Little Gidding

Poem from a Godly Play gathering yesterday...

2012-02-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

in a palest pink room with dark wood trim and leaded glass windows.

Letters to a Young Poet--Letter 4-- July 16, 1903

Be patient to all that is unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are now written
in a very foreign tongue.

Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given to you
because you would not be able to live them
and the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

4am thoughts

2012-02-06T07:44:00.000-08:00

I'm sure I'm not the first to say so, but I was thinking about how 30 Rock is so much like The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The comparisons just kept presenting themselves.

Liz = Mary
Jack = Lou
Pete Hornburger = Murray
Tracy Jordan = Ted
Jenna Maroni = Sue Ann

Did Martha ruin coloring eggs?

2012-02-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

I read a blog post where the writer was feeling nostalgic for the good old days of her childhood, where coloring eggs involved a box of PAAS and that's it.

With Pinterest, blogs and all the ideas to be seen, to be tried, it is kind of sad that it makes the basic celebration activity seem boring. Just a heart shaped doily. Just a colored egg. Just a party hat. But, it's a heart shaped doily! It's a colored egg! It's a party hat! Along with the not taking of granted of things, I want to enjoy the basic celebration activities that I've always done, without the pressure of trying something NEW all the time.

The difference between feeling inspired and feeling inadequate is sometimes hard to pin down.

Taking it for granted.

2012-01-30T15:08:00.000-08:00

I'm noticing things all around me that I take for granted. I want to be grateful instead.

Smoothies for breakfast. I am thankful for frozen berries, bananas, yogurt, and a machine to whirl it all together.

Music as survival.

2012-01-28T20:36:00.000-08:00

I've been re-reading all the "Little House" books. In the last few pages of "On the Banks of Plum Creek" I was reading out loud to Lily, and Laura is describing how warm, how pleasant she feels in the evening with her family in her home. The last line of that book is her Pa saying, "Look, Caroline, look how Laura's eyes are shining." and I couldn't even read it out loud I got so choked up.

What was there? I didn't even know. Something about how hard it was for the Ingalls family, how hard-working and optimistic they all were. How it would have been shameful to lose hope, how Laura seemed to see the value and cherish the moments of peace and joy.

It seems every time I re-read these stories I find a new part--last time it was The Long Winter, I could not get over how close that whole town came to dying of hunger and cold. How Laura and Pa worked so hard for survival. This time, it was Pa's fiddle. I came across a story called "Grandpa's Fiddle" by Rose Wilder Lane, Laura's daughter. In it, Laura tells Rose just how important the fiddle was: "It's the first thing I remember, Pa's playing us to sleep when we were little, in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. And by the campfires, all through that awful mud, across Kansas and Missouri, all the way down to Indian Territory and back, and all the way out here, across the whole of Minnesota and beyond the Big Sioux river clear to Silver Lake. He played the fiddle by the campfire at night. We never could--I see it now, though I didn't then--we never could have gotten through it all without Pa's fiddle."

It's true that in the stories, Pa often picked up the fiddle and played when it was probably the opposite of what he felt like doing. He encouraged and comforted his family with his music.

It was their worship, it was their entertainment, it was their escape. The fiddle, the music and the singing. It was some sort of survival technique that humans have that animals don't.

Then, I came across the song, In the Evening by the Moonlight, a version sung by Nina Simone. There is something in the singing and the fiddle. There is something about the pleasure of it, linked to "getting through it all".

Trying

2011-11-04T14:47:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to find out some stuff. Where do clothes from Old Navy get made? Why can't I resist Target shopping? How do you live out your ideals and values when it's so easy to unintentionally support bad stuff?
This video was a good place for me to start:

Disneyland

2011-10-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

With the mouse himself. Lily spoke of this later, remembered that Mickey was in a robe, about to get ready for his show...?

On Heimlich's Chew Chew Train. Both kids love this ride.

The cotton candy on day 2 matched her shirt perfectly.

Just a little Disney Magic. This is Goofy's house in Toontown. The clothesline is spinning and looks so crazy and cute. Hard to see.

As always, I love Disneyland. I noticed this time that my hips hurt when I walk around all day and night. Not my feet, my hips. I have a feeling this is something about having children. I also noticed all the wonderful things that just seem to "happen" to you when you're in Disneyland, but are happening so often, everywhere in the park that it just seems that way. Catching a performance at the Golden Horseshoe. Seeing the tail end of a parade disappear behind a gate that you didn't notice until it opened and the performers waved at you with their last waves! The music everywhere: marching bands, parades, performances, not to mention the muzak pumped throughout the park, it's the finest Disney muzak that can be achieved. I love it there.

A poem I found.

2011-10-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

Believe

Maybe the camera crew is at someone else’s house,
a spotlight haloing over another’s fleshy story.
Maybe the mailman is delivering the good news
to your neighbor, or a different city entirely,
and you come home to a rash of catalogues,
the second notice for a doctor’s bill, a plea
from the do-gooders for whatever you can spare.
Maybe you haven’t cleaned your kitchen floor in weeks,
forgotten to nourish the front garden, spilled too much
coffee in your car, weaving through traffic.
Maybe you are 10 pounds heavier than last year.
Maybe your skin is betraying your age.
Maybe winter is ravaging your heart.
Maybe you are afraid, or lonely, or furious, or wanting out
of every commitment you entered with such vigor and trust.
Maybe you’ve bitten your nails down to the quick,
chosen your meals badly, ignored the advice of those
who know you best. Maybe you are stubborn as a toddler.
Maybe you are clumsy or foolish or hasty or reckless.
Maybe you haven’t read all the books you’re supposed to.
Maybe your handwriting is still illegible after all these years.
Maybe you spent too much on a pair of shoes you didn’t need.
Maybe you left the window open and the rain ruined the cake.
Maybe you’ve destroyed everything you’ve ever wanted to save.
Still.
If anything, believe in your own strange loveliness.
How your body, even as it stumbles, angles for light.
The way you hold a dandelion with such yearning and tenderness,
the whole world stops spinning.

Maya Stein

Body prayer from this morning at Godly Play training.

2011-07-10T13:44:00.000-07:00

"Take, oh, take me as I am, (Arms extended to heaven)
summon out what I shall be; (Arms outstretched to your sides)
set your seal upon my heart (two hands on your heart)
and live in me." (bow from the waist)

2011-06-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

I hate my cherry pitter taking up space awkwardly in my drawer for 99.99% of the year. But then, I buy some cherries and I am always SO glad I didn't get rid of it.

Love wins.

2011-06-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

I just like this picture of Mags with her camping chair and hood pulled up over her large head. So sweet. I finally read Love Wins. That book that everybody's panties are in a bunch about. I kind of thought- no big deal- after I read it. Then I couldn't really remember all the parts. And I couldn't remember exactly what he wrote about this or that. Then I had a nightmare about it last night. How do you have a nightmare about love winning? Confusion and a cold will do that to you, I guess. So my final verdict was, no verdict!

Things that make you go, hmm.

2011-05-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

I am a blog reader. Avid. I love the blogs. I love my google reader. I love seeing new ideas and glimpses into lives all around the country. There are the very chic and spare, desert themed, artistic southern Californian mom blogs. The very annoying, but helplessly addicting Minnesota mom blogs. The kansas mom blog who is so artistic and inspiring. The super fun New York mom blog. The crafting blogs, the cooking blogs, the spiritually challenging, etc. etc.

I spend too much time looking at these blogs and I don't even update my own blog more than once a month usually. I try to quit. Delete feeds of blogs that are annoying or rile me from my reader--why bother?! Delete feeds of blogs that are never really that interesting, but I still click on to read anyway. I just discovered a blog called Mennonite Girls Can Cook. How amazing and weird is that? But I'm not really the kind of gal who makes "Hired Hand Macaroni Casserole". Do I really need to read it? Yes, I do. And the NieNie Dialogues, yes, it's such a compelling story and she and her husband are so sweet, but it's usually kind of boring, right?

