faith like a kale seed

Kale is in the mustard family so I'm not exactly taking liberty with that reference. And I'd consider it a common reference, but maybe you haven't read the new testament lately, or at all, so I'll tell you that it's from the book of Matthew, Chapter 17, verse 20. And He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

I'm not so sure about moving mountains. But doesn't putting such a tiny speck into the ground with the hope it will yield a bounty of nutritious greens seem just as impossible? It's biology, sure. Or not. Like raising babies.

Anything could happen. But you trust it will all turn out for good in the end. If you don't believe it will, then don't even start in the first place.

If you're certain that the birds will eat the seeds before they germinate, don't waste an afternoon getting mud in your fingernails, poking them into damp soil, just don't.

It's hard to believe. My gardening past has been spotty. Flowers in pots and sporadic attempts at container vegetables. One year we had piles of romaine lettuce but the broccoli was anemic and wilted before maturity. We've moved around a lot (no really, I never stop playing that broken record) and I haven't grown all that much. So it's not rote yet and still very much fantastic and magical.

Maybe it never becomes routine. Maybe serious gardeners with years under their rubber clogs still believe in magic. Like having babies. You can do all the right things, you can read the right books and put forth your very best effort, but these little people come to us so full of their own ideas and dreams and predilections: the resulting yield might not be what we are expecting. Or it might be so much more. Amazing!

We hope for the best. We have faith. We water and weed and shoo starlings away.

i love the smell of bay in my kitchen

There is a pox upon our house. A little over twenty-four hours after discovering a fresh crop of red blisters across her chest and stomach, my girl is growing tired of couch life. The littlest one in the house has surely been exposed, but has yet to show any symptoms. I mean, symptoms other than inexplicable crabbiness, which could be the start of something sicky or could just be my current taxed patience. Or could just be a being Two, with all the rights, privileges and frustration therein.

At any rate, this isn't my long awaited discourse on my take on the increasing eco-green industry. The whole Let's Save The Environment by Buying More Stuff! insanity. I've been meaning to write that all week, what with earth day this past week and all, and while I hope if you have some mind reading supertool, you're using your power for good, I don't expect that you've aimed it at my head and rifled through my random blog post ideas. Which is to say, by long awaited, I mean, I've been long waiting to write it, not you've been waiting to read it. And I'll write it later, which is why I'm mentioning it at all right now, so I remember.

So this is just what I'm having for dinner. An easy recipe to share, a variation on the old lentil and rice stand-by. From the Vegetarian Times Cookbook. I tweak it a little, you know I do, but this is the recipe as written.

Lentil-Chickpea Stew with Spinach

1 C dry lentils
3 tbsp virgin olive oil
3 C diced onions
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 C uncooked long-grain rice
6 1/2 C water
2 Bay Leaves
1 1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground pepper
1 C cooked chickpeas

Cover the lentils with hot water and let sit. Warm the oil in a soup pot over medium-low heat, and cook the onions and spices, stirring, for 8 minutes. Remove 1/3 of the onion mixture and reserve it for garnish. Add the rice to the onions in the soup pot, and cook 1 minute to cat the grains. Drain the lentils and add to the onion-rice mixture along with the water, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Simmer, covered, until the rice and lentils are tender, about 30 to 45 minutes. Add the chickpeas and heat until warmed through. Discard the bay leaves.

Steam the spinach, chop coarsely and stir into lentils. Ladle the stew into bowls and top with a spoonful of yogurt cheese or yogurt. Add the reserved onions, lemons, pepper and parsley or cilantro.

Okay, so I didn't list all the garnish ideas on the ingredient list. I skip that part. Actually, I use fewer onions from the start and don't remove any to use later as a garnish at all. The people for whom I cook much prefer onions all cooked up in the mishmash of a stew, not plopped on top of everything. I think we'll be eating this soon with feta melted on sprouted wheat english muffins, for no other reason than the pickings are slim in my kitchen today and that's what I've got.

I like this recipe because it's so fast to make, everybody in my house likes it well enough to eat several bowls full, and it gives me a good excuse to pluck leaves off of the bay plant in my backyard.

suspended animation

It's been a while. I've been meaning to report here with some progress on some of my recent subjects. Namely, the haircut conundrum and the push-up endeavor. I actually titled this post 'progress report' but this week's This American Life episode about cryogenics is fresh in my head and it seemed fitting. It's been cold here. And I've been hovering, waiting, freezing. This might be a missive from the insulated chamber. Don't mind my choppy thoughts and empty complexion: I'm not completely thawed yet.

Exactly three seconds before I grabbed my haircutting shears and whacked off the front of my hair in some imprecise approximation of the same shorty-bang bob I sported six or or so years ago, I was convinced that I'd give long hair one last hurrah and see what braids are like come summer. But, oh, the allure of sharp metal on dry hair. The scissors were just right there. Okay, so I had to open the drawer and root around for them a bit. But then they were in my hand and I had a fist full of hair and when you have scissors in one hand and hair in the other, there's really only one thing to do. Because deciding could really take all day. And growing hair is so passive, it's a decision by default, a body tagging along on the ride of so many hair follicles, hoping it works out in the end. Vanity thine name is wonky-hormone induced existential crisis. I know all about decisions and defaults. Snip. And that first cut is always such a relief. Yes. I can do this. It's a little thing, but it's mine. I trimmed up the sides and back, too. Which isn't as bold and important at all as harnessing some new career or returning to school or creating some fantastic, inspiring piece of something worth remembering, but there are only so many decisions I can make while wearing pajamas in the bathroom.

For the first week or so after my push-up test, I faithfully practiced every day. I admit to having slacked some since then, but BUT! I am now doing ten solid, serious pushups every time I try. Near daily, not quite. I don't think I've built stronger muscles so rapidly, rather I think this experiment indicates that exercise is, indeed, partially a practice in muscle memory. My arms know what to do now. They drive down the street without thinking and turn into the driveway while my thoughts are elsewhere. I just personified my arms *and* gave them a driver's license. Which is the least I could do, really, since I've been secretly fond of my shoulders for many years, hushing my self-deprecation just long enough to notice how nice and strong they are (and the freckles, so cute, but, no, such worrisome little reminders of excessive sun exposure, shhh).

make your own kind of music, sing your own special song

There was a moment this past weekend when my daughter rushed by me, on her way outside, and I didn't so much take notice of what she was wearing. A few minutes later, I peeked out the living room window to see her marching in a circle in the front yard, a large cardboard box embellished with color and eye-holes over her head.

And it made me think of a recent conversation I had with a friend. She was relaying something her son did that might have made some of his friends snicker a little bit, or else, if there wasn't overt snickering, there could have been, but my friend's son didn't care. We talked about how admirable it is to do something, choose something, or maybe be someone a little unexpected, a little unusual, a little different, and be fervently and unabashedly okay with that.

The box on my daughter's head? Apparently some attention grabbing tree disguise, made with the intention of compelling questions (from neighborhood kids, I reckon, maybe something like, What are you doing with a box on your head? Weirdo!) so she could jump into a conversation about nature and conservation.

For the record, no children asked her what she was doing. Which, considering the veritable parade of costumes and funny play often present on our front lawn, is unsurprising. But she kept at it a good long while and then came back inside and wrote this:

The trees trees
that sway in the breeze
I stand by these.

Good and strong
they'd live long
if man would not destroy them.

Trees are not some toys -ahem!-
Man has no right
to toy them.

They are strong, they are true
they live not to make
boards for you.

So stretch a rope
from me to tree
and tie it very tautly.

You'll cut this tree down
over my Dead Body.

