Update

I still don't have the time or mind space to reflect and/or compose. Cap's been gone 10 days and he returns a week from tomorrow. Today is the first day I really wished he were home. Luckily, my mom, sister and brother-in-law made the trek from Queens and Manhattan to come spend time with the kids and me.

They played the Geography game. Sag and Mike came in first, Sandy came in second, and Gem came in third. The kids brought out 'the podium', Sag whipped up some medals and I was the paparazzi. Sadly, my mom didn't make it onto the podium today.

I prepped and cooked for two days and we feasted on a smashing dinner: braised short ribs, sloppy lentils, rice, cold sea tangle salad, chicken salad, tamagoyaki, nimono and kinpira gobo (the last three dishes thanks to mom :-)

Sandy brought tortilla chips and salsa (which the kids scarfed) and a yummy bean dip to accompany the store bought GF crackers I had recently picked up. I made deviled eggs with the pastured eggs and, oh my goodness, they were amazing.

For dessert, I grilled banana crumpets with olive oil (I baked them last night) and served them with homemade strawberry soy ice cream. Yum.

Oh, and I made hibiscus iced tea which was lovely with a dollop of agave :-)

After dinner, they all went out back to play baseball and I was able to wash everything up save for my new cast iron Dutch oven. I decided to let the beef fat get nice and congealed which will make disposal of said animal fat easier.

I am pleased to report that I continue to make incremental progress on the organizing and cleaning front. I got down on my knees and washed both the bathroom and kitchen floors. I am thoroughly enjoying walking in the kitchen in my bare feet again :-)

We wound down tonight with silly and happy photos.

And skyping with Cap.

I'm not sure what this week will bring in terms of blogging...

Up In The Air

Saw a great movie, Up In The Air.

I guess I'm busier with Cap being gone. Not much space or time to blog. Things are good. Full. If you were a Facebook friend you'd be getting more updates :-)

For now, another song, by another artist I'd never heard of before.

Peace and love.

Lightning in a voice

I've been seriously digging Season 3 of Mad Men. It is really good.

Tonight I watched an episode and this song, this voice, played over the end credits. Went right to my core via my thrumming ear drums.

I love that each new moment gives us the chance to hear something true and beautiful...something that, despite never having heard it before, is instantly recognized as part of one's soul.

Bettye Lavette : Love Reign O'er Me

I love a good cover :-)

The pudding

...as in the proof (is in the pudding)...

Choosing motherhood, choosing learning at home, choosing joy, choosing the moment.

LOST anthem

This is AWESOME. Can't believe it's ending Sunday!

Sometimes a doppelgänger

I believe in energies that no one has to see for us to prove
I believe in you and me and everything we'll ever see and do.



I probably have sometimes a hard enough time being an activist for myself. (1:41 in the clip.)

Starting

We could start tonight...Mr. Pond is at it again ♥

Equipoise

Pause

a tulip of sorts.

Time has been whizzing by lately. Things have been busy...and different, as Cap spent a week or so prepping an online course he's teaching this month and preparing for his three week trip to Japan (he left this morning).

The kids and I are ready for a pause, to reset our energies and foci. And next week we'll resume the routine we began setting up last week.

• ordered a few of the ADD books I was able to peruse thanks to the library. the used bookstore in town didn't have them, and I couldn't renew them because others were waiting their turns...so I bit the bullet and ordered them from Amazon. it feels good to have cleared personal book shelf space. (did I mention that here? $40 credit at the used bookstore!) when my new books come, they will move right onto an empty shelf.

• majorly fell off the Dragon's Way food and GFCF wagon since Saturday. the result? feeling very tired...as if my limbs were replaced by some dense and heavy material that it now takes four, five, six times the energy to move about. would like to make time to read some of the mindful eating material I have. today I am back to no meat and dairy. I made myself a delicious stiry-fry for dinner tonight: scallion, garlic, ginger, green pepper, mushroom, bamboo shoots, safflower oil, coconut aminos, salt, black pepper, sugar, and red pepper flakes.

• loving the sight of the kids in their new big boy raincoats. this Spring has been swinging kind of intensely between chilly and rainy to hot and sunny and back again.

• dropped a bundle on two new bras...and don't regret it. good bras are like good shoes...or good eyeglasses. you get what you pay for and it is so worth it for items you wear/use every single day.

• we'll be hitting bed earlyish tonight. all of us have been going to bed just a tad later than our bodies are okay with, I think.

