food and kittens and yarn and green overalls

so. after a post where i vent and swear and get my stress out....of course, i mean, thankfully this would follow. some pretty stuff. some yummy stuff. some sweet sweet precious delicious lovely cuddly stuff. some dreamy desirable stuff. i am drawn to the pretty for a reason. when the pretty stuff is available, of course we all want it. i think we all do anyways. and when the pretty stuff happens, of course i see it and take photos of it when i have my camera handy. and of course i want to remember it. and share this side of myself too. i have a pretty feminine country southern girl side!!! it is true. and yet, i have my edge all the time. if i ever feel like i've attained the 'place' i want to be, someone pinch me. it doesn't work like that. it all exists all the time every moment. sometimes it's easy to see the beauty. sometimes we have to search for the treasure. sometimes we have to close our eyes and find it inside. and then build up the fire and turn into a lighthouse for others. sometimes we look around cuz we have no kindling and can't seem to make a spark and see we our friend over on the shore beaming and welcoming us, showing us the way this time. we are connected. we are here for each other. this i am surrendering to. and feeling so grateful for my friends who shine their light for me when i am dark.

after school





and hot chocolate on a warm fall day is crazy. crazy treat we love.

a lollipop gotten at a greenhouse nursery we went to wander around in last week while max was getting a literacy lesson. i will say, he likes this new lady teacher. and this lady likes him. i will dare to say she is falling in love with him. it is such a match made in heaven. and he comes out of the lesson emphasizing all kinds of sounds in his speech, because it is on the brain, but more so, in the body. she has a body based way of teaching literacy. mmmmm, yay. it's all worth it. and me and the girls have some fun girly times for 45 minutes while we wait. yesterday it was just a 45 minute knitting/people watching session in the warm car, while olive slept, and zhi wrote love letters. i got one. they are some special special letters she writes.

(slight bummer that i added to much salt. maybe i'll use it on biscuits that i add no salt to. yes. that's a good idea.)

yumm. those red peppers in that little bowl were the spiciest red jalepeño ( i can't believe i just figured out the ˜ !!) ever. had to leave them out just for the parentals. woohoo.

cake made by the man. isn't it beautiful. he's an artist with cakes. and scones. and cookies. and brownies. and gelato. and anything edible basically, but especially the sweeter variety.... i would like to lay a red carpet down for him sometimes. just sometimes, though. hehe.

he brought these savory scones home last week. a new little recipe. i gave them the go ahead! mmm. olive and i had some for lunch one day and smeared so much pesto on them. we couldn't get enough. oh my god they were so good. oh, and yeah, some butter too. i am so crazy over butter lately. ever since i had my blood test in the spring and learned my cholesterol is good, i am not worried about butter anymore. phew. but david can't do that. he inherited blood that likes to turn butterfats into bad cholesterol. he is so good about it though. but if i can enjoy it still, there's no reason not too, right?

david says i have too much time on my hands to be able to blog like i do. whatever! that's what i say. would he rather me be a wrinkly old grump who never did anything besides clean and cook and vent? nonnononono. he would not. but still he teases me. i only get around to posting something usually twice a week, if that. what would he do if i challenged myself to post daily. ha. what would i do? i'd be posting horsefeathers a lot of the time, i'm sure. maybe i need more horsefeathers in my life, in my mind. i'm sure i do.

i posed some yarn. actually, it was functional. this wool yarn i found thrifting smelled like mothballs. so gross. i aired it out here for a few weeks. it went through some crazy windstorms and got really aired out. and it looked so pretty. what will i make? it is the scratchy kind. i'm thinking kitchen towels? coasters? blankets for baby dolls?

like this one i knit up with some other scratchy yarn....it was a project where i just played with a lot of different knitting patterns from barbara walker's knitting treasury book. i loved it. olive loves it for her baby doll.

we had a good weekend day last sunday. got so much done outside. i planted some bulbs. it was such a good day. and now it has snowed. it has snowed. i must change the header picture soon.

portal to love. what is your portal to love?

me. headist. i like flowers.

