What goes around...

Spaghetti with meat sauce was my favorite dinner growing up. Hands down. Spaghetti with or without meat (preferably with meat) is definitely at the top of both of my kids' lists of favorite foods that Äiti makes.

Their dinner tonight looked so good, I had to snap a shot. The meatballs look even better with the red sauce clinging to them, I think.

In the kitchen

From the farm to the board to be made into dippers for hummus.

Karen's Lady and the Tramp meatballs. Gem goes bananas for these with good reason. They are delicious.

Gem's really into baseball and film making at the moment (he's in costume here).

Onigiri are ubiquitous, but they still kick ass.

Sag dove into the bubbles atop the soaking rice cooker bowl.

Blueberry corn bread. I cannot get enough of native blueberries this summer. These are organic and even better. Sweeter and juicier.

Some knits

All possible dysfunction aside, these are so beautiful and give me pleasure (the experience of pleasure does come rushing back once PMS has moved along, I find).

All are pre-blocked and have ends not tucked in (they are artfully hidden for their photo ops).

Dreamy

Sag. (Who has found his first love in Maeve.)

The sketch book he made me.

And the package it came in.

The peach Gem picked up at the Farmer's market.

An active little critter we found in the house who mysteriously expired within the hour of our discovery.

What the kids see too much of. Gotta work on that.

Escape

Oh, I don't know about this. But, I have a touch of insomnia again, so here goes.

Today I knit two scarves. Both for August birthdays (August which is nearly upon us. Yikes.) I had PMS and was feeling down and the knitting gave me something easy and purposeful to do.

But, tonight's episode of "Clean House" I watched off the DVR kind of percolated in my mind, and as I lay awake in the dark I realized that knitting may be more than me being crafty and creative.

Escape.

My cooking binges?

Escape.

My blogging and the dozens of blogs on my Google Reader?

Escape.

My tv shows?

Escape.

Is it possible? All excuses not to declutter and clean and once and for all deal with the piles? It all fits together to form a convenient, deceptively "normal" routine.

Maybe my cyclical feelings of being overwhelmed by the clutter and dustiness don't happen because of PMS...maybe they happen because I can't keep them at bay forever and they naturally wash ashore repeatedly because the situation is something that really bothers me at my core.

Paralysis, not knowing where to start, starting, but never getting anywhere near finished, embarrassment, finding it so difficult to let go of things despite all that, it all resonated for me.

I've thought about this before vis-a-vis the kids and how I spend time with them. With these unsettled and ultimately unresolved feelings I have about our living space, I didn't feel free to just "be" with them.

I realize now that I am requiring a certain level of escape just to stay sane and frack if I am just figuring out just how much of my time, and their time with me, that uses up.

I am PMS-ing. But, I have a feeling there is some truth here amongst the heightened psychodrama. We'll see how it looks and feels in the morning...

Water play

We were back in my old stomping grounds on Wednesday. Ellie showed off her favorite local haunt.




Jiji giving the boys a lesson on water physics.


After lunch the boys went back down while Ellie took a nap.

Cuke love

We pulled into the lot behind the house.

Cap and I had had appointments with Vinny. (Thing that I love right now #1: seeing Vinny is a guaranteed lift. I felt pretty terrible walking in his door today and left feeling so much better.) Then we drove straight to the super WF to pick up items and ingredients for our food needs for tomorrow (lunch at Ellie and Lisa's, dinner out with my side of he family). I walked through the mega-store in a post-bodywork daze. Thank goddess for lists.

So, then, we returned home. You can see the jungle garden as you pull in and I asked Gem if he thought the tomatoes might have turned red. (The garden has been...not neglected, but given a lot of independence as of late.) Cap sauntered over, as did we, and no, the tomatoes were not red. (Sag is really not interested in the garden. He hopped on a swing.)

But, there were three full grown cukes undercover of giant cuke leaves, right on a bed of grass because I still haven't staked or trellised the humongous plants.

