magic magic honey love

i really want to start taking notes on the magical seemings, i find in our days. i want to start searching for them like i search for specific colors sometimes. cuz when i search for red, i begin to see it everywhere. same with gold or green. or black or grey. with our new summer rhythm, i need to give it my best, so that when summer is over, and we're back to the school rhythm, i can look back on our summer of 2011, with so much wonder and gratitude for the magic we searched for, cultivated, watered, and grew. i want to grieve that summer is over, but feel glorious with gratitude for what it offered, that we received. so much is offered, and not taken. i want to start taking. like a wild woman. a wild woman with three young children, would take as much as she needs. i need need need more magic and love. searching for the rainbows. next post, i hope has rainbows.

searching for the blooms, with sweet nectar, like the bees. loving each wild child. being brought to my knees daily by their pureness. wild and unruly. pure. loving. and growing. and responding to parents' disciplines. parents' awakenings, that take them all into more present and pure exchanges. returning again and again to see if we're still there, strong as we were before. oh yes. stronger. and stronger and more awake, mostly because of the little wild ones. they make us stronger. more capable. our love for them makes us want to be the best we can be. it is such a beautiful cycle. as i watch the bees, and read about the bees, and think about the bees, i'm realizing that all we really ever do is for the future generations. deep down, somewhere in us humans, is this realization. i guess it's on a biological level of course, but we are very biological. yes? feel your heart thumping. right now. feel it. it is biological. it is power. it is bloody. the flip side is that our spiritual reason for being here is maybe the beginning point. the chicken or the egg. weird. maybe we are just working our butts off to keep the biology going, so the spiritual experiences can continue. the bees. i wonder if they enjoy their every task. defending from robbers even. cleaning and clearing the dead. tending the young. feeding the queen. (or being the queen. she never gets to forage. she never goes outside, except for that one time to get her dna, her sperm, for the future bees to have a chance.) foraging. dancing. when i see them dance, it makes me nervous. they dance so so so fast. something in me is responding to seeing them shake their bodies like that.

today: magical salad for dinner. frog belly lettuce, imported tomatoes, imported cucumbers, imported sunflower seeds, haystack goat cheese, imported balsamic, imported olive oil. it was so so so delicious. i love life these days. i really might need to move to florida in the cold months someday. or wherever.

love.

9

~some birthday pants. they are a lot like last year's birthday pants. but bigger, and with this years latest totem animal. rooster of course. although he is moving into parrot quite passionately in the past couple weeks. i gave him the extra rooster fabric and told him it will be his new pillow case. he's down with that. he likes his big cute wide legged pants. i love that he'll still wear what i make. yep. pleasure. (i got some of the alexander henry rooster fabric that clevergirl turned me onto. love it. the navy is thrifted, and the same i used in last year's pants. i got so much of it. such a score. it is cool fabric. (and he's wearing the same shirt as last year i just noticed. haha.) and the stripes along the sides are from some other alexander henry fabric with castle folk and creatures. very cool. i am a new fan of a.h. fabrics. pattern is negligible since i ended up widening it so much and shortening. but it's a burda size 8 pj pant.)

~a sister who eagerly wrapped all her brother's birthday presents. except i insisted on wrapping his new shoes for some reason. same sister also made water balloons, with little sister, all morning long, while birthday boy chopped trees with his dad.

~some sweet friends and family who went to see kung fu panda 2 with us, and then came over to hang out and be with the brand spankin new 9 year old boy. at the gathering that was not a party. i kept telling myself we are not having a party, just a hang-out thing, so i wouldn't clean too much before hand and lose my sense of what's important. it worked. i am never having a party again. get togethers yes. hopefully many more mellow fun ones with kids playing mostly peacefully, and parents drinking peacefully. at our dirty messy house. ha.

~ swinging roosters.

~such a blissed out heart that it's warm and it's june and things are growing. i woke up this morning wanting to go outside and look at the garden first thing.

~a chicken barrier. another one needs to be put up now. they could totally jump that. let's hope they don't......

~i see honeycomb, hexagons, everywhere now. if you put your hands together, with interlaced fingers, and then look inside at where the fingers come together, there are hexagons. i see it anyways. do you?

