dance monday post....snow dancing

hello everyone!!!! (and i'm speaking to all the creatures of the forest, and now to the friends who visit from the interconnectednetworldwidespiderweb.)


i would never have done this before!! i am so glad i created this exercise for myself. because for the sheer need to avoid boring myself, i brought the party out to the snow. the kids were all sick home today, and they were inside watching little bear, so it was just me and the trees.

i like this move. maybe my new favorite. i can't imagine myself doing this. it's funny to see.

and this must be where i salute to the chief of trees. thank you and, you guys rock, i say to all the trees!! they really are the best dancers. i could totally feel them.

and i guess i bow to the camera, too. who knew?

it was actually mellow music i was spiriting (my new word for dancing today.) to. this guy is so good, he kept me right on the verge of tears the whole time. and he's doing it again as i watch this video. i love how he talks about coyotes.

the end. goodnight monday.

dis and dat....love and beauty

for, i LOVE:

i can't get enough of the girls wearing the prairie shirts i made.

this shadow is so weird to me. it looks like i came out of the 1800s.

don't you love to hold your nose like this? mmmm, feels good.

i read harry potter when i was pregnant with max. i loved it so much. i am wondering about reading them again. i sort-of feel like i am pregnant, in a metaphorical way only. his surgery is in a month. i am slowing down, drinking chamomile instead of caffeine, for the most part, i have had some jasmine tea and chai a few times, i will admit...but i am working on calming the nerves a lot these days. that means no caffeine, right? and it means working it out!! i am doing my workouts, while max does his... (david is always working out, that's nothing new, but it's nothing small either).... let me name them...feldenkrais, hippo~therapy, rolfing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, snow boarding, juggling, alexander therapy, and i know i'm forgetting something!!! swimming lessons will start up again soon, i'm feeling. isn't that the best grouping of therapies ever in the history of the world? yay for therapy.

(i antiqued the photo, nice huh? an antique exercise machine)

i have been using this elliptical machine (david got on ebay when our rec center closed for a year for renovations.... it was a very good purchase for us) a lot lately too. getting the fearstresstoxins out out out out out out out out out as much as i can. i have been hiking too, more than usual. i had a trippy time with my camera on one last week. here are my favorite pictures......

(and these are for thirty days of beauty..)

(i am so close to starting my first cabled knitting project..)

(there is orange inside, and that means creativity to me)

(we do grow towards the light, but we better have some strong roots in that dark earth!)

(i feel like i am in star trek)

(this sign made me happy. the falcons are back.)

messy and fast.

and i got in trouble for the fast part. i wasn’t even meaning to go fast. i am usually the car that people are wanting to pass as i drive us around to wherever we’re going. right, claire? but here, the city puts a photo radar camera right at the bottom of this one hill in town, where it’s impossible not to pick up speed, and yes i know i have brakes, but come on! they did that on purpose. okay, i feel dumb for complaining about this. if i lived at the bottom of that hill i’d be psyched about the photo radar van that is parked there most days. i’ve gotten in trouble there 4 times i think now. dang! this is the best picture i’ve gotten so far though, that’s a bonus. and you know what’s funny to me, every time they snap me, i have a mug in my hand. drinking some sort of tea or coffee usually, and going to fast. getting all jacked. 40 dollars seems high to me for this. but i prefer this to being pulled over. you don’t get points on your license for photo radar. that’s also very nice of them. well, no more! you won’t catch me there, i am pretty sure i am going to be all over my speed, i mean brakes, at that spot from now on.

