Solo

I'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 temporary home/apartment. But it is my first time alone in Our Space, with their Lego scatterings, Tim's socks that need washing, our dishes and coffee paraphernalia.



I have come out of sleep each morning listening. Looking for a small silhouette in the doorway asking if it is was daytime yet, Mommy. And yet it is quiet, the early sunrise over the hill pulling light into the day, softening their room in its glowing. Made coffee for one, donned work attire, checked in by phone. Headed out.

Returning to a home undisturbed and silent is disconcerting. Knowing it is temporary is comforting. I have progressed in the way of sorting and quilting and 'catching up' in general. and I thank the blessed gods of all for this not being my norm.



They bring light and true Life to my days. In their churning chaos and needs, they define me. The library pulls but not enough. Making of dinner calls but not quite enough. Making is there to fulfill but also fill a hole. Me time is relative when there becomes just too much of it.

I love being a mother and wife and worker and woman and person. I love taking the time to realize that. I miss my babies, babies no longer, I admit, but I miss mine own.

I am grateful to love my life. I am eager for their return. I am trying to embrace the quiet. I am not so good with it.

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills. -Joseph Roux

Settle In

Set·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 residence: They settled immigrants in urban areas.
7.to furnish (a place) with inhabitants or settlers: The French settled this colony with army veterans.
8.to quiet, calm, or bring to rest (the nerves, stomach, etc.).
9.to stop from annoying or opposing: A sharp word will settle that youngster.
10.to conclude or resolve: to settle a dispute.
11.to make stable; place in a permanent position or on a permanent basis.
12.to cause (a liquid) to become clear by depositing dregs.
13.to cause (dregs, sediment, etc.) to sink or be deposited.
14.to cause to sink down gradually; make firm or compact.
15.to dispose of finally; close up: to settle an estate.
16.Law .
a.to secure (property, title, etc.) on or to a person by formal or legal process.
b.to terminate (legal proceedings) by mutual consent of the parties.



This is Me now. All of it. All 16 parts speak to me in some way. But for the most part my Soul speaks right now and so the definitions just make sense. Because I am settled in a way I have not felt in... forever? A calm; a lesser need and a greater need.

And the calm that has descended into my depth and made me settle into a Center that does not feel like swirling right now but more like sediment, layers slowly shifting and deepening, creating a base that feels solid, like concrete. Breathing solid concrete.



Things that were once so scary are less so. Things I did not want to do are seen in a different light. People I want to be near are people I want to be near... but there is new space for people that I should want to meet. I am grateful for the ease of transition, for the lovely Marcie I met at the park with her babes that came equipped with costume bag, snacks and an eager desire to find a friend like me as I wanted to find a friend like her.

Who do you thank when you profess to not really pray anymore? I turn to the Universe in general.
Thanks, Universe. You are tops.

And the Question Came

It 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 womb or the home but the Question...

I didn't say God put us here because I don't believe that. I said I didn't know. I explained a bit about evolution and Earth and the Big Bang, about the Universe being so so large and about every beautiful thing that exists had some path, some place and evolution to make it so. But that I also didn't really know.

The conversation wove about, to volcanic action and back to the time of Dinosaurs and why they became extinct, or dead, as Mace will clarify every time. We talked of food and starvation and legs mired in tar (Mace's theory) and eventually the words slowed down, the bodies I lay between became more and more still and then their breath fell into that rhythm, the one that instantly makes me feel at one with them, at One.

I want them to ask that Question again and again. I want to explain about the miracle that Life is. In the simplest of ways; by showing them a shoot growing, or their lungs exchanging gases with that shoot, or the stars that spin through their own cosmic dance.

I will not be able to tell them that they were put here by the choice of some Other thing because I don't know about that. But I can tell them that they are Here. And I can tell them about what I do know. And about Love. That seems a very good start.



* Thinking of Susan, a brilliant star with a valiant warrior heart and a voice that spoke to hundreds, thousands, millions as she lived. She is missed on this day.

Inked

Bones 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 spot, where that bone fractured, bears the mark until the bone is dust again. I think sometimes that human souls are the same. Human souls can fracture but they heal…by building a network…and filling it in with a callus. Forever marked but whole in a new way.

