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!

Welcome To Orange Blossom Cottage!

Thought I'd give you all an updated peek at our little house, which I have named Orange Blossom Cottage. This is the view, when you roll up and park in the spot out in front of our house as an overnight guest! Please, feel free to imagine....

And then this is looking to the right so you can see the whole little front yard and all the gorgeous roses along the fence. I think our little town is the perfect climate for tea roses and lemon trees. You wouldn't believe how lushly the roses are blooming, with no special care or encouragement beyond a heavy pruning this winter. Someone planted them long ago, the stems are bigger around than my wrist at the ground....and so covered with craggy, old bark that I'm not sure I'd identify them as a rose in a photo. There are pinks and yellows and reds and oranges and they smell wonderful too. I'm so lucky. On the front of the house there is a beautiful bougainvillea that I trimmed waaaaaaaay back with the help of a local landscaping man and arranged to no longer block the front window and instead to coil around the window on a trellis and also over onto the fence that leads to the backyard. This is a big change in yard space for us....this is our only "lawn" area with classic swathes of grass. We mostly have paved space and garden beds in the back. I am astonished by how freeing it is to have such a tiny area to mow. So lovely. Welcome to our cottage....consider booking a room soon!

Of Two Minds

 This was the first year I have ever flown home for the holidays. The airport is a crazy, festive place on Christmas Eve. Wild times, y'all, but hey....home is home. You gotta get back.

Its always a big hugs thing to go back to the place I was raised. I think about it a lot beforehand, marinate in the experience while I am there and then do a lot of post-processing. Its amazing how much all the same stuff is still there and how much I am the same and at the same freaking time, nothing is like it used to be anymore and neither am I.

 I am really wrestling with making my peace with my childhood, where I come from, these hillbilly, disjointedly backwoods parts of who I am and also this city slicker, modern woman life that I live where we have sidewalks and favorite shopping haunts and we wave hello to our friendly city garbage men from the front window. The world I grew up in kind of hates the world I live in now, and vise-versa. Its really schizophrenic to be me after a visit home.

 I love both places and they are both pieces of who I am. I am a culture person, a style person, an art person, a people person and I love my silent retreating into nature and my make-do style with zero salon visits and lots of Laura Ingalls. My sons grew up in the city. I married a guy who was born in Detroit and I learned how to gut chickens when I was a kid. Sometimes I feel out of place here but mostly, I think I've learned how to carve a niche for myself in my current life. Now its just really weird when I go home.

 I love to be there and in many ways, my parents house is my safe-place but so much of what I do now, and know and like is just really odd there. Its hard to feel accepted or understood or free to be myself. Growing up and being different, changing and walking the line between what your parents are and what you once were mingled with who your spouse is, what your children are and what your current self is like is SO tough. I find it hard to be brave, I find it hard to let go, I find it hard to be unashamed about what I like and no longer care for. I want to be comfortable but that's not the same thing as free.

 I love that my parents let me come back and bring my city sons to their house, I love that I have raised boys in the city who aren't afraid of getting dirty and that I have been determined to learn how to feel confident in opera houses and barns by turns. I love who I am becoming and even though its scary and embarrassing and confusing, I love changing and embracing more facets of interest and experience. I hope that home will always be familiar and that I will learn more and more, each year, to be bolder and more freely, warmly myself there. I want to feel like its okay for people I grew up with to be nervous around my obviously urban clothing, but also okay for me to get dirt under my fingernails and laugh too loud, to let go of the need to make it all smooth and easy and simple and allow the uneven weirdness sometimes. Its lumpy and awkward, this becoming. I wish I knew a more graceful way to do it but I don't.

 I am so grateful to my parents for warmly welcoming my family who are so different from them into their life and home, for their willingness to talk about internet companies and buying and selling homes and city Little League activities with us even though these things have little to nothing to do with their lives. I'm also glad that they ask us to stack wood with them and dump out the chicken scraps and sit around and play guitar. I hope these two worlds are always part of my life and the fabric of who I am and even if it never gets easy to be in both places, I hope I get wiser about it and learn how to let go of the fear and shame and awkwardness of my duality. 

I be complicated, y'all. Its tricky and I want that to be okay....even just for my own satisfaction.

Cleaning My Home Sweet Home

 Today was our first day back from Florida with our feet really on the ground. So, we decided to drive back down to the airport after a deep sleep (we got in at 3AM Saturday) and ship A off to California. We are all sad to see him go and are shuffling along towards normal but feeling very strange without him here to shuffle too. In his absence I have decided to CLEAN!

