It's the Neighborly Thing to Do

The most amazing thing just happened. I cut and pasted some HTML gobbledygook into this little box and, when I look at it in preview, a picture appears. Amazing.

Anyway, the point of the picture (below...oh yeah and it's a link, too, click on it and see what happens) is that I'm not here today because I'm there, visiting my neighbor, Amy, who lives a good 3000 miles away, but was kind enough to invite me to guest post on her blog.





So please do go and read my little post, about some really terrific parenting advice I tried to implement a while back. And then go back some more and read what Amy has to say, because she's really smart and really funny and she has three boys too. And isn't that reason enough to give someone a few minutes of your day?

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Update: OK, maybe not so amazing after all, cause I somehow managed to direct you to a post from December, which, while I'm sure is delightful, is not mine. I've tried to fix it so give it another try!

Layers

This must be the week that my new schedule catches up with me--and not in a good way. What with holidays, shutdown days, snow days, and sick days It's the only week, other than the very first, that I will have actually worked five days, so I guess it makes sense that things will feel a bit rougher. Only I'm totally bummed, because I'd been feeling really good, positive, happy this winter and had hoped I'd skate by the Feb/March/April blahs (what do people who are not in denial call that? Oh yes, Seasonal Affective Disorder). I'm feeling like my life is made up of layers, like an onion (or a matryoshka) and every single one of mine is somehow off-kilter.

Layer 1--Me. This week I: drove 15 miles in the pouring rain with 10 inches of my scarf hanging out the door and dragging through salt and sand; lost one of my favorite turquoise earrings that I bought on our train trip to Colorado two years ago; and lost one of the fabulous mittens my mom made me for Christmas (Mom, if you're reading this, please don't kill me!!). Sucky. And, of course, all signs that I am not being mindful. Also, as usual, I'm finding myself over booked, over committed and over done. It's a pattern I have; I see a blank spot in the future and I fill it up with more than I can handle. And I'm tired. Bone tired. No matter how much sleep, exercise or protein I give my body, it just wants to stay in bed. All the time.

Layer 2--Family. Out of whack. When mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. Ain't that true? The boys are also overtired from their own overly busy schedule (and we don't even do any extracurriculars!). Dinner doesn't land on the table until 6:00 at the earliest, pushing the limits of getting kids into bed by 8:00. And still no one (especially M, who could sleep 12 hours a night) wants to get up at 6:30 the next morning. C and I can't seem to fall into a groove, getting on each other's nerves on the rare occasions we're in each others' company. I've completely lost the calm, centered parenting style I thought I'd adopted over the past few weeks when I totally flipped out on M Tuesday night because of his bedtime shenanigans. Grrr.

Layer 3--Work. I guess it had to happen sooner or later, but the honeymoon phase is over and growing pains are starting to set in. I've gone from busily working in my little cube to depending on others' input...and I never handle that well.

Layer 4--Community. The g*d d*mn f*cking p*ece of sh*t school budget did not pass again!!! For the fourth time. And you know how that makes me just want to swear. It was even originally reported as passing, and I briefly thought, "wow, people aren't total *ssholes! They really do care about kids!" Only to be disillusioned a couple hours later (remind you of any recent elections??) Swear to god I'm moving to Denmark (or Costa Rica).

Layer 5--Nation. Appalling. What more can I say. Health care. Massachusetts. And now the Supreme Court handed our country over to the corporations. OK, they already had their paws on us, but did SCOTUS have to make it official? Didn't even watch the State of the Union. Waaay too disappointed. Kinda wishing I'd voted Nader, so at least I could have the bumper sticker. Denmark, here I come.

Layer 6--The World. My god. Could any more really horrible, terrible tragedies strike those with the least? I know that sh*tty things have gone on since the dawn of time, and will continue until long after we blow ourselves up, but come on! Imagine if we took the resources we were dumping into insanely senseless wars and put it toward bolstering nations like Haiti (or even into our own country's schools). Imagine.