I spent a weekend with some fantastically beautiful women and finished it by building a new structure on my body. I took some time for myself and ended up coming home marked forever in a way I feel completely comfortable with. There was a moment when I went breathless, sitting in that chair in that parlor, feeling the deep stinging pull of the needles and the question formed in my mind… What does this mean to me? But then I let it go because it is what it is.

I did yoga in a room that gazed out over what has been called a meatgrinder sea. On this day it was not, it was flat and yet not. The wind would sail across it and smooth it and push it and ripple it and then throw it but a gentle throw, nothing like I know. Nothing like my sea. I was in a room with women I had come to adore in 24 hours and shared what I find to be a most scared experience, the practice of yoga. There is something that happens when you breath in unison, you become a tribe.

I think humans souls knit themselves like fractures…possibly if they are lucky, possibly if they are strong, possibly if… but no, that is wrong. We live and breathe and so we heal and that is really the only possibility. It is what it is.



One of the amazing things about the human body is its complexity and its ferocity when it is in need of healing. My fascination with this process makes me what I am, it is why I do what I do. But forever I will turn to breathing in unison and chanting a mantra in a safe space as my healing choice for the soul. When you chant you lose all boundary of Self because if you didn't, well, you would just feel ridiculous. Those moments shared, chanting with women I love sealed a conviction I have long held true, one I find hard to articulate as maybe all truths are.

And so I went on that Monday to a man named Lee and asked him to put that seal on me, where I can see it. In a way it felt like the most fitting healing despite infliction. And now home again, I glance down and I am happy for the moments that led to this. And ready for the next moments.



When the Universe speaks and if you want to listen, you just do. And then you smile, rub some ointment on your healing wrists and go along.

MIA

I 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 that I might have to actually go 'for real' full time. First it was three days, then I added a fourth day and now it is five. Funny how time can creep away so easily, so quickly, given readily. I have not been angry or upset about the change, it feels right to be working this way, testing myself. But it does leave very little time for anything else.

Anything else; blogging falls into that category. I love words but spend hours tapping our patient care documentation, it is not fancy stuff and the obligation sometimes sends my wrists into a spiral of stiffness and pain and I realize it bleeds me of the desire to tap out more for myself. But then I read something from last year, something like this and it makes me realize.

I love this space for many reasons but those reasons have taken a backseat of late. I have little time to read and connect and comment and engage in this realm. But I know it will be here, when the time comes for me to be here. And I want to keep placing words here because when I glance back into my own lives and words here, it connects me somehow. It is truly the height of Me-ness, to put words here for Me. But I kinda' feel like that is okay too.


Insta-life. I love it.

In the mean time I am holding onto to the tether that Twitter and Instagram have become. As the time comes for packing and rearranging our lives and (gulp) big big moves, it is nice to have a place to reach out and find you all.

And as for the move? It all came through so far. The job, slated at part time with benefits for all of us, the timeline we needed. A trip North to find a place to lay our heads is in order. Holidays are in order with the whole family coming down to gather one more time.

But I am going to go through with 365 though. It looks like we will be picking up the moving van on December 31st, figure that will make a great last photo for a year that is shaping up to have been one somewhat light on words but packed full of actions.


no Halloween recaps this year but here is a glimpse


On my bday last month. Pretty happy.

Blogher11 :: Unmoored

Last 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 putting 'different' into the 'better' category.


Let me say this; I do think tacking on a conference that entails the gathering of three thousand women at the end of a three week journey may have been a bit much. I feel like I entered the space already exhausted, not energized or enthused about blogging. And Blogher is really about just that, women blogging. The conference has grown exponentially and with it the topics, the numbers and the sponsers. There was a lot going on and information and people speeding by at a rapid pace. And stuff, so much stuff.

There was also a few intimate moments meeting the ones I love to read and know online and letting their physical person take shape in my life, getting that hug and learning little bits of information that rarely slip out online in our measured blog posting and twitter clips. But when these things happened in the quiet of a hotel room or at the edge of a pool, both places not technically included in the conference space, well, that was when I have to question just why I am there.


