The weekends have been rolling through with paintbrush strokes lately. There have been many more bright yellows and reds where there had been a lot of darker things, like depression and colic. We are moving now, wheels turning down the road to places with familiar faces and isn’t it silly that I started to wonder if that would ever happen again? If we would always stand still? You do, you know? You start to believe that “it will always be this way” whatever that way is, but it never stays. We have that one constant, in counting on change. You would think I’d be sure of it by now but I still get scared sometimes when things are hard. I get scared they will only stay hard or get harder. But this weekend Miles had a play date and there was a pizza fundraiser and a huge indoor garage sale where I got […]
We have this crazy dog. She’s crazy around any other animal, no matter how big or small. She’ll charge a horse (yes, she’s done it) or a mouse or even a fly. She especially dislikes other dogs. It’s not awesome. We did all the right things, the dog park daily and all that and then suddenly, when I got pregnant, it was all over. No dog park for her! (There was a rat terrier incident.) Our Tia Maria became overly protective and has possibly even become more and more so with each new member of our family. She’s nice to people, but not to any other living thing, including trees–you know what dogs do to those. Now we have those baby chicks. We knew this would be an issue, so the chicks and Tia take turns being outside. We’re trying to slowly introduce them, like through the screen door and stuff like that, […]
because your Thursday needs a little dance off… p.s. who needs pants?! or shirts?! P.S. I did an interview for an online show called Moms Like Us. You can watch it now if you’d like. (It begins at 4 minutes 30 seconds. There’s an interview with Minnesotan children’s book author Catherine Urdahl before my interview. Catherine was kind enough to give her two books to me while we were there and we love them. They’re beautifully illustrated and touch on childhood themes that are hard to address without her style of seeing these hard feelings through a child’s eyes. You can check them out at catherineurdahl.com)
{Welcome to Just Write. This week, after you link up below, click on over to Momalom and link up there, too! We’re sharing words with 5 for 5 this week! The prompt is “Words” but if you didn’t get that memo, no worries. Your post surely has words in it, so it’ll work just fine. The link to 5 for 5 is at the end of this post.} {WORDS} On Sunday I got back into bed, overwhelmed and exhausted, my down comforter like a life raft. No TV, no book, no iPhone. No words. I was just thinking but not about much. Then I drifted off to sleep. I have no idea how long it’s been since I did something like that. Just calmly ignoring the loud sounds coming from the other rooms, coming in and out of consciousness. Peaceful. It’s been a really long time. It was the next thing on […]
Hi friends! Please note: This post is for Arianne because she’s very bossy when she’s packing to move and she wants to know all about our chicken-owning. Also please note: Just Write will be up tomorrow morning and in case you missed it, there’s something new and different and exciting happening this week. In short, you get to link up in two places so your words can be read by more eyes. Coolio. Now. For the chickens. BAWK!!! I have fallen in love with three. One black, one brown, one yellow–all hens. We have a semi-large fenced backyard and we’re turning the play house that the boys never use into a coop. At first our baby chicks live in a really big plastic bin (you know, the kind of bin Arianne is packing her family’s belongings in to move across country). We got all three chicks, a feeder and water-er, wood chips […]
{This post is actually about this week’s Just Write, but it takes me a bit to get to the point. Please forgive. Heh.} Hi friends. I was just thinking about how I randomly write about things and then other things and some small and beautiful things and other Big Things and then I change the subject and stop bringing up things and it’s probably because my brain is so very scattered… so my blog is too! Anyway. I want to do an update-ish sort of thing soonly because of that (like about Elsie and how she’s being assessed because of her gross motor skills being a bit lacking and about that whole post tubal ligation craziness and about upcoming good things…) But for now, I want to talk about this coming Tuesday because if you do Just Write with me (or would like to try) it’s going to get even better because you’ll […]
I ask our boys (and soon Elsie) what they can know for sure. They answer, I belong! It’s true. They do. I want them to know they can always come home and that we have a belonging kind of family. And I hope one day that expands to my children having a knowledge of their role in a greater belonging. That they play an important part in their little corner of the world, wherever they’ll grow to live and that what they do and say causes a ripple effect far past those corners. So much of that kind of belonging starts in our home and in the ways we spend time together. I love it when I come across a way to make good ripples from our corner of the world, something that will teach my kids that doing something small can be really big for someone who needs them, someone close or far […]
My soul begs for quiet maybe even more than my body begs for rest. A quiet room and mind. No racing thoughts or legs no loud no hustle no no no no no strife no strain just peace just a moment. No, that’s not true. I want moments. Many many moments of quiet, in a row. It would take days and days of quiet moments for the recovering of this heart and mind. This person. I am tight shoulders and held breath, sleep deprivation and overstimulation. I am numb. I am not. I am crying. I am trying. I am not. I am feeling a tinge of pride when my Dad walks in and I’m making brownies with Asher on a very bad day. Look at me go! I found the energy! As if his love for me changes based on what I’m doing or not doing. As if he has a piece of graph paper and […]
