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.

Reggae Monday

The morning after a holiday always falls into a kind of Mommy-hangover zone. Today dawned all manic, and stressful, low on coffee and full of whining and missed targets and other good times. So we blundered on into the week, practically dizzy before it all began. Time for a little silliness, a little extra pep...

And thus Reggae Monday was invented; a cure for all ills.
It goes like this: Lockbox and I drink smooth, Jamaican coffee with extra cream, we cube mango flesh for the baby and laugh watching him eat it out of a little plastic dish, we laugh....a lot, we listen to Bob Marley and Michael Franti on Pandora and dance wildly in the kitchen and leftover Easter egg dye turns into spontaneous clothing dye projects. Then periodically all Mommy communication lapses into Reggae-speak thusly:

"Hey mon! Pick up de shoes. You gotta put 'em on de rack, yo!"

"Every one of de bikes bess be off the grass in five minutes mon! No kidding!"

"Wow! So many Legos in de box now! You boys be jammin'!"

And there is more laughing. By lunchtime we were standing around seriously discussing getting one single dreadlock each. Maybe in mermaid colors? Little seashells embedded in the strand? Will it be Reggae Monday every week? Stay tuned. 

Music Cleaning

Happy Poetry Friday!

Today I am feeling too drifty and loose-endsy to take the time to link up with the other contributors. I'm having my own private poetry event here in a quiet corner of my blog. Sometimes introvert half-bloods have to have a little space.

I'm craving music in my life. I miss my high school days with the endless radio background soundtrack, listening to our favorites with the windows open and the dashboard buzzing with bass reverb. I love the rippling, cathartic, tumble of perfectly reciting lyrics and vocal twitches and guitar solos in unison with my favorite artists at top volume. I love the way certain songs make me feel and I love the way certain feelings are mirrored up in front of me in a heart-squeezing, soaring chorus line. Time to burn some cds.

I listen to Spotify and Pandora but my oh-so-portable little iPhone doesn't bloom out in lush volume quite like a regular set of speakers. So, I bought myself a cheap cherry-red cd player for the kitchen and now, I'm going to burn myself a row of mix cds to pop in during dishwasher loading time. My boys are gonna learn We Will Rock You like all good red blooded Americans. Come to think of it, this might be the way to light a fire of energy under my new everyone-helps-clear-the-dinner-table rule! Nice.

 I am using my cd project as an excuse to also clear up the teetering piles of old audio cds sitting all over the office desk that I keep hoping will magically go away. Rip time. And then Goodwill will get a gigantic musical present! Freedom is good.

Outmoded 

Spending quiet softly while
The pewter sky smears past
The giant oak sleeping outside
My window.
Tearing songs from mirrored,
Mermaid scales that I decoupage
To a giant cloud blooming into
My collage.
Teetering stacks of crystal
Sail out the door smoothly,
Winking blessings as they leave
My margin.

Music for the Little People

We used to live not far from the campus of Yale University. It was my first brush with something as entirely upper crust as The Ivy Leagues. (there really is ivy in quantity if you wondered) I was cowed and awed and underwhelmed all at once.

This week I took my two oldest boys back for a special big boy outing with Mommy to hear the symphony perform their annual concert for children. It was a beautiful day and we wandered around campus both before and after the show, meandering under a Calder sculpture, jumping a few puddles, and counting gargoyles on the tops of walls.

I feel fond of Yale now. Fond of the oldness and the careful, minute beauty, fond of the importance and yet approachableness of it all. Anyone can wander into The Bieneke Rare Books Library or ancient, hallowed concert hall where we sat above a glowing russet string section and listened to Beethoven. Its all very lovely really and hard to believe this great alma mater of presidents is really also part of own tapestry of life, the place where my first child was born.

The concert was magnificent. Beautiful little dances and pastorals performed with great feeling by very young artists, directed by an apple cheeked, tweed elbowed young man who was an echo of Ru's godfather. The musicians wandered the aisles before the show and let little fingers run up and down their instruments and warmly explained what all the keys and holes did. And the energy in the hall was really vibrant and humming, nearly 1,000 school children all packed shoulder to shoulder in seats, the lower open level all bussed in children from various institutions in the area with their various teachers eagerly flanking their charges and then the great balcony above all homeschooler parents and their little free-spirited young. So amazing to look all around the great room and feel the hum of the eager kids watching and listening for the first note.

My favorite part was when Dee, sitting on my lap for a better view yelped happily and began bouncing when he recognized The Arabian Dance from The Nutcracker. That's my four year old there, recognizing and loving Tchaikovsky! Having my children feel some ownership and kinship in the arts makes me feel so good. The world is their oyster, as it is for any child...if they can wiggle to Tchiakovsky or play under a Calder so much the better. I hope they always feel the freedom to enjoy even the most pretentious appearing forms of beauty and feel that beauty is created for no man...and yet for all.

Summer Coming In

We're into the real stuff now....hot nights when we lie on top of our beds listening to the fan whir away without even untucking the sheets, epic salads for dinner served in our big wooden salad bowl, days that stretch out longer than they have any right to be. Real summer.

