. when a child poops in the wrong place, or takes off a diaper with poop in it and proceeds to step in it, track it, sometimes eat it, that’s pretty much the most horrific mess a mother comes up against. and i did yesterday, actually. but look. the mess, the horse poop, is actually what i need to make my garden grow! i need mess. I FUCKING NEED MESS TO LIVE! holy holy crap! literally! IT IS HOLY CRAP! THE MESS IS HOLY! WE WOULD NOT STAY ALIVE WITHOUT IT.

maybe i need a tattoo of poop too.

okay. dinner time. dinner that needed messypoopydirt to grow in.

wait, one more thing.

i am talented, and sometimes have a challenging time. this is what my therapist told me i am to tell myself when i am playing my guitar but not liking what i sound like. my normal self-talk would be more like, ‘you suck, this is a stupid thing to even try. you’ll never get this.’ terrible.... i would never say that to one of my kids, or a friend, or anyone(!), who i saw struggling to learn something that wasn’t coming easily. no way. i am a cheerleader to the bone. just ask my sister what i was like when it was time for her to push Juniper out into this earthly air. i became the cheerleader i was in junior high. and that baby wasn’t coming out easily at all, but that did not stop me even one tiny bit from encouraging her to stick with it, to tell her how amazing and powerful and beautiful she was, and to acknowledge her incredible otherworldy effort. no, i channeled the cheerleader, and out came that baby. when it is crunch time, and i am challenged, i want to talk to myself like i do all my loved ones. i want to be my own cheerleader. give me an H! this is so important. self confidence. self love. self cheering. i need a megaphone tattoo too.

oh man, that makes me want to tell my cheerleader tryouts story.

can you tell i am jacked on jasmine tea??

a little new project, a little new kitten, and a little new header

this little pie, as zhi started calling her, is a crazy thing. as i was trying to work on these pants last night, she insisted on jumping all over the paper, chewing on the pins, and pouncing at random intervals. i kept thinking how this is just what it has been like for the past seven + years. since max was born, there has been a little crazy one walking right into the middle of anything i set out to do. and i kept thinking how natural it is for this kitten to be doing this, and then remembering how natural it is for baby humans and children to do the exact same thing. and how someday i really will miss this. i really really really will miss being interrupted every 90 seconds. i will miss projects taking 20 times longer to finish than they would if i was alone. i will miss it like crazy. i thought about this last night as i spent way too long cutting the pants out, picking the kitten up and plopping her to the side of the pattern pieces at least a hundred times. i felt deeply how i don't want to look back on this time of having young sweet wild things as a time of mostly stress and resistance. i mean, the stress is pretty much a given as far as i can tell sometimes, but the joy can be too, right? it was so nice to have this reminder, cause it's all going by so so fast. not that i want to invite my kids to jump in the middle of my patterns that are so neatly laid and pinned on the floor, but if that's what they need to do for some reason sometimes, i kind-of do want to invite it. you know? it's way easier said than done, but i am serious here! i want to chill out. i want to revel in the chaos. (and for those of you who know us and our history with our cats being lost to the wild animals of the forest, this one is going to be an indoor cat. and we are actually going to leash train her. at least that's the plan.)
i am making the kids some new thick and warm pants....from some old thick and warm pants. i bought a few pair of pretty large sized cords at a thrift store on half price day, and after cutting the waistband and zipper out, opening the legs up at the inseam, they are the perfect size for a child's pants pattern. neat.

3 patterns i had on hand for the three sizes of pants i need.
a little love reading beside me.
and then playing a little slinky.
and a cute corner i recently set up with my new 10 dollar chair from a thrift shop.

okay. now this header i made. i love it. and i am wondering if it looks like i am expressing myself as a sexy desperate housewife, dreaming of the big city. that's my fear as i analyze it. but the reality of why i made it, as far as i know it, is that i love the sparkly shirt and the striped apron. i love the hand on the hip. i love the kitchen after it's been cleaned and i stand there like that for a sec and feel pleased. and the other photo is from when we went to see kooza, the cirque du soleil show, in denver. you can barely see the tents, but they are there, to the left of mile high stadium. the clouds above the tents are so dreamy and the light from behind them so magical looking. and somehow i like seeing all the cars in the foreground too. and these two photos together are a healthy juxtaposition for me of a deep inner home life, with a colossal, expansive outer world. that's where i'm coming from here. the balance of the two is really of GREAT interest to me right now, as i begin to look at the future, and my plans to step forward into the outer world a bit more, to begin to make some money again. good luck to me! and maybe i need to be on a leash, too?? my kids will take care of that, right?

well..

summer decided to snow on her last day here. it melted before it hit the ground, but still. i built a fire on the last day of summer. and it's okay. there is still a hummingbird here. i had images this morning of keeping her in the house with us all winter, in case she missed the leaving time with all her buds. it really seems like she might have. i could take care of her in the house. in a cage cause otherwise the cats would get her. ugh. i hope she knows what she's doing. i'm sure she does, either way. if she's old and not up for the flight back to mexico, or if she's young and free-willed and just wasn't ready to go when the others were. i love her so much.