I found the pace and information and the sheer seas of people to be too much for me this year. I found difficulty staying in it and wanting to stay in it and I actually ended up leaving Friday evening, calling my lovely husband who was juggling the boys that day and asking him to grab me early and bring me back to our little rental cabin thingy where the boys were wreaking havoc and there was a horizontal space to lay my head. I did stay to see the one part of Blogher that I think remains true to the initial spirit and purpose of blogging, the Voices of the Year speakers.

I listened to Bon and Kate read and then listened to other women speak their written words and cried and laughed (hard) and then cried again. That part will always be like that, I think. That part is the reason why I read and sometimes write in today's blogging world. You should read that part, and you can here, but man, it was good to hear the words spoke clearly and purposefully by their creators.

I did attend the Thursday night parties which were low key, except for the seven feet in heels drag queens wandering the halls.

I did wander through the Expo hall where the sponsors set up booths to entice and engage the bloggers. For me it was definitely zoo-like. The Jimmy Dean sun guy from the commercials was there, there was a lot of sausage, some free Dove bars .... a lot more, oh lord, a lot more. I think so far as I dig down into the bag of swag which followed me home, I have yet to find anything that I would buy, endorse. I did get a free copy of this book by these ladies, the book went promptly to my newly pregnant friend and I do hope it is a help or at least a laugh as she navigates this new part of life.

I think what I am trying to say is that this year I realized Blogher is not for me. I don't believe I will take my dollars, hard earned that they are, and direct them towards another weekend next year. Not because there is anything fundamentally wrong with Blogher or sponsers, not that there is anything wrong with me or the way I choose to blog. Mainly because we are not a great fit, Blogher and I. I would rather hoard those dollars so that on some future weekend I can travel to new place that holds old friends where there is no session schedule or party to make but just people and tea and couches and drinks. All the laughs and fun that happen at Blogher but scaled down to just the people and not why they blog or if they make money or do it right but instead what they love and believe in and plant and think and do.

I will say, there was a great moment where I received a detailed description from this lovely woman about how to bale hay and dispose of feral kittens and that was pretty cool (please say that like Miley Cyrus as you read those words because that is how we use them around this household and it makes us laugh every time).

But hell, who knows, now that it is NYC again I might just use it as an excuse to travel, not buy a ticket and just crash people's hotel rooms.

Adios to another Blogher.

Wahe Guru

Something 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 some form since I was about 10.



I was so wrong.

I am in Day 10 and something happened to me today that has not happened in a very long time.



I finished my asana practice and settled in to savasana, relaxing into meditation state. I was listening to a beautiful piece called Wahe Guru by Mantra Girl. And then I felt it. You can call it prana or qi or Life force but it began to resonate in my hands, my hands open at my sides as I lay supine. It built, the heat and life. I felt it and tentatively invited it in and then it moved slowly, waves of it up through my wrists and then through the crook of my slightly bent elbows, up through my biceps and the hollow of my armpit and the waves from each arm met and crested and enveloped my heart, pulsing with more than beats now.

I was weeping, completely present and completely overwhelmed. And I felt a connection that I have not felt in many many years. A connection to everything, and then to Nothing. The song faded out and I slowly came to sitting and gratefully curled forward, bowing namaste to the trees framed by the window in the room where I was practicing.



I came out to my boys, usually so animated, quietly playing with legos. Tim was on an errand and I just sat with them, letting the experience settle into me, expecting it to go. And yet it stayed, has stayed, I can feel it this minute while I type.

I looked up the Sanskrit translation of Wahe Guru, it means 'Wonderful Teacher', interpreted sometimes as god. I realize I want to feel that way everyday, every moment but there is also the realization that I am not sure I could remain that open and function. I am glad to know where to find it again, to fill the well.



Getting on the mat daily, practicing the asanas I love and also the ones I hate has shifted something inside of me. It is making me a diffrent person. I feel both frightened and encouraged by this as I feel it strip away and strengthen the core, not just the physical one but also the one that lies at the very heart of my Self.

