As the atmospheric pressure lifts, so do I. It is palpable. Windows have been thrown open and I practiced Qigong just a little bit more than yesterday morning (no great shakes yet, but one step at a time).
I was not surprised...yet was dismayed to see the nocturnal critter(s) was back in action again last night. There has been some speculation about whether it might be termites which had not occurred to me. Are termites more active at night/when there is less people activity going on?
Yesterday we had some mid-day drama courtesy of the almost 12-year old. I think he is feeling the absence of his father in ways he cannot articulate. He would say he is more attached to me, which is probably true, but he is much more like Cap and I think he is feeling the imbalance of being outnumbered in terms of household personalities.
We made it through and were rewarded with our planned trip to the comic book shop. I splurged a bit and we picked up The Princess and The Dragon extension for Carcassonne (Jim, who was manning the register loves Carcassonne and was wonderfully attentive to Sag as they discussed some of the finer points of the game), the new Chip Kidd penned Batman graphic novel (he wrote one of the funniest novels I've read in the past few years The Cheese Monkeys) and, finally, a decent Pokemon card pack for me!
We chilled out before heading out in the evening for a quickish shop to Whole Paycheck which saved me the trip today.
After dinner it was showers, Skyping with Cap and the recently requisite episode of America's Funniest Home Videos before heading to bed to read. And the excitement of a tooth finally coming out for Sag!
It was nice to have the windows open for a couple of hours but the humidity is insidious. I have cranked the air conditioners up again and am typing while sweating.
The three of us have mostly been doing our own things this morning. I practiced Qigong last night and this morning for about two minutes. It's something, at least. I also washed the kitchen floor. But I've also been snippy.
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Anyway, here is a puzzle. Gem and I have both noticed recently that there is mysterious...dustiness? appearing around the seam where the linoleum from the kitchen/vestibule "meets" the fancy stone lip of the bathroom door. (I say "meets" because as you can see the linoleum is curling up. And I say "fancy" because our apartment is most definitely shabby...not shabby chic, in most ways, so this stone lip is way out of place.)
At first, I just thought it was dust build up. (And since I'm being honest, yes, I left it alone while my mind flitted onto the next thing.) But something about it just struck me as weird. So one day, I spritzed it with cleaner and wiped it up.
The next morning, there was more dustiness. More than pictured below. So I wiped it clean again. The next day more dustiness. So I wiped it clean again. This morning, again, more dustiness (pictured below), though noticeably less.
Very curious. I don't think it's a mouse because there are no droppings. And there is no food in this area, at all. (And where there is food, in the adjacent kitchen area, there are no droppings or anything out-of-the-ordinary to be seen.) Yet, whatever it is, it's happening only in the dead of night. I've wondered if it is dust that falls as the house "shifts" in the night. It's an old house and there are three full grown adults and a big dog who live upstairs.
Any thoughts?
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Just Skyped with Cap and as were kissing our good byes I remembered that I dreamt about him last night. And that when Gem woke me up this morning I felt like I was being ripped away from my dream and it was so unpleasant.
Another reason to explain my grumpiness.
And another reason to be grateful. We've passed the halfway mark, here's hoping for some coasting the rest of the way.
We watched this video of Maya this morning and Gem recognized the background music. I just found it online for free (it's now public domain) and have added it to my Spring into Summer playlist.
Relieved...I saw Vinny today for a much needed tune up.
Bewildered...I had four pieces of Udi's toast today.
Thrilled...I ran into Kelly and the girls in the market this afternoon.
Confounded...I thought again about retreating. I want some introvert time but my addled ADDish mind inflamed/bloated body are significant blocks.
Off to chug more coconut juice and relax my aching shoulders/neck/upper back.
Last night I took an Aleve to manage a headache so I could fall asleep. (Which I did at 2am bathed in the cool air duet provided by ceiling fan and air conditioner.)
This morning I woke with no aches or pains as the I had the previous morning. I was joyful but then realized it might have been due to the Aleve still in my system.
In the hours since waking my wrists have been tickled with nerve-y signals.
My body is telling me to move on from this new baseline of no Qigong and no herbs.
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Clearing off the big table this morning of my piles. Sigh. Always with the piles.
This afternoon I have a mind to wash the kitchen floor. The humidity is bringing out all its sticky qualities.
