30 today

And so the week is gone

I've been sick. A major yucky head cold + fever combo that has left me wimpy and whining watching re-runs on TV. I hate being sick. Especially around the holidays. To distract you from the abundant LACK of posting going on around here, pretty pictures: My boys whispering in the early morning light, while I got up, snuck downstairs and slipped something into Bean's advent box.

Breakfast this morning. The thrill (yes, it really is) of going to the coop and getting freshly laid green or blue shelled eggs has not warn off. Talk about fresh.

The kitchen, post breakfast. The penguin's name is Snowflake, and Bean is in love with him.

Feeding the sheep & lamas is a regular weekend activity. I love the lama's eyelashes, and the way the barn always smells sweet with hay and is warm with animal breath. Our neighbor's always put on a full nativity play in their barn every year. All the local kids act out the parts, and everyone sings carols and eats cookies & goes sledding afterwards. So fun.

Getting the newspaper on the way back from our walk. We sled down to the bottom of our drive, then pull the paper up.

My little mischief maker, "helping" me make Christmas cards.

satisfied

Outside a wood pecker hammers into the trunk of a poplar and the sky is the color of snow. I finished my manuscript yesterday, and couldn't have felt better about it. The stories work, I think, and they've begun to carry themselves, the characters leading me to new discoveries and scenes. It's how I mostly imagine writing should feel--and I've decided there is absolutely nothing better writing for two days straight, hours blurring, in a quiet house. DH too Bean over to the inlaws, and I cozied up by the wood stove, clacking away at the keyboard as content as a clam.

Other delights:

My lovely hens have started to lay eggs! Regularly! I've been particularly enjoying them soft boiled with a little salt and pepper.

I was inspired by Ali's beautiful advent boxes to make a set of my own for Bean, and he's delighted at the advent fairy's tiny gifts: yesterday a miniature tape measure; today a handful of tiny dinosaurs that grow when submerged in warm water (remember those? So fun.)

I spent the morning vacuuming and straightening, and mopping. The floors now gleam, and this makes me happy.

This afternoon, after a wee nap, I think we’ll head to the craft store to pick up tissue paper and card stock to prepare for the holidays; and also to a home store for throw pillows. Every couch needs a good collection of throw pillows, and we have too few.

What are you doing/eating this Sunday afternoon?

A positive counterbalance

It's the end of a week off and I feel at once relaxed and utterly frantic. I keep trying to remind myself not to let amorphous anxiety paint the backdrop for the entire day, and to instead pinpoint the underlying fear that causes angst to spread like a dark stain over calmer moments. This week my fear is that I won’t have enough time. My writing deadline looms at the end of the week, and although I love the work I’ve been producing I haven’t had the undivided time to sink back into it in a week or two, and this week is particularly busy.

I have decided to focus on the positives this week as a counterbalance to the stress. I am excited because DH and I are starting a new class together: a beginner series in ashtanga yoga. I can’t wait for my new yoga pants to come in the mail, and am looking forward to bring more attention and focus towards being consciously in my body next to DH being consciously in his. We’ve missed each other like crazy for the past couple of weeks. Bean has been sick, and this always results in him cozying up in our bed, needier than usual and full of toddler snores. We had an afternoon napping date yesterday, and though not a lot of sleep happened, we’ve been grinning at each other ever since.

Small good things that make me smile: my orchids blooming again on my windowsill; chai tea with sugar cubes and milk; discovering new settings on my camera today; carrying around a list notebook in my back pocket (instead of obsessing about the things I’ll otherwise forget); the first green and blue eggs from my Ameracuna chickens; and my new subscription to Cookie magazine. What are some things that make you smile?

First snow of the season

Driving home, three good songs on the radio and then perfect light. I couldn't stop smiling.

I pulled on my new snowboots, and dashed out the door with my camera thudding against my chest.

The light was so perfect it took my breath away.

A momentary break in the clouds, and pure gold.

Everything was silent except for the wind, and the light faded fast.