I know soap operas are going off the air these days, it's because all the ladies at home with their littles are reading blogs instead of watching soaps. And it's kind of the same thing, soap operas are boring 90% of the time and then there is something interesting and you were watching so you caught it and then you watch more to see what will happen next.

A lot of blogs I read rah rah about not being a "mainstream" family. Cloth diapers, organic foods, no tv. I've thought a lot about this idea of not being a "mainstream" family. Is it not the most mainstream thing in the world to blog and blog and blog about your life? How does "simple" v "mainstream" living really look, without a blog? What about me? Am I a mainstream family? I love all the ideas, the inspiration, but sometimes it's tiring to see it all and not even know how to integrate the blog reading into your life in a good way, let alone the recipe or project featured.

So as I contemplate my relationship with blogs, (Read them at one time a day, no constant google reader checking? Read them once a week? Pick a few of my favorites and dump the rest?) I offer a short list of my favorites:

joy the baker
whatever
lovely morning
nat the fat rat

Camping

2011-05-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

At the beach at Montana de Oro State Park

This past weekend we went on our first family camping trip. We visited a state park near Morro Bay and then our dear friend Cristy Rose at a permaculture farm called Quail Springs. I wish had taken photos of the animals and some other parts of the farm, but I did get a few that show a little of the place. It is truly in the wilderness and I saw so many stars that night. I wish that I had lingered looking at them so I could see a shooting star. But I was just too tired. So wonderful to be in nature so much, feels like I'm living out my new year's resolution.

This is the kitchen in the common house.

Camping next to Dianita, Cristy Rose's camper home.

Lily playing near the clay ovens.

Inside the common house.

Wildflowers.

Such a foggy morning. High desert is indeed such beautiful country.

A glimpse of the well organized shelving in the kitchen. I love kitchens and seeing other people's systems.

Through the kitchen to Lily eating the goat buttermilk with honey and Peter playing a bit of guitar.

Lately, in pictures.

2011-04-28T13:47:00.000-07:00

Made Lily a booster seat out of this fun oil cloth. Too bad she won't sit like this all the time. She still sits on her legs and just throws the booster on the ground.

Yountville in early Spring. So lovely, romantic and peaceful. Bike ride around the vineyards.

'Peace' rose is blooming.

Hung some inspiration above the washing machine.

New curtains in the kitchen. If you weren't sure there was enough pattern/color in my house, there is now. I promise.

Things are what you make of them.

2011-03-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

Me, with one of my favorite pieces at the deYoung. I do like visiting there enough to have old friends waiting.

Lenten disciplines this year: no desserts, read the Bible every day. So far so good. If good means difficult and sometimes failing. I'm getting it. Understanding it, learning from it better than I have in the past. So that is good.

Boston

2011-02-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

The only picture I took on my trip to Boston a couple weeks ago. I had 10 pictures of this sunset, sidewalk and sweet friend. This one was the keeper. A long walk in the snow from the T. Invigorating, made it home just as the sun slipped away.

Orange Morning, Gray Morning

2011-02-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

The light in the kitchen in the morning is helpful. When we wake up so early that it's dark I squint. But when we wake up a little later and the kitchen is full of sun I don't. That's easy to appreciate.

The magnolias and the cherry trees are blooming everywhere. The oranges are sweeter than I ever remember. I was listening to Townes Van Zandt and Weezer and Ladysmith Black Mambazo and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude for the music, for the oranges, for the sun. Then, driving alone and remembering how sprinklers come on in the early morning and how soft gray it can be, the sound and the sprinklers adding to the dew. Let nothing be lost on me! I beg. Even the dawn, even the cold.

Chard

2011-02-10T13:25:00.000-08:00

Chard is one of my favorite vegetables. I crave it sometimes. I wish I craved it more often than I crave ice cream or nachos, but when I do crave it this is how I like to fix it. Rainbow chard is the prettiest, but any will do.

Sauteed Chard

2 bunches chard, cleaned, stems removed and diced, leaves roughly chopped

1 onion, chopped finely

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 or 4 slices of bacon chopped up (I usually use turkey bacon)

1/2 cup apple juice (water or broth is fine too)

Add a little vegetable oil to a large stock pot. (Have you heard about how you're not supposed to use olive oil for cooking anymore?!) Saute bacon, chopped chard stems, onion and garlic until stems and onion are softened. Add the chard leaves, filling up the pot and stirring them all around to get coated in the sauteed mixture. Deglaze the pan with the apple juice and sprinkle the whole thing with a lot of salt and pepper. Keep stirring every once in a while until the chard is wilted and the juice is gone. Check to see if you need salt and pepper. Done. Sometimes I drizzle it with a little olive oil at this point.

I like to eat this kind of sauteed chard with a baked sweet potato and a chicken apple sausage. Or with rice and grilled or baked chicken. Or tossed with pasta and some parmesan.

Granola

2011-01-21T14:46:00.000-08:00

This is one of those basic things that I've always wanted to make, but never have. Until Tuesday. I adapted Ellie Krieger's Nutty Granola and the main reason I made it was because there was no oil or butter. I love granola with oil or butter, but I wanted to make a granola that I could eat all the time, not a special granola as a treat. I think I will be making this regularly. I loved making it--it was easy, way easier than I thought and it made the house smell good.

Basic Granola
3 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup chopped almonds
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt.

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, bake at 300' for 30 minutes spread out on a sheet pan.

After it had baked for about 25 minutes I added 1/2 cup chopped dried cherries, 1/2 cup chopped dried apricots, 1/4 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut.

trees

2011-01-17T10:24:00.000-08:00

Planted a Blenheim Apricot tree and a Fuji Apple tree. Actually planting trees in our yard is so exciting. Our house has NO trees on the property. Now it has two. Trees that will blossom and bear fruit in season, even better.

I would also like to plant some boysenberries and blueberries this year. Who knew January was the time to plant these things--I feel like until this year I had NO idea that this 2 week-long bare root tree thing happened. It's like, they're there and then they're gone in the store.

Now to wait 1-3 years for some return on our fruit investment...

Wanderlust

2011-01-14T14:52:00.000-08:00

Always has been me. Monday I saw a girl driving a big, ancient RV, with sheets covered the windows, sagging in the middle, looking absolutely artisitc. She spun the wheel and parked, taking up three spaces. She looked flushed, figuring it out. My stomach actually hurt a little for wanting to be her in that RV.

Road trips through the desert, winding through the mountains. Seeing views unfold and parking for the night, I love it. Now it has this added component though. It's not solo wanderlust to get away--it's this "wouldn't it be nice" longing to gather my favorites, Gid and the girls and be all together, just us, see a bunch of stuff. No appointments, no obligations, no plan. Just a few weeks of no schedule, no calendar and the wide open road.

Ah, on a Spring-like day like today I pine for it!!

A virtual place to collect virtual things...

2011-01-10T23:55:00.000-08:00

that i love the looks of, virtually.

The Butterfly Net

Louis and Serena

2011-01-09T21:21:00.000-08:00

Or at least I imagined them to be. These swans came so close I could have touched their feathers. Which are so white!

Nature

2011-01-08T16:21:00.000-08:00

This year, my goal is find nature. All the time, regularly, specially.

New Year

2011-01-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

Christmas Gimlets

Lily at the Exploratorium.

This morning the sunshine was warm and friendly through the window--like spring. Not thin and pale like winter. And I have 2 daffodils blooming in the front. I should pick them and bring them in because it's too early to enjoy them. Of course the world doesn't bloom in the winter, we can't be out there to enjoy it.

Reading Moby Dick, and completely delighted by it. How did I not enjoy this book in college? So dumb. It is so good.