Some quiet, cool cleaning before our four-day week.
This morning has been a drag. Not complaining, simply describing.
Woke with many aches: back, stomach, head, general all-over-the-body. (Most of it has worn off.)
Doing laundry with the kids. (Normally a Cap task.) Lugging, stuffing, icky basement.
Brought down all the recycling with the kids. (Normally a Cap task.) Lugging, stuffing, icky trash/recycling area in the side yard.
Sag and I are quite grumpy. Maybe it's our sensitivity to the weather. Last night was an AC night (I still woke up a few times feeling warm). This humid heat wave will hover till Wednesday, it seems.
Feeling a lot of gratitude for the work Cap does around here. He is doing well in Japan, by the way, finding inspiration and meaning in the things he is seeing, hearing and doing.
Time is so illuminating. That's one of the reasons why being able to just be without worry and constantly trying to figure it all out is the way to live. In balance, with flow, at optimal health.
• turns out we can operate the GPS in our car without Entune. glad my annoyance didn't mutate into stress on that one.
• the bookshop website has been updated and now explains things pretty well. being Aquarian, I am often ahead of the curve...I am learning being zen is a key partner quality to embody.
• my life was changed when our goddaughter was born fourteen years ago. but time and technology (Google+ is proving itself useless in this one important way) have granted me new opportunities to learn from and about her. love.
• Cap's time away is going by fast, so far. but the space that is opened up by having one less person here is significant. this three-day weekend is going to see some deep cleaning.
• speaking of cleaning. it is no secret I do not like to clean. but I like a clean space. how I carry these two opposites peacefully is a mystery. and deep down inside it's not peaceful. the tar-like mess of stress bubbles up during PMS more often than not. how do other people live with this? how do they deal with it?
It's going to be a quiet-ish day. After lunch I'm dropping the kids off and going food shopping. Will fight the urge to buy tons of cleaning "product". It's going up to 85ยบ today and the humidity will be up about there, too. Sag's been studying dolphins and orcas. He read about Free Willy in the course of his research and wants to watch it. Maybe we'll do that today, too.
Sag made two portals today. Here's me with one of them. Our kids are creative/creating early and often, as the saying goes. But, as with any art, I don't dig it all. This, I love.
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Today, I drove. Which I really don't like to do when the route/destination is not familiar. But, the destination changed last minute to one I was somewhat familiar with which boosted my morale. And, honestly, I love our new car so much, that I was driving Moomin boosted my mood.
It was nice to socialize a bit, hang out with a sweet dog and be out of the house.
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I've been asked: does your new car have GPS? The Prius is high tech. Or...more tech anyway. And, yes, our model comes with a nifty "screen" package which includes a GPS. I've been having trouble setting it up and this afternoon finally discovered the reason: our cell carrier is not a match for the necessary interface.
Annoyance.
Especially because our "Entune" account has been considered "activated" since the day I first went to the website to hook the system up, a month ago. The day it didn't actually connect because as it turns out we don't have the proper cell carrier. I wouldn't call that "activated".
I said, "well, that's not fair", she said, "well, our system isn't set up to remedy that, but I can document your call"...I figured I wasn't going to get very far on the Friday afternoon of the three day weekend that kicks the Summer off.
If we do decide to switch cell carriers so we can use the freakin' Entune (it's free for the first three years), they'll be hearing from me again to make our free period retroactive from when we actually are able to start using the service.
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Read See You At Harry's. It was okay. No great shakes. It had some good moments. For me, it suffered a little bit in that the protagonist was twelve and yet it felt and read like the narrator was much older. The storytelling wasn't as transparent as I thought it was meant to be.
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Inspired by some chicken Donna made for common meal, I baked some pastured chicken legs for dinner tonight. I seasoned them with garlic powder, ginger powder, salt and pepper. Then marinated them in orange juice and olive oil. Yummers. Sag and I were all over the crunchy skin.
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Gem is not having any of his usual pre-birthday angst. It is so wonderful and eerie at the same time. I'm happy for him, but it's such a departure. He still says he doesn't want to grow up/things to change...and I don't know for sure what's going through his mind because I'm in no rush to point out that he has, in fact, changed quite a bit in his pre-birthday mood...maybe he's resigned...or accepting in a new way...or just is in a different way.
