the way things are going

Ani has announced that we need to change things up around here. Too much routine. (This, from the girl who wants to know the plan at all times.) So as we slip towards less structure for this season, I am engaging more of my observer and recorder skills. My journal has fewer "to do" lists this week and more "we dids".  Brownies, newborns, marbled paper...

E's sketchbook

International Street Fair

We still try to spend a couple of hours of the morning together, usually with some current events over breakfast, and then our read aloud (just finished The Shakespeare Stealer) and more reading of history or science, and a game or two.  This week it was the favorite subject-predicate-clause (really, we have to come up with a more titillating name, but I'm afraid it would be something like The sinister Grandma barfed on your tennis shoes and threatened to explode on the baker's doorstep).

Ani recording her favorites

This morning it looks like reading in bed - for all of us! - and a round of Bananagrams over breakfast - for all of us! - and then some time watching things on the computer with Eliza (Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! and a few outstanding performances from poetry slams) while Ani builds, tells stories and plays with the wee people she made out of sculpey.  Eliza has her last dance performance of the year this evening, and Ani and I have plans to watch a movie about bees.  Plenty to observe and record in this juicy season...

parabolas, brain doodles, and steering the boat

I think I've mentioned before that Wednesdays are a wild card for us.  Sometimes we are in synch and the flow is sa-weet! But many weeks we are tuckered out from Tuesday's coop and Wednesday finds us in our separate corners.  It is reminding me that long ago we quit a coop for just that reason: instead of coop taking one day of busy and out, it really took two days from our week - the long day out and the long day of recuperation.  That feels like too much time to me! We lose our rhythm and struggle the rest of the week.

I keep thinking that rhythm is hard won, because that has so often been my experience, that if you interrupt the rhythm of your days it takes so much energy to get it back.  I wonder if some would argue that in that case, it would mean the rhythm ain't really there...I tell you, this business of  - what? shepherding? guiding? I can't find an analogy I like here...steering the boat? Anyway.  Trying to facilitate a good day for three people is a bit mind-boggling. When I'm rarin' to go, they are deeply focused on Something Else and vice versa.  Case in point: I had my shoes on to run to the store for supper supplies and Ani bounces down the stairs singing, "I'm ready for piano!!!!" Turns out, she had a lovely practice, without me. Good for both of us...

So, to celebrate the successes of today inspite of no rhythm...Eliza launched herself into sewing together the pieces she cut during sewing class yesterday, to make a beautiful little "clothespin apron".  I'll have to get a photo of the finished product to share.  She is still doing a good bit of winging it, rather than being sure to check the pattern and the instructions, but I'm seeing big improvement in her craftsmanship, which was one of her goals.  I love that she forges on and does it, rather than thinking about it for a few months before starting (Ahem. I am intimate with this approach).

Ani and I butt heads a bunch today.  Just couldn't really see eye to eye on most things.  I finally went and lay on her bed and apologized for the ways in which I'd been pushing her to do the things I wanted her to do today.  What I wanted her to know was that I really deeply value her ability to tell stories for nigh on three hours, that I don't think it is a waste of time for her to cut out every piece of clothing her paper dolls have so that she can tell her story and that I remember not wanting to practice piano, and I thanked her for getting to it when she was ready.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~

Wednesdays tend to be a math art day.  

We made parabolas a few weeks ago, and today we made more parabolas and Eliza and I stitched some, while Ani got out the compass and made a circle to string on.  I mostly enjoyed that we were all at the table together, Doing.

oh! circles! so many circles!

Ani tried the stitching, but was easily frustrated and went on to something else. Eliza made the sweet butterflies below.

My triangle. I can see why these were popular in the seventies!

My friend Molly sent me a link to this and it got me traveling down a few rabbit holes and thinking about how I could use this method of thinking "out loud" to encourage Ani to put more thoughts to paper.  The girls attend an off-again, on-again poetry class with a poet we love, and Ani participates in her own way, but does not often choose to write during class.  I've offered to be her scribe, but she feels pressured by time and is a bit intimidated by what she perceives as the ease and skill with which her friends accomplish their writing. (Some are impressively skilled and some are willing to accept some scribe help to get past the mechanics and are able to contribute to the class.)  

