WifeMotherExpletive

Boomboxes are Vintage...

2012-02-08T13:53:00.000-05:00

or, What Color is Your Tea?

SO, heads up. this is an early Valentine's Day issue-fest. early. just like we like it... so we have lots of warning time before the big big day. I'm a whole six days early in case you wondered. the titles, you ask?
I'm giving myself a whole littled week before I express my disappointment that my husband didn't John Cusack himself up in the driveway and serenade my persnickety windowstuck ass. No, he didn't, hasn't, won't. There are also the two dead bunches of carnations somewhere in vases around the house testifying to the dead-love we have growing here. And these are not fighting words here, just appropriate to the flowers and the reality that while once pretty in their grotesquely-overdyed slightly-neon-scary fashion, they are now the walking dead, and such is the love i have for Valentine's. get that?

i know that many of my single ladies have a hard time with this coming holiday and part of the reason for writing is the acknowledgement that it sucks for just about everyone, even the 'coupled'.. except for maybe the newly-engaged, and for them, mostly for the relief of not really having to 'do-it' (gift giving whahoo-not 'it'.. perv) .
there was a superbowl commercial with an incredibly beautiful woman suggesting that if you give her flowers that you order from an 800 number that she'll put out. i just want to tell the world, uh,... no she won't. its a lie. the whole thing. lets pretend just for a second that a young woman, looking like that has a man who matches her beauty or youth or 'wealth'... Do you think for a second that if he has flowers delivered to her office/coffee shop/dress boutique ... it'll flip the coin in her head and she'll run out and ...

oh brother, i can't even complete my thoughts on this one, its just too stupid. and has nothing to do with love. and i don't know what love is, really. .... I don't think it has capital letters, for one thing. I think it has small ones, all the little details in the curvatures and the angles. i have suspicions that it is much more quiet than a superbowl ad could handle... and it may have to do with familiarity and choosing to notice the color of someone's tea. how do you take it?
and so . . . familiarity. really? I guess its not so cute and there's no symbol for it to use in the marketing campaign ... so its probably not going to catch on. But I know how Hubs takes his tea. I know which cereal is the true favorite of the 4. I know how to read the flushed cheek of the 6.
i do.
and as scary as all this vulnerability in love is, i'd probably do it all again this way... especially if i could read the script ahead. especially. you know, no leaping off the boat without a lifejacket and such...
phaw.

Is that what the question MEANT?

2012-02-07T13:48:00.000-05:00

I always do self-checks on myself: wicked important things like this, to myself... (and by always, i mean once in a while. )

BIG, OMNISCENT NARRATOR VOICE: Are you loved?

yeah, yeah, of course. i mean, the kids do... they can't help it, i'm the mother here. they have no choice.

and this...

B, Om..Narr..Voice : Do you love?
yeah, oye, of course. I mean, i'm the mother here. I have sex! with my husband, i clean underwears all the time... I feed the cats and the birds. I cook chickennuggets and hotdogs even though I hate them so..Yeh, Love.

and then there is this...
lower, closer...VOICE: okay, kate, is that what the question meant? have you answered?
in the fullest of answers? meanings?

and then I get all stymied. Do I really think the boys love me because they have no choice? really? Is there a reason I don't mention my husband who loves me, probably most of all the people in the world, most of the time?
and then again, with my own love for others... why is it mixed so deeply in with necessary things? things which honestly- except for the sex- I feel resentment for in the first place?

why is the vulnerability of admitting love, real love, so damn scary for me? I mean, my god, i am married! with children! one could just assume saying love exists for me to be a no-brainer. but no.
so what happens to me if i admit this vulnerability? is the universe going to test me within 5 minutes of my admission? will i be alone and bereft? so what is my attention focused ON all this time? am i avoiding real honest expressions of love because it may at some point not exist? is that really the way these things go?

and if i think i know the answer and don't know how to move, then what?

THEN WHAT?

Things Lost, Things Found, no relation to Seuss

2012-02-03T10:49:00.001-05:00

In the past week we have lost a disc of DuckTales, which will cost me and my friend Netflix a lot of money... and the kids never even got to watch it as it was pilfered from its nifty envelope by sticky fingers #4 and G-d knows where it is now, but it has been looked for and declared 'lost'. I haven't told Netflix yet, I hate disapproval and fear I will sense it through these internets.
In a larger realm, it doesn't even matter, because we have ALSO lost the clicker which operates the dvd player. And I have looked. AND I'm talking, every chair has a clean underpinning, the rugs were lifted for the dvd search.. even the toy bins have been emptied, bitch. I checked the fridge, eyep, and all the trashcans and the bathroom cabinets, and the boys beds were stripped in the search... All I can figure is that it got recycled or pilfered by that sticky bastard #4. (in yesterday and today's childrearing episodes I have the feeling that my kids are out to get me and are busy turning themselves into hoodlums. I recognize that this is MY perspective and that i am SKEWED this week, waiting around for some sort of change... and that they are just regular old kids busy exploring all the things of the world. i love them, don't think they are liars or bastards most of the time... sometimes i think they are very thick brickladen children, other times they are brilliant stars of the galaxy... such is motherme.) We have also lost a Mario DS chiplet thing, the camera temporarily, multiple measuring tapes, oil pastels, and my marbles. (no pun. just insane.)The temporary loss of the wallet yesterday made me itch.
I lost my opportunity to go to a cool meeting nearby, because I didn't act on finding childcare. I just didn't take action. what is that?
I COULD have gone out yesterday without the wallet, would have been fine. What is that?
And what has been found? not much.
I sat in meditation today and found my brain running through places to look for things... the normally staid and aloof cats were downright whorish in their need for my attention at that moment and I could not look away from that opportunity... so I tried to sit again after they had their way with me... same list of lookspots. . . I'm thinking that maybe I'm searching for the wrong things lately, and its niggling at my spirit. what to do with that though?
I'm going to read today, and clean, and do some writing.. and that is all I can do today. what will i find?

**! GAH!! found a karate outfit thats been missing for TWO weeks. !! aha!! whats next?!!

The Days of Staying Home

2012-02-02T13:29:00.000-05:00

we're home today, all day... we WERE going to go out, spur of the moment, to an ikea with a ball pit and free babysitting... i need a new wallclock that teaches time... but then discovered that the wallet had been mislaid. And by mislaid, i mean that the 6 was having a fit last night and was seen by his father with said wallet heading out into the house... and the 4 this morning told me the wallet was in the trash. These tales were discovered after a panicked call to the HubsJ to assess situation before cancelling all the cards and applying anew for health insurance cards, social, etc. and all that. all that has left me all weepy on the inside and convinced that in fact this whole situation IS A TRAP, and I cannot get out from under the 'doing for others' ... and today it is not feeling that good.
I suppose you could check in tomorrow and all will be well. I'm looking forward to that too. Maybe I'll even have a list.
whine whine snuffle.
*- the wallet was found BEFORE the trash was searched, randomly placed on a chair in a hallway. . . cash intact. little punks.

sometimes what is more difficult is not the parenting constantly, or the hardworking marriage or the isolation of being a stayathomer... its the combination of them all and the utterly unceasing nature of it all.
I have lots of moments of bliss, and a husband who is really actively involved with the kids and the marriage. but today, i am tired, and the healthy food and tea are not cutting it away from me just yet.
hanging in...
wmx

I'm tired of myself, man.

2012-02-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

Boy, I have some whamdingggy loops that I like to cycle through... loop, loop, loop. I'm so very tired of most of the people who live in my house. yes I am, and I typed it out loud, I did.
I'm tired of kids waiting barefoot for the bus. YES, it did. and hello, FEBRUARY 1st, NEW ENGLAND... not Mali, or an island I can't pronounce, but here, New England, home of the wooden houses. and the weirdly wrong temperatures today...but still FEBRUARY.
I'm tired of laundry, sort of. I mean, I still like how it smells. BUT I am kvetching about the plain old amount of it and the no thanking that I get for providing EVERY SINGLE PERSON in the home with clean underwear. yes, i do. and they need it. yes, they do.
I'm tired of washing pee sheets. When I was a camp counselor and had to do the loads of pee-soaked little girl laundry, I remember feeling so happy when the summer finally ended... no more, no more... what a silly young thing i was.

Man, I wish I could tell you I was bigger on the inside, and so, able to see all this crud as an act of love. I wish my bigger-on-the-inside self wasn't just on a fullout lie-down-and-cradle-my-head on this one...
I don't want my wishes to be horses.
I'm going to spend the morning looking into retreats for me to go on this summer.
I'm going to read some of my book.
I'm going to make some tea with honey from my new honeypot.
I'm going to fold more laundry. Much of it is MINE today. MUCH.
I'm going to smell my laundry, maybe even put my face into a pile of socks and underwear that I have cleaned, that are not MINE.

I'm getting off the computer.

Space and what to put in it... or how to leave it be. . .

2012-01-30T10:45:00.000-05:00

So tell me this: why, when I clean my closet, get rid of a garbage-bag sized bag of clothing, a whole bin emptied (and put away) AND my old Doc Marten boots in the give-away pile, am I not filled with glee? I was almost instantly morose. What is this? Some teenaged girl is going to pee herself when she sees these perfectly broken down boots at the Salvation Army thrift... and I don't want them anymore, so it is perfect. Was it the size changing I have done? The linen pants in a size four that I can't wear, no matter the season or the desire? hmm. The clothing I have been given that I have never actually worn? The sweater chest? Do I fear the cold so much that I keep two cardigans for each day of the winter? Is it the looming need to keep going? to get the baggage that I carry down to a single shelf, a single hanging rack? a need to pare down until I have reality on my chest and nothing else? It it hard, this skinpeeling, this un-layering, the hurt is real right now and the self-motivated nature of it makes me feel confused about why I am doing it, while feeling it is necessary to make the space, but wondering what will fill the space (if anything).

I found a store in this town that is in a little shed behind a farmhouse... horses, mud, rusty metal and all... and the woman sells angel figures and things of beauty (?) that she has made while inspired and while i don't get all thrilled by figurines and things and so just bought some lavender essential oil and a deck of cards with 'angel advice' on them. ( i love things like this, like to draw a card and think about what it means all day... yesterday the card suggested i cleanse my chakras. go! rock on the newagey, i say!) ... anyhow... the lady's name was carla lee, or carlinely, or somesuch rythmic 'L' based name.. and she was a hardsmokin' lady on a farm and just was thrilled to be doing her thing, thrilled! and it was just so cool and I really like meeting people who are so far out and yet, working on being so GOOOD, and trying to live a wacko life based on the basic goodness of humanity, and the possibility of magical things being real. If you saw this lady at the grocery store, you would have no idea that she was blessing everyone that she saw and asking her angels about which broccoli she should buy. (ok, maybe you could guess that part... :)

I'd like to start assuming this more often. Maybe the boys who I went to highschool with, who are mostly cops now, maybe they are trying to be Good too. Maybe I should give everyone the benefit of the doubt more often. The other moms at the school pickup? All the grandparents? I certainly don't want to go the other way, I don't. Can't we decide to believe that people are mostly Good? Maybe we're all trying to fight the good fight, in our small ways? Don't we engage in spiritual warfare, just to get through the day sometimes? Is our seeking part of the bigger picture? What is going to fill our closets when we are emptying them of all these 'things'? shit, i have no idea. none.

Camera gone AWOL, amongst other things...

2012-01-27T11:27:00.000-05:00

IT is pouring here, as in, have to turn the lights on to light the way... going to share my list of things done today, if only to prove to myself that I have, inf act done something in the past 40 hours.

1. Made cookies, with oatmeal, chocolate chips and cherries. so good, i had to talk myself down from eating them all. really, i did. I was making them for an event at the Meetinghouse this weekend, so I really had to conserve and send them away, and I debated that. aloud, in the kitchen, alone.

2. Was reminded of this, because I shared about the cookies on facebook, verbally... http://wifemotherexpletiving.blogspot.com/2010/06/piracy-and-privacy.html a whole post I have absolutely no memory of writing. yep. i do remember the comments, back in the day when I had comments. ehem.

3. Candyland. I lost everytime. my kids are cheaters.

4. Made copies of birth certificates for T-ball signups. both boys, same team, same schedules, all day all night, i dream about sports. . . oh my good Lord, please get me to enjoy the sports. please. it is a long hard road I find before me if I do not enjoy the sports.

5. Made bread, kids no eat dis stuff.

6. Laundry. folded and everything.

7. Moved chairs around in the unfinished pile of books room. Threw purple cloth in the FengShui Says spot of Abundance, because FengSHuiSays I should.

8. Made two blocks for a Quiliting Block Bee thing that I am doing with MamaMama ... in which we use up our gigantic crapstashes of fabric in hopes of making something of our dreams. oh, dream away... I love having myself get all busy busy in the fabric. do love that.

9. Tidied. Washed Dishes. Laundry. oh, man.

10. Confirmed with the babysitter that she is, in fact, going to show up for 7 hours tomorrow. SEVEN.

11. Printed out a fabricated essay from a moshup of posts, which I now have to make funny and edit until it looks like something entirely different but still retains the same voice which is unfortunately, mine.

12. Realized I don't like the number 11 and so refuse to stop there. . .

thats what I'm talking about.
40 hours? that includes a crap night sleep... sheesh. I'm not thinking I'm very busy busy these days. what the hell have I been doing?

Death of Funny

2012-01-25T17:27:00.000-05:00

Honestly, if I try to be funny, I'm like a lame horse, so not funny. limping, ungainly, unfettered from the defining characteristics of the thing. horses are meant to gallop, lope, canter, even plod.... but not limp and hobble. . .
trying to get my writing to be funnier is hard for me, and if I let it go at that, the post will end.
would that be funny? or lame?

. argh.

Its 9:18 PM, Do you know where your children are?

2012-01-24T21:27:00.000-05:00

One of mine is sleeping. the one who has to get up earliest, so there is that... there is a four year old bounding around upstairs and I am overwhelmingly done with him so I am down here hiding while his father tries to handle it all. I can hear him, and that is something... what with my psychotic ears and all. I don't suppose psychotic is really the right word but can't really get a handle on my word choice in a quick enough fashion to satisfy my sense of alacrity of type.
if that be a phrase at all.
+No word on the writing/editing thing. Maybe I dreamed it. ?
+Saw Chakra Carol today, the reiki, cranial sacral, talk therapist I most treasure. We talked, I realized things. Fabu. I am in fact, changed, you know. its true. I'm not what I was three years ago, and I am glad of it. Rock my chakras, if you can. I also got to practice Reiki on her... come on, that is just nuts. It felt great. I love to touch my friends, man...
+Started the menstruation so the crazy is calming, thought you should know.
+Looking into Feng Shui because I have a wicked lot of time on my hands, what with the no-friends and all.
+Using plus signs as bullet points because I don't know what else to do while avoiding the never-ending bedtime routine going on upstairs. Now it is later that 9:18. Do I have to change my really catchy post title?
Do I ?

Sortof

2012-01-23T10:54:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling sortof off, lonely (sortof)... feel like I'm doing a lot of waiting for shoes to drop. Alot of pretty changes are happening around here, and its not all just snow.
=The homelife is going through some radical changes that I am too scared to talk about and risk tempting the witchy fates. bitches. I don't want it to end, and that makes me so sad and certain that it will. I am probably overly hormonal today, as if that were to effect some change in my reading of the world. or yours. I just have to be okay with it ending, or stuttering, or changing to something gross or beautiful ... and what then? I'm not sure how much faith and patience I have to muster.
=A friend from high school offered to submit some of this here writing to a magazine/site he works for... he offered, i didn't know said piece existed or that he was reading here, so that was clearly cool. But I have not alot of good feelings about reading much of my old stuff and I spent a weekend going over and over old posts to try and see what people would like to read and it did a bit of a number on my soul. So perhaps I am not cut out to edit, look at this as a doorway through which to shove my humor and typing skill. I put so many things behind me, so easily sometimes. Maybe there is an irony in here, as this is certainly a public way to journal... and to have someone point out that it is, in fact, public? awful. I am not quite able to feel clean about it right now. Tomorrow? I also feel ridiculous for not being that excited. what am i, an idiot?
=Doing yoga again, out in public, with other people. The first class I was youngest by 20 years. The second, I wasn't the youngest, twice. So its a nice mix. I wish like hell I knew how to talk to strangers when doing a common task.
=My hearing is pissing me off and making me sad. (hormones) In Meeting, people stand up and speak when the light strikes them in the heart. so cool. Unless they are looking right at me, and are nearby me, I don't know what they are talking about. and dude, that just sucks. not only do i not get to share in what has struck them, but i am having to be general in my support of them, and I want specifics.
I WANT SPECIFICS.

So, its sortof a wash.

snow!

2012-01-20T06:50:00.000-05:00

We finally have some. seriously. it is mid-january and we got our first snow at the new digs and it is probably less than two inches but I am going to keep everybody home so we can pretend its a really big storm. I may regret this, its true... but right now, while they are all still asleep, i have visions of popcorn and hot chocolate and tracking footprints through the yard... what IS out there all night? lets feed the birds, now that there is finally snow... lets throw seed to the wind! maybe i can finally carry the christmas tree to the back and we can slather IT with peanutbutter and seed balls? oh bliss... in the quiet pre-dawn light, today could be really cool....
(i know there is a wide range of 'average' snowfall, but if I am wicked excited about an inch and a half of snow, it is a little bit spooky...)

Happy SNOW DAY!!!

Deeds...

