just a small check list of sorts

--book club was fun. they really don't discuss the book much at all, which is kind of weird. but maybe if i actually read the book for next month, i'll have something to add, thereby increasing the discussion time from fifteen to at least seventeen minutes. we'll see. but we did discuss eddie izzard quite a bit, tell some stories, and laugh a lot. it's strange to be seated at a table with a group of women and hear them tell stories about each other's births, spouses, houses, families...it was so apparent how long they'd known each other. and me the outsider... but i mean strange in a neat way. i enjoyed it. i just wonder sometimes if we're really meant to settle here in this place of ultra-conservatism. i mean, these women did and they seem happy. i guess we'll just have to see....

--emily died. not emily saliers...emily, my mouse. it was sad. she ate some grapefruit seeds while she was out on saturday, and i haven't googled it, but that's all i can figure would've been bad. unless she ate my incense or something? i don't know. so amy is all alone. and i want to get her a friend, but i'm going to wait to be sure she's healthy for awhile before i start some chain of mouse deaths in my house...that would be so sad.

--my spouse woke me up at six o'clock this morning because he heard something in the wall. he was getting ready for work. he was all laughing/wow/freaking out about it. i was all grubby-eyed/drowsy/wtf? about it. and then he proceeded to leave a bunch of lights on in the house...as though five of us weren't still sleeping. i guess i should say seven because the dogs were asleep, too, and then miss kitty started whining to go outside and, oh, i was just annoyed. but i think he was all chipper cause, well, you know, he got some last night. and we've been talking a lot. and i think he's feeling good about things. and i am, too. nothing like being the total outsider to get you to make peace with those you're closest to. he even said he'd start doing yoga with me...and NOT make fun of us...yeah...i'll believe it when i see it.

--i've been thinking a lot about the mamas on my mama board...and just the circles of friends i have, in general. the diversity. the shared love and support. what's important to each individually. what becomes important as we journey as a group. i still have a lot to learn. but the shifts at this point seem to be coming below the verbal radar, which is important sometimes....saves it from potential mindfucking. must be sacred stuff... but i do love these women.

--it feels good to get stuff done around the house. actually getting a lot of this stuff out of the house is doing great things for my state of mind. i might post some pics later of the kids' closets...please don't think me crazy. but i want to preserve this moment...if i get around to it.

--and i think that's it for now. last rock climbing class is today. i am looking forward to a little more "unstructured" time. i have a post brewing about my second born son that i will try to get to this week. i have a couple of meetings this week, too. piano. no flute. i think i've got it under control...snort.

peace

please don't report me

to the health department.

all this cleaning today and i walk into my kitchen to see a mouse on a plate next to my sink. gah.

luckily, it was one of mine. emily. i don't know how she got out, but i am not making a lot of progress cleaning when i keep running back to her cage trying to figure out how the hell she got out.

craziness.

peace

working out of sorts

man, i've been kind of a messy blogger lately....kind of james joyce-y, but not intentional or brilliant at all... just fragmented all over the place. but that's pretty much me lately....

i have struggled with feeling weak, feeling wrong, feeling unworthy because of previously mentioned feelings... a lot of this is just who i am. a lot of it has to do with how the parts of me that were already mine to begin with, were reinforced and shaped in my childhood. (by adults who had plenty of their own shit going on, i might add.) but as i live and keep going, i have choices about awareness and responsibility. it's like working out...it may be uncomfortable at times, but there is an end result in mind...a certain freedom in fitness that i am looking for. just as i first wanted to just be able to run thirteen miles....now i want to run thirteen miles quickly...then maybe twenty-six...i want to be able to navigate relationships more easily, more quickly, more freely...and feel a little less like i'm going to die at the end of them...snort. but this requires a fitness in myself and myself only and that's what i'm working on.

we have been busy today. we are still healing from whatever badness visited us over the weekend, but the kids still wanted to go to rock climbing today. they'd missed physical activity for a week. so we went. now they're kind of lethargic, but i think they're glad they worked themselves out pretty hard. i am proud of them and inspired by them as they learn to listen to themselves and take care of themselves....with a little help from me....sometimes.

we are wrapping up some of our hsing efforts for the year. we've been wrapped up, but now we're "testing"/wrapping up....yeah, time to put our money where our mouths are...or something like that. anyway, it's going well...which is a good thing, because after the month i've had, i don't know how i'd handle bad news right now. even though somewhere inside me the answer is, "like you have been all month" but whatever... it's going well and i'm grateful and look forward to a little closure, although i know we'll be working diligently on things all throughout the summer.

switching subject...emily and amy are humping each other. rather, emily keeps humping amy. and amy squeals a lot as though maybe she's not liking it. well, that was yesterday. they seem to have things worked out for today. which i hope is a sort of permanent arrangement because i read that mice ovulate every three days and that could really put a damper on our enjoyment of our new residents if they have to work this out every time one of them ovulates... but i will say that it amazes me the dominant animals that i have brought into our home...and me not really liking all those shows of dominance and stuff. but one on one, i didn't notice those traits. and in a big group of mice, emily wasn't humping anyone. but get them in the right environment...like say, my house...and the diva or hulk or whatever comes out... i remind myself that my fish never showed dominance, but then who am i kidding? oscar ATE other fish...

ok, back to work. left foot, right foot, breathing....
peace

happy mother's day <3

what a lovely day...a pretty lovely weekend, to be honest. it's been a tough month to be me. but like childbirth, you go through some changes, some shifts, you labor, hard, become weary but have to keep going...you aren't finished yet!...and who you have around you makes a world of difference. i had an awesome tribe...some i've known forever and knew i wanted there, others who've made a place in my heart and lifted me up, and still others i've only just met, but somehow wandered in and by the gift of grace had some kindness or wisdom to share, too.

i'm editting this post to take out the forward i originially copied and instead post this essay that i've been sent a number of times and inspires me.

"On Being Mom" by Anna Quindlen

If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they
ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the
black-button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the
yellow ringletsand the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the
lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin.

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in
disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two
taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and
have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of
them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry,
who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors
closed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food
from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the
bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within
each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now.
Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and
sleeping through the night and early childhood education, all grown obsolete.
Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are
battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust
would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the
playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations -- what they taught me was
that they couldn't really teach me very much at all. Raising children is
presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice,
until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one
knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another
can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One boy is toilet
trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to
put baby to bed onhis bellyso that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the
time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research
on sudden infant death syndrome.

To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then
soothing.Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research
will follow.

I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful
books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of
infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for
an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat
little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he
developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last
year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can
walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes
were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did Hall of
Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not
theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for
preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp.
The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her
geography test, and I responded, What did you get wrong? (She insisted
I include that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald's drive-through speaker and
then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I
include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two
seasons...What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while
doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now
that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of
the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing
set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate,
and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they
slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next
thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little
more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and
what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday
they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they
simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I
back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact
and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up
with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone
to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was
bound and determined to learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

there are so many more things that we have in common than that make us different. being a mother has taught me that. it sometimes seems easier to focus on differences and avoid people based on them, but my life is so much richer for embracing similarities and learning how little differences can matter. i'm so grateful for the opportunity.
peace

ps--here's a little something i got for mother's day. my family made me gardening stones, but as each child put their hand print and name on them, i'm not going to take a pic. but here's some new members of our family...named amy and emily...i know, i know...go die of surprise already. but they are the cutest little things....