the creamery

my two shadows

2012-02-14T05:00:00.000-08:00

Is it weird that I haven't posted in a month, and the first thing I put on here is a picture of the two furry beasts that have been following me around for weeks?

We've been literally turning the house upside down, moving the contents of one upstairs room (my little studio space) to the wee little office room downstairs. The room upstairs will be Baby's. With an extra guest bed. And Chip's desk. And some other stuff. Not that it's huge to begin with, but it's a lot of stuff to stick in there.

Did I mention that we also kicked the furry monsters out of the upstairs entirely?

That would explain them finding me as their only real and true friend, their only source of solace, their only human who truly knows what it means to SUFFER AND HAVE TO LIVE IN COMPLETE COMFORT DOWNSTAIRS. (I actually do have a lot of sympathy for them, they used to have complete run of the joint, but were slowly ousted room by room, until finally they woke one morning to find a gate on the bottom step and all the humans peering down at them going NEENER NEENER YOU CAN'T COME UP HERE ANYMORE.... or, that's how I imagine they see it.)

It has to do with Chip's and Alice's allergies.... and this baby, who knows what he's going to bring to the mix in FIVE WEEKS. Five weeks, people.

I'm not really freaking out. Only hoping we get the books out of the hallway by the time I'm in labor.

Oh, and Happy Valentine's Day, if you celebrate that sort of thing. I think we'll be celebrating today by sewing curtains... or something.

snow business

2012-01-20T05:00:00.000-08:00

Arctic cold and it seeps into your bones, drives you indoors and makes it so you don't want to go out. Maybe ever again.

But the weather folks are saying that this is supposed to start to melt and slush sometime today.

Fingers crossed, because I'm not sure I can stand the many clothing changes Alice requires for outdoor adventures.

thirty-eight on me

2012-01-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

It turns out, the longer you stay away, the harder it is to come back. Even a (momentarily) forgotten password.

It turns out, radio silence isn't silent. The clawing static is deafening. At first you think of ways to quiet the din, but later it becomes a type of white noise you shout over, never noticing your rising voice, the hints of hysteria.

It turns out, thirty-eight is a quiet birthday. A birthday blanketed in white snow and ice crystals.

It turns out, even at thirty-eight, that damn chocolate cake is still cursed --- this time it's a double dose of salt. Cake was salvaged.... but ocean-y.

It turns out, that cake is the only thing that makes you curse.

It turns out, you miss this creamy space something fierce. The people in it, especially.

I'll do my thing and you watch your football

2011-12-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

...directly quoting myself from just a few minutes ago.

'Tis the season for much football watching and football discussing and much much much reviewing plays with the DVR and much much much much much attempting to get me interested in the football on the screen. I resist, naturally.

One of my favorite football discussions in our house goes like this----
Whimsy: When is that going to be over?
Chip: There's only ____ minutes (insert number here, could be anything like 9 minutes or 2 minutes or 27 minutes, etc) left in the ____ (quarter, half, game, etc).
Whimsy: Which means that this will be on for another ____ minutes (wherein Whimsy does a quick calculation and multiplies whatever number Chip gives her by FIVE to account for the many inexplicable delays in this even more inexplicable game).

I sound awfully cranky about it, don't I? I'm not really that cranky. It's just the post-Christmas doldrums magnified by Intense Pregnancy Crazy, which is not a pleasant situation. I also counted approximately how many Saturdays we have left before this baby makes his entrance into our world and HOO BOY if I had not already been feeling the nesting insanity then I am surely in the throws of it now.

You know the most shameful Nesting Crazy Thing I forced Chip to do last time around? (this deserves all caps, as you'll see) I ACTUALLY MADE THAT POOR MAN CLEAN THE EDGES OF ALL THE BASEBOARDS WITH TURPENTINE...WITH (wait for it.....) A Q-TIP. True story. When I recalled that tidbit a couple of weeks ago, I laughed until I CRIED. And then I gulped and realized that, at the time, it seemed a very reasonable suggestion (demand) to make in order to clean up any paint or glue splotches left over from installing our hardwood floor. Which means that I am RIPE for some homebrewed CA-RAZY soon.

Stay tuned, I'll see what I can do about seeing through the fog and telling you all about it.

For now, I'm frantically cleaning out closets and inventing new projects for myself that have nothing to do with cleaning. Nice.

Oh, and also: I'm working on a photo for you guys, but a photo requires me to pose in front of a camera and I haven't been doing a lot of that lately. The closest I've come to that is when Alice put every hat she could find on my head, finished off with some fabric bags, called me a birthday cake and then asked me to take a picture of her creation.

For those of you who have been pregnant, what was the craziest thing you did in the throws of THE NESTING?

...Let me also add that today is my mother's birthday, and although this post has NOTHING to do with her or her birthday, I'd like to wish her a very happy one. Filled with lots of cake and ice cream and time to do whatever she wants. I would not recommend cleaning out closets, mom, more along the lines of naps and such. Happy birthday, I love you. I'm nuts and you should be very glad that you're not here with me right now.

introducing Holiday Pregnant Whimsy

2011-12-27T05:00:00.000-08:00

Say hello to (almost post)Holiday Pregnant Whimsy.

Holiday Pregnant Whimsy drops things. On the floor. On the kitchen counter. In the sink. On her small girl-child. On her enlarging belly. On other people's floors and tables and couches.

Holiday Pregnant Whimsy drops dishes, especially heavy casserole dishes as she's putting them away in the lower cabinets, straining for all she's worth while making very attractive grunting noises. Super pleasant!

Holiday Pregnant Whimsy is absent-minded. This is a nice way of saying she forgets. Everything. She forgets where she put her keys, what she agreed to do five minutes ago, and where in heaven's name she put certain Christmas presents.

Holiday Pregnant Whimsy is a mess in the kitchen, specializing in Disastrous Holiday Baked Goods. While making cookies for friends, she adds too much flour to the sugar cookies, resulting in her having to make a double batch. When making Susan cookies, she adds the wrong kind of butter. And while making the Cursed Chocolate Cake, she manages to put in baking powder instead of the required baking soda. A move that, most definitely, makes a HUGE difference to the cake - as it simply bakes to form a quarter-inch tall pancake instead of anything resembling actual fluffy cake. When she and Chip bring it to a dinner party, they insist everyone just call it sheet, instead of sheet cake.

Holiday Pregnant Whimsy writes blog posts, dates them, and then simply doesn't ever press the Publish button. Later Holiday Pregnant Whimsy wonders where those blog posts went and why they aren't up at The Creamery.

Heaven help Holiday Pregnant Whimsy, and you too, if you should run into her.

In other news: how was your Christmas? Ours was smashing, despite myself.

just in time for christmas

2011-12-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

I need your help.

Everything I've ever heard about a child giving up their nap goes like this:
- The child has a hard time sleeping during the day
- The child drives their parent crazy with the NO SLEEPING during the day
which eventually leads to
- The child no longer naps during the day

That is not what is happening at my house.

What is happening at my house is this:
- The child (Alice) sleeps perfectly well during the day
- The child (Alice) takes lovely two-hour naps during the day and I am able to get some stuff done and reset for the late afternoon slog
But...
- The child (Alice) has a HORRIBLE time falling asleep at night
- The child (Alice) drives her parents crazy with the number of times she requests bathroom / water / back scratches / toe nail clippings until an unearthly hour of the night

We've tried everything we could think of to explain what's happening, and the one I keep coming back to is that this weird behavior is her way of giving up her afternoon nap. That if she didn't take that lovely luxurious blissful 2-hour nap during the day, she'd put that sleep into the evening hours instead.

But I'm not 100% on this theory. And quite frankly, I don't want to be right. I want to be WRONG. I want her to do BOTH: sleep well during the day AND the night. Maybe I'm hoping for too much, since she'll be four in March and most of her friends have stopped napping. But tell me what you think, and give me your best advice. And if this really is her way of giving up the nap, how do I still maintain that little bit of daytime peace?

checking in while checked out

2011-12-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

Um. If I could post a mindless bunch of vowels and random consonants, I would. Because my current level of tired is so... off the charts of tired that it can't be measured. It's, like, stratosphere tired. Immobile tired. Can't lift my hands tired.

All these metaphors aren't helping me feel better.

So I'll say that we had a great time with my parents, and Alice ATE THEM UP. I don't think she stopped talking even once. That's six days of straight talking, folks.

Now I'm trying to find the energy and motivation to finish off the Christmas prep, including mailing off packages. Which, if I don't get that done tomorrow, I'm in trouble.

Whimsy out. But I'll be back - got to clear out the cobwebs.

visiting a famous person

2011-12-08T05:00:00.000-08:00

My parents are flying in this afternoon for a pre-Christmas visit. I don't know if Alice is more excited about Grammy and Grampy coming or Christmas.

A note about the skirt Alice is sporting in this picture: it's her Christmas skirt and you'll be seeing more of it. Plus it's fluffy and sparkly and has red AND pink, so basically I knew she'd love it. And she does. Which is nice for me, because we've hit the age of Let's Assert Our Clothing Independence.

what might have been

2011-12-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

I would have liked to name her Alba. Or Violet (if I could have ever convinced Chip). She would have had the deepest darkest chocolate chip eyes, and glossy chestnut hair to match. She would have idolized her older sister, wearing her shoes and tripping over her hair ribbons. My girls - that's what I would have called them, and each time my heart would have melted to welcome such softness, such femaninity into our home. I would have relived Alice's babyhood, watching another sweet girlchild inhabit Alice's clothes - but with every new dimple and smile, discovered a world of differences between them.

The journey of motherhood has hammered home this lesson: that with every turn of the road, you leave behind another possibility of what you imagine. When you have a boy instead of a girl, when you have a c-section instead of the other, when you bottle feed---- hundreds of little things that close down the What Might Have Been to tell the story of What Is.

This is not to say that I am sorry for anything that has happened to give us this moment. Every small detail of our lives is how it should be - and for how it's going to be, I'm willing to be surprised.

Black friday, simple and belated

2011-11-25T12:24:00.000-08:00

More of an explanation later, but our Black.Friday was short and leisurely. A family affair. How was yours?

Belated and trunkated black friday 8:18am

2011-11-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

A different sort of Black Friday Assault, revised and shortened because our next door neighbor's place was burgalerized yesterday.

More later.

with more spelling mistakes, if you're lucky.

third thankful post and i think this is officially a creamery tradition

2011-11-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

This year I am thankful for:

My body with it's ability to heal, grow, change, move and hold this new baby in it and speaking of this baby - yes: this Polly baby who has snuck into our lives and consciousness in such a way and hardship and trouble (you heard me right) and my parents who have been such an amazing support and Grammy Dawn and my sister and the little brother and Coach Curtis and all that these siblings have taught me and music that gets me through the hard days and the easy days alike and silly Alice and sweet Alice and spunky Alice and creative Alice and quiet Alice and sleepy Alice and even cranky Alice because it's always just Alice and she was the baby that made me a mother and I love this life with all it's quirks and problems and lovely little bright gifts that have come because of this Alice creature and computers and Fergus and Phoebe with all their nonsense and Chip Chip Chip who is my very best friend in the world - even so much more than I ever thought possible and The Last Homely House and dear Texas Alicia and meeting lovely Kate in that birthing class so long ago and scraped knees and bumped heads and good movies and sewing and fantastic fabric and artists who create that fabric and my lovely computer and Matt and the beautiful time we were able to spend with his family this summer (so very special) and Buddy with all that he had to teach me in such a short time and stretching and naps in the middle of the day and teeny tiny baby onesies waiting for an occupant and Amanda and chocolate and warm sweet milk with a splash of vanilla and good medicine and fresh squeezed orange juice and Chip's hash browns and being in touch with my sweet old friends: Stacie and Chad and Karen and Sharon and Samia and the friends I have here in my life who forgive my mistakes and do their best to understand me and the faith I have in God and my church and the opportunity I have to work with small children and our preschool co-op and chalk and a large driveway and emails from friends that make me smile and Kathleen and Harry Potter (sounds like a personal friend) and while we're at it: JRR Tolkien and let's just say great writers who inspire and dream and ice cold water and modern electronics and Fergus' stripes and central heating and a warm jacket and seeing Alice in her sparkly purple Converse and the opportunity I have to be home with Alice every day and employment and my dear friend and boss John and potty training (so glad it's OVER) and the dearest of dearest Minions who comment here and visit at The Creamery--- you've become my friend-friends even if I've never met most of you (and normally I would then list each of your names because you really ARE friend-friends and one should mention friend-friends by name, but quite frankly this year I'm worried that I might miss a few of you because the pregnancy memory loss has hit hard 'round here and I'd hate to miss any of you because then feelings would be hurt so can I just say that I am grateful for YOU and you'd know that I'm talking directly to YOU?) and caramel Rice Krispie treats and while we're at it chocolate susan cookies and delicious chocolate Texas sheet cake and oh so many delectable pieces of sugary yumminess and peaches (can you tell I'm pregnant?) and seasons that change and rain even when it's falling like there's no tomorrow and the smallest things, I guess that's what this year has come down to: the smallest things that give me faith for tomorrow--- small things that make this world spin. I'm giving thanks for all these small things, and more.

where I've been

2011-11-23T05:00:00.000-08:00

In bed.
At home.
In the living room, watching mindless television.
Attempting sleep.
To the doctor.
To the pharmacy.
In Alice's room at her bedside.
Trying to help her cope.
Wiping lots and lots and lots (and lots) of bogies.
Sitting on the floor with Alice on my lap as she takes in a breathing treatment.
Reading books to a sick girl.
Stumbling around the house like a zombie.
Blowing, blowing, blowing my nose.
In silence, ears blocked.
Coughing until my ribs ache.
Climbing the walls.
In a sleep-deprived glaze.
Watching Chip sacrifice time and energy and much-needed shut eye for his family (bless that man).

And finally, finally, finally---- watching this from the other side, feeling better, feeling hopeful, feeling like I can once again join the living. As is little Alice, while she's a few days behind me, she's sleeping quiet again - and actually sleeping with a depth and comfort that I haven't seen in days and days.

See you tomorrow for The Creamery's annual Thankful post.

how we see things

2011-11-15T09:39:00.000-08:00

Hello. I write to you from the semi-reclined position as Alice stumbles around the living room watching television. We are both sick for the second time in less than a month. I know I sound bitter. I kind of am bitter.

Except, when I think about all that I have to be grateful for this year - and especially at this time of year - I can't be that bitter. I mean, sure, we don't live in a huge rambling house or have every physical creature comfort we'd like to have (I'm looking at YOU, sciatica)---- but I think it's all in how we see things. And when I try to see things as they really are, with the plenty we enjoy and full bellies and a happy Alice and a healthy Polly and I get to have Chip home every night with me, I can't be bitter. Just grateful.

But I am still sick.

Let's see what tomorrow holds.

surviving a food rut

2011-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

Since Chip started his new job, we've all had to make sacrifices and improve our game, so to speak. Before, with him traveling four or five days out of seven, Alice and I could easily eat cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with nary a complaint between the two of us (we love our cereal). Now my big guy is here, living and sleeping and breathing our air every night of week. And while that is awesome, it has also meant that cereal for dinner is in short supply.

I've come to realize that I feel comfortable cooking about seven different entrees.

And seven different entrees isn't enough to happily satisfy this family, week in and week out.

So here's what I am proposing, my dear Minions: let's help each other, yes? The beauty of my food rut is that it's not your food rut. So I can share my revolving recipes without having you think THIS AGAIN? Which means that you, too, can share two or three recipes that might be on your food rut list and they'll be entirely new to the rest of us. I'm looking for things that are pretty quick, pretty simple, and pretty delicious. A remodeled recipe exchange, hosted here at The Creamery.