My early riser is up with the light. Bouncing around and all chatter and energy. He passes the hours (yes, hours) before school with Nutella and checking in on the baby chicks (yes, chicks) and Legos and Animal Planet. Today we learned about walruses. Walruses apparently get annoyed with each other and jab those big tusks into each other. The narrator man says that’s okay because they heal fast and they’re made of six layers of blubber. On a commercial break, there’s an ad with a woman in a hospital bed. She says she had a stroke because she smoked her whole life. Her son is giving her a sponge bath and she’s talking about how she can’t do anything anymore. She tells smokers to “enjoy your independence now”. I asked Miles what he thought all of that meant and he said that everyone should stop smoking. Then he added that if you […]
I have some really good news. My friend Ellie got her pathology report back on Friday and she’s in remission! Cancer freeeeeee! Of course, she’ll be watched closely in the coming months and years, but after the surgery to remove the rest of her tumor and surrounding lymph nodes, she got nothing but GOOD NEWS. Good news is so good. Ellie and I have some other exciting news to share (coming soon) but for now, because of that news, I’m curious about where you are. Where do you do life? Here in Minnesota? Over by Ellie in Massachusetts? In England? The moon? Kentucky? Indiana? Could you leave me a comment that tells me what country or city and/or state you live in? (I promise I’m not trying to trick you into becoming someone that I follow around with binoculars.) If you normally don’t comment, it’s very easy. Let me tell you how: you […]
When I was a little girl and would stay over with my Grandma and Grandpa, I always had trouble falling asleep. My Grandma Helen would rub my back and ask me what I was thinking about. I’d tell her and then she would say that I needed to clear my mind, to think about nothing. So I would try. I would repeat over and over in my head, don’t think don’t think don’t think…but then I was really busy thinking about not thinking and I’d stay awake longer. For the short seven-ish years I’ve been a mother, the whole being present thing has been one of my greatest struggles, the way I would wonder if I’m doing it well enough. Lately I’ve been thinking that it works in much the same way as trying to think about nothing. The more time I spend scrutinizing myself on whether or not I’m spending enough time […]
Asher has a blue shirt with red and yellow headphones on it. Every night I sit on my bed and fold the laundry and it seems like that shirt is always in my hands. Half fold, sleeves together and folded back, half fold again. I stop to look at the front of it for just a second when I put it on his stack of clothes because it’s my favorite. I don’t know why. I just like him in it. Maybe because it’s his favorite, too. Right before the laundry folding festivities, I put Elsie in her crib. Every night, I rock and nurse her, run my hand over her head and put her down and look at her for a little longer than a second. I walk away and tell her Daddy that I can’t believe how beautiful she is or that she’s ours and doesn’t it seem like she was always […]
“Stories and truth are splints for the soul, and that makes today a sacred gathering.” ~Anne Lamott She has a caramel roll and she’s wearing a white sweatshirt with a lighthouse stitched on it. She sits alone with her newspaper and a sign on the wall above her head that says Dream. She’s absent-minded when the gooey bite falls off her fork on its way to her mouth. I look away to save her from feeling silly. She goes to get a napkin and comes back, sitting down carefully and catching my eye. Good morning! she says and I don’t hear her at first and she says it again loud and clear and then apologizes for how it came out funny the first time. I reassure her and smile wide. Books are open around me, my favorites like C.S. Lewis, Lamott and Donald Miller. It’s been a long time since we sat together […]
Today I said, Note to life: I’m done with this week early. Thanks for having me! Life isn’t a very good listener. Apparently we’re supposed to learn from it more than it learns from us. Buh. Nothing is really bad or anything, it’s just exhausting. The travels-for-work husband is traveling and Asher has hit a phase in which he is terribly NOT okay with having a traveling dad. I can’t figure out if it helps or hurts to talk to Daddy on the phone. I’m guessing he’d just be really sad either way. The bright side is that the way Asher’s heart is hurting is evidence of a really strong connection with his Dad. I love that. Today has gone something like go go go go go go go goooooooooooo…. breathe. go go go go go go go goooooooooooooooooo…. gasp. go go gogogogogoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo… fall over. get up. GO. Then it momentarily stopped because […]
We walked to the park with the merry-go-round, all five of us. Our family. It was so warm and not so windy and the clouds were looming in the best way. Floating puffs looking as if they were being slowly pulled apart like taffy. Maybe I thought of them as taffy or cotton candy or fluffy marshmallows because I’ve been refraining from sugar for nearly forty days but I still crave it. I sat on the merry-go-round next to Ryan and we talked about how we can’t even push along with our feet on the ground to spin because we both get sick to our stomachs when we go in circles. We laughed. I thought of an analogy, of course. About going in circles and how it feels and pushing along or just sitting still and being. Elsie sat nearby in the grass and contemplated whether she should try to eat a leaf […]
I’ve been using Picnik to edit my photos for years. So when I got the message that Picnik would be closing, I was worried that I’d never edit another photo because I am completely incapable of using Photoshop haven’t learned how to use Photoshop yet. I get asked quite often how I take my pictures; what camera I use (Nikon D60) and how I edit. I have been giving Nikon and Picnik all the credit for the way my pictures look. Now I’m going to be giving credit to PicMonkey. Thanks to She Posts, I learned about this new site and in my humble opinion, it works even more smoothly than Picnik. (Aside from not saving your photos right on the site, but I’m okay with that because they’re already saved to my computer. And it’s most likely why you don’t have to register or sign in or create an account to use […]
