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Friday, December 18, 2015

Whats your calamitous yelp?

*i watched lord of the rings and not for the first time.
but this time i noticed that the warriors were preparing for a battle by screaming 'DEATH' as their rallying cry.
good lord.
and i found it to be totally powerful.  the one certainty in life and a powerful shout-out to it!  a challenge, a beckoning, a gauntlet of courage.
so fascinating, those thoughts, that rallying of spirit in the face of sorrow, loss, and inexplicability.

*my two top kids, older than three, had to come up with a worry apiece for the christmas eve service, that they are going to put in a column and leave behind for the peace of Christmas Day.  (john denver and kermit did it best, we are so SO Quaker.)
boy 2 says immediately 'Death'.   I so can't tell him anything about it. its certainly a reality, and one he will have to face, although hopefully he'll have some more life under his belt the next time it rolls back  on us.
boy 1 says hes not afraid of Isis anymore because America and Russia are beating them up.  Oh, heart on fire for this. so many innocents in the pile, so many. this ain't no Rocky movie.

so what is your yell to the sky?  i used to feel all 'BEAUTY!!' like Howard's End... but now I think that shouting the death and the terror to their faces might be more my style.

there are calamitous times ahead, and calamity jane put on  a dress after all.  its all good, and its all bad and its all right here, right now.


Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Where the wise men are...

Living in the sneakers these days... we all are... in times of difficulty, we're choosing comfort, some of us for speed/ease of motion/escape, some of us for sanity/escape/restlessness... its all in your perspective if there is any difference in all those choices.  sometimes what we choose for comfort is ultimately a miss, a danger to us.  you drink? you smoke? you eat fast food? (me: two of the three)

danger. danger.  what our pleasures are? the long game? are we shorting ourselves? of course moderation makes a difference. of course. but then, sometimes the long game makes it look less like moderation, right?

today i exercised, in my sweatpants and with sweat all included.  sneakers too.  messed up hair,  and flailing, lots of flailing.  there was nothing pretty about it. at all.  but i'm trying to take small steps to make myself stronger, to be 'in it' for the long game.  for my kids, yes, but mostly for me.  to have more faith in my own strength, to open my own doors, so to speak.

this past month i've been exercising every day. one day off a week.  this is the most consistent i've been about ANYTHING in my whole life, possibly.... exception child rearing, but that is different from minute to minute and seems to be all 'fly by the seat of my pants' type action. . . but this consistency?  was there a catalyst? nah.
i don't know.  i'm getting stronger.  i bought a new pair of jeans, and a fitbit bracelet. (expensive pedometer. not sure how i feel about it just yet. its just a pedometer! gah. got it on cyber monday so it was at least not full price... )  but otherwise, its all internal, and i have a quote on the board that says 'nobody but you'.... and it works for me, to remember that the work is mine, and nobody but me is going to know if i work hard, or not, and nobody but me is going to see the changes, and nobody but me is responsible for myself. I've been home with kids for a little over nine years, and I can't say that I've made the most of it, sometimes i feel like i've wasted it, in terms of my own self. and then other times, i just point (internally) to the kids and let it rest at that.  its a betwixt and between space.

I get confused as to what it is that i value.  I HATE that i now want to 'talk' about exercise.  man, i feel like such a chump, downright embarassed by my subject matter.  do you know what a 'surrender' is?  oh my gawd, a killer. (do you see how chumpy i am, holy smokes.) and, after 9 years of being home, and 14 of being married, I realize how little I value housework and domesticity... and thats hard to incorporate into a stay at home mom's self-impression.  and right? i value OTHER people's housework and domesticity, i do.  but just not mine.
what is that about?!
and what do i do about it? geesh.
i don't know.  i could start writing again?  i sure do value THAT.





Friday, October 23, 2015

Crackin' dem eggs...

Yesterday i was so miserable, fighting back hysteria at every turn.  I mean, walking in the door with sobs, choking it back as I get out of the car...and while it is the season of my father's death two years ago,and winter is fast approaching, I cannot truly make out why sobs have so powerfully re-entered my walking world.  When the tussling kids knocked over my gigantic cup of coffee (yes, my fault. my ever-vigilant preventative-mother must have let down her guard.. sarcasm, and bitter at that....) ... all over the books, all over the floor, all over the everything within a solid three feet range.. and since i am nearly deaf i did not hear it go, and the kids made not.a.move.to.clean.up.not.a.move.not.a.move....there are not enough ellipses to dramatize this... ... .  I lost my everlovin' mind....  QUoth the mother... " i was not meant to spend my fucking life cleaning up fucking SPILLS" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  somehow the overuse of exclamation points deadens the truth of my deep howl...
 to the kids, yes, to the kids.  And while, usually, i am able to toss off my rebellious thoughts, this one went deep and i could not shake off the feeling of being misused somehow, wasted. and so began the day.  a humdinger.
i muddled through, doing things that needed doing, certainly, and hiding my inner turmoil from the two year old in my midst fairly well.  uncracked but wobbling.