Daily yoga is directly changing my life right now. A part of me is astonished that it took me so long to find this shift. Another part wants to learn Sanskrit. And another is just so grateful for those moments today.

To Run or Not to Run ...

Last week I decided that it was time to start running. Because here I am, 35, watching friends and friends of friends on Twitter do the Couch to 5K and I suddenly thought that this is something I could do. Me, the girl that loves yoga and having her feet firmly planted on the ground unless they are firmly fitted to bike pedals. Me, the girl with a generous ass and thighs that go right along with it. Me, that gasps for breath after a sprint to catch the boys before they do something really bad. Yes, me. I decided I too can run.

The C25K program is a good one, a gentle one that lets you transition from never ever running to possibly completing a 5K. Last week was week 1 and I felt great; three runs with Tim, each one a little easier than the last. But then Sunday I woke up and my knees were aching something awful so I skipped yoga and decided to try a day of rest. Then came Monday afternoon and we headed out for the 30 minute session with plans to repeat the first week because I am not sure I am ready to move on yet. And oh my god, my knees, a fire-like piercing pain in the right one which gradually started in on the left by the end of the ‘run’. It was hellacious. But I stretched and did my yoga class and figured I would take it from there.



Yesterday was the second session for the week and it did not happen.. At all. I barely limped home and collapsed on the floor and resigned myself to being that girl that cannot run. It was quite disappointing and really painful.

This morning I was doing paperwork and a light bulb hit. I am a PT. I am the person that people go to when they cannot run because they are in pain. Well, I am not that PT, my specialty has never been orthopedic injuries. I am the brain injury/CVA wunderkind but never been one for the old ‘it hurts when I run’ treatment routine.

I spent 20 minutes in self diagnosis this morning, zeroing in on the problem. Now, I know my body well, yoga keeps one fairly linked in, I would like to think. But apparently not as well as I thought. I started at the patella (knee cap in laymen speak) to measure my tracking and Q angle. First thought on my R knee was “Holy sh*t!!! When did my knee start to look like that?” Because my Q angle is not looking so good. The greater your Q angle, the worse your tracking, the more you risk scraping your poor little patella out of the femoral groove leading to even more pain. So I did a little squashing and pushing and pulling and taping and it began to track a bit better and I began to feel a whole lot better.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because this morning I was reminded of something. Well, a few things. That I am a PT for real and I know a lot of things about the human body, its failings and its healing and something I can do about both. It also reminded me of the fact that I am getting older. My knees are getting older and tracking in ways that I never thought I would see on me. My heart is getting older which I why I wanted it to pump more so it can be trained like my knees. My bones, my flesh are starting to change, not fall into some deep spiraling decent but just age. Moving towards that inevitable place we all end up.

It was also a reminder that I may never be a runner despite my will/wish/want. I can still do yoga and hike five miles a week with my feet touching the ground the whole time (I might have to hike a little faster and harder to get that cardio effect though). So, I may just fail at this Couch to 5K thing. Which I think is okay despite the fact that I hate to fail.

Ah, to be a person that is aging. I am not sure I feel comfortable wearing that role quite yet. But I know from my work that it happens to us all. And I know that staying on the move is the best way to welcome it, this aging thing. Now off to something I know I can do …

Let It Be

Sometimes life feels a little bit like a zoo with all the feedings, cleaning out the mucky pens, trying to keep all the animals happy.

Sometimes I feel a little too breathless and the attempts to practice yoga and eat right and juggle responsibilities approach overwhelming.

Sometimes nothing gets done right and opportunities are missed and it makes me feel sad.

But there is always a bright smile somewhere for me ...



And the reminder that sometimes letting go is just the right thing to do ...




Here is to finding a little freedom in the daily grind of it all.

365 :: Caught

I've needed a little push with the camera the last few days so I thought I would gather the last 60 days. 60 days? Seems so quick and yet so many more to go. Already I love how the project365 allows days to be captured even if it is just one moment in the endless 24 hour cycle. Almost better than blogging. :)

3.6.5 :: January



3.6.5 :: February (plus 2)



There are so many things I would love to do better in the taking of photos. Better control of light. Better comprehension of subject. Less manipulation, more SOOC. New lens. Remote trigger. The list goes on.