Mango lemonade with mint

I have a window-box of fresh herbs on the back porch and its getting a lot of use. I drop snipped bits into our dinner salads, and snip them over all our meats and every glass of whatever we're drinking is better with a sprig of mint, right? I love fresh herb season. Next year I have to remember to make sure cilantro and thyme make it in. (Help me remember that, will you?)

Our corn went from this....

To this!

And here come the tassels...the male parts of the plant!

The corn/lawn experiment, in which I planted corn right in our turf grass and then mulched over the top once there were rows of green leaves..... is going well. I have never grown corn. My parents always did when I was growing up, but I've never done it myself. Fun to have the space and the sun. My dad always planted our corn when I was a kid, it was his special garden project, he pounded in stakes with taut string between to be sure of perfectly straight plantings, and then he put in the corn. I remember that we always planted from little paper bags full of seed that we got at the feed-store. Not a feed-store in sight here and I still seem to be managing to pull of my own tiny corn patch! Hooray!

The apples on our apple tree are swelling and starting to show just the barest hint of a blush...still wondering what color they'll end up, how big they'll be and if they'll taste good enough for eating. A few weeks ago I ate a jar of applesauce my aunt made, thinking wistfully that I hoped this fall we'd be eating our own. And apple pies, and dried apple rings and maybe a few apple turnovers for autumn picnics to boot! The boughs are starting to bend downwards with the weight of the fruit which makes me smile.

And the bees are happy about summer. They're buzzing around pollinating our cucumbers and tomatoes, and zooming over the hedge, to yards beyond our range of vision. I have been into the hive a couple of times since introducing the bees to their new digs. They're building beautiful comb and filling it with all kinds of good things, and I am hopeful that they'll find enough fodder in the neighborhood to make sure they are all lardered up for the winter. I have plans to build a small fence, with climbing, flowering vines planted on it, to enclose the area where the hive is, and create a little protected bee yard. We're working on teaching Dee to stay away from the hive but he did recently discover it and is now on closely monitored probation to ensure that he never get out of eye-sight. Time for a little landscaping to solve the problem. I'm thinking a short fence of some kind with honeysuckle on it, and maybe pots of jasmine in the summer to make it really highly scented. Mmmmm!!!! I'd like a barrier like that around my house, wouldn't you?



Closing with this song which is humming in my mind, on perpetual repeat, Sumer Is Icumen In, sometimes also called The Cuckoo Song. Can't remember where I first heard it but I know it was a long time ago and I know rings in my mind merrily and makes me smile. Its a very old song, one of the oldest written songs we have in English, written about 1260 or so....a little ode to "sumer." It says "Summer is a comin' in, loudly sing cuckoo, groweth seed and bloometh meadow and springs the wood anew..." Summer is a pretty timeless affair.

Ren Faire

Best donut holes of my life. Amazingly tender and melty.

 The local Renaissance Faire is gearing up for a final spring weekend before they close up shop until autumn. I'm sharing our recent experience just in case anyone feels inspired to go take a wander through the grounds and see a joust face to face. I had never personally been to a Ren Faire although they are just the sort of places "my sort" of people tend to hang out, the people who like old fashioned things, who like costumes and acting, the sort who love fairs, the sort who make things, the sort who are kind of in love with romance and literature and all things dreamy. Yeah...my people.

 In fact, the reason why we went at all is because an acquaintance mentioned in passing that he thought I ought to know that there was a Renaissance Faire happening nearby this weekend....he told me that it "seemed like my sort of thing." There's a piece of me that bristles somehow at the accusation, but I have to admit he's completely right. It was exactly my sort of thing. 

 I loved all the handmade items for sale, the beautiful ideas, the impressive craftsmanship and the wonderfully hard to find types of objects that only the old fashioned folk would even think of selling or buying. Ah, specialization!

 The boys were wild fans of the live jousting match that we watched, never thought of a Ren Faire as the perfect boy activity before, but I sure will now! And thus inspired, Dee went charging across a field after a poor, surprised grounds maintenance woman, sending about a dozen onlookers into titters. I can't believe I caught a picture. Love his ardent fervor.

 The big boys both got to shoot at very Robin Hood-esque targets with an old fashioned bow and arrow and the kind target practice booth man also gave them a free demo of crossbow shooting which Ru thought was positively dreamy. He's kind of mildly obsessed with medieval weaponry (especially crossbows) thanks to this book which he got for Christmas and has been devouring ever since. Nothing like an unintended living history lesson.

 Lots of wonderful music at the fest too. Fiddle, uke, guitar, and peppy vocals in large doses. Makes me remember how much I love traditional folk music of all kinds and how much I really need to get serious about attending the local contra dances. Why in heavens name have I waited so long?

Oh, wacky Ren Faire people....you're so cool.

Ren Faire....I think I love ya.....

Poetry Friday: Between The Seasons

Happy Poetry Friday!

