shedder

the fun had this past weekend.

there was an impromptu feast with the dearest of friends on friday afternoon.  an early dinner at a dorky restaurant.  somehow it dawned on me afterward that it had the vibe of a feast.  the energy, the love, the children, 6 of them, the parents happily conversing with each other and the children in an unusual medley of harmony, not that typical feeling of constant interruption.  the shared margarita.  the early hour, so that when all was done, we got home and the kids to bed a fine early hour.  yay.

also, 

i made this ridiculous shirt.  i finished on saturday, just after the babysitter came.  i went over to the studio and hemmed it.  i like it and i am embarrassed by it.  but i've worn it three times now.  sometimes things are just flops.  this one rides the edge of flop so well, yet hangs onto the side of cute just enough that i can't decide.  i feel it is a shirt i will wear when i feel amazing.  when i feel i could wear anything and look cute cuz my energy is just that awesome.  and at those times, when i feel like a goddess incarnate, i may wear this shirt and give it some time to shine.  but if i'm feeling less than amazing,  i feel the shirt swallows me up and i look a little lost in it.  however.  both my girls really like it.  that might be all i need to know.  and my husband.  and another sewing friend  who i emailed a picture of it to, said she loves it and that i need to wear it out on the town....  ha!    however, in yesterday's out and aboutness, not one compliment on it.  hmmmm.  it's one of those, i~have~to~own~it pieces of clothing.  i was not owning it yesterday.  it's simplicity 1997.  i feel it coming in chambray too.

after finishing the silliness of that shirt, it was time to go.  dinner and a date with the husband,  ani and gregory.

dinner before going to hear the singers sing.  mmmmm.  it was very good.

there's ani down there.  all lit up.

(that's us waiting for the show to start.  i didn't bring my knitting.  i was fidgety.  but it was instant mesmerization once gregory started his set.  all the way through to ani's last song.  on the edge of my seat in love with spectating that girl.)

on sunday morning, the p90xworkout was the thing to do for david.  and he dragged me on into the experience.  it was pretty funny and fun.  the kids were very entertained by the whole deal.   they were swimming in the little pool david has in the studio.  peering out watching the weird adults.  the first 10 minutes were a yoga warm up.  then it got into martial arts/boxing types of exercises.  that's what was amusing to the babes.  mom and dad fake fighting with the air in front of them.  i am sore still, 2 days later.  mostly from the yoga.  haven't been doing that so much.  i like being sore.  it feels good.  

here are some of olive's colorings from lately.  i love her style.


she likes me to go through her coloring book and tell her which pictures are my favorite.

i chose these two yesterday.   not an easy choice.  i am noticing both my favorites have mushrooms.  hmmmmm.










the thread, of my last handful of posts continues on.  i feel that i am doing some serious spring cleaning.  of the shadows in my closet.  i LOVE doing shadow work.  it is so freeing.  all those stories, all those words, all these thoughts.  all these memories.  clearing.  healing.  accepting.  growing.   i say i love doing shadow work, and what i love is what i feel like afterward.  like a few days, or weeks afterward.  not right after.  right after is hard.  the integration of the new me, takes a bit of time.  you know, of course it does.  there's some vulnerability at first.  shedding skin.  that is an event.   the new skin is like a baby at first.  gotta cover it in mud for protection for a few days.  today, though, i begin to feel relief.  renewed.  regenerated.  for people who go through these experiences with me, you are warriors.  i couldn't do it without you.  you stay focused on the heart of the matter while i thrash.  that is not easy to do.  i do this for my loved ones too, i know it is not easy sometimes.

ok.  i feel the urge to move on.





ssssssss.


i was listening to the radio this morning and learned of story corps.  had a good cry driving max to his reading lesson.  i mean a good one, from listening to one of the stories.  i hope to listen to more soon.  and maybe read the book too?

love.

what i wants....

  when i think about what i want, it is not to have a blog where i share my crazy sad darkness.  i'd rather just show my gleanings and musings.  for one, though, i wonder how often i'd post.  once a month, right around ovulation?  for two, how many times have i been getdownonmyknees grateful for reading some other woman's words, where she bares it all, including but not limited to all the dankly dark grit, and how many times has the reading of others' stories been what's kept me from feeling completely alone in this experience of being the woman that i am?   and third, how many times, have i, been relieved, by sitting down and writing my stuff out?  how many?  a zillion.




(our burned mountain)


