well. here we are.

i have all these funny and witty things to say, like 'what true, kind, necessary' really looks like during Christmas vacation. funny to think about how far i have fallen... funny, actually, not depressing, which is always a nice change.
i want to tell you the vast differences between 'santa's gifts' and those given by the uncles/aunts/grandparents... locally made wooden castle with working drawbridge - shared...
dog sized AT-AT with fully functional noise machines... (if you don't know what an AT-AT is, i can't even begin to explain the wild craziness ... just think star wars big walking gunner machines)
I have eaten so much butter and cream-based foods that I am feeling downright happy with my clogged arteries.  greasy and happy and licking my fingers.
I'm here to check in and say hello and then i'm back to a sort of weirdly sick three year old and a lot of rikki tiki tavi ... and 'snow buddies'. eesh.
I hope everybody is well and not dealing with a weirdly sick three year old. . .
i'm looking forward to reading again...
war and peace is tough going, but going it is...

Merry Christmas!

sometimes, the best thing, is holding hands.

mothering can be a distinctly surreal trip into a fairly ugly inner dimension. but the hand holding? utterly unbelievable.

love and kisses,

holding hands...

merry christmas everyone.

wmx

Who are you? and the rut is back in town...

Who is out there? who are you guys? There are times I definitely feel something is lost, for me, here. Its all getting repetitive, I am having deja vu about thoughts, before I'm even writing them down here... and I am wondering who is reading here? who? c'mon, lurkers. show yourselves, or old friends? talk to me.

The realtor told me that I'd be lucky to sell this house for 40K less than what I owe on it.  annunciate with me, forty thou.sand. doll. lars.
 whooosh. well.
I don't have that much in my savings plan.
The tax man made me write a check for 5K today.
Since when do I throw Ks around? like illegal inside baseballs.
who am i? yikes. I'm working on a lot of things and feeling bleak in the darkness over here. like so many things have changed and yet nothing at all has changed and I am stuck.
ah.
Here's to hoping a sparkly interior decorating scheme will soothe my jaded soul.  I'm off to turn on the lights, baby.

up to date...

So, I'm still praying every night that I get to keep my hearing, just in case you were wondering.  I have been wondering, now that my three is three, if I will ever read again. I've been in the same ten pages of my book for a long long time.  And it is a serious book and I like it.... war and peace, baby. I can't wait to see what the next ten pages hold...
what it is all about. this time of year, this time of the world.
peace coming, anticipation... nestling... inner... outer...warmth and chill...
while agree with all the smarties out there that opposites are not truly that, and that there aren't the great dualisms that we've all gotten very comfortable with... good/bad, etc. ... it is the solstice, the longest and the shortest, at once. . . and i'm IN, after having been OUT.
I'm thoughtful and I'm insensitive.  I'm ever-patient and my fuse is so damn short.  I'm optimistic and I'm depressed. . .
I'm the best mom. and the worst of her kind. . .
I'm overly hard on myself and I'm totally lax with my lassitude.
I'm redundant, and fresh.

I'm here and I'm gone.

Camera batteries are dead

you'll just have to make do with verbosity. sorry.

maybe i'll find an old photo. hang on.

there we go... to thrill my boys i took pictures of city life while we were away... the pigeons in the sky against the white, became 'eagle man' and the tip of a wing at the corner of a building? evidently, it was the toe of 'black panther'... i had thought it was fer shure going to be spidey, but i am out of the loop. i don't even really know who black panther is. 

also, the tree. life in the big city, the trees ride the trains. 

The days are darkening, I am not going out to any more stores, and even the errands are being compressed to be home for the pre-lunch rest. It is lightly snowing right now and I wish for nothing more than a very very large snowfall, so that we all could be together and nestled. . . 

ah. 

wednesday the 'bigbad' realtor comes to tell me what to do to the house to get it ready.  i'm a bit nervous, as I think I'll find out what it really should be priced at and I am afraid to lose all my savings in the loss we will take on the house.  

BUT. 

there is room on the floor in front of the fire.  while we are here, everyone is welcome to visit. 

COME ON OVER. 

(but not wednesday... let me cry in peace...) 