~a crown chipped. hello dentist. and lots of appointments this month for everyone to get teeth cleaned.

~joy with homemade glue. perfect use of a bag of flour i unearthed from the shelves from 2008. oops.

~olive asked me how much i love her yesterday. the thing that came to mind to say, because i think about them so so much lately, is 'as much as bees love flowers.' zhi quickly improved my statement, to 'more than.' yes. most def. more than. that is a huge feeling. i asked olive how much she loves me. she said, 'more than the sun loves his east baby suns.' wow. what the hell? how is she so cool and magical?

~a new garden patch.

~baby seedlings made the move to outside.

~they are fun.

~the girls are listening to things on the ipod as i write this. they just chose eckhart tolle. zhi says giggling, 'this is dumb stuff mom likes to listen to.' big quiet hahahaha inside of me. smile.

success

hmmmmm.....

worked it out.

internal and external success!!!

in summation:

see your plight.

work it out. work it out. work it out, while saying, 'i think i can. i think i can. i think i can.'

hopefully smile like that up there afterward,

and say, ' i thought i could, i thought i could, i thought i could.'

::

my boy's birthday is tomorrow. this is a magical time. feeling fun. listening to zhi's beatles all the time. when we are inside that is. smiling.

thanks for working me through the screaming hate post the other day. love.

...and when i tell you that i love you, you're gonna say you love me too.

how could 4 guys be that cool? drones are cool creatures. at least there's a whole lot of potential anyways. these guys just met theirs, yeah? externally anyways. freaks me out in the heartliest way how cool they were musically.

dirty house

sometimes i can't look back. i just have to look ahead. maybe someday i'll be able to, want to, feel like looking back. not today. smile. no thanks. but now. i like now. now i am looking around having that thing happen when all of a sudden i wake up after a few days of not being awake in this one sort of way, and i see how dirty a lot of my house is. weird. and i could hyperventilate. but i decided to blog instead, after bon ami~ing the sink, but not scrubbing it yet, flossing, taking my hawaain flower essences, and drinking water. oh and i shook out a rug. holy gggggeeeeeeezzze. dirty house. i love you. you could be dirtier. i am sure of that. i kind-of just barely hold you together. no chance of perfection here. and it's fine. you like it that way. however i once had a friend come over for the first time, and tell me it looked like ms. manners lived here. i so do not see it that way. i had been to her house too, and i could see what she meant, i mean, compared to hers. hers was pretty pretty (larry david) messy. it's so funny how relative it all is. and how not relative it feels when i look at our house from my dirty house lenses.

water is so good.

isn't this column, dear sugar so so so good. ? david told me a more pro way of linking to other peoples' sites. include their name, title, site name, or whatever in the link, don't just say 'this'. like, look at this. he said it's better for their search data, or something. he's been learning while working on his own website. so i'm gonna be more pro. i pride myself on being pro. just kidding. but i do like to be in the know. thanks d.

breathing is really good too.

i've also been reading a book called women reinvented. i just spotted it at the library on the new nonfiction shelf, and was definitely drawn right to it. it was really intense to read at first. like i had to call a friend to talk me off an i suck so bad ledge, i am nothing compared to what some of these women have done for themselves, coming from horrible horrible shit. it was not pretty or easy to read. but it was very very powerful. today the ones i read were mellow, not dramatic or scary, and kind-of boring in comparison. however, they were still real and raw and i like that. i read them while max was at his reading lesson, and the girls were so cute playing out back of the trident in the sandbox, burying their hands and feet. i got to read. if you scroll down on that link, you'll see all these other books the same company has put out. voices of 'some hard disease'. i want to read all of them. in some way or another i've been touched by all but one of those diseases. i can think of a few other hard things i'd be interested in reading about. like marriages reinvented. that would be a good book. or men reinvented. that would be so good.

i just went out to lock up the chicken coop. there was a fox sitting right there outside of the fence that is around the coop. the fox looked at me. didn't run. not at all. i love fox. i finally, after looking at it in the eyes for a minute or so, decided i had to say something so i also honored the good chicken guardian i am. i said, shoo girl . you can't be around here. and she turned around and went on up the back road. it was sort-of sad. but she seemed to be cool. and she's probably so coming back to scope out the chickens some more. the older hens and the roosters were quiet. i kept wondering if they knew there was a fox so close by. but the two little girls, easter and orangutan were totally chirping. babies. babies need so much protection. it makes my heart race. i bungeed up their coop extra tonight.