2012-01-17T08:51:00.000-05:00

Took the kids to an organization nearby yesterday morning... we lasted an hour at cleaning and sorting clothing and toys to be dispersed to social workers and case workers asking for things for their kids, sometimes in foster care, sometimes in shelters... My six was a powerhouse with the toothbrush, cleaning crevices in a dora house of somesort... my 4 was a powerhouse of wandering amongst the toys and wanting to try them all out. Its a very kid-friendly environment and I hope to make it a more regular event for the boys.... yesterday was Martin Luther King day and there were hundreds of people there helping out. hundreds. dozens of teen groups, pockets of retirees, few little family groups like mine. . . .
I have a pretty good feeling about my relationship with G-d, most of the time... but there are times when I am ashamed of my gluttony and my overwhelming plenty. I get the same feeling on Martin Luther King day... what am I doing to make things better? really? I try to recycle. I donate food and money to the Council on Aging. dude. yes, it is something...but it is so damn little. I compost. I try not to throw trash out the car window, pretty successfully. someone give me a prize.

is composting what its all about? turning things over? I knew the kids would have a hard time looking at all the toys all morning, so I told them if they worked hard, I would get them something on the way home. We shopped at a Savers, a local thrift-type chainstore... all second hand...
The effect on me at seeing thousands and thousands of toys was pretty astonishing. I don't think I"ll buy anything 'new' for a long time. so crazy that there is so much out there... how many toy phones can one planet hold?
call me, on one of the toy phones you have, and tell me what the answer is...

How can I avoid football? really. i want to know.

2012-01-14T16:56:00.000-05:00

short of leaving the house, (running away), i am stuck here for what appears to be another 'very important game'. man. there will be yelling at the tv, standing up and shouting at the tv, and possibly throwing things at the tv...the greatest benefit will be the pizza., and the soon-to-arrive-cousins will entertain the thrilled boykids in spades.

before we got married, hubsJ and I went to a weekend retreat for engaged couples run by a catholic organization up in new york state. it was flatout gorgeous, oh my honey... gorgeous old monastery on the hills above the hudson. oh my. and i think now that the things they wanted us to talk about were important... big issues that should be aired publicly before getting hitched to one another's stars. but most of the time? by engagement, the dye is already sealed.... whether it be willfull ignorance or naivete, the belief that differences will be smoothed out after the marriage has settled in ... oh my... can't believe it isn't the most common illusion on the books there. . . the one thing i do remember and refer to regularly is that one of the old couples that ran the retreat kept saying that you must be willing to make the 'decision to love' in the hardest moments. you must. imperative.
all that.
i've always held it close and tried my best when i needed to...

but football?
a decision to love ? oh hell.

Interior Detail of a Trap...

2012-01-12T11:26:00.000-05:00

The youngest, the runner, the recently 4... is a maker of traps, of so many kinds that it is almost inconceivable how easy it is to lapse into metaphor. There is string involved, and tape and the objects of the day... and the badguys are invisible and have never yet fallen into their pits of doom, but it seems to be fairly irrelevant which suits me also, to a T.
It is rainy and cold here, but not enough to freeze and give us snow. just muck, and chill. and I slept like crap last night, and I'm not sure why but i do know it was compounded by the early arrivals of the two boys into the space which can't support their lank anymore... so - complaint complaint, blagh blah... everything is fine, i'm on reserves but thats a regular beat... and what have you?
I'm making a stew in the slow cooker, for which I doubled the meat portion to suit my protein happy boys and man. realized the MAN won't be home til very late, after we are all abed and if he doesn't lead the protein pack, the boys will eat very little so now I will have leftovers for way too long. and its fine, but I make things like stew and meatloaf to satisfy and possibly satiate hubsJ and when he is not here, I would be fine with a bagel and an egg. so there is that. but it certainly will smell good as it cooks today. certainly.
In between the times of extreme boredom I am productive in a weird way, and only in typing it do I realize it to be true. Sometimes it is the slowmotion nature of the day that gets to me the most. The constancy with which I pay attention and try to distract myself and their interplay can make such an exhaustion that I get to the end of the day and remember nothing of it whatsoever. My one 'task' today is the visit to the grocery store... and it is a battle to get the boy dressed, a battle to complete a fort/building/house/dam ... ah. complaint, complaint. blaghu. accchhhhuuuuu...
bless you too...
its all fine, and I mean it.. I just need to remind myself... its all fine. no trap. just the way that it is right now. no trap.

My youngest is a will o' the wisp...

2012-01-10T10:48:00.000-05:00

whoosh, like the wind he disappears. A flickering light over the marshes... luring strong men and maidens to their doom... He runs from grandparents, fathers, from Sunday School teachers on a hunt for seashells and so many more... so many more...
a lot less funny and yet more worrying than that ridiculously annoying gingerbread man.
Luckily, or un-luckily, depending upon who you are... he is usually trying to find his mother, because while he is a willful runner, he is also freshly entered into the mama's boy Hall of Fame. He can't go to sleep unless I am in the room, can't watch tv alone even... yep.... can't tell you how much I look forward to this phase moving on... and i know there is a time coming when he won't even sit on my lap for a dollar, or slather me with kisses all over my elbow when I bang it... i know this is coming. but I am tired of talking about his ability to bolt at church, I am tired of watching DJ Lance. (more than tired, but I am trying not to swear.)
Short of breaking his legs (which would only serve to give me heavier lifting...) I am not sure how to curtail the bolt. hinkypunk.

Other than that, I am battling morose, yet again. So here is my required list of gratitudes, to battle the morose:
1. I CAN hold my own interest when building structures with the above-mentioned runner, and that is good, because he can build things all the livelong day.
2. Drove down to the water yesterday after dropping the runner at school...ate a muffin while watching seals bob around. How many times in life does one write that?
3. January sunlight is like a popsicle in July. lights up all the corners with its magical drips..
4. Laundry machines in my very own house. laundromats, a thing of my past...
5. blanket forts.
6. raw almonds.
7. scotch tape. unstuck. potential in bloom.
8. pad thai. i am so glad that it exists. i am.
9. Put 'Goonies' on the Neflix list. oh my, i am excited to see it again...
10. tea with honey. lots of honey.

SO, what about it?

2012-01-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

The connections? If we're all one and all connected in the same intergalactic glowwaterpoolnet... then what? I'm responsible for my actions and yours and my history, and yours... and so are you. and it seems too much to bear, sometimes.... that the 'toddlers and tiaras' moms are my job. I believe that the kids are so resilient that they'll make it out just fine. I mean, there are NOT 42 million 'pageant girls' running around chugging pixie sticks, right? So, I worry for the stress levels of a mom who is obsessed and wonder what is is that drives the obsession, again. There certainly are a lot of obsessions out there, drugs, drink, wine at five to get through the night, bigger, more, faster; connection has been replaced by a constancy of contact which we are all exhausted by... although different names for the exhaustion abound.

ah.
so many people are seeking more contentment, more simplicity, more joy, more space... it seems a lot 'more' in the end. maybe its less we should be seeking, and by seeking we may not find 'less'... maybe we should just cease all the seeking and just start keeping our eyes open...sometimes at least...
right?

-this post is one of the reasons I didn't do very well in college-level philosophy classes, saying little in a too-large space... and making the reader suffer in the meantime...

my apologies...
:)

HubsJ put the boys to bed...

2012-01-05T14:28:00.000-05:00

oohlala. HubsJ put the boys to bed, and I am left all alone with the whole house and its nightly settling. Its been happening more and more lately and I find myself sitting down in front of the tv with a gnarly fist clamped down on the remote ... but I think it is going to be shortlived, this tv watching... its too upsetting.
last night I saw Glee which I love for its music and crazy unreality...then Zooey who I have a crush on but its quite sad really, as I am old and heterosexual, and married and not really that 'cool'... ... and then I saw "toddlers and tiaras."...
let me just say I'm all concerned about these kids and their moms. I'm also concerned about obesity in Southern Georgia, because it is a very clear problem. I'm concerned for the dichotomy in our culture that allows for both shows to be so wildly popular in such varying degrees of involvement, in such different, seemingly unrelated populations.. (although, wildly popular may be a wild guess as I have no idea how ratings and such are for either/any show.)

IF we are all one and interconnected, then I am stymied as to my connection to babies on stage and the moms who are so desparate for their girls to 'perform'... I DO know that there is a tremendous amount of money involved in these little pageants, maybe that is a big driving principle there... a dream for economic stability, cost be damned... maybe there is a dream for the girls to land on Glee, in fact... in a few more years, or some Disney show for teens and preteens... what is it? what is this? money money money?

what is the connection? why does it feel so fine to watch handsome dolls and dudes singing in highschool hollywood but so wrong to see young ones doing it? how far apart are they really? the costumes aren't that different...
and what is my role in it, as watcher?

and by not watching I change nothing? as it is a 'real thing' that happens, in the case of the pageants...
if I stop watching Glee, it could be cancelled I suppose, and they'd all get other jobs ...
so what? whats the connection? Everything means something, everything.

EVERYTHING.

what about this one?

What do you want?

2012-01-04T09:46:00.000-05:00

really, i suppose its too much of a New Year's Thing... the assessment of what is, will be and will become and what our hopes are when we open our eyes after the wishes are made and the candles blown out...
I've been having problems with my old familiar rut lately, so much that I think I'll be heading into another 'cleanse*' at the end of the month, of the house, the food, all of it...we need more light and there is too much blocking the windows...

*(this is how I do that: http://hannahsharvest.com/the-making-space-cleanse/)

My rut and I are very old friends, and it is so cozy down there. so cozy. So when I think about resolutions and dreams for the future at the New Year, I have a hard time getting out of the box. I've put some serious consideration into what it is I'd like to change and really, I'm having a hard time thinking about goal-oriented specifics... or maybe its just that I don't feel my language capability is equipped for the 'new-ageyness' of it all... i'm not all sparkle, glimmer and sunshine, see? A dinner mate told me over the weekend that I was a loner. Is this true? I have no idea. I'm certainly alone a lot. sheesh. I don't even know. And she IS a girl of sparkle and glimmer. dude.

... and it isn't that I'm so content that I can't see the change possibilities. I wish...(ah, but I don't really, I can't formulate an actual wish... and therein, post-subject #5497) ... I have a great life in many ways, but it is not filling me up with joy, and I'd like some more of that. I want to spread the damn stuff around. At the very least, I'd like to make it easier to access the joy on a regular basis. Some of that, for me, is eating better, remembering to do yoga in a pointed daily-type way, and getting more time to meditate. I AM going to clear more space...stop acquiring, go on a purchasing-boycott... even my lovely quiet space at the top of the stairs is gathering 'things' and I am changing that, maybe even today... I'd like more music in my life... being a hearing-impaired fool makes it hard to listen to much new stuff, as it sounds like seaslush melody and I can't make out lyrics at all... so I've decided that I might need to teach myself an instrument... music welcome! come on in, lady muse, come on in...
Making it public is step one. What else have I made public? not much. not much. hm. I think I need to step back from feeling how public this is and step back into just writing about my life and what it contains. I think it'll help me feel more connected, to myself and to the few friends I've got reading this... less conspicuous and more intimate?
What do I want?
can anyone help me with this one?
:)

Pools O' Plenty

2012-01-02T15:16:00.000-05:00

We're good here. I'm so happy that the blitz that is the Holiday Season has finished, and now I can focus purely on the sparkle and institute a no-buy campaign (economy be damned!) for the next month. (with the exception of sugared treats, most importantly my long-lost swedish fish... like the prodigal son, they have returned... and i have to buy them. i do.) And yes, the vegetables, they will return as well, even (possibly) topping the lurking swedish pesces. . .

I've been ruffled this week, but am settling my still waters so that they can flush me deep with abiding chill once again. boy, don't you wish i wrote sentences that treacle-y every single day? don't you? COME ON.
abiding chill? hmm.
well, i am looking forward to chills and snows, and darkness and light and all that there is to come for the next three months. Went to a wonderful bonfire on New Years Day and boy, it was beauty unleashed... sparking right up to the sky in swirls and blues reds yellows orange... so amazing. a metaphor of what will be, what has been and what is?
Make it a good one...

lurve,
wmx

hummy tummy...

2011-12-29T15:53:00.000-05:00

I'm looking to clean house. in so many many ways.
In a body-begun purge, I see the makings of redemption. The bloat of the aftermath of Christmas is here, and nothing fits. nothing.
Today I've cracked the journal, done yoga and meditated and so I call it a clear win. for everyone, although until the house is emptied of the sweettreats that arrived over the past week, we are still in dire straights.
If anyone had asked me last week if I was pregnant, I would have coyly answered that I just didn't know... this week? I know that I am not. ... and I acknowledge that I have gained a tremendous amount of weight and have the plates and plates of cookies and breads and so ons that have crossed our threshold. 'tremendous' being my word, and not yours, although the belly I am sporting could have been mistaken for one of early pregnancy, thats all I'm saying. I am not going to diet, I am going to eat my way to the end of the day and start again in the morning... and perhaps I will make it a more important part of my week to plan food options again.... to eradicate this overly snack oriented cabinet I've got going on. (double entendre there, did you catch it? cabinet? junk? trunk? oh.)
There is a time for all things, and the time has arrived for vegetables. truckloads of them.
bring it on.

wmx

Merry HOHO!

2011-12-24T14:30:00.000-05:00

Ruhroh. Jesus and his mom are lying down on the job. and two of the Three Kings are here... what to do? what to do? who's playing host? Joseph recently lost his hand and is also out of commision. Mary deserves a break, and Jesus is just a babe. Think the Kings will step up and vacuum the house? or make some soup? hm. Lets wait and see...

until then, we share our love with the world today and tomorrow and all the days after that...

Light the Way!!!
wmx

Sparkle Sparkle Cucough...

2011-12-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

We will very shortly all be down for the count with a large, movable and yet, brooding cough. Someone will pee their pants while coughing. The 6 will miss his classroom christmas party and hubsJ will infect everyone he sees at work. Funny how sick people don't let their docs get sick. such an interesting redundancy... well, he's Already sick... mah. I have stopped talking for the most part and am hoping the massive honey dosing that I am doing will help me carry the boat through the water this week. We had a pipe burst yesterday and I used up all my energy running around figuring that one out. All fine. staining, sure, but fine and fixed. I love plumbers and people like them who know what the hell they are doing and do not run around turning off every machine in the basement because this girl didn't know which one was the water... (to be fair to myself, i know the boiler is the boiler. but does it send out water too? huh. when in doubt shut it off.)
And isn't that the way it is usually? All sparkles and light mixed up with the dark. How could you see them otherwise? Wasn't a baby born in a donkeystall? How delightful to see something so clean in that muck.
Went on a large grocery shop this morning, and during this season of sick.. I always feel like I am shopping to survive armageddon.... jars upon jars of spaghetti sauce and its pasta. Snacks. tons. a pot roast. chicken nuggets. Decorations for cookies, cocoa, more pasta and some orange juice for those without sore throats. . . more pasta.
we are ready. someone ask Santa for a blizzard once hubsJ gets home, allright?
good.

see you soon.

No one is home.

2011-12-19T11:34:00.000-05:00

I did not plan this..

This was a busy weekend, full of an arrival, a birthday, a party, a party, another party, a few fish tacos, some sickness un-related to the tacos which were incredible if spicy, in-laws of all varieties, cancellations, and a few showings of 'Rudolph'. I'm so tired, I could cry. in fact, i probably will.

The crazy is all upon us. The 4 year old has a crotchety cold and will watch tv all day. I think I'm punky because of all the late nights in a row but there is also this desire to get my family in line somehow, to be conscious of our quiet times and to cultivate the feeling of a snowed-in time. Celebrating the darkness that is me, that is here, makes the lights that much brighter.

Someone else in my hubsJ's family referred to me as a wallflower this weekend. that would be rather coincidental if it didn't match my feeling of being overwhelmed by the confluence of controlling voices. . . . have I ever mentioned that I am quiet? heh. I do speak my mind, when called to, but sometimes can feel backed into a corner by my sometimes contrary desire.
AH, the joys of the season.
I'm hunting them down as I hide by the computer. :)
It'll all be fine. just wait and see. it always is.

wmx

Wallflower. Flower of the Wall.

2011-12-15T08:06:00.000-05:00

My sister-in-law told me casually that I was a wallflower, after having gotten off a daylong planeride with her four year old. . .across country and jetlag included? I am granting her some leeway for the exhaustion she must be feeling.
Chakra Carol says the only time people can really hurt us with their words is when we believe what they say might be true.
HubsJ says I am not a wallflower, I am quiet. There certainly is a large difference. Discount me at your peril, I say.
I don't think I am a wallflower, really. I don't. It niggles at me, though. So what is in there? Sis-in-laws own power struggles? My own feelings of isolation/solitude/hibernation? I have loved moving to this town. In some ways, I have a much wider support net than ever before, because of proximity to family and old old friends who would simply drop their own children in the road if I was in dire need. In some other ways, I am a newcomer... and my quietness (shyness, slow to warm-ness?) can put me in a loophole of social interaction. My kids aren't really having playdates, I don't really know my kids peers or their moms yet. I know this will come, I just don't know when or if it will really be the 2-3 years everyone says it will. In the meantime, I wonder how to be a flower of the wall. . .

and i have this wierd feeling that I've written this whole post at an earlier date... huh... common themes? just in time for a new year? hmmm... :)

hoo.wee. hooey.

2011-12-13T12:31:00.000-05:00

phooey.

hong kong phooey.

