tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122976142024-03-07T19:06:20.810-08:00mamieknitsKnitting a Life Well Lived with my Hands, Words & Photosmameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.comBlogger532125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-48758782662336689012012-04-24T20:31:00.000-07:002012-04-24T20:33:57.984-07:005 Years or Some Ridiculous Amount of MonthsIt has been awhile since I visited here, tonight I was prompted to come to say hello to my (almost) 5 year old boys. 5 years ago on the date I went into Huntington Hospital for a fairly uneventful and much held off c-section that brought our two people here. 5 years ago we all irrevocably changed in the minutes of 1117 and 118 p.m. when our small people were pulled into the world. 5 years .... mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-60180096512102732222012-03-02T18:31:00.000-08:002012-03-02T18:31:25.354-08:00Weakened by the WeekIt has been a really weird week. I expected the boys back Tuesday but then the house was not done and then there was that storm that blew in and dropped snow on our place and all the roads around and so that delayed things. And so I am still here, alone. Sitting here, listening to Pandora and various public radio shows at a distractingly loud volume to detract my thoughts from being alone.
I mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-9118968371725817582012-02-25T20:51:00.000-08:002012-02-25T20:51:26.922-08:00SoloI've been away from my boys one week a year since they turned two. Solo, alone. I don't travel for work, no. I travel for sanity. And I am a very blessed woman for having a partner that has allowed that space for me.
This time, this week, is different. They left me. Headed down South, my three boys, to work on the old house, touch base and reconnect. I have been alone in our new home, albeit mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-12919978923046852472012-02-18T20:04:00.000-08:002012-02-18T20:04:42.023-08:00Settle InSet·tle /ˈsɛtl/
verb (used with object)
1.to appoint, fix, or resolve definitely and conclusively; agree upon (as time, price, or conditions).
2.to place in a desired state or in order: to settle one's affairs.
3.to pay, as a bill.
4.to close (an account) by payment.
5.to migrate to and organize (an area, territory, etc.); colonize: The pilgrims settled Plymouth.
6.to cause to take up mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-69285717791319562952012-02-06T19:42:00.000-08:002012-02-06T19:42:51.985-08:00And the Question CameIt was bedtime last night and I was laying down between the boys. We were huddling under the blankets, slowly finding the bedtime rhythm of a late night. We began the familiar routine of question/answer/story as we worked through the day and then they asked : "Mommy, where did we come from?". I was startled but I also understood they were asking me Where We came from. Not the question of the wombmameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-72489946478451648492012-01-25T20:50:00.000-08:002012-01-25T20:50:21.845-08:00AnewDo you believe in dreams? Ask me three years ago and I am not sure of the answer to that one. Younger Me might have said, yes, of course. Three years ago Me? Not so sure. Me? Today? Equivocal resounding Yes.
I write this from my new home (for now). My home in a town that was a name only 8 years ago when we first started passing through this area. 5 years ago when we first stopped in it. 3 years mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-79293662916684427672011-12-31T17:46:00.000-08:002011-12-31T17:49:51.840-08:00An appendectomy and AdieuOur 17th anniversary started with a sponge bath. A very thorough sponge bath. Not a sexy role playing thing, it was a bath of necessity.
As I helped Tim wash away 2 days of hospital funk, scrubbed his hair, his scruff, I thought "So this is what they mean about sickness and health". I told him that thought.
We've been together a long time, almost half of our lives. We're weathered together, ourmameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-63518734023357531532011-12-08T22:03:00.000-08:002011-12-08T22:03:18.358-08:00InkedBones knit themselves in the most beautiful of ways. When you fracture a bone it is apart, the strongest part of your body. It repairs the damage first by laying a new structure, a filigree really. Over time that delicate web fills itself in and becomes what is called a callus. The callus is never really the bone it was before, it is never as elegant, never as joined. But that callus marks that mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-57424007111344482242011-11-14T20:25:00.001-08:002011-11-14T21:18:58.571-08:00MIAI don't mean to be MIA. I don't want to be MIA. I do that thing where I write blog posts in my head or make comments on some of the amazing writing that I get to read every so often. But it does not translate, the words to page or rather screen.
I spend a lot of time working lately. It crept in, the hours incresing as they had to. In a way I decided I wanted to practice a little, anticipating mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-31093107396417826062011-10-07T21:11:00.000-07:002011-10-07T21:11:10.133-07:00RIP Steve. From the Eye of a Little.Do you let your children play with your iPhone? We do.
It is a great babysitter. Well, not babysitter. But, it is great, you know? They, with their facile minds, just get the iPhone. It was made for them, for their small swiping fingers and lateral thinking. For the last year my small ones, the ones I swore would never have their own cell phones until 35, have usurped, explored, played. I know mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-33113053434006540502011-09-25T17:28:00.000-07:002011-09-25T20:16:58.034-07:00Good StuffI want to tell you so many things. I want to tell you about feeling good. So good.
Because more than one person and place told me I was needed and valuable and would make their place better. Because we wandered through open places where homes sprout out of the earth, homes that I dreamt of but forgot of that dreaming until the doors opened wide. Because yesterday a wide open opportunity mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-5963901981780965002011-09-19T22:40:00.000-07:002011-09-19T22:40:29.865-07:00For Her, For MeIt had been months since I sat in front of my sewing machine. July, actually. The machine collected dust in the corner and any and all projects in the queue sat, neglected or forgotten or undone. I had ideas about this and that; a quilt, a knit hat, a new t-shirt handstitched. But these hands, they remained idle. Well, not idle but tapping out work or turning book pages or wrestling the young mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-57859403257164114972011-09-11T19:06:00.000-07:002011-09-11T19:15:21.492-07:00Remember51 minutes.
