worthy vs. frivolous

I am so interested that many of you also face this tug-of-war over worthy vs. frivolous, and I am wondering where we came by such notions? What voices define these words in our heads? Parents? Teachers? Friends? Books? I'm also curious about what comes to mind specifically for you when you think of these two words. What things in your life do you, without much thought or intention, deem frivolous or worthy?

frivolous (adj.) 1) of little weight or importance; not worth notice; slight. 2) silly

worthy (adj) 1. having worth, merit or value 2. honorable or admirable 3. deserving, or having sufficient worth

In then next minute write down five things that immediately come to mind as frivolous and then five more that you think of as worthy.

I'll share mine tomorrow too...

(right now, bed is calling. It was SUCH a long day. Did I tell you that my Mac died a horrible death this week? JUST as I am on deadline with everything? Ouch. Still recovering. Long story. Perhaps tomorrow?)

Out of context

It was a kind of out of body, out of context experience that put me back in touch with myself in a way I didn't expect... starting with driving the 3 hours alone in the car, no radio, just me and my thoughts. I haven't spent three hours alone with my thoughts in a long, long time (when was the last time you did that?) and then spending a night alone in a shady paint-peeling hotel (that looked way better in the pictures. Last update: 1984.) Then getting pampered: a beautiful haircut + highlights, and someone to show me how to pull together a look that reflects my inner AWESOME more than a hoodie and jeans and flipflops which are my daily default. (By the way: Clinton Kelly is even sweeter and funnier in person than on T.V. and he's a genius at what he does. Truly.)

And instead of letting myself continue to feel silly (which was my first feeling) or embarrassed (a close second) I decided to let go of all negative feelings and soak up every moment of two days all about me. It was revealing: I don't give myself a lot of down time in my life, and I need to more often. Also: I have a hang up about things being frivolous vs. worthy that seems to permeate all aspects of my life...

Is fashion superficial and frivolous? Maybe it is. Or maybe not. (What do you think?)

One thing I learned: it feels good to know you look good. And to know that who you are on the inside is accurately reflected on the outside for the world.

Discovery #1: My inner supermodel loves bohemian + a little edgy + athletic. (Pretty flowy tunics + leather + a men's white tank.) Also, I don't think I ever gave skinny jeans the appropriate credit they deserve (FYI: they are made to STRETCH. So nice.)

Discovery #2: brown mascara with blue eyes. GENIUS people. I had no idea.

Discovery # 3: the key to rocking any look is BELIEVING you look incredible. Because then you do. Pretty much a rule for life in general, don't you think?

Tomorrow: back to things. Including finishing the proposal for my book. And work. And running. (I've missed it big time the past few weeks.) But maybe also: just a little more time for me. (Don't you just love Anne Lamott?) Curious: What is something you have a hang-up about?

Go out and see

go out and see what is for oneself

notice stories trying to fly.

+++ What is your story today?

Small perfect things

Things I want to remember about the weekend:

Sounds: the exquisite laughter and glee of the under six set at discovering plastic colored eggs strewn about our friend's back yard; the peepers trilling, bumble bees, bellies fat, new from sleeping in the mud buzzing around beside our picnic blanket; the evening wind rushing up the valley.

Sights: pink hair bows and Easter dresses on our friend's little girls; Bean in his favorite plaid button down, baskets brimming with colored eggs, kids on the swing sets their hair flying back, watermelon smiles, new buds on the trees, the return of the indigo buntings by the pond,

Moments: playing in the sandbox after dinner, playing guitar + laughing with friends up from Boston after dinner; a walk to the pond, barefoot across the squishy grass; looking out the window at Bean and T sitting side by side on a rock eating peanut butter and jelly from jars with spoons (their version of picnic heaven)

Sensations: wearing messy braids, 80 degree sunshine, bare feet on mud; rubbing sunscreen onto little boy cheeks, running hard 3 miles, sunburn (everyone was pink last night).

Food: prosciutto + cantaloupe, grilled lamb + tadziki, coconut cupcakes, iced lattes, Circus Boy, valpolicella, dark chocolate.

April begins

At 5:43 a.m. I wound the window open so that there were two inches of screen exposed between me and the things of the early morning world: the smell of mud and moisture, and also the song of robins, and the other birds I do not know the names of;

and together my boys and I lay in bed, my eyelids still heavy, closed, the little one sitting with his pacifier lopsided in his mouth, the bigger one tucked into the crook of my arm, and T, there, completing my outline, and we listened to the day come softly.

Out the window the clouds were pretending to be mountains, there, across the gulch, beyond the pond, where the world ends, among the maples with their new red buds now flush with pollen, the fog was there below the sky with shoulders hunched, the sun hesitant and milky.

