Smoke, Thanksgiving, and Broccoli

Dear World,

It is almost Thanksgiving. My siblings are all in Michigan, every last one of them....except me. I am there in the my soul: staying up too late with my sisters talking, cooking with mama, playing guitar with my brother, snuggling kittens and eating wild apples out of hand. I love them all and I am so glad that they are getting together and though I can't be there in person every time, I am so glad to know that we all have each other, despite our differences and busy lives. Familial connection is an elastic wonder.

We will be here for the holiday, pet-sitting for our home-going friends who all headed off in their cars to see grandparents. We are here with borrowed parakeets and guinea pigs, making pies from scratch together and test running board games for the big day. A's kind aunt and uncle who have been like bonus grandparents have invited us to come celebrate with them and so we will pack up our noisy van full of hooligans and drive the 30 minutes to their stately, elegant home on Thursday. It feels strange to say that I will be making broccoli for Thanksgiving. I said I would cook whatever would be useful and a green vegetable was the open slot. No extensive brining or searching for fancy recipes or agonizing over the decoration of pastry but also, no stress about the pie cooling properly or the meat being done all the way or the timing of the swapping of various items in the oven. It's kind of lovely to think about a day of gratitude in which I can just cook some broccoli and then read story books, dig out A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and press fallen leaves. It sounds good. Also, truth....I bought the ingredients for a small brie-en-croute and stuffed figs and I was thinking to make a little bit of my family's traditional wild rice dish. Not that I will take all those things over to dinner....but it wouldn't exactly be the holiday without them.

I am trying to come up with a classic to read next. I want something I have never read before that isn't too drippy and romantic but does feel uplifting. I can't do Austen right now, too much romantic fuffle. I can't handle Ethan Frome....too hard. I need something in between. In the meantime, I am working my way through My First Summer In The Sierras by John Muir. I am pleased and gratified by his botanical and scientific warmth in describing the world of the mountains, no one can do it better, but I am astonished at his own lack of facility and capability outdoors. He feels a little weaker than I ever expected. He's rather dependent on stuff: food, equipment, proper clothing, warm fires, etc. I think  I might be tougher than he is! Not sure how I feel about that. This is John Muir that we are talking about.

Speaking of fires, the air was clearing just a little today. I love the fact that stepping outdoors didn't mean itchy eyes and instant cough. The smoggulous smoke (as Suess would say) was so terrible earlier this week that we truly didn't leave the house for many days, not even to step into the garage for clean laundry. The Camp Fire seems to be finally dying down a bit which is a blessed relief. Wednesday the weather men are saying we will have rain. We had one little spit of a shower in October but otherwise, we've had nothing for half of a year. It is amazing to me that the plants can just hold their breath and wait that long but they truly can. As soon as the rain begins to fall there will be an astonishing surge of rebirth. I look forward to gray skies that are heavy with big bulging clean rain clouds and not ash, and air that feels like clean hope and not a kick to the gut. I cannot wait to hear the sound of it on the roof and have a home day with a steady drizzle on the yard and a stack of library books!

Happy Fall, everyone...I hope the rain patters on your roof, your lungs breath free, your family gathers and your books uplift you!

Reading Stack and Summer Lull

This week we are back in the swing of our own life again, finally. Part of the challenge has been not only settling in after a bunch of travel but also just changing our own set-up here at home. A is at yet another new job (he adores change and stimulation) so we have a new schedule to digest and wrap into our life. Its also a new season and the school year approaches which, as they say in You've Got Mail:

"...makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. "  

So, that right there is justification for self-organization and assessment and the sort of things I spent the morning on today: making up a new daily schedule, printing off my weekly goals, re-writing the kids chore chart (everyone gets a new chore at their birthday and everyone had birthdays). I am hoping to be absurdly organized and get the chore chart laminated and slapped with a matching dry erase marker in the next week. I have printed attendance charts for the coming school year (state law here in California for homeschooling) and have subscribed to a printer ink program so that we won't have any last minute panics about papers that are finished but need to be printed the night before co-op. Its a good time of year.

