back in the saddle.

We're signing one kid up for a heart transplant and another one got a Lego stuck up his nose yesterday so I figured it was about time to start writing again, if only to keep tabs on all the bodily shenanigans around these parts.

I am here in the same place T was last year, but for the fourth time and not the first. I think new babies are magical no matter how many you meet, and they are also messy and time consuming and generally bad for productivity. gimme all the babies.

I'm not sure what I want out of writing in this space this time around, or if it will be more than a one-time visit. but something about the idea of blogging has been calling to me again so here I am, you siren.

It is still the beginning.

It's not that I hate lists, but - the thing is I kind of hate lists. I concede their use in getting things out of my head and onto paper, where things always turn out to be less of an ordeal than I imagine. But a list is also a tangible reminder of all the ways I'm not measuring up, my best placed intentions not yet manifest, staring smugly up at me from its papery perch.

So, I avoid lists whenever possible. Instead of to-do lists, I draw myself maps representing the tasks I will complete as I move throughout the day. My shopping lists are more like charts or grids, their own type of grocery store map.

And New Years' resolutions? They get boiled down, reduced and condensed into short phrases. My resolutions are mantras I can remember all year, kept in the back of my mind to inform my choices with a much broader scope than some collection of aspirations.

Favorite mantras of past years include: "get out of your comfort zone" and "find the third option."

This year my resolution consists of two words, often and mistakenly placed in opposition to one another. Two words to remind me to soak up this (deceptively) still moment between the events that were and those that will be. To remind me to allow art/space/time/whatever-needs-making to spring from a place of calm rather than angst.

New Years' mantra 2016: Relax. Create.

{t}

road trips.

 

 

when we were little, road trips were almost always to see a grandma/grandpa/mami/papi and meant powdered sugar donuts and orange juice consumed from paper cups at an interstate rest stop.  that is the taste of adventure and anticipation to me, those puffy white bites of cake that coated your tongue and got all down the front of your shirt.

 

grown up me and my husband are stalwart drivers-to-grandmas, too.  we're fifteen hours away and road trips look a little different from this side of the front seat/back seat line, I'll admit.  there is the packing and loading, the deciding when to leave (late so the kids will sleep, or early so we won't?), the arrangements for plants watered and packages collected in our absence from home.  but then we start up the car and head out for our other homes, for mamas and papas and brothers and sisters and old friends and now--nieces and nephews and cousins!  and that right there brings back all the good feelings of eagerness and possibility and just generally happy childlike contentment.  we are going on a trip!

 

and we get thirty minutes down the highway and the first kid needs to go pee.

 

******

 

I've wondered lots about the "right" way to do a road trip.  it's definitely one of those events that seems to act like a sorting hat for parenting styles and social affiliations.  back when we bought our minivan as new parents-of-two, we decided against the built-in DVD players.  it may have been a fit of sanctimonious crunchy-mom insanity--the auto salesman certainly thought so--but really, we haven't missed them (mostly not, anyhow) and we've gotten to listen to tons of good audiobooks in the meantime.  we talk lots, and we've been blessed with plenty of what must surely be character-building squabbles, too.  on the other hand, we've allowed the boys some game time on parents' phones the last few trips and that hasn't been so bad, either.  fifteen hours is a long time and probably kids who have dvds in the car are just as well adjusted as ours, and even more versant in interesting film topics.  but at the time, way back when we were new to parenting and full to the brim with ideals, we made a no-movies call, and we've stuck to it.  principle, folks.

 

this trip, I was despairing about the junk food that makes its way into the car at every gas station.  we gave in to a pack of candy for the kids years ago, mostly because we were already loading our own cup holders with starbursts and gummy bears in an effort to stay awake on long stretches of barren interstate.  somehow, though, we greenlighted a cherry Icee in the final, most strained hours of our journey home last week.  as Elliott dove in to it, I panicked about Red 40 and corn syrup and ADHD and cancer and all the rest.  I mentally laid down the law about how all future road trips would be bento boxes of homemade veggie rolls and tiny cubes of bean curd.  we'd find a cow on the side of the road and milk it, by god, before we bought another ounce of tooth-rotting candy or soda in sheep's clothing.  (because of course we already stick to a no-soda rule.  duh.  (most of the time, anyway.)) 

