Trying for Stable

Am home and it feels good. A bit overwhelming but good. I spent yesterday soaking in the company of a few friends after stocking up on local raw milk and good fresh eggs from a farmer friend. Family is good but they fill a different tank than my mommy-friend community. It was nice to be back. Had a lot of good discussion, shared some laughs and let our children run wild together in one big squirming heap in the wading pool in front of us.

After the visiting I promptly went home and had a great big panic about the state of the practical things in my home. I washed the dishes before leaving and did all the laundry but there are still 4,000 things that suddenly need doing. How does that happen?!? The tomatoes need tying up, the cucumbers are in desperate need of harvesting, the front of our house looks abandoned for want of string-trimming, there are clothes to sort and put away after all that laundry, suitcases to unpack, a fridge that needs cleaning etc. etc. etc. I am not sure if I feel more inspired and ultra-motivated or overwhelmed and snowed under. Tough to decide sometimes.

I am trying to take today and get my feet under me, make some parts of my home pretty again and begin an organization/sanity restoring plan. There is never time enough to get every little thing in my life in order but I am determined to do the very best I at making productive stabs in the windows of time I get. Life is so punctuated by nursing breaks and potty visits and diaper changes and naps these days that I find it very hard to work on anything very cohesively. I live a pixelated existence with any number of fragmented, mosaic-style goals on my current plate.

Am trying to be in the moment, live easily, speak love and also work ambitiously towards creating the kind of life I mean to live. "Let the standards slip only when you must!" I tell myself, "But never cheapen the standards to make them weak or anemic just because life is full of challenge." Its a tall order but its the path I'm on right now.  I lit a candle, I made a nice To Do List, and I'm hacking away over here. If you feel like bringing an understanding spirit, a load of inspiration and a giant mint-iced tea...feel free to drop by!

The Not-So-Scary Relatives

My in-laws came and they went. I didn't keel right over from anticipation stress and the visit went very well. I'm not sure exactly why but I sure am able to make a whole lot of panic out of a friendly visit. I'm so intimidated by other people sometimes, so scared of sharing my space (lest it be sneered at), so afraid of criticism and so unsure of my ability to get "included." I think a lot of it stems from not being a very strong feeling person inside, I'm not confident in my ability to hold my own, impress, blow away the competition or be what I am supposed to be.

A's parents, in the flesh.

It was just a little weekend visit, they flew all the way out from the Midwest, just to spend the weekend with us, belnieve it or not. On that weekend visit they sent A and I on a highly relaxing overnight with no kids (Oh, baby-free, king-sized, sleep-number-bed...you were heaven!), they re-stocked our kids with books, brought us sheet-music for children's songs, did all the laundry in the house, ironed anything within a 1 mile radius, took all our trash out, shined our every dish, treated us to pizza, and even maaged to hang a curtain for me on the sly that I had been battling with.... What exactly was I so scared of? I sometimes wish I was less of a ridiculously cagey bird and more placidly trusting and smoothly optimistic. But yeah, I'm still me.
 Image via Wikipedia

So, now that they're gone and all is well after all, I'm handing out the homemade cookies my mother-in-law whipped up for snack time and we're all reciting the lines from, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (which we can now recite in chorus thanks to Grandpa's astounding patience with "one more time" requests from Ru.) I feel soundly on my feet, heading into the holidays with my cap tightened down and my kitchen counters shining. I am determined to manufacture more goodwill for my fellow man, more cookies for the Christmas tins and as much good cheer as can be reasonably obtained. Morning sickness be darned!

Afterglow

Our dining room, here in our rehab-project colonial is in exactly the right spot to receive somewhat mystical evening sunshine, exactly as dinner is being served. It's a wonderful thing, as thought some thoughtful someone has zoomed in on your table and is spotlighting each dish as you serve it. Makes me look forward to cooking, and have a boost of energy and goodwill on nights when I drag myself to the kitchen.

In other news, we are back home from our family reunion with A's extended relations in Yellowstone National Park, and our family is one pair of cowboy boots richer. Ru and Dee picked them out together since they'll be hand-me-down treasures after our biggest boy is done wearing them. Was secretly very pleased that they wanted the viney stiching ones. :)

The trip was one of our personal best as a nuclear family, only one small interpersonal melt-down which was pretty briskly mended and overall low stress/high enjoyment. The extended cousiney, relative type interaction was well above par and left everyone with a much fonder regard at the end of it all.

We all were somewhat frantically counting the years until the next big get-together and thinking "Three years??? Too long....how else can we see these people?" You know you have a cool family if???? A has cool family. I feel lucky to be along for the ride. And I do hope that we end up getting at least one round of house guests out of the week together. There is also talk of a wild, bluegrass tour with the rels, sometime in 2013. Am dreaming about that!

Extended Family = Good Memories

Yesterday the boys and I spent the day with my aunt and her two children...baking cookies, playing in the snow, and laughing together. Such fun. I think it's very lucky and also very valuable that my children are growing up so surrounded by such a cloud of warm relations. I hope it slowly sinks in for them that what they have is rare and precious.