To get the proper delivery, you'll have to do like my girl and raise your fists in the air for the last line, bellowing it out loudly. Which isn't so over-dramatic at all if you know Freya, whose passions have always ran deeply. I love that about her.

push it real good

Disclaimer: I debated with myself long and hard before deciding to post that (decidedly cropped and intentionally shadowy monochrome) picture there. I guess it could be misconstrued as being too open, too revealing, too much; it's more of me than you're likely to see should you see me in person, but less than you'd see of a lot of folks, should you happen to not live in a bubble. I'm not in the habit of posting nude pictures of myself, but I am in the habit of writing about myself online, which is something of a verbal Full Monty equivalent, naked in words every time I post. Even my words aren't so revealing here, in this quiet blog spot any person could stumble upon and find, but it's still me, raw and real and honest, even if you have to squint a little and leave the rest to your imagination. This is who I am. And I'm working on being more okay with that.

Last week, I was listening the The Satellite Sisters, my turn-to podcast when I want to be amused and vaguely informed and generally kept company while I nurse a toddler or wash some dishes, and they were discussing the push-up. Of the drop and give me twenty variety, not the frozen confection out of the back of a beat-up van playing the same tinny version of Turkey in the Straw a thousand times over.

Apparently, new studies (to which I offer no links, I'm not that sort of researched blogger) find some correlation between a person's ability to do push-ups and his/her general fitness level, especially as one ages. This makes sense, in a making broad assumptions sort of way, as we might assume that if you can do twenty push-ups somewhat easily, you're likely not a two pack a day smoker. I'm not sure if the relationship is symbiotic or coincidental, I am sure there are many exceptions, but I'll buy it. I might have my numbers a little off, but I'm recalling that studies indicate that a reasonably fit 40 year old woman should be able to do fifteen pushups. A similarly aged man, 27.

Now I don't purport myself to be super fit or anything. In fact, if I'm really telling it like it is, then I'll tell you that the truth is that I'm closing in on twenty pounds above where I was a year ago, and it's not extra muscle bulk I'm carrying, no. It's twenty pounds of a dang hard year, clinging to my middle like bad memories. I don't exercise as much as I did before. The one-two sucker punch of miscarriage complications slash fractured foot followed closely by the onset of one very wet winter did a number on me and my ability to move my body as much as I did before. I'm not athletic in the slightest. I'm the opposite of athletic and dislike sports of all kinds. But I do like being active and walking and hiking and bike riding. The only weight I lift is my thirty-five pound son.

Genetics didn't give me a dewy complexion or musical talent, just a stocky and stout stature with maybe a little bit of an extra inclination toward being muscley. So despite any dedicated effort on my part, I have a strong upper body. I mean, stronger than you might otherwise think. Or I thought it was pretty strong, anyway. Who knows what you think. I may have even had passing thoughts of pride, which confused my customary self-deprecating disposition, regarding my strong back and shoulders.

So when the youngest of the Sisters (but still, a decade or so ahead of me) declared her push-up test total at 16, I was challenged to try myself. I can't recall the last time I tried to do one. Not on the on-your-knees type, but a regular full on push-up. I had no reference for guessing how many I could do, but if a woman in her forties can do sixteen, me, with my strongish back and strong enough arms, well, I can do ten, right? Easy.

Not. Easy.

I managed a measly three. And my husband, who says that at his best he could pump out sixty-eight in two minutes, reminded me that to be "right" my arms must bend to ninety degree angles. So the three I barely did? Probably not even right. I'm pretty sure I didn't go down that low. Now, I have since seen websites that demonstrate a proper push-up starting prone and working up, one, back down, up, two. Like that. If I start flat and go up, and back down, flat, I can do lots, lots of independent push-ups. But hover with my nose near the floor and my arms at right angles? No freaking way.

So all this means what? That maybe I have some serious training to do before I quit my day job and join the women's bodybuilding circuit.

My new goal is to get to a point where I can do ten in a row. I'm practicing by holding plank exercises and doing half-pushups, where I focus on just the downward motion. We'll see what happens from there. I don't really aspire to the full on body wax, oiled skin and string bikini look, arms clasped above my head in flexing competition pose, but I do want to be just as strong as I can be. I'm not there yet.

don't blink or you'll miss it

I have so many things I want to tell you. So many ideas that crop up quickly, like those intense momentary wind gusts in the desert that seem to come out of nowhere and sting your legs with flying sand, but then, just as suddenly, fall quiet. What was that thing I was thinking? That thing that made me lose track of the present and wash the same dinner plate over and over so many times? It seemed important then, but now, I don't remember.

Have you read a particularly good book lately? Fiction? What I need is a decent novel. Someone who knows me well enough thinks I'm hard to please, but I'll tell you what I think: I think I have an abysmal track record for picking real doozies. Books, Movies, What have you. So it's not that I don't like *anything*, it's that I have such varied, unpredictable tastes that I try a little bit of everything and I have to slog through plenty before I find some that fit just right.

Of course, it may also be argued that I might (and this is purely speculation for while I am an expert at resorting to snappy self-deprecating retorts for humor's sake, I never say anything overtly incriminating, a gal's got to have a little bit of mystery, after all) be a little bit of a contrarian. I've been considering this quite a bit recently. I can be contrary. I don't know how to get along with everyone but I do know how to take the dissenting opinion. This applies to lots of things, media, fashion, lifestyle choices, presidential candidates.

I don't care to discuss politics at length, but I will say this: It's hard for me to look at the current campaign without seeing a fat, fast moving bandwagon. Just guess how I feel about bandwagons. It boils down to this. I don't care for the masses. If the masses care for something, then I can assume it's not for me. This fuzzy logic has proven true more often than not. Which is why I'm having a very difficult time considering Obama's rising popularity as more than a parade, people falling in line just because the line is long and people are in line. I see a lot of enthusiasm. And? A lot of enthusiasm. This cynic isn't blowing horns for anybody yet.

The truth is, the more popular something (some one, whatever) becomes, the more suspicious I am. So if I am building a reputation as a curmudgeon, I supposed it's deserved. I'm a jolly curmudgeon, though. Not one of those surly ones. I never (okay, rarely) rap angrily on the window at passers-by from inside my house and I only smell like urine a little.

You saw Blades of Glory, right? Will Farrell? That urine line had me laughing for days, but it was all in his delivery. I don't really stink. But I do contradict myself, all the time. I have a soft spot for the basest comedies. I still quote Chris Farley movies with my sister and I find Will Farrell hilarious. It's true. You couldn't pick me out of line up of the hoi polloi if you tried.

I've made two bad comedy movie picks in a row, though, and I didn't find them funny at all. Not the 40 year old Virgin and not, definitely not, Superbad. Just because I loved Michael Cera in Arrested Development and just because I had so recently watched and adored Freaks and Geeks, in which Seth Rogen plays a part, does not mean I should assume their respective future projects will appeal to me in the same way. I didn't make it past the first twenty minutes or so, but if the masses made it a blockbuster, I'll gladly be the grumpy curmudgeon calling bullshit from the corner. Because it wasn't funny to me at all.

I haven't seen so many other movies lately. When I discovered NBC was streaming The Office online, we watched all of the current season, which we hadn't seen, and got all caught up. It does make me laugh. See, and that's popular, right? I'm right there with you. Movies often feel like such a time investment. I can much more easily commit to watching one, okay just one more, television episode than a whole full length feature film.

