The view from here

For a peaceful, lovely hour.  (My soul is frothing a bit in that too hot way.  My body needs some recovery.  My mind is relatively at ease.)

Barbra arrives tomorrow!

Peace and love.

Mid tide

The outrageous storm of activity leading up to and continuing through the weekend calmed down nicely today.  It was so hectic and I was so depleted that I just now realized I didn't take a birthday portrait of Gem yesterday.  Le sigh.

(Thank you for your gifts and well wishes.  He had a wonderful birthday.)

Onward.

This morning I had a lovely breakfast with Donna.  My first bit of friend/me time since Cap's return from Japan.  It has been a gorgeously breezy and sunny day and we ate al fresco.

This afternoon the kids played Minecraft with Lucy.  It was her first solo visit here and things went swimmingly.

waiting for Lucy.

 before.

 

Cap helped me pull down all the linens and such from the closet shelves in the bathroom.  We sorted and organized.  Then I went through the medicine cabinet, under the sink and through the bins of miscellany by myself.  I was dragging by the end, it took hours and produced a full heavy duty trash bag of junk.

End result?  I am beginning to fall back in love with our apartment.  It really does have some character and the nooks and crannies hold a lot of appeal for me.  (When you can really see and enjoy them!)

 

And, inhabiting these decluttered and reorganized spaces?  I can breathe.  Deeply.

Peace and love.

Party in p major

 peonies.

 pears.

 pink lemonade.

 pair of scavengers.

 pair of scavengers.

 pleased papa.

 Pokemon.

 piñata.

party boy.

Shirts and books

Yay for sale t-shirts made in the USA with organic cotton!  While I don't even aspire to this kind of physical flexibility, it's a good mantra to be reminded of when I catch a reflection of myself: be flexible.  With myself, with others, with life.

Because life happens, whether I like it or not (and this is in no way a complaint)...like my pile of books to read doubling in the last 24 hours.  (Not to mention my stagnating list of books to read in 2012, remember that?)

Peace.

When there is no 12A

Don't tell my kids, but deep down inside, I kind of believe, at this point, that the earth...or at least the United States, is going to hell in a hand basket.

A small, yet telling, example.  Yesterday, Cap was reassigned to a seat in a row that did not exist on the plane he was boarding.

Down with bureaucracy!

Gifts

Cap showered us with gifts last night.  He had an unexpectedly hefty pay day for a talk he gave at a Japanese university.  The crowning glories were Panny and Papa Panda from Panda Go Panda.

Things are about to get hectic here.  We have a birthday to celebrate this weekend and then Barbra comes for a visit next week.  I'm pretty compulsive about posting so I don't think I will disappear, but things may feel scant here for awhile.

Some ideas about how to spend the Summer are beginning to form...and some kind of mindful technology/screen practice is an idea tossing about in the wash.  Time will tell.

Peace and love.
 

And to all a good night

I felt icky most of the day but made it to the end which packed quite the bang for its buck.

 the Bloggess came!

 look who was sitting two rows behind me.

 Rosie!

 we had so much fun.

 the kids and I ended up able to get to EWR with time to spare.

 Cap's back!

we filled Moomin's gas tank the night before Cap left.

18 days later, just under 3/4 of the tank remained.

I am off to bed.  Peace and love.

I'm just a burner, they can't trace me

OMG!!!  Your internet awesome of the day, my fellow Wire lovers.  Check it.

Grateful

I realized this morning that 2 1/2 weeks with no kid respite is just a bit too long, for me.  Next time I will plan to embed chunks of time to/for myself.

Last night was a nadir.  I was chowing on pomegranate chocolate chip coconut ice cream (that Sag had picked out to make a milkshake with) while watching Gene Simmons Family Jewels at 11pm.  I'd been in a bad mood all day.  I've been putting the new pickles from the farmer's market to the comfort eating test (finished a quart and free pint bought Saturday tonight) and last night I finally turned to ice cream.

Then, I stayed up till nearly 3am.

Today has been quite fine, despite all that.

After yet another whatever's-in-the-fridge-or-pantry meal, I called the faraway health food store and they are kindly holding two bags of Gem's favorite spice cake mix for us till later this week.  This meant our errands today stayed quite local.

• the post office for some international stamps

• the hardware store to get what turned out to be a super expensive special size battery for our new car flashlight

• the ATM to withdraw cash from the savings account to cover us till pay day (le sigh)

• the bookstore where I sneakily picked up some birthday books for Gem, got some details about tomorrow night's Bloggess event, and plucked some Father's Day/get well/sympathy cards

• the library where this was waiting for me

• my fave cafe where we picked up local eggs, honey and the Irish breakfast tea I fell in love with last Fall

• the supermarket where we bought the bare minimum for today and tomorrow's needs

(I love living in this town...at every stop of our errands we were recognized and treated warmly.)

Once home, we lunched, I made some tea and then we played Carcassonne.  Sag was under the weather again, but the game seemed to cheer him up.  With the recent expansion set we got, the games are now close to two hours long!

Finally, the game ended and it was on to homework and reading for the kids while I made dinner.

After dinner, the kids were showered, the tea basket was decluttered, and the kitchen was cleaned.  Now the kids are watching a birthday gift which arrived in the mail today (thank you, Auntie Barbra :-) and we are all sipping herbal tea with honey.

And so, a pretty productive day draws to an end.  Not without its share of moans/groans and shrieks/eeks from each of us, but relatively mellow.