 It sure did for me.

Back To The Nest

Its still hotter than blazes and we're back home again. Am fervently praying for a cool September when we will begin life in our new non-a/c home that is practically without insulation and does not come complete with astoundingly maintained pool directly across the parking lot. Blech. There are small perks to the grey, 80's architectured condo life.

But, yes...we're back and in the stage of life wherein we will keep our apartment immaculate for showings, while trying to stay relatively cool and madly packing all we own in preparation for what we hope will be a real genuine move in a maddening number of days. Whew!

Have a helping of vacation photos while I run off to the farm for milk and our vegetable share!

Mmm.....it was a good trip.

Leaving San Fran Behind...

So, when we first arrived (literally the first night), Dee came down with a wretched cold that his big brother generously shared during the plane flight over. We tossed and turned and sat up and back patted and offered sips of water and rubbed our eyes and somehow we made it through the night. There are times when its really nice to be two people parenting and not just one. We just kind of traded off when it got insane and we were wishing for toothpicks to hold our eyes open and between the two of us we both managed to scrape up survival levels of sleep. The next night was the worst (although mercifully Ru has improved more and more and has been sleeping like an angel every night) and then we had one more wretched night at A's maternal relative's home. The great mercy here was that they had us set up in two separate rooms (intended to be kid and parent quarters) but what it actually allowed was for the "off duty" parent to get some quiet, closed door sleep while the other person took a shift. A and I both slept more deeply, even though there were still not really any more hours of shut eye between us. But folks, that was the blush of dawn on the horizon...last night there was no wheezing and many fewer wakings and so much less anguished wailing. Praises be...we felt downright normal in the morning. So, here we sit, preparing to dig into the quilts at a new mom and pop joint and we have every hope of getting decent rest for the second night in a row and ending up positively giddy on the road to Hearst Castle in the morning! *glorious whoops of victory all round*

What else has happened? Well, both A and I were surprised how sane and reasonable San Francisco struck us. New York feels considerably more grubby, fast paced and harried. A even ventured to say that San Fran felt like a "town" to him and although I would personally never go that far, I do have to agree that it doesn't have the staggering metropolis feel that NYC feels swathed in. We're both curious how L.A. will strike us.

Another surprising bit has been the fact that besides San Francsico and of course Los Angeles and San Diego (which we know are looming down the coast ahead of us), California feels like a long and fairly empty state full of wilderness, big trees, empty tracts of land, long winding roads and scattered small towns here and there for punctuation. We can't get over how the dominant conception of the state is materialism, city, urban, glitz and yet the real sum total of the state seems more like wilderness with a couple token cities. I guess, its a little like New York state that way although on a larger scale. New York-staters (I hesitate to write New Yorkers) are always complaining that they are not reasonably represented by New York City. Upstate has so little to do with the rush of Midtown. A and I are have learned that we need to quickly check our cell phone messages and rush to update our directions and mapping plans in the cities and bit towns we pass through because big swathes of the state have no cell coverage of any kind and are quite remote feeling, albeit really beautiful, keeps us on our toes with planning and is taking apart our conceptions and silly constructions.

Right now we're spending the night in Big Sur, one of those big wildnerness areas I mentioned, a redwood scattered, turquoise bathed coast with giant black rocks sticking out of the sea cliffs where our path, Highway 1 winds on and on. We both find it curious that the west and east coasts have a Hwy.1 that runs the length of the shore! We never noticed before. We're starting to toss around the idea of reproducing our idea here on the Altantic Coast just for kicks. A nine day drive from our home in Connecticut (or better yet from the top of Maine!) all the way down to Florida's tippy toe. Sounds like fun, no? Sounds like even more fun, knowing that someday I will be un-pregnant and that this imaginary trip might very well fall in that space in time.

(putting my puffy ankles up on the dash as we cross the Golden Gate Bridge)

The shine, I'm afraid, has worn off. I'm good and ready to have my body back. I think this week was the first time I've started to really feel like, "Okay, all this other stuff is all well and good but, I think when we get home...job number one needs to be Baby." I'm ready to be done. I can't wait to feel comfortable again, I can't wait to lie on my own stomach, I can't wait to just be alone in my own skin, call me an introvert...I'm ready for some personal space. I am also of course so excited to meet the baby and very interested in getting home and having a little time to get organized before the actually make an entrance etc. etc. BUT...but but but....I'm up for the next stage. Its time to be un-pregnant good and soon folks and that's the way it ought to be right about now.

So, that's the scoop at the moment, friends...life is good, California is different but different/good and we're about halfway down the state, squiggling our way towards my warren of maternal cousins in Orange County.

And one more thing...(how crazy is this bit of familial info that A and I just put together)....we both have, Aunt Nancys...who live in California, are teachers by profession and had sons named Matt. What are the odds, people? Nuts. Life is just wild.

So, goodnight California, quirks and wackiness and double-takes galore...we're glad we're here and we'll see more of you in the morning.