12 in 16 days.
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I was floored to find out The Bloggess is coming to our very own local indie bookshop on her book tour! I picked up "tickets" for Shannon and myself today. Shannon is a fan, too. At first I wasn't going to go because it's the night Cap is returning from Japan. But, now that I'm out from under the dark cloud of a few days ago, I'm feeling like this is a really fun and genuine opportunity.
Funny aside. I was confused about why the website didn't mention whether the event was free or not. I didn't see a ticket price, but also didn't see the word "free". I asked via Facebook whether the event was ticketed and one of the staff responded to say it was and I could drop by the store or go through the store website.
I'd had no luck figuring it out on the website so I dropped by the shop. And there I learned that the "price" was buying a book through the store! I don't know if things have changed or what, but I've never had that be a requirement for going to a reading. What am I saying... Things have changed. The last book reading/signing I went to was probably Lousie Erdrich in Harvard Square in 1998 or so. Before Amazon, before the war on independent booksellers.
Anyway, I'd already bought my copy, from the shop, weeks ago, which they knew. I love having a neighborhood bookstore where they know my name.
Oh my peeps. Thank you for coming back. The sense of connection keeps me going.
I did fall asleep last night sometime after 2.
And today has been much better. Mostly because the massive sugar/corn syrup hit has been absorbed to the point where the acute damage has been done and my body is moving on. But partly because the air cooled down...it was still wet and dreary, but there was some sort of atmospheric shift.
The kids and I hit the library and the comic book store. We played another game of Carcassonne (we've played every day this week). They did some homework Cap assigned before he left. We went to Donna's for common meal.
I started up our Subaru, Giles, just to warm the engine up a bit. I was shocked at how loud he was! While I was out back I stopped to snap the roses :-) I liked how they looked like a path up to the heavens...or at least to the pine tree.
Hope something lifted you, today.
Peace and love.
P.S. I was quite tickled to find a place online that will ship you four strips of the special velcro one uses to attach an EZ Pass to one's windshield. We only needed two strips so we could hang the EZ Pass in Moomin, but where was I going to find that? For $3.67, TollTape.com will hook you up. Very fast service and shipping. I recommend.
P.P.P.S. A case of necessity breeds invention? Maybe. Or it's just kismet. My library treats are YA morsels: A Greyhound of a Girl and See You at Harry's. Should be getting Stolen in a few days.
My happiness at getting into bed before midnight has faded because...
• I was sleepy enough to go to bed earlier but didn't...which nagged my mind
• I didn't have much space...and didn't have it in me to do a firm pushover to make room
• tossed and turned
• finger combed many hairs out
• general mugginess of still air
• tendrils of hot flashes (it's been awhile since I've had sleep woes, even longer since hot flashes)
• mind would not quiet
• realized my sleepiness was fading
• jumped in my skin when my mind yelled at me: you are living amongst garbage!*
• took that as a sign to get out of bed, if even for a bit
Peacelovepeacelovepeacelovepeacelove
* I was having semi-free floating thoughts about decluttering, clean lines in living space, moving into new space, dumping loads of stuff into wonderfully large disposal bins...when, bam, I yelled at myself.
The urge to get offline (and move onto the next less virtual thing) brought to mind a jumble of words that I realized were, in essence, "do not go gentle into that good night"...so here it is, the poem, in full.
I realized tonight there is something specific taking up valuable real estate in my mind that I haven't mentioned. We may move this summer, after all.
The house has become more albatross than anything else for our landlord, this year. His wife is sick and he does not have the time or energy to devote to dealing with the house (which was a stretch for him even before he got married a few years ago).
He was here the other day helping our downstairs neighbor with something (she is moving out July 1 after living here for 12 years!) and let it drop that he's considering putting the house on the market "as is" and seeing if he gets any interest.
We were seriously thinking about moving on up this Summer when our lease was up. We would love just a bit more breathing room now that the kids are nearly as tall as we are. They were 4 1/2 and 6 when we moved here. As Gem would say, "le sigh".
But then, we bought the car. And we got nervous about the double whammy on the budget: new car payment and bump in rent. So we thought we'd stay put...and now the Universe seems to be suggesting we develop a plan B.