If you have the space and the ear and the time, please listen.
Hard but the loss, each has a story. Thank you StoryCore for doing this for us.
mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-20552273644472658702011-08-28T16:49:00.000-07:002011-08-28T16:49:21.797-07:00240 and TickingI started 365 on January 1st. I wanted a challenge, a recording. I wanted to pick up my camera daily and work it, work my eye and my equipment. I wanted the discipline. I am 240 days in with a few missed days here and there which is not too hard to shrug off.
I am finding that I may be getting more than I thought from this year of shooting. I may have recorded the last year we will live in mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-2282979742814079582011-08-14T15:30:00.000-07:002011-08-14T15:30:43.911-07:00A pie for MikeyI work in health care. I work in home care. I work with the sick and sometimes the dying. Many of the people I see are more in the ebb than the flow. It is what I do and I feel that I am in it because I do it well.
Over my years in home care I have come to appreciate so many things; the way people feel when they are finally home, in their own clothes, surrounded by their familair things, mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-55432924228974625812011-08-11T17:50:00.000-07:002011-08-11T17:50:12.419-07:00Mothering :: LessonsLast night I did the unthinkable. I withheld my love from my children. They had completely dismantled a handmade necklace, scattering it in every direction. When I found them it was too late to salvage the piece, bedtime was minutes away and my head was going to explode. Fuming, I yelled for them to get to their room! and then went into my office to try to settle myself. It was Tim’s turn for mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-72289830426952645872011-08-09T13:30:00.000-07:002011-08-09T13:30:02.503-07:00Blogher11 :: UnmooredLast year I attended the annual Blogher conference in NYC, my first. I posted about it the day after and I still feel strongly in my conclusion that Blogher is whatever you make it to be.
I went to Friday of the conference this year and I do want to speak of the experience but cautiously, very cautiously. Because for me this year felt totally different and although not terrible, I am not puttingmameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-49606209642671928812011-08-03T11:29:00.000-07:002011-08-03T11:29:05.583-07:00It was a Good TripIt was a good trip but now we are home again. So quickly we fall back into the routine of life; watering the garden, messing up every room in the place, returning to the work of patient care. Forgetting.
It was hard to leave Sunday, we lingered in Auburn, having lunch and walking around the wooden sidewalks, stopping into the antique store, the Alehouse.
It was hard to plunge back into the mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-4684000883877182562011-07-30T14:28:00.000-07:002011-07-30T14:33:15.366-07:00Fear and FreedomI have to chuckle a bit after reading the last post. Somehow I thought I would find the time to write in the maelstrom that is life on the road. It feels as if I wrote that post months past and a minute ago. And tomorrow it is time to head back South, somewhat weary from the time away but also very very changed.
The last few weeks have solidified some very important beliefs that Tim and I hold,mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-54126015421380531052011-07-15T16:57:00.000-07:002011-07-15T16:57:18.393-07:00From the RoadSheepishly trying to jump back in ...
It is mid-July and we are in the first few days of our long weeks away. We worked our asses off for this, juggling the boys and the stress and trying to remain calm and trying to get all the proverbial ducks in a row before leaving.
For once I finished every bit and speck of paperwork and left the office Wednesday free of work laptop and work obligations, mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-35787258919290199072011-06-19T16:04:00.000-07:002011-06-19T16:05:09.105-07:00An Open Letter to the Father of my ChildrenHey there, pardner.
I apologize in advance as I am feeling kinda' sentimental today. Also, I didn't get you anything for Father's Day so I want to make it up to you...
Your Birthday 2011
So, a few years ago you became a dad. Let's make that capital DAD, and it has been more than a few years. Four, to be exact. And you came into it with twins so therefore it was with guns blazing. From Day 1 mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-92009036888223890272011-06-17T23:40:00.000-07:002011-06-17T23:40:51.614-07:00Wahe GuruSomething happened to me today. And it was wonderful.
Ten days ago I made a committment to practice yoga for 21 days. Every day. The decision was prompted by a Yoga Journal article from January of this year. I skimmed it and realized I needed to do this. And so I embarked on daily yoga practice. I did not think it would be such a big deal. I usually take 3 or 4 classes a week, have practiced in mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-88761160974249985742011-06-08T21:01:00.000-07:002011-06-08T21:01:48.088-07:00Now is the TimeNow is the Time for This.
It is a new practice that I am taking to, telling myself the above daily.
This changes constantly; it may be work or the dishes, reading to the boys or cleaning up after them, taking a photo or being in the garden. I am trying to remind myself that 'Now is the Time for This' in order to stay, not wander so far from the moments.
And so Now is the Time for This ... mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-4274380584726368582011-05-26T16:44:00.000-07:002011-06-08T20:00:27.123-07:00We interrupt this broadcast ...Though I feel that I am infrequently here lately, I just wanted to direct you to my Mondo Beyondo site where I think I will be spending some quality time for a few weeks.
This second round is doing good things for me and giving me the Uumph! I needed to feel a little more connected. Feel free to read along as it goes.mameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12297614.post-8705861046865855122011-05-21T18:22:00.000-07:002011-05-21T18:22:44.571-07:00[En]rapturedYeah, yeah. Could not resist. It's just that I did wonder a little, you know?
But rather than go down the line of commenting on the latest failed prediction of the end of the world as we know it, I thought I would put up a few pictures that I have been, well, raptured by lately.
Flowers, what is it about the things that just make me feel 'beauty' as it should be? I love the full blown roses justmameshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11586918865232386537noreply@blogger.com0