I've posted a few of my stand-by's below, the ones that we can eat over and over (and have), but don't require so much work that they're impossible to pull together at 4pm on a Thursday night.

Feel free to use and abuse. And your job, if you don't mind, is to post one or two (or three or four) recipes that YOU love. Either in the comments, or on your blog (comment with a link, pretty please), or even shoot me an email and I'll repost it here.

Please help me.

Our top three dinners at the Whimsy house, in no special order:

Mom's Meatloaf (posted before because it's DEE-LISH-US) - made with either ground turkey or ground beef. Sometimes topped with french fried onions during the last couple minutes of baking. Yum.

The next recipe was originally gleaned from The Little Red House. I adore Sheena - she is simple and delicious herself. Love her. And we LOVE this chicken & salsa dish. It's so easy, she doesn't even have the recipe indexed on her site. So I'm listing our version of it. Usually I'll throw it together mid-morning on a Sunday and we come home from church to a house that smells amazing, and a dinner that doesn't need much more than some extras thrown on the table.

Salsa Chicken
Place three or four frozen chicken breasts into a crockpot set on low. Add one can of black beans (drained), one cup of your favorite salsa, and a few sprinkles of onion salt. Place lid on the crockpot and let cook for at least five hours. When complete, shred the chicken mixture. Serve with chips, sour cream, guacamole OR serve the meat wrapped in tortillas and all the fixings.

And because I can't walk away from the whole breakfast-for-dinner thing entirely, every couple of weeks I put it together, with varying items in the Starring Role. After some testing, our favorites are: this pancake recipe (so much better than the pre-made stuff), this easy waffle recipe, and recently when we're feeling really fancy, this french toast recipe - but I skip doing any of the brulee business and just enjoy the amazing custard-y french toast sans crunchy topping.

necessary introduction

2011-11-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

Let me introduce Pregnant Whimsy.

Pregnant Whimsy forgets things. She hands Chip the remote control and then promptly says WHERE DID I PUT THE REMOTE CONTROL.

Pregnant Whimsy is accident-prone. She locks herself out of the house while Alice is napping inside it.

Pregnant Whimsy is slow. She takes twice as long to complete any task and is mystified that she's so tired at night.

Pregnant Whimsy has cravings. Chocolate. Especially plain Hershey's Kisses. The richer and more milky, the better. Toast, thick with butter. Apples. Mostly Gala, or Honey Crisp if she can get them on sale. Chilled cold in the 'fridge, and sliced. Tall glasses of cold water. Deep bowls of cereal. Milk, warmed until almost hot, with a scoop of sugar and a splash of vanilla.

Pregnant Whimsy might be disgusting. She says might because her husband is particularly appalled by the recent hot-milk addiction, but it's so delicious that she can't be sure that this is a craving she'll later regret when she is no longer pregnant.

Pregnant Whimsy is tired. Wait - Pregnant Whimsy might have already said that. Pregnant Whimsy advises you to see above re: forgetful.

holding on to what's important

2011-11-09T05:00:00.001-08:00

Alice has lately been exclaiming. Her chosen exclamation is this, shouted at the top of her three-and-three-quarter-year-old lungs: OH MY GOODNESS OH MY SOUL.

It makes me laugh.

She makes me laugh alot, except when she is busy exploring her three-and-three-quarter-year-old self and she switches from charming imp to BEASTLY TYRANT.

If you have ever spent vast amounts of time with a three-and-three-quarter-year-old, then you know exactly what I mean. And if you haven't, I'm not sure there is anything I can tell you in preparation except that you should be afraid, be very afraid.

We've been wondering and worrying over it. And every time I let my focus shrink to the size of just my living room, I get really concerned. Because when I'm just looking at my own personal preschooler, the view is nothing less than terrifying. I worry that she is going to be stuck in this impatient, freaked-out, overwrought, tantrummy place forever. That I'll be talking her out from under a table when she's eighteen and her date has just offered to help her with her calculus homework.

A three-and-three-quarter-year-old is vicious rocket fuel and the sweetest clover honey. She is lightening that will arc and burn without regard and then a few seconds later, cool to something so unfathomably wonderful and precious. There are days when the whiplash is so bad, I wonder if I'll ever recover.

When I let my view widen onto the world of three-and-three-quarter-year-olds, I settle down a little. People who know tell me that this is something of a challenging age, and that if we hold on - if we are consistent - if we do our best to teach her to do the right thing and treat people with respect - that she'll pull out of this and become a functioning member of society. Or something like that. What's the equivalent of a four-year-old functioning member of society?

In the meantime, I try to remember OH MY GOODNESS OH MY SOUL as much as I can. Especially when she's absolutely losing her cool because I told her we didn't have any Kix cereal. Or when Chip tells her he can't sing the ABC song in Elmo's voice for the 40th time in a row. Or when it's the end of the world, to a three-and-three-quarter-year-old.

Oh my goodness oh my soul, indeed.

a strange and unexpected call for advice

2011-11-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

I've been wondering lately... about a lot of things.

Like how one talks a three-and-a-half-year-old down from a crying frenzy.
Like if the truth is boys are easier or harder than girls and what exactly that means anyway.
Like what is the magic formula for dealing with these time changes with kids because the change just kicks my TRASH every time.
Like are there any Thanksgiving movies (this one was a point of discussion with Chip yesterday and we couldn't think of any except for the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving cartoon).

Things like that.

And it's not that I'm really truly worried and freaking out about any of the above--- but I'm curious if any of you have any advice or thoughts. Or just general comiseration.

when you know

2011-11-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of women who can tell you that they knew the gender of their baby in advance, knew it so deep down that there was no question, and when they're looking back on that pregnancy the truth becomes something even more concrete, something even truer, like a fact that was made before the baby was even a sliver of thought.

When I think back on my pregnancy with Alice, I feel a little like those women--- making myself into a fortune teller more sure, someone who knew she was destined to have that spark of a girl in her life. Meant to be.

But really, I'm not quite so sure. Now that I've lived and breathed her air for nearly four years, her existence is so concrete, so viable---- the line between what I knew then before Alice's slender white form moved on the ultrasound screen, and what I know now with her here, the who and what and why of her--- everything I thought about her before she came laughing into this world is fuzzy and unfamiliar.

So much has been different with this pregnancy. And the sense of what's to come, the feeling about the baby we were going to inherit, it is even stronger. So strong, in fact, that I've known the gender of this baby long before it came to be---- long before any humming thumps on a heartbeat doppler, and long before a small white form moved across an ultrasound screen. In fact, last November my mom and I were shopping at the thrift store and I fell in love with a tiny one-piece romper that I promptly bought. It was a purchase of faith, really. Knowing that something would be coming our way in some murky blue future - a future I wanted to come to pass even as I feared what it might mean.

And even as I still worry and wonder, as I've worried and wondered since the mysterious two pink lines appeared on a test I was surely taking only as a joke--- things are coming more into focus, and the faith that surged and fired in my heart when I bought that romper is helping me to quiet my worries.

So even though I feel totally unprepared,

I think it's going to fit him just fine.

a brief message from olivia

2011-11-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Olivia says that Halloween was a blast - even with her parents swapping out the dangerous nut-laden candy for Tootsie Rolls.

She would like to know how you fared with your Halloween festivities, and if anyone else's ears tended to flop over their eyes a little bit?

And lastly, she would like to suggest that you tune in to The Creamery tomorrow for a bit of News. Because besides a fabulous Halloween, Monday was also the day when the Whimsy family found out the gender of the little Polly creature. And on Wednesday, Whimsy herself will reveal the findings here, along with various details of personal reactions from Chip and Alice. Would anyone care to hazard a guess for Boy or Girl?

celebrating chip's birthday in three easy steps

2011-10-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

Step 1: A cake of requested frosting color.

(No really - this is what he wanted.)

Step 2: A cake of requested cake color.

(No really really - this is exactly what he wanted.)

Step 3: Enjoy.

rule of life #67: be a pig for halloween at least once

2011-10-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, I do love this girl. Especially when she wears me out.

that I might not ruin her

2011-10-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

It's like that, sometimes: the only thing you can say, the one thing you can hope for with fervent whispers under your breath.

Because to hope that you'll inspire greatness is way too far above the mark - especially when you worry too much, when you push too far, when you try too hard to do and say the be the right thing.

So this is what you're left with: a mantra to just not do it so wrong that any of her inherent wonder is scuttled into nothingness.

A prayer to just avoid a complete implosion of self.

Yes, exactly that, please.

floating

2011-10-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

It's a new bath pasttime for Alice: the creation of flotation devices for her tiny buddies (as the group of them are known).

I've seen a water-skiing Donald.

And a Goofy suspended upside down into the bath: some kind of new preschool water torture? I have no idea what he did wrong.

I think I've taken turns feeling like each one of them in recent weeks.

Where are you right now? On top of your game, or deeply under water?

the art of disappearing

2011-10-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

I think I could write something about it, how to do fade from this space. Though when I try to form complete sentences, things are garbled.

My recent absence wasn't intentional, or even significant. I didn't go on a trip or suffer any losses. It's just life... life happening in gulping doses and I am struggling with the balancing act. It's really not a big deal.

My daily list of To Do's --- nothing ground breaking or even terribly complicated --- have worn down to the most basic items, and my goal is just to see the light at the end of that list.

The coping mechanisms are simple: I do my best to say No when saying Yes would be detrimental, and I stick to that To Do list. Unfortunately, blogging has fallen to the bottom of the list. I think it has something to do with a lack of things to actually say.

a time capsule for the dark days

2011-10-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

I love stumbling through the archives of these pages. Especially when it's been a rough day, a cranky day, a no nap day.

I love coming across reminders of bright spots that happened once upon a time.

These pictures are evidence of one such bright early autumn day - a day last week when all three of us escaped to the park to enjoy the last of Seattle's sunshine.

I made Alice laugh until she spit out a mouthful of Cap'n Crunch.

And after we had talked and whispered and laughed until our stomachs growled, we escaped for dinner on the water.

Watching dogs jump into the chilly waves as they chased water-logged sticks.

Alice and Chip took turns throwing rocks into those same waves.

And I counted myself lucky, so very lucky.

pulse

2011-10-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

I remember the sound of running: the thwack thwack thwack of sneakers on pavement, my breathing working in syncopated measures. I remember listening to passing sounds of lawnmowers, cars, the smack of a storefront door slamming in the distance - and I remember how these noises seemed to fill the spaces of my own running melody until it was a symphony of my own making. And even later, when I'd walk through my front door exhausted and sweaty, the steady beat of that music worked its way into my life: something to live by, to breathe by--- a steady drum tattoo that kept time with the blood pumping through my veins, a rhythm I could call my own.

The rhythm of my life and ways has changed dramatically since those days of solo runs and eating chinese take-out in front of the television.

Those first six months of Life With Alice were so full of stops-and-starts, the search for some kind of drum beat that would work for us took far longer than I ever would have imagined. And in the past three years, the beat itself has had to suffer through the small adjustments that all veteran parents know: teething and sickness and potty training and sleeping in a big-girl bed.

I'm not talking about a schedule. This is not about a schedule. I'm talking about the pulse of our lives, the measure of breaths we take as a collective we, the silent but palpable tick of our family's clock.

A month ago, Chip and I listened to little Polly's heart for the first time. We waited while my doc maneuvered the doppler to first hear the strange sea sounds of my internal workings, and for a breathless few seconds worried when we couldn't find Polly's own beat. But then it was there: a thumping steady badow-badow-badow-badow-badow at 155 beats per second. The sound of it filled our senses with this very new rhythm, one we're already trying to work into the sounds that we know and love, knowing that it's going to change everything come some unknown day in March.

And now, after two months of having him as a daily presence in the house, Chip is going back to work. It's a bittersweet experience for all of us: Alice will miss him something terrible, as will I. And Chip, dear Chip---- I venture to say that he's making the biggest sacrifice of all. I know that the rhythm we know will skip and stutter for a while, that it might suffer mindless abstractions of disruption while we look for new things that will work for us.

A change of routine. A change of sound. A change of method. A change. Lots of changes.

But I think if we try, if we have the faith to keep putting one foot in front of the other, we're going to find the music in it. And it's going to be great.

schooled

2011-09-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

One of the places I've diverged from others: the schooling of Miss Alice. We are seriously considering the pros and cons and wherewithal of homeschooling this small firecracker. There is reading and praying and lots and lots of talking involved. I come to the topic in fits and starts, which is why I have yet to tell you about it much at all.

In the mean time, I've joined a small group of women in a preschool co-op.

We take turns each week, teaching the children.

It was my turn yesterday. The letter B and number 1. Have I mentioned that our preschool is comprised of three boys and Alice?

They all did so well, even though I was terrified.

We sang songs, talked, pretended to be honeybees, ate a snack of Bread and Bananas, and made stripey Bumble B's.

It was kind of awesome.

the best offense

2011-09-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of opinions. Everyone has one (or several).

We do a lot of things that seem to generate opinions from other people.

I'm not sure why they feel the need to share with me.

I've heard about schooling and sickness and deadly nut allergies, bed times and discipline and the spacing of additional children.

In every case I'm citing, the opinions weren't favorable ones. And in most cases, they weren't even kind.

Is there something about my face that welcomes people to tell me that I'm doing it wrong?

I've been wondering about that quite a bit.

So, dear readers, I'm turning to you for advice. What do you do when someone offers an opinion about how you're living your life that you don't like, or even worse, is based on erroneous assumptions that make you want to punch the opinion-offerer in the nose? I'm guessing you don't throw any punches.

strange and mostly about television

2011-09-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Nothing connects these things, it's what happens to my brain these days when not regularly exercised.

- - -

The paci removal project is done and gone, as far as I'm concerned. We're actually able to talk about pacifiers around Alice without her getting upset and weird about it, asking me to get hers back from the store. My feelings about the experiment follow:

1. Having Alice give the paci's to a completely unconnected stranger (aka the clerk at the pet store) was exactly what we needed to do. If it had been Chip or me taking them away, she would have seen us as an enemy. This way, whenever we talked about it afterward, especially when she was asking about where they were and suggesting that maybe we get them back, I was able to say that they were at the store and then discuss her awesome fish. A nice deflection, there.

2. Speaking of the store clerk, it turns out that we gave her a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because as we were leaving, she told us that she'd never had someone pay with pacifiers before and couldn't wait to tell her friends about it.

3. I should have considered more deeply the fact that I would become the Designated Fish Caretaker. I'm curious how many of my goldfish and hamsters that my mom was feeding, caring for, and when I wasn't in the room--- watching? Because the other thing that I wasn't expecting is how mind-numbingly entertaining they are. Or, at least, how one can spend an HOUR in front of the aquarium in slack-jawed awe.

4. They're all still alive, btw. And of course, now that I've said it out loud and now that our two-week warranty is up, I'm expecting a dramatic fishy death any day now.

5. Also, despite my best imaginings, no new baby fish either.

6. One side effect of the paci removal is that Alice is now strangely worried about losing everything. I'm answering this question on a regular basis: Can I keep ___?---- as in, Can I keep my toothbrush? Can I keep my blanket? Can I keep Olivia the Pig?

- - -

I think it's a product of brain calcification that I'm THIS excited for a new season of Super Why to have started on Monday.

On that note:
1. Has Super Why jumped the shark since they added a cuddly talking dog to their group of Super Readers?