Yes, it would appear I'm having an existential crisis. All that fluffy knitting, embroidering nonsense was just a very thin shield that could not hold it at bay for long. And to make matters worse, I don't even feel I deserve to have a crisis. I know, and know of, so many people currently going through personal tragedies of various magnitudes that make my own niggly little problems (my mitten, my beautiful mitten) seem grotesquely self-indulgent. Here's the thing...knowing one doesn't deserve to be depressed rarely serves to make one feel better.

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P.S. Friday I'm doing a guest post at The Never True Tales (yes and it's my first guest post so please go and see it). I promise it will be less of a downer than this one!

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Update: Mitten Found!!! The rest of the world is still a mess, but my right hand is warm again.

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Update: Did you know Howard Zinn died yesterday? What a loss (but 87 and swimming laps? Wow.) This is definitely the year I need to read (and finish) A People's History (may need to get a new copy...mine ends in the Clinton years...ancient history).

School Budget Try #4

If you live in Whitefield, Windsor, Palermo, Summerville, Alna, Westport Island or Wiscasset, please, please, please vote yes on the RSU 12 School Budget Tuesday. More info here.

Becoming a Knitter

An amazing thing happened last weekend--I became a Knitter.

I didn't learn a new stitch, or accomplish any great feat like knitting a sweater or an afghan.

I'm still the same-old beginner/intermediate knitter that I've been for a dozen years or more, but know I am a Knitter.

I taught myself how to knit 14 years ago, out of a book when I was in the AmeriCorps NCCC on Lowry Air Force Base in Colorado. (My mom, an expert knitter, tried teaching me on a few different occasions before that, but it never clicked). I first knitted up a swatch out of some old red RedHeart acrylic yarn, practicing all of the different combinations of knits and purls that I could come up with, and from there started a scarf for C (who was back in Maine), out of some lovely soft maroon marino wool, in a lovely seed stitch (no boring old garter stitch for me!). I knit half of it sitting in my crazy creek by the fire on spike in the forest below the peak of La Plata Mountain, but didn't finish it until the following winter, giving it to C on the occasion of our first Valentine's Day in the same state.

The next winter I knit him a hat (moving directly to five needles) in a nice deep blue wool I had picked up at the Common Ground Fair. My mom sent me a photocopy of a pattern for a double-knit cap and some graph paper with a few designs drawn in pencil. I knitted a row of partridge feet in maroon leftover from the scarf, but I didn't know how to carry the color I was using properly, and the hat lost its stretch, and I lost my knitting momentum.

A year or so later, I took an "Instant Gratification" knitting class and started a pair of felted mittens in luscious lime green mohair and purple wool. Each mitten only took a week to knit, but it took me a year to pick up the second mitten after finishing the first.

The winter I was pregnant with M, I fell in love with the color orange and bought two soft skeins in a pumpkin color and started a scarf for myself (still on the needles nine years later). C went to Florida for a week that winter and I knit myself a purple cloche hat while he was gone (still wear it to this day).

When M was a baby I knitted him an eggplant hat and a few years later knitted him a gnome doll and very slowly and painfully knitted my way through a pair of mittens for him that caused me nothing but trouble (and which he lost almost immediately). I bought a skein of orange cotton when I was pregnant with the twins, planning on knitting a pumpkin to go with the eggplant, but it never happened.

A couple of years ago I was browsing through a knitting book I have and noticed in the introduction that the author had only been knitting for two years when she wrote the book! At that point I had been knitting for a dozen years and had produced fewer than a dozen knitted items. I set about correcting that. I knit myself a pair of wrist warmers (there are two kinds of people in this world--those who love fingerless gloves and those who just don't get it. I am one of the former) and hats for E and Z last Christmas. I made my spiral hat this fall (and discovered stitch markers!) and for Christams I made gnome hats for E, Z and C and a Hill Country Hat for M (which knits from the top down, stretching my skills further).