Today, oranges for breakfast, and also a promise on the radio that has everyone watching the thermometer with skeptical glee; balmy sweet undeniable spring on the cuff of all this mud, finally.

So it’s April.

+++ I wanted to tell you how much I loved reading all your random things. So much fun. Thanks for sharing them!

And I wanted to tell you that yesterday was the half way mark for days left for funding for my book project…To celebrate I've posted a new update and a drawing that has to do with the little painting above and something else entirely delicious over at kickstarter... so go take a peak and become a backer if you haven't already.

FYI: I’ve had a couple people email me asking how the Kickstarter funding works—so I thought I should clear things up quickly: If you become a backer you are only pledging an amount. You will not be charged at all—unless the entire funding goal is successful…and then you’d be charged in May. More about the whole crowdfunding process and how I feel about it over at Magpie Girl.

Today: lots of things including sunshine (or so is promised), a much needed run, and writing. Always that.

What's on your plate today?

Then & now and yes

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That’s why we wake and look out–no guarantees in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening. ~ William Stafford

(Found this poem here today.)

+++

Do you ever go back and read your own archives? I do. It's a little like opening a time capsule seeing Bean small, and me, whatever way I was then.

Today I looked back for the very first self portrait I ever took, at the beginning of Self Portrait Tuesday (before it became Self Portrait Challenge)...

I 'met' so many incredible gorgeous bloggers through those weekly challenges.

The funny thing about blogging is you don't get to SEE the people you read unless they are generous with you, unless they share this too, their faces, their work-worn hands, torn jeans, sunglasses, knees, braids, laughs. And I like seeing these things... and sharing them... which is why I'm doing these Sunday portraits...and I hope you will too.

Another thing from going back through my archives is seeing how memes used to fly around the blogsphere all the time. Now, not so much. I can't put my finger on it, but I do think something has changed in the way that people blog and share (or maybe it's just me?) I've read some interesting posts about this recently. About how there is less community or intimacy or something...and more business now. Maybe? Do you feel this? Sometimes I do. And so in the spirit of sharing more:

4 random things about me right now:

* In the morning when I first wake up I feel myself dangling like a marionette somewhere just beyond my body. It's almost painful to be pounced on, or touched much in this state, and the arrival of small boys in my bedroom (with their inevitable elbows and knees) is always a bittersweet thing (I love the way they smell when they first wake up.)

* I got an email in my inbox on Friday telling me that I'm the Albany, NY winner for this. (I entered only because of the NYC shopping spree.) This is hilariously perfect (and a little embarrassing.) I am a good candidate: I only wear jeans. I am baffled by makeup. I have no idea what to do with layers. Or knee high boots. And I need a haircut. (I thought twice about posting this because it's just so... not me...and yet I'm totally giddy about it.)

* I just got this book and this one in the mail today. I wish I could get books in the mail every day!

* I lose sunglasses always, and yet I can never seem to figure out where they go when they're gone. It's not like they fall off my head...or I leave them on the roof of my car (though I have, and watched them get smashed.) They just disappear. Hence the sunglasses self portrait to celebrate a new cheap pair.

+++ Your turn. 4 things. Also, be brave this week and take a self portrait... you can hide behind your shades. Post your photos here, or in the Self Portrait Sunday Flickr pool.

And when I blink

And when I blink inside the slender twigs of trees, the memory of leaf, the silent code of blossoms bursting; and there is also this: the way the robin flies to here, to these still stark woods, her plumage rust, her song the everything that lifts my heart and when I hear her call from the kitchen window I cannot help but run to the back door, where I find the grass still hard with morning frost, and hesitate and then she warbles sweet and high in the crook of a birch, and again I learn how little it is that I know.

+++ Some tunes for the end of March, just for you. <3 Also: I've opened a little shop. Adding a few things to it daily. Prints mostly. Some originals too (soon.) +++ I can't believe it's going to be April so soon. Are you ready? What is one thing you want April to manifest?

Right now:

Through the thin wall: his palm hits the glass of his desktop. And again in frustration. “Why, why? These damn program trades." On Pandora: “You are my sweetest downfall…” ("Samson" ~ Regina Spektor, from Begin To Hope)

Under the stools at the kitchen counter: Sprout picking up crumbs off the floor, babbling to himself.

On the floor: the sun makes broken squares of gold where it falls, and the shadow of the forsythia in the window is lace across the floorboards.

And I am here, trying to hold these things together. Trying, with a thousand hopes, a hundred bigger fears; sand at the backdoor from Bean’s boots; bits of bark around the wood stove; things everywhere, always underfoot.