On my way back from the airport I bought a new vaccuum cleaner and then I hit the house like a brace of foxes with their tails tied to torches! I got both full baths done and started the master bedroom. Bedrooms always take longer to spring clean just because of all the linens that need washing. On our bed we have not only the dust ruffle and regular assortment of pillows and sheets but also a pillowtop and double pillows which I always think it smart to wash too. Shezam! Things are smelling fresher...windows have been opened, rubber gloves have been squeaked into and little boys have been pressed into service.

I took pictures for posterity. After I finish a room, as a reward I get to freeze the moment in a photo. These pictures are the most lasting evidence that any cleaning happened. Good thing I am not too attached to results. Have you heard about what it is like to clean a house with kids in it? So true. At least for my house and my kids. Today, I am processing Florida and making spring come by scrubbing and not worrying too much about how long the floor stays free of pee or the sink without spots. 

Florida was divine, as it will be. All sunshine and palm trees and shells on shells on the white, powdery sand. We met new friends, hung out with old and even had a little time with family which is the pinnacle of perfection. 

Am chewing on the things I learned from this trip. 

Lots of little things, and some larger things:

• Winter recovery trips should be to one cabin/cottage AT the beach, no hopping and driving about.
• Paprika is a great spice and deserves more of the limelight.
• So does lime! Its good for so much more than avocados and ice water.
• Nib is not really ready to go on airboat rides to see wild alligators.
• The older two kid are really getting to the point where they have opinions and want input into vacation choices.
• Having a washer is a must in a vacation house.
• Florida has SOOOO much stuff to see! We must go back.

In between thinking fondly of Florida, sorting our shells we brought home, dumping sand out of swimsuits and cleaning madly....I boxed off some time for a walk outdoors with my bevy of scrubbers and shell gatherers.

 

We trotted around the block in only our sweaters, mind you! And admired the melting snow, the empty sidewalks and the feeling of fresh, moist air on our cheeks. And then we found it. The first flower of the spring! Just around the corner from our house there were snowdrops actually out of the ground, blinking whitely at the world. We had a little jumping up and down celebration and then promptly ran back home to make the Very Last Tiny Snowman Of Winter with the remains of the snow in the backyard (our house faces south so the back always holds the snow). 

Spring is slowly creeping along and starting to look like its on its way and my man has promised he'll bring us all some more sunshine when he comes home from California. Power on! Tomorrow I tackle the upstairs floors and take my first big load to Goodwill.

Slow Days

Sometimes I just need a break. Last week was one of those times. I would have warned you all that I was going to take a hiatus if I had known I was about to need one. Life is occasionally quite impromptu and you know, as in life, so in blogging.

The weekend was exciting. Crazy, gorgeous dump of snow, cancelled birthday parties and then a frantic/worried/bizarre day which we spent huddled over our sweet late-guinea pig Jenny. I never could have imagined that it would be possible to be obsessing worriedly for an entire day over the aliveness or deadness of an animal but that's what happened. They are so very small and she was clearly very sick or else dead....we were rather avidly hopeful. Alas, by this morning I could firmly say she was gone and we said our goodbyes including a custom dirge, Nib wrote and sang "Jenny, come back your friend, you are gone away Jenny, poor, poor Jenny, she did die." and a little postmortem portrait tribute from Dee complete with little stick figure legs poking out of her tiny crayoned body.

This morning after we dropped A off at work the boys and I marched bravely to the pet store after praying for a new friend for our remaining, lonely Sarsparilla. It broke my heart this morning to be greeted by silence instead of the usual friend whistles and tweets and find Sarsparilla moping in her little wooden shelter at one end of the cage. We are the proud new owners of a fluffy black and white piggy and I am pleased to tell you that Sarsparilla appears to have taken her in and is already back to making some of her usual noises. We've named the new little fluff ball Chamomile.

Pom has finally pushed through his two, giant from teeth and is the proud owner of opposing ivories. I heard him gritting them together in that horrible, scraping way all babies experiment with just this morning. Heh. I hope his sleep and irritability improve a bit now that he has put the big chompers behind him for a while. Maybe his body will give him a rest for having started a bit early.

Its slow times at our house. Planning the mythical vegetable garden, roasting beef slow and slower in the oven, drinking vats of milky tea, snuggling the baby and forcing the trimmings from the fruit trees in the yard as I slowly hack away at pruning.

Carpe Minutum!

Am feeling a little more in control of my life again at the moment which I realize is probably a passing fancy here, on the brink of The Holidays...but hey! Today I took the kids to their first theatrical production and left the baby for the first time...(He did great, my friend Nutmeg rocks!) and feeling thus emboldened...I decided to paint a little. There are such ugly risers on our stairs...potentially pretty but so scuffed and chipped and splotched with various colors that they are pretty uninspiring. Have been itching to paint them a nice gloss white for ages and ages. Why not now?!? Since dinner is in the crockpot, the kids are asleep and I don't have to dash out again for the afternoon doctor's appointment for another half an hour...I'm all over it. Ha! Feels so good!