Got up two hours before everyone else today

They all stayed up late enjoying the fruits of my labor.  I sold a table and moved things around and all of a sudden our tiny house has exploded and is now just gigantic. we have an actually useably fantastic room containing all the big kid items and a woodstove. I will show it eventually, but know this: it is warm, it is carpeted and i am in love. LOVE. I even lit a fire first thing this morning, when the three woke up. the kids are playing there now , with blocks, with figures, while i sit with the cat on my lap, like i'm a lady of leisure and coziness all over.
In my early two hours I have written, and am reading and am drinking some lovely coffee. it is all lovely and the lights are a-sparklin'. 
these are my moments, we are making the house more and more perfect as we prepare to leave it... and I am learning more and more about how to do this 'making of a home' gig. . .
i'm very proud of what is here and what our focus is in terms of the kids and the environment I am giving them in which they will figure themselves out... (wordy and slightly awkward but still valid)

(and yes, when my hubsJ told me he had to go into work for a worried mother, i burst into tears... evidently the hysteria is just below skin-deep...)

Mind Control

Its either a sign of a deteriorating mental capacity or something that mothers live through, I can't tell. Probably something of both, which makes the double whammy one that I can't figure out.  I'm talking about :The random and often horrifying thoughts that pass through my brain on a semi-regular basis, usually regarding my children's safety but sometimes my own, but I have the brilliance of brain to plot out how horrific my own demise will destroy the lives of all of those around me.  BRILLIANT.  It does seem to come in waves, it is not every day at all, but There have been times when I have had to wake HubsJ to talk to me because the 'visions' have been so horrible and I need to counteract them with reality, boring old reality.  They really are awful things and not one single one of them is real, or even likely... and yet there they are, so damn dark...keeping me awake in their distracting, improbable fashion.  And I know how many times I talk about Chakra Carol here, but my lord,  you should imagine the number of times I chant her words to myself to try and clear out the horrors of my own head.  Don't be so tolerant of what you let pass through your mind. . . FOR CHRISSAKES.  Is this JUST a mother thing? Or am I particularly susceptible?
     I am working on it, I've developed an inner shout that can clear the images during the day time, it is getting easier and more likely that I can sweep it out, after all, it is completely and totally unreal, not present, and not part of my own body of 'right now'.  Nighttime though, I have a harder time fighting it off and will find myself waking and going to check on the kids (um, rolling over)  before I can do the inner shout...
I'm very happy about the development of my daylight shout... but I do wonder about what causes this sort of darkness to creep into my head. Its pretty damn impressive.  I've got to go get me some Freud, or Jung. . . I bet they've got some ideas. 
Da Motha? ....

Day of the THREE

the boy is now officially three and I can finally drop the 'almost' that has long existed in my compulsivevocabularyoftruth and that is quite blissful.... we spent the morning at the library, were visited by a housecleaner who (very very annoyingly) gets PAID to do what I do all the time and I look around and think to myself, geez, if I picked up like this every day, I would be crazy, prematurely grey, and the house would be tidy. hm. how much is this worth to me? I am not really sure, frankly.  I am willing to pay this woman because I think it'll help me when I get ready to put it on the market, but I am really really annoyed that someone else has gotten paid to clean my house, and the difference is primarily all the tidying that I have to do first, before she can get to the grit.  I had hoped it would make me all chirpy and the like, but surprise to the third! no. evidently i am not as chirpy as I thought I was in the last post.
chirpy.
The Three split his brother's lip open with a rhinocerous toy this afternoon.  I think that exemplifies everything about three.
today. today. today...

Homies

Homies, I enjoy  the hell out of myself on a regular basis, I do, really.  I kept trying to type, I need... but my fingers kept hitting the en and I had to figure out what the hell sort of channeling I was doing... and there it is... I lit upon it.  (or my fingers did. ) 

I am generally quite light hearted, full of it, one might even say.  I am not pessimistic, I am a compulsive defender, quick to imagine (and say) that there are a wild myriad of things that could be 'other' than what they appear.  It drives most everyone nuts. eh.

And this mothering gig?  Some days it is just a trip. And on the other days, there are still parts of it that are downright trippy.  The kids getting older is a big big! part of that, and the fact that there are only two of them and I am sort of starting to be able to ignore them/parent them from afar... or, farther, at least... and I get to be home, so, as hard as that can be- I think its easier than dropping them off somewhere (for which one must work to prepare, work to provide, work to supply,etc.), going to a job, and then picking them up and doing all the whole mothering/parenting/housekeeping thing in a much much shorter timeperiod. so, i have it easy, i say. easy.