and then.  this morning, my hearing aid broke.  and there is noone in the office til monday.  so there you have it.  a break, when one did not know that one was requesting a break.  (or, rather, one sortof knew, but certainly didn't expect a literal breakage.) crack.

and so now i have all this space, this quiet, this lowered expectation ... and its the lowered expectation mixed with the complete and utter satisfaction that my hearing is not gone, just unmechanically aided for the weekend.
and its going to be a challenge to deal with three soccer games of explaining, but its almost a relief to just put it on the table.  no, i can't hear you, can't make small talk or suffer through Trying to hear your small talk.  i can't.  i have a serious hearing loss that they call 'profound', and today, finally, i'm not trying to fool you into thinking i can communicate like a regular person.  there is relief.
maybe i'll make myself a sign.
oh my god, the kids would die.
it is so good to have a new kind of hysteria.

and guess what?  i can't hear whines, either.  bet you could handle that for a couple days...

it will be hard, and i'm probably going to be sad at times, for what i miss. but there it is, space.  wide open before me. and at the end, an appointment, a repair and a moving on...

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Log Lady

The log lady died, did you hear?  the woman of twinpeaks fame?  Can you believe, of all the news in the world, that THAT made it through my firewalls?  sheesh.  I know, its (the show. the woman) probably not personally relevant to anything, but death, for all its necessity? still a loss, a sadness of inevitability, a change resisted...  relevant, always.

These were a log that arrived at the house. Milled right in front of my eyes.  I thought these things only happened to the Waltons. 
so. a tree, repurposed.  are we so egotistical that we think we improve on nature by cutting into it? OR, do we use our vision and 'sight' to imagine multiple uses of what exists? what can be? an explosion of art, love, human endeavor?

This is the tree where they began. 


This is the friend and the husband at work, on the logs and the trees. 

This is what I was doing while the beauty and stark betrayal and transformation of the tree from hearted warrior tree to hearted childhaven tree. Its branches shorn, it was re-shaped into what will be.  And while menfolk wielded chainsaws, I was stacking, stacking, stacking... winter will not catch me unawares, at least not entirely.  Would I really freeze to death rather than cutting into nature? what is my nature, afterall, but a constant reshaping of spirit?  - another repurpose? or a joining of purpose and existence? a death so that life may be continued?
there is that.
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i'm working on weighty things of late, not the least of which is mine own inner and outer weight, and solitudes of plenty. (and much of it is written down)  i will let you know how it goes. hopefully levity will be part of it.  (pbbst)

Friday, September 25, 2015

Tan lines.

I lost my ring.  My favorite, favorite. Even more favorite than the marriage bands, which I have incorporated into my bones. . . but this ring?  I didn't realize how proud I was of it, how much the thing of beauty on my hand had become part of an inner-identity.  Purchased when we were freshly married, it was an astonishment to have on my finger, a plainly beautiful silver ring with unsparkling stones and a creativity of design which garnered compliments from strangers. A touchstone, and now an empty spot that i find surprisingly empty multiple times per day.  In the fall chill, it simply slipped off my bony digits.
It makes me think of so many things;  How plainly I was moved to this, this joining of two human beings... how I stepped so straightly, so solidly forward into a great matrimony.  How clearly it was the right thing to be done, for the world and for our love.
How little I feel able to incorporate hope with its eviltwin fear.  I walk about the house, turning things over... could it be in the compost pile?  maybe its under that sock i moved last week... maybe i inadvertently dropped it in the salvation army bag... should i look? is it in the broiler? When I go to soccer practice again do i search where i was sitting last? do i stop this? will i be looking forever in my house with hope and fear?
It IS just a thing, and it is more, all at once.  Symbols are what they are, and less, and more.
And I am yearning so, for Hope. yearning, keening, wishing, leaning.  and it is hard, very hard, to yearn for something when the scarecrow flap of fear is so constantly partnered with it.  It would seem to make sense to turn away, to stop the movie, neglect to check the basement...
but what if hope is down there?  how can you face your life if you stop looking for it?

Monday, August 24, 2015

Hope all is rejuvenating and recalibrating in your worlds... i'm alive! And kids go back soon so i'll be back in a bit-more substantially..love to the world. . .

