Robotic Friend

It was a rough night last night. Too hot to sleep and punctuated by 5,000 child-nightmares so I was bushed and way too grouchy all morning. At naptime I laid down and had a small catch-up and when I came back downstairs Dee showed me what he had been quietly working on with paper, markers and a roll of masking tape.
"He's a sort of friend-robot, Mommy....not really a working kind or a helping kind. He's just a friend."

Art Resurgence

I have come full-circle in my artistic endeavors.This past fall I left my art fellowship group where I was painting weekly to attend a homeschool co-op with my boys, devote myself more thoroughly to the forming of curricula and schedules and the role of teacher. I thought I'd figure something out artistically, I thought maybe I could self-power, I thought maybe homeschooling was suddenly going to be overwhelming and exhausting. Sometimes things aren't quite as we think.

Turns out, homeschooling this year was pretty similar to last year. 1st grade is basically like quality preschool (lots of open-ended play, outdoor exploration, lots of fabulous read-alouding, family art projects and lots of rabbit traily "looking things up" at random) with the addition of beginning reading and math instruction. So, A took math...and all that was really new in our life was teaching reading. I decided I could hack it after all...and maybe I didn't HAVE to be part of a co-op but could more generally depend on a homeschool social circle for interesting events whenever we felt like it.

And as for my free-lance art motivation...heh. Its takes a village y'all. I found that I meant to get around to painting, I meant to finish pieces, I meant to replenish my supplies but what really happened was that I painted two pieces all year...and mostly I did nothing and a small piece of me withered inside.

I quit the co-op. We will be part of the homeschool group and join them for Field Trip Fridays and park outings and all the usual birthday parties and holiday celebrations instead. And I re-joined my art group. I am re-committing to taking that little bit of time away, without the kids, devoted to growth and skill development, and especially ear marked for creative expression. I need the excuse of regular time built into my life, a babysitter downstairs to keep the little ones out of my hair and the physical presence of other artists around me fact-checking and evaluating my efforts. So, here's to growth and art and finally finishing this painting that I worked on for most of the school year and just finally completed.

Creativity Stew

Been thinking about ways to get creative, getting a jump on Christmas presents and the idea of making things again together with the boys as a part of our school time this fall. All that to say...I have a bunch of fabulosity to unload out of my brain tonight before I go to sleep.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Drink it in, Friends..."The world is so full of a number of things..."

These might be a good way to deal with our burgeoning feather collection, and my own insatiable desire to pick up and haul home any pretty feathers we find. Feathers as useful gift. Genius. And how much fun would the boys have, color dipping them?
Oodles.

Image via Wikipedia

Fresh Ricotta. I think it has my number. I have been listening to a lot of The Splendid Table. I hear all the past shows as podcasts while I drive Aaron to work and he does math with Ru in the backseat and the little boys listen or look at books. So inspiring! Seriously, I wish all of you could start every day with a huge infusion of culinary brilliance like that. I drive back to the house salivating and full of ideas, fresh ricotta is my latest yen. I especially like the list on the right hand side of that link with ideas for how to use ricotta. I feel like lasagna and cannoli is it for my own personal exposure to the cheese. And then, when I have made my own fresh ricotta...I will make this with it. *slobber slobber slobber*

Image by Rooey202 via Flickr

Maybe I had too much Tasha Tudor in my life but I always kind of fancy the romance of animal versions of our human holidays. (Tasha always talks about The Animals Christmas for example) I have this fluttery fantasy of making these little ornaments on a Valentine's Day afternoon with the boys to hang outside our windows for the birds, so that they feel their own little bit of love. I had no idea Knox gelatin was the key to those bird seed cluster thingies, by the way.

Am looking around this old house at the dated bits and wondering what hardware I could update in an hour like these clever diy bloggers did. Oil rubbed bronze spray paint, here I come!