I have a child entering the terrible twos and this same child will turn 4 in two days. I guess I'm gobsmacked. He's creative, intelligent, verbal... spends his days on legos and 'traps' for badguys. Sleeps well and always has...

and he's a runner..
and a climber, as in, on his father's back during a supposedly 'quiet' Meeting worshiptime. almost kicked over the advent candles. yep. he runs from the adults watching him during firstday school (sunday school), he disappears from the playground at preschool...
and it is not the adults watching him at fault, except that we all should have him on a leash at this point. most likely, somehow, it is me. evidently i just don't know how to break his spirit..- i'm not finding the consequence which is dire enough to make him stop the bolt. it is a mixture of embarassment and a much larger portion of befuddlement and concern about how the hell to stop him from running into the road, getting lost, or downright broken in his dashes.
in my head, i'm all over my husband for his 'inconsistency', too much 'roughhousing', not enough 'parenting'... but i bet that would be there regardless of what the behavior was, or really, what was going on . i think that in hubsJ's case, its his gender getting in the way....
whatever. i love hubsJ but don't like many characteristics of the Man in America and find I bump into that sometimes in my very own house. so there it is.

*Just wanted to add some visual stimulation to the humdrum of the post... The photo is of the very last Grammie quilt to be made by your truly, not my colors or anything, and even too formally blocked but hers, found in her things unfinished, my aunt recognized one of the fabrics as a shirt she once wore... so I will be making a throw quilt of Grammie.... ah. Just have to iron one more time and the top is done. Six weeks from now I'll be moving on to that... :) ah, Christmas... the season of waiting and preparing is really knocking me down this time... so be it. (like i have any choice.)
rock it.

I'm here, I am .

2011-12-11T18:37:00.000-05:00

I feel loose and lost all at once. Fine, no big thing, just a swing of the mood, an exhaustion flitting about the room.
Maybe its the lull in the waiting season, the atrocious behaviour of the boys... who is responsible for this?
oh,
so ugly, that one.

oh so ugly, that one.

mothers do the best number on themselves EVER. and I am champion of numbers. champion.
I am trying to throw it off but am currently in wallow and cry mode. Throwing is harder than carrying, sometimes, I have heard.

so I am here. still.

My Town pays its debts...

2011-12-07T09:43:00.001-05:00

My town also gets new debt. but it pays its bills and I am glad the choices are made as they are. Went to my first ever town meeting last night, and this skinflint town was feeling very generous, and money was awarded to everyone who asked for it. Give the man his new plows! Give the Superintendent of Schools the money to pay his pcb removal bills! Give the Veterans their surprisingly (just because there are now so many more than years past..) large expense account! Give the beach committee the money for a compostable toilet! WEEHAW!! I loved it. LET YOUR YEAS BE YEAS AND YOUR NAYS BE NAYS. Its a Quaker ideal, let your words speak plainly the desires of your heart.. (which of course is led by the light of Christ.) love me some Quaker-ness.
hallelujah.

there is still some democracy after all. and it is fun to play with money like that. hoowee.

I think that having an extra two nickels to rub together lately is some sort of inner tidal change for me. I am in this weird limbo wherein I think that all people in my position should be throwing money in all directions, not haphazardly but neighborly-like, so that the burden of the rest should be eased. thats what i think. and i'm not saying that to people who do not have the extra nickels, just those who do. the burden of the rest should be eased. call me nurse expenditure. (if that rolls off your tongue, you let me know.)

I'm not sure why the millionaire politicians are not in my boat, but they clearly aren't on my ocean of gratitude and responsibility. I'm not sure its worth any time to point this out to them. Make your donations count. Give to your food bank, give to your senior center, give to your church/synogogue/temple/unitarian things. GIVE.
you'll be amazed by what you'll receive.

merry christmas! happy baby birthings! happy baby growings! happy waiting! HAPPY!

(no, i'm not pregnant. just full.)

2011-12-05T11:13:00.000-05:00

I got throw-up on my barefeet this morning.
Just wanted you to know.
Pleasant surprise, no, but a pleasant day while the mopey watches tv and I clean up after what seems to have been a very long couple of weeks. I'm seriously considering cancelling the cable again, I cannot get over how much commercialism and grotesquery there is on the tube. Don't tell hubsj, he may have to go somewhere else for sports. Even Pbs is hocking mcdonalds. . . and while i miss me some big mac action, i won't buy their food anymore unless there is literally no other 'food' for miles. I read FastFoodNation and now I can't pretend I haven't. Its over.
It isn't that hard to simplify, to get things done. Its just a matter of starting, and sometimes that is the asskicker, and yes, that pisses me off. but not deeply, just makes me yell at myself too much. I prefer the yelling to the sniping anyday.
and here I am, not simplifying, not getting things done. here I am, again.
yell yell yell.

-wmx

Last Day of Nabobloblobbloblo. mo.

2011-11-30T11:18:00.000-05:00

I'm very glad I did, I am. and I'm glad I wrote every day, clearly counting my sister's posts as my own... and I am so glad it is over. when it gets dark at 4, I am ready for bed by 6 and that makes the next two hours a bit wobbly for my intellect or my fingers, whichever are responsible for these posts.
So? What is coming up? This morning I sent out payments for ten bills. TEN. rah rah me. we start the holiday season with a cleared scale, ready to weigh it down as the month moves along.
I've realized that the shopping hysteria ratchets up markedly when you watch more tv as we did this past week. the amount of commercial action is really astounding, and really does have an impact on my heartrate.
I bought three dresses when preparing for my new york trip. hello macy couponing. I have to wear all three of them every day for the next month to make it financially viable. So far, so good. And I will never have to buy a dress again.
I have a doctor appointment next week for the first time in years, and I'm not pregnant even. Its a new doc, a lady doc, and I have high hopes that I will have yet another set of eyes watching over me...
I did yoga today, and feel remarkably chipper. why the hell can't i remember to do this more often?
My young one turns four in two weeks and that is a big child. big. presents spread between two celebrations feel a bit lame sometimes.
I hope I can take a day off tomorrow. I hope you tell me you liked this month of daily dose.
wmx

Don't Wanna...

2011-11-29T16:39:00.000-05:00

I'm just using a photo to fill the space. Saw Chakra Carol today. so exhausted still, by the weekend, by everything.... my shells a'broken...
This is my post for today, dragging myself to a complete month. cheer for me.
wmx

Not really a guilty girl.

2011-11-28T09:35:00.000-05:00

I had an email exchange with someone this week about how I sort of think its allright to overdo it at Thanksgiving, it seems part of the ritual and tradition of it, I am fine with accepting the swollen belly and the misbehaving kids and the day after pangs. I LOVE the food, and a swollen belly really makes me happy, after all. The exchange-ee commented about the guilt feelings some can suffer from...
The thing is, I don't really suffer from guilt. (my mother is really the only one who can make me feel it... sometimes without even a word...) BUT If you are a person who beats yourself up about such an event, an overeating, a loss of control at the pie table, than a holiday can really set you off... but its about control, guilt is... because I do have regrets about past things, things I didn't do, people that I hurt, times I spent hurting rather than moving on... but regret doesn't have that sense of responsibility that guilt does, a belief that 'we are in control, and we have failed in our responsibility'... I don't feel guilty for those things I did, just regretful... I feel it is water under the bridge - I made mistakes, I was mean, etc. but it is over, done, and the action is past, doesn't exist anymore.
I think it comes down to that control issue. I acknowledge that I don't have any control of the past, or for many (ok, all) of the things that happen around me, even now. Doing the laundry will not save me from an accident, for instance. I have to keep re-acknowledging that all the time. all. the. time.
And even, when I think about my mom and how guilty I feel around her, it is more of an outward push on her part, than a feeling a responsibility or failing on mine. I'm picking up on what she thinks, and not neccesarily how I feel. I spend a lot of time on 'preventative' actions with her, making sure she doesn't have any cause to use the guilt on me, and ~~sometimes~~ it can be tense and exhausting. She has a lot of wonder in her, and doesn't by any means spend all her time thinking about making me feel bad... its just a daughter thing. Again, it comes down to control... how to control the expectations, controlling the environment to live up to them, manipulate them to a manageable form... all control and reactions to it. even the reactions become part of an attempt to control the situation... like when spousal fights occur over the stupidly repetitive issues that all couples have... the rote reaction is an attempt at controlling where the arguement goes, what the next action is... the emotional response ellicited.
at Quaker Meeting this week, i came to the realization that I can't actually imagine another response on my part to some of my spousal difficulties. I can't even imagine another reality. (and i was really stretching, looking) ... what that realization gave me, at least for this week, was a sense that maybe I should stop killing myself for my reactions, maybe its the only reaction I can come up with for a reason. (no, i don't know the reason:)
(i'm also aware how lame it might be, a laziness on my part, to believe myself 'right'... but it is a slight distinction here: i don't believe myself 'right' neccesarily, just willing to suspend my self-criticism for my reactions)... it is a change, thats all, and I'm glad anytime I let up on myself... I need a break sometimes.

Time for said break. clapclap BREAK....:)

Bats in the Belfrey, Rats in the Basement.

2011-11-27T13:10:00.000-05:00

its either rats, or woodchucks, we don't hear them, or see them... just have evidence that someone very small but bigger than a mouse, is making tunnels to get into the basement. . . how much do i want woodchucks? a whole lot.
sort of like snakes, i think, the fear of the 'rat' is an old one. oooold.
where does this come from? all i have is holes in the ground and I am plunged into a sense of dread that I am stumbling around. really ? what story am i telling myself about this? do i see floods of rats running from the house in a big rain? do i see pestilence? will the children be overrun?
hello.
nutball.

getting ready to have a lunch of leftovers and very very happy about it. very.
and clearly, out of material for the blogging... heh.

HA! NOT dropping the ball...

2011-11-26T20:58:00.000-05:00

Boy, am I going to be glad when this monthly daily pressure subsides.
Put up all my sparkly lights. want to go buy more but am feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the shopping other people are doing, making me feel all tightfisted and stuff.
huh.
plus, i got the boys a big playmobil castle set for half off this summer and I really don't need to get them anything else.
today was the second Thanksgiving, the one with all the extended family ... and because I wasn't hosting, and there were many parents there, i got to serve myself full plates and sit and eat it all... and I would really have kept going but someone cleared my clear plate before I could stop them. Damn my efficient family. We're like a factory of busy-ness.
The stuffing was to die for.
but i did get to bring home a pie for HubsJ, who loves it.
whoosh.
I gotta go to bed.

BALLOONS!!!

2011-11-25T07:33:00.000-05:00

I've been writing this thing for three years now... and today is the 500th post and while its sort of arbitrary to pick a cool number and celebrate it, I do like my double o's.
I'm waving, bowing gracefully and sniggering at myself and .... frankly, exhausted and contented from the foodfest of yesterday. the kids are still asleep and it is past 7 , so you know there are miracles.

And I have been thankful this week, and sad, and mad, but thankful has won this morning. I'm thankful for Hives in Utah, and MiddleMinnesota, and Roads, Canada as a whole, and Cats, not the musical, and Greydays, and Sunnydays, and my list of gratitudes is pretty great beyond that... listen:
turkeys, i love turkeys, not the ones we cook but the irritating blunderers of my backyard. although, truth be, i also love the ones i eat...
mushrooms, i love them almost as much as i love onions. praise be things that grow close to the ground.
i'm glad that pie makes so many people so happy ... and I am glad I have a sister who brings chocolate cake.
brothers, i love brothers too... they have good laps for children and their distracted ways make for visual diversion.
acceptance, i love that we are still all here. so lucky and blessed by our own company, and thats pretty amazing.
dapple.
when you get down on your knees and look at the grass after a deep frost, its one of the most beautiful things in the world.
sleepy seeds... almost nothing is more satisfying than finding and removing them...
wordplay, the way my mind can move so quickly through the language in its fluency, and yet most of the time plays with the same 100 words. ah, choice, what a teacher you are...
coffee smells. tea tastes.
wrinkles, the way they are both strength and fragility at once.
I'm thankful for the moments I get to think, the times in life when I remember to take care of myself, the ease with which I can flow in and out of healthy rituals... these things that fill me up are so simple, at their core, and I know where to find them, all the time... I just have to remember and do.
making the occasional strong offering.
ah, and I could go on and on but my tea is ready and I'm sure there are balloons in my future. (someday)
:)
happy thanksgiving!

This is #499...

2011-11-24T07:00:00.003-05:00

think i'll have balloons for the next one?
hehe.
i'm writing this the day before so I am going to fill my time with conjecture and imagination of what tomorrow will bring:
i'm in the kitchen right now, so is my sister. the kids are bouncing around waiting for their cousins, asking for them incessantly, soon i will hunt down whether a movie is on a channel somewhere....
the house smells fantastic.
the sparkly lights are hung up already because I am now calling them 'winter decorations' and winter begins the day after Thanksgiving and I am prepared. Nevermind how many times I've had to explain that Christmas is not the same day as Thanksgiving... the kids are picking up on my excitement and I am very sure I will rue this early lighting of my fires...

The cousins arrive, the noise rises exponentially and I am still in the kitchen. cheese is eaten. lots of cheese and maybe some slices of salami... something will break or spill. The grandparents arrive... an uncle or two... there are huggings and kisses and comments on outfits... I am still in the kitchen. HubsJ has always been in the kitchen and/or on the back porch having cigarettes... we are fluid in this house, there are people all around...

Merry Thanksgiving all around... may you be well fed and content this day and every day.

I just kneaded...

2011-11-23T10:31:00.000-05:00

kaneaded... silent k.... what a whackjob, messing up first graders everywhere.
But upon the advent of my very first solo mission in the bread making department,(once, i made dinner rolls and forgot the salt, aka inedible) I thought it incumbent upon me to write her up... kanow...

I've plugged the boythree into pbs and I'll see him at lunchtime when the six gets off the bus. We are on holiday, as of that moment.... and we will have company for dinner tonight in the form of Sistah Anne and she's even going to stay over and the last time she did that was when boy2 was being born. Its been a while and I'm looking forward to it. And I've got bread gunk in the crevices of my hand where I washed in a halfassed manner and it smells like heaven. heaven.
there is molasses in this here recipe and its like taking a bath in the smells of my grandmother's house, i tell you. the woman used to make dozens of molasses cookies, dozens and dozens and everyone took a breadbag full for the ride home... and everyone reminded everyone not to eat too many at a time... molasses has its 'effects' on the system, you see...
This weekend I will see all that remain of her spawn, and many of her 17 grandchildren, and theirs...

Random, its true... but I've wanted to make bread for a long time, but thought it too complicated and time-consuming despite overwhelming personal-friend-type evidence to the contrary. ah. so. Its one of those womanly tasks that nourish the hands of the maker and fill the bodies of the loved.
here we go. i wait for it to rise, then hit it upside the head a few times and again... kapow.
knead.

Thanks and more thanks...

2011-11-22T11:45:00.000-05:00

I had a great time, I did.
My friends are married, and they get to stay that way, if they choose. One of the great joys in the universe, how much choice we have to choose love. a choice.
There was a sunny repast in the village wherein I sat outside, ate a croissant and took my coat off. In November sun, anything is possible.
Now we prepare for our two-turkey Thanksgiving, because they are small and the people are not. :)
Oh how I love this food-ed holiday, and oh how I love all the reminders of what we are thankful for. . . because there is so much, all the tiny, all the enormous.
christmas lights are doing their damndest to 'lurk' but we all know how delightful they are, so the 'lurk' holds no menace, and we begin a giggle early...
Thanksgiving always works out, even full of changes, surprises, upsets, upheavals... the simplicity of the meal, the gatherings big and small, and it always works out, always. that too, is a choice.
I bet they all are.
you?

Back in the Sticks!

2011-11-21T18:03:00.000-05:00

Home again Home again, buy a fat pig.
right? isn't that how it goes? It was awesome. and we've been away for a long time, it seems. and boy, were we nervous before the party... so many things... are we dressed right? enough? do we still have a role in their lives? are we central? peripheral?
the city is so overwhelming, the numbers of lives in small spaces, in big spaces.. the city is the size of the last state that I lived in... it goes for miles and miles and miles... and I am happy to be out of it, but there you can find everything you have ever dreamed of... and things you could never dream up... it is amazing, astonishing. the whole world is there.
are we central? peripheral? enough?

new place, old place, same questions....

club of dorks, member #342,456,555.

Martha Martha, Wherefore art thou?

2011-11-20T10:33:00.001-05:00

Today's Post is provided by my sister, to keep the hope alive that I can do a whole month without missing a beat, and also travel away to celebrate the commitment of two very dears. *******************************************

They say that when Bartholomew Gosnold discovered it, he had a young daughter named Martha at home. Just a good as name as any but I don't think of vineyards when I see this wind swept scene.

Gosnold ventured out to find far away lands, while this one has been close by for my entire lifetime and I have not explored. Steeped in some class barrier that keeps us on the New Bedford dock, working inside Davey's Locker rather than riding over it on the ferry. An excuse that doesn't hold water as I sit here at 41. It is an island that is more than priviledge and summer pants with whales on them -- it has brown people and textured history, cows and farmland, cabins and lighthouses, cliffs and heather.

My trip during the Nor'easter was full of dark clouds and wind so strong it was hard to stand to take in the rugged scenery. No tourists but we were there like crazy middle-aged women determined to have a weekend away despite warnings from horny weathermen. The lights went out at the inn and we giggled. An inn we could never have afforded during the hip summer months, it was posh with downy beds and soft bathrobes.

Look forward to going back (*before another 11 years) but may strive to once again experience the wild autumn and the true Vineyard beauty.

Madeira, kitty.

2011-11-19T10:36:00.003-05:00

Today's Post is provided by my sister, to keep the hope alive that I can do a whole month without missing a beat, and also travel away to celebrate the commitment of two very dears. *******************************************
The day after 11/11/11, Madeira was put to sleep.

I can only imagine her namesake Portuguese island saluted this 18-year-old cat, perhaps an extra crash of wave upon the rocky volcanic shoreline.

For weeks, she hadn’t eaten. I was in denial for awhile, irritated at her persnickety aversion to certain wet, smelly cat food in favor of other smelly, wet cat food. She would tentatively approach, sniff and turn away. Scare drove me to the vet.