Oh, but this isn't about movies! This was just an incredibly roundabout, freewritey way of saying that, yeah, sometimes I like regular old stuff that you probably like, too. I'm overdue a trip to the library and I need something compelling and brilliant and life changing to read. Or, you know, something Not Terrible. I'm easy.

i beat dead horses with scissors

As much as I tout the diy hairdo, and as much as I grimace at my bedraggled appearance every day, I'm at the same exact point I'm always at, about three months past a trim: I waiver. I think, maybe, I should let it grow out. Or, I should chop it all off so short. Or I should cut bangs. See, I thought my flirtation with bangs was five years past, but then I heard someone refer to them recently as "the poor woman's botox" or something like that and -I must confess- I can't get that comparison out of my head. Even though it contradicts so much of what I believe, in theory, about beauty and aging and self-confidence.

Recently, I listened to a PRI To The Best of our Knowledge podcast on the beauty biz and the part that really rung with me was how younger and younger women are putting themselves through invasive cosmetic procedures to avoid looking old. But a young woman with a chemically unexpressive forehead and plumped up collagen injected lips doesn't look like she's embracing her youth, she starts to look like the women who have already lost theirs.

I don't want to look like that.

So, the verdict's still out. Bangs or no bangs? Short or to my shoulder? My hair starts doing this thatgirl flippy thing the longer it gets and I don't enjoy the way that feels. Can you believe that of all the things I'd like to think more about and write about and receive some comment feedback about, I'm still stuck on my fricking fracking hair? It's safe, that's what. And easier to write about amid the distractions of a suddenly extra-needy two year old and an always (but always) chatty nine year old and the various half-neglected chores around the house. How thoughtful do I need to be in writing about my hair, fer cryin out loud? Not very.

weekly fly-by

I don't intend to wait nearly a week in-between blog entries. In fact, I've started several drafts over the last few days, but for various reasons, I get distracted or frustrated by my lack of articulation or bored with my subject and I just haven't finished. Let's you and me pretend it would be all such fascinating stuff. Because the dirty corner truth is that it's the same old soft focus, isolated moment fodder that doesn't mean much of anything to anybody but me. And that's okay, because the whole reason I'm here at this party in the first place is for practice. Not writing practice. Noticing practice. Remembering practice. The practice of sharing. Whatever that means.

Oh, here's something worth sharing. Consider this a friendly public service announcement, all ye who arrive here via misspelled google searches: this blog is called little pitchers. I sometimes share pictures. But pictures and pitchers? Two totally separate things. Pitchers are vessels for holding and pouring. Or, so I've heard, the tossers of balls in baseball games. But pitchers are not photographs or images. Those would be pictures. Here, let's try that again. Pictures. They even have distinct pronunciations. Yes, it's true. Pitchers. Pictures. Not the same thing. Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed for you, and by "you" I don't single out some poor lone poor speller, no, I reference the handfuls who clonk on over here every single day looking for pitchers of teeth, pitchers of lolas (what the heck?), pitchers of any sort of word I've written. But no pitchers of pitchers yet.

And while I'm on the subject of search engine keywords, I'll mention that the number two way random anonymous folks find this little quiet place of mine here is from looking up haircuts. I haven't trimmed mine since I wrote about it in the beginning of December. I'm overdue. I'm a lazy haircutter, it's one of those chores I always procrastinate on for a long old time, but then it's such a relief when I finally get to it. Owing to the number of folks who seem to be seeking out information on d-i-y haircuts, there must not be enough validation out there. So, you! Hey you! With the scraggly hair and the sharp scissors. Just freaking do it already, why don't you? Cut it off. So what if it's a little crooked? It'll grow back. And you'll get better. You've spent more money to look worse before, admit it. And the feeling you get when it's all over? Like Sydney Bristow dying her hair in an airport bathroom. Bad. Ass. Not that here, here's my self-esteem, please take care of it fretfulness that happens at the hair salon. The do it yourself haircut isn't just about saving a few (or a lot) of dollars. It's about being yourself, not some not-quite version of yourself as translated by someone who doesn't watch you flex muscles naked in the bathroom. It's about not hoping to heck it doesn't look like crap or having to buck up and pretend, in the big, swivel chair reveal, that it looks fine when it so clearly, painfully, does not. It's about not having to come home and touch up spots that the stylist missed. It's about never having to break up with a longtime stylist because she keeps giving you the same old lady 'do. It's about doing it your own effing self. I don't know why haircuts have become so specialized. If you catch me in a cynical mood (not hard to do), I'll grumble about how everything has been industrialized and specialized and don't get me started on the standards of aesthetics and beauty in our culture. Must we all have frosty tips and chunky highlights and some fancy style heavy on appliances and product? No. I mean, if that stuff all rings your bell, then do what you must. But when somebody else does it for you? Something changes, some little shift in responsibility, some little erosion of your own self image. And, by "your" I mean "my" but I'm going to be bold and assume that this must apply to others, as well. I don't want to hand someone else the power, even some faint suggestion of power, to influence how I perceive myself. If I do it all wrong, I'll blame myself, but I'll get over it. I blame myself for a lot of crap. But if it turns out fine? Man, the best haircuts I've ever gotten at salons never gave me that feeling. No way.

What do you want to bet that my inclusion of the word "naked" up there pulls in all sorts of gutterminds with questionable spelling skills? Maybe they need a haircut. Ha!

smells like spring, or something

I caught a crappy whiff last week. Which is to say, a whiff of crap. And I checked the bottom of my shoe, immediately, because I can't tell you how often I've walked across my yard and slid across wet dog crap. Not my dog's crap, mind you, but random, anonymous dog crap. (My apologies to my daughter -who does not read this blog, but whose expected future proficiency with a search engine is bound to reveal the secret online life of her mother one of these days- as she has respectfully requested that I strike the C word from my speech). We have a plan for a front fence, but until then, the unwelcome feces situation sneaks into my head all the time. If I'm not stepping in it, I think I'm stepping in it. If I don't think I'm stepping in it, I'm glaring through my big front window at the person letting their dog piss in my grass, waiting to confront them if the squat-to-crap position is assumed. It's becoming a problem. So when I smell that unmistakable smell, it's only natural that I'd check the bottom of my shoes. But this time, last week, it wasn't my shoe.

And then I had a small flash of some psychosomatic existential crisis: I'm having such a crappy week, it even smells like crap, something like that (though maybe ramp up the maudlin a few extra notches). I talked myself down from that, so ridiculous, and determined that it was just phantom crap smell. At different times in my cat's life, she's taken out her frustrations (with many, many moves, mostly, but sometimes it's just breakfast coming a few minutes too late) by urinating in places cat urine does not belong. It seems to come in bursts. It hasn't happened for a long time, thank goodness, but when it does, when I pick up that pile of laundry and smell that unmistakable ammonia-laded acrid but sweet stench, or when I stretch out my legs in bed upon waking and wonder, is that cold or is that wet?, when it happens frequently for a spell, I think I smell cat pee all the time. The odor crawls up inside my sinus cavity and hunkers down low and then surprise! does jumping jacks to get my attention all of a sudden, whether the cat really peed in some strange place or not. Phantom Cat Piss Smell. So, if the wafting stink of crap wasn't from some mutt's mushy pile outside, if it wasn't the rotting smell of my own wayward psyche leaking out into the atmosphere, then it was probably just my imagination.

But my imagination was so vivid. I kept smelling it. It was growing stronger. It was driving me crazy. And then I walked back to my boy's room, which isn't his room for sleeping, yet, but just his room for toys and books and clothes and books, and found, a discarded, forgotten poopy diaper. As in, I vaguely recalled changing it hours and hours earlier and just upon finishing, the doorbell rang (package delivery) and then the phone rang and then it was probably lunch time and then the day just clipped along and I never took care of that diaper. And it had sat there all day, warming up in front of one of our original 1958 cutting edge of technology radiant wall heaters. Like my own personal shit scented aromatherapy diffuser.