At least I know I have 300+ days to address it all. Happy shooting, fellow devotees of daily photos.

Home. Home? Home.

Yesterday we helped our best friends move. They are moving from an adorable cottage in the high Foothills to an adorable cottage in the small downtown area. We came by to pick up their oven (yes, the stove saga continues) and stayed to help with box moving and for moral support. As the movers slowly cleared the house and basement of its contents we talked and had a beer and lugged tote boxes into waiting piles. The boys played quietly in the newly vacant rooms and corners and it made me realize we likely never be inside this home again. No more warm dinners in her red kitchen, I would never pee in the odd corner bathroom with its original wall radiator, no late nights on the patio, sipping wine and talking in the fresh almost mountain air.


In the past I have lived in an old tenement apartment in NY, a Victorian home that was once a brothel in Portland, an old adobe home built in the 20's.

They all had odd angles and old features and many previous residents. I slept in those homes, sheltered and warm, made meals for friends and spent days and days of my life calling them Home with a capital H. Yesterday was a reminder of the transience of Home, a realization that there is very likely other warm bodies eating and sleeping where I once did, living there right now today.

We have decided to spend the next 10 months tinkering with this home we now have. We will shed and tweak and paint and add new trim and molding and a deck and and and. We planned on doing all of these things before we thought we might move but it is nice to have a push. The often discussed wine cabinet is on its way, the paint colors picked.


I shudder a little when I think of the sheer amount of stuff our friends had to box and move yesterday and I know when we do move my frustration with the sheer amount of stuff we have will mirror hers. It made me resolve to try to do a monthly clean and purge so that down the line when the day does come, the pain of collecting and relocating might be just a bit less.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the logistics of what we wish to do; sell, relocate, buy. It seems impossible; to leave this home, to find the right place and buy it before another, to make it work. Dreaming is scary.

I explained it like this to my Momma the other day :: There is nothing terribly wrong with where we live now; it has beautiful mountains and our home makes me happy and our wonderful friends live here. But we found where we, Tim and I, want to grow old. We found the place that speaks to Us and it happens to be hundreds of miles closer to my siblings and at the base of the most beautiful mountain lake in the world and a place where we can afford land. And that makes Dreaming good.


So for now it is just a step by step process. Baby steps to the painted walls, baby steps to the new front doors, baby steps. I will just have to have faith in that. And the friend that moved? Well, now I can visit her in her new cottage home miles closer to us and we can scheme together just how to make this move North work because they have decided they are coming with us.

Everything Will Be Alright

Kate at Sweet/Salty gives this Reverb prompt : Tell me about one 2010 moment that served as proof that everything is going to be alright. It doesn't need to have been profound. Think a passing serenity that makes you pause in the middle of a blink. Beyond trying to believe. A knowing that's as deep as bones, neverminding the how or the when.



My one and only Reverb reply for 2010 :: I am writing on this for two reasons. 1) A serious girl crush on Kate. It did not abate when I met her in person. Actually I think it got worse. 2) Her words make me want to write. With the full knowledge that they cannot shine in the way her prose that is actually poetry does, but still, those words of hers make me want to find expression here.

2010 was a really rough year. It started out promising enough. I was part of the Mondo Beyondo class in January and that experience opened me up to new people and possibilities that made the horizon seem saturated and bright. But then kinda' things went to shit from there.

We had a year of joblessness and return to full time for me. We had struggles with role reversal and resentment and wanting to just be comfortable again. We got sued. We got sick. I ran away for a bit in order to take a breath, learn how to breath ... instead, I landed smack in the middle of a world I inhabited when I was in my early 20s and found it was really not to my liking. I turned 35 which threw me for a huge loop. For a girl that never really paid attention to the years passing, this one, well, it just about did me in. And I feel quite done with 2010.

At the beginning of the year I declared it, called it the Year of the Gypsy. Guess what I found out? That gypsies are poor. Also you should not declare a year because it will bite you in the ass somehow. In truth, it was the year of the Gypsy. We roamed far from home and found that we really could. We discovered that home is where We are, where that core community of family and friends reside ...

