the gelato troll!!!!!  he lives behind that deceivingly cute door in the gelato shop, that might open its doors tomorrow.

coat tree!!!  look back at the last post to see how it started out.  i found the fallen branch when we were out triking one saturday at the little open park lot near our house.  i have been wanting to make my own coat tree for years.  i love it so much.  i need to drill some holes in the lower part of it and then add on some branches so the little people can reach to hang their hats and coats on their own...... i am all about what they can do on their own, especially in regards to putting away their things.

12/2/7

my kids…….i love them uncontrollably.  They push my buttons like NO ONE else. I need space from them, but I fear that the people they are with when I’m not there are contributing to their unruly behavior.  For example, at school, they learned potty talk, kid-trash-talk ……….they jump out of bed after the babysitter has read them their 3 night-time books, just to mess with her.  but then I think about the time I was at the trident with zhi, and I was engrossed in conversation with a fellow adult, and not really watching zhi, and she was helping herself to teaspoon after teaspoon of honey from the honeybear on our table.  Finally the lady I was talking to clued me in to what was going on.  I told zhi to stop taking honey, no more honey, I said.  I turn my back to continue our conversation, and there she goes again, helping herself to more.  What does it take to get a kid to listen?  Spanking worked for me as a kid, but it also made me closet my spirit  in a way that stunted me as an adult. That little firey sprite in me is an essential element in my soul’s balance…….uncloseting her has been extremely difficult, I can compare it to the pains of childbirth.  All for a part of me that was already born before….that’s just too much work to do over again.  I can’t and won’t do that to my precious babes, who are so beautifully free and wild.  But that still leaves me pondering how to teach them to respect their authorities.  Yesterday, I hated yesterday, but I was almost literally begging them to listen to me.  Lame.  I was in tears, I was broken. I told them I was not feeling strong, and I bared my naked self in all her ugly tiredness that she was trapped in yesterday, and they actually listened.  They went on to have a sweet harmonious day.  I can’t believe that that’s what it takes to get them to listen to me.  No way.  So when I am having a strong, hell-yeah, take-the-bull-by-the-horns kind of day, why are they more challenging to my word?  Questions I may never get the answer to.  That’s okay. Cause I know I will keep at it with them.  They are my loves, my unconditional loves, that I will work with forever and ever and ever.  I want to say with pleasure, and I do mean with pleasure, but I also know it’s often with frustration that results in me grinding my teeth at night (my dentist made me a night-guard), and it’s often with extremely uncomfortable feelings of hate for our dilemmas that I can hardly admit to feeling sometimes.  Hoooo, deep sigh.

 

Work.  It’s just hard work sometimes, and it usually pays off, I’ve seen from my almost 31 years of experience.  It’s worth it is what I’m trying to remind myself.  It’s so so so worth it.  

a coat tree to be......

11/26/07

 

happiness comes from contentment….the quote on my tea bag.  Hmmmm.  I do love feeling or being content.  How do we come to contentment…..how often did my dad feel contentment, without drugs or alcohol?  For me, I know I feel mighty content after doing a little work, when I am taking a well-earned break, everything just feels aligned and right.  I feel content when I take care of my body and feed it often.  I feel content after a good conversation.  I feel high, grounded, and content when I am inspired…….well, sometimes not so grounded, the source of inspiration for me for so long has been from above, and I must admit it can overwhelm me.  That really makes me wonder about inspiration from below.  What does that look like, what does that feel like?  I have been on a year long journey, pretty much since I became pregnant with olive, on getting myself grounded.  The idea of now finding, and hearing my soul’s song on the ground sometimes, as opposed to always coming from the heavens, is very attractive.  I have seen a definite correlation to when I am grounded, or my soul/spirit body is fully integrated into my physical body, and when I have good connections with others in a physical form….. cats, humans, birds, bugs…..it’s so much easier.  So, my point, I kind-of forgot, but it was something about how so far the ground has shown me it is a good thing, and it works well for me.