• Qigong, Qigong, Qigong...oh how you elude me, oh how I will track and follow you and make you mine...

• looking forward to a quiet day tomorrow. we've postponed the zoo to next week and will take the day as it comes, moment by moment.

Right now, Gem is watching the Red Sox game and Sag is playing with Lego. Cap is less than six hours away from landing in Osaka. Me? I am enjoying the feeling of lightening...and feeling my body let go of the hunger that has been gripping it for the past few days.

Dragon's Way update

The Dragon's Way class ended yesterday. I was absent.

Cap is in a frenzy of getting ready for his trip, I am bobbing along, unmoored from any semblance of routine, my brain/my system crouched defensively (but not afraid) in the face of this impending paradigm shift: 19 days without co-parent and partner.

So I didn't go to class, to free up the schedule at a time of the day that could use it. (I have been taking pockets of time for myself in preparation for being solo.)

When I sent my teacher an e-mail telling her I would not be present, I noticed that I felt differently than I usually do when I am letting her know I won't be there.

I felt no guilt.

This Dragon's Way has been eye-opening. Which is what you want when you attempt to heal yourself consciously. Which is what you want when you make adjustments to your day-to-day in an effort to learn something...to open up channels of flow and awareness. Which is what you want when you decide to step out of the box for awhile.

The first time I did Dragon's Way, I remember being very 'successful' with the food part of it. The Qigong has always been a struggle. The food, since that first time, has also been a struggle. But, this last time, it was less of a struggle.

I feel less guilty.

My mind is a big part of who I am. It has been interesting learning about the neurophysiological aspects of the/my mind lately, but right now I am talking about the 'thinking' part of me. As much as I value 'doing' and know that I am a kinesthetic learner, I think a lot and thinking defines my reality way more than doing does.

In my quest to become more balanced, to be happier, to grow and serve, I am attempting to align my thinking more with doing: in parenting, in cooking/eating, in practicing Qigong, in learning, in being.

It's slow going, which I am learning to accept. And I am excited to report that I am seeing changes.

Lately, I've been noticing that I don't need nearly as much food as I have in the fridge/pantry. This is immediately complicated by the fact that I don't live alone. My kitchen space is a shared one. I wish there was a practical way to separate the foods that feed each of us. Visually. Spatially. This would help my ADDish brain.

Attempts to streamline food and family have been moving along...slowly. Meal planning, a cost control measure, has helped me to organize my time better around cooking. But, my eyes have opened more to the reality that we four do not taper neatly into a simple whole when it comes to eating.

And this has had an impact on my attempts to dovetail into 'eating Dragon's Way'. This serves as a good example of why 'just do it' doesn't work for me, as a rule. I have a mind that tends to not only place equal weight on many things that other brains would automatically assign varying weights to without consciousness (the neurophysio part...the part that doesn't hone in on the Dragon's Way veggies when I open the fridge door), but I also have a mind that can, it feels sometimes, think its way into or out of a paper bag.

So, yes, this is my long winded way of saying that doing Dragon's Way is hard with my (any) particular set of life distractions. And that there has been grace in realizing that that is okay. But, more than that, that incremental learning and healing are possible even when you are feeling slowed down by the morass of the day-to-day.

I can't necessarily have less in my fridge and pantry. I am, after all, responsible for feeding three other people with various tastes and needs. But, by healing myself through Qigong and eating for healing, I am able to see more clearly what helps me along on this path. Without thinking about it, I am doing things like reaching for the veggies. Heck, I'm even doing it when I am thinking about other foods, talk about Transition!

How high the moon

I've started reading a new-to-me blog called We Go With Him, a chronicling of a mom's journey co-parenting a teenaged son with autism. Thanks to Sue who introduced me to the blog. In addition to the parenting and autism aspects, both subjects close to my heart, this family lives in NJ and the blogger is an academic, which adds layers of kindred spiritness, for me.

The obvious pleasure of blogs is the shared reading and writing. The free flow of ideas traveling and transmitted...learning something, understanding something, in a new or different way.

Sometimes there is the added bonus of discovering a book or a song...this I love.

Clothes shopping

Clothes shopping...not the bane of our existence, but something we (Cap and I) do not enjoy and tend to do rarely. Because of this, we don't have a system in place for it.

Cap is going away this week, a mostly business research trip to Japan. (This is a whole other blog post, but it is striking how academics must scramble to fund their own work...I guess it's related to their not 'working for the Man', so to speak, but in truth, any work they do while in the employ of a college/university...that school gets ownership of the work, in one way or another.)