in thinking about how i've been on here lately, i wonder this.....
why don't people talk about stuff more?  i often wonder this, actually.  why do i feel so alone in sharing my hard times.   we go around with our 'i'm ok, i'm fine, i'm good' faces and words, we display that to the world for the most part.  because it's not acceptable to be real with our hard sad pain and anger.  it's just not.  our culture for the most part has shadowed it all to the back of the closet.  pack away your hard feelings.  put them in the suitcases and pretend they're not there.  it's like using the bathroom.  you're taught to go into a private space to be with these feelings.   ( and just for the record, i am glad we all go to the bathroom in private.  but i question going to the back of the closet for 'negative' emotions.) or the kicker for me is this:  i was taught as a young adult, just through experience, cuz noone in my life had been there for me the way these people began to be,  that the main best way to be with these unacceptable feelings was in a private room, with a person i'd never known before, and i had to PAY them to hear me express my hard confusing feelings. and PAY them to talk back to me.   it's a very very disturbing reality, i find.  a disturbing reality that i'm glad to have been introduced to.  i am.  if it wasn't for this psycho~therapeutic reality, i'd have self~imploded long ago most likely.  but still, isn't it sad that that's where our culture has brought us.  so many of us feel we have to go pay someone to listen to us.  so many families were shrouded in shaming  negative feelings.  i'm hoping to start a small change in this little family of ours.  talking about whatever, anything and everything, nothing is taboo to discuss.  parents are tuned in, maybe sometimes too tuned in to kids' emotional states in this house, and kids are pried open even.  i remember going to my teachers at school to talk about how sad i was at home.  that never worked.  i would be sent to some office to talk to some lady i didn't know about my feelings more, or worse, they would call my parents at home to tell them what i'd said, even after i begged them not to, and then i'd get in trouble at home,  for saying i had it hard.  'you think you have it hard?'  i got that speech.   how insane is all that?  us poor humans.  trying to be all cool and rise above stuff, trying to teach our kids to brush their feelings aside.  i remember being brought to church to tell the preacher what i had done, disrespecting my parents by sharing private home-stuff at school.  i remember my dad telling me to smile at this one christmas gathering at my step mom's parents' house.  i had been crying before we went over there, and he said if i did not smile the whole night i was gonna be in crazy big trouble.  you know, that might be why i have the biggest aversion now to faking my way through feelings.  not only do i have an aversion to it now as an adult, i can't even do it.  i have friends who can put on the most presentable face any time they have to.  and they tell me they're faking it.  cuz i ask.  they just have that skill.  i do not have it.  it sucks a lot of the time to not have it.  it makes my social skills look so piddly sometimes.   that might be why i love it, that at zhi's school, she is never told she has to share in the morning check in sharing circle.  it is TOTALLY fine if she wants to pass.  she passes every time.  i've said that before here i think, how she does this.  i just love it so much.  no shame for feeling shy.  if she wants to outgrow that she will.  but she will not feel shame for feeling how she feels.  she is pretty confident at school.  and she simply doesn't like to share with the whole group.  someday she may be in a class where it's required, but hopefully at that point, she'll have a really secure sense of herself, and it won't be so painful.  don't know.  but i'll be there cheering her on, and honoring her feelings.



i want to ask again, why don't people talk about stuff more?   actually why never really gets me anywhere but further into my head.  instead of going there, i'm gonna just share what i've noticed.  as a kid, i learned that the effect of sharing my truest sadnesses with people who i thought would listen and care, meant i would get in trouble at home.  i didn't want that again and again.  that was worse than dealing with the way things were.    i learned sort-of fast not to talk about my sadnesses.  it simply meant shame and spankings and trouble.  then as an adult, with my first baby, i learned pretty fast, that no body really wanted to talk about what it was like to have a baby with a brain injury and those big honkin hearing aids on his head.  i wanted to talk about it, with people who understood.  that's a big part of it.  sometimes our experiences are just very unique to us.  sometimes it is true that no one can understand.   it was impossible.   or maybe sometimes there were really kind souls who wanted to hear and inquire about how it was going, but my sadness then, would be so unbearable to me, that then I couldn't go there.  i'd stuff it in and just focus on the joy.  and that wasn't so bad.  the irony of that time, is that as painful as it was, i experienced some of my highest joys being with max as an infant.  that boy was magic, and it was literally impossible to not be sucked into his joyful vortex.  it still is like that, thank goodness.  when i get paralyzed in fear for him, he is the one, with simply his roots in the joyful present moment, that catches my attention and gets me to feel things other than just fear.  but life seems to sometimes do that to us.  gives us these experiences that for a while anyways, we have to weather alone.  or with a therapist.  that has been my experience a handful of times.  i am faced with feelings and experiences that just don't feel appropriate for anywhere other than the closet.  i was taught this.  we have all been taught this.  shame.  shame.  shame.  be perfect.  be perfect.  be perfect.  (maybe this blog could be called the shadows in my closet.  or maybe i need two blogs.  the shadow one and the light one.)

and what about with marriage stuff.  why is it so freaking taboo to get real on what it's like to be married?  when d and i were going through our 7 year nasty freaking horrific itch, there was nobody really, no woman that i knew, who was willing to say what it was really like to be married.  to share what the sexual relationship was like.  the psychological one.  the spiritual one.  buttoned lips were all i found.  or turn~the~other~cheek kind of advice (pervert pun!!).  that was unbearable.  so of course, back to the therapist i went.  david and i actually had one couple friend who tried to call an intervention when they saw what a bad space we were in.  that was brave and cool and i'll never forget it.  it helped.  that guy friend is who suggested david do the mankind project which was a definite turning point in our ability to connect deeply, on the level we were needing to.  that couple has since divorced, though.  we couldn't help them.  but they also did not go to years of couples therapy.

 you know, the skills required to guide people through feelings like these, traumatic feelings, aren't had by everyone.  so that's a good thing for me to remember.  it makes me feel like therapists are superheroes.

the other deal, is this:  it sucks to go into my pain and talk about it.  that means i have to feel it.  i'm guessing this is the biggest reason for why it's not done more, being real about hard stuff.  and to top that off, it sucks also to feel what it feels like after sharing hard stuff too.  it's so exposing.  after we've been wired to feel ashamed for sharing dark feelings, it is terrifying to do it.  BUT.  i feel like most of the time, if i shared my feelings with integrity, without shame, without trying to hurt anyone in the sharing, as much as it sucks, both during and after, since i've been an adult, and there is not fear of getting in trouble, there is some freedom that i gain, that does make it worth it.  a bit like childbirth.  there's just no way around the pain.  and then there is the almost guaranteed gain of more freedom.  for those of us who signed up to syphon pain through our systems anyways.  some of us, don't have a clue really, as to what would make a person need to share their stories.  that's ok.  but i am onmyknees grateful for the people who feel the need to and then do it.  they are my lifelines.  i wish my parents had shared their stories.  they were too painful i guess.