So, I have been looking at rental listings. My late night scrolls through Trulia are engrossing. Clicking through photographs, mapping out locations, chuckling at words like "cozy" and...chewing my lip when I see, again and again, how much nicer the apartments are once you leapfrog over our rent budget ceiling.
Le sigh.
I do not know what will happen. I wish I had a crystal ball. Not knowing is hard, but what's harder is not succumbing to useless worry about what might happen and how negatively that might impact the kids.
What I do know is that I really love this apartment. It's too small, but it's our too small. It's kind of dinghy and dilapidated, but it also has a lot of character. This is the space the kids have lived the longest in their lives. And for Cap and me, our time here falls just shy of the apartment we lived in the longest up till now (Sargent Street in Cambridge).
In a way, I can't imagine living anywhere else. Which is dangerous for the heart. And may explain some of the late night/off-Paleo shenanigans.
PMS/sugar --> sleep disturbance --> pint of Ben & Jerry's in one sitting more sugar = unfortunate cycle.
Haven't we been here before?
This ain't over.
Meanwhile...
• drumsticks were hella on sale at Whole Foods. I have some marinating overnight in wheat-free tamari, coconut sugar, garlic powder, ginger powder, sake and maple syrup. will bake and broil tomorrow.
• the Bloggess is coming to our local indie bookshop! I am thrilled even though it is likely I won't be able to go. (Cap is coming home that same night.) I've started reading her memoir and am enjoying it.
• have I mentioned the show House of Lies? it's on Showtime and I'm catching episodes here and there on demand. I go back and forth between feeling giddy about it to thinking it's pretty uneven and no great shakes.
• I have all three episodes of the second season of Sherlock in our dvr. looking forward to watching those.
• Peep Show is hilarious. I've told Cap we should watch this together. we shall see if I can wait as long as this might take!
• my cup spilleth over with gratitude: our new kitchen gadgets (which make things go smoother), our health (two incidents today served as intensely sad reminders that mental health should never be taken for granted), and our extended family vacay coming up in August (Williamsburg again!)
• and Skype. Skype is very good when partner/dad is halfway around the world with wifi.
Last night I went to bed late-ish (Sunday night is chock full o'tv) and freaked out. I heard very clear scritch scratching in two rooms at different points of the evening. and the critter sounded bigger than a field mouse. fine now. talked to Donna and am pretty confident now it was a squirrel in the wall.
Today's stream:
• Skyped with Cap in the morning and at night. (he arrived safe and sound and even got about six hours of sleep his first night.)
• inspired by his grandmother's impending trip to Carcassonne, Sag pulled out our Carcassonne and he and I had a blast playing.
• blew Gem's mind playing Mastermind. guessed his code in four tries. four times in a row.
• ate much food for comfort...a day of near solid rain and a separation from your beloved will do that. not to mention general sleep deprivation and a period.
• enjoyed Digital Estate Planning with the kids. a very awesome episode of Community. the canning of the show's creator not a good sign for the future of the show. season one was bumpy, but there are moments of sheer brilliance in seasons two and three.
A year ago I was in the midst of Barcelona, Barcelona, Barcelona, Barcelona, Barcelona, Barcelona. I've been thinking of it a lot, but not truly reflecting...yet. In the meantime, this piece came across my Facebook desk and it was doubly fascinating as it reminded me of some of what I saw and experienced in Barcelona pertaining to the Jewish history of the city. Sniff...looking at these photos has made me a bit melancholy.
Today, the kids and I bid adieu to Cap, an early morning drop-off at EWR. On our way home, Sag remarked how awesome it was to be up so early and was all excited about how much he was going to get done today.
Some of the errands that had us bustin' about before Cap's trip were connected to fast approaching Summer.
Pool passes for the summer have been purchased. The kids' Crocs no longer fit so we went to L.L. Bean to check out their flip flops. They were as comfortable as they looked online and Gem and I each got a pair. Sag opted for sandals much like the ones he had when we moved here from Sacramento. It's official: the three of us now have the same size feet!
You might think I'm crazy...but I am patting myself on the back. It occurred to me that we could have a heatwave while Cap is in Japan. So I asked him to put two air conditioners back in for the season. Hot humid weather brings me down. I won't stand for it if I don't have to.
I haven't been too crazy. A touch PMS-y here and there. And even that hasn't been as bad as I thought it was going to be when I bumped up against what I thought was the tip of a ginormous iceberg last weekend.