So, we doodled.  We chose to think about our cats, and to draw and write what came to mind as we talked and giggled and thought.  

I think we might be on to something.

Hikaru Dorodango

It is the last day of November.  It is the last day of my challenge to myself to write a post for every day of the month.  I was joking with Dan today that I feel like something happens to the internet tomorrow, that I was supposed to have gotten everything written, it was my last chance.  This of course segued into "what was I doing in the nineties, before the internet?" and devolved into remembering trashy television (I mean the worst. When I was pregnant with Eliza I used to eat thai food and ice cream and watch episodes of Temptation Island. Please don't judge me too harshly) and fonder memories of drinking wine and writing letters by candlelight.  I still drink wine, but I sure as heck can't see well enough by candlelight to write a letter.  (Ah, forget the wine. I just spilled an entire glass with my computer. I still have candlelight...)

I suppose I could be reflecting on how this experiment went...I have for the most part enjoyed the push to post something - it has forced a few of the posts from my drafts folder out into the light of day.  There were also the days when the post was little more than a facebook status update, which is funny. I don't have facebook, but I do lurk like a lunatic, and I find myself once in a while thinking, "oooh, if I had facebook, I would totally put this on there".  I have also been tempted more than once to repost something I saw there, here on the blog (Doors to Europe? Anyone? It's the very best of facebook, in my opinion, made me so very happy), but I have this feeling that if it's on facebook, everyone has seen it, like...oh, like the newspaper, like everyone sees the same thing.  I know that's not true, but it's too mind-boggling for me to imagine elsewise.

I wish the blogging world was still active.  I sometimes feel like a lone island out in cyber space, when just a couple of years ago I felt like I had a whole community, as thought it really were a web. I'd mention someone who was doing something, and Dan would ask "is that Stephanie in Utah?" like we actually knew her in person, not just here in the box. I know I should just Do Facebook - I'm assuming that's where all the cool kids have gone - but I really feel like it wouldn't be as good for me. I guess it just brings me back to this mostly being a way of threading the experiences of my life together so I can find my way back when life gets too big.

So, for today I will end the month with a post I started many many years ago.  It's not the first I've mined from the drafts folder this month, but it is maybe the most random.  This is my brother-in-law, the guy we call Spoons, making like a dung beetle and rolling dirt balls. He is curious, tenacious and meticulous, and his activity of choice this particular visit was teaching himself the Japanese art of hikaru dorodango.

Thank you for sticking with me through November!! It has inspired me to post more often and dig a little deeper for what I want to say.  That has to be a good thing.

birds: a story

Earlier this fall we were walking home from a friend's house after sunset.  I was third in line behind my girls, and we were enjoying the night, the slight chill, the dark.  We rounded the corner to our street and Eliza playfully swatted at an evergreen branch that was hanging low.  Seconds later I was stumbling over something pillowy that bounced between my feet as I tried to slow myself down.  It took me a moment to puzzle it out: had the branch fallen? were these needles swirling around my feet? wait, is this a cloud of feathers? before I discovered the soft body of a bird.  My heart went to my stomach and hers went to the bird. Mama, we have to help it, I think it's still living. Me wanting to move on, uncomfortable on a physical level with the feeling I'd just had of my body colliding with what must be a wounded or very ill bird.  

I stood there, paralyzed and nauseous, as she scooped it up, cooing to it, and found it a comfortable spot where it would be safe from passing feet, underneath a tree.   She did not want to leave it there. Even if it were going to die, she wanted to be with it.  I could only imagine trying to bring it home, scaring it further, trying to negotiate the cats, making our night difficult.  What I told myself was that it should die peacefully, not surrounded by people-smells, but by earth and night.  What I was feeling was some sort of shame. 