So sometimes life is crappy, and sometimes it's just a diaper you left behind.

This past weekend was a pleasant rush of yard work and muffins and reading and hot baths. You'd think I'd been missing hot water for months the way I jumped at the bathtub as soon as the hot water heater was replaced. I don't take a bath every night, usually, but I always could, if I wanted to. And something about the not being able to made me want to all the more and it was only three days, but I've taken five baths so far to make up for it.

And we built a new raised garden bed in an under-utilized corner of our front yard. By we, I really mean "he" as his building skills far surpass mine, but I stuck some annuals in pots for the front steps and stood by with the camera, should anyone care, or not, to have their picture taken.

It felt like Spring and I am excited about this shift in our family's busyness, the activities moving outside and in the dirt. The children coming in for dinner with grass stained knees, the obligatory removal of tiny splinters from hands with tweezers before bed. Our transient past has meant that we haven't done much in the way of vegetable growing, but I'm feeling enthusiastic. In general. And there's nothing crappy about that.

the boiling point

There aren't a lot of things that make me feel so Little House on the Prairie like having to boil water to have any warmer than, say, cold. Okay, so there are a lot of things that would make me feel so rustic and antiquated, but they're usually cozy little things I do because I choose to or want to, or maybe they're things that wouldn't likely occur in my life anyhow. I don't expect to play catch with an inflated pig bladder anytime soon.

I also didn't expect to wake up last morning and learn that in the night the bottom to our (old) hot water heater had rusted out. A whole night of running water, running hot water. A whole day with no hot tap water. Another whole day ahead of me tomorrow. It's not a big deal, in the big fat grand scheme of life and love and other things. It's just an inconvenience, a hassle.

It's my habit to fill my kettle up to boil water so many times a day. (not the kettle pictured above. that's a recent thrift treasure and, I think, will soon live on my front stoop as a house for some small plant or flower). I already wash all the dishes by hand. It's not a large leap to add the two together. So, it's not the boiling of a large pot that I find troublesome. It's just the being mindful enough to set a pot to boil and then to wait for it. I'm no good at waiting.

I guess one could say that hot tap water is the email to our times past handwritten letter. We all love to get mail, to send mail (I made generous assumptions here). But email is expedient and fits in the small fissures of our busy days. Letterwriting is something that has fallen, is falling, away. And it's a shame and just about anybody would agree. We should write more letters! Everybody loves a little something happy in their mailbox! Mail is great! Yes! Sure! Oh, but email. So quick and simple. And so we tap away when a postcard would be so much sweeter.

And what does all this mean, you wonder. . . Well, no, you probably don't wonder, or at least you ought not, because often I start in on some tenuous analogy, linking up disparate concepts with the most fragile threads which rarely no one else can see but I, and then I drop the whole mess and it doesn't make even the tiniest sense any more, not even to me (especially not after midnight on a Tuesday). But I'm finding this, the incessant boiling, actually a little pleasant, in a slowing down and noticing sort of way. The thing about letter writing is that we don't want it to become obsolete. Even if we aren't writing a lot of handwritten letters, we see the value in keeping the tradition alive.

And so maybe it is with water. Only, the tradition of boiling and boiling fell to the wayside. Having to do it is a hassle, not a simple happy task. We don't miss it because it transitioned out of our modern daily lives before we were born. I'm not starting a fire in the backyard, so the stovetop still allows for a certain amount of convenience. The truth is that my whole life is pretty darn convenient, busted hot water heater or no.

Lopsided analogy dropped. . . now! I told you it wouldn't last so long. And that's mighty close to the repsonse I had when the husband relayed our predicament. We're keeping fingers crossed that the home warranty folks cover a replacement and, in the meantime, boil water, drink tea, hope nothing else goes wrong for a while.

Which would be a Nothing Else after the something which was the husband's pick-up truck making the unfortunate acquaintance of a telephone pole this evening, on his way home from work. Not a banner day around our house. His truck is in sad shape, but he's unhurt. A plumber won't be here until Thursday, but at least we have water at all.

going forward to go backward

When I was pregnant with my boy, something really terrible happened. Something that made me wonder about the world in which my children were living, something that made me worry about their respective futures, something that made me so sad and wistful for times past: Our local PBS affiliate stopped airing Mister Rogers.

By this time, my daughter was rapidly approaching seven, and would still, if we found ourselves at home mid-day, prefer a visit to the Neighborhood of Make Believe more than doing just about anything else. In her early years, from two-ish onward, we made deliberate attempts to be crosslegged on the floor in front of the television each weekday at 11:30 sharp. She was five when we moved to Arizona and it was such a relief and a comfort to discover that Mister Rogers aired daily at the same late morning slot to which we were accustomed. Moving with children across states can be a challenging transition; any little familiar thing helps. And so she'd turn it on, company while she drew or played with stuffed animals, and I'd fix lunch and in that moment, it didn't matter that we were in a new place, that she didn't have any friends, that everything felt upside down and out of sorts. Lady Aberlin would float through Make Believe and Lady Elaine would get into scrapes and the trolley would ding and the fish would be fed. Ah.

Once we were well outfitted in our new Arizona life, once routines and regularities were carved into place (at first I typed 'fell into place' but building something from nothing and feeling okay about it is rarely something to which happenstance is responsible, more likely it's chipped into place tediously with dull tools and no water breaks) our schedules and her shrinking interest meant we caught the program less frequently. I looked forward to sharing that gentle half hour of children's programming with the next child.

I was bummed for days and days when the Phoenix station yanked Mister Rogers. I can't even recall what they put in his place, probably some obnoxious program which died shortly thereafter, replaced by some other new obnoxious program, and so on and so on. It is not some arbitrary "for the good of the children" ideal that compels my passion for this show, no. It is that I don't think, in all the years of early childhood programming, anyone else has ever made a show any better. You could say that I think it's The Best. I don't care that it's been decades since new shows were made. I don't care that, by today's standards, it's slow and simple and, okay, maybe a little hokey. And I don't believe that children care either. I'll be so bold as to say that I'm suspicious of anyone who doesn't like Mister Rogers (which means that if you fall into that category, don't tell me), children included. I've had conversations with other parents before in which I was told that their children find the show "too boring." I admit it: this baffles me, confuses me, breaks my heart a little. I don't know that I want a generation of children who find Mister Rogers "too boring" to be the key to our futures. This is when I start to sound like a gray-haired curmudgeon. . .

Mister Rogers isn't a tub of candy, he's a homebaked oatmeal cookie with whole grains and maybe pure maple syrup. Which isn't to say that a little candy isn't okay sometimes, just, well, I wouldn't want it to be the mainstay in my kid's diet.

We'd already checked the Oregon Public Broadcasting television lineup weeks in advance of moving back to this state last Spring. Hurrah! Mister Rogers every day at eleven thirty again. Just in time for my boy making a decided leap from Baby to Toddler. A perfect little rest in the middle of our day, during a hard scrabble few months I refer to as "the darkest times." My girl would watch, her little brother often between her legs and leaning against her, for old time's sake. Like visiting a dear old relative.

And then, what do you know? OPB did another schedule switcheroo and the show was shoved into the 6:30 am slot. I'm convinced that this is the slot where they send old kids programs to die. The inconvenient time will allow us to forget about it, before it disappears all together. And I'll tell you, they're on to something, because despite my fondness for Fred, for the cozy memories he's created for my family (and, yes, for me firsthand too, as a child who also watched the show every evening), for the value I believe this program has for any child, it fell off my radar. We are rarely, if ever, awake in the six hour.