 

oh, it's hard, this parenting thing.  the older I get, the more I realize that kind of food just doesn't make me feel good.  not for long, anyway.  and I really do wonder about how it impacts behavior and resilience, let alone long term health.  but then I remember being small, and the powdery white donuts--special food for a special time--and I remember, too, the months after fifth grade when we moved to a new house and didn't have a washer at home, and choosing a roll of SweetTarts at the convenience store next to the Laundromat.  SweetTarts were the educated choice, because you could suck them slowly and make them last the entire wash cycle and most of the dry.  Which is the same thing I do now with candy on a road trip--suck it slow, make it last, roll it around your mouth and watch the miles drop away. 

 

******

 

We did find a cow on the trip, out back of a gas station where we had to stop for the bathroom a few miles after we'd just stopped for lunch.  Owen would have stood there for hours, petting it and trying to feed it bits of grass through the fence.  That is something I will remember.

 

******

 

I probably won't outlaw candy.  Maybe I'll make some good granola and try to sell that hard first.  But no more g-d Icees.  I mean it.

 

 

see deb's work at the county fair for a reminder that junk food is beautiful.
and andrea's, because so are road trips.

Beyond Kondo

I jumped right on the Kondo wagon. Inspired by having just cleaned out Grandma Amy’s house, full to bursting with the collections of a lifetime. Inspired by big changes in my life, including a recent move back to Florida and a new baby on the way. The massive declutter was a success. Kondo is right about mostly everything.

There’s just one subcategory of personal belongings that stumped me, and for which I could find no help in Marie Kondo’s magic book. I’ve been a big journaler for quite a while now. In my early twenties I spent some time on another wagon, and the habit of morning pages stuck with me. This means I have (multiple) boxes of journals filled with the stream-of-consciousness, unfiltered and uncensored dumping of my morning mind.

And listen: it’s some pretty weird shit.

My first impulse on finding the journals, following directions like the Good Catholic Schoolgirl I am, was to ditch them ceremoniously. I held them in my hands, and they didn’t spark joy. Something more like disgust or even fear. In the next instant, I broke the rules just a little, like the Good Catholic Schoolgirl I am, and started to leaf through the pages.

Aside from nonsensical ramblings, the journals contain dreams from nights before, occasional records of events, and some very honest outpourings of feelings from my 20’s decade, which was, I must say, fraught with feelings. I made a few cross-country moves, played in a bunch of bands, grappled with the meaning of real love, got married and divorced. The more I read, the more I felt a sense of connection to self and even something like pride—I’ve worked through some tough emotional territory over these years, and I've managed to come out the other side.

I thought of the lack of women's voices throughout history, more specifically accounts of their daily lives. Nowadays we have massive accounts of everyone's daily lives thanks to social media BUT as we all know these accounts are written for an audience, filtered and censored and largely bullshit.

So I wondered: is there some value to this one woman’s uncensored account of real life? (And am I ok with a curious grandchild one day perusing these accounts?) Or is it enough just to acknowledge the value they have to me now? The reassurance that I worked hard, that I came through, that I let myself become raw and exposed? Isn’t that intrinsically inspiring? And isn’t it a joyful thing to look back at what your feelings actually were at some particular moment and understand yourself better in doing so, then and now?

Here’s what Henri has to say, when challenged about his own journal-keeping:

“I don’t care about the facts, Domino. I care about how I feel. How I feel will change, I want to remember that.”

In the end, I abandoned all my ideas for proper fire and water journal funerals and gave my tomes a place of honor in the overhead closet shelf. They sit in a stack, exposed, a colorful mosaic of bindings ready to be dusted again and again, perhaps one day opened by that curious grandchild. Perhaps one day opened by me, when I need to remember.

 *on nodding terms

I was going to take a nap, but the afternoon had me cleaning duck poo off the patio instead. Fine with it.

{t}

never not an action shot.

 

we are still figuring this out, we two.  that's the work, and also the fun.

 

{mf}