the daily groove today, suggests changing your story to one that is more in line with how you'd like it be. uuuuuugh. that bugs me a little bit for some reason. someone just asked me how my family is doing. i said, we are pretty good overall, but there are some minor details that are giving me a headache. if i were to be super honest, i would have said my head feels like it's in a vice grip today. long story short: max's apprehension about getting some cavities filled, (developmental cavities caused by the way his tooth enamel formed on the buckle pit, and i say this because he is a good brusher and the dentist said he couldn't have prevented these if he devoted his life to it, he never had a chance she said) has turned into a wild goose chase today to find a dentist he likes, and one who can give nitrous to kids, and more missed school, and me being a freaky mother who couldn't handle one more bump in the road today gracefully, and my head feeling gripped.

exactly. that's my story! my head is gripped. my head is gripping everything. so what if i changed my story like scott noelle suggests. uuuugh, that would mean i would have to stop whining. i have no tolerance for whining in my kids. i actually told them the other day that whining is for low~lifes. it is the sign of a lower life form. that makes me laugh from way down deep and throughout my jaws that i said that. and i feel like i mean it. so my dilemma is that i love to bitch, but i hate whining. i need to make sure i am not crossing over into whining. we all need to vent. i have no problem with that. in fact i LOVE seeing how we all vent in our own unique ways. i find it inspiring and entertaining. venting must happen, or we will be poisoned by carbon monoxide. whining is not venting. whining is puny. i am full of energy! but i do not want to perpetuate my suffering or the feeling of the vice grip on my precious skull. so what would be the story i tell to cause the shift as mr. noelle is pointing the way to?

um. ummmmmmmm. i like drinking chamomile tea at diner time by myself at the trident, processing on my blog, while david takes the kids out to dinner.

but that's just the story about the part of my day that i like. i feel like the work is how to reframe the other part of my day, the vice grip part. is this right mr. noelle?

ok. i'll try again. someone asks me how i am. i say:

oh. hi! i am so fucking good! i am insane and crazy and i love my kids and my family so much and i am okay that my head feels like it's in a vice grip! i love being on earth. i read today about women in the middle east who burn themselves alive on purpose because they are so unhappy in their arranged marriages. i saw pictures of them. and yet i am able to hold it all together and i am ok. i am good! i want to be good so bad that i am gonna say i am good till i feel good.

BULLSHIT!!!! i will not ever be okay with that kind of fake shit.

and yet. i have little children, and i don't want to be a stressed out mama. i really want to have fun with them. i really want to smile with them and roar laughing. and i want to be a spacious and courageous enough person that when i read the newspaper and see horror stories about women in afghanistan who want to die, i will actually feel how it makes me feel, and not be afraid to feel the pain of others. and i need to be able to then move through the feeling so that i can come back to the people in front of me. the little people who i need to laugh with sometimes. the super funny guy i married. i have to laugh with him. if i don't do that too, i am wasting my life.

okay. try again. i am asked how my family is doing. i say:

oh. we are fine. really really blessed and good. we are so lucky that we can fill our kid's cavities. that is fortunate. i am psyched that chamomile exists because it helps with the feeling my head is having where it feels like i'm being born with forceps. i love chamomile. i love myself. i am okay that i am aging and that i have all these fine lines appearing around my eyes and that i obsess over them all the time.

ooops. i didn't get it quite right.

should i try again? do i want to? yes. let's try again.

how are you and your family, heather?

oh! how sweet you asked! we are super! i look over the bumps in the road and just keep my eyes on the horizon and it is beautiful. i have found that the way to feel super is to not look at what's right in my face..... i look at the bigger picture all the time. i am going to blog now and post lots of pictures of myself and write about the hardest thing i can think of and just feel free for a while. which implies that i don't feel free in the other larger part of my day.

i am so missing the point. i need to be tutored by noelle.

this kind of advice confuses me.