I lay there that night, thinking of my girl's big heart and of my mine, small in that moment.  I felt sad that I hadn't been able to make space for her to tend to that bird, but I didn't feel any answers or clarity about how I could have met her partway. I had dug in, sorry for the bird but more than reluctant to bring it into our lives, even for an evening. It isn't ours to save is what I think I said. We talked about death and nature and she sobbed herself to sleep.

In the morning there was a note when I woke up: I've gone to check the bird. It had died in the night, as I thought it would, but it had not been disturbed from the spot she'd made for it.  We hoped that it died peacefully, with the smell of pine. 

Yesterday I was chopping vegetables for dinner when I saw a chickadee on the ground outside the window, in our driveway.  It was one of "our" chickadees that eats at our feeder a couple hundred times a day. It or its ancestors has been "our bird" for the past few years, as chickadees are often the hardy stalwarts who hang in there when the temperatures drop.  I love this chickadee. I saw it flopping a bit and wondered if a neighbor cat had gotten it for a moment? Then it fell over on its side. I barked at Eliza, "I need your help" and I ran out the back door. It didn't fight me when I scooped it up, and I cupped it in my hands.  My heart was pounding and I focused as much warmth into my hands as I could while I checked it over, watching its little mouth open in a pant, and its bright black eyes blink blink blink.  I remembered when a starling had been hit by a bike in front of the house, and was stunned, we learned to put it in a paper bag to offer protection while it gathered strength to fly.  Eliza got to making a bag, this one with a rock to hold it in place in the wind, and leaves to offer some warmth.   Ani ran to get some bird seed in case it was hungry. 

It was all I could do to keep from putting my warm mouth on the tiny bird, for a kiss.

It sat in the bag for only a minute and then flew. It's been back many times since to eat at the feeder and chirrup hello. I wonder if it knows who we are? That the warm hands live on the other side of the window? 

I feel as though I should be wrapping this up with some lesson I've learned, but there isn't one.  I feel as though I'm still exploring that stark place between "ours" and "not mine to deal with", and it is uncomfortable and dark.  The bird surfaced in a poetry writing workshop I attended last month and I got stuck on a few moments: The bird, tumbling between my feet, is a feeling I wish I could erase from my sense-memory. The cloud of feathers, barely visible in the light, having their own movement, their slow settling to the sidewalk, the visual equivalent of my thoughts slowly landing and forming the picture of what had just happened.  Reaching out my hands to cup the bird, and drawing back, twice, realizing I did not have the courage to hold something so wounded.  Eliza's passion and courage, picking it up without hesitation, ready to offer everything she had to help.

November. It is still November and here I am, still writing!

writing

I am packing. I can't pack without a story.
My ipod is malfunktioning. Sort of.
(Malfunktion might be the name of my new band)

Ani would rather tell a story than write it down.  I haven't quite determined why, but I imagine it's because the process slows down the lightning speed of the thoughts.  And writing letters? Geez, what is one to say? I mean, it's all pleasantries and what if you just can't think of what to write? (If you've ever received a letter from Ani, treasure it.)  But when I have my worried nights - which I do every few months - I finally come around to the fact that she is more than capable of communicating her thoughts and needs in written form, when necessary.  And, as with the last photo above, she can also funnel off her frustration through her pen, which goodness knows is how I got through high school.

We work some writing into our weeks in multiple ways.  She loves learning cursive and often asks me to show her a few more letters so she can write more words.  She'll write a recipe up on the window when she wants to double it and needs a place to work it out.  The new favorite writing practice is making lists.  They often sound like poetry.  In fact, this list has the word "ellipsis" written above it, making me think it could be the title of this poem.

If roads were rivers...

If chickens had sails...

If birds were teapots...

If sweet potatoes were submarines...

If salt was treasure...

If napkins were flying fish...

If squash wore skates...

If fruit flies had kazoos...

If lasagna was president...

If potatoes wore glasses...

If sandwiches wrote poetry...

If lakes were full of butter...

If cameras were kiwi...

If lemons sang opera...

If toast swam laps...

If raisins wore pants...

If beans were motors...

Another post for November! 

honey, you smell...