My hand could glide down her back and her spine speed-bumped my palm. Boney hip bones protrude and concave at the same time. Waiting it out. But for what? To get more awful? For something “bad enough” to warrant the ER trip at 3:00 am?

I won’t talk about the actual last vet visit. The wake afterward at Eastern Standard bar was the thing of it. Two friends came with me, old friends, familiar friends to me and Madeira. The sign of a good wake is when you come back out into the light of day, you feel conflicted about having laughter still on your tongue in the midst of a dark event. We laughed about her idiosyncrasies – drooling in the midst of a good chin rub, thumping the litter box to the point that you were sure someone was at the door, crazed racing with her fat pocket swinging underneath. We caught up on our still unfolding lives and reconnected.

The house is empty now and I think I see her gray fur turning the corner ahead. It is shockingly hard to sit with this sadness. Not sure why I am so surprised to miss her so, but I am. Hope I can use the emptiness to propel me forward, to seek and find that state of connection.

Stubby nose...

2011-11-18T06:44:00.000-05:00

Getting a cold right now is NOT lack, I'm telling you.
Its a sign that my aged/decrepit body can't handle the amount of forward-thinking worry for my kids that I'm carrying. I am being told by the God within... that I must chill out and go lie down somewhere. MUST.

Past weekend was a doozy, but the biggest deal was really the three-almost-four deciding that he didn't want to stay in the house with his grandmother, but wanted to run across the very busy country road, run 100 yards down the same road crossing the street to find us all in the woods, all whilst barefoot and sweaterless, in November, in New England. Granted, there are paths, and granted, we have walked the paths together about TWICE, so ... there is that. Luckily, he was terrorized by his own fears and so when he came running at us, out of the woods, barefoot and muddy and crying, the terror on his face made me fall to my knees and have a bare, fleeting thought that maybe he wouldn't do it again. he says he saw an animal. could've been anything, but we have lots of coyotes. at the end of the woods there is also the policemen's shooting range. big big guns.

He's 3. ever tried to stop a 3 year old from doing something, when you're not even there?

I have been counseling myself away from thinking about it all week, but here it is... I got a reminder of how fleeting and tentative life is, and how such a normal thing could also be a tragic terrifying thing. . . and not only do I not want that reminder, but I can't process it and have to let it go. I think it'll freeze me right up, as productive as my nose. so, as I approach my full week of everpresent anxiety, I'm shutting the light off. I fully admit that I can't think about it for another second.
so there.

Some people know these things:

2011-11-17T08:18:00.000-05:00

1. not everyone who reads here is a honky. Bro, sorry, you included now. welcome.
2. a tea drinker having a mocha capuccino at four pm might not sleep until one or two am. that would be AM.
3. intense people scare me, I don't know how to talk with them and I frequently move away in a rather rude fashion because I am nervous and scared.
4. I am not going to look like Sarah Jessica, but I do know her sister, and I will be wearing a black dress and there is little anyone can do to stop me.
5. Teachers who tell you your kid is not progressing as fast as they expected are not challenging your worth as a mother, but it sure as hell feels like it and gives you lots to think about as you are awake until the AMs.
6. Crying wives makes husbands want to have sex.
7. Donkeys make husbands want to have sex. and leaves, and bread, and water.
8. I'm going to be away from a computer all weekend and my sister Anne will be posting in my stead. give her love, because she is my sister and has to deal with a lot because of it.
9. Sunlight through the leaves is rather spectacular, and the world should regularly say 'dappled' out loud.
10. Laughing is way better than crying, but they both bring about surprising changes, when you are able to notice.
*********

I'm at 490 posts. . .

2011-11-16T09:16:00.000-05:00

I really should get a hobby or something.

I wrote in my journal yesterday, and it had been just about a month since I had. I can't tell you how much better I felt doing that, almost like I'd done yoga and meditated and completed the check off list in my head, my ever-shrinking head.... so little room in there these days, it is all full up with my own damn stuff and ceaseless chatter about that selfsame stuff. sheesh. even I am bored, irritated with the chittering mind I've got.

BUT I LOVED IT. I had a really good quiet couple of days after this weekend of party and sleeping over and I had a good day and I even had the werewithal to push through the crapulent evening and not let it ruin how I felt about my day, and that is something new. Not letting the 3 hour pre-bedtime routine/night ruin a whole 24-48 hour period? It is something I am learning, something that is slowly, oh so slowly, changing for me. I have been breathing, pushing off the negative stuff, literally sometimes, but trying to maintain my own space and my own balance and hold on what I feel authentically and less of what I am reacting to... does that make any sense? I am not sure either. Let me read it again, and edit somewhere.

oh well. good luck with that. Today and yesterday here have been grey and wet and chilly in the house and we have fired up the stove, tucked in to legos and books and just stayed in. Its been wonderful. My six was home Monday and now off to school and the three-four-in-a-month goes off this afternoon and I have to go dress shopping for a newyork city wedding ! They got married last weekend at City Hall but shis Sunday night is their Celebration. I'll be away Two nights, their party is on a Sunday night. hello. yes, Sunday night for the childless or the workless or the extremely local, is no problem. I am going to pretend wicked hard, that I am childless and jobless and local. But I certainly have to have a new dress, one that makes me look like Sarah Jessica. because that is real, and I always want to be real. always.
O, I am off to buy Manalo blahblahs too. because walking in something like that would be no problem for me. none.

check you later, honkies. ;)

What is left.

2011-11-15T10:40:00.000-05:00

This painting is by my brother-in-law Justin McGonigle, find him online, the crookedness of the photo is mine, not his.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been going back a year past to read the posts I've written. It is now and has always been a bit strange, as it makes time as lippitylappityloopy, those things which feel like yesterday and those things for which I have no memoryspace at all. But I still like it. Perhaps its a ticket to a realistic self-view, if I like my own writing, then maybe I should be more generous with myself when that scratchyinner voice starts speaking, you know... 'oh, your shyness really makes you a loser.... your belly is really out of control...he just wants something from you... you're still not a popular girl... people think you are so aloof and snooty... your breasts are hitting your belly, you know, you HAVE to wear a bra now because you are OLD. . . ' you know...

if you face that voice down for the mean liar that it is...and give yourself a break, let yourself off the hook... what is left?

quietude? satisfaction? exhilaration? joy? calm? certitude? motion? acceptance? divinity? firmament of heaven? inner lights and sparkles? buddhism? quakerism? peacefulness? lets try.

'tis the season.

Tipped

2011-11-14T14:02:00.000-05:00

Look away from the ATAT's ass, ok?

We got our purple sofa, we stayed up late, we 'partied'. Personally, I had a glass of wine and a cigarette and that is what partying entails for me at this point in my life. (The cigarette gave me an incredibly bitchy hangover. really, not worth the illicit thrill of hiding from the kids at all. ) I hid in the kitchen and with the kids, I made my mother cry, my six year old stayed up until midnight, the ham was good, the beans were halfassed, the morning after was pretty great, the adrenalin crash and resulting stayhomeyness was cool.

I'm still hiding, kept the six year old home today because he was crying at breakfast that he didn't want to go, and it wasn't the petulant cry of the whiny, but it was real, and I think he needs to catch up on his sleep some more. I feel somewhat off-balance myself having the kids home so much in the past week and now home again with an upcoming two nights away for me, then Thanksgiving, and perhaps it is me who is almost tipping over, trying to balance 'the life' with 'the recuperation'. hm.

Fantastic, it was.

2011-11-13T18:53:00.002-05:00

a wild wonderful time, full of men in circles talking about sports, and lots of cupcakes. and a letter or two of love.
and an adrenalin crash after a child ran across the street and into the woods and tracked his parents through forty acres of woodlands. found, he was found.
yep. there is no fence to lock, i have a runner and I am just too tired to do more than this for a post.

Today is the day, and tomorrow will be fantastic.

2011-11-12T13:45:00.000-05:00

Today my six year old got his first trophy, complete with a stage walk. I sat in the auditorium of the High School and my husband commented that we'd be watching him cross in a graduation gown not too long off.
Yesterday he had his first loose tooth. We are all excited and in tears, all the time. Or, really, thats just me.
Holy smokes.
Today is the day my best male friend got himself hitched to the best possible woman, or rather, the day I saw the photographic evidence...
Today is the party for the Woman Turning 70. the slowcooker portion is abubbling, and the vegetables are prepping, and the entire meal will be the most folks we've had in our home since or warming party. Another chance to warm.
Today is the day a purple sofa will arrive in my living room, after having traveled in my 79 year old father in law's truck for a few miles. purple baby. maybe it'll even arrive before a guest does. probably not.

tomorrow I will get to sit in it, and look at it, and clean it of debris.
tomorrow we will breakfast in the sun, and nod to the woman who is 70, for she is sleeping over. Perhaps a woman doesn't outgrow slumberparties after all.
tomorrow will be fantastic.

Freeflow of I dont know what to write, see how 'flowy' that was? ...

2011-11-11T10:49:00.001-05:00

Right now the very first playdate of our new town is happening nearby. C told me this was his best friend. Oooh....what a genious motha. and what I had forgotten in all of our many months without playdates is how little I have to do with an extra kid in the house... I have done laundry, shouted 'careful' a few times, made two stupid phonecalls to change addresses and stop catalog people from sending us three copies of their cracktoy catalogs... its been like a dream, almost like I am alone in the house, with time stretching out endlessly before me...

almost.
My sister's kitty is dying, my own two are flush with life and following me about the house when they are not cowering in fear from the running children playing some sort of game that I can't quite follow. It is okay, I'm sorry for my sister, she's had the cat a long time. . . its amazing how big these things can be sometimes.
This weekend is a large family party for my mother-in-law, her 70th birthday. all the family within reasonable distance are coming. Its a bit like thanksgiving, really, a practice shot at figuring out if we've got enough plates and how to feed the kids respectfully but semi-separately... and I am very excited to have the house smell of roasting meats and vegetables. I'm making a chickendish in the slowcooker that will feed the non-pork eating portions of our family and my hopes are high but wavery that it'll be a hit. I think I have some lingering doubts about slowcookers and it is probably a very deepseated issue that I'll have to visit with ChakraC-- just to survive. really.

no, not really.
I'm freaked out that my mother-in-law is 70, frankly. I don't like it at all. She has been in my life since I was 15, as an example of a smart, educated, whip and I am not sure how I feel about 70.
We've got two families sleeping over and I've already made the beds. I am sure that there is something that I really should get on top of right this very second while the hideandseek marathon continues. Boy, I hope I never allow them to switch over to videogames. Boys are nothing if not occasionally resourceful. Maybe I can raise them to have more inner resources than I . Toast again today for me, rising to the occasion.
I HAVE been working on changing my prayers but I have been overwhelmed with brainchatter, even during Meeting and so I've been disappointed with myself. I've dropped off the charts in terms of my yoga plans, my meditation plans and forgettabout veggie meals. I DO see the connection, but I am trying to go lightly on myself because I am just doing the best I can for the moment. I'm going, right now, to make a list of what I have done this week:
bought hardware to fix c's bureau. returned hardware.
went looking at 2 furniture stores with the three year old. survived. bought nothing. (need a sofa.)
laundry, folded, put away.
got camera pictures into the computer, posted every day.
read a book. ! a whole damn book. started another one.
made a pot roast for our German visitor who likes to drink broth for breakfast. he did, i made it.
finished, signed hundreds of forms for schools.
found my journal. didn't open it, just found it.
dropped four bags of canned goods at the school.
dropped four bags of stuff at savers. (salvationarmy type place)
cleaned the bathroom. vacuumed umpteen times.
got references for a babysitter. a real live girl to come and watch the boys while i go out somewhere, with anyone, maybe even hubsJ . I'm afraid to call the references, by the way, because of the shy/hearing problem with phones.

and thats it . still glad you're reading? meh.

Jacked Up

2011-11-10T00:14:00.010-05:00

Not a single picture of the boys is less blurry, these are serious men of action, or...
werewolf and lion of action, as it were.

just sit the hell down and write.

the advice from the ladies at that writing thing a while back. In the 'ritual' of sitting down to do the daily blog-entry post, I am getting farther and farther from any introspection and it is making me feel all stoppered up. And so I can't think of catchy or apt post titles and I'm forgetting what my work is and i'm loving that my three year old is playing on his own without a screen flash anywhere nearby at all.
This is my thing, I like to have it, this writing. but i haven't picked up my journal in what feels like a long time and it actually makes me a bit fearful, like I'm going down some slippery slope and I haven't got my bungy tied on securely. no rappeling here, just superfly superfall.

bit dreamy really. to fall like that, in that the moments of the fall are much more interesting (sometimes) than the landing. we have all these assumptions about what happens next, pain, change, breaks, etc. I forget all the time about the arms open drift that a fall can be. like the blankspots in our souls, the mysteries in our relationships/friendships, in our children. Sometimes things line up to enable us to see what we're doing, to identify a pattern, to 'solve' a problem... and other times, we are in a fog, whether we know it or not.
This is one of those times for me, I think I am in a fog, but can't see my way out of it, and just have to wait til it passes. If I am falling, I don't know it for sure, and am trying to make note of how it smells here, what the light is like ... glory golden sighs?

how does joy feel anyhow? akin to confusion, bewilderment, hope, peaked curiosities? sweetness? sugarush?

just sat the hell down.

What really happened on our day off...

2011-11-09T08:45:00.000-05:00

we got a holy heavenly day of fall... full of warmth and golden light on the leaves... what an amazing gift it was. we had piles of leaves, talks with neighbors, tireswings into piles, hide and seek with friends, manual labor.. it was glorious.
glory- us. and gratitude.

This photo taken by a child on shoulders.

and then, at the end of it all... a dancing leaf pile by the side of the tire swing.

and pizza for dinner? and breakfast this morning?
yeah, there is abundance. and i am happy to have moved.

Toast

2011-11-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

Made myself toast just now. So very buttery and crunchycrusty good. This and some instant coffee are sort of conspiring to make me feel conflicted about the day. instant coffee really is a sad thing, so much engineering, planning, design, growth, roast, all to produce a slim package of mediocrity, even when its starbuckian. oh so.
Yesterday I sliced apart my finger with the same bread knife and it was one of those hurts which make you sit down and worry for the future. It was just a fingertip snip and it really wasn't nearly as bad as many many things are... but it surely did make me sit down and there was an awful lot of blood. I may have lost a fingernail but apart from changing the bandaid this morning, I am unwilling to investigate at all. Maybe I'll have one of those monthlong black fingernail issues. ?

But now, toast. And the boys are both home all day as it is a day for teachers to have training, or somesuch. I feel for the teachers... why not just give them a day to work in their classrooms, get caught up, develop ways to fit creativity back into their overscheduled days? but no, someone has decided that 'training' is what they need. hoo. again with the mediocrity.

And again, toast. The boys will watch pbs til their eyes bugg out.
I'm going to go pour out my sad coffee and make some hot tea. Maybe some more toast. with more knife-usage and less the injury. hot tea. a walk in the leaves... a trip to the hardware store. frenchfries.

ah, toast. it is good when you win.

Synchronicity damnit.

2011-11-07T14:04:00.000-05:00

For meditation, which I am trying to pick back up off the sad floor on which I left it, I've been following along with Susan Piver, who was one of the women at the writing workshop I went to whenever that was. She has videos and an "open heart project" wherein she sends free followalong ten minute meditations out to the world for free. go sign up for it.

And today? Today she was talking about Byron Katie. yes, seriously.

http://vimeo.com/31559506

That woman really gets around.
And I come around, really slowly. really slowly.
Going to go work on my negative thoughts. Because there is no lack and that wiggly voice in the back of my head should not outweigh my inner shine. so there.

Recipe for goodness...

2011-11-06T08:11:00.000-05:00

oooh, i love me some cashew chicken. i do. i do. i do. and i know how to make it in a slow cooker. you want to ? here .... http://www.365daysofcrockpot.com/2009/12/day-336-cashew-chicken.html and go on, make it tonight..go on.
Love you up some chicken thighs and some sauce and four hours later it is all done. and then you toss on some cashew sweetness and I feel like ... good mother ....

OH, and I made my second pumpkin pie of the season for HubsJ's birthday extravaganza. the weekends around here entail pie for breakfast. . . and maybe oatmeal, as we are out of bread and eggs and cheerios.
real subsistence living here.

And now, this weekend of his birth, we're fallen back, waiting the time to clear out the inlaws, preparing for our quiet space of Meeting...

- weekends are for short entries too... snippets if you will... but there is , as always, for everyone, all whole lot a'brewing going on...

see you manana.
wmx

HubsJ turns a new leaf...

2011-11-05T08:05:00.002-04:00

Today is the mr.'s 45th birthday. and we have pancakes and a child who cried, 'happybirthday daddy' while still in bed and half asleep. wonders of the world. we have one unwrapped present and the slippers he opened last week and one arriving perhaps this weekend... a soccergame and a sick kid (just a cruddy whiny cold, no more) and some spiral ham and homemade all day baked beans... we will love it and be warm and happy, once the soccer is over. Perhaps we will take a walk and figure out how to make coffee without a press. We will have love and maybe I can make him laugh. It is a good day to have been born.

Light can be Heavy

2011-11-04T09:05:00.003-04:00

Its the trick of words, how limited they are, no matter how many of them you know...
Like mustard, light can be thick, hard to understand, weighty, hard to see through, exciting, and yet glaring.

Light. mustard.

Two of my favorite things, plus I love onions too. I really, really do. a lot.

