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Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Blues, and Greens...

in this last week before two of my three hop on a yellow school bus for what is the 'entire day' of moans and groans and incredulous mom dreams... we have rain...
growth and preparation for a cuddledown of a fall, hotsweatcurls whilst searching for sweatshirts for the inevitable chill of evening. 




 
it is easier to keep the five year old dressed these days.  underwear and all.
school supplies are sitting in their bright primary colors, in bags, in the middle of everything, waiting.


the produce is already turning to its yellow cousins, waiting for a ripening too. we have pumpkin blossoms and small green fruit, and a few cherry tomatoes still to come.

It still remains to be seen how many barefeet we can squeeze into these days...the greens and blues surround, but it seems the sharpest colors are the golds, the reds, the spots where the sun won't quit, its warmth lasting far beyond the pale.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Cord now firmly attached.



the sunny side of the street...

Thursday, August 22, 2013

So whatcha whatcha whatcha

want?

things settling, burbling quietly on the back of the stove.  a heats coming.  toes cold and damp now from the morning walk to the coop, trails of greenblue grass pushed aside where my path was so clearly walked just minutes before. tangible past, the only one, i suppose i use my children the same way.  ozymandius. how do you spell that one?  you know of what i speak. 
book finished with coffee this morning, evidence of bravery, literary and personal. and so it is, every day.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Deer Isle, Maine.

if you get a chance to go... sit on a rock in maine and watch fog roll in, and out, and in... tucking trees taller than your history into shrouds...albeit temporary ones. daily, thricely. tides are serious business, the reminders of boats floating off, kids stranded on perches, Lo-ong anchor lines... all there.
sand is all just crushed shell, after all.
mosquitos loom larger here, but no human is more than a foot from an orange or green spray to deprogram the hunter.
just sit. ignore the children at this time, even the nurser at your breast.  It will be her first official sunburn but it will fade.  and you can tell her later about her skin's lust for the sun between the clouds, the run for the silver lining.
pictures taken of lichen do not translate well, their blues falling to shadows on film, or what passes for film these days.
wet in and out of place, the damp, the slick, you name it, it is here that wet is dominant, and we submit. we walk, someone jumps, we float, we ride.

Monday, August 12, 2013

STrrrressssss...

okay, so you know how the wise people are always making these wonderfully quotable sayings about relieving stress, much of which includes not keeping stressful people around, or focusing your energies on wonderful things and gratitudes and etc.... i can't remember specifics but you know these things, right?  right.
so what then of real life, unavoidable stresses?  people in your family who attack? long rides on three good tires? babies sick and you aren't at home? i'm not even talking about traumas, just the small but real stresses of life when you interact with other people and objects? anxieties? what then?  how're you supposed to 'wisdom' your way through these things? how do you salve your heart and your racing adrenalin kits?
if you don't have stress in your life, are you doing something right? or wrong?  are you interacting with the world? and i'm talking of both 'in the minute' and 'afterwards', the two sides of a coin dropped in the well, you get what you get and you don't get upset ... these life things...

yesterday we put our new little row/sailboat in the water, and took a row with all three kids, well-suited up in various life jackets and such.  it was very difficult getting the boat into the water and out of the water and people were watching. yep.  rising embarassment, the sort where i throw people under the bus in my need to look like i am not the one causing this... if my kids hadn't been there, i'm sure i would have yelled, or 'made light' of my husband with observers.  this is my shadow side, i am not glorifying. . . plus, once we were in the water, my stress level went into the mountains, and that is good for no one. and the baby, who needs to move and nurse every 13 seconds, did NOT enjoy her lifejacket situation.  THEN, upon trying to get the boat back out of the water, which took a long, long time, (again, people watching, AND WAITING!... oh my dear GOD. . . ) we broke the boat trailer and had to ride home with the boat tenuously tied to the trailer and all tippylike. like, as in, drive around a corner and the boat tips to the side. HubsJ drove under 20 . . . uhuh uhuh.