how much longer am i going to resist who i am, or what i feel?

how much longer am i going to feel lame for having to, needing to,  reveal my darkness?  even when i feel so held in people's responses when i do go dark.  i still want to ask why so hard?  just is.  i hear a therapist telling me that.  it just is.  gah.  crazy making.  i read elizabeth zimmerman's opinionated knitter book all saturday morning this weekend.  she was light and funny and got down to business.  i want to be more like that.  god damnit.  maybe i will be someday.  right?  maybe. maybe that's just my goal.  but i'm not that way now.  and the only way to get any relief from my darkness is to be with it and let it have space.  respect it actually.    to be real about it when i feel it, and perhaps someday, i really will feel very free.  and i will have mostly lightness and humor and ease to share.  and all that.  mostly though, what i want more than that, is to get to a place where i don't resist what comes through me.  where if i fear feelings, i don't fear them for long.  cuz i'll remember who i am, under the feelings, and that girl is not afraid to be herself.  she is strong.  and capable and here to teach like she's been taught, how to be cool with feeling what she feels.  how to feel unashamed of feeling what she feels.  how to say with words, both spoken and written, what she feels.  how to respond to others' feelings openly, honestly and fearlessly.  the feeling warrior.  heh.

there's something i'm getting about, yes this is hard.  really really hard.  and like max showed me when he was just a month, 3 months, 6 months old,  it can also be really really joyful. hardness and joy playing around together.  they happen at the same time.  if you know it.  if you look.  if you choose.  if you see.  he was so easy for me to see when he was so little.  he still is.  and he was so good at sharing his joy.  he still is.  and the girls are too.  if i choose.  they are so easy to feel joy oozing from their spirits.  and i can be like that too.  i got some good tastes of feeling myself happy last night, listening to the music we went to hear.  ani.  happy music high.  they don't negate each other.  the pain and joy.  i am feeling that as radical at this moment of insighting it.  like childbirth.  are the birth metaphors getting annoying yet?  they kind-of are for me.  but they keep coming.  it's not all like childbirth, obviously.  there are some pains we feel that don't necessarily guarantee we will walk away afterward with a baby, or something we could relate to as a metaphorical baby.  and still, i am wondering if even in these kinds of experiences, like when someone you love dies, there can still be times in the days, of joy.   i know this to be true.  and i need to write it anyways.  i want to remind myself of this.  and when those moments aren't here, it is time to honor the ones that are.   but maybe,  i'm getting an understanding i think of how people can struggle and seem so genuinely happy sometimes, even at the moment of feeling horrible internal emotional pain.  and maybe i'm  even getting an understanding of how those people i know, are able to turn on the 'fine' vibe when really if they are honest, they are not feeling fine at all.  is it some kind of reservoir they tap into, or some kind of knowing, that this fine channel is available too, and maybe switching to it cuts them off from current other feelings if they choose to change to it for the sake of being socially acceptable, which is why my friends who do this,  say it's not actually enjoyable to fake it like that, but maybe i'm thinking, that is how they do it.  they are genuinely rooted in joy and can switch to it if need be.  but it doesn't take them away from the pain that gnaws away inside, cuz it's needing its own time being tended to as well.


 my step mom and me watching soap operas.  that was the one time i remember feeling that i could trust her.  she'd do laundry then usually, and it was such a mellow hour, watching those stories on the tv.  we need our stories.  they are like some light in the dark for sure.  and some kind of trail map.  many to choose.  and she and i watched the saddest juiciest dramas together.  and felt comforted by them.   but she had no way, no resources or knowledge, for how to transfer her inner world to health.  that's all i'm trying to do.   it's a big process.


indefatigably

insouciant

my new favorite vocabulary words.  thanks to virginia woolf and elizabeth zimmerman.  learning me some new words.

i want to be indefatigably insouciant.  but i'm not.  and i bet you i never will be.  but here and there, maybe so, that would be cool.

mushroom

such discomfort in sharing my dark hardness.  and such appreciation for all of you who made me feel so not alone and so heard and seen.  somehow i know i need to get real about how hurt i've been, so i can get better and better, and sometimes the hurt me just rears up and says, 'hey you, i am so so hurt.  pay attention.  don't act like nothing happened to you.  you need tending.'  and then i tend, and it's somewhat shocking to accept it on those deeper levels, each time.   feeling pain on a level i kind-of never allowed myself to, each time.  endurance.  or something?    i really really feel so thankful for my angelic friends who meet me here.   thank full.  thank you.  i feel you are all as brave as i am being sharing, just by witnessing my pain.

so to give my discomforted self a little space, i'm gonna share some happy thrifting finds.  yeah.  sounds cool.  i'm really so depressed feeling, this better pick me up.  it sure picked me up to find these fun things last week.

but before that, i want to link to an old post of mine i just read, from back when i was pregnant with olive... reading my own old words is so nice to do sometimes.  soothing reminders of where i've been, and of knowledge i've gained and then forgotten, sort-of.  and that post in particular just resonated with me quite a lot.  similar themes i ponder round and round.  and how interesting that it was written at this same time of year.

thrifting.  first, it was just me one day, in a thirty minute window while max was at a lesson.  i skipped over to the nearest thrift.  i had been thinking for a couple days that max needed some new pants.  grower.  score on this day.  they had about 6 pairs of size ten pants that are just his style.  loose, comfy, thick cotton, mostly llbean, hardly worn.  woop!  that was freaking awesome.  i forgot to photo them.   but here's one shot of him in some.  as he stares at the tv.  with wallet in hand.    i'm telling you.  he is obsessed with counting his money.  could it be the jewish genes?  is that horrible to generalize a culture like that?  david does it with jewish culture stuff, but he's jewish.   he's allowed.  but i don't know if i am??  i think it's maybe like calling your friend a ni**a when you're african american.  only they can get away with that.  foot in mouth much??   keep me in check people.  anyhow.  max is set for a while on long pants.