this is the bird-poop yin yang i found the other day on the car's windshield.

it's almost prefect!!

how fitting that i saw it in the last days of the summer...

and this is the love i woke up to on a day last week. the two big ones, who share a room, were snuggled in the hammock together, exuding the sweetest love vibe ever, with many giggles involved. that is maybe the best way i've ever woken up.... to those sounds of joy.

and the washing machine broke. this is one week's worth of laundry, including some cloth diapers in the purple bag. this had to be almost a hundred pounds of clothing. it costs a dollar a pound to have the people at the laundromat wash it for you. i did it with max and olive and it cost me exactly twenty dollars. princess zhi was the lucky dog who was playing at a friend's house while we slaved away cleaning her dresses and robes. max was so helpful, and really into it. maybe a little too much for my comfort. but i hung in there and didn't get too uptight about our clean clothes spilling out from the dryer onto the floor. i resisted the seemingly involuntary reflex i have which makes me turn into a scary witch when i sense the potential for an unnecessary mess to be made which will result in more cleaning work for me. yes, i am insane and uptight, and want things neat and tidy and clean, all the time. they never are, naturally, but i sure do waste a lot of energy wanting them that way. ahhhhh. it really feels good to chill out about it. and it really feels good to be immersed in clean tidiness, too. there is the yin yang!

today, while the big ones are at school, olive and i are going back to the laundromat, with about 50 pounds this time. i didn't notice the triple loaders until i had already started 5 double loads last time, so this time i am going to be a little more efficient. oh yeah.

and finally, tonight, we are going to a party to celebrate a friend who has found herself to have a baby growing inside. and she couldn't be happier about that finding. we get to go meet the man who gave her the seed (that's how we say it with the kids so far. something about a seed from the dad, goes into the mom's belly and finds her egg. when they meet, they turn into a baby. this weekend zhi was talking about how babies grow for some reason or another, oh, because it was max's conception anniversary, which yes, i shared with them at the breakfast table. and zhi insisted on me writing him a happy conception card, which i did. but as she was talking about his conception, she mentioned that the seed goes into the mom's belly button to find the egg. david and i very subtly looked at each other and smiled, but didn't say anything to correct her. it just didn't feel important right now. i know they all know that babies come out of the mom's yoni, because they were there to see their sister come into the breathing world, but it hasn't crossed their minds yet to ask where the seeds actually come from, and how they get into the body, at least not beyond the belly button idea. i love this sweetness. love love love it.) they are here visiting from kaua'i. and we're going to play us some taboo. i love that game. and i highly recommend the electronic version. it has tons more words to play. the acoustic version, with the cards instead of the little screen thing, was exhausted by us long ago. we got to the point where we knew all the words and couldn't play it anymore. i had to buy the electric one on ebay cause it was discontinued for some reason.

(here we are planning her baby shower last week)

summer goodbye dress

good bye, my love, mrs. summer. we have less than one more week together, and i am all about the 80 degrees you're going out in style with.

but hey, i'm heading for fall in style too......a few months later, and .....

it's made! simplicity 2702. i kind-of can't believe that i actually like it, and am wearing it out of the house. but i am. and it feels pretty cool. and i have gotten some sweet feedback while wearing it today, which is nice, of course. and, it has a little story to it....

when i sat down to do this project, starting probably 6 or 8 weeks ago, i made a deal with myself, that at no time during the process would i rush myself. i would just take one small step at a time. i set a firm boundary that hurry and stress were not going to be a part of any step. not like i could control the stress part, actually. but i could definitely control how hurried i let myself feel. so, this dress is infused with patience. this was an awesome exercise. i highly recommend it on whatever your next project may be, no matter what medium you use. this world is crazy, and we are always hurrying. it is such a relief to have something to do, where hurrying IS NOT ALLOWED.

i did have a frustrating time sewing the right angles where the neck band meets the dress below the boobs. i ripped the seam and tried a few times to get it perfect, but it just wasn't happening. this fabric is thick, and that is a tricky thing to do with thick linen. oh well. the Dman had the brilliant idea of sewing a piece of ribbon or trim over that seam that was bugging me. so i went to elfriede's, and found what i wanted. i like it better with the trim than if it weren't on, so that 'bad' sewing job was a blessing in disguise. love it when that happens. don't judge mistakes, people. they are often blessings. (like the time my 4 and half year-old had an accident and pooped in her pants at the playground this summer, just as we were getting there. there were no bathrooms within walking distance. and i didn't have anything in the car to clean her properly. so we had to pack it up, all 3 kids back in the car, and drive to a bathroom. and when we got to the bakery where the bathroom was, we saw a very good friend who i hadn't seen in so long, and we ended up just hanging out and having tea and cookies. so much better than the playground, actually.)