2. It would appear that Wonder Red has a new disturbing hip gyration in her rhyming dance. Has anyone else noticed this?

3. And further, either the kid doing the voice for Pig is going through puberty, or they've recast the dude, because: TOTALLY DIFFERENT VOICE.

4. Lastly, I think the writers are actually trying to age Baby Joy - because the baby who was merely crying and laughing and had barely any hair at all for several seasons is now sporting a flowing mane of toddler hair and talking up a storm. It's weird, is what I'm saying.

- - -

Do you think it's weird that Alice runs around the house at 7pm singing WHEEEEEEL --- OF --- FORTUNNNNNNE!!!!!!!!!!!!

- - -

I'm not ashamed to admit that I watched All My Children yesterday, and plan to do so again tomorrow and Friday. It's the last few days of an institution, after all. Plus: Sarah Michelle Gellar talking about vampires!

- - -

I miss milk.

When I'm pregnant I can't consume milk in ANY form without serious consequences. No more needs to be said about the particulars.

But I really do miss milk, especially in the frozen dessert form.

From the bottom to the top

2011-09-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

I write to you from the exotic locale of flat on my back.

The reality of New Pregnancy, Whole New Realm of Pregnancy Symptoms hit a few weeks ago. It started with some twinges of pain at the back of my leg... Thought it might be muscle spasms or something. Then in the days following, it grew and grew until I could barely stand.

Now I have a diagnosis under my belt and a sincere pain in my... Um.

Let's just say, I am looking for any and all suggestions y'all might have to deal with sciatica. I have a prescription for physical therapy-- which I am going to (begrudgingly) pursue, but tell me whatcha got.

navel gazing of the second part

2011-09-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

(I'm not sure what happened, but this entire post was hijacked by EXTREME CAPS LOCK USAGE, and I'm just going to apologize for it here. Carry on.)

As something of a long-time blog reader (I stalked people LONG BEFORE I ever had the guts to introduce myself or put this little old Creamery out on the internets), I consider myself a pretty decent source of truth when I say the following:

BLOGGING CONTENT OF SECOND OR THIRD OR FOURTH (you get the idea) PREGNANCIES IS BORING.

I don't mean any disrespect to any of y'all who are busy blogging about the belly when it's not the first time around - but I know what I know. When it's your first time, there's all this awesome discovery of the heinous and weird and completely unbelievable crap that your body goes through. It's funny. And horrifying. And also strangely touching, in the best way possible.

But those second babies---- well, there isn't a lot said about them. The strange discoveries are done and gone, and while it's still awesome, the being pregnant stuff--- there is clock-watching that just doesn't make for a good blog entry.

Be that as it may, I promise I won't be totally silent over here (if ever - ha!). And I feel bad that I haven't said much more about little Polly. But I get it, I get it in a visceral way that I didn't before: I don't have the same sense of intense focus on this belly that I did with Bean. How could I? Bean herself is doing so much to keep my attention focused outside of myself --- I'm doing a preschool co-op with some friends that starts next week (more on this later), and until very recently I felt like every day that I actually spent upright was a TOTAL WIN, which meant that my personal expectations were down to LET'S CELEBRATE THAT WHIMSY GOT DRESSED TODAY and LET'S TOAST WHIMSY THAT SHE MANAGED TO CLEAN THE BATHROOM. It didn't leave a lot of room for writing navel-gazing missives about my hopes and fears for Baby Whimsy #2.

And now that I'm here, on the other side of First Trimester Sickfest, the intense view of WHAT HAVE I DONE fades into smoke and I'm feeling... optimistic. And even... excited.

Which means that I can say, as if I'm discovering it for the first time:
HOW CAN A SINGLE PERSON PEE THIS MUCH?

through several lenses

2011-09-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

Hello. I am officially reporting from the other side of Operation Paci Removal. It's a surreal view so far, and a little too soon for me to say much about it except that we all survived.

Including the fish (at least so far).

Each of us has some opinions about the fish.

A few of those opinions are shared:

1. The pineapple house is fantastic.

2. The tank needs some greenery (which, after these photos were taken, we went out and bought a small plastic plant that's just perfect).

3. Having fish is strangely entertaining.

4. Their food is smelly.

5. It's really hard to take a good picture of fish.

The rest of our opinions are best represented this way:

According to Alice:

According to Whimsy:

According to Chip:

According to the Fish:

on transitions and change: the view from the pacifier bowl

2011-09-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

It is late Wednesday evening as I write this. I am listening to Alice over the room monitor. Her first night without a pacifier.

So far we have gone in there for trips to the bathroom (notice the plural), to find specific buddies (little Elmo, Grover), to answer questions, to take clothes off a buddie (it is unacceptable that Elmo go to bed in corduroy pants and flannel shirt), and to deliver a tiny book about cats that Alice is convinced she cannot sleep without.

During the last Alice pit stop, Chip decided to stay. He is now hunkered down on her bedroom floor, hoping that his presence will soothe her into dreamland.

I don't think that Alice is the only one who really misses that paci.

- - -

We've been working toward this for months. She hasn't been allowed to use one for more than actual sleep in a year. And in the last six months, we've tapered off her even holding more than one at a time. Meanwhile, I have been thinking hard about what motivates this girl, and after some serious deep thinking, I came up with FISH. Which sounds weird, I know. But she wants a pet, has wanted a pet to call her own for a long while. And she's allergic to anything with hair. So we have fish. And you know, with enough build up and visits to the pet store: fish are EXCITING.

It turns out, according to Alice's parents, fish are also EXPENSIVE. So expensive, in fact, that they can't be bought with money. The pet store will only take paci's as payment.

Two days ago we bought a small fish tank and several fish tank accoutrements to Alice's liking.

And today, we walked into Petsmart, picked out three little colorful fish, and Alice paid for them with a bag full of pacifiers.

- - -

She named them Spoonjab (phonetic spelling), Annie, and Miss Hannigan.

- - -

After getting the trio set up in their new digs, we had a family picnic in Alice's room because she couldn't bear to be away from her new fish.

- - -

The reality of Life Without Paci hit dear Bean as soon as I was done reading her bedtime story. When she asked for a paci, and I reminded her that they'd been left at the store, she sort of just looked. Blinked. And then said, "But I need something for my mouth!"

- - -

I usually resist writing anything when I'm still in the middle of it --- it's like trying to describe the ocean while swimming neck-deep in it. The view obscured to a straight blue line, small bobbing things far off in the distance.

And it's just as true in this instance as in any: I can't tell you what it's like on the other side, only tell you that her pain and frustration and worry is real.

Here's hoping for better nights to come.

How have you handled transitions at your house? How long does it take you or your kids to get used to the change? Have you ever gone back to an old way of doing things because the transition was too hard?

the summer of alice

2011-09-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

In the way of a three-year-old, every day has been a possibility of wonder. While others of us have been preoccupied with questions of future employment and a healthy baby and finances and what in Heaven's name we'll be eating for dinner when the cook feels like she's been peeled off the bottom of a shoe--- sweet Alice has been thinking about play, amassing more treasures for her treasure box (already full-to-the-brim), how many hats she can jam on her head, the sandbox, and new ways to convince her mother that ice cream is an important food group.

I don't ever want to romanticize my life here in this space - there's plenty of that out there on the internets without me joining in, but it's hard not to dip the Alice stories in dreamy gauze.

The other day I was feeling so sick, and so tired--- which of course helped me to take the small step into Complete Self Loathing quite easily. As I lay hopeless on the sofa, a thought struck me that not only was I a horrible housekeeper, a useless wife, and a terrible friend - I had FAILED in my motherly duty of Historian and hadn't taken any pictures of Alice all summer. I tried to think of any single event or funny thing I'd caught on film and my mind went blank.

Imagine my surprise when I checked the camera last night to find several snaps of Alice in Summer Glory.

Sometime in my mid-elementary school years, Winston was laid off. I remember it being early summer, or nearly so. And we had just started to remodel our house. Suddenly Dad was home all the time, and wearing his grubby clothes, carrying a hammer and spending his days building a second story on our house. It's strange what sticks in the memory, I think: how arbitrary our brain is when it chooses to keep one faded image over another. But the truth is, I don't remember being scared or worried or the least bit fazed over dad's unemployment. That summer, the summer of drill bits and two-by-fours - the sawdust in our hair and the smell of fresh-cut wood - was one of the best summers of my life.

I can't imagine that this summer will quite compare for Alice, in scope or depth - to that far-off clutch of months in my childhood, but I can hope that this was at least a sweet one for her.

the story behind the story

2011-09-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

It is incredibly FREEING to have that little secret out in the open. Writing anything for the past couple of months has been so weird - with so much of what I've been experiencing colored by the fact that we're going to have another baby. ANOTHER BABY. I will now tell you some of the other fun details that I left off previously:

1. We found out we were pregnant two days into our GRAND SUMMER FIVE STATE 25-DAY ROAD TRIP EXTRAVAGANZA. There was me, a test I'd just thrown into my bag for kicks, and the funny feeling I had waking up that morning. I figured I'd just take the test... as a test. For the future. Because we'd decided that we were going to get started on Alice's future sibling. In a million years, I wasn't expecting a positive test. Let alone, a test that showed its results not in three minutes, but THREE SECONDS. My first reaction? I laughed. I just couldn't believe it.

And neither could Chip, but this time around, he didn't make me take an additional five tests--- just to make sure, just in case.

2. I have been through every shade of opinion and worry about Alice as Big Sister. She is going to be amazing, I know this. But my worries have been mostly centered on her COMPLETE HORROR over finding me holding another baby. In this case, it was her baby cousin Carter while we were visiting the Little Brother in Utah. Alice howled, just howled - and then literally begged me to give the baby back. I don't think that even early pregnancy symptoms could outweigh the overwhelming desire I had to vomit right there on the spot, feeling like I was betraying this sweet little Bean-girl. But she has been full of surprises - and as we've talked to her about the joys (and the realities) of having a sibling, she has somehow come around. And when we actually told her the other day that she was going to have a baby brother or sister, she was excited. Truly excited.

Let's not discuss the fact that so far she seems to see this future sibling as some kind of a pet--- and has actually asked for a "little cage, like for a hamster, to put him in". Which, also to point out: she has made clear that she will only accept a baby brother. There is no discussion or even glimmer of a possibility of a sister, just brother. So.

3. I'm due March 20.

4. I have been sick and queasy and exhausted for weeks now, but I am feeling the first inklings of Second Trimester Return to Normalcy.

5. And last, but most certainly not least: thank you all for your wonderful well-wishes and sweet notes of confidence. There is a lot more to say about my worries and hopes for this little tadpole baby. And rest assured, I'm going to talk your ear off about all of it. Because dude: BABY. But speaking of which, so far the only name that has stuck, relatively speaking, is Polly. There's this song that Alice loves to listen to from the Bare Naked Ladies' album for kids, called Pollywog in a Bog. And, well... when we saw that first ultrasound, with P's arms wiggling there by his head, it just stuck. And yes, I said HE, even though we have no concrete idea, and won't know until late October, but I have a feeling, and so does Alice...

what if

2011-09-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

What if it turns out to be the most expensive thing we have ever done?

What if we don't have enough money?

What if we are unprepared?

What if I get really sick?

What if Chip gets really sick?

What if I can't do it?

What if everything that's happened, up to this point, is a fluke?

What if it just breaks Alice, like right in half?

What if we fight all the time?

What if there is heart trouble or brain trouble or some kind of physical cataclysm?

What if there is mental trouble or pharmaceuticals or constant doctor's visits?

What if there is heartbreak and sadness, loss and grief of a kind that weights us down until we can't breathe?

What if we unbalance the scales?

What if we break the surface of this beautiful life we've built and it's terrible--- just terrible?

What if we are absolutely miserable?

And what if it works? What if it's a bliss that can't come in any other way than through the tempering strength of pain? What if everything else is true: the misery and worry and heartbreak and destruction--- and what if there, under the surface of all that darkness lies the gift of the life we are meant to have; that in the crucible of this experience, we find something we didn't know we were ever missing?

Are you ready for this ride?

a theme of oatmeal

2011-09-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been eating a lot of it lately. Every morning, in fact: a warm bowl of oatmeal with toast. At first it was because we had a big box of instant packets in the pantry. Wanting to be thrifty, I figured I'd just eat the stuff and save on cereal.

After a while, I developed a taste for it.

Now I've moved on to a big drum of the stuff nestled in the lower cabinet lazy susan.

So oatmeal cookies seemed like the right back to school fall cookie recipe. Karen tells me that it's a new tradition at their house: a new cookie for the new school year.

Before we get to the recipe, I'll tell you that I'm something of an oatmeal cookie aficionado. Picky, even. Not so crunchy as to be crumbly - but not so soft that they bend in half when held in your hand. I like cinnamon in them, and raisins. Which is weird, because I don't normally like anything lumpy in bread or cookies or ice cream (raisins, nuts, candy that doesn't dissolve like skittles or gummy bears - totally unacceptable). But raisins in oatmeal cookies? Yes, yes, and yes.

I also don't like chocolate chips in oatmeal cookies. I have reasons: namely that the chocolate seems to make it not an oatmeal cookie, somehow. But that's neither here nor there, because this recipe has lots and lots of room for interpretation.

But I think that one word is true, no matter what you choose to add or delete: DELICIOUS.

Whimsy's Oatmeal Cookies

2 sticks softened butter (regular butter, not unsalted - and soft, NOT MELTED)
1 1/2 cups packed golden brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large eggs
2 cups regular oats (not quick)
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins

(alternate additions: 1 cup raisins, 1 cup chopped nuts, 1 cup chocolate chips, 1 cup shredded coconut)

Preheat oven to 350. In large bowl of electric mixer, beat butter, brown sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy (about 1 minute). Add eggs and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Add oats, flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt.

Mix on low speed until blended. Add optional ingredients at this time. I always add raisins, and have occasionally also put in the coconut--- pretty delicious. Mix on medium speed until incorporated.

Drop batter by heaping teaspoons 1 1/2 inches apart on baking sheet. Bake for 10-13 minutes or until golden brown. Mine usually take 11 minutes. Cookies will feel soft but will firm up as they cool. Let stand on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to racks to cool. Makes about 45 cookies.

Happy September!

a brief note of explanation

2011-08-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

I am interrupting this week of 'Ber Love for an underlining note about my displeasure with late July/August.

It started when we were on the Epic Summer Trek through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. First there was the obvious discomfort from all that traveling: the constant pressing drag of the unpack / sleep / repack / drive long tedious distances in a car with a three-year-old who has developed the fine art of being entertained by something for exactly three minutes before insisting for sumfing else, sumfing else please. On top of this hot mess was the day leading up to leaving for the trip, which should have been full of laundry and packing. Instead, there was an emergency run to Alice's doctor and the fantastically-timed diagnosis of walking pneumonia (both lungs, y'all). When the doc handed me the prescriptions for the nebulizer treatment and the antibiotic, I should have noticed her shaking hand. Shaking because when I got those prescriptions filled, our bill was in the TRIPLE DIGITS. After insurance. I am convinced, to this day, that that antibiotic was made with melted gold and the nebulizer could only have been manufactured using bits of ACTUAL DIAMONDS, because seriously---DUDE.

By the time we got to my parents' place we were happy to sort of melt into the woodwork. But that was not to be, because we got a call from Amanda who had bad news. She and her six-year-old Zander were looking in on the cats while we were gone, and because of all the time we'd spent doing a doctor visit and having prescriptions filled (paid by SIGNING OVER OUR HOUSE)--- we hadn't had a chance to give Amanda an actual key. To the house. But not to worry! Of course! Brilliant Whimsy just said HERE IS THE GARAGE DOOR CODE! YOU CAN GET IN SO EASILY! NO KEY NEEDED!