alright.  then another day last week, olive and i stopped into another thrift shop one afternoon.  she picked out these fake flowers. i was hesitant to say yes.  in fact, i totally said no at first.   i have judgement on fake flowers for some reason.  tacky!!   but i let it go, seeing her passion for them. she did NOT want to put them back.   i am so glad i gave in.  she also picked out this tiny muffin tray.


okay. how sweet does it get?  little girls save the world i say.  so do little boys in their way.  but this is a little girl thing that just melts me.  SO glad i let go of my judgement on fake flowers.  cuz now?  now i am in love with them.  ha!  leave it to these kids to open this locked up mind.

her open imaginative mind.  heals me so much.


this little drawing was definitely saying zhi's name very clearly.  we framed it, with a frame from the thrift from long ago,  and it hangs by her bed now.  so sweet.  it turns out, her rats and our cats are sort-of friendly to each other.  pretty much just like in this picture sometimes.  there was someone's whole collection of drawings at the thrift.  so many sweet animal drawings.  we just got this one.  for a dollar.  sweetness.



and then.  olive saw a little rocker at the thrift.  i told her no. again.  that we still had one in the shed, that we had cleared out of the house a while back in a fit of needing floor space.  she remembered first thing when we got home to remind me to go and fetch it.  she got to rocking that baby right away when the chair was delivered to her.  rocking that baby in the sweetest tenderest way.  i could just fall over with adoration sometimes.  instead i grab the camera.



and here is a side trek, following zhi around outside, i got some photos i am smitten with too.


look at that angel boy.  all strong and healing up.  it's a slow healing though.  when he opens his wings up, you see the injury, the extent of it still.  it was massive.  love him so much.

the animal whisperer.  she's been that way all along.  it is a joy to witness.

2 more thrifted treasures:

this little piece of art here.  see the tab on the side?  guess how much kids like this?


push the tab down, and what does it say?


yep.

and then there's this wrought iron scrap from i don't know what exactly.  i think i am using it upside down here.  like maybe it was part of a light fixture?  well, i'm hoping it can be a candle holder.  but until i find a way to place it on the wall in a safe straight up and down way, it's a mushroom holder.  mushrooms are sacred.


so i'll just hold the candle till then.

i did not thrift this candle.  d gave it to me for valentines day.  i posed with it.  feeling moved this one afternoon to photo myself with a candle.  ha!  how funny are we sometimes?  i like the photos though.  so there.

love.

speaking of love.  i am excited to begin checking this site daily now!!!

revelations in the dark

i am not leaving the dark.  not ready yet.  just saying.  i'm actually looking around down here and getting a new vantage point.  i'm beginning to understand why i am down here in a new way.  hello past trauma.  of course i am down here over and over again.  trauma drama mama.  no.  it's not drama.   just trauma mama.  no.  i don't want to be called that.  but i want to let myself acknowledge it.  admit it.  for so long i've felt like a whiner saying this.  but i'm gonna say it.  i had a hard childhood.  i've had some hard blows.  it's hard to say this though, because i know others have had harder ones.  i often tell myself,  i should just shut up and feel blessed for what i do have.  that's all i'm gonna say there on that, on feeling guilty for saying i had a hard time, to anyone other than my sister (s).  cuz in the reality of being me, in actuality, i am traumatized.  i am feeling like going back to do some more emdr type work is in my best interest.  i had a mama, my mama,  who couldn't keep me.  back and forth i went, flying on a plane by myself,  from her home to my dad's.  when i was with her, i was in a home that was not healthy.  cheating and lying and fighting between her and her men.   and me trying to keep the peace.  multiple step dads.  multiple affairs i was aware of when the step dads weren't.  and when i wasn't at her house, i was at my dad's house.  i went from one unhealthy house to the next.  my (half)sister, wasn't with me most of the time.  she had been sent to live with her dad.  so i weathered this craziness alone really.  at 8, my mama really let me go, and i went to stay with my dad in arkansas till i was 12.  i would have stayed on with him till i could flee the sad nest,  and be legally emancipated, but he and my step mom were heroin users.  and this was after he had been through hell and back from alcoholism.   all starting in vietnam.  dad and stepmom lost control completely when i was 12,  and i ran away for fear of my life from my stepmom.  i think she might have killed me had i not run.  they were in and out of rehab during that the last two years i lived with them.  i had two younger stepbrothers, and we were shuttled to weekly alanon meetings for those last two years i was there.  without my grandma, my dad's mom, being there as a touchstone to wholeness and health during those years, i am scared to imagine what would have happened to me.  once i ran away, my mom was feeling settled again, and decided to rescue me.  so i ended up with her and her fairly-new-to-me husband in colorado.  i ended up in a home that was healthier in some ways, but still, not healthy.  it was sad a lot of the time for me.  starting over, and being in this new home with a lack of real love was dark.  as a new young woman, i was keeping my mom's secrets from her husband, and feeling deeply wounded by it all.   somehow i made friends, and that was where i found some light in my last years of being under the helm in someone else's home.  to add to this bit of formative trauma, my first kid had severe birth trauma.  responding to his trauma, i became traumatized in a whole new way.  i've gone on for all of his life now stitching up the tears for both of us.  and then, when my firstborn was 2 and my second born was 3 months old, my dad died.  his liver seized by cancer.  it was another huge trauma to see my dad through his death at 58, when i was 27.  huge.  i can tell the stories of how my parents became the ways that they were, and understand it all in a way, that at least tells my soul that i was loved, under all the misfortune and poor decisions they made, their hearts were good.  but right now, i am not needing to know that they loved me.  i am needing to acknowledge the trauma that i've suffered.  the hard hits.  i've done years of therapy.  like ummmmm, 17.  my whole adult life, i've been in therapy.  i've done loads of emdr, but it's been about 8 years, i think since i immersed myself in emdr.  since then i've done many birth trauma workshops with my son,  and then many for me as well.  embodiment workshops in new mexico that gave me perspective i'm gonna be eternally grateful for.  but it's not enough.  these kinds of deep formative trauma experiences need attending to for the long haul.  breaks from working it out are good.  breaks are fine.  but getting back to the work of peeling away trauma layers so that i can get closer to my whole self is something i have to do.  periodically.  i'm lucky, cuz i know therapists who are really good at this stuff. i have a sister and friends who are really good at understanding, relating, and loving.  i have a husband who is an earthly god, and has stood by me through the whole of my adult life, well we met when i was 19,  while i've peeled layer after layer away.  and he's peeled his own layers off at the same time, so we've made quite a team.  i have three bright magical children who i just don't even know how to feel worthy of, so instead, i feel dumbfounded and crazy ass lucky. or something.  i am crazy lucky.  and i am crazy traumatized.  as a lot of us are.  and today, with the help of a therapist, i got the perspective, again, that i still have trauma buried deep within.  still.  i can do more healing.  and i will.  feeling into the hardness of the hits i've taken is somehow very calming and affirming.  like..., ok.  this is why i feel like i do.  i didn't do anything wrong.  i just got hurt badly.   understanding why i struggle, takes such a load off.  and it's odd that i have to be reminded.  i mean, how can i forget?  but i do somehow.  or i go on with my life thinking, maybe, now, i will be free of the wounds, now that i've done all this therapy.  freer, yes.  but not really free.  get back to work sweet savory self.  get back to the work of tending to yourself.  your healing.  of acknowledging that you have been hurt.  feel comforted knowing  there is loving help to be had.  you can be more free than this.  saying that, believing that, knowing that, that actually makes me feel better.  aaaaaaaaah.  