We are also in the middle of the lull season. We have had our travel and our excitement and now its time for things like grilling in the backyard, taking slow evening walks, watching the weed patches for caterpillars to raise and checking to see if friends can come over to play. Its the rest in the garden when the extremely fuss-free daylilies bloom, the dramatic peonies and foxgloves are over and the zinnias aren't ready yet. The roadsides are all chickory and oatgrass, no blooming trees anymore and not much else in view besides the gentle endless sun and the tiny basking fence lizards blinking at each other.

We are reading several read-alouds since I can't seem to ever get enough sitting around together reading at this time of year and the kids are just as excited as I am about all the options. We are listening to Pollyanna in audio form from the free and delightful Libravox collection and also reading the third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner From Azkaban which occasionally gets too exciting and full of plot tension to for relief we retire to Swallows And Amazons which is the best for firing the love nature and sense of capability in little boys, not mention a love of sailing....also on the stack at the moment is Dandelion Cottage, a vintage favorite about a group of little girls who play house with an abandoned cottage in their northern Michigan village. The boys always wish we could find a nearby house that's empty when we read the next chapters, and they start eyeing up the empty lot nearby.

 We recently finished Girl Of The Limberlost (added to my narrow list of favorites) and More All Of A Kind Family (book 2) all about our favorite, laugh-out-loud Jewish sibling set, total fun and lots of interesting cultural discussion to boot! We plan to read the rest in the series of both books.  Ah! So much good fun, take-you-away storytelling and interesting stuff to talk about together. We love our read-alouds. The new schedule at our house means we start breakfast early so I am stretching it out a little so that we can linger at the table together making up for the early start with a little reading at the table while we sip our tea and coffee and digest a little. Kind of lovely to find you have the time for some new little nugget of enjoyment. Shift and tweak, it isn't all difficult and grinding.

What's Fueling My Fire....

           Its great to share ideas and to inspire each other with both the thoughts and growth we are experiencing but also with the raw idea of BEING inspired. We should be looking around us for stuff that makes us feel astonished and amazed and full of answers and energy. Please, allow me to go first....
Here's a little peek into my resource room at the moment. These are things in my world that are filling my tank, pushing my edge, giving me ideas and handing out delicious mental gymnastics:

• Magic Lessons podcasts by Elizabeth Gilbert. Every episode makes me want to create, NOW. 
• The movie, Seed: The Untold Story. Saw it on the big screen and my jaw was on the floor.
• The Standing Rock Protest
•  Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search For Meaning.
• The biography of the Cheaper By The Dozen parents, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Partners For Life. So well written (yay biographer!) and so unknown (yay for Lillian, one of my heroines!)
• Piano lessons with my three oldest kids...I'm working them through their lessons every day which means I am suddenly, accidentally playing the piano
• This astonishing info-graphic. 
• Women Who Run With Wolves, I just got this two nights ago and its knocking me back on my heels. I'm underlining every other page.
• The incredible music of Yonina....their vids can leave me high all day.
• This Avett Brothers song. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Ever more, since the election. I will always be grateful to Alicia from Posie Gets Cozy for introducing me to the bros. 
• The mind boggling, Understanding Your Child As A Spiritual Gift, believe it or not, written by a friend of mine.

Library Day: What Are We Reading?

Today is Library Day...and there are ever so many things to research as always.

Top Topics To Hunt For This Week:

• Arizona Travel Tips (We're going for a weekend in March!)
• Watercolor Projects (I'm teaching a class for Middle and High School students.)
• Lego Ideas (Everyone's obsessed)
• Crystals (Today is Science Day...we had a gorgeous snowfall....and crystal study came to us)
• Gardening (The seed catalogs have started to arrive!!!! YAY!)
• Jewelry Making (We moved on from ice crystals to rock crystals and suddenly we were looking over our rock collections and pondering pendants.)

Epsom salts crystals....so pretty!

Crystals from our collection.

The winter time is the ideal time to library our little heads off. So much wonderful cozy, indoor enthusiasm and so much dark and snug time to read. Reading is one thing I'm really going to throw myself into again this year.

I had a less prolific reading year in 2014 and I miss it a lot. I have so many books on my list and a stack of them that are waiting in the wings on my bedside table but I need to knock a few of my in-process tomes out of the way first.

I'm currently reading:

The Rosie Project
Parent Effectiveness Training
The Bible's Cutting Room Floor
Sex at Dawn
The Gifts of Imperfection
Eating on the Wild Side

No duds in the batch...although some of are the type I need a break from periodically because they require some processing.