Amanda's phone call was along the lines of, Um--- I can't get into your house. I've tried the garage code about five times and it doesn't seem to be working.

And of course, no one has a key to our house. Not a soul.

There was some discussion of overnighting a garage door opener to Amanda, or even the key on Chip's key ring. That option was denied because it was Friday night and nothing was open, and even in the best of circumstances it would have been Monday before she'd get the package - leaving the cats without water and food refilled in six days.

We ended up calling a locksmith, who met Amanda at the house Saturday morning and then proceeded to explain that he would be charging us over $300 to drill through our locks and get inside.

Um.

Chip talked him down to half that and then we just hung up the phone and gulped.

Meanwhile, Amanda watched him drill through our deadbolt, rendering it unusable. She made plans to have her husband come over later to install a new deadbolt. You know, so no one else could get inside the house.

This is a really long story to illustrate something along the lines of how tired we were of those kinds of surprises. But there were several more in store.

Ten minutes inside Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, dear Alice Bean threw up all over the backseat of the car. I didn't know it could come out of a person's nose like that. That one ended in a four-hour detour of washing every article of clothing, fabric, and upholstery in our hotel parking lot.

There was the time that I got sick, also in Moab--- my body had the good taste to wait until very late at night, when Alice was already asleep in our bathroom, of all places. I had the pleasure of attempting to deal with my situation a little more discreetly. Inside the public hotel bathroom, downstairs. AWESOME.

Then there was the small matter of Chip getting laid off when we were only one day from returning home.

A week later, our house presented us with a belated welcome home present: a broken hot water heater.  Replacing it, the only option. The plumber quoted us $1,300. Luckily, our dear friends Kate and Abram came through (yet again) with the far cheaper solution of doing it ourselves--- we bought the water heater, and Abram and Chip spent that Saturday installing it.  We were only out hot water for about 36 hours, which left me feeling immensely grateful for Modern Conveniences and Very Good Friends.

Since then, Chip has found a new job and things have normalized a little--- but we have had to buy a new lawn motor, replace a light fixture, install new shelves in Alice's room, and buy a replacement laptop for Chip.

Then, last night we got locked out of our house. Not because of a broken garage door code - but because of a broken door knob, the one leading from the inside of the garage to the house. Try as we might, we couldn't get it unstuck. We finally got back inside thanks to some masterful window climbing by yours truly (helped by Chip's sturdy back).

Later, standing in line at Home Depot as we purchased a new door knob fixture thingie (technical term), Chip rolled his eyes as I reminded him that August hadn't killed us.

Yet.

Truth is, somewhere inside all this misery is humor. I think it's pretty funny, how everything sort of just happens at once like that. At least in my life, for some reason, the misery is always dumped together in one moldy heap. I think it's that way because it forces me to keep moving through it, to never stop and fully digest one part of it. If I hold on to a single bad thing for too long, it will poison me from the inside out. But the Revolving Door of Misery has this Zen gist to it--- that things come and go, ebb and flow, even in darkness. August didn't kill me. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the cooling days of September have something really great in store.

only the highest quality discussions here today

2011-08-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

I write to you as Chip luxuriates on our bed, watching Big Trouble in Little China. Doing such a thing (me writing as he watches) has me thinking about the August Television Doldrums. Does anyone else feel this way about now? When you don't think you can stand another round of flipping channels just hoping for something interesting, something funny, something even mildly entertaining? When you've exhausted your entire library of DVD's three times over and simply don't want to contemplate how it can be to access something like 100+ television channels and THERE IS STILL NOTHING TO WATCH.

Lately, we've been watching The Great Food Truck Race on the Food Network. It's a bright spot in the late August yuck; as is Project Runway, but in that I'm just speaking for myself. When Chip sees it's on, his eyes roll into the back of his head and it's possible he goes into a walking coma.

But September, dear September brings with it NEW TELEVISION CONTENT. Or, at least the promise of it. Somehow I can stand waiting until the end of the month, just knowing that there will be something new to watch.

Not to say that we live for television, but there is something so necessarily restful about turning on the Box in the evening and just forgetting about the stresses of the day.

So. That's my first Good 'Ber Thing: television. (And that's what you've come to expect from The Creamery: QUALITY CONTENT.) And I think I can say this safely, even for those of you in the outer reaches of Texas and South Dakota (hello Alicia & Tearese!)--- it doesn't matter how hot it is outside, new TV is pretty good.

Now tell me, and let's not be proud: are you looking forward to watching anything in particular this Fall? What about that new thing from the people who did Lost? (And so help me, if you tell me that you simply don't watch television, you are dead to me.)

what to do with August

2011-08-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing: after ten days of blog silence and countless stops and starts in writing, I've figured it out: I hate August. Hate it. There is a long drawn-out yuck to August that marinates my muscles until I can't move without feeling an August squish. And it's gross. Gross, I tell you.

I am sorry to all of you perfectly lovely people who celebrate a birthday in August, or (shockingly) profess to love this late-summer season of languor. I wish I could join in the love, but I'm done being fake about it - I can't love this month, I don't love this month, and I'd like to be done with this month as soon as possible.

To that end, in the next week I am going to tick off the things that I do have to look forward to, once the drawn-out dog-days of AUGUST are behind me. You know what this means? NEW CREAMERY CONTENT. I know, you're shocked. And dubious. Maybe even dubiously shocked, because this is coming from Whimsy, and Whimsy has been on the absent end of blogging lately.

We'll see. This is my call to fall, my love letter to the coolish days of autumn that hold promise even on the very beginning fringes of September (first of my beloved 'Bers). I don't think I could let the 'Bers down by not celebrating their very existence with little blog entries.

Tell me: what things do you want to hear from me? Any special requests? I'm open for requests, even in the lanky lunk of August. Would you like to hear about upcoming sewing projects (I have some planned)? Or how we celebrate September? Or our favorite recipe for pumpkin bread? Let me know, I'll see what I can do.

And because I'd hate to not give August one very well-deserved thank you: this terrible, no-good, uck of a month did give us this: a new job for my beloved Chip. And job that will have him working LOCALLY, as in, home every evening and in bed snuggling with his very lucky wife. Every night. We couldn't be happier or more excited. Thank you so much for all of your well-wishes and prayers, we felt the support and feel abundantly blessed.

from such great heights

2011-08-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

There are things I know, that I've always known: the bliss of a quiet afternoon spent in sun and shade, the comforting presence of a well-loved book, the healing power of a hug, the sweetness that comes when music reaches into your heart to tell you Yes, this is hard, but things are going to be okay.

Somehow, the truth of that last one has the habit of receding like the tide--- pulling so far from my view that I can't hold it in my hands and make it true until it is ready to come back to me, rushing around my ankles and knees in wave after wave until I am surrounded by the solace of beautiful music, buoying my heart and my body. And then I'm floating in it: sweet comfort that only music can give. Music deep and lovely, ethereal and palpable at once.

Such was yesterday's small gift of grace. I worked quietly at my boss' home office--- he was at meetings for most of the morning and I had the run of his house, the walls echoed quietly with papers shuffling until I turned on Pandora and chose my Regina Spektor station, thinking that if nothing else, I'd be entertained. Chip tells me my music choices are so melancholy it's a wonder I don't lay down and die. I like to think of my taste as bittersweet, emphasis on sweet. And Ms. Spektor and her contemporaries didn't disappoint. In fact, they soothed and calmed my irritated soul.

As I poured over invoices and receipts, a feeling of longing crept in--- a longing for more sweet, more sass, more hope, more flippy dresses viewed in late-August light, more blue skies tinged with gray clouds (my favorite kind, you are not surprised), and yes--- more music. I welcome all of that.

where I am

2011-08-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

Where I am is pouring an entire glass of water on Phoebe the cat last week because she was doing a repeat behavior that drives me crazy. There were other options to deter her from her course of action: things like a stern NO, loud clapping of hands, maybe even walking out of the room and just ignoring her for another day. Instead there was me silently retrieving the mason jar of water off my nightstand and ever-so-calmly dumping the contents on the cat. Chip was not impressed with my tactics.

Where I am is so quiet I can't scream sound into the atmosphere.

Where I am is forcing Chip to watch City Slickers. Without irony.

Where I am is dreams of rising water and mud, sure to suck me under if I don't seek higher ground.

Where I am is hunting for solace in familiar things: book jackets so worn they feel like flannel, movie plots I can recite from start to finish, recipes so comfortable they come to the dinner table like very old friends.

Where I am is here, but not for long. I'm sure of it.

and then you get up in the morning

2011-08-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

The numbers run like this:

Twenty-three days.

Twenty-two nights.
Eight hotels.
Five states.
Two time zones.
Several dozen tanks of gas.
More fast food than a person should ever consume.
A pair of very happy grandparents.
One overjoyed Alice.
One brand new nephew.
Several family dinners.
One porch-viewed lightening storm.
A graveside visited and cried over.
Ashes scattered over one lazy curve of the Colorado river.
More hours than were meant to be counted in a car.
Precious handfuls of time spent with the parents.

How many memories were collected in the pages of my mind to be pored over when the sun is not so bright, when time has spent itself, when I am closeted away in the dark winter?

We are home, and so happy to be here. But just one day before reaching our dusty porch, in one last night spent away from familiar bed and roof, one last surprise waiting for us: dear Chip was laid off, part of a corporate restructuring of which Chip wasn't the only casualty--- there are a lot of fancy words used to describe it, words that have become far too familiar for so many of us of late.

But new challenges await us, this is something I know. We have each other, and we have faith. There is beauty to be found even in these pavement cracks. I've laid low for this many days, collecting my thoughts and coming to a place where I am able to share these words with you. In the meantime, life beckons. The days roll on. Alice is growing and wanting more of me to stretch her mind and lengthen the reach of her understanding. She reminds me that even when the daily foundation of my life seems destined to quake - even when I feel like the planet should stop spinning for an hour while I try to catch my breath - even when everything is changing and I can't hold on to a sliding bit of it---- the days still shift and turn, the sun goes down, night noises descend on the house and sleep--whatever small bit of it--comes. And then you get up in the morning.

everything that's lost will be found again

2011-07-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been losing things. My phone, multiple times. My handbag. Bottles of water around the house. I've managed to lose things that aren't even mine: Chip's phone, Alice's shoes, pieces of paper that I had no business relocating in the first place.

Chip tells me it's about patience, that these things aren't actually lost, just moved. He says I need to have the patience to retrace steps and remember more clearly where I put things. A suggestion to replace my current method of flailing around in a twirling dither on maniacal repeat: WHERE'S MY PHONE? WHERE'S MY PHONE? WHERE'S MY PHONE?

What's even harder is losing things in someone else's house, which is exactly what I've been doing since we're currently at my parents' house, Chez Winston---- mom and dad are making it perfectly acceptable to sigh every 15 minutes that I can't find that thing, that thing I just had 3 seconds ago. They tell me I'm joining the aged ranks. Maybe they're right, and maybe it's something else: a preoccupation with the things around me, giving meaning to who and what and where I am. I see it in Alice, how she gathers stuff around her - bits of ephemera that are just that: wings and fluff and bits of plastic, stuffed into handbags and backpacks and tiny boxes that fit into the palm of her hand. She seems incomplete unless she's carting around a knapsack full to the brim.

I watch her stop in the middle of the living room, contemplating mom's measuring spoons. She stuffs them into her pink backpack before moving on two yards to the left to pick up a tiny Altoid tin, a gift from Grampy. If I ask her why these things are important, she has no vocabulary to say these treasured wonders intrigue her into weighted meaning. She simply tells me that she wants them, wants them close.

If I let her, she'd sleep with empty packets of gum, red rubber balls, small tubs of lip balm. Instead, she places everything on a small table before bathtime, kissing each thing goodnight.

Being here with my parents creates an ache in me that can't be soothed, an ache of loneliness for the insubstantial lost things like holding Winson's hand while crossing the street or sitting on the countertop watching mom make chocolate chip cookies or the smell of Winston's workshop at the house on Raymond Avenue. It's the stabbing sense of the loss of my childhood, something that can't be rescued from beneath a couch cushion.

Instead, I watch them perform everyday tasks and memorize the turn of their heads, the angle of their hands in the sunlight. I watch mom water the backyard. I listen to Winston as he tells me about his childhood home. And I do my best to remember every inconsequential thing as they love Alice in the best ways they know how. Dad hands her some tiny Altoid boxes, and mom brings her cottonballs to put inside them. She brings these things to me, her eyes shining, "Treasures, mommy! Look at the treasures!"

And I answer her quietly, Yes. Exactly that.

someone else's fear

2011-07-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

These are the paper tigers: the ones you can't help but laugh at, the ones that earn your eyerolls and sighs of exasperation. The ones you can't see because they aren't there... for you. These are someone else's fears. Heights or closed-in spaces when you have always loved standing on the very edge of the precipice or never blinked when you stepped inside a too-small elevator. Fast cars or strange food or the number 13. Something that you simply don't understand because you never earned the fear. You didn't survive a near-fatal car crash or spend four days in the hospital after an alarming bout of E coli. You don't have elaborate worries about a specific number. And you most certainly aren't afraid of jumping into a swimming pool.

But wait--- you were. On that last one, you were afraid. When you were five and so tiny, when your older siblings and cousins ran in and around the water in an endless frenzy of splashes, when your dad stood at the side of the pool telling you to jump, just jump--- you found yourself paralyzed with the fear of it.

And this is how you know it's true, this memory of fear, because as you stand in the pool and call your three-year-old into your arms, you can remember that wiggling seed of worry over the flight and soar. Your memory is tangled in the one you're living now, calling Alice into your arms, telling her you won't drop her, promising her you will always catch her no matter what. But still she stalls at the edge, her bathing suit dripping in a sloppy puddle. She draws her hands up to her face to count with you--- a ONE, TWO, THREE of exaltation that is stunted at the end, her arms dropped down to her side and that forehead worry line even more pronounced. She is asking you to step closer to her now, willing you to simply pick her up and hold her in your arms. But you are frustrated with the hold-up. You insist she JUMP, even when you can hear the same echoed in your mind: this one from your dad as he tells you to just do it, just JUMP ALREADY. This is the five-year-old you, worrying that he won't catch your falling body, worrying that he will let you flail uncontrollably in the water, worrying that he simply won't be there even as he promises he will be, even as he stands so still.

You don't know how to do it, how to explain to your daughter that she is safe - even as you ask her to throw herself into the void and trust that she will be caught. You don't know how to talk to her without mocking the things she fears. This act of belittling will only make her back further from the edge, will only have her expect you to throw her in the ocean one day. She will bear her claws then, spitting with fury and betrayal, her legs running wobbly up the shore to dry sand, knowing that later she will refuse to hold your hand.

diving

2011-07-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

I am not a natural swimmer. I remember lessons in the impossibly deep pool on Glendon Way - our swimming teacher throwing weighted rings into the depths, instructing each of us how to dive. When it was my turn, I would stand shaking on the side, toes curled over the white rim on the concrete. Arms over head, together. Bend slightly at the waist. Head down. One, two, three: leap.

Except I wouldn't leap. Not immediately. Under the breath there was a second count, a count whispered quietly in shaky whisper. One.... two.... three.... three.... three.... three....

And I would imagine as I counted, the cold shock of the water, the pressure of depth on my body, and the topsy-turvy nonsense of leading deeply into the water with my legs high up over my head.