Some other holiday media reporting:

Read Chipmunk Seeks Squirrel by David Sedaris when I was sick after Thanksgiving. I thought it was funny, but the last story about the owl, the hamster and the hippo was actually perfect. I was amazed by it.

Saw True Grit in the theater, one of those perfect movie experiences where you sit down and your mind doesn't wander, and you don't even think, you just watch and enjoy the story and leave after its over blissfully aware that for two hours you didn't come up with anything on your own, you just went along for the ride with someone's story and idea. Very nice. The movie was great too, I thought.

Also really enjoyed a netflix movie with all the old pals from The State in it, written by Michael Showalter called The Baxter.

Snowflake shadows

2010-12-16T12:42:00.000-08:00

You can barely see them in the picture on the computer, but at the top on the garage door there are these cool shadows in the late afternoon kitchen from the snowflakes on the window.

Today we made shortbread and chewy bars and Lily played pretend with the ornaments for an hour. Nothing broke. The sun is shining through the south facing windows, helping the amaryllis get going.

"There is no try, only do."

2010-12-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

So far, during advent I have tried. And failed. I feel strung out and harried, exactly the opposite of my intended state for this season. But it's because I tried so hard.

I do not want to be the one who misses it, who walks right through the mystery.

I have looked at Magnolia's eyes countless times and saw them, they are hazely green like Peter's. Yesterday at the doctor he said, "Magnolia has all colors in her eyes. Hazely green and blue on the edge." I said "Yeah, uh huh." And then when we got home I looked and saw that she has this cool outline of blue on her eyes. That I had never seen before. Oh, to have eyes to see and ears to hear! So I don't waste so much time thinking I see and trying to listen.

Tracking

2010-11-20T01:43:00.000-08:00

When you find yourself eating too much food, the first advice is to keep track and write down what you eat. When you find yourself spending too much money, the first advice is to keep track and write down what you spend.

The idea that we eat or spend without realizing it seems terrible. If we only had just enough (or not enough) to eat or spend we wouldn't eat a bite or spend a dollar without being aware. I am struggling with the idea that there is a normal, healthy amount of stuff (food/money/possessions/things to do) and somehow being more aware somehow helps you stay in that place. I know it may have something to do with greed, envy, worry, pride, comfort; there are these reasons and traps for how food and money get out of control in our lives. But as opposed to reactive measures like the whole "track it and you'll get back on track", I wonder if there is a way of living or a cultural adjustment that would eliminate the problem!

Are people supposed to live more subsistently? If so many people have these struggles with weight and spending are these symptoms of living in a way that goes against how we are wired? Or taps into something negative about the way we're wired?

How do you reconcile having so much, and then "not enough"? Maybe I am just yearning for something that is yet to be. The kingdom of heaven does not have diets in it. I am sure. But I am also sure that we are never hungry.

To my Magsie on her birthday

2010-10-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Magnolia,
You are one year old. You were born in the evening and we came home after lunch the next day. I had made you a pink cake a week before you were born and froze it. I told Gram to take it out of the freezer that morning. Then, when your dad and sister went to get burritos for dinner that night, I frosted it and put sprinkles on it so we could have a little party to celebrate you. Remembering those early days with you please me. I was so worried that your whole first year would be a blur. A blur of caring for two children, a struggle. But, looking back into the blur, these perfectly clear, sane moments greet me. Sure, maybe there aren't very many. But they are representative. They are real and just yours.
I remember getting up and nursing you in the night, before we had figured out lying down nursing together. Watching Jimmy Fallon and the National Parks specials on PBS. I remember getting Lily buckled into her seat in the Target parking lot and feeding you in the front seat of the car. Lily would be flipping through "Cars-that-Trucks-that-things-that-go!" (as she says) and you would eat, spit up (a lot) and be content.
I remember you in the snow. Peaceful, watchful girl.
I remember you smiling, laughing, beginning to understand.
I remember you in Grass Valley, wearing you in the sling as it got dark, walking together under the lacy leaved trees, quiet and slow. When you and me are together by ourselves, it is serene. I remember so many of those moments over this past year. You have been a source of delight, of love, of joy. I thank God for your life. Your surprise life. Because here is just what our family needs: a little girl with hazel eyes, with an old soul, watching us, laughing.
Love you sweet babes.
Mama

Leaning into Autumn

2010-10-06T20:48:00.000-07:00

Now, all three of our new chickens are laying eggs. (For interested parties: we did not eat the other ones, they just died.) Lucky's are greenish, Astro II's are tan and Rhoda II's are brown. (Lucky is an Araucana, Astro II is a Barred Rock and Rhoda II is a Rhode Island Red) We have a lot of eggs these days, so the girls eat eggs almost every morning and CR and Peter both have been cooking them for lunch lately with beans/tortillas/salsa kind of stuff. Very tasty. Cristy Rose has been staying with us and it has been so lovely. I love sharing coffee and chatting in the morning, having another lady in the house, eating homemade tortillas...having an encouraging and loving friend so near is a gift.

"Tuesday Morning Adventures" may sound like an outing at a retirement facility but it's really our way of making sure that despite school days and some other regularly scheduled programming in our lives, we get some weekday fun. This past Tuesday we visited Muir Woods. After seeing "The Gnomemobile" recently, the scenery was just right for hunting gnomes. We didn't find any, but it was perfectly beautiful and the slight changing leaves and nip in the air felt like the first taste of fall.

Inside a tree.

30

2010-09-17T00:04:00.001-07:00

Another Birthday, Another Decade

2010-09-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

This is one of those big birthdays...and although I am a birthday girl who loves to celebrate, when the time came I was edgy and confused. I have no idea why turning 30 seemed so hard. Many reasons, but the biggest one is probably that it feels so unfamiliar, it doesn't seem like me. I have to live in it for awhile for it to feel comfortable. My heart feels so young, it's hard to imagine ever being older than 23. But I am.

When I was young, learning how to encounter the wider world, Plato's quote "The unexamined life is not worth living." helped me. Now as I walk in this wider world, I return to it. I can't help but wonder if I abandoned this idea for a time and that's why I feel strange to turn 30--I haven't looked inside to see who I am at this age, at this turn of the decade. I've been going through the motions, taking for granted the examining I did in my early twenties.

So here I am, 30, facing the future and turning inward for a bit, and it's very good.

I love a good "before and after"!

2010-08-08T15:23:00.000-07:00

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Birthday party.

2010-08-07T22:47:00.000-07:00

Maybe I am trying to impart my own love of birthday to my child. I loved her birthday as much as she did. It's so fun to decorate the house after she goes to bed the night before, set out presents for before breakfast opening, make special food. I loved having streamers and balloons in the dining room when it was my birthday as a kid, waking up and coming out to see birthday decorations is so wonderful.

Blink

2010-08-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

and she's three.

Mid-summer: don't let anyone tell you it's not.

2010-08-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for book club. It's very good. But you knew that, Oprah told everybody a few years ago.

listening "Roller Coaster Ride" as covered by Mates of State.

eating almondina cookies.

watching Breaking Bad.

cleaning and organizing our garage, office, girls' room. Utilizing craigslist and the ikea as-is dept. for all they can possibly offer to us.

wishing and dreaming of road trips to Alaska, cruises to Mexico, Disneyland, New Mexico.

Rainbow Order

2010-07-26T21:08:00.000-07:00

Remember when you were supposed to put things in rainbow order?

Grass Valley

2010-07-19T16:48:00.000-07:00

We went to Grass Valley last weekend for a wedding--it was very hot. But very lovely. I thought a lot about the book: Angle of Repose.

Catching Up

2010-06-23T15:29:00.000-07:00

Our camera was lost and we finally got a new one last week...

Crazy Mags and summer time Dad.

Discovery Museum. It's a pteranadon nest.

Instead of a skirt for Lil, I made a zipper pillow cover. This way, we can have a bed pillow on the couch and it doesn't just look like someone in our house is sick.