Anyway, a clothes shopping expedition was in order. I can sometimes do this online (my preferred mode), but he needs shoes, among other things, so off we went to a local mall yesterday evening, two active boys in tow. (The family that clothes shops together, survives together :-)

Did you know Doc Martens are now, for the most part, made in China? We learned that yesterday. He didn't like the couple of styles he saw, shoes were not bought.

We entered a Gap Kids, which we do maybe once a year or two. One of Cap's Japanese colleagues, when asked what she might like brought to her from the States, had requested "light, cotton clothes" for her 2yo son. We found a cute outfit for him, plus bathing suits for our kids and a sale shirt for Sag. The bathing suits were not on sale, but hard to deny.

The mall was pretty crowded, but not completely insufferable. I think this was because we were all there together. I tend to space out in malls and tend to find the whole mall shopping experience very unpleasant. It was grounding to be there with Cap and the kids. It helped, too, that we were on a specific mission and that we had less than 90 minutes till the mall closed.

I have had good luck at the Land's End shop at Sears in the past, and we did again, last night. A lot of stuff was on sale and they have very basic, comfortable pieces. He found exactly what he needed, plus a nice blue shirt, and it didn't break the bank.

I found something, too! I've been on the look out for some new jeans since two faithful pairs bit the dust in the last few weeks. My body is in a transitional place. I want to take off some weight and am teetering on doing so, but it's going slower than I initially thought. So I don't really want to buy new jeans for my current shape, but don't want to commit to buying in a smaller size...'cause, you know, you never know.

Then, last night, there they were. Skirts made of a cotton jersey fabric with some stretch with a 'soft' waist that will deal with my transitions just fine, thank you very much. I hesitated a little because of the length of the skirt. I've never been a fan of my 'athletic' calves. But, I had a moment. Something let go, and I embraced the years of comfort these skirts would likely bring.

They are not Goodwill cheap, by any means, but at $24 a pop (on sale), they work for me. (I got one in brown and one in black.)

Walking

Cap and I had some together time today thanks to some friends taking the kids for a few hours.

We drove out to DeKorte Park which is part of the New Jersey Meadowlands. Holly introduced me to this slice of nature heaven, a swath of native ecology that has re/claimed an area surrounded by industry past and present.














The trails I'd walked before were all closed, in need of repair. Somehow, I fear it may be awhile before the funding for repairs comes through.

Nonetheless we drank in the luscious oxygen, that certain tone of muted quiet that envelops the space right by a body of water of certain volume, the endless birdsong and the bottomless green and blue.

We saw tree swallows, an egret, a Baltimore oriole and a small and quick yellow bird. I bowed to the glory of the Rugosa Rose, the dark pink color such a favorite of mine.

It was a wonderful morning for a walk. Breathe in, breathe out.

Please Give

The opening audio-visual montage of this movie is amazing. I hate even giving that away, but felt like I had to in order to warn you that if you click on the link for Please Give in my movies box to the right, more than that will be given away and spoiled.

So, if you want to be somewhat surprised, do not click over before you see the movie.

Cap is leaving for Japan on Thursday and will be gone for weeks. I am beginning to anticipate this on a cellular level and am grabbing for time right and left (with him, for myself). I snagged babysitting for the kids today and we will have some date time this morning into the early afternoon.

Last night, I impulsively called Donna, who I knew was without her son for the weekend, and we went to a 9:20 showing of Please Give. I discovered that my friend is a fellow movie buff.

The movie theater, one of two in town, was hopping. We were at the one that shows the artier films. It was awash with people...most of them older than me, it seemed. It was interesting to be out at a time of day that I am usually curled up in my living room in my pjs. It was galvanizing joining an external hum of life.

I enjoy Nicole Holofcener's work a lot. Walking and Talking, her first movie, was a revelation. Please Give did not disappoint. The-truth-hurts zingers nestled among quiet, clear-eyed, observations of women dealing with and embodying various tendrils of a common spectrum of being...she does it well.

Catherine Keener, as usual, gave a poignant performance. All the actors were great. The movie gets pretty sad towards the end. But, I do recommend it.

Treme

There are many wonderful things about David Simon's new show on HBO, Treme.

This is simply one of those things (John Goodman's character becomes a bit of a celebrity after he posts this rant):

DSI Jane Tennison

I recently watched Prime Suspect 7: The Final Act in pretty much one sitting. It was a great send-off to an amazing series (can it truly be over?) Helen Mirren kicks ass in a role that has been given so much loving time to unfold and grow. (The series began in 1992 and The Final Act aired in 2006.)