Friday, June 5, 2015

terribly good.

i'm terribly good at saying no to myself.  terribly.  one would almost think its some sort of contest - my will against my what? my flagrant success? my sinful, wanton needs?  shoot, man.  self-abnegation is certainly not the american way, and it certainly doesn't seem to be lending itself to any peace, i can tell you that.  great, so i abstain from alcohol, i abstain from night-time meetings, i abstain from sex, it seems, although that one is not so much by choice but by circumstance. . . i abstain from spending money... when i am low i actively stay away from all things that might possibly be an actual benefit to my psyche.  - there are chocolate covered pretzels in the cabinet- full disclosure-
i can't even figure out anymore what it is that i want to say yes to.  what are the things that i want in life? to feel ?  most of my desires center around the kids, what i want for them, what i'd like to feel for them, what i'd like them to experience if they get the chance... so much so that when i get my minutes free and i've read the books, then i'm at a loss what to do- the laundry is running, the dishwasher is flooding, and i'm sometimes certain there is nothing left to do but socially network, and even that? not so good at it, just reading, not sharing. . . i think the point of it is to share, but i'm not so much with the sharing these days.
the walnut heart is taking its toll.
you've heard this before.  here's newstuff. but not really, since there is nothing new under the sun, and i buy into that one wholeheartedly. (nut-heartedly)
 
my mom is having a hysterectomy this coming week, to try to remove cancer by removing the whole kit.  and that is lurking on me... emotionally and logistically as i try to prepare to have her recovery take place in this 'family life'.

i miss my dad a lot because cancer is scary and he'd be doing all the stuff that i am, and more comfortingly for my mom, more privately, more assuredly.

the marriage is tricky and we're trying to work on it, which is scary, and isolating and heart-hurty.

the kids seem fine, much is needing to get done before the summer begins in two weeks.  much will not get done.

 i'm trying.

-wmx


Monday, May 11, 2015

Fear and Laundry, these United States. . .

WE're so totally first world, right?  WE're so completely luxurious and privileged and our streets ARE paved in gold. Have you SEEN the grocery stores around here?! good lord, twelve hundred ketchup bottles in every single one.

We've got Freddy Gray, we've got Mike Brown, we can't breathe, we have to be reminded that all lives matter, but black ones too. We have crazy states that believe they are under attack and Walmart has to get involved.  Fear at the roots? WE demand the Pledge of Allegiance but only if God is included. WE don't seem all that clear on the separation of church and state. Our children's schools are floundering with the little money and the over-reliance on fill in the box learning.  The politicians have stopped talking about the Middle Class because they can't recognize who that might be.  Politicians don't send their kids to public schools, don't send their kids to fight in wars. . . is this what money buys? Money has the most sway it has in any generation of American history, ever.  We still find ways to blame the poor for this.  Lets drug test 'em.  Lets also take away their ability to choose their own food.  How many prescription drug addicts do you think sit in Congress?
in congress, together. . . making plans for how to spend all that crazy tax money. . . journalism that doesn't exist anymore, what with its entertainment/profit measures. . .

today is depressing.  I'm going to do some more laundry and hang it on the line and make the decision to love that i make so often, and although I'm on my own with the laundry line, and the dewed grass on my feet, I can only make the smallest choices for my smallest homestead, in my smallest way, I'm still going to do the laundry, I'm still going to have my short-reaching goals: the laundry, the overnight, the school play... tiny, littles...

Thursday, May 7, 2015

GREEN

try and fight it. you cannot. i know. because i am a devotee of the resistance arts, and i know.  the world is greening up again.

Monday, May 4, 2015

INSane in the Maybrain.

long winter, right? seems like all the everythings we all dreamed about are spilling over into the month of May... all the sproutlets sprung.

good lord, it is busy. i am almost not keeping track anymore of the evenings, letting the kids fill me in on who gets picked up on which nights, who has a game, etc.  at least the broken pinkie has made game nights fewer and farther between.  so i pile whoever is home into the car and we drive out to find who is missing, and so far, as may is only a week old, it seems to be working. if we keep the baseball uniform and some snacks and extra sweaters in the car, we're basically good until bedtime.  although there is the 'dinner' part that i am so crap at.  i'll just feed them again when baseball is over, thats my plan.

i am awaiting peas, though i may have waiting too long, i think i was supposed to plant them last month. we'll see.  and i am awaiting radishes, and i can already see bits of red/pink peeks through the muds. . . and we have some flowers, though i am quite disappointed to say that i believe my dreamy fritillaria meleagris may have been planted in a mysterious corner of the yard to bloom unnoticed in peace.  they are supposed to bloom in march and frankly, we still had a pretty good snowcover at that time, so ?  where i thought i had planted them?  daffodils!  lovely. but not fritillaria melegris. i will keep typing that, and i will probably spell it differently every time.

i have been having 'realizations' lately. supah.
1. i need more friends.  there has been a bunch o' shite in the past few years that i haven't even told anyone about, not ANYone.  and thats not very good for me, and i am not an independent blossom who can handle everything on her own. so while those stories may go untold, i need to get myself some flowerfriends to bundle up with. make of my life a bouquet. dude with the loneliness, already.
2. i long for hard work. looong. and laundry just doesn't cut it. oooh, just remembered the sheets.
wooohoooo... got 'em out on the line!  such a wonderful time and smell and if these were not flannel, they would even SNAP.
i want my coveralls to be dirty and to stand on their own.  dig?

laundry doesn't cut it! and it seems that i work real fast and keep myself involved with small projects because i have so much damn free time and i spend a whole lot of it doing a whole damn nothing.
so i am frustrated by my own lassitude.