by the time we got home, i was a hot mess. taught the kids the Lords Prayer on the way home. i did.  seriously. (Quakers don't really do liturgical things, so my Protestantism/ritualism has to squeak its way in otherwise) - was surrounding the car and boat with a bubble of good energy and trying to regain my humility in thinking i could even possibly be responsible for saving this situation- hence the Lord's Prayer rising...

we got home fine, the boat off the car and babysleeping and mama cigaretted.
if we hadn't had kids around us, i would have 'relief sex'ed my husband right on the driveway.  yes, i would have.

i think i'm still recovering. i know i am.  this is a mild thing, my recovery. i dig it.  perhaps this is because i have so little stress in my life? am i under interacting with the objects and people in my life? wah? what? wha? am i an overly pampered, but truly enlightened buddha? (do you get that joke? heh. joke. )

of course, there is other stuff too. slightly bigger than the material world of the boat. and how to deal with people stress seems to be beyond me.  when is it exactly (or is there ever a time?) when you cut someone out? when their presence is so far outside what is good and kind that every experience becomes one of eggshells and shitsmears? if mental illness is involved? what then? and what if it isn't EVERY experience but EVERY third experience? what then? is everything so fluid? is it all grey?

man.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Sweetness gone sour, and then reversing. people are strange.

back and forth, and back and forth.

I had two boys at camp yesterday. wild freedom, indeed.  Little babe and I tried to watch some tv and some 'freemovies' and then some netflix specials and each time, every time, saw about 10 minutes of some sweetly wistful romantic movie and had to turn it off.  what time does to the romantic soul? the romantic soul requires reality as it ages, the movies and their pretend games, (their bits left out, the 'after' the big dramatic finish? ) don't cut it, make me curious about who the actors are dating in real life, how many marriages they have been through in their tenderness...

I keep thinking about smoking, found myself last night, trudging up the stairs for 'bedtime' full of resentment for everything, *just* wanting a cigarette and i realized that i was all full of struggle for something that *just* wasn't.  i wasn't at all focused on where i was, what i was doing, who i was with, at all.  so i gave up the ghost, and put the kids to bed in a much better frame of mind.  this was a wonderful happening, and i hope to get myself to do it more often.

Yesterday was my first of three days with both boys at camp... I had a hard time filling the space, couldn't watch movies and ended up taking down one string of christmas lights (out of many) that did not work, used another to help prop up a giant tomato plant, and hung more laundry on the line.  I didn't feel overly freed, but i was certainly able to get out of the house more readily, more simply, which has whatever value you give it, i suppose.

In the evening, we had another family supper, extendeds along.  I am so overwhelmingly overwhelmed at this point, need a nice consolidated break from extensions. boy, cigarettes are fantastic after things like that. and boy, not having one was good too.

Today things are quiet, I visited my mom and dad with the wee one, my mom has been in and out of the hospital all summer and has now been home for almost two weeks.  she has a surgery and starts radiation next week, which'll go for three weeks before a reassessment.   It is wildly strange, all this change outside myself. 

Last time I went to Chakra Carol, there had been a mixup of times and I was on the 'can't do it' end of things.  I was so sad, but resigned, and ended up at the grocery store for a slow browse.  Took my big kid for the next time with her and have now been without therapy almost all summer.  I am doing pretty well, considering, although the romantic in me would like to be seeing more in the world, more of the small bits, the cups of coffee made just right, the evenings slow, the evenings with live music and kids dancing and bobbing. what makes the world go round seems to be all those little bits, and it doesn't seem that we share the good as quickly as we share the aggression and the petulance.  meh.

i think i should get a swing and put it in my living room.  its gigantic, so there is room.  yes?

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Everything I left out...


a truthfully, but not for better, formatted ode , to the HubsJ

inexplicably passionate guy, (i don't understand his energy levels, can't believe, after 12 years, can't believe it... )  ... right down to calling the grassgreen color a hallucinagenic, his wife a rare beauty (he does, all the time) ...

has he NEVER seen me yelling at the kids about crap? that cannot be a moment of beauty.  has he NOT noticed the belly which divides and conquers and makes all my teeshirts call me 'preggers' in some wierd bifurcated alien way?...
and going into raptures over cloud formations and forgetabout the swallows, forgetaboutit. (they are pretty damn cool in their numbers and swoops)

Energy spills into painting rearranging, refrigerator cleansings, shutter hangings and the everpresent book sortings. Sometimes I feel like I should get up and help but then I remember I'm in the middle of nursing, laundering, washing, staring, etc.