ok. goodnight. time to watch a video and eat caramel and drink tea. yummm. no guilt.

tomorrow i will harvest kind of a lot more nettles. it is growing so quickly. all that rain.

i need nettles. need. nettles. in. my. blood.

i still like my jar carrier i made last summer. i want to make another one some day soon that feels even more pro. gettin that pro feeling. maybe david, mr pro, will give me his two cents on how to improve my design. i can count on him for that for sure. he's a one, 1, on the enneagram. smile. i might have married the hardest type to be in relationship with. definitely interview me for the marriages reinvented book. it's not over, though. there will be a few more reinventions to come yet, i'm sure.

i hate stuff post

there. i am all fired up by the god damn idiotic stupidness of my kids fighting lately. they made me scream today so loud i hurt my own ears. there. enough. enough. enough. and yes. they made me. i like to own my own behavior. i do most of the time. but i'd like to see gandhi go ahead and give my kids a try, and not scream his own brains out every now and then. totally screamed from my throat. whatever. there there there. moving on. fuckers!!! gonna let it go now that i am alone, and i've handed them over to their brave daddy. he had to meet me while i was seething, and thank god he did not judge me. thank you god. dess.

i am having my moon blood too. that helps with getting me into my anger. i am reading this book. i read today, from one of the teachings, and this may not sound sacred like it does in the book, out of context, that from the persepective of the path of pollen, we are not in a universe, but more accurately, in a yoni~verse. yep. i am in love with this book. we had out first beesting. zhi. it's long story. and i don't feel like getting into it because i am so bitchy right now. but because of this book, i see it as a healing opportunity. and i have proof, that it has been. she is different. in a cool cool way. that bee healed her. i knew bee stings were therapeutic for the body in certain ways, but what i saw in her was kind-of like a psychedelic kind of healing. the kind i've seen and felt with myself when i've taken psychedelics. i might need to take more psychedelics. yes. that would be good. get a clear picture to bring back with me. get a nice eagle's nest view. or i would be into a breathwork workshop. i haven't hyperventilated myself into hallucination before, on purpose, but i'd like to.

okay. so read this. i just did and it made me cry and made me feel like a crap mom, and made me inspired. and made me want to hug everyone. forever. i just discovered dear sugar's column in the new sun magazine which just came in my mailbox a few days ago. i am so in love with every answer she's written so far, that i'm very very excited that there is a whole backlog i get to read. have you all read her stuff before? i want to read her books that she is writing under her real name. looking very forward to that as well someday, when she outs herself.

i am going to try and remember to do the rain exercise with my kids. they have anger management problems. like me. but max, especially, has to confront his own anger a lot. i want him to have tools so bad, so that he doesn't scare other kids at school, and alienate himself from them, like he has. some kids are scared of him because of outbursts he's had. it's so sad to me. but some kids, some are cool, and forgive him, mostly because their mother is one of my best friends, and she somehow, has raised kids who can see under max's anger when it comes up, and know him for more than that, and forgive him, righteously. thank god for some kids. kind-of interesting that i just happened upon that specific letter of hers, when i went to grab the link to her column. it's not one that i had read in the sun. she sucks me in. sucks me way in. like a vortex. a strong one. i want to see what she looks like so bad.

oh . sadness. take me away to a happy world. a world where my son fits in. and has friends who adore him. a world where i don't hate my kids' behavior. a world where i cook and clean while whistling. a world where i skip to gather up one mess, and then another, while singing sexy blues. help me guide my darling babies through their sibling rivalry explosions with inspiration and gratitude for opportunity. help me see that telling my husband he's done something thoroughly annoying, can be a simple fun experience. oh sadness, show me how to contemplate my very unique life experience from the vantage point of the grateful joyful artist, who has been to hell and back, and knows that this, this right now, this is not hell. this is life. this is life. and i love my unique blessed life. help me feel that i am artist and lover and mother and freak. help me sadness. help me forgive all those who i feel wrong us, by not understanding max the way i wish for him to be understood and seen. help me sadness. help me piece yet another patch onto my quilt of love and healing, from this current wave of pain. thank you sadness. you take me places.