I highly recommend it...there are moments of grisly graphic detail, but there is also so much more.

Reading again

I've been reading for pleasure again lately and have read two engaging and entertaining books:

and

The Cheese Monkeys is a work of fiction, a debut novel by a graphic artist who supposedly has revolutionized the art of the book cover. I heard about it on Seth Godin's blog, a new blog I've got coming into my Google Reader that I enjoy (I also learned about THXTHXTHX there, check it out, it's a wonderful, delectable slice of life :-)

I just started the sequel, The Learners.

Michael Chabon's book is a collection of essays. He is a well respected author whose fiction I have yet to read though I've been interested to, for years. Many of the essays, a majority of them, struck resonant chords. He certainly has a way with words, but more than that, I really appreciated finding threads and oases of kindred spirit and thought.

Irma Thomas:It's Raining

Heard this gem as the credits rolled on this week's episode of Treme.

The little things

In the case of the pencils, literally, they are the little things.

I like small, finite tasks. Or should I say, my brain likes them. The pleasure that wells up from deep within when I am immersed in a short and simple task goes way back. I can remember feeling it when I was very young though the specific activities are long forgotten.

I have been enjoying some days of clarity and smooth hum (a good thing to remember through the squalls of an intense period...there will be calm after the storm...)

This morning I set about decluttering the pens and pencils.

The kids spend a lot of time and energy drawing. And it was high time the cigar box was emptied of the 2 inch pencil stubs.

The eraser tin has been overflowing with pen caps for months. So I went through the pens testing them for ink and then making sure each one had a cap.

Every few months I go through the marker bin and chuck the markers that have dried out. But, that task I left for another day.

Instead, I continued with organizing and taking away. The apartmentscape is starting to clear in perceptible ways which is gratifying. Progress is being made (in what feels like) at long last.

(I wish I had a 'before' picture...but what're you going to do...some of you know what the 'before' looked like, and the truth is that this 'after' will likely clutter up again sooner or later anyway :-)

Yes

This kind of reading/writing/thinking/believing resonates with me.

Care

File under "what goes around comes around".

And "from the mouths of babes".

And "bolt of clarity".

And "wow".

Tonight I had pretty successfully talked myself out of going to Dragon's Way class. Gem looked me in the eye and said, "you know you will feel better if you go".

In that moment I knew he spoke the Truth.

I went.

I did feel better.

I was living in the negative (feeling like a loser bc I hadn't practiced in like a week) and he pulled me into the positive.

Organizing

I've bought myself two weekly pill boxes. And I love them. A simple way for me to know in a glance whether I've remembered to take my herbs. (I currently take 9 pills twice a day...the number changes depending on the season and what I am taking.)


And here are two of the handmade organizers I bought from Etsy (the one on the door knob is one I've had for some years...and not necessarily in that location for keeps).

Oh, the third organizer, the one I bought for the car is actually in one of the pockets of the golden organizer. This one is now in the car (and looks great).

With organizing, sometimes it's a quick and satisfying fix, like the pill boxes, and sometimes it takes longer. But, there is pleasure in the anticipation of something good, something more, coming down the pike.

I am

...subdued.

An intense period (mercifully short) knocked me down Friday and Saturday. Mother's Day yesterday was mellow and pleasant.

This morning...

Same old shit sounds more negative than I feel, but it kinda feels that way...(the same old shit part, not the negative part...)

It's a spiral, which is what I always contend. Looping curves which move forward, up or down, inward or outward...always onward, never closing.

So, yes, I am in process (seemingly in forever loops) with sleep, Qigong, food, homeschooling, decluttering/organizing, being.

Yes, being.

Here's a quote from D.A.R.E. an essay by Michael Chabon. He's talking about marijuana, but these words have struck a chord within me (who has not smoked pot since sometime during college).

"...could intensify the sunshine of a perfect summer day, but it could also deepen the gloom of a wintry afternoon; it had bred false camaraderies and drawn my attention to deep flaws and fault lines when what mattered---what matters so often in the course of everyday human life---were the surfaces and joins."

At the crux of my striving for balance lies this choice...of the surfaces and joins over the extremes both high and low. I am realizing and recognizing that my brain appears neurobiologically predisposed to tipping towards the highs and lows. That is where I feel most alive and most whole.

(Enough so that I've possibly been overcompensating for it in some ways, but not enough so that I've begun self-medicating or am unable to function in the world.)

