Painting, Gardens and Jam

Our first crop of arugula has turned into a fluttering cloud of white blossoms, like a flock of little cabbage moths, levitating next to the hose reel. I need to put in another crop of spinach, (maybe some malabar spinach for hot weather?) and a new block of carrots. The boys have been so excited about our first round of carrots at this house that they have been pulling them as little finger sized snacks and munching them before they get any chance to get big and hearty. Love that delicious, culinary impatience.  Need to remind myself that they do indeed love things that are good them, in addition to the pizza and chips that magnet all kids right in. I tend to blow the negatives bigger and discount the positives and end up with a nicely lopsided view of what really happened with my kids.

The whole house smells amazing tonight. I just batch cooked some apple muffins to put in the freezer (flour and sugar free!) so that those junk food loving boys have something sweet to grab for a snack. There is also a second big pan full of cherry plum jam bubbling away in the back burner. It smells tangy sweet and I have added just the right amount of sweetener to leave it zippy in the back of the mouth but still sweet in the front. Love me some sweet tart flavors. The first batch was made with greener plums that were still pretty firm but had all fallen anyway. This round, the plums were all making big cranberry colored splats on the sidewalk when they fell, finding ones that were still whole and hadn't squished on impact was the trickiest part. They have more natural sugars this time and when you pop them in your mouth raw, the skin slips off and leaves you with a big juicy mouthful. So delicious!

I haven't been painting so much this week but, I am chewing on a couple of ideas and am hoping that the long weekend will be a chance to pull out my brushes and sit in the sunshine and drip some art out through my fingertips. Recently, I saw the good friend who spoke painting prophetically into my life and convinced me that I was a painter when I thought I loved art but only knew how to draw. I am so grateful for her insistent warmth and pushing.

 So much happy that this habit bloomed out in my life and I had a time when I shared art days with her. She still lives in New England and I had a quick breakfast with her while we were in town, its so amazing to see my art on her wall and come home to see hers on mine and know that we have entered each other's lives and flavored each other's world's so sparklingly. Good friends are the type who make you a better person for their having been in your life. She qualifies.

Flying Solo

A is away for the first time since we've moved. I forgot this feeling: going to bed alone at night, trying to conjure up motivation to make meals without another adult in the house, locking the doors at night (A's job) and feeling slightly nervous, sleeping all wacky because he isn't here with his strong opinions on bedtimes and rising. Its hard to be the one behind, but its especially hard at certain times of the month. Heh.

Remember this post? Yeah, that issue is still with me. But PMS is better, I have found with a few tricks that bring some sanity.

1. Trick 1: Track my cycle. Knowing why I feel totally hopeless helps. I know I'm on drugs which means that I know a lot of this is high reactivity and not actual massive dysfunction. 
2. Trick 2: Skullcap tea helps me tremendously. If I start to feel blue or ragey or kind of hopeless sobbish, I make myself a mug and then a thermos and just nurse it for a few days. This is the one I buy. 
3. Trick 3: The third thing that helps is wearing the tracker I talked about here. Monitoring my heart rate and breathing means that it can vibrate to remind me if I'm getting too worked up which is surprisingly effective. I listen when an objective device tells me that I'm getting too wound up and maybe I should take a break. 

So, anyhow...its that time and I'm trying my tricks and they help...but its still a dark week with a lot of low energy. I don't really know how to get to the place where I understand and appreciate my cycle and hormones. They are so disruptive to me. Frustrating.

Today was beautiful, the rain took a break and the boys were fooling around in the yard, fussing about on the edges of the vegetable garden "weeding things" to help it all along. The radishes are starting to show their second leaves and we can see little arugula and bachelor's buttons too. Its an amazing thought that we can have a garden now. I could have had one before now if I had jumped on things and just begun as soon as the rain came. Next year I will know a little bit about the rhythm of things here. Everything is so topsy-turvy in my mind. The rhododendron are blooming and the peach trees but the plum trees finished a while ago and so did the cherries. Everything seems like a muddle. Its beautiful and its so fresh and I'm utterly grateful in this alien place, but it is alien. 

I had a couple of really filling connections with girlfriends right before A left town and that is carrying me. I may be stressed out and tired but I am not alone and I am loved.  I am also glad that it is only 4 days. Bit sized business trips help. But why, why, why do the kids always get sick when he leaves? Stress? Heartbreak? Sheesh. So frustrating. 

We are going to meet him downstate in Bakersfield and then drive over and see the incredible, historic superbloom happening on the desert floor in Death Valley. Never been there, and stoked to see botanical history. Botanical history + My Man = Life Saved.