The list is divided into household chore items for Cap (separate from the numerous details he needs to attend to for himself before he leaves) and my own set of "to do"s. I have a boatload an ocean liner's worth of "to do"s to follow. Ad nauseum infinitum.
Sunday morning is the page break. We are beginning to feel the pangs of impending separation. For now, we dododo and keep it going.
Past the pollen sending frissons of fever through us.
Past the death of a high school classmate.
Past the growing piles of less pressing work to be done.
Past the comeback of Pokemon card gaming in our midst.
Past the precarious purchases that keep our engine of four running smoothly.
Past the clearly positive signs of no gluten for Sag.
Past the indicators at every turn of a maturing Gem who turns 12 in less than a month.
Past a compact, but no less lovely for it, date night.
This is a Siberian cat. 75% of cat allergy sufferers do not react to this breed of cat. I am beginning to research cats, as in, might there be a cat out there for us? Gem's interest in cats, and having one, have not only not waned in the last year, but his passion has been contagious. Sag is now interested in having a kitty of our own and I, a dog person through and through, am thinking it might be very nice to have a feline join our brood. Gem and I are both allergic so the search is on for a "hypoallergenic" kitty. It turns out, what causes the allergic reaction is an enzyme in the saliva. The Siberian, and a few other breeds, produce significantly less of this particular enzyme. I love the look of this kitty. Purr.
I saw my kickass healer yesterday for some laying on of the hands. To answer his query of how are you? I replied stressed...but not unhappy.
I am grateful for the joy I feel despite the obstacles of overwhelmed which blot out swaths of my mental landscape every day these days.
I keep moving forward, latch onto one thing to do and do it, get distracted, then find some other one thing to do and do that. Then I get tired.
The stress --> eating crappily (for comfort, for convenience, without mindfulness) --> plummeting energy --> not practicing Qigong --> more plummeting energy --> watching a lot of tv (for comfort, without much mindfulness) --> sleep deprivation --> more plummeting energy --> all adding more stress. The cycle is in full force.
But, unlike years past, I am not unhappy. I break out of the cycle for bracing moments of clarity that are restorative enough to keep me from getting depressed.
I am loved.
I have good friends.
I have a wonderful family.
I have good ideas/think good thoughts.
I love and care.
Some visuals...
Puppies are super cute. And hot like a hot water bottle! She was so so sweet. I get to puppysit her for awhile this afternoon. Lucky me!
After about a week of being microwave-free, we decided to get a toaster oven. We had nearly $20 in rewards "cash" from Sears and picked up this nifty convection toaster oven for under $100 (it was on sale). Gem declared this morning's reheated turkey meatloaf perfect. Joy. It's the little things.
As Cap's days-before-departure dwindle fast, it's becoming more apparent that my belated Mother's Day Paleo meal may not be happening. Which I am absolutely okay with. I have been enjoying Melissa's Paleo blog and decided this afternoon to give myself (another) Mother's Day treat. I ordered her cookbook and look forward to making some yummy Paleo dishes.
I LOVE OUR NEW CAR!!! Love, love, love, love. It is so comfortable (my bottom is spoiled for leather seats with power lumbar support forever now...and I so look forward to flipping on the seat warmer switch come winter!) ...and watching the mileage monitor creep up and over 45 miles per gallon cruising along endless I-95? Enthralling.
We spent just shy of 24 hours in Plympton and it was wonderful. Jamie came over for the lovely backyard dinner Amy put together. It was so relaxing and the night was perfect for it. Cool enough to keep skeeters away but comfortable enough to play and play and play.
Though I can say no toads were harmed in the making of these photos...it was pretty traumatized-stunned, the poor thing.
Mother's Day was spent celebrating Cap's mom, Mummu to the four "grands" as she calls them. I was very pleased that she seemed to really like our gift, a Barnes and Noble Nook. We set it to charge right away, but didn't have enough time to go over the ins and outs with her. We will be calling upon her local techie gurus for help with that.
And what would a visit with the Plympton cousins be without a viewing of Panda Go Panda? Sorely lacking in tradition, that's what.
Sigh. Cap and I really miss Massachusetts. It's always good to visit and a little wistful to leave.