i love to cry. i love to share my hard shit. i love to share my happy shit too. i'm into reframing stories also. i'm into lots of methods to keep the sanity, and to retrieve balance. i'm into getting shitfaced occasionally. i'm into meditating in silence. i'm into exercising. i'm into talk therapy. i'm into self~medicating. i'm into vision questing. i'm into extreme self courage and rebirthing when you feel like you're gonna just fucking die from the insanity of the world and the pain of it all. i'm into flowers blooming. i'm into good good sex. i'm into blushing for saying that. and getting hung up on what to say next. i'm into letting my kids watch movies so i can chill out sometimes. i'm into so many things. sometimes i will be into looking at my story and seeing how i could put a different spin on it. but sometimes, before i do that, i know i am really into freaking out and calling my husband to cry real hard about how hard being a mom is sometimes.

oh. i feel so much better. so much better.

okay. now. ask me how i am.

i am good.

how's your family?

we are so good and real and free with our emotions and feelings. we are free people.

ha!!!!!! i really mean that. that is funny. i would never actually say that sober. but i will write it.

sometimes i am as good as the best of them. and sometimes i am as bad as the worst of them. and i like to be real about it. i like all kinds of stories. hopefully i will tell more of my favorite kinds as time goes on. i will set that as a goal. i get you noelle. i think?

just for fun

my favorite spiderman

muffins i made that were delicious. they had frozen carrots and beets that i had stored. i felt clever.

some fun. and most of it in the kitchen. lots happens in the kitchen i guess. but also in the hammock.

water hose beauty

one thing that's not fun, is we lost another cat to wildlife related causes i am guessing. we lost solstice. she was our 5th cat to lose in 6 years. we let our cats go outside. we did. they wanted to so bad. and then at some point they just don't come home. it's very sad. our cat pie, the one we take on walks on the leash, has recently taken to eating string in our house. and getting it stuck around the back of her tongue and needing us to spend lots of money on the vet to get it unwrapped. we narrowly escaped surgery twice this summer with her string eating antics. one went all the way down into her large intestines we could tell from xray. somehow the vet when we went to anesthetize her saw that it was actually starting at the base of her tongue. crazy cat. well after that happened twice, the vet actually told me she may need to go outside to relieve herself of the neurosis she is acting out in the house. so i had to let her out some. it sucks. anyhoo. i mostly try to let her out on her leash, but she needs to go be free sometimes. also, she's gotten wiser and more mature in the past few months coming out of kitty hood. so maybe we're out of the string eating phase?

so, i just couldn't stand her staring at me wondering where solstice was. i told her what i thought happened. and she followed me all over the house for days. unusual behavior. we miss our soley. i rehabbed soley from a very traumatized place. very very very traumatized place. we had this one cat, when olive was born, we called slinky. slinky liked to jump on olive right after i got her to sleep. repeatedly. i went insane. and then i got sane, and realized he couldn't live with us anymore. we'd had him for a few months. i took him back to the humane society, knowing he'd be readopted. he was a cool cat, just not for a mama with a newborn. i asked them to show me the most reclusive cat they had. i wanted a guarantee the cat would not jump on my sleeping baby and undo all my hard work. freaker. well, that was solstice. we got her on the winter solstice. when i first saw her, she was hiding in a little womblike cat house in the way back. you had to shake her out. she was so scared. i was sold! and i had a new little project. i liked the idea of loving on her so much that she'd maybe open up and show us who she was. it took a month or so till she came out from under the couch. and then she'd only come out briefly and run down the side of the hallway trying to act hidden as she did it. but she was doing it. i would go to her under the couch over and over and bring her food and water and talk to her and pet her and i really fell in love with her. she was healing me as i was healing her. to be really accurate, we were healing ourselves. there was a part of me that was as scared as she was that i tapped into. i really looked inside a lot during this time and related to her so much. i let myself feel a lot of fear in my body that i had locked away cuz i couldn't deal with it. we would have energetic talks about it. about how fucking insane life had been for us for it to make us feel this way. she really got to know me as i got to know her. of course. i mean, she is a cat. cats know. even kittens i am now discovering. but really i feel like a lot of animals know. really really know. and some humans. well, after a while, i found her climbing up beside me on the bed at nights. she'd wait till i had crawled into bed and turned off the light. then she'd come to me. and sleep beside me all night. sometimes walking on my head purring while i was asleep, which wasn't cool.