baby girl

hmmmmm. Olive. I smile just writing your name. I need to write about how you smile, and how I’ve woken up to your smiling face for the past 4 months or so….you were an early smiler. I actually feel like I saw you smile when you were an hour old, and then every day after that I kept seeing it, but told myself there’s no way a baby smiles that early. And then your dad said he thought he’d been seeing it too. It became very clear that you were definitely smiling when you were about two weeks old. I will never forget, this exchange you and I had in the studio, when you were 2 weeks old, and I put on the lonesome sisters, and started crying thinking about mawmaw dying, and your’ being born, and then just feeling a wave of realization come over me around all of our preciousness, vulnerability, and mortality. you were just hanging there in the sling. I looked down at you through tears. you looked right into my eyes, and gave me the clearest, brightest smile I’d ever seen I’m pretty sure. And you still do this all the time. You just did it, you awoke from your little trident nap, looked up at me, smiled, and fell back into sleep. You’ve also had this little habit of awaking from sleep just to make sure I’m there, and when you see me, you drift right back in. sometimes you do this when nursing. You pull off for a sec, look up at me and smile, or just look into my eyes, and then pop right back on like a little animal. I am in love with how comforted you are by my face. And I am in love with waking up everyday, looking into your eyes, and smiling together for minutes. then zhi wakes up and comes in, for more minutes of smiling…..followed by max. dad has usually gotten out of bed into the shower by this point, but he’s there for the first bit, and then catches the scene while getting dressed, as we all lay and emit love for each other….and then at some point either you or I start to feel a little clustered, and have to end the party. Those big kids have a way of getting excited that is a hard to hang with for long first thing in the morning. That’s how we start our days, olive. It is a full on treat, little hummingbird that you are. Little joy, baby love. I am in love with YOU. You are at the moment smiling at two women at the tables across from us, and they are smiling back, and waving at you. I have a feeling you’re not gonna be a shy one.

aunt red

the man with the eggy head, bald and shiny, just came over to me and said I sparked a thought in him this morning, about eggs, and how they gather more and more energy in them until the shell can’t hold it any longer, and then the shell breaks open…………he said he sees me in my shell so often. Well, buddy, I guess I am still gathering energy. I like this angle on energy stores, though. The idea of building the energy up to the point of busting out with abundance, as opposed to the idea of saving energy out of fear of depletion and feeling scared because I haven’t busted out yet, and that I might only have half my space filled up….half full, versus half empty again…

rolanda is letting me smile at people more and more.

and a new shirt, from the built by wendy pattern #3835.........i like it, it makes me feel cheery and like i might be the never heard of, sometimes naughty, but clever and oh-so-fun favorite aunt red in an elsa beskow book.

FULL . ALMOST FULL......

10/12/7

half. FULL! Half FULL!! HALF FULL FULL FULL FULL FULL FULL FULL HALF FULL HALF FULL. HALF FULL. HALF FULL. HALF FULL…..IT’S HALF FUCKING FULL!!!!! ALMOST FULL.................

keeping on top of the shit

staying inspired is so critical for me. i need to remember it is possible to feel spirit in all moments. during all tasks. easy does it folks. at times i am a preschool teacher with patience flowing out of my ears, others, a militant mother who won't give an inch, sometimes a maid who despises any bit of dirt, then a mellow monk who only sees the bigger picture, now a crafty writer who writes to wake herself up. wake up little rock. pay attention to your heart.

the synchronicity inspires me to no end............

'It's very good jam,' said the Queen.
'Well, I don't want any TO-DAY, at any rate.'
'You couldn't have it if you DID want it,' the Queen said. 'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam to-day.'
'It MUST come sometimes to "jam to-day,"' Alice objected.
'No, it can't,' said the Queen. 'It's jam every OTHER day: to-day isn't any OTHER day, you know.'
'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!'
'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'it always makes one a little giddy at first--'
'Living backwards!' Alice repeated in great astonishment. 'I never heard of such a thing!'
'--but there's one great advantage in it, that one's memory works both ways.'
'I'm sure MINE only works one way,' Alice remarked. 'I can't remember things before they happen.'
'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards,' the Queen remarked.

from the looking glass, lewis carol.

what do you do when you feel like you're just gonna freak?

everything i wanna do, feels like it would just take me down further. alcohol, cannabis, scream at my kids and fully freak them too, shop, run away. breathe. that's all i can think of, that might help, and i know won't hurt.

i hate getting mad at my kids. this is the deal right now. i have been pushed to my edge a few times today, and i hate that edge. i judge it. it is ugly, scary. ugly and scary are bad. bad is not good. only good is good. i only like good. breathe. breathe. breathe. ice cream helped a little. breathing really works though. sometimes i pray, but i usually get distracted before i can tell if my prayer was answered. breathing is the answer for us mental types. stop everything, and breathe.