I thought of my lungs filling with that cold dark water, and a feeling of being trapped at the bottom of the pool while life above the rippled surface soldiered on without me.

I am not a natural swimmer. I sink when others float. My body fights the current that carries others so effortlessly. And the view from the water---- I hate how the line of blue obscures my perspective, makes it impossible to see anything beyond the few feet in front of me.

There is something to be said about those to whom swimming is a second life. Something to learn from them who can embrace the uncontrollable waves and ride them, smiling. There is something to emulate in those who can leap into the darkening depths without worry.

One, two, three...

more magic bean stock

2011-07-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Happy trails.

Even for frogs.

magic bean stock

2011-07-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

We were laughing the other day, Chip and I, about all the little weird things that Bean does, so very grateful that I've managed to catch a lot of them with my camera. I usually post them on Facebook.

Then Chip told me, "I hope that people know that we don't pose her for these things. That she comes up with them all on her own."

It made me think, actually, like I wanted to jump on my small soapbox and shout I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. So begins a new series here at The Creamery, Magic Bean Stock. And for the record let's note: I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS.

I'm calling this one Doppelganger.

...Doppelganger because I walked into the studio to find her wearing a travel pillow on her head and I immediately thought of this:

show and tell

2011-07-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

Two recent Costco receipts, from different visits - with exciting artwork.

In case anyone thought I was joking.

life in snippets, and having something to do with sand

2011-07-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

We spent all day Saturday and all day Monday outside in the sun, building planter boxes and a sandbox. (Well, Chip built planter boxes and a sandbox. I painted. And wrangled a three-year-old.) In all that time, I didn't get a stitch of sunburn. Not a bit.

I spent 45 minutes in the front yard with Bean yesterday evening, and managed to burn the backs of my arms, my neck, and bits of my back - through my shirt, mind you.

- - - - - - -

We believe there is a conspiracy of Sand Box Sand Sourcing Companies to jack up the price of sand. Because SERIOUSLY.

- - - - - - -

I always thought that two was the Age of Getting Dirty, and somehow we'd sidestepped it. But it turns out, the Age of Getting Dirty, Really Really Dirty, is three. And we are rolling in it, people. I'm talking two and three clothing changes a day because I won't let her back in the house and up on the furniture when I can't tell the color of her pants for all the dirt.

Which was the origin of the sandbox: if she wants to be playing in organic matter, why not give her SAND instead of plain old DIRT?

- - - - - - -

In the grand scheme of things that Chip and I might have discussed over the weekend, some of those possibly were---- the sandbox sand pricing racket, the moral implications of a midnight run to the beach wherein a person (or persons) could liberate some of the perfectly available, and yes, FREE sand, and different methods for covering a sandbox to keep poop-burying creatures from turning a brand new sandbox into the neighborhood outdoor toilet facility. I'll let you guess which of those conversations took place more than once, each for an unseemly amount of time. Hint: there are a lot of details to plan for a fictitious midnight beach run.

burning fast and bright

2011-07-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

This is how we celebrate the Fourth of July at our house: with white noise cranked up to eleven, shhhhhhhing in the dark hallway and in Bean's bedroom. We listen to the too-close pops and claps of fireworks exploding furiously in the backyards of the houses surrounding ours, and hope--- hope and cringe that Alice will sleep, that the cats will eventually settle, and that our house will not burn down from an errant bottle rocket (one, two, or seven). This is what happens when neighbors can get their hands on any and every illegal incendiary device known to man, whatever is made and sold at local Indian reservations. There is barely a second between the pops, some high and whistling, others with a low booming depth that scares me silly.

But in the smallest quiet, I find myself thinking--- not of the excited teenagers surely clutching the lighters and matches fueling the explosions, and not of our country or the freedom so dearly bought with the sacrifice of patriots and rebels so long ago.

Instead, I'm thinking of the lives that remind me so much of the fireworks bursting in colorful blossoms around our dark house. I'm thinking of the people I've known who live lives so fast and so bright, they cannot sustain the burn. I'm thinking of Virginia, who ran up mountain trails and slid down rock falls, her dogs at her heels. She was the bossiest person I've ever known, but she loved her friends with a heart so fierce, her loyalty burned lines in the carpet. That was Virgina-- lover of the outdoors and friend to the canines, so strong in her own opinion, you just wanted to slap her silly. She left a hole in the world when she dropped so quickly out of it: breast cancer that ate her up in a single swallow. I wonder about the son she left behind.

I'm thinking of Carol. A nursing student who smoked a pack each day without irony. She sat in my bedroom and told me I was her favorite roommate, like, ever. And then six months later we argued over something stupid and I never talked to her again. She was gone just a year later, an inoperable brain tumor. She went home to Connecticut and got a dog who stayed by her side as she faded. Her parents dream of the grandchildren they will never meet.

I'm thinking of short lives and the burning trail they leave. Does it come down to fire? To fuel that ignites but cannot sustain a steady flame? I am sure there have always been human fireworks that light the sky, lives that cause us to turn our faces to the heavens and marvel at their astounding beauty.

And here is the noise they make around us: the loudest percussive boom, while the rest of us flicker quietly on the ground.

where I'm from

2011-06-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

I am from yarn-tied quilts, fat yellow Twinkies and the original 7-11 Big Gulp.
I am from a brown house on a straight square street dotted with round trees like cherry lollipops, warmth turning too warm in sticky August summer afternoons with nothing to do except listen to lawnmowers and traffic drone in the distance.
I am from the Citrus reticulata and the Strelitzia reginae, from hot-house flowers grown in the front yard even though I preferred the mint that peeked up wild behind our garage.
I am from long road trips in the back of a hulking green station wagon and working hands that are never stilled, from Lynda and Boyd and Condie and Knudson.
I am from adoption stories told 'round creaking formica tables and opinions whispered in the wrong ear.
From sure-sure-sure and if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.
I am from Mormons, dark-suited missionaries, threadbare pioneers trekking across the wilderness in shirtsleeves. A dark blue book of scripture that continues to change my life. A three-letter acronym that shapes me and colors the lens from which I view the world.
I'm from the Beehive state and the Golden state alike, from Irish-German immigrants and Scots-Danish settlers. Farmers and schoolteachers and accountants. From meatloaf with evaporated milk and chocolate chip cookies, perfectly baked.
From the boys who got up in the icy dawn to milk the cows and slept in a damp basement on shared beds, the girl who worked in her father's meat-processing plant while wearing a Jantzen sweater, the family who tied a whole beef roast into the oven because it shot out of its pan and across the motorhome living room while driving through the twisting roads of coastal Oregon.
I am from a honey-brown cedar chest, the mantel over the fireplace, the giant key hanging on a wall of the house on Raymond Avenue. I am from faded sepia faces staring out from photographs culled from my Grandparents' farmhouse. The faces that tell me, again and again, I am from sacrifice. Their story reminds me, above all, I am blessed. Blessed because of where I'm from.

Inspired by Clueless But Hopeful Mama, who got the template here. If you'd like to write one of your own (and oh--- I wish you would), link in the comments.

how it is

2011-06-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

In the end I decide it's because although I, we, didn't really know them, they knew us, and whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.

-Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet

secrets to long blog absences

2011-06-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

I think the secret to being blog absent for a whole week is to come back with interesting stories. Or at least one.

I don't have any interesting stories to tell about last week, unless you count the one where I drove one wheel of our beloved Jeep Jefe off the curb of a terrible gas station and got stuck and had to call AAA and cried on the phone to the AAA dispatch lady, doing my best to convince her that she needed to send a tow truck RIGHT NOW because I was blocking a sidewalk and had a child in the car with me, who, incidentally had very little to do in her car seat because I thought it was going to be a quick trip to the library and the AAA lady turned out to be the nicest woman on the planet and she talked me down and got me to stop crying while we waited for Gary the tow truck driver to come rescue us a scant 20 minutes later all the while various passers-by were stopping and knocking on my window to ask if we needed help, my favorite would-be helper being the lady who laughed and said, "This is something I would do!" and then she offered us snacks. My favorite part of the story, besides the part where beloved Jefe was barely harmed, having landed on the frame - and Gary, tow-truck driver extraordinaire, pulled us back onto land using a little ramp he constructed with wood he carried in his truck---- my favorite favorite part was how Alice described it to Chip on the phone later, saying, in ALL CAPS, as 3-year-olds tend to do, "WE HIT A BIG BUMP, A HUGE BUMP, A GINORNOUS BUMP! BUT JEFE WAS OKAY!"

The other secret to being blog absent for a week is to promise lots of cool stuff to come.

I'm not sure I can really do that.

But I can promise this: more posts all week long. And the week after that. And the week after that.

Really. Truly.

Because BIG BUMPS notwithstanding, I miss you, my beautiful creamy Minions. I really do.

What have you been up to? Any near-miss (or real) car accidents? Tell us all the details. I will be sad if you hold back (or say nothing at all). I want to hear from you.

friday, week in pictures

2011-06-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I really remember much of Friday, except being unbelieveably tired. But I can tell you that we survived the week, we all survived the week, even through Shelby desperately missed her parents - even though Alice really missed having us all to herself - even though Chip seriously missed being able to watch television in our bedroom - and even though Whimsy missed her sanity. WE ALL SURVIVED.

I think I learned some lessons, but they're all a bit fuzzy. Hoping for clarity tomorrow, when the Father's Day Festivity Exhaustion has passed.

Until then, I leave you with pictures from last week. I'll let you guess what we did A LOT of. And also to wonder, again, why the heck Alice loves that ratty brown hat so much.

Monday:

Tuesday:

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Friday:

really thursday, really truly

2011-06-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

(After my complaining about my bad blog titling yesterday, I finally just went back in and edited all the post titles to reflect the days they were written about. So now this one? Is really about Thursday.)

I called Thursday the day of can't. From the girls it was I can't put my shoes on and I can't go pee by myself and I can't eat that and I can't share and I can't, I can't, I can't.

From me it was I can't believe it's only 10:30 in the morning.

On the docket for Thursday: bead necklaces, finger painting, and driveway chalk drawing. It wasn't so much that I meant to make it such an art-heavy day, but once they were all dirty from the finger painting, I just figured we should go with it and really embrace the mess.

And that's all I've got for Thursday, because I can't keep my eyes open. And I can't say much more than I'm exhausted. And I can't believe that there's just one day to go.

wednesday*

2011-06-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

*Late Thursday night I actually went back in and CHANGED THE TITLES of each post, because it continued to bug me throughout the day. So I guess that solves that.

I realized a little too late (read: Wednesday afternoon) that I should have titled these posts the days that they're written about, instead of the day they're posted on. It would have made more sense. But then again, that is pretty much par for the course of Wednesday (the day that this post is, obviously, ABOUT).

I decided that Wednesday was a lost cause before I made the genius observation about blog titles but after I got a split lip from an ill-timed Alice headbutt. It was also after I managed to spill the contents of a toddler potty on the wall. No really - I'm feeling sick just typing it.

So.

After mopping and scrubbing and bleaching the bathroom within an inch of its life, I told Chip that it wouldn't be a stellar day at home unless I had gotten up close and personal with at least one human byproduct.

That was Wednesday. Between irritating blog post realizations and split lips was the following: a trip out into the wide world (totally innocuous errands), a group effort to make waffles (the girls counted cups of flour and teaspoons of baking powder for their part, along with eating a tremendous number of waffles), and lots of time out on the driveway.

Here's what I know so far: I give them things to look forward to each day, like movies with popcorn and chalk drawing on the driveway and making bead necklaces. I let them both be cranky, within reason; and bossy, within reason; and unreasonable, within reason (if that makes sense). I also know that this is quite possibly the worst time ever, in the history of the universe, to be on a diet. Because 'round about 9pm when the girls are finally asleep and Chip and I are huddled on the couch doing our best not to miss our bedroom (where Shelby is sleeping on the floor)--- the thing I want, above all, is to reward myself with a whole truckload of fatty goodness. It explains why, after the blog epiphany and the pee-on-the-wall and the bloody lip and the general roughness of the day, I consumed TWO corndogs (I'm not proud) with a waffle chaser (maybe a little proud).

Onward and upward, folks. Three days down and two to go.

tuesday

2011-06-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

A day of few words, Tuesday.

They rode bikes, I was the Catcher in the Asphalt, so to speak--- standing spread-arm across the driveway to turn the girls around and head them back to do another circle. I watched their legs pedal furiously at tiny tricycle wheels.

They watched a movie and ate popcorn. This, I brought to them, in heaping bowl after bowl. Their companionship creates an appetite, it would seem.

They played dress up with skirts and dresses and beads. Accessorized with rainboots and handbags, everything they could carry.

They did their thing, another day of it.

On to tomorrow.

monday

2011-06-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Chip tells me that I'm doing a good job, maintaining the energy, stepping in to referee the squabbles, and generally keeping them both busy.

Yesterday morning was an exercise in controlled chaos with both girls running full speed up and down the hallway screaming their blessed heads off for a good twenty minutes. I watched from the sidelines, quietly sipping a tall glass of water and marveling over my calm despite any help from prescription drugs or otherwise. This had quieted somewhat by lunchtime, with each of us finding some sense of balance--- but it's been interesting to observe each of the girl's personalities surface. And I'm taking notes in my head, trying to figure out the best ways I can help each of the girls enjoy this week.

But I'm still formulating those thoughts, not ready to talk about them yet - especially when it comes to telling you in a sentence or two who these little beings are: complex and interesting, nuance on top of the slightest hint of shadow.

One moment there was joy sparking between them, their eyes alight and smiles stretched wide. The next minute one was so quiet, thinking hard as she stacked blocks quietly by the table--- the other had escaped onto the stairs, was talking (loudly) to us both, that she "needed a minute, a minute to MYSELF---please do not come up here, DO NOT COME UP HERE". So we didn't. We ate goldfish crackers and waited for signs of life to emerge from the upper level. Eventually Chip coaxed her downstairs with a promise of dinner and a rousing after-dinner game of soccer.

So it went, so it goes, and so it will today.

Wish us luck.

What do you do to balance different personalities?

an introduction to the week

2011-06-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

This is day one.

The undertaking: two three-year-olds under my roof, 24-hours-a-day, for a consecutive five days. One of the three-year-olds is mine. The other one belongs to dear friend Kate who is out of town for a work conference.

The plan: it's no secret that I am a bit on the extreme end of "structured". So I'm a little freaked out by this week. It's something like a lesson in chaos, I think, and so I've decided to tackle it by doing the following--- 1. Avoid going out; play outside, play inside, do anything and everything to eliminate the need to shop or gather anything that would require putting me and two strong-willed (albeit adorable) 3-year-olds out in the wild, defenseless; 2. Deep breathing and meditation to keep me nice and mellow; and 3. Lots (and lots and lots and LOTS) of planned activities to keep the inmates happy.

For your enjoyment, I'll share my findings here.

And if you have any suggestions (or survival techniques), please do let me know.

on beauty

2011-06-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

My present for Mother's Day was an afternoon out of the house, with Chip watching over Bean. They played with blocks and beads while I got a pedicure.

Pedicures can be such intimate things, I think: having someone, a stranger, wash your feet--- their face at knee level as you tower over them in a big black chair. I closed my eyes as a tiny Asian woman scrubbed each toe, her fingers moving quick in the soapy water. As she reached up my lower leg, she caught sight of a mole on my calf.

It's not something I like very much: a red mole, so strange in it's brightness. I wish for a type of camouflage for it, or the power to wish it away.

I hate trying to shave my legs around it. I've nicked the thing once or twice and if it didn't bleed more than I thought possible--- handfuls of kleenex and a small river of blood in the shower.