The Flip Side of Weakness

Its Single Mama Week at our house. A is pulling 9 to 5's in California and I am here, manning our urban homestead. Been reading Gladwell's, David and Goliath which is not a sacred book about the Sunday School story but a super readable social commentary on underdogs and cultural giants, power and clever thinking outside of the box. I'm really enjoying it a lot and its making me think that I should spend some time brainstorming. I'd like to through the things that I think are my shortcomings and the places where we as a family are odd or can't quite measure up and see what hidden strengths are there and also what fresh thinking can do to help me/us accomplish things that seem otherwise difficult or impossible. (Also, I now want to learn more about my Mennonite spiritual roots, the Huguenots and the Quakers. I'm a pacifist in my soul.)

Been thinking about Single Mama Week like this a bit today and yesterday. Its hard to be apart but in some ways, if we're optimistic and energetic...it can be a chance to connect more deeply. If we do what we plan we will have real conversations twice a day in special, private, kids are asleep kinds of settings. We mean to talk and hang like that in normal life but I think we actually end up being more scattered than that. A business trip is also a good chance to reboot our texting, photo sharing, spur of the moment phone calls and short love note emails. More contact in some ways means more connection, even though we aren't in the same place physically.

The other strength to being apart for a week like this is that A can get caught up on sleep and kid-free space and I can get caught up on projects. The evening time after the kids go to bed is free...I can read, I can paint, I can work on the house, I can deep clean the cellar....whatever is nagging me on my list can actually get my full attention because there's no call drop everything and watch Game of Thrones episodes with my husband. God knows I love watching Game of Thrones with my husband...I'm not complaining...I'm just saying.... Looking at the flip side of the loss means seeing what can be gained and there's always something to be gained. I am determined to think that way normally anyhow but this book is pushing me to be resourceful about how to strategize and visualize the hidden goodness of my own "losses."

Am also reading Eating On The Wild Side, which is SUPER INTERESTING nutritional data all about which foods are the most nutrient dense, which varieties are the best to grow for nutrition and even how to prepare them for the best dose of nutrients. Fascinating stuff. There's all kinds of little nuggets of info:  carrots are best eaten cooked....and its best to cook them whole and then cut them up for serving, shallots and scallions are the most nutrient dense onions and outpace bulb onions by fathoms, tomatoes release more nutrients the longer they are cooked....tomato paste is out of sight! Some of this stuff connects to the stuff in the other book. Its amazing what foods are popular and are cultural giants and yet have so little nutrition. Some of the least known and loved or the marginalized and not trendy (cabbage anyone?) are the best picks. 

Breaking my routine and reading, are my latest reminders to examine my life, my habits and my assumptions.

Reading Stack

Cold weather always means an uptick in my reading. Lately I can't get enough. I am greedy at the library, pushing open the door on my way to the car with a teetering stack wedged under my chin. Its a lot harder suddenly, with intensive homeschooling and four wild hooligans to manage to read anything steadily. I am determined though. I finked out on reading towards the end of last year and managed to read pretty much nothing from the end of the summer until Christmas. One of New Year's resolutions was to record the things I'm reading on GoodReads again...in order to do that, one must read. Off I went to the stacks!

I have a couple of new tricks in my arsenal for keeping on. I read a book at a time in audio form using my iPhone and ear buds when I'm washing dishes or driving down the road with all the kids asleep) and sometimes even tuck into a Kindle book on my phone (not my favorite) if I forget to bring a book along and find myself stuck at the doctor's office or the mechanic. I also keep a book or two tucked in the door of the car, sometimes one in the diaper bag and books all over the house for wherever I happen to be having a nursing break. Pull out all the stops is basically the message. Read whenever, however...just have serious tenacity. Bear in mind that in addition to the things I am happily clipping through I am also still hacking away at a book I borrowed from a friend about a year ago. *wince* I am not an emblem of reading perfection. I am only one crazed mommy, doing the best I can, and still in love with the printed page.

Press on.

Teaching Empowerment

Teaching a small person to decipher letters and learn the secret code of reading is an electric experience. I feel completely amazed at the power of discovery, the beauty of achievement and the incredibly special tenderness of watching literacy unfold.