one more. help me to not judge myself for feeling hate sometimes. help me see it from the eagle's nest. it is a strong strong feeling, pointing me to dig deeper. deeper, till i feel in my heart something true. thank you.

i felt that.

that felt really really good and true, what i just felt.

and one more. help me sadness. help me most of all right now, to feel some trust that my boy is on his sacred path. and that we are on our own, beside him. and that everything is ok. that he is gonna grow into a righteous and good man. help me sadness. help me reach that trust for him. help me know this like i knew when he was born that he would live. that he was gonna be better than they told us he would be. cause i knew. i knew.

i knew.

ok.

thank you sadness. for helping me.

and that is the end of my i hate stuff post.

ps~

we store our unfinished wine in the bottle in the fridge. i had some the other night, and i like to warm it up before drinking it of course. who likes cold wine? handy that i had some potatoes cooling after boiling, to set my wine glass in. handy dandy moment of simple resourcefulness that made me happy.

nice and subtle. and out of the ordinary.

this photo is how i feel like being right now. subtle. blending in. but magical. super magical. mostly camouflaged, though. foxy gnome. the other day, olive and i had a very out of the ordinary morning, involving driving to the big kids' school twice, after taking them to the bus stop, because of me having an idiot morning and forgetting one thing. then another. and then once i got there for the second time by 10 am, i freaking realized max didn't have his orcas (aka hearing aids) on. i left it at that. he can get by without them pretty well. but geez. what was up with that day? i realized that night it was a full moon. i need a moon calendar. but! all that extra time on the mountain roads, allowed us to see 3 fox that morning. one sighting was especially amazing because of the intense eye contact we made with this one younger looking girl fox who was more grey than the usual red that we see on the fox here. and there is a black fox around here too that i've seen a few times in the past few years. that is a rare one indeed. but this grey girl with the intense eyes just about blew my mind. so had i not been an idiot, sucked into the vortex of moon~mind, olive and i would not have had this contact with fox. it's nice when i can let go of being perfect and not beat myself up for not remembering stuff sometimes, and have these magical encounters to tell me all is well and flowing along magically still. david was also out of town that particular morning, and wrangling the kids for the morning routine by myself is an out of the ordinary event also. lots of out of the ordinary. i like that actually. olive and i ended up just staying at the school and blending like fox with the class for a few hours after our second extra arrival. loved how it all unfolded. thank you fox. thanks for being the messenger and telling me, showing me, how when i am not perfect, beauty still comes through, magic comes through. art is still happening. thank you for helping in my quest to shed myself of perfectionism. i'm ready. i like magic so much more. i like self-forgiveness. i like foxes.

::

on another note...

happily started reading your blogs again. and their blogs. ha. it makes me feel lighter today. more spirited. some days its helpful to reach out. some days it feels amazing to pull in. that's what i think after my sweet break from internetting so much. i didn't go 100% off. but maybe 97%. that's a big out of the ordinary thing to do. refreshing.

anyhoo. i guess i am sneaking in ahead of schedule from my little break from blogging. i am just feeling ready again. i've been writing a bit this whole time, and that bit is gonna be on here too, just for the records. the oh so important records i love to keep. so. it was a good break. i really let some pressure release. and got to feel some stuff. three weeks! i haven't done that in a long long time. love may. it has been very rainy for these parts. weirdly rainy. you know how we had that wildfire last fall. now we have to be on the watch/alert for flooding because the burned land can't take water like it used to. i have a friend in the flood zone. so far it's been okay with all this rain. thanks to some really cool aerial mulching they did all of april. see here (yes olive is singing touch me again, don't ask why we listen to the doors so much), and here and here:

that helicopter-helped-mulching is what we drove by for days and days in april. it was awesome to witness. and now this burned mountain has a blanket to cover her scars.

the kids and i had an out of the ordinary weekend, with their dad being out of town. he went to las vegas to hang out with some good friends from high school. yeah. doesn't sound so good. but hey. next year they want to go to telluride. yep. so that means i get to plan myself an adult-type get away. or two.

blessed pollinator

blessed storyteller

blessed animal whisperer girl

blessed animal wrangler, i mean leader?, girl

blessed funny love sweet sassy sour oily salty bitter girl

who is so adorable, even when she cries. peereshus baby. the rawness of children inspires me a lot.

and so. bushy tail blending magic. here i am. blending in. but standing out. subtly. blessed mama.