A few months ago my doctor removed a few moles, and as she worked I hopefully directed her toward the strange little red one. She pursed her lips when she saw it and said the scientific name which I immediately forgot. These types of moles, she told me, are fierce and annoying and nearly impossible to remove without a lot of trouble: they sit poised directly on top of a blood vessel. Unless there is reason to remove them, like a cancer scare, it's best to leave them be.

So she did.

I continue to be annoyed by it. Embarrassed, even.

- - -

The other day Alice and I were spending time on the driveway, our usual positions when it's afternoon and not raining. She had been riding her tricycle and I was sitting near the grass, leaning on my hands.

In a moment of quiet, I noticed that Alice had abandoned the tricycle and was on hands and knees staring intently at our front walk. She pushed her face close to the concrete, and closer. Then in a split second she was up and running full tilt toward me, calling my name. As she reached my arms she gulped, "Mommy! I'm scared of the ALLIGATOR."

I stood up and took her hand, "Let's go find this alligator, Bean. Show it to me."

So she did: it's small gray armor moving quietly along. A pill bug; sow bug; roley-poley; whatever you call it, it was one of those lumbering across the expanse of our front path.

I told Alice not to be scared, that it was a pill bug. Some people call them roley-poleys, I told her, urging her to look closely at this tiny miracle.

At first she held back, but after a few moments she was laughing at it, wanting to pet it and hold it and keep it for her very own. We did the first two but happily kept Mr. Roley-Poley on the lawn instead of bringing him into our house.

Yesterday afternoon Alice came to me again: this time inside the house, telling me that she was scared. I sensed another ferocious beasty and wasn't disappointed when I found a small black spider on the floor. I quickly squished it in a paper towel.

Alice watched the proceedings and I could see her mind trying to work out the difference: how was a pill bug so unassuming and sweet and a friend --- when the black spider was not? How was one so much more worthy of adoration?

- - -

As the tiny Asian woman washed my feet, I could see her examining the ugly red mole. I wanted to pull my leg from her hand, wanted to ask her to ignore it.

Instead she motioned excitedly to another worker in the shop, a running burst of quick Cantonese then a smile.

She looked up at me then, motioning to the mole, "You know, in my country, this is very good luck. Beautiful. Very very beautiful."

I nodded, unconvinced. But she continued, "No, really. It's such a beautiful thing, a sign of goodness."

I think about beauty, this strange arbitrary concept of what is acceptable and what is not. One culture taught to revere what another culture thinks is just plain weird. And a small gray pill bug still living in vast forest of our grass while a black spider's body sits squished in the kitchen trash.

things that are making me happy right now

2011-06-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

These hands, and for that matter, this chalk.

The perfect antidote for too much time spent indoors. We have big plans for the driveway this summer.

This excellent photo opportunity to get some of the treasure box contents in action! out in the wild!

She smuggled them in her handbag to Sears, and while we were inspecting lawn mowers (a very exciting purchase we couldn't WAIT to make, to replace our old lawnmower that up and died on Saturday)--- Alice got busy emptying her many special treasures on the Sears' Lawn Astroturf.

This goat.

We saw him sunbathing at the zoo on Saturday. We stood over his comatose body for several minutes, just making sure that he wasn't some kind of unfortunate victim of sun stroke or goat stroke or whatever it might be---- I imagined the scene, some kind of zoo ambulance pulling up with a goat stretcher. Luckily it was all for naught: his chest rising and falling in the sunlight. Now I look at the photo and just smile: our goaty friend, taking it easy.

This snow leopard.

More sleeping poses--- what is it about animals taking a snooze?

This girl.

As she was watching the otters, she noticed all the other kids had cameras held up to their faces. Being three-years-old, she did not have a camera.

But that didn't stop her from pretending.

What's making you happy right now?

modern archeology

2011-06-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

In my continued study of the 3-year-old child, I have come across the following oddity:

THE TREASURE BOX

or, as we really think of it: the random box of crap

When she first started throwing stuff into a box to carry it around the house, I tried to put everything away each night. But after a while, I just gave in. Let her throw stuff into the box and love it for all it was worth.

But every once in a while, I like to sneak a peek at the contents.

The question isn't why should one would carry a moon-shaped cookie cutter around in a box. The question is why SHOULDN'T one carry a moon-shaped cookie cutter around in a box.

A gum massager.

Also doubles as a poking device and pretend spoon.

Not that she would ever even eat there, but it's important to carry around a list of all PF Chang's locations in the U.S.

Just because.

Hotel soaps. Can't just have one.

Bottle connecting thingies from Costco.

(I don't understand why they're in the box, but I've been told by Alice that they're essential. And I guess that's true because she don't just have one, she has THREE.)

Perhaps the ugliest man-bracelet ever made.

No, it is not Chip's. (He needs to make sure you know that.)

Hey Alice, what are you doing with these highlighters?

Mommy, they aren't highlighters. They're microphones.

No bubbles, but a wand. She says it's magic.

Two kinds of clothespins.

You never know when you're going to need fabric for itty-bitty sewing projects.

In case anyone needs a travel toothbrush cover, Bean has an extra.

What every girl needs: a teeny tiny book...

...a teeny tiny book with quotes about cats.

A mini rolling pin. For those last minute cookie-making emergencies.

Chip, I think I found your contact lenses.

a future in fashion

2011-06-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

A project I've been working on to catalog Alice's fashion choices for the last several weeks. While I've done the basic dressing of her in most of these pictures, any additions (read: THAT HAT), accessories (read: THOSE SUNGLASSES), and/or additional accoutrements (read: THE BAGS, THE BUDDIES, THOSE BOOTS) are ALL ALICE.

Oh, to have this girl in my life.

lessons of infinite patience

2011-06-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been contemplating infinite patience. When I think of those two words, combined like that, they are capitalized and important: Infinite Patience. A super power, perhaps.

What could a person do with Infinite Patience? She could build lego castles with her 3-year-old from dawn to dusk without complaint. She could answer every question asked of her, never rolling her eyes or stopping short out of irritation. She could respond to her three-year-old's overly tired demands to stop talking, stop talking RIGHT NOW with serenity.

On Monday we drove out to Snoqualmie Falls. Massive in its roar, white water spraying hundreds of feet into the air. We marveled over the volume of water passing over the cliff's edge and stood on the walkway until our faces were wet from the condensation.

Watching the falls, my eyes got lost in the force of it all: the quantity, the overwhelming largeness of the waves of water. When I closed my eyes, I heard nothing but the pounding thrum. Chip pointed to the cliff face, helped me to notice the small spurts of water freely falling, separated from the main body.

I imagined those small spurts of water, miles upstream, quietly collecting as drops of water in tiny running rivulets.

I imagined those small drops of water melting from snow.

I imagined the snow, drifting one flake at a time.

Ice crystals and water molecules, high mountain passes and cascades--- the stuff of Infinite Patience. Something to be learned there: how beauty takes time to collect, how powerful the force it creates because it doesn't rush.

because he saves my life

2011-05-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

There are weekends that pass by in a slogging haze of work and chores and too many commitments. There are weekends that fly past because they are jam packed with fun: too much fun, with sticky fingers and giggling and fizzy drinks that you wouldn't normally consume except during a weekend of big top happiness. There are weekends that droop around a person in a murky clinging fog. Gray weekends and pink weekends and weekends of stripes. They exist. I know they do, because I've lived them.

This was not one of those weekends.

But although I'm not going to talk about what kind of weekend it was, exactly, I'm going to tell you this: there were moments--- excruciatingly painful moments, when I felt like I couldn't breathe. When I worried and wondered and wanted more than anything to feel confident about the next moment to come.

It wasn't the best breeding ground for good communication with Chip. In other words, I was sensitive and cranky and let's just say it: a bit on the crazy side.

It was in some of the worst most crazy-making horrific moments when Chip would reach out to me, take me into his arms, and hold me.

There are weekends when you feel as though the very laws of gravity don't apply to you, and everything you own, everything you are, your very existence is going to fly off into the atmospheric void leaving nothing behind but a dark smudge. If you are very very lucky, those are the weekends when someone is there to hold on to you and keep you grounded in safety.

And I am that lucky.

I love him for so very many reasons. But above all, I love him best because he saves my life.

if you don't feel safe

2011-05-26T09:02:00.000-07:00

On Monday Alice and I went to the grocery store. Oranges on sale, a few bananas...we walked lightly laden to the car. While we shopped, two large trucks had parked on either side of us--- making the squeeze to get Bean into her carseat that much more acrobatic.

Once she was in, I walked to the driver's side, feeling strangely edgy. The prompt to get in quickly felt deep in my gut. Once inside, I locked the doors and put on my seatbelt. The feeling didn't make sense since we were out in bright daylight: a busy grocery store parking lot, Monday morning shopping on people's minds. I sat for a short second, thinking about the nonsense I do when I caught movement outside my window--- a man approaching the car, mouth moving already as he walked closer. Don't roll down the window, came the voice deep inside of me, if you don't feel safe. He motioned to get my attention, roll down the window--- but I didn't. I wouldn't, shaking my head. His face was a mottled roadmap of hard living: deep wrinkles interspersed with a shaggy beard, teeth stained brown like shoe leather. My car needs a jump, he said squinting. Can you give me a jump? A hopeful stare, waiting.

The rational part of me seemed willing, a perfectly normal request, it said. But that voice, that voice rumbled quietly inside of me--- if you don't feel safe, you don't have to do anything.

I told him I was sorry, there's somewhere we need to be. He motioned again with his hand, roll down your window. His whole body leaned in, there was something in it that was much too insistent--- a desperate reach toward my Yes. I shook my head again: No, already pulling out and moving the car.

It was then that his face crumpled into anger--- the lines set deep around his mouth as he yelled. As we drove out of the parking lot I caught bits of his ranting: HOW DARE YOU, HOW CAN YOU NOT HELP ME, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

Later, telling Chip the story over the phone my hands started to shake, the quiet voice of warning reminding me, if you don't feel safe, if you don't feel safe, if you don't feel safe... you don't have to do anything.

It's possible that he was just having car trouble.
It's possible that he was just a stranded driver looking for help.
It's possible that nothing would have happened other than an exchange of car energy.
But that voice, the warning--- and the image of his leaning body into our space.
I consider it a near miss.

Near misses
-by Laura Kasischkee

The truck that swerved to miss the stroller in which I slept.

My mother turning from the laundry basket just in time to see me open the
third-story window to call to the cat.

In the car, on ice, something spinning and made of history snatched me back
from the guardrail and set me down between two gentle trees. And that time I
thought to look both ways on the one-way street.

And when the doorbell rang, and I didn't answer, and just before I slipped one
night into a drunken dream, I remembered to blow out the candle burning on
the table beside me.

It's a miracle, I tell you, this middle-aged woman scanning the cans on the
grocery store shelf. Hidden in the words of a mysterious clock are her many
deaths, and yet the whole world is piled up before her on a banquet table
again today. The timer, broken. The sunset smeared across the horizon in the
girlish cursive of the ocean, Forever, For You.

And still she can offer only her body as proof:

The way it moves a little slower every day. And the cells, ticking away. A crow
pecking at a sweater. The last hour waiting patiently on a tray for her
somewhere in the future. The spoon slipping quietly into the beautiful soup.

picking my battles

2011-05-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Last week out of the blue she announced that she would be calling me Francine, and she would be Olivia.* And what I thought would be a short-lived session of make-believe turned into a recurring theme of weirdness where she will approach me, hold out her hand for me to shake it, and then say, "Nice to meet you Francine." After introductions, we proceed to interact in our usual fashion (making dinner or doing laundry or playing with blocks, etc.) all the while maintaining our alter-egos of Francine the very proper pig (who eats her lunch with a SPORK, thank you very much) and Olivia, lover of all things impetuous and red and dramatic and delightful. I've been Francine at the grocery store, Francine at the hotel pool, Francine during dinner, Francine during bathtime. A few times I've wondered if its wrong to let her call me something that is not Mommy or Mama--- like some kind of weird undercurrent of disrespect.

*(For those not in the Olivia know, Francine in Olivia's sometime friend, sometime competitor.)

- - -

Its late in the afternoon, the sun coming through the high dining room window in a slant. She woke cranky and unsettled from her nap, crying for a sippy that sat forlorn on her dresser. She could see it from her bed, but still believing in the invisible bonds of bed-dom, that once she's placed in bed she can't get out unless released by a parent. When I heard her cries at 2:30, I walked to her bedroom quickly, hoping I could climb in bed with her and calm her into another 30 minutes of shuteye. As soon as she saw me, her tear-streaked face crumpled, demanding the sippy. "The sippy right there. Right there!" I sighed inwardly, knowing nap time was O-V-E-R, spelling it out in my head. Now we're sitting at the kitchen table. I'm trying to read something on the computer while she busies herself with play doh. I don't know why I try to get her to do it on her own--- play doh is an Alice Directed activity, wherein mommy rolls and molds and cuts the dough to Alice Directed Specifications. Without my help, she's rolling minuscule amounts of the blue lump toward my elbow. Now the table is covered with the stuff and she's irritated, voice rising into octaves reserved for mice and small girls. I tell her that I will play with her in five minutes, ticking the five off with my fingers. But she is adamant in her pleading and I let it go, close the computer, pick up the play doh and ask, "What should we make?"

- - -

Yesterday I caught her saying that something was stupid. I sunk to my knees, pulling her toward me, "We don't that word in our house, Alice. We don't say 'stupid.' Do you understand me?" When she nodded, there were tears in her eyes.

- - -

She asks for the marshmallow cereal, code for Lucky Charms---though I'm too cheap to buy the real thing, I think it's Marshmallow Mates or something equally ridiculous that I pull out of the cupboard. When I sit her down with the cup of cereal, I tell her to eat it all. A bit later she finds me in the kitchen, the cup in her hands. She asks for more. The cup is still three-quarter's full, just brown oaty squares and no marshmallows in sight.

- - -

It's bathtime. She's been playing for a good long while, has surrounded herself with floating foam letters and numbers. When I ask her to put them away, she moves slow---and then slower, putting letters in a pink bucket I hold. Now she has the last six letters held tight in her arms, insisting that she keep them with her while I wash her hair. I tell her no, she can hold two-- just two letters. But she wants more: five letters. Five letters, mommy. As I restate my offer of two letters, I feel the line settle here in front of us--- the insistence of here is the limit, here is the place where I dig my heels and hold my ground. And as her voice wavers and rises, I have the same thought that I always do in these moments: how I'm not sure if this is really the particular time and place to prove a point, how I want to teach Alice about discipline and obedience but don't want to be a tyrant. I wonder if bath letters are worth all the fuss.

- - -

Sometimes the battle is over cereal. Sometimes toys. Sometimes we set up opposing camps over the insistence of a cookie. And each time, I wonder what my victory is worth: the tears, the sadness, the frustration? I understand more and more that the point is almost never the cereal or the toy or the cookie or even holding foam letters during her bath--- the point is the exercise, the practice of saying no and hearing it, the act of following instruction.

I never knew parenting would be just as arbitrary as I once imagined it when I was the one desperately fighting for foam letters in the bathtub.

the truth is...

2011-05-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I have an episode of Binge Blog Writing. True story, and a weird one, seeing as how I've been all Blog Silent lately.

But a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a whole slew of entries; one right after another.

The truth is, I was nervous. Wracked with nervous jittery energy, and it seemed to be the best outlet to my craziness. It was that, or throw myself off the hotel balcony to the pool below - and when I suggested that option to Chip, he seemed pretty unsupportive of a four-story dive. So I wrote. I posted pictures and arranged badly-written missives.