After Christmas I picked up the shawl I had started last fall. I knitted a few rows at knitting group last Thursday, and a few more while C and I watched a movie Friday night. Saturday I itched to knit all day, and took it with me and knitted while we drove to dinner with C's father and his wife. I knitted along as we drove to Wiscasset and suddenly it came over me, this realization, "I am a Knitter." I took my knitting into the restaurant and knitted while we waited for our food, and after dinner while we waited for our check. I knitted again after we got home, in front of the TV. Sunday I somehow ate my lunch while I cooked everyone else's, so I knit while they ate. I knit another row while I monitored the boys in the bathtub.

Becoming a Knitter had nothing to do with skill level or expertise. It had to do with feeling driven to knit. Wanting to do it anytime my hands were idle (and even wishing I could do it when they aren't). I think this may be why I haven't been able to call myself a Writer. Not because I don't write well or often or for money (though I don't), but because it hasn't yet become that itch I must scratch. Sometimes I will become overcome with an urge to write about something, that nearly drives me to distraction. More often than not I ignore that urge in favor of dealing with more urgent or more visible issues (laundry, work, sleep). Granted, it's easier to pick up a piece of knitting and put in a few rows, or even just a few stitches and put it down again than to pick up a notebook and write a few words or sentences in the interstices of my day. It would be difficult to write in the car while driving to dinner, and downright rude to try and write while at dinner with other people. And trying to write while the kids are in the tub? The paper would get wet, certainly, but I might come up with some amusing descriptions of our twice-weekly ritual...maybe I'll try it next time.

This Makes Me Really Happy...

E drew this picture of an airplane this past weekend:

Although he enthusiastically started drawing heads with legs and big smiles sometime last year (and ahead of Z, who wouldn't even try for some time), he has grown timid about drawing and mostly just scribbles, while Z regularly produces pictures like this:

Now, I've written before about how I don't like to compare my kids, and I try not to even think about what M, who was precocious with everything, was doing at their age, but with twins, it's really right there in your face all the time, so it's hard to not think about, and I'm not sure how E thinks about it. Is part of his hesitation in trying due to being afraid he can't draw what Z can? Or am I reading too much into it/projecting?

Z had to get over a major drawing hump this summer, when every time he sat down to draw, he wanted to draw EXACTLY like M. I tried to explain that M has had four more years experience drawing than Z, and that by the time Z is eight, he will be able to draw just like M, but he just wouldn't buy it, until, after one particularly frustrating drawing session, I got out M's old preschool drawing journals and we looked at what M drew when he was four. M's drawings of monster trucks, robots, guns, swords, race cars, pirates and bad guys were still somewhat advanced beyond what Z was drawing at the time, but nothing he couldn't produce if he put some effort to it. After that, it seemed a wall had come down and he now spends a good chunk of each stay home day drawing (he still gets frustrated when things don't come out the way he wants to--who doesn't?--but he no longer expects himself to draw like an eight-year-old). I hope that in drawing this plane, E has broken through a similar wall of his own.

Inside Out

I'm taking another online course (yes I seem to be addicted to these things). This time it's not a writing class, but a kind of journey of creative self-discovery (didn't I just say I'm not a big fan of self-help? Apparently I'm not a big fan of consistency either), although there is a major journaling component to it in addition to meditation and yoga and probably some other stuff we haven't gotten to yet. I know there are those with strong opinions about the difference between "journaling" and "writing" but I haven't had a strong opinion since the very humbling experience of giving birth eight and a half years ago. Besides, I'm OK with making both journaling and writing a part of my life. And that is the problem...I haven't been making writing a part of my life. When I'm involved in a class I can do the assignments and even produce a finished piece of work for submission, but I just lack the discipline (or something) to do this on a daily basis in regular life. I'm hoping my self-exploration in this class will help me find the drive to do that.