life is messy. especially when you are a human, and you have stuff. and too much stuff, as is the case with us. i love how our clock tilts. a screw came loose, and it’s not fixable. we have loose screws and wobbly time in this house. messy messes, and a mama who teeters between insanity over the chaos, and a sad feeling of overwhelm at the whole mess deal. why try? i often wonder this. just for fun. i imagine what would happen if i never cleaned. would anyone in my house start it up? mmmmm, no. david would hire a house cleaner. he did that once when i stopped. i had a good excuse, which involved barfing all day for 4 months, while i grew my baby girl. she was a nice girl. the cleaner, not the baby. the baby is an amazing girl. but i have a hard time relaxing with someone else cleaning our stuff. i’m grateful to be able to clean my own space. so grateful. wow, that was a shift. and at that, i’m not super freaky about it as far as dust and mess goes. just a little freaky. and when it’s that time of the month, i will admit, i get super freaky. but it makes sense to me now. everything internal is somehow manifested in the external, and as women clean and clear their wombs, they often do the same to their homes. the deeper cleaning happens then. that’s when i all of a sudden see something, like some dust on the top of a cabinet that eyes have never seen. well, i see it at that time of the month. menstruating is magical. i wonder how the magic shifts when menopause happens. i know it doesn’t go anywhere. the other thing that i find interesting about the premenstrual time of the month are the mood swings. there’s a reason. i know there is. and we’re not necessarily all out of balance hormonally. we are mostly just all tuned in, and super tuned in, at that time. we are sensing what is out of balance. and we freak! we lose it. we want change, we want to restore the balance. but often, stuff is so far out of balance that it’s not an easy adjustment to make to bring the balance back. and so we feel desperate and crazy about it. and we are told we are just pms~ing, and we are not taken seriously. this is such a crime to me. i heard eckhart tolle explain once, that pms~ing is also when women tap into the collective pain body on the planet. come on! see! we’re not just temporarily insane. we’re temporarily sane! it reminds me of the seal song, crazy. watching him move is really fun. he is cool. and so are those girls behind him. here's my newest theory for saving the world, the human race should be asking premenstrual women for their take on things, and use that information to help with the shift the planet is needing so desperately to come back to a state of balance and health. i feel like the earth is premenstrual right now.

a bunch of light~filled moments....and my february small change

when i put pictures all together like this, it makes it look like life is so awesome. yes. this is a good practice for sure. and this is why i love cameras. i can capture and remember some serious cracks of lights!

for my one small change this month, i vow to be a much better girl at hanging my laundry on the line instead of using the dryer so much. see, i already caught myself, and instead of drying these butt wipes (that we've used for all three babies!!!), i took them back out of the dryer, and hung them up. they are easy. a load of our clothes takes time!! but i will do better. and i will hang another line. and get out the drying rack too. okay. and below you see something that wouldn't have happened had i not vowed to recycle batteries this past month. i was cleaning out a cabinet recently and found these two little mini mag-lites. their batteries were corroded and i couldn't get them out. oops. so before this small change project, i would have thrown them away, i swear. i'm bad. but because it's now, i went online to search for a way to unstick stuck batteries. i found a few strange remedies, that i would have tried, but then i found that mag-lite will replace these flashlights if you mail them to them. i hope they recycle them once removed. i'm pretty sure they will for some reason.

making it work,

however i can, which means car dancing today. ha. but it did lift my spirits, for sure. and as always lately, i wasn't exactly feeling like shaking the car with my rockin body, but i did it anyways. even to bob dylan. the cd player is broken in the car, and the only tape we have in there is bb dylan on one side, and led zeppelin on the other. it was led zeppelin on the way home from school, and zhi asked me if we were listening to rock and roll. i told her 'no.' just kidding. where did she learn that? i would have asked her, but i'm lucky i heard her question. the three of them talked at the same time the whole way home. i can't get a word in. next day: so, i asked her this morning where she learned about rock and roll, cause i know we've never really talked about what rock and roll is, not for any reason, it just hasn't come up. she said her friend at school was showing her some rock and roll dancing. fun!! i asked her to show me a little, but she wasn't feeling like it. maybe later! i look forward to it!

all my prayers, last night, really were heard. thank you if you helped me out there and . i had the mellowest night, thanks to david, who saw me praying in my arms at the table, quietly, and told me to go to the studio while he did bedtime with the kids. he was so kind. and he said it was easy because i was being so kind. that was swell. ha, that word makes me laugh. and we made ourselves an appointment with the ole therapist. and of course we're getting along great now. we'll still be able to pull all the stress back out when we see her though, i have no doubt.

i was hoping to have my february first goal for 'one small change' over at hipmountainmama, ready to declare today, but nope. maybe tomorrow, i hope.