This morning, I treated myself to a belated Mother's Day and took the kids out to breakfast. We went to Toast and loved it. They are knowledgeable about gluten issues and we felt comfortable (safe) ordering. Homemade hash on the menu daily...yum!
Peace and love.
P.S. We've decided to remove gluten from Sag's diet for the next while (3-6 months). He has experienced enormous physical growth in the last six months and we suspect there are some hormonal/chemical shifts taking place based on new signs of inflammation (puffy appearance and higher than usual sensitivity). Cap and I are renewing our own commitments to gluten-free/grain-free...it has become a full blown family affair.
...and keeping it simple, as they say. (Which just don't come natural to me.)
• reveling in freshly vacuumed floors
• giving up colorful disposable straws for these more utilitarian metal ones...the better to clink while you drink my pretties...
• looking forward to Chinese takeout tonight. my baby got paid and it has been a stressful few days here
• figuring out the new laptop...Sag plunked down his savings to pay for half...the learning curve, as we cross over to the dark side, it is steep (and, yeah, it is time to rename this month the more accurate No Spend Awareness month)
• contemplating a life without a microwave...our workhorse veteran of, I believe, three moves and over ten years, died a sudden and quiet death this week
• anticipating quiet on the blog while we soak up some family time this weekend road tripping to MA for Mother's Day
I love weather days like today. A chilly bite to the breeze, cloudy and windy and then sunny and bright. Where in the world is it like this year round?
Normally, raspberries freak me out a bit. I put one in my mouth and it feels all wrong. I taste a smell when I eat a raspberry. These berries were so velvety ripe and delicious that I got over my initial sensory dissonance and ate half of them in seconds.
I've been a bit worried about this bush. It looks sparse and sickly compared to years past. The blossoms are stunning in cloudy light. That magenta...I love.
I could have sworn the tulip tree blossoms had already fallen. Maybe this is a second harvest?
My mom likes thee flowers and I always think of her when I see them. Pretty purple lovelies.
Sometimes the ties that bind come to me in the way someone uses words to weave a "sense"...as in common sense...living sense...emotional sense...universal sense...
Alex Chee tweeted a recommendation of this...if memory serves me correctly...which it usually does but not always.
I had it in my hand after I parked the car to return it to the library and it fell open to reveal poem-sized prose. Not prose poems, but short stories. Very short stories.
I can read this...is what I thought.
I have not been reading for a while now. These stories are whispers. Easily consumed though they take some time to digest. I love them for nudging me back in the reading saddle.
The slim volume is called Blue Has No South. And it's got a pretty, pretty cover.
P.S. I've been watching Peep Show. Very funny. Strong language. Cringes and oh no they didn't moments galore. You can watch on the website or Netflix streaming.
Talking to Vinny yesterday, I said things along the lines of...
feeling amidst chaos (Spring, Spring, you do something to me),
feeling busy (we parsed that word a bit and, yes, it means too much, but the too much is by choice and out of love and devotion...family stuff) and,
feeling overwhelmed (if one can remove one's "head"/mind from the past and the expectations that cling...the present moment can power you).
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I took an exploratory/observational trip to Costco with Tiina yesterday morning. After some analysis, I have firmly established that it is not the way to go for us right now. They don't carry our brands or applicable alternatives. Next stop: Shoprite.
Speaking of food and finances, I am running into a problem which tends to crop up when I meal plan and do the bulk of the week's shopping on the weekend. I don't have a clear enough picture of my/our schedule when planning/shopping and perishables lie fallow in the fridge while life happens outside of it.
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I took a pointer from this piece over at Lifehacker and turned off the alerts from e-mail, Twitter and Facebook on my phone. I was out of the apartment a lot yesterday and it made a huge difference.
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Lana posted this gem on Facebook the other day. Made my cells sing. (It's a rainy morning here.)
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Things have taken a turn in Sag's dreaming of acquiring a PC laptop. He has wanted one for months and months. It has been a desire born of playing Minecraft, which can be played on a Mac, but delving into the world of gaming, which like the "real" world, operates majorly on PCs. There have been paths of play and curiosity he has not been able to follow, limited by being on an Apple machine.
We discovered recently that he has been squirreling away his dollars and can pay for half of a budget PC that would seemingly be able to handle the demands he would place on it and is on sale at the moment. We may take a leap and strike while the iron is hot!