Nothing spectacular, as you can attest, since you read the results of that late-night mess a while back.

This entry, this one you're reading right now, is the last of that group. And it serves as a sort of gravy catch-all for the stuff that won't fit anywhere else.

Like this: I forgot to add a few pictures on the Monday post when I talked about my escapades with Bean in our very own Harry Potter closet:

(Yes, we fit food storage in where we can, which happens to be in the lower reaches of our hallway coat closet. And yes, we love applesauce.)

The truth is, all that catch-all blog writing was in direct relation to nervousness. Our beloved Winston had major back surgery the very day after I finished writing the slew of posts--- and I just couldn't focus on anything except feeling nervous and worried about Winston. This is one of those times that remind me again, just how far we live from my parents. Like when Bean tells me that her Grammy and Grampy live far, so far away. So far that we drive for days and days (her words). Without the luxury of being able to drive for days and days to be there with them, I rely on the phone - on calls with my sister and the Little Brother who both live within evening trip distance, for apple pie and cinnamon rolls. We're headed down there this summer for a long visit. Lucky for me (and Winston), the surgery went well and he is fully on the mend.

I've got to tell you, too, that there is something I want to say about how awful it is to see your parents grow old, and older--- but the truth is, I can't say much because my lovely mother and the equally fantastic Winston both read The Creamery and I wouldn't want to make them blush, or feel like they're soon to be giving up the ghost (which, surely they are NOT). So let's just say: I am officially voting against the notion of parents growing old. Who is with me?

The whole big girl bed thing is going well. Bean has yet to discover that she can actually get out of the thing without us coming to release her in the morning. I am not rushing to dispel her of that notion anytime soon. The next big hurdle is THE LAST PACIFIER, which sounds like some kind of frontier movie with horses and cowboys and a long dusty ghost town road--- instead it's my complicated multi-prong weaning off of Bean to her very much loved pacifier. She's down to the very last one, used only when her head is actually in contact with her pillow. It took a serious amount of decision-making energy and strategy for Chip and I to come up with a plan for getting rid of the final paci. After rejecting the Paci Fairy and deciding thoroughly against having Alice give the paci to her doctor, we have decided that the best way is to have Alice give her paci to a sales clerk in exchange for... FISH. A fish tank. And fish. And for some inexplicable reason that only Alice herself knows: a bag of colorful rocks to put in the fish tank. The reason for the strange paci exchange item is this: she wants fish. She has wanted them for a long while. And I've told her that the fish are very expensive, and the only thing the store will take for them is pacifiers. We'll see how it goes. We've been talking about it for a few weeks now. I think we'll be taking the leap sometime very soon. Wish us luck.

I'm going to jump back on the blog writing wagon this week, cross-my-heart, so you can return here tomorrow for Real! Live! New! Content! I guarantee!

And with that, Whimsy is signing off. What do you have going on right now? Any helpful tips for The Last Pacifier?

the child you allow strangers to push around on a hotel luggage cart

2011-05-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

Meet Alice.

I've been trying to teach her the name of the city we live in, a precursor to teaching her our address. After saying and repeating the correct answer about seventeen times on Monday I asked her, "Hey Alice, what city do we live in?"--- to which she responded,
"PANCAKE!"

She's more than a ham. She's the kind of child strangers want to have complete conversations with. We're in Portland with Chip this week, and yesterday had Alice and I riding the elevator to head down to the pool. On the journey down, we met Allison, a police officer staying at the hotel for some kind of conference. She and Alice discussed their similar names, the trials and tribulations of being three years old, and hair ribbons.

Later on, Chip asked me exactly how it came to be that he was sitting in the hotel lobby on a conference call when he looked up to see a perfect stranger pushing Alice around the lobby on a luggage cart--- a smiling and laughing Alice being pushed around the lobby on a luggage cart by an ecstatic smiling and laughing Alison, followed closely behind by me.

My answer was this:
Because Alice is the kind of child strangers want to push around on a hotel luggage cart.

And I guess I'm the kind of parent that lets it happen.

pocketses*

2011-05-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

What child can resist pockets?

Certainly not mine.

Especially when the pockets are big enough to fit Olivia.

*not a spelling error, totally intentional, and I didn't include the entire reference to Gollum in The Hobbit because it just seemed creepy

sure

2011-05-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

Not just one word, but a whole slew of them: the sures.

There is the simple SURE--- for quick agreement, for simple assertion.

The SUUUURE--- when she's being a little silly, the smile playing just at the ends of her lips.

There is SHORE--- the answer to my more serious requests, like when I ask her to please pick up the 1,250 pony beads she lovingly threw around her room, into every single sticking corner, and even when my voice was starting to wobble with irritation as I demanded she PICK UP THESE BEADS, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. RIGHT NOW. She smiled, licked her lips, and said shore.

But my favorite, the one that is so weirdly quintessentially all Bean: SHOW-WAH--- elongated and exaggerated, like some 3-year-old New Yorker. Reserved for the most excited and outrageously exuberant agreements. Like, "Would you like a piece of chocolate cake?" SHOW-WAH! Or, "How about we sit down and watch Scooby Doo together?" SHOW-WAH! Or this one, yesterday morning, when I showed her an overnight creation that I had to finish because it had both pom-poms and ric rac AND tulle.

"Bean, would you like to wear this today?"

Nothing less than

SHOW-WAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

we are the makers

2011-05-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

I once wrote a post about identity. Who I am in singular words. Words like goer and picker and vanilla and snoozer. Yesterday it struck me, again, that I am a maker.

There's something to say about a soul bruise. Something to say about it, even though the words have lately failed me. It feels like they are stuck inside a hose, building up but not powerful enough to push through the blockage. The bruise continues to heal as I leave it open to the air, as I give it light and space and time. I am wary of pushing the tender area too far, too quick.

And then there's the studio. A haven from the word drought. A place where I feel useful, where I feel competent, where I feel free. These days I dream of patterns and color. When I wake in the 2am darkness, I imagine skirts and dresses I'm going to make. I draw plans in my mind's eye for Alice's summer wardrobe. And even when Chip reminds me of her full closet, how she doesn't need another pair of summer shorts, I smile and tell him, "She may not need them, but I do."

Because I'm a maker. While I can't change the tilt of the planet or take another's pain, what I can do, is make. Use my hands. Craft fabric or fiber or paper or food into something else, into something to love. I can make. I can offer comfort through my efforts. I can clothe and decorate and beautify and succor. I can make. I can express these feelings and desires that seem trapped here inside. I can make. I can do. I can be busy with thread while my mind untangles itself. I can make.

So I do.

A very dear friend of mine is suffering. Grieving and worried for her brother, who is struggling through advanced cancer. I talked to her yesterday at church. It was the first time I'd seen her since she told me the news, since she'd stumbled through explaining the vast abyss of pain she is navigating. We stood there in a crowded hallway as Alice pulled hard on my hand, urging me forward even as I pulled back, even as I reached forward to hug my friend. In those moments, there are no words than the small few we've heard a thousand times; sorry being the main one, I'm so sorry. She stood there against the wall with people pushing past us in a rushing hurry. She blinked tears and then said, "I'm making him a quilt."

Because my dear friend, too, is a maker. And this is what we makers do. We make.

When I heard her say those words, "I'm making him a quilt", I knew she'd be okay, she will pull through. Because making isn't really about the things we make or even about the people we make them for. It's an act of creation in the face of loss, nothing short of an expression of hope, the transformation of one thing into another. We refuse to let raw materials defeat us. We take what we're given and we make it into something better. We spin gold from the straw, our faces reflecting the luster. We make. And we shine.

(Yes, I made this. Reversible orange playday smock and dark rinsed summer shortie pants with sailor stripes around the cuffs.)

attention minions: gmboa time

2011-05-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

Hello to the Minions! The GMBOA is available and up for grabs over at Chocolate on a Rainy Day. Act FAST, because I am late in alerting you and I'm hoping that Miss Rainyday won't hold it against you if you enter late.

Go here to get your grubby mitts on that fabulous golden box of gifties.

on bruises

2011-05-04T05:00:00.001-07:00

This was Chip's gift to me: an away place, a place detatched from memory, a place to think, a place to be quiet.

I don't know why exactly, but there is something bruised deep inside of me. It's like those mystery bruises that show up on my shins from time to time: unbidden and unremembered, I'm only aware of them later when I go to kneel down in front of Alice --- to tie her shoes or straighten a hair ribbon --- and as my knees hit the floor there is a sharp stab of pain, the blossom of purple staring quietly from my skin.

A soul bruise of unknown origin. Invisible, but felt at odd times - most especially when I'm reaching into that place to share something of meaning here. The aching pain, the stab of tenderness. It's why I shy off, time and again, from writing anything real.

I talk about our days, skirting the abyss with photos of Bean. Her face is a star, the winking silver drawing my mind away from anything that stings.

And Chip: my confidant, my best friend, my protector and husband. He brought me to this place as a gift. Even when I couldn't find words to tell him about the bruise, he noticed my shift in demeanor, how a smile doesn't stay long on my face, how I spend extended moments in the studio, how I say that I keep hoping for peace.

It wasn't long after I told him that I was glad I couldn't hurt a sewing machine - that I couldn't say the wrong thing or misunderstand a piece of fabric; it wasn't much later that he told me he was going to Lake Chelan and wanted us to come with him. A short trip, he said, but a beautiful one. A little vacation, he offered, for quiet thinking.

So that's what it is. And that's what I've done.

There's a bruised and painful place inside of me. It's tender near my heart; so tender I can't quite face it, can't put my fingers on that place for fear that I will pass out from the pain.

When Alice hit her head a few weeks ago, the bump rose on her forehead: angry red and deep purple. In the days that followed, she watched the geography of her face change and kept asking me about it. I gave her the name for it: bruise, just a bruise, honey. And I promised she could watch it go away if she gave it enough time. The purple mark turned dusky gray and yellow: so ugly she worried that it was mad at her. But in another week, and then two, and then three--- it faded. The rise of skin, the smudge of injury: gone. Only her perfect ivory skin in its place. I caught her touching the place just yesterday. She put her fingers over the spot and made faces at me in the bathroom mirror. Look Mommy! It's gone! It was just a bruise- and now it's gone.

Which is what I tell myself now: just a bruise. I will give it time, some space, an occasional viewing in the mirror. Just a bruise. In no time, I'll be just fine.

polandroid to the rescue

2011-05-03T05:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in pictures, driving to Eastern Washington with Chip for a brief visit to Lake Chelan.

Apple orchards and rolling green hills.

A hotel right on the lake.

We've been promised 65+ degree days.

I'm thinking we're in for a nice time.

I'll let you be the judge.

our next big milestone

2011-05-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Life these days, viewed through a cracked kaleidoscope lens. If you move too fast the scene shifts into an exploding sunburst of colors.

Look--- here's Alice helping me organize our very own behind-the-coats, beyond-the-extra-pantry-space, under-the-stairs hidey hole storage we've dubbed The Harry Potter Closet.

And the time a few days ago when she grabbed my glasses off my face and ran around the room wearing them herself. She looked (even more) like a miniature version of me, and she laughed until she couldn't stand straight.

Then here's us setting up Alice's big girl bed. Her face is an array of excitement, of wonder, of anticipation.

And later that night, the darkened glow of lamplight in her eyes as we tucked her into that bed. Everything smelled like baby soap, and I thought to try to will myself to memorize every fiber of that moment, how small she seemed in that vast twin bed.

2pm, yesterday afternoon

2011-04-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

As I write this, Bean is snoring loudly on the room monitor. Her environmental allergies have spiked - grown horns and developed tails that are long and reaching. We had her annual visit to the allergist a week ago and I'm still tired from that long afternoon.

The sleep Bean is getting now is thanks in part to a grape-flavored Benedryl wanna-be, a pill I gave her before her nap because we'd been outside blowing bubbles. I watched the transformation take place as silver bubbles soundlessly popped against a winking blue spring sky: her nose dripping a slow but steady stream, picking up from a trickle to a stronger flow as the minutes ticked by and cut grass fluttered through the air. She asked me, mid nose-to-sleeve wipe, what the droning thrum was in the background, cocking her head. I told her it was the neighbors' gardeners, their lawn mowers, you understand? When she nodded, she rubbed her eyes, squinting with pink eyelids.

This is what I remember most about this year's allergist visit--- beyond the needle pricks, beyond watching Alice's back abloom with countless red welts. Beyond her cries over the pain and irritation, how much it itched, how much she wanted me to help her. What I remember most about last Monday is watching her play in the waiting room while we listened for our name to be called. She crawled on the carpet quietly chattering to herself as she explored a huge dollhouse set in the corner. She was enchanted with its size, how her little toys could sit at the kitchen table without help, how she could put them to bed in the bedroom.

I watched her face light with wonder, and I thought to myself, "This is my child. Whole and well. I am so lucky."

An hour later I was sitting in a small white room holding her shoulders as a nurse poked her bare back with two dozen tiny needles. I thought about my Alice: the Alice I see in my dreams. An older Alice with greater awareness about the world she lives in. An Alice that I will still struggle to keep safe.

You don't know. You just don't know until you've lived it, what it's like. The hulking weight of responsibility to bear when every grocery cart has the potential to carry something lethal within it. I do the best I can. I keep the weight on my shoulders as much as possible so she can still skip through her days. But I've started to talk to her about the things she can't eat; how we don't eat nuts at all, how some things can make her very sick. And in the coming years, I'm going to have to talk to her about the people who are going to judge her based on her allergies. The ones that say we're over-acting. The ones that say we're over-protective. The ones that tell us she'll get over it if we just let her eat some damn trail mix already.

I've dealt with it more than you know: the mean ones and the well-intentioned ones alike. The ones who don't get it, and the ones that don't want to. The ones who try to help only when it's convenient. Every one of them who fails to see a small piece of chocolate as the deathly delivery device I know it can be.

It's a waste of energy to wish for that kind of understanding, just as it's a waste of energy to wish these allergies away. This is our life, I wouldn't have it any other way. My little girl is sleeping upstairs in deep naptime slumber. She is safe. She is happy. She is well.

And so am I.

small moths

2011-04-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

The space that I can call mine...is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptures, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from the tiny space. I make maquettes, tiny sculptures that are rehearsals for huge sculptures. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth. At night I dream about miniature gardens I can't set foot in because I am a giantess.

The compelling thing about making art---or making anything, I suppose---is the moment with the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances. Circe, Nibue, Artemis, Athena, all the old sorceresses: they must have known the feeling as they transformed mere men into fabulous creatures, stole the secrets of the magicians, disposed armies: ah, look, there it is, the new thing. Call it a swine, a war, a laurel tree. Call it art. The magic I make is small magic now, deferred magic. Every day I work, but nothing ever materializes. I feel like Penelope, weaving and unweaving.

-Audrey Niffennegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

For a while I thought it was stress: a break from writing while I adjusted to the changes taking place around me. Chip was gone a lot: a slew of business trips five days at a time. And then deadlines: for work, for church, for home. Taxes and paperwork doctor's appointments and insurance applications before the end of the month. So I waited.

I cut fabric. I sewed. I made plans for Bean's summer wardrobe. I dreamed in pictures instead of words. And still I waited for the words that didn't come.

As time went on, I felt a shift inside - where once I could categorize and shift ideas in my head to translate here, in the last several weeks the ideas and stories I would have told once-upon-a-time seem to condense into nothingness inside my brain.