Am trying to become an expert at carpe diem and even more realistically in my life carpe minutum...seize the minute. My life is a woven thatch of moments right now and so there are not often whole days but there are always moments. Must read more books and less reflexive facebook checking, must clean one little spot, sort one little box, lay out an outfit for one child and spend less time standing there wondering what I was doing, wishing I had more energy or lying in bed hitting snooze. There is a place in life for letting go and relaxing your mind and your frenetic To Do List but there's also a lot to be said for doing little things here and there to make your life more peaceful and happy and productive. Am ever inspired to do better with what I have....better than most people say I have any right to expect I can be. Thus we achieve...by trying.

Happy Hurricane!

Somehow it is Wednesday already and we are busily clipping towards the weekend which suddenly is inches away! Nothing like having a hurricane over the weekend to make time really fly!

A view down our street.

Hurricane Sandy was mostly, luckily for us, a very exciting story. We heard the most terrific wind I've ever experienced outside our house Monday night but besides a few trees down we have had very little to disrupt our daily function. A was off work and spent some extra time playing at home with us, we did some yard work we meant to catch up on anyhow and we have spent some time yesterday and today calling friends to be sure all our folks are safe and sound. We even miraculously managed to keep our power through the whole storm. I am still shocked that that happened. I carried a candle around with me all evening and went to bed with one on my nightstand, just waiting for the lights to go out but we woke up in the morning with the bedside digital clock blinking merrily at us (there were lots of brown-outs in the night so it went on and off and on and off) but still very much there and alive.

The new ocean-front in our fair city.

We had no major property damage and have been checking to see if anyone we know needs a place to stay or a hot shower but so far people are just toughing it out, waiting to see who will be in it for the long haul.

Halloween festivities have officially been postponed by our mayor to make sure they can get downed wires taken care of before kids take the streets. Still weighing what to do about that personally. Our waterfront was pretty walloped and is quite damaged and flooded I hear but here, one mile in from the shore our own street is pretty sound, we all still have power and the extent of the damage is just trees down in yards. We might check around with neighbors and see if people feel like letting the kids troop around or if we will all wait with the rest of the city. There's some merit to both options. Will see what I find out later today.

Siding off the side of our house that the wind blew down against our front door.

I am off to call and email more friends as I work my way down the list of people I am checking on. Lots of non-answering still...several I am still wondering about and still lots of hot water and food to share if people need the help.

Learning How to Wiggle Our Ears

The giant maple tree in our side yard is fruiting out giant, slightly yellowed oyster mushrooms in a ruffled column high up on the trunk. We're finally getting a bunch of them after all summer without any luck, although unfortunately the tiny, rounded beetles that love oysters as well as I do did not go on vacation to Hawaii and so they are having themselves a buffet without so much as a by-your-leave. I wish I'd gotten a few of them too while they were still fresh and tender but I don't begrudge them their fair share of toughened, shoe-leather stage fungi. Nature is a beautiful thing, a little something for everyone.

The boys and I are watching a little How It's Made today. A fun rainy day indulgence. There are certain things I feel sludgy about my boys wading into for mindless entertainment (video games....argh!!!!) but I don't feel so terribly bad about this show. For one thing I also enjoy it so its more of a group activity and we stop it all the time to clarify points, quickly google rabbit trail questions (unschooling!) and add our comments which keeps it from getting too mind numbing. Today's clever piece of knowledge from the most recent episode:

Mainstream peanut butter contains trans-fats...they're added to make it a nice creamy consistency and be sure no oil rises to the top of the jar. "Natural peanut butter" is just peanut butter without trans-fats dumped in....and sometimes without sugar or salt.

I had no idea!

In other news...Ru has learned how to wiggle his ears! We're still working on tying his own shoes, reading smoothly, blowing bubbles from bubble gum and whistling but really, why get humdrum about life skills?!? He can learn those things later....when all the other chumps who never did learn how to wiggle their ears properly are trying to make up time. He's slightly magical really. I've asked him to give me ear wiggling lessons but apparently its a very subtle and mysterious art. He has yet to figure out how to explain what in the world he does to make them flap. Truth is, apparently..... he's not really sure. He says, "I just move my ear bones!" Duh.

Little Pom is grabbing things these days which is such a pleasing stage, so self-satisfied. He gloms onto handfuls of my hair, wads of clothing, things I'm trying to eat, ear bud cords, receipts and whatever else comes between his two grabbers. I think he loves the new power. Nothing like the ability to start controlling your own destiny...even if it starts in small territories like The Things One Chews On.