Spider webs everywhere.

Latest project at our house...door on the office. Also, painting office orange and making it a nice, functional guest room/office/sleeping place for Mags.

Finally saving some energy and drying the diapers on the line. So glad for sunny days.

Brooding Rhoda...no good. No eggs, just sitting there all day!

At least Sunny hasn't gone that route. She's still laying one a day.

First Cosmo bloomed.

Hot

2010-05-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

Achievement

2010-05-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

Switching from Jif to natural peanut butter was SO hard for me. I love(d) the texture of that Jif. I knew it had a lot of extra stuff, I knew it was processed beyond the necessary peanut processing, I knew it had those bad oils...but even if the rest of my cupboard looked like home to healthy whole foods, the Jif jar lived there too.

It's gross to stir the natural peanut butter. But it's better when I realized that I don't have to store it in the fridge like it says. Anyway, I'm officially a convert to the natural stuff. It tastes pretty good if you get the salted variety.

I probably will keep some Jif on hand for peanut butter cookies and peanut butter frosting for that amazing peanut butter chocolate cake, but for our daily PB and J's, it's the natural stuff now. One more step in the right direction!

Poem on a dreary May morning

2010-05-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

The Exhibit
by Lisel Mueller

My uncle in East Germany
points to the unicorn in the painting
and explains that it is now extinct.
We correct him, say such a creature
never existed. He does not argue,
but we know he does not believe us.
He is certain power and gentleness
must have gone hand in hand
once. A prisoner of war
even after the war was over,
my uncle needs to believe in something
that could not be captured except by love,
whose single luminous horn
redeemed the murderous forest
and, dipped into foul water,
would turn it pure. This world,
this terrible world we live in,
is not the only possible one,
his eighty-year-old eyes insist,
dry wells that fill so easily now.

Lillian Austin

2010-05-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Lillian Austin rose is blooming a lot this year. And I noticed a crazy new rose to rival the now extinct pixar rose. Tenth and Addison. It looks like a Cecille Bruner. I must get a Cecille Bruner rose and plant it! I love the smell and the color and the look.

Lately

2010-05-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

Mags' huge head in a bonnet.

If you have 6 inch pans you can make a dozen cupcakes and a two layer 6 inch cake with one recipe of cake batter. I like this.

We went to the Marine Mammal Center. Later, processing the idea of a seal hospital, Lily put band aids all over her souvenir.

Sea glass from Sea Cliff Beach in Santa Cruz.

Very pretty shell that looks like it needs to be turned into a necklace.

Kitchen counter remodel got finished right before Easter and I love it.

With B at the Academy

2010-04-22T16:30:00.001-07:00

Stamp

2010-04-22T15:46:00.000-07:00

Weanie

2010-04-16T21:27:00.000-07:00

I wrote this about 2 years ago, when Lily had started to wean. I never published it because I thought it was one of those processing sessions that ended when I trailed off. But right now, in a nursing season with Magnolia and having friends who are weaning their children, I revisited this saved post:

"Do you remember the scene from Return of the King with Frodo back in the shire after his adventure/nightmare journey? He walks around, picking up this or that, standing and looking out the window with a cup of tea, drinking with his friends, all the while so melancholy? He asks in an overdub, "How do you pick up the pieces of an old life?" It's this perfect scene for the state of melancholy; the music, the question, the small things you see.

Lillian has begun the weaning process-she's not that interested in breastfeeding anymore. She still nurses once or twice a day, but we're on the path. So I've gone with it, because I truly don't want to push through this disinterested phase and continue to nurse for months longer. But you wouldn't know that to catch me in a Frodo moment. "I don't nurse my baby anymore." Whimper, whimper. "Then, who am I? What am I? What is this place to me if I'm not a nursing mother?" I literally look out the window like Frodo, melancholy as can be. Then a few hours later I'm feeling free as a bird, "Look at me, I don't have to feed my kid with my body anymore! Whoo Hoo!"

I believe these melancholy moments are partly hormonal and partly true sadness, so I'm giving this process the respect it deserves. It's a big change, a big deal to wean. But then again, it's not. In so many ways it's this natural progression that just, happens. Things must change and things must end and I know it's just the beginning of all the letting go I'll be doing as a mother. But I must admit it sort of makes my heart squeeze a little to watch her crawl and point with her small hand, to watch her babble and eat all kinds of food. It's not just me and her anymore. It hasn't been that way for a long while, but with breastfeeding there were these little sections of the day that were reserved for just her and me. It's like a secret or a promise you keep. There was something that bound us in that nursing relationship. Now she plays and loves other people too. She doesn't just turn her head for my smell or my voice, she knows different faces and voices and her world is bigger. That's good. But I feel left here, with feelings about the whole thing that she has no concept of. That's good too.

So when I have my violins soaring, golden light of the Shire, self-examination moments like Frodo, I often find myself being cut short by a little girl pulling on the cat's tail or clamoring for more toast. And that reminds me how natural and normal it all is. Each little baby has a time to wean and my little baby's time is here."

Now, with a little time and distance, all this still feels so true. In a word, or a few: Breastfeeding extends the period of time in which you are bonded physically with your child. When you wean, you find yourself for the first time in many many months, sometimes years, back to just being you. You hadn't been just you since before you conceived. But now, you're not just you. You're a mother. So the old you doesn't fit right and you have to adapt. It's so bizarre. I want to treasure my time nursing Magnolia now, but sometimes I forget how short lived it all is and whine at the suffocating aspect of nursing. Back and forth, back and forth. Girl, remember it is fleeting!

It's how you cope.

2010-04-09T14:01:00.000-07:00

Old Reliable

2010-03-29T20:19:00.000-07:00

In our garden, this is the one thing that is always edible, all year round. It's a kale tree. We got it at Spiral Gardens and it bears really tasty kale. You just clip off the leaves and they grow back, fast. I like the texture of cooked kale a lot so I mostly use it as a supper vegetable, sauteed with onion, a little turkey bacon and then simmered with a little apple juice.

The chickens also like kale, so if a branch gets aphids we just toss it to them.

Yesterday I planted a lot of seeds--sweet peas and sunflowers all around the frontyard fence. I hope they all do well.

Reflecting

2010-03-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

I've been reflecting on the weekend, particularly the time spent on the farm. I love Disneyland and the dear people we traveled there with. It was terrific. But I've been thinking about how restful being at the farm was, how calm. It was so good to see cr! in her element there. So good to be barefoot there.

I was thinking about how much time I spend indoors. I know that it is just now Spring, but I really do spend more and more time inside instead of outside and it grosses me out. I need to be outside more. Lil and Mags need to be outside more. So I am resolving to spend time out on our small farm everyday. Even just a few minutes. So I know what's going on out there. So I feel the vitamin D going in. So I don't become pale and sickly. Outside! It is beckoning! Outside!

Fun times

2010-03-23T13:55:00.000-07:00

Winnie the Pooh ride at Disneyland.

Picking carrots at The Abundant Table Farm.

Our picks at the farm. So beautiful! Not pictured: avocados and strawberries.

Mapping it out

2010-03-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

I want to make a patchwork version of the skirt I made Lily. I love all the squares stacked up. Can't believe we're headed to Disneyland tomorrow. I am excited to see it at Springtime. Lily is such a bigger girl now--twice as old as this picture! She is almost as excited as me.

Snowflake

2010-03-01T20:31:00.000-08:00

This is the best I could capture of the beautiful snow we saw in Tahoe this weekend. I have become obsessed with snowflakes and that they really do look like all the clipart pictures of snowflakes...but tiny. I was always confused about the whole thing, but now I understand and I can't get enough! I'm the lady who looks completely stoned, looking at my gloved hands in wonder.

This is now.