So I turn my attention, in a more conscious way, to the surfaces and joins. Words can be such a catalyst...I am so grateful for writers for that.

For movie lovers

Thanks Shannon :-)

Good tv

Three network shows which I have really been enjoying the past couple of months:

Community

Parenthood

The Good Wife

With an honorable mention going to:

Flash Forward

My longtime network staples:

House

Lost

Great read

The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd. I just requested the sequel from the library.

I had a premonition

...that I would not be posting much this week. And almost made an announcement. But, didn't.

It's a combo of factors. Sorry to my most faithful readers. I will try to post this weekend.

Tomorrow, my day will be full babysitting our 3yo niece/cousin for the first time. She will be here sans parents for six hours!

Harmonic convergence of sorts

My two favorite pairs of blue jeans, my only two pairs of blue jeans, have both started to split in the crotch/butt areas. One pair I bought in Sacramento (about six years ago), the other (my true fave) I bought here in Jersey for $7.50 brand new at a Land's End store.

As luck would have it, I've taken off some inches doing Dragon's Way and fit back into my orange pants, just-in-time.

(ignore the piles of laundry to be folded, please)

A strand of focus for this week will be to cut out meat (again...it's been creeping back in) and carbs other than the recommended handful of rice.

I've been shifting my sleep and going to bed earlier and waking earlier. As this smooths out, I will also focus on practicing Qigong twice a day, once in the morning and once at night.

It may be pushing it to add a third thing in...I'll see how it goes. I'm going to scale back my time online and try to add more reading time in for myself. I have a growing pile that I want to attend to.

This explains a lot

From ADD-Friendly Ways To Organize Your Life:

"Although we don't really understand the neurological mechanism, the ADD need for stimulation is well known. It is more obvious among hyperactive/impulsive ADDers because their stimulation seeking is quite observable, from fast driving and fast talking to sky diving. But, even quiet, inattentive-type ADDers stimulate themselves through daydreaming, television, escape novels, and overeating if the events around them aren't interesting. Thom Hartmann, a well-known writer on the topic of ADD, hypothesizes that those with ADD crave a sense of aliveness more intensely than others. Some ADDers are so intolerant of boredom that they start an argument or create a crisis to avoid understimulation. Stimulation-seeking behavior can be either your key to success or your undoing, depending upon how it is managed."

Wow. It is unreal, seeing very real, very true aspects of myself from a new and different perspective.

I'm grateful.

Plant sale

Last weekend we were driving around a part of the state we'd never been before. It wasn't too far from where we live. We had exited a highway and were in a residential area (the kind without sidewalks) and were headed towards a heavy commercial area, the likes of which this state is known for.

I looked at Cap and said, "I could never live somewhere like this". I wasn't being funny, nor was I being judgmental. I just knew that if I were forced to live in a community/area like that, I would die a little bit every day.

Which made me realize with a jolt, that I better start appreciating where I do live, because even though it's no city (which is, I'm realizing, the best fit for me), this town has a lot of things to offer.

I partook of one of those offerings this morning. I'd heard of Van Vleck House and Gardens many times. But had never been. They have an annual plant sale which I've wanted to go to in the past, but had never gone to. I had it in my calendar again this year, but probably would not have made it over had Donna not mentioned she was going when we talked on the phone yesterday. I told her I was interested in going, and we made a date. She picked me up at 9am.

Oh my gravy, it was like an oasis. A slice of paradise. The air was so full of pure oxygen, I think I was a bit stoned wandering around looking at all the plants and flowers, for sale, and also, part of the wonderful gardens.







I brought $20 with me, but didn't expect to buy anything. Two summers ago I had a disastrous garden experience and last year I didn't even try. I'd already decided I was going to have a window box herb garden (my Mother's Day gift request is a window box out the bathroom window which gets the best sun exposure). The container garden in the yard was going to lie fallow, again.

But, I tell you, inspiration is a wonderful thing. Heirloom tomato plants? How could I not? I picked up an heirloom red pear tomato plant and an award-winning cherry tomato plant and some cosmos, one of my favorite wild flowers.

I repotted my babies when I got home. It's supposed to hit 87º today and tomorrow, pretty perfect weather for getting the garden going. I was, alas, chased off by skeets. I hate being around them because they like how I taste and then I get swollen itchy bites. It is this connection which drove me away from gardening in the past. We'll see how it goes this summer.

For now, I'm enjoying visions of children plucking tomatoes off the vine and reveling in their summer sweetness.