Sometimes the enormity of Love can weigh down the heart, in my case. What I feel for my boys mixes with fear and worry and that mix is oily, cloying. If I could stop carrying the worry and the fear about their behaviour, what they 'look like' to the outside world and all the fears and worries that I have for them, and for me, then the light of the love would be quite glorious and more constant than the muck that I carry now. Its all my choice, none of this fear and worry is necessary or forced onto me, none of it. How will it look to choose not to carry it? How will that feel? To already be letting go of them? oh my. OR will I be holding them up in my light and in their light? holding them up, rather than holding on?

The whole search for the light within is good, it is changing the way I pray on a daily basis. So little need for the outsiders of desire, ritual, form, format... just a search for the light within and for those things which perhaps enable me to access my light more readily. and sometimes, its desire, ritual, form and format. dig? I do feel like I'm shuffling off some unneeded weights, loosing the hair, patting the overlarge belly, accepting the lassitude in colds, moving right along.

evidently, i belong.

My time is running out.

2011-11-03T11:00:00.001-04:00

what if my time were running up? what if my biggest and best were yet to come? what if i'm running right smack into my time, right this very second?
what then?

I've been reading a lot about Quakers, because we've been taking the kids to Meeting and as much as I love it for its quietude and the great potential for silence and worship that it offers me every week, I am struggling with what it might mean to be a Quaker, and how much my identity might be problematic. Even as I type it, I see it as untrue. Not that I've been struggling with what it means, but that my identity would be problematic. These are a people who believe that your life and how you live it show the light of Christ that lives within. They are the supreme Namaste-rs . There aren't any protocols, there aren't any formulations... you seek the light within and take action on what you find there.
huh.

It is the small voice in the back of my throat which says I can't belong.
*Just right this very second I think back to the stone I picked up at the writer's retreat as a gift token, and on it was written, "i do belong" ... maybe now the relevancy has arrived. DUDE.

I have to go do some thinking.

What you want is never what you really want... alternately titled: birds and prayers.

2011-11-02T07:10:00.000-04:00

I paraphrased my post-title from another blog, and here is her post... in the interest of not plagiarizing, which i realize is dating myself quite seriously, but there it is.
and while she writes beautifully and seriously, it is not really my bent to do it so well. so here is alltogether different take on the vaguely similar theme of how little we know ourselves....
or me, how little i know myself... I've been reading lately, gotten back into the habit of picking books at random off the shelf of the library and just plugging until i am done. i like it alot. i tend towards the mystery and the fantasy, very little romance and mostly of a generation past, it seems. Chakra C gave me a book on a 'Lost Mode of Prayer'... and I've been digging that too.... occasionally i will pick up a nonfictional guide of some sort and last month's was backyard birding and so i've become the birdlady of my acreage. Someday I'd like to have chickens but for now I have some very fat squirrels, nuthatches, more than a few sparrows and a scrawny little sad goldfinch who pecks at the nyger seed all by his lonesome self. caught a glimpse of something red once, tho no definitive cardinal sighting as of yet. i've seen a woodpecker but only once. we have many large hawks around here and I've tried to put the feeders near bushes so they can dart and hide when a shadow passes by but ... man, I fear the shadows passing by, my own fear utterly disregarding their very important role in the backyard birding empire i am building. there is even fear for the runt of the wildturkey litter... poor thing. while the others are all now monstrous, the little guy still looks like a little guy. my little guy wonders why there's only one baby and all grownups now, not putting pieces together... (in truth, i am thrilled to see the runt every time, they always say 'survival of the fittest' and all... but this guy is making it... rah rah!)
the bushes are literally teaming with small birds, waiting their turn at the birdfeeder. teeming! churning bushes of bird.
the irrationality of fearing the hawks? ah. they do have an awesome beauty in their efficiency... and still the teeming is unstoppable.

I've always prayed. For as long as I can remember, I felt just fine making lists of what I wanted or crying for people i knew to get better, get with it, what have you. I have not lately been feeling very prayerful though*, been feeling limited by words and formats and all the language that I have. Even during the quiet of Meeting (Quaker meeting, yo.), I've been too talkative, too busy identifying what kind of listening I'm about to do... blagh. irritation with self, here insert guffaws and hair-pulling.
*its more than just feeling not prayerful, i've been feeling downright petulant and childish and overly concerned with too many of my own mannerisms and blgahblaahg. looking for changes, as always, a deepening and thickening.
Is it the aging? the fear of the shadows passing overhead? Is there a secret part of me that is unsatisfied because things have not resolved? really? what a prick i must be. or a spoiled debutante.

Oh to learn patience and some humility may be my biggest hurdles ever. I keep yelling at the kids about it. holy fruitless projection. holy hawk amongst the birds of the bush.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

2011-11-01T09:39:00.001-04:00

NaBloPoMo begins.... this year I officially signed up, so I'm probably doomed to fail.

I mean, if I could do such a thing. :)

Last night we did some trick-or-treating. I made it to one school parade but missed the other and my six year old was really upset at me. it was a heartbreaker, for him. I do my best, I really do and I'm sorry he was disappointed. Oh how I love him.
I do love Halloween also... but I had forgotten the insane excitement that my kids can't process. I suppose I am still new at it, so the forgetfulness is forgiven... but the wildness in costume is not one that I can plan for, or do preventative parenting for. The sugar alone could outdo any calmatives I have on hand, and the sugar is really the least of it... its the dark, the strangeness of holding hands in the dark, along the road, troops of what could be strangers? or friends? ...our first year in the new neighborhood and visiting homes we've never even seen in daylight. Two doors down there is a home for disabled adults and in ten years they have not had a trick or treater. ten years. boy, they were excited to see us... the workers gave us toys and spider rings. I fought against that long driveway with an intensity matched by my son the werewolf's love for shining flashlights in your eyes. and I will not ever make that fight again. ten years.
ah. to be new in a neighborhood. the things you learn by trying.
also, the food banks in my town are desparate for food and volunteers because they're not getting the donations they used to and because there is so much more demand. what about near you? I feel a rush on canned goods coming on. this is crazy. crazy. and there is an abundance in my house that I just cannot stop. and i'm not even trying. :)
I feel so damn cute with myself sometimes.
sheesh.
welcome to a month of this.

Halloween... and a wunder...

2011-10-31T09:47:00.000-04:00

I've got a lion and a werewolf in the house today, and trying to get them off to school is like to kill me. schoolbuses out of costume do not take werewolves and all. go figure.
and I sortof bailed on homemade decorations, and even paid an exorbitant amount for shipping (which wasn't even the postal service that i love and long for daily! damn.) ... i love me the postoffice. internetwise, i always choose it.... but i have a boy whose lion costume will make him happy for a whole year, and i love to look at him in it so there is that. i love lions. and the werewolf? a kit costume with a whole new head/hat that isn't scary and is warm, because I just can't believe what scary stuff there is for kids out there... the kid is goddamned six and thinks he's a freaking werewolf sometimes. why the horror? has the whole country lost its innocence? noone can come up with a costume that doesn't come from a movie? i know, a conversation all played out. i know. but still ! (arms raised, hair straight up and crazy eyes... )
the kids broke somethings i liked yesterday. yes, plural. and i took a bath to soothe myself and had to take my glasses off to avoid seeing how crappily dirty the tub is. so this morning, i have cleaned it. but yesterday, after the bath i had to leave the house to avoid the broken and the dirty and i tried to go out and shop. what a hopeless task. on a crisp fall afternoon, i got me some cotton underwear. ah. dudes. i'm a lucky girl.
and also, the gig is up.
Tomorrow is November and if i do the Noblopopo craziness, then i would have to start writing every day for the month and that would be my third time doing so, and while i would love to have done it for three years straight, i feel a dirth of material, if that is how one spells dirth.
since there is really no lack, what does it mean for me? i would wonder about it, if i could dig up the energy. It is clearly a low energy time for me. probably a damn menstruation coming on. Perhaps I should make an abundantly honeyed cup of tea. ! Maybe it would be a good exercise (again) in setting up a ritual for myself as we enter these times of ritual.
but hey, i spelled 'wonder' with a 'u' up there. its halloween, everything is spelled bootacularly, and we lurve it. right?
so my wonder is this: do? or do not do? or give it a halfassed whoop?
one of the new cats has diarhea. abundance!

Good Goddamn

2011-10-28T10:15:00.000-04:00

I'm tired of reading so much anger about the protestors down on Wall STreet. so tired. I've read things about how priviledged they are, how misguided, how 'entitled', how hypocritical they are with their computer stations and $100 shoes and yogamats and all that. and it still doesn't change a goddamned thing. what the majority of the country SHOULD be angry about is not the dreads, or the yoga or the twitter flutter, but the ways in which the american dream has been sold. It is just simply this, it is no longer enough to work your hardest and try to better yourself, you can't do it... the system is rigged. It doesn't mean we have to lie down and cry about it, but this country of immigrants and hardworkers should certainly have something to say about it. you are on the shoulders of a larger system and someone is sitting on yours and everyone is bending over to clean some crud off their shoes and so we all fall down.

Financial Corporations, Health Insurance Industries, Pharmaceuticals, Lawmakers/Lawbreakers, lobbyists, Food Processing Processessssss... the whole world of factory farming is set up and dependent upon us all eating fast food. so go get more. and more. and all of the individuals at all of the levels making choices are responsible. Grab, Grab, More More...noone will notice if i take a second piece? right? and we all are part of that, because none of us has done anything and now look where we are.
so what're you gonna do about it?

Abundance...

2011-10-26T09:23:00.000-04:00

Guess what the opposite of lack is?

Abundance.

Today I have an abundance of cat sht on the reading room chair. really, i do. And the abundance is that I have two cats, new to me this week, and they are learning their sea legs under my care. Perhaps this extra poop in my day will help me decide about having a new baby, which will produce a prodigious amount of poop, for which I will also needs be, do launder and remake beds and so on and so forth.

I am extremely tired and have an anger-hangover, as is my bent. Last night I was extremely livid (redundant? can one be livid in anything but an extreme way?) and dealing with it in isolation, as HubsJ was elsewhere. While this is a genetically-achingly-familiar phenomenon, I have been trying to work through it for a very long time and the hangovers are fierce, because I spend a whole lot of time with the self-berating inner voice completing the task of beating myself to smithereens for my current life. oh, patterns, you really got me going.
And the abundance is? I am safe, I ride the wave of anger like a rockstar, surf style, I am not a child anymore, no one is hurt, its over right now, and I find the space to bless the source of anger and to bless my children and myself and to imagine myself and the anger as finished. finished. handled. FINISHED!
it can be a joyful prayer, to envision life and its waves being peaceful, teeming but peaceful, maybe even exciting, happy and fun. not in some far distant future, but right now. get.out.of.town.
Who doesn't want more joy?

Forcefield of 'Shove Off'... I have one, do you?

2011-10-24T14:50:00.000-04:00

Otherly titled: Things I have noticed about myself lately and I cannot believe I am 37 years old, still.

*I have to expose yet another personality troublespot that I've noticed lately, my physical incapability to sit close to someone that I have anger/confusion for... do i have a repellent barrier? a forcefield of 'shove off'? I do.
*I also realized just this month that people can actually see me. Yes, Yes, its true. All those years and all those people that I was watching? oh yes, they saw me. Some of them wondered about me and why I was so quiet, some of them glanced away, some of them thought I was a snootyone. . . but dude. I JUST realized that this month. and I am not even kidding you. I don't know what caused it or how it slowly made its way to my consciousness, but it is most definitely a calling out. If, in fact, it IS TRUE that they have seen me ... then ALL of the times that I have looked away or turned without calling out to them or introducing myself... they have seen that too. I can't imagine what it must have been like.
*I am considering AGAIN the impending doom of my ability to be pregnant. and I don't know what to do about it.seeing people with babies is hurting a little bit. but not seeing people with one year olds, or two year olds. hm. AGAIN.

oh, and thats it. does any of it fit into a 'lack' question of faith? hm. well, the pregnancy question is difficult because i am currently in hot pursuit of prophylactics in 'loving' and so am actively not trying to get me a baby. so, there is no lack because i am blocking the pass. yay me. what? i don't know either.
as for the 'my god, people see me?' wackiness, i think perhaps getting older and seeing the multitudes of experiences makes for a better vision. less projection, more introspection? hmmm.
shove off forcefield? i should probably just spit out all the anger/confusion and sit tight with the physical reaction til it dissipates, yes?

mah.
working on it over here. ...
wmx

More Lack... oh really? is it conundrum time?

2011-10-21T09:58:00.003-04:00

HubsJ says he likes the thread of 'don't believe the lack'... but wants a sweater, more more he says, manaical as always. The pressure is intense. heh.
My youngest wants to play 'elephant punching a car' and this is the umpteenth time, it is 8 AM and I am feeling dissatisfied. (the game is not a joke. the cars are the badguys... it also has a polar bear.. ?:) I had a whole tigerscouts/boy thing meeting time earlier this week to have the house to myself (in the evening!) and I was downright pissy about wandering from place to place and my god, i can't for the life of me imagine what it'll be like when most of the time the kids are at school. where the hell are my inner resources? I read somewhere in the Patti Digh world that I can do a self-check at lunchtime and if I haven't done something to be proud of, then I've still got the rest of the day. I've been trying hard, as always, most of the time... And sometimes the proudness just comes from sewing on a damn tigercub patch, you dig? or sweeping the floor or looking at fabric in an industrious way, or playing go fish a multitude of times. or yes, 'elephant punching a car'. even posting here is a fillerupper, although the curiousity and desire for feedback is rather a blankspace... And so mostly I've been choosing to change my perspective, to look at the small things being weighty, as they are. but there are those days, and certainly those moments, where my dissatisfaction belies my belief system.

The whole question surrounding a 'belief in lack' of the last post is not just one of faith in G-d, it can be the 'universe' or 'the way things work'... whatever floats your boat. If I believe that the world is essentially balanced, then I also have to believe that the balance occurs continually after a series of ups and downs. right? believing that it is balanced and always balanced is to discount the lives that we actually experience, yes? the lives where we sometimes believe in lack. or act like it.

If I'm certain that G is watching my back, then the dissatisfaction is what? saying no to G's plan? yikes... being a recalcitrant teen in the face of THE PLAN? oh. huh.
All the fear I have for people in my family and the crazy, life-threatening choices they are making? um, if I believe G has their back too, then what? am I just forwarding a complaint that I don't like what G's plan looks like?

I'm really not saying this is easy, or that everyone has this belief system, but for me I find it lines up with several of the things on my list. The more I meditate, the more I try to accept things as I find them, the more I come into line with the dismissal of 'lack'. it just ain't there. and thankfully, it is a terrible word to say, as well as type, so its loss will not hurt.

Believe in Lack?

2011-10-18T15:23:00.000-04:00

For the longest time, Chakra Carol, or CC as I will now call her, has been saying this thing to me directly, but I've been letting it pass by because I didn't really get it and thats how I handle these things most of the time. I assume I'm a little bit thick and things will settle in or eventually just enter my verbiage by osmosis. And to my surprise, I think I've sort of glommed on to this one. Its a matter of faith...
Do you believe God provides you what you need? its basically a yes or no here. If you believe that G does in fact, provide you and all with what is needed, then you cannot believe that you don't have enough. the two are not compatible.
this is not an arguement for joblessness or passivity... :)
sorry.
but so there. CC's language has always been, 'but do you believe in lack?' when I've been moaning about what isn't or what could be... ow what i'm upset about presently and I've always thought I've known what she meant, but now I actually know that I do, on something closing in on a molecular level. For me it is a reminder to check myself on what exactly I do believe. And I do believe that I have what I need. Is it everything that I want? Sheesh, can't even begin to approach that one... but I don't care right now. I have what I need.
I did yoga today and my three year old insanitypackage did it with me, and that was pretty damn awesome to see and I am proud to be exposing him to that. Did some reiki on my bad self and didn't that complete calendar screwup just make my day something valuable? huh. ALMOST as if I'd had a real life appointment with CC.
the yoga made me smile.
rock it.

Wolves in my hair

2011-10-17T17:15:00.004-04:00

The fabulous six year old in my midst is a wolf ninja currently. He is playing with legos in full costume. I am off the list of potential meals evidently, so that is good. Please don't get him started about werewolves, there are a whole lot of rules for werewolf behavior that are very very important... and he knows because, you see, he is one.
`There are many times lately that I am worried for him, sometimes thrilled but worried nonetheless. The kid is a wild wound muscular thing, and much of him is a mystery to me. Some of this i'm sure has to do with his being away from me in school all day and the switching of his 'play' to 'work', and I'm not altogether sure what to do about it, if anything. Are my kids supposed to be anything but mysterious to me? He gets goals in soccer, something I don't think I managed ever in my slow sad career. He runs like the wind, and the snake, and the tree. It is actually beautiful to watch him go... but hard as hell to handle when his body has been cooped. He moves so fast, he's going to have trouble with reading, as he's on to the next page before he's done the one in front of his face... meaning is down, but accuracy will matter sooner or later. to him. to the story.
The younger of the boys is 'that age' as I say over and over and I just cannot begin to tell the time I spend chasing him. I cannot.
I've been doing allright, got some writing done, some meditating... slacking on the yoga and the veggie meals although we've got frozen pizza for dinner tonight and I suppose that counts if you want to be SUPER lame. I choose LAME sometimes. I do go to see Chakra Carol again tomorrow and I'm really liking those days as I get about an hour free before I get there, so I treat myself to a healthy lunch that someone else makes and I might even shop for groceries or something that is quite the accomplishment. She gave me two pieces of homework last time and I've only done one, so maybe i'll stay up late tonight and send myself through the illumination wringer just to satisfy my twelve year old self ... getting all my homework turned in on time. ...
wolves wolves wolves in my hair...