that was three years ago! she went through a total transformation. she started letting zhi hold her this summer. and she'd gotten to a place where she could walk down our hall with major confidence and nonchalance. she'd still sleep right beside me. she'd always come to me if i sat on the couch. within a minute of me sitting on the couch to relax, she'd be there. i realized with her, that cats are always aware. always watching whats going on. it doesn't seem like it, but they are. i love cats. i can't believe she's gone. i wonder if maybe she's not. i'd seen an orange tom cat around the way in the week before she went missing. maybe he was her boyfriend and they went off together to his house? i don't know where he is from though. i'm not putting signs up. we've done that everytime with no luck. i check the humane society's lost and found site. it's always wildlife. looking at that picture makes me miss her so much. oh it hurts. it hurts everytime we lose a cat.

yes

so, since pie was following me around the house like a lost puppy, i spontaneously decided to go to the humane society with olive last thursday and bring her home another feline companion. and i plan to go for indoor cats if the cats allow. it was get a free adoption week. score. i brought us home two little kitten sisters, for the price of one. they are so fresh and spunky and cute.

more kitten photos later. this post needs to be mostly about solstice. i love you girl. love you. thanks for living with us. you were a tiny light in a lot of dark when we met you. you embodied it, your dark and your light, and you showed me how to get brighter and brighter and brighter with simple healing love and a ton of courage and bravery. you were a brave ass tough ass bitch warrior cat. you became the best mouser/ratter i've ever had. and if you are somehow still out there, come on home! we'll be a four cat house. we'll be crazy people in a tiny 1200 square foot house with five people and 4 cats, no problem. at all. oh man. we love you solstice. ( 1200 square feet feels tiny to me. i know it's not. but it is at the same time. you know?)

i thought this post was gonna be just fun stuff. and look what happened. that's cool. i love her so much.

rattled unravelled slowing down breathing very mindfully in a smoky village

yeah, that's our fence. and that is another wildfire. i spoke way too soon saying goodbye to grandaddy wildfire, huh? and tidy aunt blaze has not arrived yet. nope.

another fire close to home last friday. looking back through my photos of it, i am remembering, physically, how much it stunned me. how panicked i was on the inside, and a bit on the outside, but really how thoroughly shaken and rattled i felt looking at it, taking photos, instead of packing our house up again. i would go inside intermittently to pack a bag, then go back outside to look at it. i was freaking internally. yeah. not cool. very hot actually. it was a very hot autumn day.

i went on a walk with our cat, pie, the night before and saw this. on top of a pile of ashes, behind the studio, this little medallion thing was sitting. at first i was spooked. i though maybe the new temporary neighbors who are staying at the house closest to us from behind, because their home partially burned in the first fire, had wandered down near the back of our property and made some sort of memorial. why that would spook me, don't know. then i had a memory triggered of this grow thing. it was on a journal of some sort of mine. i think it was a gift from somebody? somebody i had tension with. i burned a lot of stuff last winter that i couldn't deal with. i think whoever gave this to me, i needed to burn some bad energy between us up. and look what survived. the funny thing is that i can't really remember who gave it to me. i burned some pretty cool stuff in our fire place last winter. pretty cool stuff that felt tainted with unpleasant memories that i didn't want to be reminded of when i turned that corner of our house where it hung or laid or whatever. grow. i love that grow survived. grow from the ashes. forgiveness and forgetting! ha. dear mountain that has been burned now on top and bottom this year. grow. that will be my mantra for you. for me. for us. grow. survive. rise. david must have dumped the ashes out there, seen the random thing, and placed it on top. yeah? did you do that dman?

olive and i hung out over here by the fence for a while once i felt like the fire hadn't gotten any closer to us for an hour or so. she was happy playing with the bird bath and a stick.

