FiveMinute Friday...

Now, set your timer, clear your head, for five minutes of free writing without worrying about getting it right.

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.  Gypsymama...is the link...
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them in their comments. Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community..
Oh and Ahem, if you would take pity and turn off comment verification, it would make leaving some love on your post that much easier for folks!
OK, are you ready? Please give us your best five minutes on:::

Change…

My goodness, what is there to say about change? inevitable as the weather, the sky, the water? There are many things I have learned in the past years of becoming a grownup and the absolute consistency of change is the one I have held onto most dearly, even when it is a terrible pain or loss... there just isn't any choice.  My resistance is futile, as the trekkies might say.  

Its not just the terrible changes that await... its the hope there that the things that are terrible are just fleeting... that this too will pass... that people will find ways to unite, to be compassionate, to build something rather than destroy.  saying no is not the only solution ...

was listening to a bunch of mothers complaining about buying school supplies for the schools.  was wondering how i turned out so differently... crayons being on sale for 25 cents, i bought extra .. for the kid who forgets or comes from foster care families stretched beyond beyond... natural, small, simple... and the other moms were livid that their supplies might be shared.  boy.  what is there in a little spare change that makes us all so squirmy? so afraid?

i guess its perspective, hope and faith being stronger for me right now than fear and grasping.  i know this will change sometime, as it has before and will again.  but for now, i choose change, i look for it and hope for it. 

 

Trees and Windows

"One measures the age of a tree on a cross-section whose rings show the amount of growth which the tree enjoyed each year.  There is a wide circle for good years, and a very narrow one, sometimes almost none at all, marks the years of drought.  I know that we show no physical proofs of our experience, but I think our lives are not unlike those of the trees.  Some years are good years and we expand in them; some years are bad ones and the most we can do is to hold our own.  But good or bad, like the trees we are still ourselves, growing out from the heartwood of our youth which I believe is a combination of our inheritance and our upbringing.  Like the trees, we may be able to correct a bend or knothole which shows in youth; we may cover over the scar of an injury which however will always be there, though it may be hidden from sight. " 
- Elizabeth Coatsworth, in her 'Almost an Autobiography: Personal Geography' from 1976.

I'm in a narrow year, and I've forgotten my humor, become so serious that I'm always as behind a window pane streaked. 
Its true I still have moments of levity, thank God, or I'd turn into that pane of glass literally.
So its been hard to write, having lost that voice and ease that I hadn't known I had taken such pride in.  But even in the long and narrow, things keep happening that I know will have long and wide repercussions, and I do wonder what they will be. 

Coatsworth trails towards the end of this particular essay with this...

"All these things and a thousand more are embodied in me, the good years and the bad, the wide rings of growth and the narrow.  One's past is not something we leave behind, but something we incorporate. ... Outwardly I am eighty-three years old, but inwardly I am every age, with the emotions and experience of each period. The important thing is that at each age I am myself, just as you are yourself. "

I like big BUTs and I cannot lie. . .

make it an authentic yes, whatever you do, make it an authentic yes.
make a strong offer.
i take my advice where it falls.  some of it is golden. and will stay. (ponyboy defied.)
when the time is right, a teacher will appear, say the new agers and some other wise people. . .

i'm in a position these days to make post-its and stick them up and keep them for later, when i'm not in such a deepsunk rut and spot of ineptitude. 
but they are out there, i can look up from the floor and see them in their yellow-ness, just pointing out the end of the tunnel, the ways it can be... the arrival home at the shire.
heh.

but.

then there are these times when its allright. I'm not on the floor at all, I'm at the kitchen table, which IS NOT sticky.  i feel fine, things are working in a well-oiled bicycle gear fashion.  I look around and feel thankful, I have a specially brewed cup of coffee and some pate for breakfast and I feel luxuriously content with my gourmet lifestyle.  The kids are playing some sort of battlebased basketball game and I have a safe place for them to get dirty in.  So it is not as deep a rut as I sometimes feel. and that is a gigantic but.

thank you, sir mix a lot.  we all love them too.

Leggo my Ego

 

 

I'm in the midst of a coupla regular everyday challenges. pregnancy, fine, okay, challenging. discovering that the boys have been peeing out their bedroom window instead of in the bathroom (4 ft away)... okay, regular mothering of boys challenge... disgusting but regular. ... marital disharmony, for us, regularly challenging, this year anyhow. . . though there is hope there. fleas in the house. damnit. damnit.

but...

the hubsJ is just freshly gone for a two night sail with his 80 year old father and his sister... and the freedom of solo-parenting (temporarily, that word being a HUGELY important part of my experience of it...) is pretty amazing.  I've talked about it before, I know, but I love the stretching of time.  I don't have to think ahead much about what is for dinner, what behavior I have to limit, what bedtime is okay for everyone, etc. And the pressure-release on my ego is pretty great, some balloon-squeal of letgo. . . and I do think the ego problem is ALL mine, a relaxation of my fraudulent, imaginary sense of control.  For instance, don't give a shit today bout how much tv the kids watch, because I don't have to tell a damn soul about it... don't care if they eat a single vegetable for the next week and a half. (it might not be very good for their longevity, this private parenting thing. hm) As long as blood is not drawn, it will all be okay.  and blood may be drawn, and it'll still work out somehow.