*can i just tell you that I was an ENTIRE WEEK off my schedule and that I can't see Carol because my appt is not til next week. luckily, my motherinlaw babysitter was on her schedule just fine and didn't show, which means i'm home, with runnerchild, with homework done and illumination wrung... goh.

Occupiers, and other matters.

2011-10-15T06:50:00.000-04:00

So what do YOU think about the Occupiers of Wall Street? ragtag hippies with no life that matters as Rush Limbaugh thinks? Do you want to share anything with him? creep, disgustingly Wealthy creepy liar, wonder where he puts his dollars? hm.
I admit, I wish it looked differently. I wish I were there, really, so that the American public would see a mother of two, former schoolteacher getting all pissy that the real scumsuckers of american society are living very very well, and we are not scorning them- we are being asked to continue giving them benefits and subsidies and so on and so forth. We are making choices and allowing our politicians to make these choices without repurcussions. we are attacking municipal plow funds, and social security, and teacher salaries, and poor people for their damned inability to stop being poor, and the lighting funds of rural communities, we are asking people to break their backs again and again, just to make a living wage. we are even being told we should lower the minimum wage. is this a government of the people? really?
and if you think it is fine, then fine. but you are making a choice in your complacency, as am i. I'm no preacher.
I wish I could hold myself up as a banner citizen, involved and activist extraordinaire. but I am trying. I am becoming much more aware of my steps and how much they DO MATTER. what you are wearing and where it was made... MATTER. where you shop MATTERS. How you treat emloyees MATTERS. what you will accept from your local businesses or bigboxes MATTERS. how you treat your neighbors MATTERS. what you tell yourself about those strangers MATTERS. how you spend your money MATTERS. if you have extra, are you helping anyone? another actual person? Buying online can harm your local business and its employees. really. How much porn you watch MATTERS, you are part of an industry. what you eat MATTERS, the farmers in your neck of the woods wish you took more care. what I do with my trash MATTERS. where I choose to take my kids to lunch OR NOT, MATTERS.
what I joke about MATTERS.
what I write about MATTERS.

so, in essence, i don't care that half of the protesters are messy. what they are protesting is clear. so i give them a rah rah, and i get more aware.

I've been lying? is that true?

2011-10-13T13:16:00.001-04:00

I've been telling everyone here how much I am looking forward to the first snows here. It is a new house to me, and a wild space outside and I am so curious about how it will pan out... will the deer show themselves? Will the tracks be mysterious? Will the damn coyotes get less frightening? yowlhowls subsiding as it freezes up? Will the house be warm enough? will the 'mudroom' actually work that way? as in, actually containing the 'mud'/snow/sluckslush mix? will there be quietude? cocoa? hotcider? will there be enough rugs? will the pellet stove really work to heat this space? i'm so curious... and excited about it... and thinking about christmas lights already... warmth in the glow and the whatnot. . . :) ah... bliss....

and as always, there is a 'but'...

This boy is about to scream blo-ooh-ooody murder
because there is snow on his face.

but i just saw a photo on another blog, of a family tromping through thin snow in their boots, coats, hats, scarves, and i'm sure, double socks, longjohns, motherswears, mittens, peedisasters, and so on and so forth ... and so i decide to be glad of the lingering fall and the wild luxury of having no place to go and the days of damp cold to experiment with lighting the stove to see how it works, to have the living room at 70 degrees just with the flick of a switch... to open a window to the outside to realize it might be warmer out there... to receive packages in the mail because the maillady is willing to get out of the truck and throw them on the porch... and I am content here and now, I am.

and we have a family of wild turkeys visiting us every now and again. and i just pinch myself sometimes. it is all so different from where i was last year. so different in so many ways... so many of the struggles have come with us, but so many are gone from the world. and the spaces and the joys are overwhelming at times but here. here.

plus, I just had a cookie and the sugar is whipping the hell out of my inner puritan. and the battle can be part of the thrill ... but that is another post.

so there.

Scrambled egg pan, I have strong feelings for you.

2011-10-09T11:23:00.001-04:00

Most of what we use here is cast iron. For slapping upside the heads, of course, but also for cooking... and my favorite husband-made dish is scrambled eggs, primarily for the luxury of the someone-else-made-breakfast sensation, as he does like the way I make them better than his own. But the pan, my friends, the pan can sit in the sink or on the stove for almost an entire week...uncleaned, eggy in a very masterly way. The pan has got my knickers in a twist. The damn thing will not clean. It has been a long battle, for as long as my husband has been my husband with his damn paranoia about teflon. um, well-rooted in weird fact, but still. When I had my dog, I tried to let her clean out the egg before washing it in the hopes that she would get it down to its roots, but no, not even the hysterical will of a beagle to eat all things could get the pan cleaned down to its deepblack origins. and it was sort of gross... but mind you, it sits on the counter unclean for a week so I am clearly not the arbiter of cleanliness...
Last night we had scrambled egg, bean and cheese burrito type concoctions and they were yummy and closetcleaning...and I woke up this morning by myself at 7:15 and was the only soul awake. late! alone! hallelujah ...let the choir sing madonna.... it was amazing, and today is supposed to be brilliantly sunny and 80 degrees, and I NEEDED my kitchen to be clean, so I could go outside all day and NOT have to come into clutter for any reason and so I washed the goddamn thing less than 16 hours after using it. Just wanted to share. If my whole family dies of salmonella one day or whatever it is that comes from old egg bits.... I want you to tell the world about responsibility but also about my clean pan... if only for one day... it was clean.

and dudes,dudettes and all the inbetweens? we had eggs two days in a row and now the 'strong feeling' is morphing into a wild fanatical scraping of the iron with a spoon. i'm just saying that now, now i will miss part of the sunny day because of this pan, and it may be the only sunny hour for seven years. damn. out out damn spot. out.

Peace as a great big hole.

2011-10-06T10:23:00.000-04:00

Hey there. I did a 'writing exercise' yesterday and while i think it was crap, it has given me fodder for today's post, which makes it all an exciting win-win. I picked out a sentence from one of my first month's postings, and wrote about it, trying to get deeper and thicker and muckier with... both, what i meant and what it could mean. . . . but also to just get myself writing and flowing and fun actionmama and doing something besides facebook and laundry because they are both sort of futile. it all just goes round and round, see.
SO, the sentence i had picked out was this: Nobody says Peace is boring. Do they? --- from December 15, 2008....
AND I went to see Chakra Carol this week and she had been to see Byron Katie (oh my god, her AGAIN?!) and Carol shared some of the sentences she loved so much ... one of them being: Peace is disturbing. get used to it.

Right? ANyone think maybe it worthy of a blog shoutout to coincidence and noncoincidence? right.

It happens to be frighteningly cold in the house and i refuse to turn on the heat as it is just the first week of October and so my typos may be frightening as well as my fingers are seizing up. true.

so there. There seems to be this idyllic notion that peace makes everyone happy and giggly, all things solved all at once. big healthy trees and granola for all. no more bankers. and i think, personally, that it is much more turbulent than that. when you 'solve' or 'release' one of your burdens, a big fat hole opens up in you... all that space in you that you devoted to a drama is now open for other business and I generally have no idea how to go about 'business' and so fill it up with almonds and the occasional tantrum. For instance, friend Russel fills me with contentment and peace, reminder of wonderful friendship and love and creativity. And then he leaves, and I am boatrocked in my hole.
I suppose it isn't the clearest example.
Do you get my jist?

We are made in the image of God, so they say. Think how unknowable that is. And we are unknowable as well, full of spaces we don't understand, corners we can't see around.
What I think is that we are made to have these holes, to be on the lookout for how to live with them. and that ISN'T peaceful. The search, the work... they are actions.
sweat may be involved, or crying, or divorce, or tea. its hard to tell. but movement IS turbulent, isn't it?
right?

New Day

2011-10-03T11:05:00.000-04:00

I don't' know why the post is called this, maybe i'll find out as I write, what made my fingers have hope when the rest of me is so bummed. Just had a night with a wonderful couple of friends that made me laugh and now makes me long for so much more time. . . downright bereft is how I feel.

what i did do this week:

I did do some yoga, tried some kundalini and found myself laughing at the breathing and the new to me moves. felt good in the body but I think I made my three year old laugh while breathing 'like a monkey' as he described it. He was happy to have me sitting down for so long though. a good way to do yoga yesterday. . .

I did do the writing that I wanted to do, but not here and this one here is going to be a freeflow spirited away kind of blogblah entry. so there. and it will count towards my new week of intention. it is how I handle bereft, i guess. like telling embarassing secrets just to get them off the skin.

I did do the meditation that I wanted to do and I am counting all of the unnumbered minutes of our second family trip to the Quaker Meeting ... its just so quiet there and the congregation tiny and the space so big and simple in the most intimate of ways. I am happy to be there and daunted that as part of such a small community, there may be something expected of me... and therein lies the evil bitchy inner voice which fears and yells about expectations of me AND as I am practicing my utter disdain for said voice, I am going to just ignore it until I can let it wash through and go on its merry way. but it is not working for right now. maybe as the day progresses.

I am glad to be getting them into a community that will enlarge as they get older, it will be good to give them this. and maybe they'll get comfortable talking to god. man, i couldn't wish that any more for them.
So , I did accomplish a task, and maybe by lunch i will figure out something that I can do today to make me feel proud. I would like to feel a stronger sense of worth, to look at what I 'do' and value it . My kids are good, but they are creations of God at this point, and I"m just providing a good habitat and food. they get good stuff here and they are good kids. so there is that.
and I just don't know what else to say, but that I am going forward, looking into the next week with a new and refreshingly similar list of things I would like to do:
3 times a week, 10 minute writes.
2 times a week, 10 minute sits.
and I'd like to add that I'd like to do 2 times a week yogas and 2 times a week, planned veggie meals.
just small steps here.
I AM.

Ghost Cat

2011-09-28T01:19:00.000-04:00

My cat Sadie is missing, has been for four days now. I see her everywhere and no where at all. I check the porch everytime I walk into the kitchen. Every morning I expect her yowl at the back door. I don't even have a picture of her. I probably 'see' her more now than I did when she was here. I so hope she is traveling the woods in a cat pack. I can't think anything else, really, no matter how it might behove me to make friends with that/those thoughts. I told the boys she was missing this afternoon... we went on a walk to see if we could find her. C6 cried. E3 threw sticks. I never said 'hurt' or 'dead', just wondered where she could be, who she might be with... She is a lovely cat, like they almost all are. I never gave her enough attention and she never held it against me. Not even once did she ask me why I don't spend the time to try to seduce her. Not even once.
:)
Oh, animals.

One of the things of many that came from the writing workshop was a phrase of Patti Digh's which sticks to the ribs. 'Make strong offers'. Make your offering to the world a strong one, one which you yourself relish, which speaks to the strength you have, which makes your offering an actual 'offering' and not a 'tradeoff' or a 'sacrifice'. Make a strong offering to the world.

(I hadn't meant to offer Sadie. But she was a strong one. and I probably can't call her mine...)

And I am improving the quality of my time here, on the interwebs, slowly, certainly (at least) taking more time. pausing before publishing and the like. I will probably not create formed essays at any point, but do look forward to subjects of meaty-ness pushing their way to the fore. I suppose I have done that in the past, but I am getting close to 500 posts soon, and I find that remarkable and also, weighty... giving me pause to consider what exactly it is that I am 'making' here and is it, in fact, a strong offer? I need to do some re-reading, some self-checking for satisfaction. And if I am not satisfied? well. no idea. I guess I'll just plan on being satisfied, and see what I can learn...

Yeah yah ya. the times, the times. . .

2011-09-25T15:29:00.000-04:00

=This weekend I had my writing class, which is not so much the name for what it was... conference? workshop? hm. not so much. but whateve it was, I had one exercise in which I was to write for an hour. an HOUR. no prompt given just have at it... and I was surprised when the time was up. I wrote for an hour. dude. The workshop-for lack of a better word- was full of funny women and that is always a crackup, I do freaking love the laughing! why don't I remember that more often? There were 2 men there, but the majority of what was discussed was overwhelmingly female...what are your fears? What do you long for? What is stopping you? Sit the hell down and right. middlings: I am not good enough, smart enough blahblah, i will be exposed, if i was a good writer, i'd already be writing... if i could just get to the brilliant idea on the tip of my tongue, all would be well, etc.etc. Damn middlings. Its sometimes enlightening and sometimes disheartening to hear the same fears so so often and strong in a group of women. Why and what for do we engage in all this ? Setting goals that we will fail and berate ourselves for? WHAT?! what're we doing that for? I quit that, just so you know.
There were writing exercises, icebreakers, sandwiches, water bottles. Sometimes I wonder about all these fancy 'nonwaterbottle' bottles out there.. Are they really so much better than the old plastic bottle? Don't they all look awfully new to you? How many are being produced? How many do you have? It seems so excessive. Is yours metal? Where'd the metal come from ? Do you like how that tastes? Do you reuse your actual plastic bottles? whut? huh? When do we just get to carry our mugs around and drink tapwater wherever we are?
The three women were Patti Digh, Susan Piver, and Jennifer Louden. They were some of this... southern drawling, misplaced cali cheerleader, meditation practitioner/teacher, graceful faller, grieving daughter, profane, menopausal, grieving mother, support system, wizened warrior writers, genuine, empathetic, excited, sweaty... and there was more and some of it will spill out here in time.... I sort of fell in love with a couple of those women and would have gone to live in their kitchens if they'd invited me.

=This morning I took my family to a Quaker Meeting. It was a first time for all of us, although we had been on the premises several times for various booksales and concerts and the like. It was pretty great, once the kids were gone- a lovely and maternal thing to say, yes? But the kids were in meeting ehem "quiet" for 15 minutes before they left for 'first day school' ... they left and parents stayed and it was pretty great... I got to sit quietly for 45 minutes. that would be, forty five minutes. did you hear the non-deafening silence of that? really. I studied the other people in the area, winked at a baby, studied the trees out the window nearby. got down with my bad self, without interruption. This is evidently the normal 'unprogrammed' meeting, there are others with a more scheduled service... but, boy, I liked my alone time with me and my Guy...

=Today I chose to take a bath and be alone and make myself some tea, rather than go kayaking with another family. I am sure that it is a bit rude. But here I am, bath achieved, waiting for the tea, and the rudeness is somewhere other than here. I have goals for this week, I do... I will meditate twice, for at least ten minutes apiece... and I will write, either here or in a journal in three different periods this week, for at least ten minutes as well. These are goals I can achieve. And won't that make me feel good about myself? And won't that be a nice change?

freaky, that.

The Cleanse*

2011-09-21T14:39:00.000-04:00

A 10 Day Cleanse. No wheat, no sugar, no caffeine, no dairy. 10 days. What to say about it? It was good, makes me feel good, I learned to cook again, use the food in my fridge, feed my kids something besides pretzels after school . Ate great meat.
Lost my mind, found it again. Felt hungry, fed myself healthy snacks. Love the almonds. Realized the reasons I've never been on a real diet are that I am really fairly stubborn. Probably didn't lose any weight but got back into yoga which is something akin to finding your favorite sweater on the first chilly morning in the fall. Ate a little bit slower, ate some really good tasting stuff. Got into smoothies, with kale in them. I know. I know. Turns out when they're all zipped up, they're just green... even the kids drank the green smoothie. so good. Learned how damn sweet bananas really are. Took responsibility for my own food, because it matters what I put into my body, because my body matters, because I do.
Figured out how much better brown rice is for you. shocking. also, that China makes 95% of the world's supply of rice. hm.
Felt calmer, less run down, more able to keep my peace when the children were losing theirs. Even one day of that would have been worth it, but I had several. It is always good to feel good. and it should be an everyday thing.

Drank a lot of water... sometimes with a slice of lemon, which served to make me feel dainty and privileged every morning. Drank a lot of tea, with a lot of honey. really liked it.

On Day Eleven. could have made me a pot of gloriously hot coffee to eat with the bagel slathered in cream cheese. Didn't. Stuck with my lemon water daintiness and my tea. Got some coffee this afternoon but it has made me tired, is making my mouth taste yuck and I think I will not finish it. huh. May make some more tea.
Ate a bunch of chickpeas for lunch and dipped some bread in it. I think that I will eat much less of the wheat, I'm not feeling all freshlike with it in my belly. No bagels, no bread. I'll be allright.
(But boyo, tonights pasta will be covered with cheese and paired with cheese and please keep your fingers crossed that my one true love will love me back. )

good. it was good.

*The cleanse was 'led' by Ms. Hannah Marcotti and you can find her here: Hannah's Harvest

There is kinky, and then there is kinky.

2011-09-20T09:58:00.000-04:00

I have a kink in my neck. One of the kids kicked me early this morning and my reaction to the kick caused the kink. eh. it is a slight annoyance but again, amazingly, it brings up Fear and its awesome ineffable power. The reason i don't have full swing of my head is that a certain point in the roundabout brings a 'hurt' and so I stop. The fear is that it will hurt more if the head keeps stretching, bending, etc. and so, i just stop.

I have a feeling and a knowing that there is a much larger story there, and I know you can track it down on your own, because it is as simple as this: how much fear does it take to stop us in our tracks? how much fear is based upon make-believe? how much make-believe does it take to stop us in our tracks?
sort of different, yes?
Do you remember in the Madeleine L'engle books, at one point there is a questioning series of ... I think it is Charles ? and the questions are both absurd and pointed and asking him to make weighted the values of different people and to choose lifelimbdeathlife for living creatures of all sorts... I clearly cannot remember the specifics but I sure do remember the generalities.

It is all so absurd and pointed and geared to make us all look at ourselves again and again... all of it. . . all of this.
I remember Charles ? arguing that the questions were absurd and that he couldn't do it, it wasn't making sense. I also remember loving him a bunch. so lovely.
There can be much love amidst the roar of Fear, and perhaps that is what we are supposed to see when we do all this self-reflection/investigation. aye?

