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!

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?

Autumn, Right Here.

I have in my mind this brilliant idea for an art project/home decoration/science creation. I want to make a large, watercolor wheel of seasons that will go on my wall....but instead of the traditional seasonal markers I will fill it all out with the wild things that make up the seasons here in Northern California. I have fallen in an Alice In Wonderland  world full of topsy turvy references which are vaguely familiar but all seem a bit jumbled, stirred with a hearty dose of unusual occurrences that I have never experienced. Its a new outdoors, a new science and a new sense of place. I am wildly curious and astonished and excited and aghast that I still hear, EVERYWHERE from cynical locals, "Bummer about not having seasons anymore now that you moved here, eh?" Seasons are everywhere. Traditional is only some places.

For instance, here are some of the things which will go in my Autumn slice of the wheel:

Autumn In NoCal Means.....

• Monarch butterflies drifting through traffic
• Blush of color on the sweet gum, pepper, ginko and crepe myrtle trees.
• Ripe persimmons in my garden
• Figs area ready to eat in every corner lot
• Wild mushroom hunting time in the hills!
• Twilight mating season walks for tarantulas
• Planting the winter veggie garden
• Monsoon season begins
• The prickly pear cactus fruits
• Crab fishing season! 
• Meteor shower time, head to the hills for spectacular shows
• Waterfalls re-appear...time for all the hikes along rivers.
• Napa is hung with astounding grapes of all varieties and colors
• Gold Rush Days in Sacramento (we'll make it next year!)
• Dia De Los Muertos celebrations throughout the area
• Olive harvest and oil pressing
• Elk mating season
• Bird migrations....some are spectacular (wild cranes for instance)

Did I miss any? Let me know your favorite things about Autumn in The Bay. I wanna notice all the stuff.

Rain And Friendship

 The rainy season is winding down now, just a month or so less of this cooler time of year and I can already tell it is warming up. The flowers are starting to open here and there and the back yard edges are a riot of green weeds. I don't know what anything is because I am in such an unfamiliar world out here so every little lime green vine or fistfull of invasive plant material looks promising and exotic to me. This spring will be a wild bashing bar-fight of a gardening season. I am not pulling much of anything out and I am so excited to put my garden in that I am sure to follow my usual plan of putting more in the ground than is practical or diplomatic. It will be a wild, chaotic mess of growing and choking and overgrowing and learning. I'm so excited about it all. Here's to the weeds and the learning and the hilarious errors and the brilliance of knowing more about what in the world grows here.

 I am so excited about making friends. This is my current project for the month. I am pushing myself to make dates with people, to reply to emails, to set up playdates (how I hate the term!) for the kids and to go out on the weekends for little lady getaways in the evenings. I am hungry for the connections, the roots, the deeply tapped lines that pull us in when things are dicey and send up their macrame'd message of security and belonging and sense-of-self and sense-of-other. The boys are easy to tip into melancholic and self-pitying wallows about nobody liking them and how they've never had friends. We need to belong and to have "folks," we're all hungry for being missed and having people light up when they see up and for knowing there are people who we have to update about the latest exciting happenings in our day to day. Its a weird feeling to have a lot of people you can small talk with at anytime but no real spot for letting your hair down, talking deep or hearing true vulnerability with others.

 I am so glad I have family during this transition and that I have technology. I need to rely less on Facebook (refresh refresh refresh refresh) and more on my own energy to call people on the phone, actual letters and building the real relationships in brick and mortar here. I slide into the Internet when I feel lonely. I think it feels like a safe place to hide and it is a place where I can find people and connection. That's not all bad, its just that I use it for a shield instead of as a break or a spring-board. I have been eyeing up a women's book study and am not really connected enough to any church yet to find  a group to connect to but I decided to just order the book and try to bootstrap a group based on who I know right now. When you can't beat 'em, lead 'em! That's my technique this time. Never really tried anything like that before. We'll see how it goes.

Starting Over: 2016

Its January, and although I am a little late to my usual party, I am finally in full-on clean slate mode. Tomorrow I am beginning a Whole 30 food commitment which will take me off of all sugars except for fruit for 30 days. Time for clean eating. Giving up coffee will also be in the plan (time for some dandelion root tea!) as will adding in some things I have been dropping out of my life in a spotty kind of way: meditation and listening prayer, yoga, drinking my daily allotment of water and getting my workout in, fitting in Special Time with my kids and getting up early before the family. Its time to polish my boots and get back in gear. My brain is foggy, my waistline is pudgy, my motivation is gone and I am itching to get back at it.

Dear January, here in California you are bringing me the first flowers, fresh lemons off the tree outside my kitchen door and a blessed lack of snow. I do need to book a skiing weekend to satisfy A and the boys who have a yen for cold and downhill thrills that won't be satisfied by any number of lemons or palm trees. I will do it though. I will also plan a night away by myself in the coming months and I will hunt up a friend who will go horseback riding with me nearby. This is a new year and it is time to start putting things to rights.

Today I worked on the garage (sorting through boxes, flattening empty cardboard and filling the van for a Goodwill run). The boys helped me pull about a third of the garage out into the driveway and work on categorizing it a bit. When it began to sprinkle (rainy season!) and we ran around shoving all the things back into the garage, there was decidedly less heaped up! So exciting and hopeful. I am looking forward to the Craigslist postings going up for selling larger items, the mopping of the big concrete floor and the set-up and general assembly of the little guest cottage and art studio that I am dreaming of.

It is fun to start over. But, wow...I need to get my body re-booted again so that I have the clean energy to do it all!