Wearing Two Hats At Once

This week I playing professional mommy and home mommy at once. I'll be in San Francisco for two whole days for a training conference for a homeschool public speaking gig that I started last summer. I am super stoked and enjoying the whole adventure of an outlet, a chance to put on a little polish and step into some different shoes. Its also so incredibly empowering to go have get-togethers with organizer go-getters who have all self-selected into a room full of energy driven, life loving, spur each other on power. I love the buzz in the room. I love that no question is too wordy or obscure or intellectual. I love that everyone wants to be there and is invested. Also, nobody follows me into my bathroom stall or puts Legos on my plate while I am eating, which is kind of novel and fantastic. I was even thinking happily of the 5 hours I will spend commuting back and forth (I am driving back and forth in the mornings and evenings) and realizing that I in no way dread that time either. I have audio books, sisters to call, mental space that is just waiting for me and all of that time will be a gift.

I was talking to another mom today and mulling over why in the world I would be making the crazy choice to drive back and forth when there will be hotel accommodations provided. It sounds massively inefficient and kind of illogical at surface value but, as a mama I have to say that it seems quite worth it to drive all that way so that I can tuck my kids in at night after they have been playing their friend's house all day. Its worth it to be able to kiss them goodbye in the morning and zip their hoodies myself, after I put all their yogurt dishes in the sink. Even a tiny amount of contact and continuity will carry us and will keep the kids feeling loved and seen in a small measure. I have also learned that I need all the hugs that we share, I need to be with my husband when he gets home from work and to savor the delicious letdown of the quiet house and slipping into bed together for a little pillow talk before sleep. It feels good to be known and seen and connected to those who love you. I also love little things like watering my own houseplants, making space to be barefoot in the backyard for five minutes alone, and putting a roast in the oven for dinner later that night.

 I am also imagining that contact with my normal life and with my kids will keep me grounded in my training. I have a tendency to live utterly in what I am currently learning....in good and bad ways. I see all the trees and forget the forest even exists. I get excited about the ideas and plans I am learning and don't keep planning, home life and self-care in the viewfinder, I also get overwhelmed and intimidated by the grandness of what I encountering and have trouble chunking, right-sizing and staying in the moment. Kids are amazing at keeping you right where you have to be. You learn to spend far more time than you would ever imagine sitting patiently waiting for a shoe to be tied, you learn how very many steps there are to washing hands and how easy it is to forget any of the parts and you learn exactly how pungent a hug is and very much it matters when you make eye contact with an earnest question. These things keep me learning, they keep me stable and they keep me tethered. Its not all some kind of delirious dulcet cocktail though, sometimes these are bitter lessons that I grind through...remembering with some embarrassment and a bit of honest failure exactly where I am. Lest I get to grandiose about my speaker self, the boys and my husband are there with needs like runny noses and fresh underwear to keep me realizing that no matter what intellectual things I offer or achieve, I have to keep myself strung into the action of community and connection, even in the small humble ways and build my character alongside my brain. So here we go!
Speaker Me + Homemaker Me = Real Me

Springtime Shifts

Its been a good winter....again, and I am loping on into a New Year, February already a new notch in my belt. There are big fat buds on the apple tree that leans over our fence, the snails are out doing war  with the cole crops in my garden every night and the acacia trees are flouncing along with their yellow blossoms all down the freeways. Its the first of the really solidly spring blooms...before the poppies are spilling down the hills like orange sprinkles or the bottle brush trees are a standing in fierce crimson array on every street corner. So wonderful to live in a place where winter means green, and lush and damp fog laden moss. I have to get my tail down to the redwoods again, haven't been for a couple of shameful months...the trees call in this kind of weather.

I have noticed that in the waste space along the freeways there are some old forgotten orchard trees...I saw them for the first time last year and assumed they were cherries but missed a chance to go see them close up because we were so busy with baseball. They are just opening to peak bloom right now and I managed to park and run over to check some out on a side street near an overpass. They are not cherries, but maybe some kind of plum or peach. I am curious to see what/ if any fruit develops as the summer goes on. Lovely to feel homey enough where I live to be able to start picking out little curiosities like that to keep tabs on.

I am starting to feel pretty settled. I have places for most everything in the house, I am starting to feel like our possessions are trimmed down to an amount that more closely match this space. I have people to call in case we are trouble, know the neighbors, have the mailman's name down and even occasionally run into folks we know at the grocery store. Its such a good feeling to nest in more firmly and feel the amazing mix of wonder at the novelties but comfort over the known.

Spring is coming and I am working on tuning up my life and schedule...working out all the little ways things can be tweaked and adjusted and let go and removed. Isn't it wonderful to remember that we are the stewards of our own lives?

Here's What's New Right Now:

• I have been making meals for families with new babies or sick members at our church and homeschool group as a little way to contribute to the community. 
• I am cutting back on fruit and coffee and going back to a more strict interpretation of paleo eating.
• I am trying a new sleep schedule (to bed before my husband) to try to get 8 hours and still have morning quiet time alone.
• Minimization has come back into my life in a firm manner.
• Watching the boys play piano is inspiring and I have been planning to get my fiddle back out for tune up and learning.
• I am painting weekly now thanks to standing babysitter dates.
• We are not doing baseball this spring.
• Taking Zumba in addition to yoga.
• I am signing up for another year with Classical Conversations.
• We are planning a big trip to Italy this spring!
• I cut a bunch of length off my hair after it kept breaking and breaking. 

What are you shifting and changing in your life this season?

Destruction Day

We spent a lot of our time today working on destruction. Its the time of year for heartlessly uprooting the yellowing, flopping and barren members of the vegetable garden. The borage and squash were so prickly that I left them to black into the crisp bits of stiff stalk several weeks ago and they were still incredibly prickly. I never had enough borage in my garden to realize how very covered with tiny, crystalline needles they truly are. They are practically cacti! Astoundingly off-putting. I ended up picking them up between two trowels and forking them over to the compost can. There was a lot of dropping and accidental shredding and a few prickers in my fingers despite all my efforts. Next time, I might do well to wear gloves and consider containing the borage in future gardens. The next frontier will be putting in a few fall crops. Its funny to think about gardening year round here without even trying. The kale just gets chopped down with a larger and larger axe as the seasons wheel round and it grows new stalks from its roots or from the old stalk bases and it basically becomes a grove of kale that lives with you eternally.

The boys and I are so dead after one day a week at the co-op that we are attending. The whole next day is marked off for recovery....dinner the night of our co-op is always a deflated afterthought. I wish I could say I was organized enough to have something snug in the crockpot every week but yeah,.....truth....its like leftovers and take-out and whatever I happen to have in my canned good pantry.  I'm kind of embarassed at the way it takes the wind out of our sails. How do all of you "normal" people do it every single day? Perhaps the contrast of a whole day out and about, teaching and learning, and leaving the house early and packing lunches and filling water bottles against the backdrop of our quiet, homey normal is what is really getting us. Whatever it is...its incriminating. I feel like a total wuss! I am trying to quit beating myself up for it and give us all a little extra grace to deal with what is. Its hard to accept something that is loaded with negative meaning.

This weekend we are headed up to Lake Tahoe to hole up in a little cabin together, skip rocks across the lake and take a chilly dip in that clear, clear water. Nib is hoping desperately for some fishing and I am hoping for a peaceful, foggy morning rising alone, before the whole camp is up....the mist rising off the lake, a loon in the distance. Mommy wishes.