It hit me a few weeks ago what a tragedy this is. Now that Fred Rogers has died, I keep hoping that dvd sets of his shows will be released. But until then, I keep waiting for the classic programs to get the axe, to no longer be a common cultural reference. A world without Mister Rogers? Can you imagine?

So we've started hooking our laptop up to the cable cord at night, set to record the show in the morning, while we sleep. We're filing episodes away on an external hard drive, to be watched later or again. As soon as I get the software, I'll start burning dvds myself. And I don't know what pbs would think of that, but I know Fred would be okay with it, and so that's good enough for me. Fred Rogers fact: did you know that he nearly saved the vcr by convincing congress that it was okay for parents to record his program to watch it later, that he thought the vcr was a wonderful tool for busy parents to use so that a child could watch his show, even if they were at daycare during the day, that if a parent needed to make dinner, they could turn on the vcr and play his show? And that's why we can record television programs today! Without some piracy laws or what have you. Or, at least, that's the gist of my understanding of his influence in the birth of the vcr. whew.

So, we think he's swell. I think it's funny that we have a complicated system of external drives and usb ports to record a program made twenty years ago. I think it's a shame that he isn't aired in the middle of the day anymore. But in our house, I hope it's always a neighborly day in this beautywood. Would you be mine, could you be mine? Won't you be. . . my neighbor.

all the layers

I've heard at least several mentions in so many days of some newly engineered onion which will not make you cry. And this onion, so I've heard, will taste and react in all other aspects just as you expect an onion should, minus that one little thing. No tears. And I can just about see why that might be a desirable thing. I am especially sensitive to even the weakest, half-withered onion and fat drops roll down my face as I tend to my chopping most nights. But it's an onion. That's what they do. For every reluctant pot of soup I've ever thrown together with random ingredients culled from a bare pantry and noticed, upon first taste check, the obvious absence of onion, I can't buy that they can remove the cry and leave the rest behind. I won't believe it even if they insist it to be so. I won't deny an onion its onion-ness any more than I would keep my daughter from being who she is. I could steer her toward safer wardrobe choices, respectfully request she consider choosing something that goes together (says who?) more than her typical eccentric fashion, but why would I? She tends to alternate from a monochromatic ensemble one day to some crazy mishmash of patterns and colors and textures the next, the latter often drawing a smidge more public notice or comment at times than I tend to prefer for myself. I could encourage her to take off a few layers (the girl, she likes her layers) or consider switching the stripes for a solid or maybe ditch a few of the necklaces. One might say, despite her poise and confidence and brilliant enthusiasm for her own brand of fashion, that some of her outfits might make my eyes water, figuratively speaking. But that's who she is. And to ask her to change into something else would change her. It would spoil the fantastic pleasure she finds in putting outfits together and she'd look the same, she'd seem the same, she'd probably still be just about as witty and sharp and interesting. Just about. But it would change her in some tiny way and a tiny drop of water can carve a canyon, eventually. Even take the change part (the biggest part, really) out of the equation and I'll say that dabbing at my teary eyes with the back of my onion-juicy hand is a little diner making ritual I don't care to lose. Not because I particularly like hoping that I don't chop off my finger as I finish up the last few slices with my eyes inadvertently clamping shut in opposition, no. Not because I have an endless supply of fresh responses to the, "oh no, Ma, why are you crying?" affectations I get from that sharp dressing girl of mine, no. I support holding on to as many rituals as one can notice. I believe that even brief annoyances can be important. I think if we could lump a whole lot of annoying things up and eliminate them all at once, our collectives lives would instantly become that much more bland. I'll keep my weepy onions and my sparky kid, thanks.

it's like this

walked with the children all over town. visited a few friends. dropped my girl (and an overnight bag and a sleeping bag) off at her friend's house for her first sleepover ever. walked home. boy crashed out asleep, all thirty five pounds of him, on my back in the ergo. if i took him out, he'd wake up, which would be okay, since it's after five, but i would rather wait and have him wake up rested and pleasant. it's payday. maybe the three of us will walk up to mcmenamin's for dinner. so when i walked in the door, with the sleeping boy on his back, i had to pee. it was hard to unbutton my jeans with the ergo on. got the pants down, emptied my bladder, now what? pants around my thighs, shuffle to the dining room, sit here at the laptop. decide to wake him up (my shoulders vote Yes) or not (the soft sound of his breath in my ear is a peaceful cadence i don't want to stop).

some kind of fog

I told you they were teaser days. Yesterday the sky was a wet wool blanket, the precipitation practically clinging to the surface in tiny, spitty balls. I love the Northwest. I love the loamy smell and the moist air and the softness of the colors. It suits me. We moved back here, in part, because the climate and the geography resonate with us like no other.

But here's the thing. . . I grew up in the desert. I come from people who grew up in the desert. I spent my formative years, scorched and freckled, running barefoot over hot sand. I'm starting to think maybe this means something. As in, it just occurred to me just right now, oh, ten minutes ago, to wonder if while my disposition is surely suited to this place, my physiology might expect something quite different.

My recent yearly check-up exam revealed a "tragically low" (her words, not mine) Vitamin D deficiency. Couple this with more rushing white noise in my head than normal and the most formidable Ennui opponent I've yet to face (okay, there I am, using that silly word again, without a lick of irony) and the knowledge that, though I didn't ever really hit it off with Arizona, I never felt this way there, well. . . when I say I'm duplicitous, I'm not speaking lightly. It's indisputable that some chemical reactions are askew within. The question is whether or not this could have anything to do with my body determining a set point, expecting a certain level of sunlight, from having lived my first twenty years in the Southwest or not. It sounds plausible.

The plan is to be more mindful with my diet, fine tune my supplements, wait for Spring, and see what happens. But in the meantime, I am still appreciative of the gray and the rain that feeds the soil and makes this place I love. I like the variety, the knowing that in a few months, the fog will lift and the skies will be reliably, if not constantly, clear.

the family that bikes together. . .

I'd like to think that I'm living my life so that, when it reaches the point of a natural, culminating sigh many decades from now, I won't have many regrets. I guess it would ultimately be nice to to not have any regrets at all, but I've already screwed that part up. I already have this one thing that haunts me and hurts me and wakes me up in the night with the sweet gnawing of a bittersweet memory. This one thing, more than any other thing, that makes me wish I had a time machine and could travel backwards and fix it.

When my nine year old daughter was about the age her brother is now, which is to say smack in the middle of the wild and wonder of toddlerhood, we had a rickety, vintage tandem bicycle and a lopsided, but sturdy, front-mounted child seat and our little family tooled all over the lovely green city of Portland. Wait, this sounds pretty nice, right? A bicycle built for three? It was nice. It was nicer than nice. It elicited smiles from passers-by and random strangers, it made our muscles stronger and our days more pleasant, it became the memory that serves, almost more than any other, as a fantastic marker of what was one of the sweetest, easiest times in my life (she says in the fullness of hindsight). So you're thinking Where's the regret, right? What would I go back and change?

I do not have one picture of this time. Not one. I don't have one tangible snapshot of the three of us on two wheels save for the loose and fuzzy tendrils that are all tangled up in my head. I can't remember, exactly, what our helmets looked like or what shoes I wore. I'd wrap up my right pants leg (jeans cut off at mid-calf, probably) to keep from getting caught in the chain, but what did I use? I can't remember. Sometimes Freya would hold something, a flower, a scarf, a little stuffed animal, and wave it from her front seat perch but I cannot recall a precise example of what that might have looked like.