Gem also noticed some green beans. He plucked one.

Things that I am loving right now #2: veggies that like their independence, and #3: garden-fresh cukes sliced, lightly salted and eaten on toast with mayo.

And while we're at it, thing that I am loving right now #4: agave nectar. I want to marry it, I love it so. It's thinner than honey and so dissolves easily in iced tea! Or cold hemp milk, which brings me to...

Thing that I am loving right now #5: hemp milk. I bought some to use in Gluten-Free Goddess' amazing (and wonderfully kid-approved here on Sunday at lunch) Vegan Banana Ice Scream. Hemp milk is creamy. It's got a nutty flavor with a slight earthy undertone. But squirt some agave nectar in it and it is, wait for it...money.

Here I mixed the last of the box into my iced decaf. Yum.

And, last but not least, thing that I am loving right now #6: having some time to blog while Cap is out with the kids at swimming class. I feel like I have not had much time alone lately and I am needing it. I am even pondering a short vacay away from the fam. I need some time and space to recharge...

Woods time with Jiji

Making a home

A better camera would help in photographing active little critters like this one. But, these days, I am feeling more inclined to save those dollars for yarn and needles.

I spotted this beauty (kind of scary looking, but beautiful nonetheless) yesterday evening. S/he was moving about on her invisible-to-the-initial-eye web, bobbing in air outside one of our bedroom windows.

It had been a day where I was on my feet, seemingly perpetually. No complaints, I spent many hours in the kitchen cooking at a leisurely and constant pace. I was making a nourishing cornucopia.

Silke, Roger and the kids came over for their pre-departure dinner (they leave today for a month-plus in Germany) and Karen, Brent and the kids arrive today for a few days (K&B have a wedding in Philly Sat night).

I needed to create using only what I had because Cap had the car and I wasn't interested in hiking to WF with two reluctant-to-walk kids in tow. Not surprisingly, we had more than enough on hand and I enjoyed plucking menu ideas from a different part of my brain based on scanning the cupboard, pantry, fridge and freezer, as opposed to my free flowing imagination/desires and cookbooks.

I made: miso soup with wakame and tofu, onigiri, tamagoyaki, hijiki, roasted potatoes, potato salad, corn and peas (ah, childhood, though it was sans the butter-y sauce), chicken sausage, brownies, and vanilla coconut ice cream.

Today is designated for picking up and making either the kids' room or our bedroom hospitable for our friends' stay.

There are times when I feel overwhelmed by the work of keeping house and there are times when I am in love with making a home. More often than not, I can be found somewhere in between.

While watching the spider last night, I marveled at her purposefulness and sheer exertion. It dawned on me that there was meaning to her movements and that she was spinning her web.

I can live with relative chaos, but those moments of absolute focus: magic.

Goggles

Sag has struck up a friendship with a child in his swimming class. She moved up from Polliwog 1 to Polliwog 2 at the same time he did. They chat a lot while they're waiting for their turns to swim. Before I knew which kid she was, I asked him to describe her. (I am able to watch the class in an observation area where you can see, but not hear, what's happening.)

He said, "I don't know...but I can draw you a picture of her goggles."

Summer things

Splashes and screams...

Puffy white clouds wafting in a blue sky.

That growling appetite that comes after forgetting to eat for hours.

Butterfly lanterns.

Kicking off the sandals and swinging in a hammock.

Breaking in the hot tub.

S'mores...

Bare feet.

Mimosa blossoms.

Painting outdoors.

Blueberries off the bush.

Favorite yellow crocs.

Knitting started during the strangely compelling All-Star game (was still going at 1am when I shuffled off to bed.)

Iced decaf. Cinnamon hazelnut. Not as good as Karen's.

Suit kicked off after swim class. Those sharp dark shadows and the ever present cicada doing their audio death shimmer give these days and moments a balance of tang and edge.