and now.  to change gears a bit.....  i went back in the archives of this blog recently and saw that i did this once a few years ago.  it made me want to do it again.  love.  i really hope noone takes offense in my sharing up there.  somehow everything can be taken that way.  but i did it for me.  i needed to do that.  for me.  for my deep dark self.  

what we wants:

miss H:  magic.  dark black silky slinky happy lively magic.  cleanliness.  loving exchanges to outnumber the hostile ones in this house.  to play words with friends about 10 times a day.  or more?  music lessons (if i keep saying that will it happen?).  to listen to more david bowie.  and brian eno.  to make a book of memories about pawpaw.  a never ending book of memories.  to lose some fear.  less fear.   less fear.  less fear.  less worry.  to find some newfound love of cooking, to experience the boredom of cooking vanish and some neat creative little happy food sprite join in the bland adventures of heather's food creations, and turn that bland into grand.

miss O:  time with her bears at home.  time with her friends at school.  to help with anything in the kitchen. to eat snacks constantly. to ice skate.  to tell of her most epic dreams at the breakfast table, tales that last solidly for ten or more minutes. to be a water bender....  to watch avatar, the last airbender. 

miss Z:  to stitch.  on the sewing machine, now that she's privy to the ways of it (!!!!).   her own machine (ha! let's take it slow my dear.) to play checkers.  to play with rats.  or cats.  to get a new baby rat.   to eat sweets constantly.  to ice skate.  to giggle.  to cackle.    to be a water bender.....to watch avatar, the last airbender all the time.  or to read it, or draw it.

mr. M:  to laugh.  to tease.  to play.  to get a new duck.  to count his current savings over and over again.  to trade 5 one dollar bills for a 5 dollar bill, and then back again.  repeatedly.  he's grasping the equality of the seemingly large obvious differences there (i did have five bills, now i have one ???  how is that the same?).   to go on a weekend overnight snowboarding trip with his dad.  to watch avatar the last airbender, all day long.

mr. D:  to drink coffee.  to make coffee.  to make love.  to swim.  to sleep through the night, to be free from insomnia.  to laugh.  to cry.  to do lots of face chat and phone chat with his mama.  to watch movies at night after the kids are asleep.  to have his gelato pint project grow wings and fly.  

LOVE.  LOVE.  LOVE.  love in the dark.  

more from the underworld.

citrus flavored fish oil burps coming up, sadness and loneliness coming in here and there, wishing we weren't all so far apart...even my friends who are in this town, sometimes we all feel so far apart.  better go on and do some of that stuff i need to do.  wood.  food.  kids who are gonna need food too soon.  wood food soon.  too bad wood doesn't rhyme with food and soon.

ever wondered where epsom salts come from?



the elephant in the room.  i am a fan of naming it.

my elephant, the one i've been living with for as long as i can remember is the unloved elephant.   it is a big elephant.  i love elephants.  sometimes, i've gone to the zoo, and only sat with the elephants.  for an hour or two.  i've made my kids do this too.  i feel like i got the idea from some novel i read a long time ago.  but i don't remember now really.  it's been a long time, though, since we've sat with the elephants....  it might be time to do this again.  i feel like it is.



to feel unloved is something i struggle with sometimes.  i think that's why i'm swirling in the underworld right now.  i've forgotten myself.  or i've come to a new place in myself, going another layer deeper in the testing of my own self love.  just how deep does it go?  can't resist.

how deep does my self love go?  self.  sweet savory self.

what if.  what if i was to let go of my inner ~ critic?  the one that helps in making me feel that i am utterly unlovable sometimes?

to let go~

to let go is not care for, but to care about.

to let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.

to let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.

to let go is not to be in the middle of arranging all outcomes, but to allow others to effect their own destinies.

to let go is not to be protective, but to permit others to face reality.

to let go is to fear less, and to love more.