Still I was grateful, so grateful, to be in the right place at the time. With my camera.

A mini photo documentary of my day:

Another morning to myself. Sitting in the sun at the table writing with the cat.

Re-reading shreds of story, and trying to figure out a better system for filing story ideas, works-in-progress, etc.

Back from a run. Downward dog.

Listening to good tunes on my iPod while soaking up the sun. Post run cool down.

Making a post-run smoothie. Frozen peaches, raspberries, strawberries, wheat germ and yogurt.

(Time in parenthesis)

We took a weekend trip. Just us. Two. Without the little scampering sweetness we've created. It was the first time, since him. The first time to loll about in bed, taking advantage of uniterrupted time spent both horizontal and unclothed. And also, time to laugh and sip martinis at the open bar (we went to a wedding) and to tear it up on the dance floor. Time to giggle and eat ice cream and walk hand in hand. Time to watch mallards landing on the Delaware River, and the fog lifting. Time to poke into ecclectic hippie shops and glass blowing galleries and cafes. It was, simply put, an amazing weekend of rediscovery. We have so much fun together. He rocks my world, still. More now.

Sweet, sweet, bittersweet.

Ready, get set...

In nineteen different places today, all at once. The sky is blue, but winds are roaring up our valley making the birch leaves show their silver underbellies. By my computer on the bar in the kitchen are a row of ripe peaches. Outside hawks are calling. It's getting ready time: laminating folders and organizing books, every random hour spent at school in preparation for a new passel of kids. Also trying to find the right things to say to Bean so that he understands that our routine will be changing. We've had such a fun summer: taking rambling walks and playing on the back lawn. Here are some pictures from our walk yesterday evening.

Chicken coop in the evening light.

Goldenrod is waist high in the fields now.

Bean & his red wagon.

Wild grapes, ripening.

Slug love.

I love ferns.

Overgrown mailbox.

Bean in the green.

Jewel weed.

Autumn's first red.

Time outdoors

Soaking up summer. Taking walks at a two-year old's pace. Noticing the minute beauty of things. Splashing water. Throwing pebbles. Picking wild raspberries and licking the juice off my fingers. Rediscovering how much I love my camera. Bee & queen anne's lace.

Milkweed blossoms.

Bee & thistle.

Bean exploring at the neighbor's pond.

Growing

They're both getting so big: the boy, and the chicks!

Small unbelievable things

Walking knee-deep in the ocean. Picking up scallop shells for Bean. Uniterrupted reading time. Trying to kick fear in the ass, and the prospect of an entire night of uniterrupted sleep.

June self portrait challenge: environment

On the front lawn, with the half-doze little araucana chicks, soaking up sun. School's out. Summer's finally here.

More environment self portraits here.

Giddy

Soaking up sun. We walk, his little hand in my big one. A constant narrative tumbling off his tongue like the little stream we stop to wade through in the field. No clouds, all day. And I can't keep from smiling because I'm off to see Lizardek and Blue Poppy. Certain delight.

Soaking up sunshine

It felt like spring today, for the first time. The mercury climbed to the upper fifties, and the sky, this afternoon, looked like heaven’s housewife had hung all her downy comforters out to be tossed by a mischievous wind. The sun shone down with real heat.

I came home from work, threw on my black rubber boots, grabbed a yogurt and fled into the sunshine with Bean at my heels. DH followed suit soon after, carrying his signature pint glass of iced espresso, his muscles rippling divinely under the blue cotton of his t-shirt. Barely t-shirt weather, but I’m all for it.

We rambled haphazardly, following our marmalade streak of a cat, Bandit, down into the lower meadow where the apple trees grow, and where, in summer, the grass is waist high. Now it’s trampled and brown, and the apple trees have the tiniest of budlets just beginning to push from the ashy maroon bark. I ran back to get the pruning shears and with a sudden zest, we initiated the immense task of taming the mess of wild grape vines growing like kudzu between knobby, overgrown and half-dead branches of our many apple trees.