3.i've got a lot of potential...  see the problems #1, and #2 and imaginate the interweavings therein.
(imaginate SHOULD be a word, damnit.)  I do not blame motherood for the loose endings i;ve got, but i see that I have not handled it all as well as I should have, and i'm still actually ON the steep learning curve and whatnot.  How have you all done it? cooking? good god damn.

4. its possible that the littlest will hit a very partime nursery situation next year as she will be almost three and is a very social little.  this will rob me of the last of my excuses for the isolation and the at-homeness.  what then? i can't help but tell you there are little nibbles of fear on my fishing line there.

5.  metaphors and i are at home with each other. it is one of my best relationships.

Best to you!!
wmx

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Aging, graceful is for the magazines.

the magazine on aging: I picture perfect shadows in the soft white light, a woman's face turned aside, her wrinkled brow and crinkly eyes looking elsewhere, hair in full drift, frame. ... a face full of something undefined, not sadness, not grief, though she will have had much of both, her fair share, it would be lame and too easy to call it 'wisdom' but it surely has its connections to experience.

Watching people age into elderly in real life, is daunting. daunting. I'd love to say its full of meaningful lessons and i'm sure that it is at some level.  the level far far below sea level, where the bits lilt down, where the self-lighting fish live. ( and in there, you find a place too full of metaphor.)
but mostly what i am watching is discomfort and fear.  daunting. things are magnified: loneliness, fragility, emotional distance, reserve, independence, dependence, the complete and utter separation of body and mind, and their complete collaboration all at once.  complete, incomplete.  all the relationships of a lifetime replayed, a crescendo in a glass house. . .
this cycle, so damn evident in spring, is just mind-blowing, as preparation for death marches in lock-step alongside the daffodils and the coming tulips.  the very soil, i know, the very soil.




Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Kerfluffle. (and poop)

Today will mark the fourth plumber to visit our humble domicile.  FOURTH.  and this does not include the man who came to pump out the septic system yesterday.  I am lucky to have friends who count as the first group, because probably i'd have gone to four digits already in the quest for 'no poop in the sink' which i find to be an almost universally upsetting quest, which most people are well ignorant of...
yes.
my mother-in-law had a seizure on sunday.  we, here in the phone-call-receiving household thought that she was dying. She was not. glory be.  and we have been awakened.

it is school vacation week, yesterday rain, today glory. yesterdays destroyed trampoline has been fixed and i've made them clean the disastrous room in which they did their rainyday mayhem... so we start with some rooms in which there probably isn't any poop.  so theres that. i'm in a hurry for my radishes to pop, and for some fritillaria meleagris to show itself in my very own yard.  its probably the only latin name that i know, for anything, and its a cutie pie that i have never seen but for pictures... and it will presently be in my very OWN YARD.
i would much rather yell at that then poop in the sink. wouldn't you?
we have an entire area in the yard which is being consumed by grape hyanciths and my seven year old has declared it a grape city, and it has battles with another patch elsewhere in the yard. someday a photo, because its a calming battle, believe it or not.
i think thats pretty cool..
and i looked at my last blog post and there are all these doubly underlined words with ads attached to them.  what the heck is that? does that happen every time? doesn't someone need to ask my permission to do that? maybe it'll resolve on its own? a glitch in someone's kerfluff?
meh.

i await the plumber, in chain-smoking resentment and grossness...
wmx


** EDIT: OH! and then i spent 8 hours at the Pediatric ER for a kid's broken pinkie.  just saying...

Thursday, April 9, 2015

I have low blood pressure. (thrills yet? )

anyhow, i do. i have low blood pressure.  laughably low. rest assured, i am a living thing, i do have blood moving around in here, but it is leisurely... in no hurry to travel the whole shebang at anyone's whim.  and what this means to me is little, but weighty.  my extreme appendages tend to get cold.  aaaah, fingers and toes baby.  i try to keep them swathed in woolens but honestly, now that the winter has been crushed beneath the unfrozen damp, woolens are a chore.  and today is the most perfectly damp spring day, and i am in great sufferance with my chilly digits.  i feel in good wutheringheights-like company... british damp having the most literary presence ever. . .