~author unknown

a tiny heart orgasm while i sit and feel what it feels like to do this for my self.  i am in a place i think, of needing to recite very generic mantras on how awesome i am.  like, i am beautiful.  i am strong.  i am lovable, i am worthy.  keep coming back to the middle. i need to keep loving myself when those i look out to, to affirm for me that i am ok and lovable,  can't seem to do it quite right.  because my inner wild wisdom is just not gonna be satisfied until i can affirm it for myself.  

i did make myself dance this morning. it was such a fake~it~till i make it experience, i was surprised that it worked.  like some of you said to me in response to that last underworld post.  fake~it~till you make it can work.  often.  and i fucking hate it.  i hate forcing myself to pull up out of my misery and do something that doesn't feel authentic for any amount of time.  i guess if i was a kid, i would be wailing more.  and since i'm not wailing really, how else to churn up the stagnant energy?  the adult me has lost her instincts for dealing with the pits, somewhat.  but hey.  this is where having these minds actually come in somewhat handy.  my mind is hearing a message from my soul saying 'shake it up, yo.'  and hearing messages from my sister on the telephone line saying, do something crazy.  go stay at a hotel for a night and watch the oscars you silly (we don't have tv reception).  you'll only live this life this once.  she also told me recently, when i was whining about going to the grocery store, very embarrassing to admit,.  the banality of that chore was killing me this one day.  she told me to buy myself something fun while i was there.  i bought purple eyeliner because of her, and it has cheered me up many times since.   what is up with my sister these days?  she's one of the lines i find in this underworld.  a steady steady ever present line.   as much as some of us dis family and the complicatedness of those relationships, they are the ones that seem to be the most constant, often.  the most forgiving.   i keep wondering if maybe i'm supposed to keep all this to myself.  if being in the underworld is meant to be quiet and dark on purpose.  am i looking out for a line too much?  well just in case, i am redirecting, and looking in for the line.  and i figure writing about looking in can't hurt too much.  as long as i keep looking in.  line after line after line i am finding inside. so surprising after days of refusing to look in.   i really do find them when i look. i find what i am craving.   self~lines.  lots of them look to be laundry lines.  some are telephone lines.  there's that sister telephone line for sure.  cuz duh.  we came from the same underworld womb.  that's a lot of similar history.   we speak the same underworld language.  so it is making sense to me as i ponder, why i find her line down here in the dark.  dark dark dark.  playing in the dark is possible.  i just have to let go of the fear first.  and the amount of focus it takes too, is not to be denied.  focusing in is tricky when there are cute little people asking me to look at them a zillion times a day.  but tricky is what i'm doing.  i signed up for tricky.  making myself dance was a trick for sure.  too bad i hated it for a second, but luckily it was only for a second.  tiny contraction really.   

fuck. sometimes a woman just needs to cuss.  FUCK.  shitty ass fucking fucking fucking shit.

somehow this space too, seems to be really immersed in the dark.  this blog space.  i guess there is electricity in the underworld.   and internet lines.  they're obviously letting me use my laptop.   oh how this blog needs to be called dark and macaroni.  dark processing and stupid macaroni.  just for now.  along with its other names.  light and foxy gnomes.  chill out and shut up.  freak your brains out.  and.  stupid waste of time.  there.  that sums it all up.  what is going on?  i'm not even pmsing.

end of february contractions?  i'm taking vitamin d.

just for now.  i have to call it dark and macaroni.  it makes me feel better.  lighter.   

the earrings are in motion




boo.  eggs?

how deep?

deeeeeeeeep.

mmmm, focused and very deep.

trick

dance

i want to post a dance photo soon.  i felt that urge over come me last night.  ok?  ok.  basically i felt the urge to trick myself into dancing.

olive will be psyched.  she's such a sucker for dancing.  how cool is that?  she's been saying psyched more and more lately too.


i've been doing some tricky 'tricks' on my mind lately,  the past few nights, focusing on forgiving those ladies from my old women's group.  i've been sad and angry when i think about them, my neighbor in particular because we are so close in proximity and so i actually see her or her house and then of course i feel jaded.  but because the anger isn't taking me anywhere beyond further down, i let myself feel what it feels like to forgive them all.  i tricked myself into allowing myself to feel that.  and it worked.  for as long as i was focusing on it.  it goes away fast once i stop focusing.  that's ok.  it's a start.  now whenever i think of them, i do this.  i forgive.  aaaaah.  it's really like a heart orgasm, when i do it.  it feels better.  that's all i know.  i'm not thinking i'm better than them anymore either.  just different.  we just came to a place where it was mostly clear that we all wanted different things.  and now, when i see other women around town,  that i am friends with, i think to myself, hmmmm, she would be nice to be in a women's group with.  and that feels nice.  to at least see that there are other women in my life who i feel that way about.  lalala.

today has been hard.  so was last night.  sometimes the heaviness just comes and really weighs me down.  playing  i mind (james blake again) as loud as i can take it in the car, so loud that i know other cars can here the base even in winter with everyones' windows up, and no,  the kids are not with me when i do this, but doing that with that song today was helpful.  and now, i sit with tea and ponder how else i can trick myself into some lighter space.