Introvert? Extrovert? Radical Follower of Islam?

2011-09-15T18:26:00.000-04:00

well. maybe. but it doesn't really matter except in how I am going about the understanding of my self-identity. Not a Muslim, only occasionally a radical and that has to do primarily with an old-school new england backtotheland movement in my heart and in my compost bucket. Can be an extrovert when it comes to flirtation. Men are my playthings, or were, when I was playing that game.
I've always considered myself an introvert, plus a shy girl. Its hard for me to break out of my 'space' and talk to strangers, for instance, having a great deal of difficulty going into a store to ask for help, being shy of the worker...
I CAN do it, I certainly have and having kids has made my skin a whole lot tougher in terms of doing what is necessary to get around in the world. I don't really want them to have this sort of shyness. I know it, totally crazed.
but true, nonetheless. I really and truly don't like it, the whole talking to strangers thing. I'm not generally insecure about myself but I just make a LOT of assumptions about the greater worth of other people, their time, their pathway, their lives, etc. and so I move aside to let them be their greater worth. dig?

Anywho. the reason for bringing it up is ChakraCarol. !*! She questioned me about that aspect of my self-identity, saying something like: If you are such an introvert, why are you so lonely?

oh.
well.

and what it has caused me to reassess is not actually that I might be an extrovert, but that I might not really be that lonely. go figure. Of course, I would love to know lots of dynamic woman friends and I'd even take a few men to my side in a pinch :) but I wouldn't want them all at once and I certainly don't want to be part of a crowd anytime soon. SO there is that.

And I'm also reassessing my need/desire for feedback all the time. I like to be challenged to think in a new way, to add a new facet to the complexity ... but it doesn't need to undo me to be comment-free (here) or introverted (also, here, but different.) Its like word choice, the weight is in the voice, the meaning in the vibrations of the larynx ... and so, wanting the challenge of conversation is not the desparate loneliness that I had identified, the meaning is in the thinking, the process, the 'connection' with another.

AND, as I get older and older, I have to reinvestigate why and where I decided to move aside all the time for the 'greater worth' of everyone else. Its a sort of highschool -junior high mentality that I just never fully shook, the popular kids now encompassing the entire world, instead of just the few in school. I have a lot of belief system which tells me bigger truths about people, about equality and oneness and grace and the wild spread of humanity that there is, so why in my moments of weakness is it always this that I slip back to?

so, i'm not saying i've decided i'm not lonely or that I don't need friends or that the ones I have are where I'm stopping or that I'm never going to get directions at a gas station, because I haven't 'decided' anything. I'm just plucking away at my strings here.
sort of banjo-y at the moment.
heh.

Clean-er?

2011-09-12T08:59:00.000-04:00

Sunday was the first day of the cleanse, no wheat, no dairy, no sugar, no caffeine. I had cut out the coffee last week and switched over to tea, but went cold turkey...and uh, Spent the Entire afternoon from 3-8 roughly, in my bed with a whopper headache. It was sort of trippy. I couldn't sleep as I'd taken a cup of coffee to try to get the headache to go away, so I spent five hours lying down, breathing through the hammering and thinking. It was like a five hour retreat, seriously. I re-examined my feeelings about september 11th, where I am now as opposed to where I was then, single to married, childless to old-hat motha, happy and fulfilled in my work to less than that, but working on it. I'm 37 years old, an entire world of days has passed in the past ten years. an entire world. two children exist who did not . bikes are ridden in my yard, faces are made at the dinner table... I thought again about the teaching lesson demo/interview I botched when I was eight months pregnant. It was awful, an epic fail. I thought about the times when marriage has been awful.
It was an impressive five hours. I can't remember the last time that I was uninterrupted, and had only my head as company, the only distraction being where my brain would go next. I have a lot of curiousity about its purpose.

And now, I've got a pot of brown rice on the stove, something I think I had pretty much relegated to the deepest days of history when I had to eat at my parent's hippy friends houses... and I am SO looking forward to scarfing it down with an avocado at lunch... SO.

What is all this? Why would I share it? I don't have any idea. I don't know why my brain tripped through so many things during that headache and I don't know where it will go, or whether it will all come back again later... I don't know.

I do go see Chakra Carol tomorrow afternoon, so there is that! and that is always a refresher. always.

I did not win powerball.

2011-09-09T09:49:00.000-04:00

Shocker.

I'm deciding not to write today about the fear and loneliness that I am about to feel putting my babylicious one in preschool for the first time here this afternoon. fear. loneliness.
I'm not going to write about it.

I'm going to try a 'cleanse' this coming week, abstaining from dairy, wheat, caffeine ! owfucking hell caffeine! , and sugar. I'm supposed to feel fantastic and chipper and all that. hold your breath, babes, hold it tight.
I've also signed up for a night/day writing workshop at the end of the month to get my ass to accept that [-at the very least, and i mean this literally-THE VERY LEAST-] sometimes i like to write.
there you have it, assertiveness 101.
I am trying trying. I think it is the fall and the desire to bundle up and lie down in a blanket pile that is making me a bit nervous to be alone with my bad self all winter. have to get a focus, a 'thing' to do... things to be proud of, the inner motivation to get myself back into doing yoga... probably the extra layers of bodyfat have something to do with the desire to lie down in that blanket pile/nest. I've heard it said that stating your intentions aloud actually helps increase your chances of going through with the actions necessary... in type, and in voice I say: I intend to be healthier. I intend to stop eating when I am not hungry. I intend to exercise all by myself!
rah.
I WILL buy lottery tickets, because I see them as tangible pieces of HOPE.

The Sun Also Rises...*

2011-09-08T13:46:00.000-04:00

*in honor of my three year old who learned (from his precious cousin Francis) that waving your naked bum in the air is a form of dance. to the moon!

and it has been raining here for the entire week, and I am OUT of ideas for how to get my lovechild six year old to decompress after school. He has about an hour afterschool in which he is just lovely, chatty, eating snacky.. and then all goes to hell. he's a tantrum-er, has been since he was a head-banging toddler. loud, mean, prone to throwing. supah. if i drank, it would be heavily from 4-7 pm every night. every. night. he's lost his portable video game thing forever, although he doesn't know that he isn't allowed it on school nights anyhow, and he gets a show if he doesn't tantrum before its time for one.... have i said, SUPAH?! and this is only the third night of school . i understand his deep exhaustion, i do. i just wish he would shut the hell up and get a job, already.
heh.
any ideas out there? if it weren't raining for all the heavens abursting, i would send him outside until it got dark. really, i would. but it is... so what?
ideas?

She swings.... she misses... she will swing again. . .

2011-09-05T18:35:00.000-04:00

I've got a pretty strong center, I think. (most of the time) . and in the parentheticals lies todays feeling and all the days of a rut... I'm good, I'm fine...as I get older I think the 'cycles' are getting stronger so that what used to be a bit of pms is now a full on 'watch out' timeperiod every month., and I can't seem to recognize it for what it is until someone else mentions the possibility and then wahooey. of course. head slapping and some curses too. . . doesn't seem to help, to recognize it, but at least I know it'll have an end.

...the big kid is going off to first grade on the bus tomorrow morning and I'm so excited for him and for me... new town, new kids, new new new.... and then whoosh. waaaves of sadness (or something i can't identify which fills me with mourning and tears...and a desire for sobs..) ... and I wonder about how much I resist change and how much I resist acknowledging vulnerability (deep, deep DEEP resistance.) Vulnerability makes me really pissed off. really. like, a lot. take my word for it.
I do know that most of what angers me is related to fear. I can't seem to hold onto that emotion at all without yelling about it, so that is something to know, to look for... why am i so mad? what am I afraid of? ...and I think, for me, fear has most of its foundation in resistance.... a thing we are trying to control has left our grasp...
like my kid.
ah, have we done the right thing? will life be joyful for him? will he love freely? will he play ball? will he feel safe? will he be loved?
Its a matter of faith, to get through the day sometimes, to forgive myself for all the anger, to look to giving up on the fear, to just allow life to unfold as it will .
faith.

All hail the rut is back! ALL HAIL!

2011-09-02T16:32:00.000-04:00

we all missed it, you know we did. the painful delusion-creating/fostering rut of mediocrity and complaint which fosters a quickness of wit and a cutting sarcasm. we love it, we hate it, we know it well.
we, being the all and the inclusion of you in the me, which of course is slightly problematic.
the past say, three days, i have been on the computer non-stop. and when I say non-stop I mean to say so often that the screensaver doesn't always come up, that the log off that happens after fifteen minutes so that the kids can only get pbskids.org with their little fingers does not come up. no. and I've started laundry and 'watched children' and hung laundry on the line and made lunch and given haircuts and so on and so forth.
I'm going to blame the short power outage of the hurricane for sapping me of my will to actually 'live' a quality life. The big energy shift that occurs with a giant-sized wind? huh. I got a whole lot of 'blow it up your ass' for you.
(um, not really, in a deep way, but shitcakes ... i am fuming at something that I cannot identify ... and so, blow it up your ass.)

and i ask you this: what the hell is worth being here all this time for? have i, literally, emptied myself of my resources so much that I cannot even read a book or entertain my mind and/or body with anything that doesn't have qwerty involved? where is the magic potion? where is the fabulously funny? where is it? why am i so damn bored, with all the world at my fingertips and an amazing ability to completely ignore these kids. (who, by the way, during the formation of this current rut, have been absolute PIGS) yes, i know, i know, the connection is not exactly lurking in a darkened hallway. they have been ignored, they have lived like the lord of the flies, i keep expecting to find new totems when i finally pull myself away.

I've made myself a list of things to do that I love so that I can stop stuffing my face with dingdongs here . but i haven't been accessing the list. And the Bible is sitting on the floor right behind me where i have been ignoring it all day. not even that can pull me away from this laundry lint that i am jokingly referring to as my daily "life".
wtf. LOL. (I HATE these abbreviations with a damn passion. how many people do you think are typing LOL while completely straightfaced? insidious!) have i already said this? my god, come and get me, i have abandoned all spark of life.

(ehem. and i'm not getting that many comments here either...so i have to resort to facebook and the times. see where i have been living?! it is dark here, dark. )

Ennui...or maybe menopause? menstruation? mid-life existential dilemmas?

2011-09-01T11:34:00.000-04:00

Such a strange looking word, that one. ennui.
Say it often and it becomes a sort of chant. ennui, ennnnnnnnnuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...... plus, it looks vaguely threatening with all the dots it contains. or, conversely, sort of partylike in its confetti. i choose partylike, today.
and its not truly a boredom with which or by which I am waylaid, but it is truly a restlessness, an inability to focus, a difficulty finding that or those who give me/afford me solace, restfulness. Its a bad cycle, a bad spot, or at least the one I find myself in, and I don't like it.
examples:
*we had salmon last night and i can't get away from the smell. and can't seem to be bothered to scrub - just get repeatedly annoyed by the waft. I don't like salmon, at all, in any wayshapeform. so sue me. i am unhip.
*My kid is starting school and I'm so happy, but I haven't done anything to prepare and I'm vaguely annoyed at the wild mechanisms of the shopping guides that are arriving daily which all tell me to go buy him a lot of stuff, and so i'm just playing mathgames with him and giving him tons of timeouts because he is a punk from hell these days. I don't want him to go back to school, and I do.
*my hubsJ complains that I don't have any laughing these days. and I don't.
garumph.

wanna fight? no, me neither.

What I cannot believe.

2011-08-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

What I cannot believe is that we didn't know what we were missing. We had a feeling...and some fears, but we didn't know.
and now we do.

Today was the 'open building' day in our new school district... you can go in, see your classroom, tour the building, go see the cafeteria and the library, meet the principal, talk to the school fundraising ladies.... meet your classmates, run in the halls...

By the end of our 25 minutes, hubsJ and I were choking back tears. Rather than starting the year with 44 classmates, our boy is going to have 23 classmates and a teacher who stays all year, classmates with two parents (some, but at least SOME.), and 70,000 books, actually sorted into categories. These things are standard in the rest of the country, i know. but not in poor communities, not in struggling schools. haves not. He has a sweet teacher, a sweet classroom, excited kids to become friends with... oh my, oh my. a whole new life that begins. How can you be any happier to let your kid grow to this?

(i'm no dummy, i know he's a boy in a public school classroom, but man, i love school. )

My heart is so full of gladness for our move and our motion that it hurts like I am heartbroken. It hurts.
I imagine for all you normal people out there, that this might be a type of joy, that one feels in one's heart. :) It also feels like I want to nurse, will explode with the tenderness.

I don't have an ipod, or any songs on a computer, anywhere...but I had a real bonified imaginary soundtrack in my head on the way home from the school this morning.

My soundtrack is 'cuts like a knife', and the beautiful yell in 'i'm a creep', weezer? ...Peter Gabriel because I will take whatever he dishes... . and then 'we are the champions' because really, its on everyone's list, or should be. and of course, folk versions of 'goodnight irene'...

Irene----we did fine during the hurricane, but I have a very strong and newfound relationship to the trees in and around my yard. They lost some branches but none of them fell or lost their footings. We lost power for the day but had it back in time for a later supper. I had the best bath of my life when we had water again and felt my first kinship with this house. We are beyond beyond incredibly lucky.
The swingset is no more, but it came with the house and started out quite akimbo so we will test to see if it will hold more than one child and then let her pass gently into the good night, i believe.

We went to the beach.

2011-08-27T17:59:00.001-04:00

Holy Beauty ... a storm is coming and the waves, my GOD, the waves and the spills and the storm is a'coming. we have our candles and we have our power and the air is heavy and there is no wind.
but that is going to change.
Holy Beauty ... a storm is coming and the waves, my GOD, the waves and the spills and the storm is a'coming. . .

Marriage is hard, like a brick wall of beauty...

2011-08-22T09:23:00.000-04:00

really, its hard. way harder than anyone ever says it is. and its gorgeous, in its height and breadth. and its surprisingly porous, so many things slip through and away that you could never believe possible. and sometimes that is lovely, to release so many things. and sometimes we pine for what is lost, and spend a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to get it back. and there it is, what we jump into unknowingly, jump from ... crash into... a sharing, a longing, a space of immobility and permeability, an us when the 'I' is still unknown. what has 'love' become? what are the changing definitions and how much change will we tolerate? how to bend with the wind when one is an edifice?
:)
my analogy perhaps goes too far. because, of course, there is sex.
for those of us who go that way, anyhow.
who aren't too tired...asleep before the light is off... or bogged down by the minutia of the everyday, holding onto resentments that play their power roles in turning down something the other would really like, self-pleasure relegated to the capriciousness of a relationship...
BUT! sex is good, and we should all be doing it whilst we may.
so, get on that.

ah, the yin, the yang. ah.

Change. (and the complete F%$#^%$%$$! inability to deal with it)

2011-08-14T13:51:00.000-04:00

A childhood friend died after a long battle with cancer and treatments and today I'm going to spend the day with his family, across the street from the house I grew up in, in which my parents no longer live. The tent is being supplied by another neighbor and she and her four sisters will be presenting all of the desserts. It was a good neighborhood and I haven't been there for a long time, and childhood was even longer ago... sometimes. In watching our kids we get some of our memories back, which is an astonishing miracle of memory... and for all of the 'grownup' learning that we do, how death is part of life and decay and cycle are all one, the shock of death shows up the lie. I think I'm so thrown by this death because it is a signal of the change of the generations, a possibility that change and mortality are around the corner. all the 'knowing' that all of life is impermanent is shaken by the personalization of it. What will I do when Mrs. King is no longer sitting at her kitchen table? when Mr. King is not splitting his own wood? when my Dad is not raging against the politicians and/or the woodchuck? when my mom is not politely thanking me for having her over for dinner? who will i become when I am the last holder of my memories?
Will I really be unchanged? really? How long am I going to define myself as the woman from a small house... in the face of this new gigantic-ness? where I have come from becoming 'less' than where I am ? or, does it work that way? Do the memories of long ago get bigger as we age? it seems like that, when faced with many elders... reminiscing seems to be the powerbroker in the game.
when faced with the constancy of change, why is there so much resistance? am i really so idiotic, so patterned in my battle against reality? expending energies in impossibles? certain improbables?
oh, i love words. they roll, baby, they roll.
and distraction, i love distraction too.
and, if i am looking forward to a funeral to see so many people from the deep past, what does this say for me? aye?

Many Children and roasting vegetables.. and sometimes vice versa...

2011-08-10T11:43:00.000-04:00

I think I am pushing summer out of my mind. I am. I have spent the morning roasting vegetables to prepare a veg lasagna because that is how I can make something this morning. the 'make' is on. I am using summer pattypans to stock the lasagna but otherwise I spend my time dreaming of butternuts and red and orange leaves and sweaters...oh, the sweaters in my dreams. . .
I've been challenged lately, in the cooking/parenting arena, both outwardly and inwardly. My three year old neice is here and she is a vegetarian, an only child, and a GIRL. holy smokes. I have laughed in the past at how different boys are from me, noting the inborn tendencies towards gender stereotyping, etc. great. great for me to be so abtuse. super.
bhut holy smokes. girls. how do you all do this?! seriously. the differences are astonishing and I can't differentiate between what she needs because she's used to being the only one and what she needs because she is a girl and doing girl things. Her cousin, my son, is 9 days younger than she, so there is an impossibly easy comparison chart for their behaviors and abilities and etc. etc. Girlie's mom is gone for possibly the next week while she does some important closing up of her past in New York. so I am on my own with a girl and I am daunted. the outfit changes, alone! forget about coloring! easy, quiet, always a possibility! and spending lots of time figuring out how to cook vegetables in a way that everyone will eat. It is a shame and a half that I don't already have this experience, but aye, there it is. I was given 7000 pounds of vegetables at the open house and I cannot and will not compost it all. Pattypan, Spinach and Red Pepper Lasagna, here we come.
I thought pattypan was purely in farmville. ha. I don't even have an instantaneous label for food-related posts, because while i do like good food and don't serve much processed food, it is a simple simple matter of letting hubsJ cook on the weekend and making the same four meals all day all summer long, with the surprise additions of neighbor's corn once in a while.
WAHOO...

good lord.