i kid about the great suffering. i've got a barely sick toddler watching doodlebops, i've turned all the heat in the house down to a no-central-heating temperature, and i'm downright sexual with the coffee mug. i don't kid anyone that this is suffering. but, oye, my digits.

i'm making a real effort to write because i do like this aspect of my personality to have an outlet.  but it is hard.  things are hard here, and i'm weary.  my hubsJ has been gifted my dad's leather coat and while it is on him, its all good.  when it is hanging on the back of the chair, or on the coat hooks, the absence and loss are all that i can see. the small details like the snaps at the cuffs, the way the collar folds, how it would look all zipped up... the hanging of it suggests all its emptiness and i am all forlorn again.

 hubsJ says Yeats has something to say about that too, that only age can make one understand. . . but i can't find it, and yeats is sometimes too beautiful to peruse.

my mom is going to have to have more procedures. all is not clear.


the anticipation this spring is almost like an adrenalin-crash, if that crescendo/fall be possible. i'm waiting so hard it hurts. 

and i have the deepseeded belief in hope. and i'm heavy-lidded with cynicism.  and thats a hard mix. and one for which we must need weep. '

ah. i think i need to go peruse.  

best to you, 

wmx 

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Candy, arch-nemesis or sweet little bob of joy?

I had a complete melt-down yesterday while trying to re-glue, clamp and completely repair the top drawer of my kids' bureau, a necessary bit of work as all his underwear and pajama matter is currently spread flat all over the everything.
My dad used to fix things, just like me.... with lots of glue and swearing.  I got glue all over my sweater while i was carrying the drawer around looking for something to clamp it with... rope in the trunk, as it turned out.  glue glue, wherever you may be... for i am the lord of the blue, said he...
I spent a whole lot of my sobbing power on that drawer, got really really mad at my dad for being unavailable... its the first real time, i think, that i've been so damn mad about it, and was very glad that the little was asleep and the boys were still at school.  was able to chill out and wash face before they got off the bus- there just ain't no calming boys who think you're upset for mysterious reasons.  i try to limit the times i CAUSE their inner turmoils.  i do.
man, it was a rough go.  and yes, i fix things.  and like my dad,  they are bound to break sooner rather than later, again.   although he did tend to go WAY over the line and use lots of hardware on top of it all... assuring solidity through stainless steel.  he fixed the boys bunkbed with something like six different nut/bolt combinations, it was solid man.
but our biggest problem in the fix-it realm is chairs.  i have kids who act like kids and lean back in chairs, stand on supporting pieces, flip them for use in forts, etc.  and so they break.  and they get glued and hit with hammers and so on.  and so on... and so on... and all that my dad has fixed, has broken again and i work with more glue than can possibly be healthy.
gha.
so i decided after my breakdown, that i needed to have candy stashed all over the house, so that i could sneak and binge and feel like a very questionable personality while keeping it all from the kids and salving my emotional upheavals.
and what i wanted was a real live candy shop to go to.. not bags of branded candies at the grocery store or fancy expensive chocolates but  jars upon jars of choice, so i could make up a delicious medley of corn syrups and cane syrups and chocolates and dried fruited bits slathered in all of the aboves...
not that easy to find.  had to settle for a target binge today, but tomorrow i am skipping the gym in order to find my way to billy boy candies. i've got to find its website, but if i am giving in to my slavering desires, than i might as well go whole hog.  aha! https://billyboycandiesinc.com/


ridonculous.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

what caged birds? what?

i'm exhausted. deep bone weary. rainy day chill. so, let that be the baseline for today.

not chirping.

wracking cough, keeps me up all night. back up bitch. back it right up. i even took a hot shower in the middle of the night, when i am so loathing of the shower, i can't even tell you.  call me bath girl. someone, please. its just a little weird.

'woke' up, left before the boys got on the bus, got my in-laws settled and took my mother, who wrecked her ankle yesterday, for a procedure which will tell her if she has cancer again. it was so superfast, i was still choking down my luxurious eggs-at-a-restaurant-alone when they called to say the procedure was finished.  i nearly ran down the waitress in my dash. nearly, but she would have coldcocked me if i had, so we're all good that i didn't.

i keep wanting to say 'supahflyyyyy'.  i'm too tired to fight the impulse.  my kids are going to be PSYCHED when they get off the bus- and when the wee gets up.  i'm hoping my mom wakes in a patient and kind mood, because i don't have any of those. i feel sort of stoned, but without the giggles.

the procedure was really routine, but the ankle busting? not routine, and somehow heightened my inner world (and, i think, my mom's) to a nearly paralyzing emotional seizure.  we say, feel, hear... 'well, if your dad was here.... i don't want to be a burden... if your dad was here...i really resent this ' and we have mother and daughter adjustments on a grand scale, a first 'caretaking', a first allowing 'caretaking'.. . and a whole truckload of fear, resignation riding side saddle, if trucks can have sidesaddle riders.  i'm too tired.