Image by alsokaizen via Flickr

I was recently given a little wooden, windowseat style storage bench (Yay!!!) which I put in the boys room but turns out they don't use it...I thought they'd plop there with story books  but no such luck. They want cozy seating for storytime...so they head to the office loveseat or even their beds and leave the bench all bare. I have new plans to paint the bench a grown-up color (its all bright primary colors right now) and move it downstairs to the entryway (Convenient shoe donning spot and secret mitten storage location all-in-one? Yes please!) but moving the bench means I again have no home for the out of season or back-up blankets, quilts and flannel sheets. I have been plotting some rolling underbed storage beneath the boys bunks, imagining high glamour in the form of plastic Rubbermaid products but check this out, Holmes! Is that not hot? Am now keeping my eyes peeled for loner dresser drawers.

Image by adwriter via Flickr

And finally, in closing. I can't think of a single, blessed reason why it would be useful or appropriate or helpful for me to make these cookies. Oh, but I want to! Aren't they beautiful? Indian dinner party anyone?

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Poetry Friday: A Poem About Inner Workings

 I am often asked how and sometimes why I do so much ("with three kids", they say incredulously!) besides just the laundry and the vacuuming...how is fuzzy...it's helter skelter, it's sometimes messy, it's creativity and prioritization and a million little invented systems to make it all work...but, why?

That's the poem for today.

Machinery Maintenance
I create, to keep my shiny, inner gears twirling.
The wild smudge of cyan on my brush tip
Is antidote to the angsty smear in my mind.
All these poems and paintings and frittatas
 I throw them tumbling madly from:
My hands, my soul, my brain, my very self.
If I stopped, I'm afraid the works would gum.
I would hate to see my interior hum,
Grind to a slow, pained, sticky glugg
The psychologist would put his ear
To my chest and furrow his brow
"Hmm...I'd say she's stalled. Still living,
But just kind of frozeny-glued up inside.
We see it all the time with these mothers.
I wouldn't worry.
She's good for another 40 years!"

To see other Poetry Friday participants in action, visit: The Poem Farm

Art Peek

So, have I ever told you all how very, very important I think it is for mommies to have alone time, time with good friends, time with people who inspire, time to create something of beauty, time away from their dear little ones. Of course, there's nothing so very particular to mommyhood that means a given woman or human being for that matter, needs these things except for the fact that motherhood somehow carries with it the suggestion of martyrdom. A good mommy is a doormat for her husband her children...she pushes her needs deep, deep down to her toes and pours herself out for those she loves. While on some level this does just happen, and on some level its even good and to be admired and suggested....on another level it is kind of sick and insidious. And I assert that mommies who are having these deep human needs for specific kinds of "time" in their lives are able to be better mommies for it.

As you all know, my own personal time at the moment is my art group that I'm painting with once a week. I cannot even tell you how helpful, wholesome, healing, and fabulously empowering this new thing has been for me. Some weeks I feel like the only truly worthwhile thing I got done was painting at my group. That I came away with my soul a few notches fuller and I know that there are countless Tuesdays now when I've left with more stamina, resources and bounce in my step as a mother to boot.

One of my artist friends, a fellow mommy who first invited be to be a part of the art group, recently quipped:

  "I am fortunate, there is no doubt.  I don't have to make money at art right now, yet I have to make art, I simply have to.  I make time to make art.  I think a widespread obsession with raising kids well is not such a bad thing.  However, to raise healthy children it's important NOT to obsess about their every moment; growing up for any person means learning that the universe does not revolve around oneself. I believe it's better for my kids to come along on my adventures than to BE my adventure.  I rather think my children benefit from knowing that I have a creative life that is nearly as much a priority as they are.  It is good for a child, or anyone really, to learn about delayed gratification!  That is why I don't feel guilty for saying, 'Love, I will get you more juice in ten more minutes, once I have gotten this bit just the way I want it.'"

Yes. Yes. Yes. That...is what I mean.

All that to say, find a way to feed your deepest you, even if (or maybe even especially if) you're a mommy. And if you're curious about my group...here's a tiny peek at today.