(just watched my kid pee out the porch door rather than walk to the bathroom. maybe i should come down a little harder about this.  maybe later. god bless his teachers for what they'll have to deal with this year. hoorah pre-school teachers everywhere! hooray!!)

I suppose I could feel like this all the time if I chose, the freedom of apathy? or maybe thats a little too close to a lack of hope, or a decision to walk away from what responsibility there is inherent in child-rearing, responsible living. and I'm not at that point, although I've probably had some minutes where I could have turned in that direction.
so its apples for me, today, a change from the oranges, and its nice. and absence really does make the heart grow fonder.  it really does.

k

Fully FULL.

in case you have forgotten, my pretties... or, really, in case I have, which I have, completely, depending on the day...  I am wicked pregnant.
and it is hot, super hot. and it is August, mid. But there IS hope. It is getting darker each evening, and there has been at least one night wherein I was called to use a sheet to cover my largess.
My brain has done that thing, which you may recognize, that thing of 'shutting off' which happens randomly, sporadically, almost without cessation but with enough cessation that it continues to be random and not entirely consistent. 
ask me to go to the grocery store, i dare you.  I may end up there, I may buy tuna and potato chips but forget to buy bread and mayonaise.  I may buy apples and return home to children and husband ravenous for the pizza I promised. 
there are quizzical looks all around, i tell you.

I made it to a therapy appt with my husband, made it all the way through coherently and relatively forthrightly... walked out the door and could hardly see my way to walk forward.  We walked to a restaurant and sat. thank the lord they had pad thai because it is my most favorite thing ever. it righted me for a bit and while braxtonhicks are cavorting with my sanity and comfort, i get to eat leftover padthai. so there is that.

My mother has been in my house for two days trying to help me cook some foods to keep in the fridge for the nights when my brain has left the county.  I have been letting her cook and fold and carry laundry and have been trying to find ways to not feel guilty about this.  I recognize it is a pretty damn special thing to have someone willing to do these things for you.  and i have frozen chicken bits all about the freezer now, as well as quiches. . .

frozen chicken bits. heh.

OH. took five roosters to the Farmer to have him cut them up into little bits.  guess what? Farmer chuckles, tells us we got a nice fat lot of hens to take home.  same box.  all our 'roosters'?  not boys. just peacockery ladies. we need to wait a little bit longer to see if any of our ladies turn into boys.  looks like we'll have eggs for the neighborhood soon. 
(did you know that ladychickens can grow combs and wattles? ((did too many people remember ally mcbeal at the 'wattle' mention?))

or anyone? perhaps it just stuck with me.

oh nelly.
i hope you are all well and good out there.
we're a work in progress over here. fer shure.

a not so pretty self-portrait....what the hell.

A whole month ago...at the 'beach'house...

oh, the places you'll go...

dude. when you get a bee in your bonnet, the sucker can make right off with your head.  Had an ultrasound yesterday to confirm that there is just a singular baby in the belly, which there is... even looks like it has all of its alienparts... ultrasounds are freaky. . . . I've been measuring rather larger than my week-count, and was concerned about many things. too many.  been trying to channel chakra carol's (CC) therapeutic otherworldliness but have been fairly unsuccessful about it.  My age is high, my nerves are shot, my imagination is on overdrive. this is what i worried, like so:  Is there, WAS there a second baby? is that why i'm big, because there's a sad little dead thing in there next to the moving-niblet? Do I have some sort of mass which keeps the baby only on the lefthand side of my belly? If there are twins will I have to ask my husband to leave the room so I can adjust in peace without his panic to deal with?
castles in the sky, but of the dark swirling thunderstorm sort.
and all along, i was doing the CC attempt, like, gee, kate, you KNOW you only get what you can handle, right? ... gee, kate, all this faith you hang on to... now would be a pretty good time to actually TRUST in it... gee, kate, you seem to be spending a lot of time worrying about something that simply doesn't exist... like maybe your brain is on fire with its lie lie lies... brainpants on fire. heh.
-
the chickens are good. we have 7 roosters, which is too many. but hopefully we will remedy that this weekend with a trip to the Farmer. . . we have a very healthy fox in the neighborhood, so I am looking into evasive techniques. . . what scares a fox anyhow? I mean, i have read and seen the Fantastic Mr. Fox... so i know.  . . . i'm not really willing to bomb the trees yet, or get a large yellow construction vehicle. this ain't no field mouse.

- i've been having a hard time writing because i feel like i'm leaving out the biggest things and so I am going to keep trying to interject from my depressions with moments like this, it is really all i can do and i'm imagining that when the summer ends I'll find it easier to get out of my own rut.  of course, i'll be 8 mos pregnant by then so hooolllllaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!  we'll just have to see. . .

wmx