We are Moved...

2011-08-07T17:48:00.000-04:00

Yes, it is the royal WE. It is official, we have been moved. We have been seen, welcomed, warmed.
My heart walnut is roasting.

LOVE LOVE LOVE

We had our big housewarming throwdown this weekend. I met new people! I talked to grownups! I trusted that my children were fine, almost the whole time! It was a fabulous thing, I was laughing and bustling and showing off and I was happy .

Sometimes it is a serious interior gasp when you think about what a rare feeling that is. And so it should be.... the gasp i mean. but anyhow, thats neither here nor there.

The party was warm, the day and night were warm, we had a real live taco truck in our driveway and everyone ate their fill and I had no hostessing stress. imagine it. no hostessing stress. no dishwashing! even the trash was taken away. this morning i collected empty bottles and juice boxes and wiped up lemonslices and even had a lemon slice for my glass of water. it was an openhouse, come and go as you please, and some sleepovers and no harm no foul, i say. no harm, no foul. there were no wifely admonishments towards the HubsJ for being the only latenighter and it was a latenight bonfire sort of night, and I had a great time. great.

great.

I move at my own pace sometimes, and experience a great deal of awkwardness as the lights go down and I can't read lips anymore... bonfires can be downright fraught with peril of the 'pardon?' sort, but this night I just sat and sighed contentedly and all was well. children in the bonfire light running around the trees. pretty damn cool. this was one of those summer nights of childhood, the sweaty running, the flashlights, the interior lights, the warmth of the house from the blues outside. everyone and everything was a blur of action and movement...

We are downright moved.

This is our new place... I have high hopes.

Walk the Talk

2011-08-04T12:56:00.001-04:00

I'm not, I ain't. I try and I flail and then try again. It seems, in all areas, all... that I move through this day after day revolution in a constant try try try mantra. and (of course) I am weary.
This doesn't mean that I don't see joy in my moments, that I think my burden too heavy, that I despair. My boys are coloring, which in this house is sort of miraculous these days. the house is gigantic, still, but I think we are adjusting and finding our nooks, all of us... the coloring is taking place on the floor in the sewing nook, where the machine is unpacked and the majority of the still unpacked things are resting.

At the top of the stairs in the farmhouse is an empty spot with a window. I have been steadfast in keeping it empty, for it is full. of my hopes for a quiet space and that dreamy feeling that I had before we got here. the possibility space.
And while I am frequently screaming at the boys, or at least, thats what it feels like to my internal world, I know this place is there. I've been giving myself timeouts on the stairs so that i can peek at it like this. I'm weepy and full of sadness a lot but have been trying so hard to remember these places. I have been so inconsistent, its remarkable.
watch this list of flipflop:
1. This morning, I flushed the house and went around putting up energy symbols and incense-based crosses in all the important spots and corners of the house. It was very intentional and specific.
2. I am feeling inconstant in my reading and writing and unconnected to the larger spiritual world that floats around in my body.
3. I'm getting these emails from a joy program that is going to last ten days. I wanted the joy to read.
4. I am so damn cynical that I cannot believe in the reality of other people's joy. (gasp.)
5. This house is so big that I feel incredibly conspicuous and embarrassed by it.
6. We are having an openhouse THIS weekend to share it with everyone we know because we want to share the love we have for it...like giggly kids... (uh, did you read #5?!)

Seriously? really.

Dude, I don't want to knit.

2011-07-29T16:42:00.000-04:00

I am so happy for all the contented knitters out there. I really am, honestly. . . but I don't want to. I find the yarn itchy and my skin rejects the skein like nobody's business. And I don't want to sit at the park and make a sweater in the summertime. and still, have no animosity for you who do.
I do not want to knit.
I have been taught, I could pick it back up, but ah, no. the click, the clack. no.

so what?
wanna fight?

(yes, it is a mood, but it is mine. MINE.)

Gratitude list when things suck.

2011-07-28T06:44:00.000-04:00

maybe a conundrum? dichotomy? oxymoron? I have no idea. but things sort of suck this morning and I am bucking the trend of self-dismay to write a list of what is not sucky.
These are the things I am thankful for, and its not even Thanksgiving, and I don't even have a box to put my quarters in...
1. put up the first birdfeeder yesterday, with two 3 year old who were righteously pissed that i wouldn't let them hang it inside.
2. fixed the two pair of pants that had fallen hems... O pioneer!
3. The room that may become the sewing room is heavy on the morning light. LIGHT!!
4. I'm meeting an old friend at the beach today, our five children will entertain themselves without drowning... what a crazy amazing sentence.
5. I'm going to take recycling to the dump this morning and it fills me with glee to have the porch back to its porchly glory.
6. I love dumps.
7. there is a lot of space here for me, a room, a morning chair, a frenchpress coffee maker... I will 'live' here.
8. Registered the 6 for school yesterday and found a space for the 3 in an afternoon preschool... they will live here too...
9. Had egg/blackbean tortillas last night with tons of sour cream. OH LOVELY.. I wish Mexico were closer. or Texas.
10. My kids are still in bed and its almost 7 AM . how beautiful is that?

AHA.
less sucky now.
BEAUTY.

What's your Art? Your Make? Your Love?

2011-07-26T08:51:00.000-04:00

What do you make? Are your hands busy with foods? papers? pencils? fabric? words? children? Do you type fanatically when you get here because 'the life' is spilling all over the place and your passions drive you? Do you spend a month preparing for Thanksgiving Dinner because it is the best time of the whole year?
What do you Make?

I still haven't unpacked my sewing machine. Mugs have been higher on the list, Mugs! But I am likely to have an entire space devoted to the sewing, and it is incredible, albeit currently a stopping ground for the things that have no place. . . but I know where the box is. So - I feel the 'make' coming on...

I saw chakra carol yesterday. we talked about changing definitions of love, how many things we want to be capital letter LOVE, that just aren't. and how...much easier it would be for us if we let go of our notions of what should be and just looked around at what IS. How much of our belief patterns developed in our teens? How much have we looked into how we feel now? Re-assessing our perceptions to make them current, applicable to current realities - utterly removed from molly ringwald and judd nelson (gasp). Not even John Cusack (stabbing myself in the eye to let that one go...) .

Does the 'make' hold hands with the love? is it prioritizing my Self above the unpacking of the mugs that lies beneath? Second and Third Chakras must hold hands! Must! The choice to leave the house for meetings that feed my self-esteem, to leave the kids? temporarily? to leave the house for physicality? Sometimes the amount of planning involved just to leave is an overwhelming obstacle. Mugs, Love, Make, Children. well, word order, hello. no making children anymore. so. Children, Mugs, Love, Make. better. :)

OH MY. OH! a ramble.

2011-07-24T10:54:00.000-04:00

Had a hard time going to sleep last night ... for no apparent reason. HubsJ says my sexdrive is finally kicking in after 37 years and I should have woken him... finally did fall asleep, woke at 5:40, and that would be AM. not nursing, not pregnant, no newborn in this house. 5:40. damn.
and an OH MY.
can i get a witness?

church day. While I had a great deal of meditative quietude this morning, I am still missing the ritual of an early morning hallelujah to God and his wacky son Jesus. I really am, but I am more unsure about visiting churches in a non-urban environment as I will stick out as foreigner more. Although, I was one of five parishioners at the church service I attended in the big city. Perspective is all. I should look around less I think.

I'm taking the 6 to get a DS today, a handheld lovey electronica. because he 'earned' it with monumentally good behavior over the past month. a deal was made, this is the outcome. a win-win as far as I am concerned because it is portable and will be smashed with a hammer if he ever calls me 'stupid' again. I think it is fair. the consequences will be clear and will match the rage that burns on the inside as I deal with too many boys in my life. (uh, not the divine ones, though. perhaps the problem lies therein?) hm.

can i get a witness? could you be mine?

won't you be mine?
won't you be my neighbor?...

Character.

2011-07-22T12:03:00.000-04:00

I have been at the beach for the last two weeks. almost literally. and I am still there, in my mind, and in fact... although I am home to do laundry and to make an attempt at keeping the 6 out of the sun for the day, as I think he has been struck through by its rays.
so I am home, and away.
and thinking of Character, because I have spent my time surrounded, and felt myself washed away. So much time spent comparing, and then moderating, and then withdrawing, that what I feel from this time at the beach is some sort of Loss.
vague, unsettling... perhaps it is the space, the time, the history of the place... what is theirs (my hubsJs history, family, place... is not mine and I am foreigner forever, tho my children will belong... )
I have needed to escape the vacation, and have done so. so many adults to watch the children and that flexibility is nothing short of AMAZING... so what is it? is it as simple as low self-esteem? should I believe in the negatives of the others?- subtle digs and the like?
i'm generally not thick-skinned, but am overly familiar with that way of things and have learned to let it roll but do not like to wear the leathers.
heh.
it is hot. Haaaaaat, as we whiteys in the north like to say.
maybe my brain has slowly melted and the loss is there and tangible. . . .

what is the level to which Character settles? to me, clearly a changeable notion, although perhaps consistent in strength? hm.
maybe not...after all we do leap and learn and gain character as we go along...supposedly giving the olders the edge in this gain. . . character... interest? does a character have to contain interests? can a deadly boring man be a character? full of character?

what say you?
i've got to go back to the beach or I will lose the function of my bones and lay about forever and ever.
Thank God for shorelines.
Thank God.

I know you have other things to do...

2011-07-08T13:42:00.001-04:00

go read this, even if you are too busy and this is your daily timesuck. you have a few more minutes... you know you do.

http://walkingonmyhands.com/2011/07/07/good/

I know it, you know it. but go read something that is good.

* I don't know how I feel, having written daily for the past few days, I still don't feel like I have my vim in order, I feel forced and think it has to do with life and some pieces of it, and the only fleeting peace that I've been having lately...
but what to do? I'm going to go to the beach a lot, and maybe even get to swim. I don't know what else to do. really, I just give up for a while. I'm off the hook.
whoosh.

Jonesing for some Ice Cream.

2011-07-07T15:48:00.001-04:00

I'm not really sure if thats the appropriate spelling for jonesing... should it be jonsing? joansing? too much flexibility with this damn english. if i had another to switch to , i would. right now.

but really. I'm not a fanatical ice cream eater, its a rare pleasure, but today is flippin hot and i've been to the dump and my kid is asleep and i have a lot to do that doesn't involve this here timesuck and there are people coming to 'see the house' tonight as well as an overnight convalescer and I AM IN NEED OF SOME COLD BEVERAGE. but by beverage, i mean ICE CREAM.

really.
my mind is on pause and my fingers are still going. this town does not have town trash pickup. and i have to bring my trash to the dump in an old chevy impala which usually has kids in it. Today I just brought the recycling because it is so flipping hot that I am SCARED to look into the trashcan without a hazmat suit on and I am SCARED to put it in my car trunk... I may never be able to use it again. literally.

really.
oh dear god, i dread the trash. I do have gloves and I will wear clothing free to be burned. we will see.

keep me in your prayers these days (for reasons other than the trash, I swear) because I need some bolstering. crazy life.
crazy.

Things Found

2011-07-06T09:07:00.001-04:00

We're good, we've found the camera cord, a cow timer, a greenlantern birthday present and the atari controller so my kid can get bored with pacman just like me...
ah. There's a lot to say, yes. So much of it is wrapped up in the summer, the humidity, the pang of expectations matched to a different sort of reality, maeah.
Let us make a list of things to do this summer, shall we? things that are possible, and not even very difficult... and I'll extend it through the forever if need be... things I'd like to do that don't (neccessarily) involve homemaking or childrearing... right? here we go..
1. I'd like to make another quilt, or set it up to be made... without even having a baby to give it to...
2. I'd like to have a coffee at the beach, in the morning.
3. I'd like to find an early morning church service to beat the heat in many different ways.
4. I'd like to make a favorite cookie... a combination such that the family can't stand any other..:) uhoh, sort of homemaker-y and childrear-y all at once. damn the man. damn.
5. I'd like to get the car all sandy with the beach, and leave it that way til the snow mixes in...

You? What about you?

and, what I'm not doing while doing this:

*oh, dudes. Its also my anniversary today, nine years J.d.... Nine.

A good number, as we enter into a new year, of the 1 variety...anything can happen, it won't even be difficult even....

Looking for the MOJO...

2011-07-05T07:29:00.002-04:00

Aside from the very obvious chaos of moving, I haven't got a reason for my writing having changed flavor, and I'm on a search: either for a reason, or for the flavor of familiar. I'm going to see Chakra Chakra today for the first time in a while and thats always good fodder for my brain and sets me on a good track... and I think I've committed to posting every day for a week or so... to see if the publicity of it will drag me back up to my own standard of interest. I have been journaling, and think maybe the riches are going there, but I don't want to give that up, its the first time in years that I have journaled consistently and I like the total and utter privacy that comes with pen to paper. It is more than a like, I confess. I deeply love it.
Maybe the riches are just gone, dulled by the humidity, slightly curled and thus ill-fitting.
I am very slightly intrigued enough to try and write them out.

*The boy-who-was-5 woke up an hour earlier than usual this morning because today is the first day of summercamp, and he will spend all four days left of this week riding a bus, sweating with children his age and exploring hot outdoorsy play... there may not be enough coffee in this world to get me through the wild nervousness I have felt in the past 12 hours, a bus! he's going on a bus! its not even literal nervousness, I know busses will serve him well in his life... its just a new thing he is growing into and the 'bigboyness' of the summer is getting to me. a pool! a pool! he is going to learn to swim (more) without me?! holy shoot. I feel like a newbie kindergarten mother all over again...

*I will show picturesof our new digs and the toy chaos within, but I can't find the cord that attaches everything to everything else so there is that.

OK?

Nervy Nervy

2011-07-04T15:39:00.000-04:00

I was at many a cookout this weekend, of different sorts, with different branches of family but seemingly the same numbers of 'those to be avoided'.. I have to imagine that most families have this, the few and spectacularly odd cousins, uncles, whathaveyous, that somehow end up in the corners of the rooms, or the centers ... and around whom the crowd flows, a highspeed montage flickerflicker of the 80s... this weekend we were all on fullalert for the freaky. and really? got none. it was completely tame, after all the innerprep/dread. go figure.
I wonder if there are situations in the world in which I am the central, still target- and the world morphs and swingsways around me? If my inner world were made plain? perhaps everyone else would be making their dodge. I know there are lots who feel this about their lives all the time, but I am not one of them. A sideliner here, always, and fine with it, as age has allowed.
I ate hotdogs begrudgingly and I slathered my burgers with guacamole and I am the better for it.
I was accompanied by a strange nervousness all weekend, like if I didn't have my eyes on all my peoples that someone would be cornered or end up pinned down by one of the oddities... and I tried to calm myself but spent an inordinate amount of time seeking my peeps. I do believe I was doing an avoidance dance for myself in that hunt and peck.
I'm home now, sitting in all 'anew's... in a napping house, where everyone is sleeping, and we are home. ah. familiarly odd. slow and simple.

ALIVE!! she's ALIVE!!!!

2011-07-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

Things I have learned in the past month:
1. Young Frankenstein, with Gene Wilder, sort of goes over the head of the young ones. I guess Teri Garr is only really funny to grownups, and Gene Wilder, as Dr. Fronkenstein, is just creepy and confusing to a five year old.
2. My youngest has started to tell me that people are going to die. and that is just creepy and confusing and scary to this, now 37 year old. He also tells me that some of them will come back again, but not all.
!
3. 37 is not nearly so nice to say as 36, or probably, even 40. I am waiting for next year to tell anyone how old I am again.
4. This house is really big. When all of our things were put in it there were still three and a half completely empty rooms.
5. Tireswings are endlessly entertaining. really, its true. get one.
6. I can really be a recycling nazi, and people don't find that very attractive.
7. Sometimes I focus on an old way of seeing things, and I have a hard time adjusting to some new realities... letting go of some of my worry and anxiety about bill paying and money spending in our time of 'flush' is one of those things. There is a time for everything, and worry and anxiety should be saved up for anxious times.
8. There are a lot of spiders in the country. many.
9. I need to not be in a hurry more. I'm going to work on it.
10. I missed having a computer, and a virtual network, I did.

see you again, soon. soon, jaguar, soon.

Insurance.

2011-06-16T15:58:00.000-04:00

What a wild and crazy thing, insurance.
really, i just spent a whopping load of money on 'protection' in the event of a wild happening that may never come to pass. When you look at the money and the payouts and the replacement costs, its almost a wishful thing, like 'well, gee, i hope a flood happens in my arid plain while we are away on vacation so that I can build an entire house from scratch'... hm...
no wonder they ask if i've got a history of arson. no wonder.

our closing date is in one week. air mattresses are primed and ready as we will sleep on whatever floor we can find. although that is sort of a joke as we will have moved into something that has twice the footage as what we have left and eighteen times the footage of the bed we are all sharing nightly. if not twentyeight times the footage of said bed.

hearing is better, but I am longing for the respite of the quiet. thinking of checking out a Quaker meeting or two in the next months, for a forced family breathing time, i'll have to see if the urchins allow that to pass.
something always pans out, it just may not be the gold you were looking for...