Did i want to kill my kids today? yes, only one, and only once (and the day is young. 4:30PM...) but still, once the adrenalin rush passes by, and you can shake off that shakey feeling, there is food and there is a warm and cozy nest of a house that I have made, here.  me.

so there it is, homies.

Away......

Techno no longer is just for dancing... when 'linked' in the big city, all the information of the world is at your fingertip/phonefinger... so i'm copying, from the uburbs.

HubsJ and I were away for two whole nights in the big city, the big Apple, no less. We spent the weekend with our blessedly child-free creative-genious genuinely genuine friends in their sprawling pad off of Lexington Avenue...I went to the Frick for the first time, and also MOMA.   (these are entire posts, waiting to explode in my visual life...)  . . I ate soup dumplings(can't recall the restaurant name..but everyone who is everyone ELSE, can.) and chicken mole (courtesy of fabu homies), and a pot of cheese fondue...as well as bacon and eggs (again, the lovely home). . .saw the GayMensChorus singing Christmas Carols on the Hi-Line....  got gloves....did not lounge around with them on... or pay for them... started to read a book...thought about books I'd like to read again... Madame Bovary Madame Bovary... rode some trains...walked... held hands with HubsJ...learned that Paul Klee is probably pronounced Klay, which since I have never spoken his name aloud, was a shocker... learned about myself that I belong in a different era, romantically speaking... give me a swishing bustle, thats what i say... and a paintbrush.  I wish to be Lee Krasner, too... I wish to  have all of this on a more regular basis... I wish to have it all without any sacrifice of what I already have... and . because wishes have always driven me crazy for the innate longing/depression I feel for having them?  I am going to do something about it all and I do not know what will be done.  Haircuts do not cut it, I tell you without punning.  Find the link for this, would you?

How to Elect an ACTUAL representative.

1. Find out where they live.  If they have more than one house.... do they represent you? If they do, send me some money, or a gift card, if you like.  If they live in a 'gated community', how big is the community that they represent? and how big is the community that they are 'slightly uncomfortable' with? IF they winter somewhere else... are you kidding me? How can they represent a place they can't stand?
2. Find out how many times they have been married, or if they have kids...  or, if they even can get married, (state to state), or if THEY have kids... find this out just for kicks.
3. Find out if they have ever had a job. I mean, a real job, which is hard and demanding and doesn't pay alot ... or if they have been in school their entire lives... and if any of it was public or publicly funded...
4. Find out how much money they made last year, and what percentage of that they paid in taxes.  Compare to yourself.   ... if the difference in percentages is a large one...if the difference in salaries is more than you can stomach...  ask what changes they might make in legislation to improve the lives of 'yous' , whether it be by improving your wage earning ability or by paying more in taxes so that you can access the same opportunities that they have had.  All men are created equal and all that...
5. Find out why the hell they are running for a public office. why? WHY do they want this job? Who do they think they will be working for?

Maybe when we know whom we are electing, instead of just listening to the soundbites of the news, we can be more certain that they will respond to the American people, and hopefully we won't end up a nation of people whose government is bought and sold by the so-called elected 'representatives' in the U.S Congress and the corporations that donate to them.   Be they Democrat or Republican, they have sold out to the highest bidders and left all of us in the lurch. . . so lets get new ones.  Its the American way.

-anything i missed?

Dude. I hear you.

This refrain, 'Dude. I hear you.' is one that I very Very regularly use in my mothering patterns.  Whether it be to the three year old who is perseverating about lions or the five year old who is telling me some very fabricated story about werewolves and their skill sets, I find it to be applicable and when said with something approaching sincerity, it is even, dare i say? suitable. yes, wildly suitable.

I don't have to pet their egos about their stories, their lions, their whathaveyous, I just have to truthfully let them know that I am their witness to whatever sort of wackyness they are experiencing RIGHT NOW.

and yes, there is a WILD TON of irony in the fact that I say this all the time.. and sometimes I think WISDOM rears up its hairy head and smacks you with an iron.
so you sit down and try meditating again, drinking your teas with honey and sucking down the vitamins... and facing tomorrow with all the faith that one can muster for the sunrise.
okay?