But it was hard, ugly even sometimes. There were missed moments and tears of frustration and the eternal wrangling of two small people when sometimes all I wanted to do was stare at a wall.

What made me know it would be alright? There is not one moment in the year, rather a moment of the day. It is that moment before sleep, when I am prone and my mind is unwinding, the events of the day unfolding and reflections on small moments flick by the screen of my mind. I kiss my husband, or if it one of those nights when sleep will not come and I find myself in the boys' bed, snugged between them, I touch a unbelievably soft cheek. Sometimes a tiny bubble of panic will rise in my throat when I think of the unfinished paperwork, that dying patient, the next bill, the lack of time, the demands of Life. But then I touch them again, these people, this man and these boys that connect me in a way to this world where sometimes it is so hard to live.

And I know it will be alright. Because they are real. And they are mine.

And then my mind begins that slow descent into oblivion and my last thought is invariably of the cup of coffee I will drink in the morning, fragrant and loaded with the synthetic creamer to which I am addicted and I know, I just know, it will be okay.

Fruition

The roses are almost done here, the last of the blooms waning. This was in October when the flower became full and fragrant and caught my eye after a rain. The bush sits there, at the end of the drive, often overlooked but not on this day.This is how I wished I felt right now ... full and drenched in possibility.



And then there is this, this image. The trees at the park down the street, full of fruit not yet ripe. The crop will be ready in another month and the orchard will open for picking, bags and bags of citrus to be had. This is what I am right now, hanging out, full only of possibility and waiting for that day, that time when something comes to fruition.

It has been a frustrating few months. In truth, it feels like it has been a frustrating year. A year of catching my breath. Of remembering to breath. A year derailed in so many ways. I want to look at it and think I loved some parts of it. I know I did. But I also just want it to finish up and scoot out the door.

But that fruit ... I keep thinking about those unripe oranges. I want to believe that is what I am right now, all the potential for change and sweetness right there, just waiting for the right time to come ripe.

Serenity Now

That was always one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes ... George's dad yelling that line at the top of his lungs. Serenity Now !!!!

The last month or two have had so little to do with the blog world and so much to do with life and some of the rough turns it can throw at you. I alluded to a court case which thankfully was settled today. I do not want to talk details but I can say we found ourselves confronting some of the most rigid, bitchy suburban folks that I have ever seen. It had to do with leaving the first pre-school we were in last year. It had to do with Owen's finger getting cut off there. It had to do with poor communication and pretty mean people. It came to a head today in an almost laughable conclusion that had the judge scratching his head, shrugging his shoulders and giving me a little smile. I liked the judge. I am pretty sure the people that sued us (yep, sued us) are branded forever in my mind as assholes. But at least I can unclench my jaw and know that we are done with this matter and that karma will hopefully take care of the rest.

In truth, the whole thing kept me in such a heightened state of stress that I just wanted to run. So, I did. Just a little.



I spent the weekend with my sisters in what I hope becomes an annual ritual, the kind that sisters swear to uphold despite all the layers in life. SF hosts a West African dance festival in the Fall and this was our second time making it. It is held close to Japantown where my sister scored a beautiful room at Hotel Kabuki. It was serene with a fun, diverse neighborhood just outside the door.







We could walk to the dance, we were close enough to visit this French bakery with to die for ganache tart and croissants (and chasson aux pommes .... and baguettes ... and macarons de paris ... you get the picture). We joked that if we ever won the lottery, we would rent the whole bakery for a day and eat our way through it. Heavenly.

And we danced. Danced with Masters from Africa that make your heart sing and your body want to rejoice. Drums and beautiful ringing and legs that jump and twist faster than I thought possible, smiles that stretch wider and wider the faster the movement and sound. It is such an unbelievably release and I know that my body lacks the skill to make the shapes of the dance, but my heart ... that is in the totally right place.