telling myself only things that i feel are healthy and whole about my children.  refraining from picking them apart and worrying about how each of them is going to be wrecked, or is already wrecked, because of my wrong~doings, or because of the culture's wrong~doings....  refraining from that kind of horrid thinking is a definite assist in getting me closer to the light.  and these whole and healthy aspects of my children, i do not take credit for that.  nope.  i seem to only take credit for how they seem messed up sometimes.  geez, heath, you seem to have a devil complex now.  try ing to balance out the god complex.    you really know how to take yourself DOWN.   yep.  i do.  but on the flip side, i am looking into this trickiness of how to take myself up.  UP UP UP UP.  just cuz the weight of being so far down starts to hurt after a while.  there are things about being down that i sometimes feel are helpful to my humility.  or my sensitivity.  my humanity.   i guess i mean, i know i can't, or don't want to be, but really, i can't, be a person who is just up.  the underworld is kind-of etched into me.  was i born there?  maybe so.  i can't lose the knowing i have of being from the underworld.  but i do start to get gnarly and twisty and can't grow toward the light, when i'm under so much weight.  i can't even sense it,  or feel it, to know which way to grow towards.  i've lost sense of direction.  this happens to me sometimes.  guidebook?  friendly mole or rat around here to tell me where i've wandered to?   tunnels.  caverns.  my world as of late.  making me want to read the wizard of earthsea books again.

telling myself things that are whole and healthy about me could be a good trick too.  hmmmmm.  that idea makes me move my mouth to the side and wonder, a lot.  what are those things?  what is one thing even?  lips/ mouth are very far the right.



i just don't know.  not right now.  that's not a trick that i'm interested in for some reason.  not into me so much right now.

anyhows.

i've been wearing zhi's sweater.  i've been feeling a little strange wearing my daughter's sweater, but it's not stopped me.  cuz you know i like strange.  there's something about me that i feel is whole and healthy.  my strangeness. there.  but yeah,   i really love it, the sweater.   it fits me in a fine way i think?  zhi doesn't mind at all.  she said it's fine if i wear it, and she'll wear it sometimes too.  yeah.  right.  i think she is a girl who won't wear wool.   scratch attack.  it's soft wool.  she's a prima donna lately.  but how interesting that her sweater, kind-of fits me.  i like the neckline so much.

three quarter length sleeves are cool.  feels kind of free.


sometimes i even wear that hat i just made david, at the same time as this sweater,  and then i look funny and very matchy since they are from the same yarn, and i feel like a person who gives a present and then takes it back.  a funny matchy present~taker~backer.  now don't you want to feel that way!   i'd much rather them wear these things.  but if they aren't, well.  ok.  i will then.  ha!  watch out if i ever make a baby sweater for somebody and i see it's not being worn!  i'll just squeeze myself on into it.  i'll find a way.  just like i am determined to find a way to dig out.  i think my point earlier was that i know i'm not going to fully get free from the underworld stuff.  and when i feel really high, i've pretty much learned that i can't stay there.  i don't want to stay there.   i'd float away and i'd forget to eat and feed the little munchkins.  and when i get too high,  which i don't think can even happen anymore,  i've learned that i need to go and find something to weigh me down.  put some rocks in my pockets.  when i'm too low, i haven't learnt this one so well.  (learnt is a cool word and i want to spell that in scrabble too.)   but that's where i am at right now.  traversing dark tunnels.  i have been lighting a candle more at home.  exercise would be smart.  maybe i could run these dark ass tunnels with my candle in hand.



when i'm too low, low low low, what comes to mind right now, as i ponder myself and my relationship to nature and the seasons, and all i know, is trust.  like i trust that spring will come.  i really trust that (ha).   i  can feel deep inside me, some trust somewhere in me, that i know how to handle this dark stuff.  and i'm gonna know when it's time to poke my new green growth out of these purply tunnels.

i am wearing my preppy wool pants that i got thrifting today.  david asked me what business meeting i am going to.  it's true.  i look businessy.  i'm taking this tunnel work seriously.  getting down to business amongst the roots and mysterious richness and trapped nitrogen, working on some law school papers and some very important plans.  where are my fake glasses?  i need them.  and more.  i need more.  more more more.  more.

snake

swim lessons this morning for olive and max.

before that cleaned the kitchen pretty good.

david and zhi went up to ski with her school.  her school goes skiing for pe class.

m, o and me ate lunch at the diner.

took max to school.  his three hours of school.

errand for david.

got new license plates for the new car.  i think i like the new digits.  i think?

sit and drink coffee with olive till it's time to get max.

browse the internet cuz i have nothing to write.  feel stupid for wasting time like that.  i need a new knitting project.  let olive play games on the phone.  feel stupid about that too.

i need a life david would say. (endearingly sort-of??)  like a life for these spare moments where i'm not sure what i'm supposed to be doing.  or where i don't use my time wisely.

coffee is my friend right now.  i've noticed that after my dad died, and now david's, coffee is good for me. have i already said that?  i feel like i have.  how weird my relationship with caffeine.  how thoroughly weird.  or is it wired?  aaaargh.  whatever it is, it is nice to be friends right now.  mmm.  coffee.

that was friday.


this is tuesday.  i've already had coffee.  and oatmeal.  now i have some oolong. (that would be fun to spell in scrabble.)

the kids are swimming with their grandma.   i'm feeling guilty for not swimming with them.  gonna try and let that guilt go very quickly.  it's okay that i want space.  it is okay.  it's okay.  ...........

i'm daydreaming  about getting personalized license plates.   it's a dumb fun thing to ponder.  what would it say? today i keep thinking of the word avatar.  mmmmm.  loving that word.  we need more avatars.  but that would seem really conceited and cocky of me to have it on my license plate.  i'd need an addendum added somehow that it's not me who is the avatar, i just like the concept.  i just think about avatars. i guess i'm getting into bumper sticker territory now too.  my bumper sticker would say, 'i like to think about avatars.'  heh.