 It was the ankle, way more than the possible cancer scenario, way more than the invasion of the speculum... it was the goddamned ankle, the littlest inconvenience, the straw that broke us.
and spring is not yet enough of a force to stop this spin .

blagh.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

GAH. you want to hack something?

you wanna hack something?  hack a piece of wood into splinters using an ax that really, in all truth, is too heavy for you.  and while you are basically dropping this incredibly dangerous thing into a stack of wood?  dodge the fucking chickens. -because they are back to living on the porch because it has snown.  ( i assume this is not a word, but it should be. snown.)

big digression:
there aren't any life 'hacks'. just life and we only get through it, some better than others, but we all end up in the same place no matter how hard we work.  better enjoy some of it.

back to the point:
but in my heart of hearts, i know that winter's back has been broken, and so this snown feeling is allright. i know spring is around the corner because i ordered plants to arrive in the mail, and i accept the responsibility of digging holes no-matter- what- is- happening, on the day they arrive.  it'll be good to have a drive, a hole to dig, repercussions to follow.
percussions, drums...
wild jungle calls...
my hubsJ.
my husband wants more from me: more variety in the food i make, more enjoyment of life in general, more gratitude for what i have.

i don't think of myself as a complainer really, so some of this takes me aback.(because i believe he must have heard me complaining, thus, i must be complaining. either that, or he's developed a freaky case of mind-reading which means we are totally doomed. ?)  plus, i hate to cook [its even more complicated than 'hate' and its so lame that i don't really understand my deeply rooted antipathy towards this necessary part of my daily life ]   and cannot easily imagine adding more dishes to my repertoire, unless they come from the freezer section, which would really probably make me feel bad to serve my family. blagh.  i don't really know what the whole deal is with my cooking and the stress i feel about it.   i spend an awful lot of time dealing with food, shopping it, getting it ready, having it lying about for the hungry urchins, prepping meals, setting tables, timing things, and all that.  there's a whole canned goods section in my house, for goodlordsake.
in my house!

there are people in my life who are wonderful cooks, namely most of the people in hubsJ's family, and hubsJ himself.  they seem to love it, get off on the glory of big production meals, feel connections between food and love and sustenance and all that.  they use vegetables and things like beans casually, and to good result.

this is not me.  hubsJ even suggested i take a class.  i wish we were in therapy, because i would so make this worth an episode. ;)

agah.
i'm thinking about looking at a cookbook.  this may be the end of the world.
-wmx

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

unsaid things. maybe better that way.

do you have a whole list of those comebacks you could'nt spit out fast enough?  do you have a whole list of those funny things that would've made you feel like a rockstar?  yeah, i do.
i have a whole list of things i never typed here, and i'm waiting to find those papers to include them here and challenge you to do something with them.  i thought they were good, but just couldn't 'work' them into something else, they were flatout standalones.  they are down below, there, i found them when moving shit from place to place to change what is empty.

do you decorate your house based on children's programming?  i do.  i take my cues from little bear and the waltons... we go for minimal in our dreams, but we go for empty spaces in a big, big way in reality.  i might (literally) be the only person who can identify what is an empty space, though. my standards for size are quite low.


ooh, i found the unsaid bits i was thinking of:

hurry-home internals.    - what do you think of that? boy, i think it rich .

when there is an empty space and a wardrobe door has room to creak, there are inner upon inner worlds available to me.     - oh yeah, some narnia ... 

squall squall squall, pen, DO MORE! i'm watching the young cat wrestle the rug and it seems his squall is play. mine seems so searching and coastguards jumping into rough seas and I am deeply tired of rescue orange-        ha!

salt is only romantic when you have something to compare it to, which it is not.     (salt is romantic? really? ) 

no damn apricot here.    (again, ha! )


so? isn't it good to find the unsaid bits?  they each have this certain something i like about them.  i think we should take it as a personal challenge to insert them into something we say or write in the next weeks, it would be a shared intimacy ...and a secret funny.... go on.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Long Haul, in bits.