I confess that, at the time, I always appreciated how sweet it was. I always felt like I was holding some secret powerful treasure, just the thrill and contentment of whirring along together like that, of cutting through city parks to avoid traffic, stopping to play when we felt like it, noticing things one doesn't notice by car, seemed so perfect that I couldn't believe such a thing could be so easily found and kept. It didn't take much more than grabbing a water bottle, snapping on our helmets and setting off to find pleasure and purpose. It was just that sweet and easy. And I knew it. I knew it was sweet and I knew it was special but I don't know how I didn't manage to never take one picture. I remember musing that maybe we'd get our photos in the newspaper: it's not every day you see a little family on one bike! And the grins and double-takes we received confirmed this. Portland's one of the (if not THE) most bicycle friendly cities in the whole flipping country, what newspaper wouldn't want a little picture of us in the Living section, at least? But we never got our picture taken for the newspaper; we never got our picture taken at all.

I think maybe it was one of those everyday (special and dear, but still. . . everyday) things that just happens so regularly it doesn't always occur to one to document with a photo. I'm better about this now, what with the ease of digital pictures these days. I was mindful of it then, taking pictures often (but not as often as now!), but still maybe thinking, a little, that it would last. There's no hurry. She's so little. We'll zip around the city like thise forever! We're the little biking threesome!

But, oh! the rate at which little turns into big! She soon outgrew her little seat and we upgraded to a swanky trailer. We pulled her on the back of the tandem, all set-up back there with books and stuffed animals and snacks, until the massive length of our transport, and my daughter's precarious proximity to cars, started worrying me, and I finally got a bike of my own. So then the husband would pull the trailer and I'd take the protective tail position in my blue Schwinn cruiser (or the other way around, depending on our route and my gumption that day). And just like that, our three-on-one days were over.

We've moved around a lot in the last few years and our biking situation has fluctuated plenty. After the trailer, Freya moved to a trail-a-bike for a few years as she became a proficient rider herself. The day after she took her first two-wheeled ride, she joined her dad for a four mile jaunt through our neighborhood. So it didn't take long until her pride grew larger than the trail-a-bike would allow and she was keeping up right there with us, riding right alongside on her own bike.

A year ago, we purchased a new front-mounted seat for the little guy and we started our first family of Four rides. But soon after this, we left Arizona for Oregon and, in the mess of living in a temporary apartment with all of our things in storage for six months, and then moving into our current house and, well, winter, it wasn't until this last weekend (a couple of those bright and clear teaser days that makes one a little less hungry for spring) that I got my bike out. Which is to say, I hadn't ridden in nearly a year. The husband and daughter touched their bikes a little, we haven't been, as a family institution, completely off of wheels, but it was just now that we finally went on a ride all of us together.

It was so fantastic. So fantastic that after Saturday's extended ride, I was anxious for a Sunday repeat. There is a new sort of thrill in racing my nine-year old down a hill, in surprising her when I overtake her coming back up the same hill, in being together in this, new older way. Her brother rides in his little seat in between the husband's arms and takes it all in, with delight and excitement, just like his sister did some seven years ago.

We still have the rickety old tandem. It hasn't been ridden at all in five years. It's more rickety still. But the daughter makes regular requests for its repair. She suggests that we attach the front-mount kid seat and, for this purpose only, pull out the old trail-a-bike. A bicycle for all four! We could ride down any street and make an instant parade, just like that. Time is short and life is busy and on the long list of things to do and duties to attend to, fixing a rusty bike isn't high up there. But if we do fix it up, if we replace the rotten tires and tighten the screws and true the wheels, you can bet I'll take a picture.

for kids, for families, for you!

It's Friday, so you know what that means? Another TMBG Podcast For Kids to download! They Might Be Giants know exactly what happened to all of their fans from the late eighties and early nineties: they grew up and had babies. And those babies grew up on TMBG tunes. All the old, favorites their parents dig are still around, but wait, the band's been making extra special children's music for a while, which made, in our family anyway, all the more reason for calling them our favorite band. In preparation for a new cd release (Here Come the 123s, a follow up to the Here Come The ABCs several years back), they've been sending out video podcast teasers every week. I can't tell you how much we love these. Actually, the new album might be out already (I'm not so hip as knowing specific release dates) and the Friday Night Podcasts might be a thing of the past already, but if you don't have them in your itunes library, I urge you to download them all straight away. My children love them, love them and I find the songs super catchy, too, and the animation charming and John and John just as witty and wonderful as ever. They're all up in various youtube locations, as well, but we like having them right on the laptop and on my ipod. I buy myself five extra sleepy minutes of stretching in bed every morning by turning one on for the boy when we wake up. I think there are eight or nine total, and all are terrific, but I think the family winner (certainly the one we sing and hum the most) is still the Never Go To Work song I posted several entries back. Okay!

little bits from other places

I can't compartmentalize. Everything swirls together in my head, in one murky glob, sometimes shimmering like a chemical rainbow on wet tarmac, and sometimes, well, sometimes not. And it can just be a challenge, a simple real estate dilemma, with disparate observations jockeying for the same pieces of my brain. It's a little tight up there, with all the noise and noticing and over-analyzing. If I stick to the precarious real estate analogy, I could follow that with so much competition for my thinking space, every random notion becomes more valuable. Your basic supply and demand. I find strange comfort in that, in letting the odd ideas move in right alongside the sanguine, expected passing thoughts about life (and by life, I mean my life, which is mostly relegated to the categories of Mothering and What's for dinner), and regarding each one as an important part of who I am. So, important, but no less odd. Like the other day, for example. I was at the doctor's office (regularly scheduled ladyparts look-see) and in the waiting room, I had this moment of swirling madness where I couldn't quite reconcile the contrast of what was happening in the waiting room, what was happening in the book I was reading, what was happening in the whole world. And I could just about see myself as a tiny pinpoint and do that pull back, higher and higher and higher thing you see in movies, or google earth: the waiting room, my town, the state, the country, the planet, all of time and eternity, right there and the horror and wonder of it all screaming in my ears.

It shouldn't surprise you that I was reading The Grapes of Wrath. I sure talk about it enough. But I'm like that. I am such a creature of habit. I grind a path and then plod, predictably, in the same bare ruts. The Grapes of Wrath is my favorite book for reading whenever I don't have anything else to read. I have the audiobook on my ipod (and if you haven't experienced it as read/performed by Dylan Baker, then I suggest you remedy that straight away. I love it so much I can't even really tell you) and listen to that a lot, too. It's not just my favorite fill-in-empty-space book, it's my Favorite Book. I opened the book several chapters in, after the Joads started in the Hudson heading west, but before they reached California, in the thick of the worry, the uncertainty, the humility of needing to trade one's shoes for gas. A tangential inner dialog sparked, considering potential possible correlations from that era to our country's shaky future. And what I said elsewhere (when I wrote about this in my other place, which, yes, makes these rambles a little bit recycled, but you know how I feel about secondhand stuff and, also, I don't use complete sentences or even proper punctuation over there) was that the contrast, between the frail but tenacious old man holding onto his walker and worrying about his wife's Alzheimer medication, the young pharma-rep chippies in pantsuits talking about "getting drinks later" while waiting to unload their samples and swag, and the desolation and exquisite hope in Steinbeck's meandering, perfect prose all swirling around me right there felt very powerful and beautiful and painful.