This photo isn't sunrise (like I wrote about in today's poem) it's sunset but it is April and it captures the warm, glowing feel I'm missing in our current season. Am totally jumping the gun mentally at the moment and living one month hence. Spring, you can not come fast enough...I am so ready.

That said, today's poem comes out of a deep, little corner of my self that knows that all things exist for a reason and all bits of creation have purpose and beauty and innate use, even early March. This afternoon Ru said to me, with this sweet, open face: "Mommy? What are leaches good for?" And then there was a long mommy-pause. Leaches are one of the very few animals that I deeply detest. But I want him to appreciate and value all of creation, not just the glamorous members like the nautilus and the zebra. So, yeah...even the lowly leach has a purpose and a value, and it's good at something...something I have yet to discover. I told Ru we'll head right to Wikepedia when I get the chance and read about them to see what they are good at because I just didn't know. And I will force myself to pay attention to the beauty of the now, even if now is frigid March. What exactly is March good at?

A Missed Interlude

The light had a way of crescendo-ing
April daybreak so that she realized
The dismissed tinkle of last month's
Icicles had been a kind of prelude.



In the meantime, to help the chill weather time pass faster, we have company for the weekend! I will be writerly absent tomorrow and Sunday but will rejoin you all on Monday, tuned up with fresh ideas, inspiration, conversation and laughter. Concentrated time with friends is good for my blog, no two ways about it.

And now, I'm off to make up the guest bed! Hop yourself on over to The Small Noun, a first-time Poetry Friday host, to find other participants, posting their poetic thoughts today.

A Little Finger Pluckin' Warmth

I wish I could play the banjo to my little men but, in lieu of that, on this chilly, blizzardy night (yes, another snowstorm, rolling in) I suggest you all enjoy this video on me. I love the warm cozy house this baby is in...sweet mama with a kerchief and her strings, papa teasing from behind the camera, wood stove and quilts hung over the chairs.What a warm moment to play over and over...

Unpacking Music

I can't get this song out of my head...its my perpetual soundtrack at the moment. I can't imagine hipper music. I would love to do a late, late night jam session with a bunch of acoustic musicians (lots of drummers!) and play this song. Wouldn't that be loads of fun? *sigh*

Picnicking in Earnest

It was one of those idyllic days with perfect weather. Just exactly perfect. 75 degrees, brilliantly sunny, poofs of clouds, blazing blue sky, light breeze, and as many happy children as you can possibly cram into one minivan. Its crazy at our house lately but, its that good kind of crazy that leaves you collapsing into a droopy, smiley puddle at the end of the day.

This is ideal, dreamy summer. We had a picnic lunch today with Penny, my good friend Nutmeg and also Painterly, another good chum and of course our grand tumble of children. Amazing experience really...the kind of thing that happens in books. There was a big pitcher of ice water, lots of fresh fruit, quilts on the grass, multiple hampers of goods, potato chips, chicken salad, fresh garden greens, goldfish in quantity and a bar of chocolate to share all around, not to mention plenty of babies to pass to any open lap.

All this sunshine has my brain desperately hung up on lemon. Somehow, even though they are ripe in winter and cheapest then and freshest then my mind craves the flavor right about now. To go along with the theme I have this song stuck in my head pretty much perpetually these days. Wish I could share Mason Jennings playing it with you but instead you get to hear this happy little ukulele dude cover it.

Dreaming of making a grand and floaty lemon meringue pie in July...and satiating myself by heading downstairs to mix up the dry portion of these for breakfast. I do so love muffins. And lemon poppyseed is my top, all-time favorite...I think. I also really love blueberry. I had lemon poppyseed muffins for the very first time, made from a really exciting Jiffy mix (mixes were verboten in our house) when I was a little girl by my very artistic and glamorous aunt with the corkscrew curls and the face splitting grin. She was an amazing aunt to have in your back pocket. She knew all kinds of fabulous people, collected black beach rocks, told breath-taking stories and loved chocolate intensely. I was somewhat adoring. And she made lemon poppyseed muffins for me and I was smitten and have loved them ever since.

And while we're on the lemon theme...what about this? Doesn't that look like fun? Can just imagine drizzling it over the fresh ravioli I'm going to make with herbs from my garden in July! Yay summer!

Meltdown Music

Yeah, *cough* so, it was just yesterday that I was beaming generously out to the world my recipe for chocolate cake and telling everyone that I was whizzing along so well....heh.

But isn't that the way it works? Cloudbursts yesterday, meltdown today despite the golden morning sunshine. Well, now I've had the meltdown out of the way so lets hope I'm just on my way to normal again and have the bumps out of my system...I know its just part of rolling with the punches and really, really getting the engine humming.

Today, a video link of a new group I've discovered recently thanks to the wonderful magpie skills of my friend Alison. Please enjoy this extremely fabulous German band who do a wonderful collective peppy Elvis impression. I can't stop toe tapping when I play this song. I'm dedicating this to my patient husband who listened to me rave and cry all the way to his work this morning and then hugged and kissed me extra as he got out instead of cold shouldering me for even a minute. You're a gem dear, and you can stand under my umbrella anytime.




XOXOXOXO