Here's the "sacred creative space" I set up in preparation for the class. It's a tiny end table smushed between my sewing table and the big ugly chair in my bedroom. The first night I just worked in bed, but last night I sat at the table because glue and paints were involved. I ended up turning it around because the overhead light was behind my head, and my supplies spilled out onto the window sills because the table is so tiny...so that tells me something that is likely part of my writing blockage: lack of a good work space, also lack of good work equipment (I share both of our Computers with C, and since he works from home--for money--he obviously has first dibs--that's one reason why I'm sitting here at 5:30 a.m.; however now that our laptop is repaired, I should technically be able to work at the same time as him, unless I need the Internet). Though aren't there prisoners who've written whole novels on rolls of toilet paper? Am I just spoiled?

The journal is handmade, it being Buy Nothing Month and all. I had a big stack of 11 x 17 paper, so I tried remembering the technique one of my mothers-in-law showed me a few years ago, but I did the signatures wrong, somehow, and ended up powering through it with lots of extra glue.

One of the assignments last night was to name an "adventure buddy"--the one person I can tell my creative dreams to, with whom I feel completely safe and who supports my crazy ideas. I couldn't think of anyone! I have tons of friends, but no one I talk to on a daily or even monthly basis. And no one I would talk to about something as cheesy as me taking an online self-exploration course (other than the entire Internet, of course). Even C and I only talk about what should we make for dinner and who's picking up M from daycare...so that's my second lesson from the course: reconnect with friends and don't be afraid to share my dorky projects with them.

So two days in and I haven't produced any writing yet, but I've made two realizations about my life, and I've played with collage and watercolor in my journal, which is something that's never happened in the Writer's Notebook before...

Celebration

The governor very kindly gave us Friday off, in an effort to staunch the hemorrhaging of money from the state budget, so I decided to make a bit of a celebration of it.

I started with a very elegant breakfast Friday morning (real tea and a tea cup!)

Then, after spinning wildly around the kitchen, the boys and I made peppermint bark.

I had been promising to make it since Christmas, and it turned out to be an incredibly expensive and time-consuming way to use up a few leftover candy canes and peppermint sticks (five bars of white chocolate!!), but the boys had fun, until they ran out of enthusiasm after the second layer...

M, after getting home from school declared it the best candy he's ever eaten, so that's saying something at least.

It's amazing how much longer a four-day weekend feels now that I don't get one every week. I stuck with my mindfulness plan from last weekend--not worrying about the list and what needs to happen next, just focusing on what I'm doing NOW. It's really amazing how good I feel when I do that, and how much I manage to get done. And I kept on taking care of myself as well--I did yoga on three of the days, got outside every day (sledding, walking, snowshoeing and even a late afternoon ski on the new snow yesterday afternoon) and got a few hours to myself when the boys went to a birthday party.

While they were gone, I made this pillow (inspired somewhat by this tree made by Heather at Shivaya Naturals) for a housewarming gift for friends (they moved in October!!). It's a family tree, with a leaf for each member, including a baby due in May. M thought it looked not at all like a tree, but a blob of chocolate, but C approved, so I'm hoping it doesn't look too stupid. Then I lay down on the couch to read, fell asleep for awhile, woke up with the book in my hands and my arms asleep, finished the book and lay there for some time doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING before finally getting up, putting a log in the fire and starting dinner, before three raucous boys came home from a World War II party (not kidding) and stormed the house. It had been truly lovely while it lasted and I spent the evening feeling somewhat punch-drunk and slightly dazed.

Earlier in the day I made two mouse pads (get it? They're cat and mouse pads! Ha!) one to replace our "GoArmy.com" one that M picked up at the armed forced recruitment center (no kidding...and no I was NOT the one to take him there!!) and one for my sister.

I didn't accomplish everything I wanted to, but we did embark on an epic cleaning of the boys' room, for which I nearly ran out of enthusiasm, but revived my energies at bedtime (resulting in three boys going to bed late after a long weekend...sigh...