Oh, bother. That's a very run around sort of preamble to yet another mention of Hi, I keep meaning to write more here and I keep not doing a very good job of it. I can't separate the tedious details, the t.m.i. and the incriminating evidence from the boiled down, reduction of the parts best fit for public consumption. I write elsewhere for myself, to purge and be done and start fresh, but the reverse of that tactic is proving inefficient here. It all seems so shallow. And so incomplete. I guess I need a focus. If not purging the minutiae, then what? I lack practice in forming words for any other reason. I'm not a crafter, I'm not a mommyblogger (I'm a mother with a blog, but even writing about my children feels too precious and unreal and I tread lightly there), I avoid politics, I'm not full of smart essays others want to read. I'm just plodding along and trying to write a little about it. It doesn't have to be smart to be a piece of my truth, another slice of my life, of all life, another chance to make myself available to the real, tangible connections that can form and happen in this virtual world.

I don't have to imagine what life would be like without this deep pool of people and ideas and relationships available through the internet, I just have to remember. I'm actually quite friendly and chatty and comfortable in most situations, should you happen to run into me some time, but there are some things in life that one enjoys quite a bit once the thing has started, but which one isn't likely to initiate oneself. (I'm sure that's as much of a double entendre as it seems to be, but no worries, I'm not headed that direction). I am not as lonely as I would be otherwise, as I have been, because of connections that start in my magic flashing box before migrating into three-dee space. Some folks are so talented at creating community. Drop them in a new town and they'll be organizing civic events and hosting dinner parties in a few weeks. Not me. I like to be a part, but I'm not very good at making it happen without a deliberate invitation. I've humorously remarked in the past that I'm always secretly waiting for a random band of merrymakers in party hats to show up at my door for a good time. It's not that I don't like to make merry, it's not that I don't enjoy being a part of a community greater than my own, immediate four walls, it's that I'm not so inclined to initiate it on my own. And knowing that about myself, having some presence online, however small and inconsistent, keeps me a little closer to something resembling sanity.

Years ago, I entered the virtual world by participating on message boards. I met some folks I still know on a now-defunct mama site. And in those years, it was enough to talk about breastmilk and the incessant cloth vs. disposable debate and feel a connection. I still veer toward folks who parent in a manner that's somewhat reflective of my own, but the older my older kid gets, the more I realize how little a lot of that stuff really matters, after all. (oh, it matters and I'm just as determined in a lot of my ideals as ever, but they're not enough to sustain relationship, that's all I mean). And then I made the organic transition that a lot of folks made from message boarding to live journaling. I approve of the shift in online community. The way we went from everybody talking at once to carefully inviting a particular group of friends over to share in our conversations. It became more intimate. And this seems even more personal, this blog with a specific url one must decidedly click to, as opposed to scrolling by quickly on a livejournal friendslist. I like having both. I sometimes feel guilty taking up the cyberspace with pointless rambles, but it doesn't have to be profound to be important. It's not always in the words, it's just in the being there. In the being here. With you. Whoever you might be, reading this.

I appreciate the visual community at flickr as much as reading along with my favorite bloggers (who may or may not be listed on my sidebar there. I'm shy about linking to folks I don't know). I play scrabble with my husband on facebook. Oh sure, we sleep in the same bed, you think we'd be able to manage a regular board game now and again, but it's easier to have a game going online and get to it when we can and not worry that the little boy in the house has already fed the extra tiles to his dump truck. Are you on the facebook? I'd play scrabble with you, too, and we can ward off the Alzheimer's together. And that's about as thin as I'm spreading the online representation of myself these days. Which is about as equally thick as any real time self of mine is spread. It's all legit and adds layers to my days. Community happens in all sorts of places.

And here's a story you can hardly believe, but it's true, and it's funny and it's beautiful. There was a family of twelve and they were forced off the land. They had no car. They built a trailer out of junk and loaded it with their possessions. They pulled it out to the side of 66 and waited. And pretty soon a sedan picked them up. Five of them rode in the sedan and seven on the trailer, and a dog on the trailer. They got to California in two jumps. The man who pulled them fed them. And that's true. But how can such courage be, and such faith in their own species? Very few things would teach such faith.

The people in flight from the terror behind -- strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

-John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
the last 2 paragraphs of Chapter 12

notes to myself

For the past seven or eight or so years, I've started a new at-a-glance weekly calendar every January. I'm pretty good at writing down important dates and items and numbers and things to do in it. It's the checking it daily part that always slips by. Which pretty much loses the whole point. I forget to make that pressing phonecall, I skip through a whole week thinking that an upcoming doctor's appointment is on Tuesday, not Wednesday. But I keep buying them and I keep scribbling away inside of them and I keep filing them away at the close of every year into boxes of memorabilia. Why? Because I really like to look through and remember later. I really like having records that remind me of the tiniest pieces of our days, the little scraps that can be stapled and scotch-taped and pasted together, to make a hollow shape of this here life. This time right now, these days which seem so full of slogging through the unpleasant parts and dull work that I almost want to choke it down, swallow it quickly and get it over with already. Almost. But the sweetness on my lips lingers long enough for me to know that someday I'd gladly have more scudgey bathrooms or menacing mounds of laundry or, even, tearful, sleepy cries for MAMA! as I'm settling in on the couch with a movie to just be here, right now, again, a little longer. The sweet parts will grow even sweeter and the bitter parts won't hold so tightly onto their acrid tang. But the problem with constructing some shape, in the future, of this time when my children are still young, out of day planners and digital data and children's saved artwork and store receipts that get washed and dried and turned into fuzzy little balls at the bottoms of pockets, is that it won't stand up on its own. I won't be able to crawl inside of it and stand very still and hear them breathing while they sleep.

no onions.

When I don't know what to make for dinner, I dice up an onion and some garlic and get that going in a pot with some olive oil, because that's how it all starts anyway. It's like freewriting. It really is a similar process for me. But when I'm out of onions, it's like all the pages are already written on or the pen's out of ink and, yeah, I could still write something, but it suddenly feels like more effort than I was planning on giving, and I'd just as well not.

the last single digit

If I had any doubt about whether or not my girl was growing too old for the paper number tradition, she let me know quite clearly the day before that she absolutely expected them and would be very disappointed if they weren't there when she woke up in the morning. She ran into the kitchen first thing and threw her arms around my waist and said, in her exuberant (always) and sincere way, "Thank you!" and I don't know if she's talking about the numbers (what's a little construction paper, really?), or just the following through and consistency or something bigger, like keeping her alive another year. I don't know. But we hadn't even given her a birthday gift yet, hadn't eaten breakfast, hadn't taken her to the local bakery for a special birthday scone, nothing had happened yet, really. And yet, she was beaming and she was glad and she hugged me with all the gratitude her nine young years could hold and I pulled back a little and said, "You're thanking me? I'm the one who's grateful. I get to spend every day with this amazing girl here who is a little more amazing every year, Happy Birthday, sweetie." She was luminous and it was so sweet and, yes, we really talk as sappy as all that to each other. We had a lovely day, even if it did involve finagling a doctor visit for a rather sick little brother. Her dad skipped off of work and took her, in my inability to be at two places at once, to the tattoo and piercing place for the long hoped for, but seldom mentioned, ear piercing. It was a surprise and she was delighted. It seemed like a memorable way to mark what feels like, on the front end, a very auspicious year. Nine. Halfway to legal adulthood. So far from those precocious toddler days, but not close enough for me to even imagine self-sufficiency. I miss the wild-haired, cherub-faced little girl she was, so surprisingly wise and witty even then, and I see glimpses of, and look forward to knowing, the confident and bold woman she will be, but I'm just really glad I can hold tight and balance right here in the middle a little while longer. Her granny mailed her a sewing machine and her dad, brother and I gifted her with all sorts of accouterments related to her interest in being a Healer. She was thrilled to have new tools for two of her current passions represented; stay tuned for all sorts of creative goodness coming from both directions.