Monday glimpses

The house was surrounded by fog today and the ambiguous weather of almost spring. We went for a walk; picked pussy-willows with dew-damp fuzz and rubbed them against our cheeks. Soft. Softer. The sky and the hills blended, things became smudged: now, tomorrow, what we hope for, whatever else we are beyond this day. Things became silhouettes of themselves: telephone poles, pigeons perched on wires, rooftops, the details blurred with moisture. The trees wore necklaces of water drops. Bean splashed in every puddle. I splashed in every puddle. Sprout wanted to get his hands in things: in the mud, in the wet grass, in the sky. He kept reaching up, clapping. The sky was white on white.

Down by the pond all four of us watched rocks break through the last thin slips of ice floating at the surface. Ice that looked like cellophane. It’s a favorite thing, always, for anyone near water: to throw rocks. To pick up a hunk of quartz and let it fly. Sprout squealed with delight. DH was reluctant to share his best rocks with Bean who teetered thisclose to the edge, among the stubble of last years cattails, his slender arms snaking out away from his body awkwardly with each triumphant toss.

So this was today: fog, and writing, and small boys under foot (an unusual Monday. Bean’s school was closed for in-service.) It was a day of corn tortillas with beans and melted cheese, and making paper tails (which we all gleefully wore) and fighting off a slew of tail attacking pirates with wooden swords and lots of shrieking. Miraculously, it was also a day of semi productivity. A few paragraphs written, edited, the boys occupied with large squares of newsprint and six dozen crayons (now strewn everywhere imaginable.)

So what if things are up in the air; in the end they always are, and this, this is my life. Boys. Writing. Sneaking kisses in the foyer while pulling on coats. Collecting blue and brown eggs from under the warm feathered bodies of hens. And taking a walk, all of us, to the pond and back, stopping a hundred times to look at the world. To be astounded by the water rushing everywhere, the puddles, the catkins, the mud.

It’s easy to forget today. It’s easy to think in terms of what didn’t get done (that list is always so long.)

What are five small things from your day?

Around here today

I felt like sharing a few photos of everyday things today. Some tunes I've been liking. A new place I've been collecting the things that catch my eye. Also really enjoying some of the new self portraits up in the Self Portrait Sunday Flickr pool~grab your camera and join in (you know you want to.)

And: we took Bean ice skating today--and it was, well, sort of a disaster. Like a wet noodle on ice. Maybe it's not his thing? Any suggestions (we did that push-thingy, it didn't help much.)

Finally: what music have you been listening to this month?

The way laundry gets done around here:

Can you hear Bean accompanying his play in the background with a little off-tune song? I LOVE it when they're both occupied like this. Bean was building train tracks and castles with wooden blocks under the dining room table...and Sprout: the minute he sees a heap of fresh laundry he's on it. POUNCE. He played like that for oh, twenty minutes easily. Perhaps not the most efficient (or clean) way to get the laundry folded...but hey, when it affords time to hang out and sip coffee in the sunshine and get through my inbox, I'm okay with it.

In fact, I've discovered that I might have exceedingly low standards about the way things should be done around here, in terms of housework. DH does to, so there isn't a lot of strife in our house about such things (except, ironically, for the laundry--he never puts his away! Like EVER. Whyyyyy???) And we're both generally okay with letting things build up, and then cleaning them together...The dishes, for example, might wait all day if there are better things to be done. (Like essays to be written for example.) How do the daily things get done at your house?

this:

And also: I don't know how to start into things today. Does that ever happen to you?

A post where I ask the internet parenting advice again

1. At what age is it no longer appropriate to bring your son into the ladies room with you? And if you send him to the boys room himself, how in gods name can you be sure he hasn't touched EVERY SURFACE POSSIBLE? 2. How much sugar does your kid eat daily? Or perhaps better put: what kinds of sweet foods does your kid eat daily? (I've been thinking about this because Bean seems to be sugar sensitive...he's sensitive to everything, so that's not really a surprise...but lately I've been starting to think I'm seeing patterns. Curious about your experiences...)

3. Why do so many mothers stop their children from taking risks--because they are afraid themselves? (Or something?)

EXHIBIT A: Today at the park there was a dad watching a boy and a girl. He let them both climb to the very top of the monkey bars, where they both perched, holding on, happy as clams while other kids rode the zip line thingy below them. Then mom came and dad left. And literally the first words out of her mouth were: "Get down from there right now!" Boy: "Why?" Mom: "Because, you'll fall!" Boy: "How do you know?" Mom: "Because so and so fell, that's why."

ACK. Why do we do this? Why are parents (and possibly particularly mothers) today so different than their counterparts a decade or two ago? What is it about nature, and high places and sharp that seem so terrifying that it's not even worth the supervised risk?