we never had to leave, although we were packed. packed up. we were pretty good at it this time. david came home to do most of the work since i went into some sort of odd shock and just wanted to take pictures and rescue remedy. my mom even came over right away to help me pack. and rake pine needles away from the house. then she had to leave to help her other offspring, as my sister was under mandatory evacuation. she was closer than we were to the fire. i went numb or something. i couldn't really move. on sunday, the fire was mostly out. we hung out a long time watching fire heli bring load after load of water. very cool. cool cool water on the hot hot fire.

i was thinking last night as i was up steaming in the shower trying to relieve my sinus pressure, about how we revolve around a big ball of fire in the sky. our lives REVOLVE around fire. and then we live on this big watery planet. we live on water. we are mostly made of water. but we revolve around fire. in the winter, we sit around the place of fire, the fireplace, the wood stove, and breathe our breaths while sitting as close as we can without getting burned. just as the earth sits as close as she can to the sun without getting burned. we love our fires. we worship our fires. we work hard and cut large trees up so that we can make fire all winter. we labor to make fire. we would die without fire. yeah, i'm tripping. that's ok. i love to trip.

and we have a similar relationship with water. water is the bomb. a water bomb right there.

fire water. water fire. steam! i have been steaming a lot these days. gently asking the sinuses to flow. i think they are scared. i know i am scared underneath by how easily this forest i live in catches on fire.

well.

not sure what i can do about it. move? i don't think so. i dreamt it became mandatory for everyone in our neighborhood to build a moat around their home. i would love that. my friend has a creek on one side of her property. you are halfway there. that creek helped her home in the last fire. i am feeling fear. breathing. right now i am breathing. last night, as i was vision questing (yes, i called in the vision quest, in the form of a radical sinus infection that has slowed me down like a crack in the railroad track. i got what i asked for! and i did ask in glitter glue, btw.) in the thick of the night on the floor of the shower with a candle beside me, fire and water, i had a vision of a giant raven lying on the forest floor. she was hurt. she needed help. lots of sweet creatures were bringing her the medicines she needed. ants and worms and centipedes and turtles and littler birds. she was blessed with lots of help and time to heal. she was. she was what she was. i wonder if she had too much smoke in her body. whatever it was, she wasn't resisting. she was beautiful. she just needed some time. and all that help. on the soft forest floor. i thought of my friend who paints ravens in her art sometimes, i thought of what her rendition of this scene would look like. beautiful, i can guarantee that. she actually just had her first children's book published. it made me cry the first time i read it a few weeks ago, while looking at the original paintings with the words underneath. they are on display at the trident right now. i am looking at one of her ravens in front of me, her raven having tea with a little girl, as i type. (julia. i saw you this morning drive past me as i was driving olive to preschool....i think you saw me too. did you? i'm pretty sure we made eye contact at the last second, but we didn't have anymore time to acknowledge and wave. you looked intent, as you always do. i was feeling slow and deliberate, as my new vision quest has shown me is the way right now. i hope i see you soon. hehehehe. this feels like one of these letters.)

go here and look at her book. it is magic. like the raven.

fire.

water.

breathe.

slowly.

don't fret about time. you have time.

an imaginary moat might just be as powerful and effective as a real live dug~out and flowing one.

imagination is freedom.

smile.

and feel much much gratitude. unravelled into the arms of gratitude today. a nice place to land. with time, centipedes and little birds here to help. and a nose that might feel better today. can't say for sure, but maybe so. thanks.

happy......glitter glue freedom?

i made the change. the change that got me over the hump with that powerful cold i had. i finally breathed last night though my nose, for the first time in a week. i am at the trident, not hacking my brains out. woohoo!!!

edit..... that improvement over my cold/sinus infection was short lived. sinus infections are tricky with how they can come back the next day. i am full of chinese herbs and homeopathics, as well as laying down for a good part of today. just saying. not all better like i thought. wah. sleep.