2010-02-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

Mags
Candy

Before
After (Still in progress)
Daffa-down-dilly
Rain
Tulip
Naked Baby
Eggs
Potty

Skirt

2010-02-07T10:32:00.000-08:00

The other night, the baby went to sleep early and I was able to do a little sewing while we watched Quantom Leap. Which is a show where I never know what's going on and often ask, "What's happening, what's the point?" For example, in one episode Sam is a prize fighter, dating a topless go-go dancer, being trained for a big fight by nuns.

I used a pattern for the first time and realized it's totally not my style. The meticulous cutting, the notches, the matching...the directions. What a chore. I made a little skirt that was a mock up in a way, I wanted to see if I could make a little skirt before using fabric I love (read: expensive fabric). I made the little skirt and it is quite sloppy but I don't mind, I thought Lily would love it, but she refused to go near it the next day saying "That's not MY skirt!" Then, Peter very kindly convinced her to wear it today so that I wouldn't feel badly about her not wanting to wear my handiwork. But I'm still not sure I will use the fabric I love to make another of these skirts. It's too unpredictable if she will wear or like what I make. I'd rather make an apron or a zipper bag for myself. I LOVE what I make. I also don't think I'll be sewing from patterns regularly, it's hard.

eggs

2010-02-02T11:43:00.000-08:00

Here it is! Egg #1. Sunny is laying now, we can tell it's her because of the beautiful color of this egg--green! Rhoda's eggs will be brown--and she better start laying some or get nicer or something soon. She's gotten kind of bitchy since the roosters left.

Egg #2.

Pizza Night

2010-01-25T15:52:00.000-08:00

In Animal Vegetable Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver talks a little bit about her family's pizza night. I think this is a brilliant idea for many reasons...everybody likes pizza, you can use up leftover veggies and bits of cheese and sauce, you don't have to think about what to make for dinner one night a week. As a fledgling menu-planner, I've embraced Pizza Night for now. I anticipate getting bored of pizza. Although I have eaten a Gordo burrito for dinner almost every Sunday night for the past 2 years.

Want a peek at my menu plan for this week?

Monday: Turkey Chili and baked potato, with sour cream and cheddar cheese
Tuesday: Roast Chicken, greens, mashed sweet potatoes
Wednesday: Black Bean Soup with Toasted Cumin Seed Crema
Thursday: Make dessert for dinner gathering. Thinking pie.
Friday: Pizza Night! Sometime I'll post my recipe for super easy pizza dough.

Muscari

2010-01-24T09:57:00.000-08:00

I like the pineapple in the background because the flower looks kind of like a little purple pineapple.

January

2010-01-12T23:41:00.001-08:00

I am very pleased with these rosehips. This rose, I am not so pleased with overall--it's not very fragrant, I thought I liked the bloom but it's too simple. I wanted some crazy really gorgeous rose to grow on this trellis and this here yellow plain jane isn't it. Plus it just looks all funky and diseased a lot of the time. What do I do though? Dig it out?

But right now it's looking very cool with these orange rosehips all over the mostly bare branches. Very mid-winter.In other news, I took the plunge and switched Mags over to cloth diapers. It's working and I won't say I LOVE it, but it's okay. No more diaper-in-the-landfill guilt. Although I've already tossed plenty of diapers in the landfill, but I just don't think about that. I'm turning over a new leaf!

I've been reading the Love Comes Softly series by Janette Oke. I've read these books since I was young, and re-read them a few times. It's fun, they're weird but also strangely spiritually intriguing to me. I am so not into the whole wider theme of women's place in the family/church/society of these stories. (They're historical, books about pioneer times, but in a kind of "it was good and right that way".)

But sometimes a wholesome, simple phrase touches me: "God can take yer bitterness Clark, iffen you'll let 'im." Stuff like that. I like that kind of stuff. So I've been reading about 1 a day. Reading during Lily's nap while nursing the baby. Staying up WAY too late reading. Doing that kind of reading you do when you're kind of in survival mode when you're not reading. Just wanting to check out in a way that only reading something very easy and melodramatic allows.

Roosters

2009-12-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

2 out of 4 of our chicks were fellas. Thanks to Craigslist we found Astro a new home and today we'll say goodbye to Mercury. Hopefully to a good home too. Or maybe he'll be the best fighting bird since little Jerry Seinfeld. It's hard to say when someone from Craigslist calls you on a rooster posting.

So now it's just Rhoda and Sunny, the lovelies. Rhoda is friendly and Sunny is funny-lookin'. They were the pair we were supposed to have I suppose and I can't wait for 6:45 tomorrow morning and NOT hearing a cockle-doodle-doo.

Cookin'

2009-12-10T14:47:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, this happens when you cook together. The gingerbread house falls down.

Then immediately afterward you cook "together" (which is when kid is in the room but not on the counter) and get the most delicious results: Cranberry Vanilla Coffee Cake. I made this last year when SK originally posted the recipe. This time it turned out even better. Maybe my favorite coffee cake ever.

Cultivate Quiet

2009-11-30T22:23:00.001-08:00

I didn't hear the sermon because I was teaching Godly Play but I heard that somewhere in there was the suggestion (instruction?) for advent, for this week, was to cultivate quiet. I want to do this. I could be doing this right now, both children are asleep, but I am here on the internet thinking about doing this. Stupid.

Teaching Godly Play on the first Sunday of advent was meaningful and I felt myself entering the mystery of Christmas.

As I was preparing for the story I invited my own self to journey to Bethlehem along with the Holy Family, with the angels, the Magi, the prophets and all the rest. I was reminded of that riddle about all the people on the road to St. Ives. All the wives and kids and cats. I'm sure everyone was making a racket. The journey to Bethlehem then and now is noisy and crazy too. But if I stop and notice it, there are indeed moments of calm. I don't have to make them happen, just notice them.

We're on the road to Bethlehem and something incredible will happen there. It's night and no one is crying, no one is screaming or grabbing. There are stars. Look up! Nod and feel that bizarre connection--like a magnet, between your quiet right then and that huge timeless quiet of the skies.

Quiet. Quiet. Be quiet. Be still.

Ah, comfort through poetry.

2009-11-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

Song for a Fifth Child

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
For children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

--Ruth Hulbert Hamilton

Two

2009-11-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

I'm adjusting to life with two kids. It's different than I had thought it would be. Funnier, crazier, WAY harder. Up all night off and on with the baby doesn't really mesh with the hours of a toddler. As someone who only feels fully competent with adequate sleep it's a struggle for me to wake up at 7:00am, only 15 minutes or so after actually falling asleep again after caring for Maggie. I have to pretend like it's normal and natural instead of hideously wrong. Lily breezes in: "Good morning!" and I reply, "Good Morning!"

But then Lily will say something like "What a LOAD on baby sister's bottom!" in amazement and again: "What a LOAD!" and I will laugh and forget that awful "Can it really be morning?" moment...for a moment.

Baby Sister

2009-10-20T22:33:00.000-07:00

Magnolia Ethle Gidlund is here.

We are all quite taken by her!

Autumn time

2009-10-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

Baby sister and big sister.

"We are young, we run green..."

2009-09-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about this particular memory of Gid and I when we were young(er than we are now). Carefree day on the beach in Capitola, watching the sun set from the little deck of a lifeguard station. Me in some cute Abercrombie and Fitch campshirt and jeans. This was before Abercrombie and Fitch got racist and the catalogs had become (too) racy. They had some really cool things back then.

There's a stark contrast of so many things about today and that day. At first, when this memory popped into my head I was a little sad for it. We were the young couple on the beach. We'll never be the young couple on the beach again. Because I have kids I'll never be as "carefree". Even when the wheel turns again and we're back on the beach, kids grown and gone, it won't be the same. Sitting together, watching the sky, that quiet won't be full of fascination and butterflies. I was looking in my mind at us there and just so nostalgic for that day. Just misty for it.