Dinnertimes are rich, varied, and above all... fabulously tasty. He shows his love in his kettles, the clangs of pots and pans and the slice and dice of vegetable. It is how we continue to grow. (yesterday for lunch, i had tomatoes drizzled in oil and balsamic, with mozzarella and fresh basil. )
I feel terribly guilty that I'm not a cooking-lover.  I do.  What I make is basic and sometimes I don't even have anything started when he gets home from work and I feel like its so SO unfair to him and then I try to remember how much I dislike cooking and am trying to get more comfortable with everyone eating hotdogs. or eggs. I can make eggs.
When we are in the depths of despair and struggle, it is hard for me to eat any food that he makes.  symbol made solid.

He dances like a wild giraffe, and we love him for it. all of us. (although we chose to emulate slightly different styles... ) His joy is wilderness in action. classic rock or jazz, reggae or choral beatitudes, he will rock it.

Sex? good lord. if you knew, you'd be jealous. yes, you would. take me at my word.
True. and i'm responsible for 50% of that. -although not the instigation part, which is critical. critical.

He is very masculine without being an asshole, full of sporty competitiveness whilst still being a teacher of beginning boys. watch him play catch with my 8 for hours, and encourage the jumps of the five as he works on knowing his body and how it works. I don't really understand competition, as a healthy thing.  I know it can be, but my nature is to have everyone feel very good about themselves and their playful abilities and I don't equate that with 'winner/loser' games. Obviously, I have not ever been a competitive athlete. I KNOW that changes things.  I am hoping to learn.

He loves his work, mixing up duties with desires and doing his best for so many who give him (sometimes) so little. He will quibble with my saying they give him little. He is generous. He loves to be generous, he seems pretty good at it. . . .
So many people he works with are super-needy, and it is hard for me to not resent their neediness.  they just keep on NEEDING, and i sometimes hate that.  This is my neediness. (it doesn't help that many of them are women. no, it really doesn't. )

He is part of his history, and working his way forward to a new understanding of where he is now.
He is trying, falling down and getting back up over and over again. always getting back up.
always getting back up.
go for it, hubsJ.

thanks for putting up with me, while I put up with you.

k

Monday, August 5, 2013

Ode to HubsJ

because he really needs one, and because it is overdue.  (although my style is somewhat missing today, and i am relying on bullets to make points)


a poorly formatted ode

inexplicably passionate guy, right down to calling the grassgreen color a hallucinagenic, his wife a rare beauty (he does, all the time) ... and going into raptures over cloud formations and forgetabout the swallows, forgetaboutit.
Energy spills into painting rearranging, refrigerator cleansings, shutter hangings and the everpresent book sortings. 
Dinnertimes are rich, varied, and above all... fabulously tasty.  He shows his love in his kettles, the clangs of pots and pans and the slice and dice of vegetable.  It is how we continue to grow. (yesterday for lunch, i had tomatoes drizzled in oil and balsamic, with mozzarella and fresh basil. 
He dances like a wild giraffe, and we love him for it.  all of us.  (although we chose to emulate slightly different styles... ) His joy is wilderness in action.  classic rock or jazz, reggae or choral beatitudes, he will rock it.
Sex? good lord. if you knew, you'd be jealous. yes, you would. take me at my word.
He is very masculine without being an asshole, full of sporty competitiveness whilst still being a teacher of beginning boys.  watch him play catch with my 8 for hours, and encourage the jumps of the five as he works on knowing his body and how it works.
He loves his work, mixing up duties with desires and doing his best for so many who give him (sometimes) so little.  He will quibble with my saying they give him little.  He is generous. He loves to be generous, he seems pretty good at it. . . .
He is part of his history, and working his way forward to a new understanding of where he is now. 
He is trying, falling down and getting back up over and over again. always getting back up.
always getting back up.
go for it, hubsJ.