this happy feeling. oh i needed it. and then just when i was feeling free, freedom!, came an email just now from david, that sort-of crushed it. max seems to need more tutoring than he's getting at school. so, in addition to aikido for max and zhi on tuesdays, dance class for olive on wednesdays, rolfing for max on some mondays, we now are adding on tutoring for max on thursdays and fridays. that's so much i feel like i could almost puke. how do i make dinner when we aren't getting home till 5:30 or 6 most days? i like us to have dinner at 5:30 at the latest so that a 7:30 bedtime is within shooting range. maybe i make it during the day, and just rewarm it? how do we stay healthy if we never slow down? this is the american busyness that freaks me out and i can't believe i'm falling into the trap. happy feeling come back. this is all good stuff. but it's so much. oh wow. i guess we will try it and see, right? david says this may be the best thing we ever do for max. ok. how can we not try it? it may not, but it may be. i remember feeling like i couldn't handle all his physical therapy appointments after his surgery, and we did fine. no problem. maybe this will be like that? maybe my mom will help me take him there sometimes? oh my. homeschooling people sound like the smartest ones sometimes. why can't i do it? who am i? i am this mom who doesn't work. i stay home with my traumatized self. trauma heal. i've healed so much, and still, there is more. and, i get to stay home. i don't have to make money right now. i am losing the happy feeling. shit! come back. come back. but do i want to run from this place, this place of really looking at myself, and what i do? what do i do? what do i do? i've had a baby or two or three with me for every day of the past eight years. i did that. that makes me cry. olive just now can go to school one, maybe two days a week. i hang with my kids. and now they are slowly all making their way to school. and after school engagements. what do i do? what do i do? besides laundry and kitchen stuff and house cleaning and furniture rearranging and thrift shop? i interact and play whichever little love of mine i am blessed to be with. inter act. cool word. and i write a few times a week in my free time. that is cool. but i still feel like there is something i am not doing that i want to do. oh my god i am freaking myself out. what is it i want to do? question of the year for me i predict. and i feel like a fucking loser that i am even exposing all this. i mean, i know i am choosing. i have a choice. a blessing and a curse, as elizabeth gilbert put it so well in her book commited. choices can take us into a tailspin. but i know i'm glad i have this gift of choice. and i know a lot don't and wish they did. and then comes discipline. do i have enough discipline to make a choice and stick with it? do i want to go back to school? do i want to sew beautiful things all day and pray people will spend their precious money on them? do i want to dream as big as i can and not care what anybody says about my wild dream? i need a vision quest. really. how do i make that happen? i'm gonna write it down. i keep finding that if i write something down, it helps make it happen. i'm becoming a list addict. but i have to write it on paper with a pen or pencil. or paintbrush. or quill. or blood from my dripping wounds. or a piece of chicken shit that i find on the ground. or chalk. or tears. or spit. or the most beautiful piece of ebony charred wood that makes my hand turn black and stains all my clothes and furniture. then i will never forget what made those stains and what i was writing. or maybe a tattoo machine. or maybe glitter glue. i like glitter glue a lot. my girl zhi has reawakened in me my love for glitter glue. i really like glitter glue. i have been known to write prayers on the walls of our home in glitter glue. and i don't regret a single one. no regrets on glitter glueing.

see why i love the weekends? i predict you will not be gettin me out of the house on the weekends till spring. yep. except for my that csa pickup every third saturday when it's our turn to go. even that feels like too much. oh no. what is happening. i was so happy when i sat down. now my nose is stuffed again.

goodbye summer. goodbye wildfire season. it is cold now. and we are going inside. on the weekends. ha.

i am going home to make dinner during the day, beans and rice and veggies?, and write go on a vision quest with glitter. and tears. and blood. and dirt. and dust. and moth wings. and sweat from my aerobic cooking. and then i will trust and continue praying. for our planet family. happy feeling? ha. glitter glue? crazy woman?

muffin batter. i just got home and made dinner, and then muffins. realized muffin batter would be a good medium to use for writing too. write my words and then eat them. that would be powerful! now i can go search out the glitter glue. i have some time for intention setting.

hello.

the shirt i made olive, that set me straight for yet the millionth time, that it's better to get crafty than to get your house clean:

a little vintage trim on the bottom look so sweet to me.

a little tiny red and white checked 'tag' sewn into the back for her orientation when putting it on. love that a lot.