But I love how that day we didn't know we'd be a family, we didn't know how sweet it would be to depend upon each other instead of date. It's almost too lovely to look at, that day. But it is also marvelous to think about how now: instead of holding my heart closed and opening it to show dazzling glimpses, the way we do when we are getting to know someone we are smitten by, it's all open, it's all there. We know each other, we rely on each other. Less independence, fewer butterflies, more deep quiet water, more true love.

I could also just be reminiscing about wearing jeans. I miss that. But I will wear jeans again... someday.

Nesting looks like Sewing this time around.

2009-09-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

We bought this plain brown hoodie from Target for $7. It was a boy's sweatshirt, but the only thing that looked boyish was the number 15 in a tan box on the lapel. I remembered that Dana had given me these patches a long time ago and thought it would be perfect. So I hand-stitched it to the red scrap while sniffling through Pete's Dragon and then did a quick machine stitch around the scrap. Hopefully it will get all unravelly after a few washes and look "distressed" around the edge.

Of course this morning, Lily wept with grief that the "abc's" got covered up. That kind of pissed me off because I worked so hard on it, but then I grew up after I had a cup of coffee and hung it on the coatrack...maybe that's where it will live forever, oh well.

Favorite Cheese!

2009-08-24T19:12:00.000-07:00

The other night I sampled--meaning I ate a lot of--a goat's milk gouda from TJ's that was SO good. I ate it by itself, on buttered french bread and in fresh tomato soup. And in french onion soup.

Today, I got some Popcorn Bisque soup from Berkeley Bowl--really tastes like drinking the freshest sweetest corn on the cob...enriched with cream--and I really wanted more of this kind of cheese. But they only had the fancy kind. But I bought it anyway. It's called Midnight Moon! The TJ one is way cheaper and tastes really almost the same. But I'm going to savor--meaning enjoy most of my smallish wedge in one sitting--my spendy Midnight Moon Goat's Milk Gouda!

Outside with the chicks.

2009-08-22T21:27:00.001-07:00

Free is sweeter

2009-08-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

These berries are from a vacant lot by our house. They were the sweetest berries I've eaten all summer. Infinitely sweeter than the berries we paid to pick in Pescadero!

Update on the unnamed chick. The youngest Reed came to see the peeps and called her Mercury. After the planet. I had to go with it because it's cute and clever and it made Peter think "I don't want to eat that one!" Also reminds me of the Kathleen Edwards song Mercury...which I love. (I wish I could just post songs like pictures. That's against the law (I think.) and I wouldn't know how to do it.)

Of songs, the season is turning again. It's true. Discovered "Easy Hearts" by Whiskeytown is a perfect transitional melody and sounds great in the car on these dusty afternoons.

The baby chicks!

2009-08-16T13:14:00.000-07:00

Today we got 4 chicks, with the high hopes of our backyard turning out all the ingredients for the home grown omelet: tomatoes, zucchini and EGGS! Peter is almost finished with the coop, and these little ladies were just born on Wednesday, so the coop will be ready and waiting by the time they're old enough to move outside.

Lily peeks at her new peeps.

Excited to hold one.

But it somehow ended up down here.

Now, meet the girls. Peter doesn't think I should name them, or call them the girls. Because he wants to EAT them when their egg-laying days are done. But I already love them and we will go toe-to-toe on this one!

First up, meet Rhoda. She's a Rhode Island Red and definitely the friskiest of the bunch.

Here's Sunny. She's an Auracana. She'll lay pretty pale blue eggs!

This one is Astro. She's the biggest right now, and she's a black Austrolorp.

And here's #4, she's another Auracana without a name. She has all sorts of colors and kind of looks like a squirrel or an owl. Any suggestions?

Here they are, just hanging out. I don't think I've ever held a chick before, and I thought it was weird. But it's so fun! They just stay in your hands and go to sleep!

Sewing

2009-08-13T10:03:00.000-07:00

I made a few of these plastic bag holders based on Martha's pattern. She suggested using a dishtowel, but I used fabric from my little stash. I love how they turned out and love that they're so fast to make. I hung them in the garage, one for the clear plastic bags and one for the regular ones. It's already made it easier for me to reuse the bags I have. In the same day I also made a nursing cover from this pattern, but made it bigger. That was not such a fun project. Too slow and too much thinking. I prefer the sewing projects that are fast and simple and you can make a bunch of them and feel pleased with yourself. But if you were a more advanced sewer, it probably wouldn't be such a big deal at all.

Anniversary

2009-08-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Six years of marriage. Some of that time was spent eating chips.

I love Lake Tahoe.

2009-08-01T15:57:00.000-07:00

New piece of the picture

2009-07-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

At church I had an amazing new picture of Jesus in my mind that I never really had before. The passage (John 1:37-42) describes a couple guys going with Jesus to the place he was staying and staying with him for the day and then in the evening, bringing one of the guys' brother over. Jesus basically looks straight at the guy and changes his name, naming his destiny.

I never really thought about how this all might go down and as I let my imagination go I pictured where Jesus was staying, in a house with thick walls, open windows with a courtyard in the middle. There, in the courtyard, in the growing darkness with lamp or two lit, I pictured him sitting with not only these two guys but a few other people. Kind of like the outdoor party ideal that so fascinates me. Jesus is sitting in the warm circle of light, quiet, listening and enjoying the talking. Maybe sipping some wine. Peter comes in and sees him and gets introduced. Jesus may have been "despised and rejected by men" in general during his life, but I imagine from his encounters with the disciples and the woman at the well that there was something irresistible to people who could see it. Attraction, curiosity, wonder. I saw in my mind's eye this picture of Jesus hanging out all day and into the night and it seemed so real to me. It kind of made me want to approach him, like at a party and see what he would tell me about my own self. I can't tell you how pleasant the whole setting and situation were.

I love that this new picture will be a part of all the little movies and snapshots of Jesus I've made in my own head to create who Jesus is to me. And that everybody has his or her own.

John 1:37-42
When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”

They said, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”

“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”

So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.

Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).

Summer at the Gid Kids'

2009-07-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

I love looking at FAIL BLOG with Peter and laughing so hard he gets hiccups for 2 hours. A nice example of the entertainment: Children's Dental Aid Fail

Berry Picking

2009-07-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

We went to Phipp's Farm over the weekend and picked some berries. They got kind of smashed on the way home but that didn't matter; I made a cobbler that made for good breakfast eating for a few days.

This summer has been rolling along. So much good food--peaches, corn, cherries have been the best this week. I've been reading War and Peace, trying to be ready for next week's page 600 check in. I've got to read something like 40 pages a day to make it...we'll see! It really has become like a security blanket. I take it everywhere, hoping for a chance to read a few pages, not necessarily because I LOVE it, but because I just have to keep going! I will say I didn't like it very much at first, but now I am liking it, seeing more in it, feeling more a part of it.

I am enjoying the slow pace of this season for our family. Savoring it, trying not to waste it by thinking too much about what we should accomplish while we have time. Turning around a lot of Netflix: mainly Entourage and The Sopranos--I am so OVER this show! Too gross! Too violent!

Lily definitely has an opinion about Baby Sister's name. We liked Eleanor and we're trying to sell it to her: "What about Eleanor? Baby Eleanor?"
"No, just Baby June. Not Eleanor."
"Eleanor is pretty, Baby Eleanor?"
"I don't like Eleanor."

Alrighty then.

June

2009-06-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to name our baby on the way. I am stumped. We have been thinking "June" but I just don't know if it's right.
I'm trying to figure that out. And read War and Peace, work, welcome summer, etc.
I don't think there's anything nerdy about Les Miserables, it's only one of the best musicals EVER. So I borrowed the soundtrack and am enjoying it this morning.

This is John Hancock's gravesite. I took this picture on my trip to Boston with T at the end of May to see dear M. Notice the bird, very Keith Gidlund of me.

First backyard strawberry picked on June 1. Haven't had another one since. Hmm.