well, so a laptop returns to my lands, the dirt is peeking fretfully from beneath the snowpiles, and 'maybe' seems to have more import, more possibility.  today is friday, the boys have a half day so we, me and the littlest, are home in pajamas til they get off the bus in a few hours.  caillou, the strange bald pebble of a boy who whines incessantly, is on and i am here, typing. get that? typing, as in blog posting.  as always, with no editing and self-checking, so for that, i apologize.
i had thought my writing course would inspire me to post but... nah.  i think the snow and cold wore me thin, took away some of the illusions i had about my own self-reliance and ability to 'hole up'.  we've got two cars but only one is a strong snow-driving vehicle so most of the days hubsJ took the good and i was literally home-bound.  too cold to play outside for very long, we did a lot of television and watched every harry potter movie that there is, except the last book's worth, as we don't have it and i betcha a lot of money its more for me than for them.  darkness man.
we had a basketball tournament, which eldest's team won, so that was good.  i do so love basketball.
uhm. lots of snow.
middle boy has quit boyscouts and started swimming. can't tell you how happy i am. and truth? i just stopped taking him to boyscouts, it was my choice entirely and not his.  man, i hated that experience. like hateful hate hate.
repetition does not always communicate anything.
woodstoves are my new favorite sensual pleasure. really, the connection you feel to the world when you are tending a fire is deep and so very human. warmth, warmth warmth. warmthwarmth.
my nose is running over because i keep going outside in my pajamas, testing the air, breaking ice from the ground, freeing the waters to flow away.  we've had leaks, we have ceiling patterns of water making itself cozy as it passes through.  i'm fine with that.  the birds have been fed, i went to a garden talk on how to plant for birds, bees and butterflies. i bought a house for mason bees, which is waiting a path to the compost heap and then will be UP. we have a cardinal couple that i watch for obsessively.  the trashbag that i threw out the door a month ago has been uncovered, animal-attacked and cleaned up.  snow wants to go, it does. it has its own feelings about the sun.
 because our chickens are free-rangers, we've let them out most days unless it was single digits or too deep to walk their little dinoclaws through.  the only sheltered place has been the front porch and so they've been here all winter, shitting all over the porch and generally leaving the place looking and smelling like a zoo which is questionably caring for its denizens.  craaphole.
i hope i'm back in the saddle again, but can't say for sure.  i'm going to put on another caillou episode and swing my way through blog reading, so be writing something for me, yah?  go on.
-wmx

Monday, February 16, 2015

snowbitch.

have to say, we're snowed under. overly snowed, i might think. my mother spends these storm nights here and stays.. in front of the woodstove which works even in poweroutages... until it is 'safe' to venture home. today, she returned and  found a pipe burst and spurting and destroying her photos. bummer, and anxiety and understanding, quite suddenly, about snowbirds and downsizing and all.
and i've been without computer during the days and have to wait for hubsJ to return at night in order to virtually link myself to the outside world and that has been good and bad, realizing my isolation is not necessarily fantastic. and realizing how much more space i have to think - when there is more space, and fewer children. this whole 'vacation week' does not feel so vacationy. children. man, three feels like 45 this week.
and its winter vacation and soon we will go north, to face more snow and more cold and maybe some tubing down a mountainside. and i cannot say that i am proud to be an old-school new englander today, or this week.  i just want to go to disney world and leave my children with strangers and go to a beach.  i don't even care if its a man-made beach, horror of horrors.  really.
sun.
warm skin, sans a chilling breeze. warmth. flat out. no pretty words to smudge that picture. sun, providing warmth. warmth. say it many times over.
warmth.

i'll wait, but it might not be pretty.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

January


It seems to be a hard month, hard like a cold hard frost, this January… but I like the coldly dispassionate end of the old so cleanly cut on December 31st, such a clear finish to the insanity of the celebration gone amuck.  It is an empty office space, an empty warehouse awaiting its potential bustle.  

The maker of empty spaces is what I call myself in my interior conversations, my interests lie in emptying out, throwing out.  In my Depression-era heart, I pair this constant purging with self-reliance, and pare, as well, down to the bone of what is really necessity vs. desire.  … the ornaments away, the Nordic nature of the tree in the house during winter is somehow brought bare.  In imagining the house, I almost always see it empty, clean, sparse… in natural light and shadow. . .

It is a mostly unsuccessful attempt to add more value to my life as a homemaker, to turn it all into a koan, a zenning of the domicile.  Never think, for a single minute, that the house is a pristine collection of stones and well-placed shui-ed wooden toys, because we don’t play that way here, all dreams aside. No minimalism makes its stand here, the empty spaces are small gasps for breath in the chaos that is a family life.  Small. Gasping.

But… when there is an empty space and a wardrobe door has the room to creak, there are inner upon inner worlds available to me. My mother-lifetime of resistance makes the value of those empty spaces glow, as possibilities for self-acceptance, little tiny spark-lings whispering ‘truer tasks’… ‘truer task’…  as if I have some ‘thing’ out there towards which I am unwittingly directed.

Empty spaces, zenning domiciles, they aren’t the whole of it- there aren’t any rhapsodies over laundry or happy scourings of the toilets… but using the last of the frozen peas, getting the fingerprints off the door for a whole six minutes, tossing the five scattered pieces of the marble run left over from the last birthday?  These are mine victories…. Cleaning up my visions, letting the cold air flow in stream. 