After I had my babies, something happened to my smell.  I mean, chemically, I really think something happened that changed the way I filled the air around me with scent.   However, I didn't ever think it had gotten so bad that the people around me would notice.  I remember commenting to Dan once, in exasperation, "Oh MAN, I smell like I just rode a bear across the country!"  He didn't skip a beat. "Honey, you smell like the bear."  I guess he had noticed.  Now, my babies, on the other hand, have always nestled in my armpits. It is the smellscape of their earliest memories. Let's imagine that for a moment....Shoo! It's almost too much to contemplate.

yes, this is my bathroom.

Asking Eliza about my smell, she says, "To tell you the truth, it's kind of comforting.  I mean, you've always smelled that way and it's just YOU. I think it's just fine."  Clearly, she is biased, bless her.

I've had friends (good friends. you know who you are and I love you for this.) share with me their own secret formulas for getting rid of body odor as if I might benefit from the same knowledge, and it's all worked, for a short time.  I even doubled up on the deodorant for a few years, using the crystal and Tom's or something similar.

It didn't work. None of it.  Summer means new t-shirts every few hours, deodorant in my backpack for a pick-me-up, and - the worst of it - hearing myself apologize constantly for the way I smell. Aside from the fact that I've been told I apologize too much on a non-sweaty day and am trying to break myself of that habit, I actually have a fondness for my smell because it reminds me of my Grampa Spangler and the way he would smell - sweat, sunshine, wood shavings - when he'd have been out in the yard or in his workshop.  But smelling like your Grampa is not exactly in, so I have grown self-conscious, I guess.

Until this summer.  It is practically a ritual with one of my friends from Seattle that when we see each other we pull out our notebooks and start sharing the list: books, movies, food, health, exercise, spirituality - it is all there in our notes, the things we have discovered or have discovered us that we absolutely have to share.  Sacagawea, Bees Knees (gin, lemon, honey), Challah Bread, Anne Lammott, bucket showers, kimchi - really, it's all there. So she mentions, as one of her many many shares, that she is making her own deodorant now.  I barely even blinked - I mean, really. This may work for the non-sweaty beautiful people out there, but not us hairy bear mothers.  So I ignored her and quickly moved on to the oil facial cleanse treatment (divine).  Fast forward a week, and it is our last night with them before we head south to Mt. Rainier and the Oregon Coast where we will be camping for four days.  On a whim, I say, that deodorant? Wanna show me? And with much skepticism, I smeared it on.

If I could employ some dramatic music here or lean over and squeeze your hand, I would, because - people. PEOPLE!!! People, you have to believe me that I did not smell. At all.  For four days.  Let me get even more graphic here:  I did not shower or touch my pits for FOUR DAYS OF HIKING, CAR RIDING and CAMPING, and I. Did. Not. Smell. At. All.  My poor family - I kept shoving their noses in my zazoos (that's what we called them in my family - yours?) and asking them to testify, because I could not trust my own senses to be true in this foundation-shaking moment. Nothing. Shaking of the heads, in disbelief: nothing.

Stunned and jubilant was how I felt when we hit town for my cousin's wedding. I could barely contain my enthusiasm for this new-found knowledge.  Really, it was treasure, for so many reasons. First, it was summer - hot, sweaty, smelly summer. Second, I really have spent a lot of my time managing my smell and my sweat - thinking about it, worrying about it, apologizing for it, trying to get over it. Third, when I tell you what is in this deodorant you are going to start whistling like we weren't even having a conversation and try to change the subject because either you just flat out aren't going to believe me, or you're going to think I've lost my hippie mind and no way in hell would you even consider trying this, or  - you are going to close your eyes in relief and gratitude that the answer to your prayers was so simple and straightforward and without a doubt the best life hack you've had handed to you in a long, long time.