Fear, baby, fear*

Its that time of year again, the hearing loss chapters come and come and come ...
I've had a cold for the past week along with the kids and HubsJ not so much. bastards. any time I have a headcold, my hearing goes down to like 30% and I miss a whole hell of a lot of what is going on. a whole hell.
The kids have been re-watching a video I got when my hearing was gone, sign-a-lot, and I have been remembering how completely insignificant I felt that all I could do for my twoandahalf year old was give him an insipid video with the signs for 'happy' and 'salad' in it... and E was only two months old at the time so its all new for him... the video is fine, its just the utterly small gesture against a giant wave that the deafness was.
And so I am scared. I am completely scared. what if it happens again? what am i going to do? how am i going to take care of my kids? How am i going to stand missing all that I miss? How can I stand missing all that I miss right now?
We got the christmas tree and hubsJ and I fell asleep on the floor in front of it and I was consumed with fear that this would be my last night hearing.  It wasn't .  but there it is.  We'll see how tonight goes. and then the morning. . .

* i know, wisdom says that I can't spend my time worrying about something that may not happen or certainly hasn't happened RIGHT NOW. and i have to state finally and for the record, I AM NOT WISE.

Out of this world...

HubsJ is not one to panic in the kitchen... First, a carpaccio... yes, that would be almost entirely raw meat. We had visiting Germans.  hello, meat.  We served up a turkey soup, some with noodles, some without.  And a wild cheese nut plate for the meatfree... not so much, but substantial enough and turns out they had the turkey soup broth and didn't mind the meat addition to their vegetarianism.  I made bread, hearty slices and melting butters abounding. There was also a cassoulet with all the things that my family will eat, chicken, turkey, sausage and cannellini.
holy smokes.
There were more people here than we had on Thanksgiving, and master HubsJ really pulled it off... good thing he only worked half a day and could groceryshop himself silly...
It was actually much better than I had envisioned, and I even managed to have some conversation, which is something I like quite a bit.
and that is how it played out.  and this morning, it is full-on collapse.
playdate played, tea with honeys and elderberry juice and we are making due with the congestions and consistent drips because there just is no other choice.
and now? we nap.
and that, is what is out of this world.

All of a sudden

We have dinner guests coming tonight. and, as luck and the strange characteristics of my husband would have it... we have,  gluten-free living loving vegetarians (children AND adults), some plain old vegetarians, one meat-only adult, and then my own famdamily itself_which has been tending towards the chickennuggetwhite diet of the millenia.
what to do?
holy smokes.
I'm thinking about nachos.
and steak.

I wish I had known about this before this morning. I cleaned, rather than grocery shopped, as no one would eat here if I hadn't... I also called a cleaning lady. NO Shite. really, i did.  I need someone with skills, determination and some seriously poisonous substances to come into the bathroom of this house and I am willing to pay. PAY.

But I am also willing to make my husband PAY for this, as trite and old-school as this may sound.  (and small, don't forget how small it makes me seem) what? NO NOTICE? I think I've seen this show on tv. i swear. Maybe I should order something expensive online. huh. no thrill there. shoes? no.
damnit.
No inner thrill at the retail end of things?!
damnit.
what a strange post.
See what happens when I get kicked out of November?

Books and their Stupid, Stupid endings...

I've read a couple of novels lately, wonderful characters, beauty all around... and each time I've gotten to the end I feel distinctly robbed.  All these accolades, these wild praises for the 'debut'... and it feels as though the pressure is just too much and by the time they reach the end of their project, they are just too worn out to have an actual, definite end.  And I am not suggesting that the ends are not 'my taste' and so I am disappointed, its more like, they just put their project down and walked away.  when someone reminded them of the ending, they wrote ... 'and then she woke up.', considered themselves finished and moved on to the book tour.

I am not saying my life is overly full.  I am not one to overcommit and I am perhaps more reclusive than most.  However, my time is still precious and I want my novel reading time to fill me up and allow me to flush my system into the dreamy. . . so what up?! novelists, I demand you work harder. Produce less, goddamnit, but make it MORE.

Don't Make me read The Chronicles of Narnia AGAIN.  Even C.S.Lewis needs a break now and again. and I am getting old.

heh.