I have been teaching Ru to learn and he's chomping along in the reading book, learning bigger and bigger words but still not really making the leap to reading himself or devouring story for himself. I continue nudging him along and he's still making steady progress and I am waiting for the lights to blaze full in his face and set him mind buzzing with the possibilities of what he has just grasped.

In the meantime, Dee nuzzled up under my elbow and started begging to have a reading lesson too. At just four year old he's not really ready for the physical elements of writing free-hand but he is able to trace my letters and follow dotted-line letters I set up for him and at his urging I started teaching him the basic first nibbles of reading. By golly, he's getting it! He's reading little words all by himself! I feel like a rockstar in the presence of all this acquisition!

Reading For The Heat

We've been spending a lot of time indoors hiding from the crazy heat lately.(Hello insane power outages just south of us!) Lots of darkened rooms, still activities and many, many giant glasses of water. The boys are pretty happy as long as they get their naptimes in, keep drinking enough, keep the playdoh in regular use and read a lot of stories. Its is wintertime in reverse....hunker down and keep cool instead of hunker down and stay warm. So we wrack our brains for new derivations on salad for dinner, and try to keep busy while largely still.

We're reading The Long Winter together with our feet propped up in front of the windows hoping to catch a passing breeze....which seems exactly right. Reading the shivery story of The Great Chill of 1880 feels like the perfect remedy for The Great Heat Wave of 2012, even if it was an accident on my part. Wondering what in the world to read next when I finish this with the boys. Anyone else have any great chilly tales that come to mind? For me or for the boys? I will also take suggestions for "take me away" warm and golden stories to stockpile for wintertime. Balance is good, even in literature!

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The Here And Now

Our fig tree is making fruit!

Life is slow and gentle at our house today. I painted this morning with my art fellowship group, we did a little errand running and now there's a chicken, slow roasting in the oven while we dash off for a post-nap park run and then pick up A from work.

Cold winter light through my blue bottle collection on the kitchen sill

I picked up paint to turn the foyer/entry area into a dark teal color with glossy white trim, a new print of a Jose Royo portrait is in the mail to me to hang on the main wall and I am hoping to attack the cupboard that I've stationed there to catch keys, and hold a scented candle and house baskets of mittens.

Little sculpture, little plant life: bright spots in our sunroom.

What else is new? The weather is insane. Last week we had chilly temps and our first real accumulation of snow. I was out shoveling snow up around the bee hive to insulate it extra and try to provide some protection. And then abruptly over the weekend we had a blast of warm air and a long rainy drizzle that made all the snow disappear into a swirl of foggy mist. The upside is, I've been out counting daffodil tips in the flower beds and have taken to morning walks before anyone else is up. (Yay motivation to be physical!) The downside is that although April weather feels good, it is after all only January and something feels unsettled in the pit of my stomach at all this balmy cheer. I hope the trees and the bees can weather it alright.

I can't get enough kumquats. And they're cute as all get out.

My reading list at the moment. Food issues, birth, gardening, poems. Good fodder.

I'm eating well....doing all in my power to avoid ridiculous cravings and gain control of my urge to sooth myself with food. (see the top book on my current reading stack above, for reference) I have dusted off my juicer and been revving myself up once daily with the juice of the hour and am still tracking what I eat on fitday, aiming for optimal nutritional content. I am also doing a pretty good job at weighing myself and tracking my progress there. I have gained 10 lbs so far this pregnancy and am at week 21 so I'm feeling good.

How I'm looking these days.

Speaking of pregnancy, the other big news is that we've found a midwife! It's about time! Halfway through is wayyyyy to late for my comfort level...but better late than never. We'll be delivering at the only birth center in the state this time which will bring my personal birth experience to a new level of well-rounded since I've been at home, and in the hospital already. Good for a future midwife, right? Someone tell me yes. Am still feeling a little bit unsettled and nervous about it but they have told me they're willing to handle my ITP and allow me to birth in their cozy home-like birthing room. I have found no other midwife besides Martha, my late provider who was willing to take on a blood issue like mine so that was a deal maker for sure. We're an hour away which is kind of annoying and there are still a few more medically procedures that I'll have to deal with than I'd prefer but it seems like a good solution so over-all I'm feeling grateful. My first real appointment is on February 2nd. Am looking forward to getting the ball rolling.