This month, the early darkening holds the illusion of a deepening, introspective time...illusion because the deeper is only within, not without.  Just because the setting tells a story does not mean that is what goes on … it seems a trick to me sometimes that all this burrowing does not bring about warmth.  The realization that the true storm did not arrive, that the snowfall was just delay, no substance, an early darkening of the early darkening,  it is a plucking, a twanging of the nerves, a reminder of the inner world mismatching the outer.   It would be good to get more in line, more plumb between the inner and outer.

If the natural light and shadow are inseparable, why is it so hard to accept this as a possibility within?  Am I not of the same system?

It is all- is it all?- a gasp,

 a grasp at something bigger within the empty space?

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Melancholy

oye.  this is today's writing prompt in an online writing-prompt thing i am doing. 15 minutes of freeeewriting on Meloncholy.  melons, baby. 
i actually try to avoid thinking too much of meloncholy during the winter, too much, too much, you see.  today it is frigidly cold, if such a phrase be possible.  and i am in my pajamas and the sesame street is on... abby flies, the snow making the grass look like cornstalk hilts.  my husband writes poetry and i just float along, riding the wave of his words at times... this he does not know, while working and feeling stressed to peaks i cannot climb.  meloncholy, there, yes.  it is cold and i may even forego the library trip, though i may be forced to read 'shiloh' which will hurt my heart i fear. maybe.  doesn't that dog die?  i can't remember and can't force myself to read things which will have poor endings in a meloncholy vein.... there, did you see that connection? ah!
it is harder to do a freewrite with type, for me, but i am pluggging on though it has only been 3 of the 15 minutes i have going for me before elmo's world rocks mine.   we are undecorating trees here, bringing back the starkness of the greenery, back to the roots.  i have started looking for seed catalogs, plant plans.  the unfortunate truth is that while i want to grow lots this summer in the second raised bed, i don't actually want to eat more vegetables.  dude.  in fact, i have a real antipathy for most of them, like the picky eaters in the childgroup here... i disdain the squashes, have a hatred for eggplant which knows no bounds, and cannot imagine what the hell i would do with a beet.   so, potatoes, beans, maybe kale for the tortoise.  i dread the waste of food i do not eat/use and i dread the waste of my work ... learning to value the work in itself is my work this year, and this phase of my life.  making empty spaces in my householding, cleaning, making these negatives hold within them their own value is my meloncholy and my work at once and it is a struggle, a winter's bone.  my husband's family has trouble with my desire for slicing down to a more wintered existence, a hardwork problem ..while they deeply understand the love of hardwork, they do not know how to grapple with my need to pare down all the time.. there are constantly bags going out to salvation army here, and coming FROM there, in their generosity to us... it is a conundrum. 
meloncholy. fire burning bright in the kitchen , the first strains of elmo's world, and i am stopping short of my 15, but glad to have done my ten.  and this is an entirely unedited bite of meloncholy.  but there is fresh melon in the kitchen, as fresh as an international traveller can be.  
bite .

*unedited but i went back to add corrinne's link to the class so you can see what it is...http://www.corinnenoelcunningham.com/p/offerings-and-services.html

**also, edited because i had to check on spelling because i knew something was 'wrong'... melAncholy, not melons actually... only changed it at the top, the rest... left as is...

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Library Break In?

'the waves' by woolf has such a wonderful rhythm and it is fairly miraculous that such a thing can exist in print and while i am no woolf, i am here to suggest the comings and goings of the surf are guiding my inconsistencies.
i am a creature of my discontents.
the library has 'holiday hours' which make me consider breaking and entering.  this is the constriction of my blood vessels and the panic of planning for new year's eve.  why cannot we all just light candles and go to bed when it gets dark, feeling relief and gratitude for what is now officially past? ah. i am in process of tightening, loosening, a periscope up and down, a kid's hands on an invisible spyglass, constriction, expansion, constriction, expansion.
its been a strange and difficult holiday season, but the ending has been larger than expected, though still to come, so we will see.
the tortoise needs his kale. 
my thoughts have been so big, universal even, and then will focus down to such a minute specific ... cardinals! kale!  it is enough to dizzy. 
my sister rejects the word 'resolution', feeling that it contains failure.  i would just like to understand my own thought process, write some more here, or somewhere, and have more fun.  and i think, to me, that the 'fun' necessitates finding more places to feel and be authentic.  there is just too much show in the world and i certainly do not need to add to it. 
the minute and the universal are sort of indistinguishable, you dig?  and what does that do for us? 
oye.  i have no idea.  but i'm off to pirouette through a foggy wood.