It was pure delight to be there with my two guys, cutting back dead wood, with apple sap on my fingers, while Bean chased the cat in widening orbits around us. DH pulled out the chain saw, and we made an afternoon of clearing fallen branches and logs from the edge of the woods—piling them in a bonfire heap. Then we lay down in the grass and watched the sky spin. Like looking up into the deep blue curvature of an enamel bowl, flecked with milk.

The robins are back, and their warbling became a forte trilling as the sun neared the edge of the woods. Bean couldn’t get enough of playing outdoors. All he wanted to do was run, twirl, climb, muck about, and I can’t blame him. The slow start to spring has had me antsy. I can barley imagine foliage. It feels like snowflakes have been permanently imprinted on my inner eye.

When it was dinner time we sat at the table bathed in sunlight, with the windows open, and ate an artichoke together, Bean on my lap. Our fingers were a mess of lemon-butter for dipping the tender parts. Bean shares my affection for this oddly sweet flower, and together we nibbled the heart right to the pithy thistle down, and then reluctantly sat back, licking our fingers.

A good day.

Also, I couldn’t resist snagging this little personality exercise from Le Petit Hiboux. I’m curious. What’s your take?

Grin.

Seeking

Trying to find beauty tonight, and striving to ask the right questions of the universe, but feeling shaky about it all. Trying to put the right words out there, the right prayers, the right hopes, so that joy floods into my life and makes me full. Some days this is easier to do than others. Sometimes its hard to even be right here, in this moment, even for a moment without fragmenting into worry and what-ifs.

Thank you for writing all your little rituals--the things you do to find solace and serentity and balance every day. I loved reading them.

I still haven't made it back onto Dh's computer to get the song title print-out for that running mix (which is totally embarrasingly 80's, but definitely rockin'!)...but in the meantime, anyone who hasn't checked out Pandora should, immediately. I'm so undaring when it comes to buying CDs, and I almost never hear new music on the radio (I listen to NPR on the way to work.) This has become my way to venture into new uncharted music territory.. I'd love to know: who are your top five favorite musicians right now?

Finding the beat

Last week I was like a satellite thrown out of orbit, twirling in crazy loops from all the scrambled sleep, and the on-edge waiting. I let myself slip haphazardly out of my routine of writing mornings, first thing while the house is still sighing in its sleep.

I’d hear the alarm, and peer at it through mostly closed lashes and then hit the snooze button with vigor, before turning to inhale the sweet sleeping scent of my boys, pressed at odd angles to each other. Light would slip softly through the wooden slats of the window shades, zebra-striping the sienna paint on our wall with gold, and mourning doves would gather below the feeder outside and coo like a clutch of kerchief clad old biddies waiting for a bakery to open.

I’d get up, staggering. If I was lucky they’d both stay asleep while I showered and made coffee, and I’d pocket those moments of silence like a thief. But I found myself missing the routine; the rhythm of bowing down first at the page, each new day.

Instead of writing, I carved some time out on the treadmill at the gym everyday last week (the weather too cold until today to be outdoors.) In doing so I began to remember this about myself: moving, running, doing, is anther way to bow down at the door of all that is good in my life.

Moving, one foot and then the other, in a steady rhythm, feeling my lungs and heart send bright red blood circling through capillaries makes me feel immediately at right with my life, with the twirling stars, with the sap running, with my all my hopes. Now, to do both: to run and to write. This is my goal this week.

** I’ll totally post the running mix! Just have to get back on DH’s computer—tomorrow, maybe?

In the meantime, tell me, what few things do you find you really need to do every day to feel whole (even if you don’t always get to do them.)

Breathing space

Snowmelt dripping

Tattered clouds

Setting Sun

Snow angel

Evening light

Walking home

Snowday # 2

Yipeeee! Snow feet deep in drifts by the door, and another day of canceled school. Another day to write, and sip chai tea, and play with Bean (just hours left until he's two, really). Sometimes winter doesn't suck.