be ready for magic at any time

If a certain man in my household and I hadn't been having a certain somewhat heated discussion and he hadn't walked over to the window and peeped through the blinds, for no reason really than pure distraction, we would not have seen the late night snowfall. Oh, it stuck long enough to still be around, thin and icy and beginning to melt, when we woke this morning, but last night's rained-on snow is never so enchanting as right now's surprising magic falling from the sky. We pulled the miniblinds all the way open and moved our conversation to beside the picture window. The mood shifted and the volatile situation diffused; we reached a calm and a peace that I don't think we would have found if we hadn't seen the snow. He went on to bed and the boy (who has been sick, off and on and mostly on for the past several days and not really sleeping so much at all) and I kept crouching by the window, watching. And even though it was almost midnight, I tiptoed in to my daughter's room, held her little brother up to her bed (a high loft bed and I can't even see her sleeping form unless I climb up the laddder myself) and he said, in a hushed but excited voice, "wake up! see snow!" and she woke up, confused, blinked at us, screwed up her face and took a moment to make sense."wake up! come see snow! snow outside now!" and then her whole face flashed with understanding and she scrambled down the ladder and tripped to the living room. we stood there, the three of us, for a long time, just being quiet together.

it's good to be known

Maybe I should save this for my quiet, familiar place across the blogosphere, but I am falling out of the habit, already, of coming here. And I need to practice. I need to write because in moving words from my head to a page where I can read them and see them and let them stay put, I free up space in my head that's so littered with anxious thoughts and things that obscure the edge of the sidewalk like fallen, slimy leaves. Clearing the leaves is much too big of a job for me to do completely right now, but if I clear away just a little of something, maybe I'll see the edge of the sidewalk before I fall off.

So I have this dear friend. She reads this blog sometimes, so I don't want to shout her name and call too much undue attention. But she knows who she is. It's her birthday in a couple of days. And I made her something.

I am not a creative person. I aspire to be creative and I attempt creative endeavors but it does not come easily. Which sparks the question, does it have to be easy to be true? Probably not. But it's not an identifying factor of mine. I know Artists and Writers and I assure you I am a humbled lowercase on both counts, if we're being generous. And that's okay. I write this not as some trickery back door self-deprecation in which I say "No, I'm not" to weasel out a string of "Oh Yes, you are"s from patient readers. With practice I think Being Creative has the potential to not require such great effort, my point being only that right now, at this place in my head, in my life, it sure does.

When you're not instinctively creative, when you're not the sort who not only sees fantastic finished art projects in the most mundane of materials, but can facilitate the making thereof, what do you do? Just your best. And hope that it translates into something the receiver understands as love and thankfulness and appreciation. I can't make something so beautiful and flawless but I can't offer that in myself as a friend, either. I am ugly and flawed, inconsistent and difficult. And yet, yet despite all that, I have people in my life who don't seem to notice the things I despise and pick apart about myself. Or if they notice, they keep quiet about it, and their presence brings out the better parts of me.

This friend of mine, she is one of Those People.

Our friendship has been many shapes. I wasn't even a mother yet when we met. I was a few months in to a hasty marriage, the very dawn of being a grown-up and just barely becoming myself. I am so grateful now that our friendship formed and grew strong before my daughter was born. Knowing my penchant for self-prescribed isolation as a cure-all for any headspace woes, I do not exaggerate when I say I do not think I would be as confident and seemingly successful (I'll get back to you on respective eighteenth birthdays) as a mother (or a person at all) now if I had lacked this one true friendship in those formative years. Young Mothers need close friends. For the first time in history, relatively speaking, we do this exhausting, dirty work without the respite of extra hands. We don't meet at the well each morning for water, our children don't play at our feet while we process vegetables or sew quilts. I mean, surely, yes, some mothers do those things somewhere and even here, now. But, generally speaking, it's a lonely thing to be the primary caregiver of small children. To have a person you can call up at any time for feedback on some detail, important or tiny, makes the work so much more bearable. I honestly cannot imagine repeating the first several years of my daughter's life minus the association of my dear friend. We talked daily, got together often. We lived across town and made frequent dates for play and tea.

And then they moved to a town several hours away. So when we moved to a state several days away, our friendship had already shifted from the daily and familiar to the long-distant and special.

We're closer again, we need but weekends and a hunk of driving time to arrange a get together, not airfare and whole vacations.

A special friendship is not to be discounted. My daughter considers my friend's children as other kids might consider cousins. She's known them well since the day she was born. She has grown up without a close-knit extended family, but having these friends a few hours away replicates for my girl the thrill that comes from overnights and rallying together to make a play to show the parents and the general excitement long anticipated visits from people dear to you. Certainly they are closer than most family, in our case.

But I miss the everydayness of our friendship. We had the benefit of becoming good friends when life was simpler for each of us. I couldn't do that again now, if I tried. I can't even begin to try again now. After starting over from scratch in a new place three and a half years ago, carving out Familiar from a monotonous litany of New and Strange and Different, I said I wouldn't put myself in that position, I would never do that again. And here I am again. I can see Familiar if I squint real hard, but the bulk of our life and our routines is all new, it's all on me to take nothing and make it something that feels like we live here. I am very lucky to have met some very interesting and cool folks in my new little town (hi, interesting and cool folks!) but to build friendships and juggle life with two kids (and their accompanying, disparate needs) is no small thing. Which is to say, that I know I will continue to make friends in my life. That I will never stop looking to enrich my world by knowing new people, but cultivating friendships is so much more complicated now.

How do I take all that, how do I say I'm celebrating you today because you are wonderful and my life is better, my children's lives are better, because you are my friend and roll it up in paper and tie it with string? I did it with recycled fabric and crooked seams and three broken needles and only a little head smacking. I could have, probably should have, followed a pattern. I wasn't trying to be symbolic by creating on the fly, wasn't stabbing at some fleeting metaphor of the organic nature of friendship. It's just the way that I am to start something without thinking all the way through and hope I can make it work. We've been good friends for eleven years now, and it's still working. I can't vouch for the expected longevity of the item I created for her, but I can say that it was made with love and if it doesn't do anything but reside in a drawer, when she sees it she'll know I care.

(maybe I'll share a picture later but since I haven't even mailed it yet, she shouldn't have to see her birthday present here for the first time. I feel a little like i'm talking about someone who is sitting in the same room. hi jess!)

a day in the life (of my belly)

Yesterday, Saturday the 19th of January, I ate:

For breakfast, porridge (steel-cut oats) I cooked the night before and warmed up on the stovetop that morning. I like my porridge several different ways, but this time I had it with a generous plop of apricot jam and a bunch of ground flaxmeal. I would have had a cup (or two) of black tea, but we were out of black tea (actually, we were out of lots of stuff because we hadn't been to the store for pantry items in several weeks) so I substituted coffee, with unsweetened almond milk.

Lunch was a bunch of kale. Literally a whole bunch. I cooked up two, but accounting for what I shared with the other three people who live here, I probably only ate one. I cooked it with a lot of garlic and I ate a piece of sourdough wheat toast.

The hotel/restaurant/bar up the way was celebrating the building's 103rd birthday with free music, so we were there at dinner time. We sat in a dark, concert room and watched belly dancers perform with a live band and I ate a burrito. With tofu, minus the cheese, please. I forgot to say "no sour cream" and I scraped off as much as I could.

I did not take pictures of my ginger larabar snack mid-morning, various glasses of water, the cinnamon graham cracker I ate when my son took a bite of it and put it on the counter but cried for it back after I ate it. And there might have been a pitcher of beer.