A Night Prayer from The New Zealand Prayer Book

2009-06-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Lord,
it is night.

The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done;
let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us,
and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys,
new possibilities.

In your name we pray.
Amen.

Dolly and Me

2009-05-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

Or should I say, Darya Aleksandrovna and me. I've been leisurely re-reading Anna Karenina this spring. I pulled out my beloved college copy, and dove in. While reading it in the background I've covered a lot of other ground book-wise: American Rust, When You Are Engulfed In Flames (which I could swear after reading the whole thing that I've read it before, but not until finishing could I say with certainty. Hmm.), all the Moffat Books and All-Of-A-Kind Family books (just for kicks), and most of The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd. I think I always need a background book, it helps me feel anchored and have options. Starting today, it will become War and Peace, thanks to new "Slow Book Club" starting on Tuesday. 100 pages at a time--I will read War and Peace!

Anyway, during the course of it's stint as background book this season, Anna Karenina has been through a lot. I now hold it together with a blue asparagus rubberband and for the last 200 pages of the book, have been pulling out what Peter calls my "pamphlets". Little sections that have stuck together despite the book itself falling apart. I pull out "707-742" and read it, put it back and pull out "743-757". Some pamphlets are much small than others. That's what happens when a stupid leak-proof sippy cup leaks in your purse and your beloved copy of Anna Karenina gets soaked...and then you keep reading it and toting it around until it actually breaks.

But, really. The point of this is that this time around, instead of annoying me endlessly, the character of Dolly has been like a bosom friend to me. It all started when Lily started biting and pinching and hitting anything that came withing biting/pinching/hitting distance. I was embarassed and horrified. The day that (looking back) I consider the "height" of this behavior, I was reading during her nap and came across Dolly seeing her kids fighting and hitting, feeling the exact way I was feeling:

"Something snapped in Darya Aleksandrovna's heart when she saw this. It was as if darkness had swooped down upon her life; she felt that these children of hers, that she was so proud of, were not merely most ordinary, but positively bad, ill-bred children, with coarse brutal propensities--wicked children."

It was just exactly it. Irrational, fleeting, but that was the feeling when your kid does something like that.

And now, today I am leaving for Boston, for a weekend with dear girlfriends. And as I read a couple nights ago, Dolly leaves her family to visit Anna for a bit. As she's travelling she thinks of the things she's free from as she travels...the children, the household, all the family worries. Then as she is there at Anna's she begins to find it strange, the absence of children in the daily life and starts to miss her own family so much. When she returns, she finds everything "particularly charming"!

Ah, Dolly. So complex, and here I am doing basically a very narrow "close reading" of her as solely a mother. But that's how it goes with art oftentimes. You find something that looks familiar and cling to it.

I'm lovin' it!

2009-05-02T16:23:00.000-07:00

Sewing: Went to my first sewing class and learned how to make a drawstring bag and use a sewing machine. Very new to me. Today I definitely did something that should help me avoid Alzheimer's. Weird coordination-wise for me and I felt like I was the slow learner of the group, but I left with an itch to sew more...and more!

Dreyer's Slow Churned Mud Pie Ice Cream: I am terrified that this is a "limited edition" flavor. I have never felt this way about an ice cream flavor before. Even after having my relationship with Hagen Dazs renewed a couple years ago, nothing compares to how much I love this ice cream.

It Ain't Me Babe: Back on it, can't get off it! Love the song, just can't stop listening to it. That and Raffi's "Le Zombies a la Loup-Gerous".

Warm days in the garden

2009-04-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

The girl's hair is so pretty outside.

First beets. I burned them in the oven!

Fat peas. All kids seem to be totally charmed by the novelty of these and eat them like candy.

Neko Case!

2009-04-15T08:08:00.001-07:00

Isn't she pretty?

First artist recognition shown by Lily. I've been listening to Neko Case's new album Middle Cyclone constantly. I thought for sure Mates of State would be the first band I'd hear her say the name of when I play music, but I guess Neko has had more airplay at the time of developmental readiness.

I love this album. It is beautiful lyrically and musically. I'm no music reviewer, I'll leave that to Gid. But I am so enjoying "Magpie in the Morning" and "Don't Forget Me" (There's a piano ORCHESTRA in that one people!) Also loving the line: "Never turn your back on Mother Earth."

Cicely, Alaska

2009-04-01T10:14:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of Joel when he got hit with a tomato. It is tradition to throw tomatoes at white people on Thanksgiving. Joel considers himself a person of color so is offended by getting hit. What?! See, aren't you dying to know more!

We've been watching Northern Exposure on DVD for the past few months. I remember watching this show in syndication very late at night during the summer when I was a teenager. I remember hearing the opening music in the evening when it was on and my parents watched it sometimes. But I had no memory of how good it was. This show is virtually flawless. Similar to Winnie-the-Pooh characters I think that everyone can identify with one of the ensemble. I think Gid is a Chris/Holling combo. I myself identify with Ruth Ann. I wish I knew more Shelly Tambo types.
Anyway, not only is the show funny and silly and beautiful, it is filled with these surprising insights about community, religion, art, and human nature. I wish we had a "Chris in the Morning" to read us The Call of the Wild and Thanksgiving dinners shared by our whole community (CWOW thanksgiving would be so great!) but we don't. So I am completely charmed by this tv show and tickled by it.
I'm sure I will be sad when it ends, hopefully I won't cry like when we finished watching X Files. (I was so sad about William for months!!) Watching TV on DVD is a funny thing- it's hours and hours that would be spent naturally over the course of years- 6 years in the case of Northern Exposure, NINE in the case of X Files, condensed into a few months of nightly immersion. It is amazingly comforting and addicting.

Double

2009-03-26T14:02:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize we had any special daffodils until these started coming up in the back. Planted them thinking they were regular old daffodils, come to find out they're so fancy!

Thank you, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

2009-03-16T13:33:00.000-07:00

Last night we saw two great things on PBS. One, a great Ken Burns American Story about women's suffrage, Not For Ourselves Alone and a documentary about women soldiers in Iraq called Lioness.

I recommend both features wholeheartedly! Totally fascinating, mind-opening stuff.

New Little Gidding

2009-03-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you are surprised by life. We're having another kid. Pregnancy puts me over in the contemplative camp I guess, so I've been looking around, staring at the curtains, listening to music, driving, all the while, thinking.

Feeling nauseated about 22 to 23 hours a day, watching Northern Exposure (thumbs up!) , reading Prodigal Summer (thumbs down.) and eating are activities I do best at this time, all the while, thinking.

Most books that feature a pregnant person attempt to describe this kind of absent, dreamy confusion that kind of takes hold during this time. It's hard to nail down exactly what it is. It's weird. I'm thoughtful, but not focused. I know it won't last, so I'm just contemplating it while I'm in it.

Interesting

2009-02-06T16:56:00.000-08:00

I was going to save this picture for Valentine's Day, but I couldn't wait. It's so smooth and pretty. You can imagine what those leaves feel like. Lily was curious and ripped one which was so embarrassing. But I understand how it was irresistible to touch them. I did, but I was more gentle.

I picked up Prodigal Summer for book club from the library and also picked up a copy of Blue Iris, a book of poems by Mary Oliver. I was driving to Pleasanton on a country road a few weeks back and heard her on City Arts and Lectures, which I never listen to by the way because it doesn't sound very friendly initially, but she was enchanting! So I wanted to read some more, and for myself.

I'll let you know how it is. Enjoying all the rain, drinking tea and eating animal crackers.

Blast from the past!

2009-02-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

Action Jackson...keeps popping into my head...so today I wrote a post. I have two more in the chute. So maybe get it back on your google reader folks.

Nothing but Flowers

2009-01-30T12:14:00.000-08:00

After months and months of listening to the Talking Heads CD we have, I finally "heard" song 18: Nothing but Flowers. You can watch the video on YouTube, and that's interesting, but what's been most interesting to me is tossing around the words.

Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it's nothing but flowers

There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it

We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
we got it, we got it

There was a shopping mall
Now it's all covered with flowers
you've got it, you've got it

If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
you've got it, you've got it

Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong

Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it

This was a discount store,
Now it's turned into a cornfield
you got it, you got it

Don't leave me stranded here
I can't get used to this lifestyle

I'd like to live more like it was "paradise", eating food I grow, watching flowers bloom and listening to birds. But it would suck to not have toilets, or dishwashers...I'd miss the symphony, GAP, road trips, scissors, books, feminine products, Diet Coke, candy, etc. So how do you do both? How do you use the modern world and enjoy the natural world? I know I need to do more of the latter to start.

The picture is from the Conservatory of Flowers when we went last week. You can't see all the colored light that shone through the stained glass, but it sure was pretty.

Some nice things

2009-01-18T12:48:00.000-08:00

Shell I found on Ke'e Beach.

When I saw it, I just saw that little silver ring above the sand, what a treasure to unearth!

Yearly paperwhite picture. These were blooming when we got back.

Eating shave ice in my homeland. Seriously, I think this is my ancestral home gauging by the way I feel when I visit this place.

I sure like this guy. I put the jaunty little grasses in his hat.

Violas smelling sweet on the window sill, friendly with the sea glass.

It's been a long time...

2009-01-16T08:36:00.000-08:00

I haven't been able to blog because our computer was sick for awhile--but now it is better and this will hopefully be the first of many posts in the next few weeks. It's good to be back!

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year, but I did set a little goal of getting a chicken or two for the backyard. I will have to see if this is cost effective and if it is too crazy to take care of a chicken or what, but I want one. And I want to name it Lucy, so P. Dana aptly suggested the breed should be "Rhode Island Red". I looked for images of RIRs and as I was looking at all the pictures of chickens I will admit, I was a little grossed out. They have beady eyes and some of them didn't have the full feather coverage that the proud girl above does. But that's reality, not all chickens are pretty.

A wee bit obsessed.

2008-12-18T15:15:00.000-08:00

This tea is so good. It's from Mexico. Directly. I can't find it in any stores here. I may have to wait until my mom's friend brings more. I drank glass after glass of this tea on Monday when I had a sore throat and it helped. It really did! My favorite flavor is Passion fruit-Peach or Cherry-Blueberry.

Just sitting there, staring at the goldfish container and it occurred to me...

2008-12-18T09:12:00.000-08:00

I think a fish needs a helmet like a fish needs a bicycle.

Enjoying...

2008-12-10T14:05:00.000-08:00

I got this book from my brother, I had been wishing for it for awhile, then I received it and now I am reading it! Just finished Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl for fun and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende for book club. I don't think I've ever read this many books by female writers in a row before. I'm only about 50 pages into A Gift From the Sea, but it is very good. I am so enjoying Lindbergh's take on women, creativity, simplification and solitude. Some great stuff here. (Aside: I know that book titles are supposed to be underlined, just so you know, but for some reason blogger doesn't have an underline button. So I italicize.)

Thanks to cr!'s blog, I remembered Bob Dylan last week and have been listening to "It Ain't Me Babe." on repeat. When I baked a lemon cake for Lisa's shower, I listened to the greatest hits over and over again. How soothing it was! The saddest Bob Dylan songs soothe me.

Pictures

2008-12-04T22:01:00.000-08:00

Kate and the new curtains.

Thanksgiving Story time (or wrangle, depending on how you look at it.)

Table

Made brussels sprouts for the first time a few weeks ago. I liked them!

Thanksgiving Pre-Meal music time.

Friendship

2008-12-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

One of my very dearest friends is moving away. I feel like a character in a children's book. Like the Alexander book about moving: "Alexander, Who's not (Do you hear me I mean it) Going to Move." But it's happening whether I like it or not. I like it decidedly not.

Friends had been hard for me for awhile. For awhile I felt so lonely, I was shy about myself, I felt frightened about getting close to someone. I thought if I ever had a best friend again it would hurt terribly and why would anyone want to be my friend anyway? When we moved here, women were so incredibly kind to me. I was so loved and cared for by my sister, women at church, old friends that I didn't see often.

But I held back. If the question was in my mind, "Should I call her?" The answer was "no". It would bug her, I don't know her that well, she probably has a lot going on, how do I know if she would want to hang out with me...on and on. It was this problem and I didn't know how to fix it. I had a lot of friends, ladies I admired and loved, but I didn't know how to get to the next level of friendship. The one where you talk to the person without thought about whether or not. You share meals, moments, conversations, trips, random errands, news, secrets and recipes. I had had that once and I didn't anymore and part of my confusion about how that had happened left me so handicapped. I felt like a runt, not equipped, totally clueless.

Enter, God. I asked to be healed from this burden. It was so heavy to be so self-conscious. So NOT me. Two things came from prayer for me, an image of being wounded and that every time that wound stung that God wanted to relieve the pain. That I was healing, it was just still painful sometimes. The second was Psalm 91, that has become such a comfort to me. To me, that Psalm equals being held by God. That's why I made Dana read it in the dim light during my labor with Lily. It always makes me feel known and loved. Two things I needed to believe that not only God and my family felt about me, but friends too.

Enter, friend who is leaving. She kept calling me. She kept wanting to hang out. There was no shoe waiting to drop. She liked me, she remembered things about me and got to know me better and better. We had fun together. We were pregnant at the same time, had babies and then all of a sudden were home during the day. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Hey, wanna go to the beach? Hey, wanna go to Target? Wanna sit in the backyard? I need a cocktail, let's have a party! If I think, "Should I call her?" I do. She gave me this sense of confidence and pure joy about best friends again. Because of her, I have not just one best friend, but many. Some wall crumbled in me and I felt more at ease with all my friends. I feel incredibly hopeful about my capacity for friendship. I'm not scared anymore.

I am so sad she's leaving. It would seem this would be the worst thing that could happen. What kind of fallout will happen for me that the person that made me feel confident and safe about letting my guard down is leaving? It should set me back a mile! But it doesn't. I am moved to tears almost daily by how much I will miss her and how I can't really imagine my daily life without her, but whatever healing that started even before she arrived in Berkeley has been done. I am so grateful to her for loving me so well and helping me learn how to share friendship in a new way. I am so glad for all the people I am close to because of her.

This past year has been an especially golden one. The slow pace of being at home with a little one and sharing those slow, free days with some fantastic people and their own little ones warms my heart so much. I will always remember these years as charmed in a way. The happy hours, the bbqs, the beach and the garden. The sweet feeling with which I remember my early college days I thought I would never feel about another time. But looking back over the past few years, I am inspired and relaxed. That perfect combination of stirring and simmering. And that makes me so peaceful.

So I say to my friend who is leaving, besides Thank you! I love you!, I say don't worry. Thanks to my new-found friendship health I don't worry about our friendship. I know we will always be close, we will always be in each other's hearts.

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Ah, nothing like a cathartic blog post.

November and the ground is cold.

2008-11-14T09:48:00.000-08:00

On Sunday we did some hard work in the yard. We composted all the tired ratty old summer garden and put fresh compost and soil back in the beds. This is satisfying because it's the ultimate personal recycling program: food scraps, yard waste and all my shredded office waste create rich black compost in which to grow food. Then we planted seeds.

We planted some cold weather crops for the winter. Basically any Spring crops can be grown in our microclimate for winter. We planted broccoli, spinach, lettuce, pole peas, beets and yellow beets. We also planted some hyacinth bulbs and narcissus in the summer flower bed. The anenomes are already putting up frilly tufts of leaves. They will probably bloom by January.

My next project is forcing some bulbs for Christmas time. Better get on that!

Hope

2008-11-13T08:49:00.000-08:00

This was outside my kitchen window November 5, 2008.