thinking on how contractions are necessary for openings again, i mean, as far as i know,  in my tiny experience of this world.   and then last night i was reading, those silly pleiadians again ( i just love them sometimes), i saw that i could apply confusion and clarity to that same concept also.  often before clarity, comes confusion.  it doesn't mean i'm doing anything wrong to feel confusion.  it's natural.   and so is clarity when it comes along.  and if the confusion is feeling contraction and painful like, well, i can just sit down, kneel down, look up, whatever, and pray my butt off if there's no other bright idea coming on how to deal.  that's always an option, just pray.   i have such a fear of doing things the wrong way.


 i have such a love of being shown and taught, over and over again,  how doing things imperfectly/wrongly is just part of the processssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.  that doing things wrong is not wrong.  it's kind-of sort-of right.



such a sneaky snakey life this can be.  so elusive the mastery of the lessons we desire to tuck away under our belts.  or in our boots.  or in our bras.  or wallets.

tonight is david's mom's last night here for this trip.  i am hoping that after dinner, or during dinner, we can sit and go around taking turns sharing memories we have of pawpaw.  and i will write them down in a special book i got for this purpose.  i hope that is in the flow for us tonight.  and i want to make collard greens.  and rice and beans.  mmmmmm.  simple.

i'm going through a phase with exposure.   it comes around my parts every now and then.  right now i am sitting in a more exposed part of the coffee shop.   i don't like it.  i'm going to move over a table and get more comfortable.

aaaaaaaaaah. so much better.  what the hell took me so long?  i sat there for 20 minutes trying to get into my groovyness and it was all contraction.  instant relief.  a friend and i had to do that the other night when we went out to dinner.  first table we sat down to was too exposed.  we moved over to a corner booth and it was an instant aaaaah.  sometimes i feel like our home is too exposed.  it's all relative i know, but we live on a corner in a mountain neighborhood, and it's like a juncture, an intersection where we live.  lots and lots of cars, relative again i know, and bikes (it's the most popular biking road in town i think) go by our house daily.  compared to all the other neighbors' homes in our hood.  for people who chose to  tuck themselves away in the hills, it's not really tucked.  it's more like, hi!  here we are, living on the hill.  and then there's our livelihood.  we have storefronts.  i certainly didn't bring that reality upon us, but i did most certainly join in to it, knowing full well what i was signing up for.  and then there's motherhood, to children who are entering into the social world.  schools.  no tucking away going on there.  it's a full on outward expression with lots of hi's.  i'm slowly being nudged out of my safe~feeling turtle shell that i tucked myself into since about the time i became an adult and could somehow be that way and still have my life.  like i chose an adult life, pre~children,  that was hermit like.  i chose a social life that was kind of like that.  and now, by the circumstances of our lives that we then chose and created, i am having to come out.  boo.  luckily it happens slowly, sort-of.  but if i were left to my own doings, oh what a hermit i would be.  david too.  i find it confusing and hilarious that we have created this outward life.  that we live at an intersection.  (and oh how hilarious it would be for some of you to see what i'm referring to as an intersection.  but still.  come on.  relativity people.  we feel it.  and just so you know i'm not the only one, the people who lived in our house before us, had issues with this too.  the guy bob who lived here before us, used to yell out obscenities at the bikers who ride by having loud conversations  out loud all the way around our house, telling them to shut it up.  he did it in front of us once.  like a 'shut the fuck up' kind of thing, yelled out with no apprehension at all.  ha.  it's just an anomaly of mountain living, this one house in particular, is just right there asking to play with the world all the time.)   i am cracking up at this.  my sister in brooklyn is probably dying at the words i'm writing here.  to her, we are tucked.  TUCKED.  but anyhow, i've got a desire to tell it in the way that i experience it sometimes.  i like the elusive corner.  hiding.   i like burying my head in the sand.   i like pulling my head into my shell.  but then, the winds change randomly, and i don't like hiding all of a sudden.  how slithery and confusing is all this?  what the hell are us hermits who are being urged to step out of our comfort zone, when we aren't feeling it,  to do?  the moon never has to go off her sweet course.  she is only full when it's time.  right on time.  be brave sweet hermits.  just be fucking brave.  there's a part of your soul wanting to come out, yah?  we are humans, not the moon.   the clarity will come.  and there are often nice hidden corners to go into before those winds of change come and make you want to go out and play.



i gave the kids a large dose of elderberry syrup yesterday.  and myself too.



our mom is so old.


evening now.

dinner was chaos.  not the time for what i was hoping to do with memories.  i will just start the book more organically.  write down things the kids have been saying lately.  things i remember.  we will add to it as it happens.  we will bring it on our next trip to baltimore perhaps.  love.  i went with the flow and didn't force more into the chaos that was dinner tonight.  crazy.  at one point, i look at david's mom and say, 'is the micromanaging just too much?  how can i do this differently?'  you know, referring to what was needed tonight to keep our kids from spinning out completely, from going to the land of no return which they sometimes do and it sucks so i micromanage the hell out of them sometimes to prevent that whole absurdity.  but then the micromanaging feels thoroughly absurd too.  she said, 'there are no short cuts.'  i love that she said that.  thank you.  my wrong is not wrong.  it's just this hard.  and i'm going through the crazy chaos at dinner with my machete in hand, whacking away for us a path to get to bed in one piece.  phew!  such hard work sometimes.

james blake.  lindisfarne I and  lindisfarne II is my favorite song right now.  sending a whole cd of his music to a friend tomorrow.  just burned it for her.  she needs some lovin.  i hope it helps.  it sure helps me lately.  how can this cover he did not help us all?