It was last night when I started to think about this passage from The Time Traveler's Wife. I understand that feeling, but it isn't physical walls that are closing in around me. I find myself in a metaphorical room that is forcing my mind to shrink inside of itself, the words disappearing into nothingness.

But there is something I know.

When your own words don't come, when they stick in your throat and gather there until you feel like you'll choke on them--- when the words can't come from you, use someone else's.

And so that's what I'm going to do this week: use beautiful words said by other writers. Until mine come back, until I can find my way out of this small space. Please be patient with me.

patch pants

2011-04-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

More sewing show and tell.

This time with blue pockets.

And really, isn't everything better with blue pockets?

musings on easter

2011-04-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

I am thinking of new beginnings. Birth and rebirth. The power within each one of us to begin again (and again)--- for however long it takes until we learn the lesson we're meant to know, for however long it takes until we become something better, something truer, something finer.

This weekend we're headed into one of the most important observances in Christianity. No matter how you feel about Easter - whether you're in it solely for the candy or if you attend church morning, noon, and night, can you do me a favor? Give some thought to beginnings. And be grateful we have them. I love starting over: a fresh day, a fresh chance, a fresh piece of paper.

Tomorrow's a new day, and I'm so glad.

the present is a gift

2011-04-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

The Castle

It's the fabulous castle of Now.
You can walk in and wander about,
But it's so very thin,
Once you are, then you've been---
And soon as you're in, you're out.

-Shel Silverstein

I've been contemplating the moments: how I can never hold on to one long enough to feel it, way down in my center, in the meaty core of my bones. The days pile up in succession without seeming to make a mark. It was just Monday a week ago and here it is again---- no, it's gone. And with it, another day. Another cluster of memories go uncataloged.

So it goes, letting days pass without a peep on the blog. This space is dusty, forelorn.

Not for long, not forever.

the smallest tea party you've ever attended

2011-04-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

With a three-year-old Alice, life is juxtaposition.

Tiny little tea cups and tiny little tables nestled up against bigger-than-life emotion, a face filled with joy that can eclipse the sun.

And this, for April's poetry month:

On Turning Ten

-Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel

like I'm coming down with something,

something worse than any stomach ache

or headaches I get reading in a bad light---

a kind of measles of the spirit,

a mumps of the psyche,

a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,

but that is because you have forgotten

the perfect simplicity of being one

and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.

But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.

At four I was an Arabian wizard.

I could make myself invisible

by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.

At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window

watching the late afternoon light.

Back then it never fell so solemnly

against the side of my tree house,

and my bicycle never leaned against the garage

as it does today,

all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,

as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.

It is time to say goodbye to my imaginary friends,

time to turn the first big number.

It's only yesterday I used to believe

there was nothing under my skin but light.

If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,

I skin my knees. I bleed.

only in dreams

2011-04-11T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been dreaming of writing without thought, of writing without worry, of writing without pressure.

Actually, I've been dreaming of vampires wearing purple football uniforms and dancing through red brick buildings--- but in my waking hours, when my fingers hurt to the bone and my mind races with thoughts of finishing our taxes and work deadlines, there is a deeper part of me - a small bit of my soul, perhaps - that dreams while I walk.

And in those dreams, I am saying things in quiet wonder. Observing the miracle of sunlight and rain fall. I am telling you about the movies that play on the inside of my eyelids. And I'm unafraid.

big box of toys

2011-04-07T05:00:00.000-07:00

When she turned three, there was this mental border I crossed in thinking of Bean as a toddler to thinking of her as this compact preschooler-child-person. It happened mostly because of the common "for ages three and up" warning on toys.

Not that I'm running around the toy aisles willy-nilly grabbing items off the shelves that previously I had considered out of Bean's depth only a month ago---- but what I have been doing is thinking of one word: LONGEVITY. Not many toys have it. They are awesome and fun and So! Darn! Fantastic! for about five minutes---- and then they sit in the bottom of the toy basket forever more.

I've done my best to avoid Quick Toy Death, but as Bean is at this weird precarious age between toddler and school-age, where she is more interested in her stuffed buddies than a doll, where she likes to play with Little People, but will only do so for about ten minutes and then loses interest--- I'm trying to figure out her Toy Personality and I'm failing a little. She's just not a dolly girl. But she does love to play mommy to Elmo or Olivia or her blue monster Hurp. She also loves tiny things: so even while she's ignoring the full-sized dolls in her bedroom, she carts around Strawberry Shortcake in her pocket - laying her down on tiny pillows and underneath equally tiny blankets next to small plastic figures of Elmo and Oscar the Grouch. She still loves the play food and dishes. They were great choices a year ago and great toys even now.

So what do you think? It's not like I have a birthday to shop for (we gave her a tricycle that loves but doesn't know how to peddle--- and if anyone wants to clue me in on how to teach a three-year-old to peddle a tricycle, that would be awesome). But I'm just curious. Toys on the brain, I guess. And thinking of Christmas about a million months away.

In your experience - whether it's your own or with your kids, what would you say are the best toys for lasting beyond five minutes for a three-year-old?

a poem for your pocket

2011-04-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Month. It's also Monday. And I am tired from lots of sewing. I have been trying to get caught up on a million different care packages and sewing projects that I have promised people... in some cases it's been MONTHS. This week will mark the end of all the catch up. Which means that my brain will again have space for writing. In the meantime, in honor of April: The Journey -Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice--- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations--- though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do--- determined to save the only life you could save. (a quick note: I've tried to fix the formatting of this post a million times and technology is KILLING me. as well as Ms. Oliver's poem, for which I'm very sorry. perhaps tomorrow the kind people at blogspot will smile down at me and give me correct poetry formatting. until then...)

no foolin

2011-04-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

There is a lot I could say to establish my craziness.

A lot I could say to prove my love for Bean.

There is a lot I could tell you about the strange small gestures of motherhood.

There is a lot. A lot of words for those things.

But today I will show you in pictures, just because.

I spent an hour last night making these.

Teeny tiny little blankets and pillows for Bean's small action figure-y buddies.

Because she wanted to put them to bed.

You're welcome.

the best way we know how

2011-03-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

It started when Bean would point to the ceiling in her room and tell me that she was scared. I couldn't figure it out at first, but after a while it became clear that she was talking about the smoke detector. It seemed ominous, I guess: the small unblinking green light, its constant presence in her room, a gimlet's white round face.

I tried to tell her what it was, a smoke detector baby---- it helps us to stay safe. But that didn't appease her, only gave her a name for the menace. After that it was a small cry in the darkened room: Mommy! The smoke detector! It scares me!

Which is when I started The Smoke Detector Chronicles. Small stories of what the smoke detector does when we leave the room. He loves to roll around in Bean's bed and play with her toys. He likes to take naps and read books, especially books about Olivia. He eats dessert first: cupcakes and ice cream and chocolate. He watches movies, too. It's a strange coincidence that his favorite movies are also Bean's: Up and Meet the Robinson's and any episode of Super Why.

After a while, Bean started to tell me things about Smoke Detector all on her own. She tells me he plays hide and seek and likes to tell her stories long after I've turned out the lights. Which is why I hurry to listen to the room monitor at bedtime, doing my best to hold tight to her childhood, listening to her laughter in a darkened room.

- - - - -

These days I am preoccupied with another childhood transition, this one about the Big Girl Bed. She still sleeps in her crib. She's so small for her age. My mom tells me it's not a big deal. So I haven't felt any need to rush it. But lately I've wondered if it's time. I will break the First Rule of Fate Tempting and say this: she's fully potty trained. All the way down to naps and bedtime. I take no credit for those last bits - it's all Alice, the way she wants so much to do what I've asked her to do. For a while I was putting her in trainers at night, a just-in-case thing because everyone said that they might continue to have accidents at night. But it never happened, not even once. If she needs to go in the late night hours, I'll hear a plaintive cry over the room monitor--- sometimes only a whisper: Mommy, I need to pee.

So now it truly is All About the Underpants. We haven't touched a diaper in weeks and weeks. Which has me thinking again about the Big Girl Bed.

I was talking to Bean yesterday afternoon and asked if she'd like a bed, a bed like mommy's and daddy's. She was agreeable, but reserved, "Like mommy's?" I told her yes, like mommy's and we will say goodbye to your crib. Which was the wrong thing to say, because she insisted that we couldn't say goodbye to her crib. We just couldn't. I've been thinking about it ever since, how I don't want to rush something just because everyone else is doing it, just because the books give me a timeline.

So many of the transitions come down to an arbitrary decision made by me as I'm sitting on the couch, or a passing comment by a friend that gets me thinking that maybe it's time. I'm not sure if I ever understood that little strangeness of motherhood until now: how there is no rulebook, no true determiner of what we should do or when. How we make things up as we go along, doing our best to do by right by these small creatures in the best way we know how.

you spotted this fashion trend here first

2011-03-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

See--- it's a fascination, an inspiration, a tiny bit of preoccupation,

with gingham.

And why not, right?

Simple. Geometric. Clean.

I decided to embrace my Motherhood role and fully commit to Fashion Overload.

I'm calling them picnic pants.

foggy

2011-03-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

There was a birthday party this weekend.

I'm blaming my lack of blog writing on birthday-related hoopla hangover.

That, and a spring/summer wardrobe sewing binge.

Until I shake myself from the stupor, I offer this gem that my Facebook friends will hopefully forgive, since they've already heard about it.

When I noticed Strawberry Shortcake was missing her shoes Monday night, I asked Alice where the shoes were.

She informed me that she'd put the shoes away.

Yes. Yes she certainly did.

my advancement as a mother

2011-03-21T05:00:00.000-07:00

In every child's life, there is a point when the parent presents them with an article of clothing.

An article of clothing that the parent considers to be sassy and adorable. Fetching, really.

An article of clothing the child wears to be photographed.

An article of clothing that comes to be known to the child as evidence of their parent's frightfully questionable fashion sense.

An article of clothing that is pointed to, in later years, as a sure sign of the parent's horrible infliction of dreadful outfits --- 'the last straw, really' the child will say as she vows that from then on she dressed herself.

So far I have avoided what I believe to be some of the more outrageous clothing options I could have inflicted on Bean.

Not anymore.

I have created the pair of pants sure to grant me the desired status of MOTHER-DRESSER DESTROYER OF WORLDS.

And I had to share.

(Those would be black-and-white gingham check pants, people. If I thought I wouldn't be laughed off the street, I'd sew a pair for myself. Because really: BLACK AND WHITE GINGHAM CHECK.)

bagged

2011-03-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

It turns out, three-year-olds are obsessed with bags.

Putting things in bags.

Carrying things in bags.

Pulling things out of bags.

Toting bags on their shoulders and on their backs.

Little bags and big bags, fancy bags and simple bags.

I thought it was time for a couple bags of her own.

Star bags.

(This one from a Simplicity pattern).

(And this one from here)

and now for something completely different

2011-03-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

Can anyone explain the thinking on last night's Jeopardy? Two of the three contestants flunked out of the game before Final Jeopardy, leaving ONE GUY to compete. Against no one. Even if he lost on the final question, he still would have WON THE GAME. So given that there is NO RISK WHATSOEVER other than money HE DOES NOT HAVE--- how much money does he risk? Does he risk most of his $28,000? Or, like, half of his $28,000? Does he do what any sane person would do and BET IT ALL?

No. No he doesn't. He bets a measly $1200.

I don't know why, but it makes me want to punch that guy in the face.

- - -

Bean spent yesterday with Wandering Nana. What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall to watch the two of them. I understand that there was cookie making instead of a nap. Lunch was consumed. Cookie dough was eaten. And general merriment was had. Thank heaven for good friends.

- - -

I have no interest whatsoever to watch a "Gray's Anatomy Music Event". I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings. I just had to say it.

- - -

We're having Bean's much-belated-due-to-illness birthday party on Saturday. Anyone know of any good party games for the 2 to 3-year-old set? I'm thinking of games best played indoors with no clear winners, since the entire concept of winning/losing is sort of moot at this point in Bean's life. What do you think? Any last bits of advice/warning?

the cope

2011-03-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

.

I remember watching hours of CNN during hurricane Katrina and its terrible aftermath. Crying babies and their frightened mothers, covered in filth with no end in sight. News people wearing glaringly bright Gortex jackets, hoods pulled tight around their fresh-scrubbed faces as they reported from scenes too horrible to contemplate.

There was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. CNN again, in loud staccato bursts showing images of mass devastation. Wobbly video recordings portrayed a wall of roiling dark brown water--- matchstick structures riding the waves into swaying palm trees. And the faces streaked with muck, telling stories of heroism and heartbreak, eyes wild, scanning the distant horizon for some sign of relief.

The Haiti earthquake: schools of children sitting in terrified clusters amidst rubble too small to be recognized as the remains of structures. Rocks and sticks, really. Destruction underlined by the horrible panic of widespread violence: fathers digging beneath towering mounds of unmentionable death to seek the bodies of their children, scarecrow-thin arms hoisting rifles over their heads, firing into a bloody sky.

Flooding in Rio de Janeiro, Queensland, the Philippines. Earthquakes in Christchurch and Pakistan.

And of course now, the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan.

Each time I find myself drawn inexplicably to the coverage, the 24-7 inundation of terror: from the first shakey camera shots and the news anchors pulled out of bed to report on an unfolding scene of horror they don't understand --- to the rising collection of local news faces as they flock to the epicenter of disaster, jumping on planes streaking the sky only minutes after the initial shaking of the ground.

I don't know if it's something innately human or more specific to American culture or even a sickness designated independently to me, but in the wake of disaster my first impulse is to turn on the TV. I flip channels from local news to the wider lens of CNN and PBS. I let the television drone in the background of life circulations: stopping mid-stride to stand transfixed as I watch the news of families searching for signs of loved ones, elderly women staggering through the wreckage of their village, their eyes too weary for tears. I watch experts weigh in, their voices even and paced, as they talk about statistics and epicenters from their brown leather chairs in a New York studio. This in stark contrast to the scenes they narrate: human beings reduced to their most humble and base circumstance, standing in a world so dramatically foreign to the one they have lived in.

I linger on images of tennis shoes knocked into telephone wires and a vast sea of white cars piled on one another, as far as the eye can see.

It's the same each time. In a few hours or several, after one day or three, my internal disaster meter glows red. With shaking hands and a heavy heart, I turn the television off. I turn the radio dial to black. I shut myself away from the tragedy. One more image will send me into a spiral of hopelessness and inaction.

I turn it off so that I can remember quiet, so that I can reflect on wholeness, so that I can feel normal.

There is a point in human horror when I know that I can't take one more image of sisters and brothers being pulled from unimaginable wreckage. To push myself beyond that limit is to risk stripping away my carefully grown coping mechanisms. To watch any more reports of devastation is to cause irreparable damage to my soul. In order for me to have hope, I have to cultivate it within myself - and in order to have the right environment for hope to grow, I have to feel peace in my heart. And peace, for me, is best found in the table scraps of every day repetition.

It's something I don't understand about myself well enough to explain it to you, other than to say it is so. And I'm not proud of this pattern of retreat, either--- I am trying to decide if it's a survival skill or a nasty wall of Western Obliviousness.

Be that as it may, these days I am watching a repeating cycle of Super Why and Scooby Doo, memorizing Alice's delightful face as she learns to ride her tricycle. I plead fervent prayers of hope and empathy for everyone affected by recent world events. I do things small and quiet to help in my own way, from this corner of the world.

And I give thanks that I have this peaceful corner to retreat to, when so many do not.

What do you do? How do you handle world disasters? And as your children grow, how do you help them to cope?