The weekend went too fast, we were tired a lot, we ate too much. But the main part was laughing and gossiping about people in that sisterly way that only sisters can do because it isn't bitchy when you are talking to your sisters. We did not fight. We did not cry. We just enjoyed, which was what we all needed.

And we totally scored Advent tchatchkes at the little Japanese 99 cent stores.


And could not help laughing over the totally crazy collectible imported toys. There was some nutty stuff, like little mini figures the size of a thumbnail that were titled "French cuisine dinner" and "Woodland animals". Hee hee.

No pictures of the dancing, totally against the rules to bring cameras around unless it is approved. No pictures of us because half the time we were sweaty and too tired to lift our arms to take photos.

A Month of Me :: No Mas

Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol



They help. They hurt. It is all determined by the circumstance, the intake, the history, the person. I am voting yes on Prop 19 here in California because it is pot. Not junk or meth.
And I like beer. A lot.

I thought I would give a nod to the whole 30 day thing.

So, uh, I left the 30 day thing way back when because I got a regular (but temp) paying job a week back. It is lovely. It is mundane. It is different. It is money. It is breathe of fresh air into my practice which had become 'what it was' since the birth of my children.

It keeps me from them for more hours than I am accustomed to. I leave and now as the Fall approaches I come home sometimes close to dinner time. The light is limning. I am only wanting to see them.


Then I have to make dinner. Or jam in sewing. Or have a glass of wine. And then make dinner. Listening to Pandora set to The Smiths radio, of which I am all kinds of enamored right now. I think that has something to do with turning 35 next week and feeling my roots, you know?

And I ask myself "What is this? This excitement to work at my 'job' again?". Because this is good stuff. And they are good stuff, obviously. And the pull of guilt begins, as does the need to assuage the pull.



I do it through library books read to them, watching them play, letting them play, some wine and beer, talking to Tim about the pull, listening to my Mama fill me in their latest endeavors which I missed, talking to their teacher/my friend on the phone about their latest school endeavors, making dinner.



There is no road map for this life. This one that we are living. I mean, me and my family. There is no longer clarity; just this is what I want, this is what we need, this is what they need and this is what we can do. And the delicate balance of it all makes it that much more alive.

As do they. Oh, as do they.

*And really, on the drug and alcohol front, really? Who cares what I think? This is what happens when I sign on for some internettens 30 day thing.

All pictures by Tim. Just so you know.

Transitions

Another season passes by, I am left wondering when it happened. The Summer that was is now gone and I realize I should change my header from iris to fallen leaf ...


I came home from work today early, no patients to be had, a slump of epic proportions hitting at just the wrong time. It was cloudy all day, the marine layer pressing into the Foothills, letting in just enough light to dispel gloom and give the hint of false Fall.

I played with the boys, read library books, juggled work and calls and then I felt antsy-itchy-had to get out of the house-ness. I felt like we all needed to come up for some air.

And so we did. Less than 5 minutes from our home, the Foothills sit. Always constant in their demeanor. Always gorgeous in their light. Always mine. I know them like my own hands, each curve and bend and dip, each pressing hill and rolling descent.


We used to walk there all the time, every week at least. Pushing the well-equipped stroller through dust and dirt or mud and bumps.


But it has been awhile. Too long. Long enough that the boys were apprehensive in the early dusk light that falls under the old oaks, asking repeatedly about bears. Little did they know that it is actually the mountain lion one should watch for up here. I didn't mention that. We did talk about oak trees and poison oak ... I tried to impress upon them the utter difference in the two but probably just saddled them with more apprehension.



It felt so good, so freeing to me. To be in that spot, push their combined weight up the hills, sweat, breathe, look up. We laughed about horse poop and they demanded that I be careful even when running down the hill; they really did not want the horse poop on their stroller.

And then I realized it was the Equinox. So fitting to come back to my backyard home now that Summer is passing. The unbearable heating will not totally ease for some time, the Santa Anas will sweep in this weekend to super heat and spark wildfires .. but we are almost there. Almost back to those easy cool meandering hikes in our place.


I know they will know these curves too. Already they are telling me "remember last year ('last year' is their term for anything in the past) when we were here". I plan on them remembering it more. Me too.