and in full, hanging up on the ginkgo tree we planted this year. her leaves all blew off in this wild wind last night and the night before. how nice that i snapped her photo here the day before she let them all go. max looked outside this morning and was a little alarmed that she was so bare. zhi counted, though, and there are 9 leaves still hanging on.


yay for the sweet olive and her new shirt, from this pattern. i made the sleeves long, that's the only thing i changed. no pictures of her wearing it, though, cuz i can't get her out of her mini mouse costume. she woke up this morning and asked if she could wear it to school. i had to say no, cause i'm pretty sure they don't like costumes at school. i felt sad having to tell her no. but now i can wash it. yes. must go do that.

alright, feeling the need, the strong need to change things up. what can i change besides the blog header picture?

i have been sick for too long. sinus thing and chest thing. too long. too long. too long. need to change. or maybe just lay down and watch a movie. maybe both. yes. both.

what else can i change? aaaack. i changed my routine this morning and after all kids went to school, i came straight home. no trident for tea. home. maybe i'll make our first fire of the year? all by myself? that feels strange. that would be a big change though. call in the fire, the tamed fire in the wood stove that is. not crazy grandaddy wildfire. call in sweet tidy aunt blaze. ask her in to keep us warm this year. david said he was going to order some wood today. i need to plug in the bowl warmer thing for the chickens' water. there was a layer of ice on their water this morning. wow. cold is here. came along with this crazy wind we are having. zhi said this morning that when brother wind is like this, he is angry. then she asked me how old the sun is. 4.6 billion years, my love. just a youngin. and the earth, his twin, born just seconds later, is 4.5 billion years old. obviously not identical twins though. the sun is a middle aged star, i'm sure you all know, i was reminded of when i looked to be sure i was giving her the right number. middle aged, i am now convincing myself, is still VERY VERY VERY young. as i get nearer what i guess is the middle age for hoomans, i feel so different about it. middle age is more like 70 to me now. perspective. my grandma used to say 70 year olds were so young. i'll never forget her talkin about her 70 year old friends that were just babes to her. she was 90 when she talked like that.

so, zhi then said, does sister fire, or father fire, i can't remember what she called it, i think it was father fire, fly? i said 'yes, we learned that fire can fly from treetop to treetop from the fire on our mountain this summer. and the sun seems to know how to fly through space.' then, she says, 'what about sister water?' i said, 'hmmm, what do you think? can water fly?' she is so cool. she goes, 'the clouds.' mmm, i love that. we never got to mother earth and her ability to fly, cuz it was time to brush teeth or something. but i loved this conversation this morning. so i will ponder today, does mother earth know how to fly?

i went to bed with the trusty hot water bottle last night at my feet. that feels so good to me. like the new cover i sewed for it? from the sleeve of the button~up shirt i cut up to make zhi a skirt. i decided to see what i else i could make from what was left.

i got the hot water bottle cover:

a little hanky case thing:

empty

and full

i also got a glasses pouch, and some little pouches i've been using for dryish snacks in lunch boxes, and i have more scraps i could use, but i lost interest. you can tell where my inspiration was though. stuff for when you are sick and cold. i can't think of anything to go with the netty pot, my other main accessory these days....hmmm. maybe just a hanky made out of the scraps. a patchwork hanky. ha. or maybe a netty pot case, to pack it away in, and not take out again, for a long long long time.

weekending is the best. school days are good. but there's nothing like these sunkin in moments of a weekend. nothing. they are my fave. setting the intention here to snap a picute of my two latest hats, the first one i made for d in baltimore is a tad too small for him, but it fits me perfectly. i like it. his new one here, that i finished, is so cute on him. now i'm onto a hat for each kid. i'm gonna knit them at the same time, so they're done at the same time. fun. olive chose black yarn. zhi hot pink. max picked the brightest red ever. i tried to talk him into a red that was a little more earthy. now way was he budging. good for him. i seriously LOVE when my kids know what they want and they put me in my place. even if i whine and cry and blog on and on about their rotten behavior. i love their knowing of who they are and what freaking color THEY want!

ok.