So, during the night-before-the-rehearsal-dinner, when the groom's family meets the bride's family and everyone basks in their almost-newlywed glow (there was so much beautiful glow for this couple) I snuck a moment with the mother of the bride and hit her up for the ingredients.  She raised her eyebrows but was willing to, you know, tear herself away from her daughter's wedding festivities to help a girl out.  I'm afraid my over-stepping the boundaries of sharing too much information was only beginning there. I mean, I understood somewhere in my social animal make-up that the wedding was really not my platform for spreading the good news, but who can help herself when there are women all around her all day long brunching, making wedding decorations, lifting tables and chairs - and profusely sweating and complaining about their own sweat and odor production!! I did give myself some rules. Well, one rule: they had to mention their sweatiness on their own, I could not point it out or bring it up myself.  Once they said the magic words, they were mine.  My cousin, of course, was one of these women, and I'm afraid she caught me more than once talking about body odor at her rehearsal dinner but I swore then that I'd followed my rule and I'll swear to you now that I did not mention it even once to anyone not related to me during the wedding reception itself. Not once.

I am photographing my deodorant. 

So here is the big reveal: coconut oil and baking soda.

Are you waiting for more? That is it. Coconut oil and baking soda.  And for the less smelly and more hardcore or frugal, just the coconut oil can work.  I start with a tablespoon of each and tweak it, working toward a paste that will rub in nicely, like a lotion, and not feel caustic or gritty.  I apply a pea-size amount after a shower, careful to rub it all in so my clothes don't get stained from the oil, and I do not need to reapply until the next time I shower, and after telling you so much about me, I don't mind saying that that can mean a day or two or three or four...Me. The smelly one. Four days, easily. Astounding.

I probably don't need to mention that part of what makes me so stinkin' happy is that I don't have to buy deodorant anymore, but just stroll to the kitchen to make a new batch, and a couple of tablespoons can last for months.  No more products, no more plastic with a rolly-thingy that I can't figure out how to recycle, none of it. This makes me intensely happy. If I thought that people would be accepting of this as an actual gift, I would make it for everyone I love for Solstice, put it in a cute little jar, and they would know, really know, how much I love them.

Now as for the sweating, well, it is a sign that my body's cooling system is working really well.  I am trying to just embrace it as my super-power.  It hasn't stopped my friends from hugging me yet, but it's a little ridiculous.  Maybe my next hack will be for some kind of fashion statement that looks like a casual cape but is really a terrycloth towel that people can surreptitiously wipe as they release me from a hug so I don't have to see them wiping their hands down on their thighs. Or I could just laugh and shrug apologetically while reminding them that it could be worse; I could pee myself like the mighty vulture does when it gets overheated...

I've challenged myself to write a post a day during the month of November. So far so good!

late summer feast

Is this post not what you thought it might be? No late-harvest vegetables or farmer's market pictures, just these fantastic beings - wheel bugs (Arilus cristatus) - that caught my eye one day in October along the bike path.  It was such a find, and I literally spotted them hanging off of a stalk from feet away, they were so big.  Of course, there were two, it turned out, and look at the multi-tasking feat they were pulling off...

can you still see the bee?

Remember the bee? Ha ha, no longer. These are pierce-and-suckers and they were in fine form! I fell way behind the others I was walking with. This kind of thing makes me so deeply happy.

Really, it does not take much to make me feel alive.

This writing-every-day thing might be too much for me.  First, I am not a great planner when it comes to writing. It just...happens...or it doesn't.  And oh, the self-judging.  I find myself evaluating my stories - most of them of the mothering-homeschooling genre, naturally - and finding them lacking a good clean finish, a button, "and so I learned the most valuable thing about the totally freaking horrible day we just had!  I feel so blessed that our day was so horrible!!"  If they end still mired in the horrible, who is going to want to read them?? There are days when I think I won't ever write another post because if I did it would be full of language that my most loyal reader - my mom - would cringe to read.  Faced with the daily writing, I'm running up against at least a few hours worth of cringe-worthy material. We'll see where this gets me.  I suspect I'll either stick to my goal and you'll read a whole lot of crap with a few aha moments jammed in there - or you won't! - or I'll take a bit more time to find the way to say the things that are floating around in here.  For any dear someone who is still reading this seven-year-old blog at this point, you deserve a well-written post or two! 

As you might have surmised, I have challenged myself to write a post every day this month. Shoo, what was I thinking?