E.B. White in Charlotte's Web wrote about the Fern and Avery swinging out the barn door on the rope swing something like, "All the parents are afraid they'll fall...but they shouldn't be, because children always hold on tighter than adults think they will." (This is NOT a direct quote...If you haven't read Charlotte's Web in a while, you should!) And I tried to remember these words today as Bean spent the entire time climbing across the monkey bars and asking me to lift him up so he could cling to the zip line and fwap from one end of it to the other, his little pale boy belly exposed, his face scrunched up with glee and concentration.

(I'm also loving the Boys Almanac.)

And: Sprout's first time on an outdoor swing today. He couldn't stop giggling. I'm kind of addicted. Seriously cute.

Sugaring

Sugaring with the neighbors yesterday. I love their old-school, hand made set up. I love the sweet clouds of steam, and how everything feels hopeful and grand standing around the evaporator watching the sap bubble and thicken. Hours pass, easily, occupied this way. Bean was all helper this year. Carrying wood. Pouring sap from the metal tap buckets into the big plastic five gallon bucket to be filtered and poured. He even got to strike the match to light the fire up. This is his boyhood. This is what he will remember. This is why we are here, even though things are so tenuous financially right now that at any moment we might slip, and have to leave. So. This is why I'm throwing my heart into trying to make A Field Guide To Now. This is why there is a lump in my throat at night, when I can see how it might not reach that stupid enormous funding goal (that also feels so small.)

Last year ate our savings. Last year ate everything. This year, who knows? This year, the outcome is anyone's guess. We could move. We could stay. It's all up in the air, illusive as the steam, as tender as the first fat buds.

So that's the truth. I want this life more than anything.

Also: You can win this painting.

Self Portrait Sunday:: Challenge # 1

Challenge # 1: Your face, partly hidden maybe; partly out of the frame, out of the picture, in the shadows or turning away.

Add your photos to the Flickr pool or leave the url to your photo here.

I'll be posting a bunch of your photos here throughout the week. Go take a peek.

I can't wait to see what you share this week. Happy Spring!

exactly.

The risk the artist takes is that you might ... actually laugh at the effort. And it’s taking these risks that leads us to get rewarded.

~ Seth Godin

one of those days

Today I left my keys on the roof of my car dropping Bean off at school and spent the better part of an hour looking for them in the parking lot in the slick mud with Sprout on one hip.... one of those mornings (not enough coffee+ not enough sleep + feeling kind of sick = not that much fun.)

Looking for small pleasures today... Like the yummy salad my friend made me for lunch: roasted eggplant, red onion, zucchini and pepper with goat cheese & mixed greens. Mmmm! Thanks K!)... and like this photo...and this awesome music. What's making you smile today?

all or nothing + love

Today I am... sipping the first iced latte of the year... letting my hair dry naturally...(it gets curly) gathering chapter ideas letting the dishes sit in the sink... listening to my rosters out-crow each other... cutting forsythia for vases to go in sunny windowsills... working from home today...

...and feeling grateful for you today (in terrible resolution, but still. You get the idea.)

identity::being a mother

To be a mother means to kneel a hundred times a day; to kiss a damp and tousled head after a nap, or to rub away some sticky mark upon an upturned cheek (and to wonder, was that oatmeal, or something worse?) It means pressing my knees into the floor, so I can look into the wide eyes of a small person who knows how to press all of my buttons and also how to unlock inexplicable emotions in heart, and to explain where people go when they die, or about the tooth fairy, or that no, the lollypop displayed alluringly at checkout is not an option. Being a mother means perpetually navigating a fine line between the profound and the mundane—a line I’ve discovered is often at floor level… and it’s there where the tantrums get thrown.

To be a mother means that my hands are always full: with the soft-jelly limbs of my baby Sprout, or with the eager sweaty palms of my Bean, bigger now, perpetually on the brink of dashing out into traffic, or climbing over fences, or scrambling down rock strewn ravines. And just as it means that I am carrying things, it means that my hands magic. With my hands, I accept imaginary cups of tea, paint dozens of pictures, rinse a thousand dishes, type a hundred thousand words.

But maybe it’s really about this: being a mother means becoming adept at the imaginary; at telling stories about monsters, or fairies, or of mice that drive dump trucks.... and its this capacity to imagine that makes enormous, extraordinary, things possible for my children, because I dare to dream them. Just as it’s this same capacity that allows me to imagine a time in the future without sleep deprivation…when my short-term memory will return… (it will, right?) and I'll have just a little more time.

SELF PORTRAIT SUNDAYS: Wanna play?

A self portrait to start the week for a while... How to play: post a self portrait on your blog and leave the url in the comments here. I'll pick some of my faves to post over at the brand-spanking-new Self Portrait Sunday site. Tag! You're it.