:: notes from today:

• i love being tidy. and i have to focus, harness, pay attention to trust when life gets messy.
• how to keep the thread of being refreshed? keep refreshing. refresh. refresh. sweat. shower. relax. take a break. forget stuff. remember. do stuff differently.
• there are so many things i could do better. like cooking. i'm accepting right now that when i cook, cool. revel in it. blog about it so i'll remember that i did something cool sometimes. and then let it go. when it's time to cook again, in a way that i feel proud of enough to blog about, i'll do it. like tonight. see below.
• turnip greens. in the csa this week. first time for me to cook them. it is a really good springy springy sour potato salad. so clean. here's the recipe we got in the csa newsletter: TURNIP GREENS AND POTATOES

  Boil 1 lb potatoes in salted water for 20‐25 minutes. While potatoes are cooking, make a

  dressing from 1/3 c olive oil, 2 T vinegar, juice of 1/2 lemon, 1/2 t paprika and salt and

  pepper to taste. Set aside. Bring a second pot of salted water to a boil with 1 T olive oil.

  Wash greens and boil for 5 minutes, or until done to taste. (You could also sauté them

  instead). Drain well and chop coarsely. Drain potatoes. Place warm greens and potatoes

  in a serving dish and add the dressing. Serve warm or at room temperature.

raising my kids takes so much energy. i am wondering if i am doin something wrong. i see these other mothers of even more kids than we have, doing and accomplishing so much more, all while seeming mellow and relaxed. how can i figure out what i'm doing wrong. or why i can't do what they do. i feel like they are just made of different stuff. and our kids are made of different stuff. and possibly our husbands are made of different stuff. or one of us has a husband and one of us doesn't. and our childhoods were made of different stuff. and our water was probably pretty different. and our seasons possibly. and our past lives were likely not alike. but.

butt.

randomness. i just started spacing out thinking about my grandmother for a sec. for a split second, i had the thought to google her and read her childhood story, just for a refresher. like i knew i couldn't ask her to tell me again, because she died 4 years ago, but for that funny split second, i was like, oh, no problem. just google it. hha. haha. hahahahaha. that is funny.

so back to but.

actually not yet.

i want to get max, and zhi if she wants, back into horseriding lessons. they took them for three years in a row. we just took this past 9 months away from the horses, mostly because their instructor moved her teaching arena to a place that would take me an hour to get to. i cringed at the thought of the extra driving, on top of how much i already do. well. i am now wondering if i could make it happen for max again....he has asked me a few times. i want my kids to do stuff. i want them to be normal. no i don't. but i get freaking caught up in being normal or being perfect. that is such a sticky web. i am way more relaxed with the goal of being present and being loving with myself, and i say just myself, and leave it at that, because you know, when i am loving with myself ..... i love everyone dearly.

but. i keep feeling like i have so much to sew. and i can't find the time. or the energy. or the desire actually. and i do make myself sit down and do it here and there. but it's not really easy to even make myself sit and sew. and then i had this thought this afternoon, like, who am i to even feel depressed that i have this desire, this dream of sewing up all kinds of stuff all the time. who am i to even feel sad that i can't make my recreational dream come true like i want. how many people don't even have the luxury to dream a dream like that? shit shit shit that sucks to think about. but i still can't let my dream go. and to make it worse, it flipflops between sewing, and and all these other dreams, ALL these other cool dreams regularly. daily. multiple times a day. all i can think, for my question on how these other mothers get so much more done, well first i think, they just do more stuff and space out less and watch less night time videos, and then i also think they must, just must have more energy. more chi. they must be doing chi gong secretly. or some thing! they must be doing something differently to give them that kind of energy. that kind of sustained low stress appearance. what is it......