Here is a song we've been digging lately.  Peace and love.

You start with what you have

This is what I thought we'd be doing this morning.  Running lots of errands.  Including some to prepare for Gem's birthday weekend.  Which, with all the hubbub of late, has snuck up on me a bit.

But, one of us is under the weather figuratively (Sag) and one of us is under the weather literally (me) and I am letting go of the expectations and rolling with what is, instead.

I am trying to embrace their peaceful ways and be in the present.  I am still recovering from a really icky bringing-in-the-garbage-and-recycling-cans experience where I encountered what smelled like a broken open bag of vomit and somehow ended up with hands that smelled like poop.  One of those times it really sucks to be a super smeller.

Just found this fun tie-in to the kids' study of Mesopotamia.  Oh, and we watched Free Willy: Escape From Pirate's Cove yesterday to tie into Sag's study of dolphins and orcas yesterday.  It was solidly good fare.

Rock out in peace.

Kickin' it to the curb

I can't quite get my head around it.  That in partially cleaning out two small areas of the apartment, eight bags of garbage were produced.

I feel bad that: a) the equivalent of eight bags of trash has been occupying my side of the bed and the floor of the linen closet for months and months and months; and b) that there is much more to come.

I feel bad that during that time mice were partying undercover of the clutter.

I feel bad that much of what I've tossed could have, at one time, been donated somewhere, and is now just garbage.

But, I do also feel good.  That I'm wrangling this bull now and staying pretty calm about the whole thing.

Peace.

When push comes to shove

If I could have, I would have had a drink (or three) or done some drugs.  Instead, I had one of these...

1/11 remains, three boys and a desperate grain-free sugar-free mama will do that.

I want to forget what I saw when I cleared out (just the) the floor of the linen closet.  I almost wanted to shove everything right back in there and put it "out of sight".  I nearly started gagging as I cleaned it all up.

Think Port Authority Bus Terminal for mice.

But, when it comes down to it, I am stronger than I think when it comes to things physical.  I had a harder time being brutal about letting go of all the junk that's been down there.  So (senti)mental am I.

Three garbage bags plus five frikkin' humidifiers, ...

and some peppermint infused cotton balls later...

a new normal has been established.

I'll get to the shelves in there later today or tomorrow.  I'm doing a load of rescue-and-recover laundry of things that we actually still want to keep that had been...tarnished.  Lunch and dinner will be whatever is in the fridge and pantry.  It will be a low key the rest of the day...till the kids and I fire brigade all the garbage out to the curb tonight!

Peace and love.

P.S.  Lana posted this to Facebook recently and I have not been able to get it out of mind.  Love.

Cool as a cuke in a pool

This made my day.  Sag started swim class this morning and had a blast.  

I placed peppermint infused cotton balls all over the kitchen after finding a single dropping on the counter I cleaned up yesterday.  Grr...little rodent 1 - spluttering me 0.  (No droppings anywhere else, though.)

I made grass-fed beef sliders for lunch and Sandy's Asian-y chicken drumsticks for dinner.

I had a hard time falling asleep last night, I had caffeine for the first time in over a week and it was timed just a tad too late in the day, methinks.  Between sleep deprivation and my leg muscles being sore today, I decided to chill and read rather than tackle another decluttering job.

Peace.

P is for pep and peppermint and pulling-off-the-blinders

These dry, breezy, cool sunny/cloudy days that scream "spring" and "fall" in the mid-Atlantic region always, always, reset my system to GO.  Today I wondered...where in the world is it like this year-round?

So, what did I do with all my pep?  This manatee on a mission put a dent into her decluttering/cleaning.  I decided to go low tech in my rodent repelling and picked up some peppermint essential oil and cotton balls instead of the sonic gadget.

I bought this new-to-me cleaning product last weekend when the mysterious dust made its debut into my consciousness.  It's been on my list of things I'd like to do, for ages, to make some cleaning solution with vinegar.  I've been very happy with it so far.

The "after" shot of under the kitchen sink.  There is no way I would subject you to a "before" shot of this former disaster area.  It's kind of crazy how things can get as bad as they do.  But, I am a very concretely "out of sight, out of mind" person.  

In a positive way, this has allowed me to maintain very emotionally close friendships with friends who I have little to no contact with (visual or otherwise) for not only months, but years.  The key is that I never stop caring, and I am quite comfortable with the "not thinking about" (it just is, there is no baggage).

The pockets of clutter in our household represent the negative way in which "out of sight..." manifests.  There is something bordering on (seemingly) pathological going on because these pockets don't always exist behind closed doors.  Sometimes, they are in plain sight, yet my brain stops "seeing" the clutter.

By the way, there were some droppings under the sink.  Those cotton balls you can see are infused with peppermint oil.  Peppermint oil is considered a mouse deterrent.

I cleaned out the area next to my side of the bed.  I'd cleared it out about seven or eight months ago, but it quickly filled back up with "things to donate/find other homes for".  So, for about six months or so, this area was cluttered with, as it turns out, three garbage bags worth of stuff that literally just sat there, seen yet unseen.  

That framed poster was given to me about a year ago, a thoughtful hand-me-down from someone who was decluttering herself.  (She'd noticed I had a postcard of the same print.)  For a year it has been propped up against one wall or another.  I've reached out to my brother-in-law, who is handy, to see if he can help me put it up.

After cleaning up from dinner, I kept going and decluttered the counter top and washed down the stove.  (The stove top needs more work...and product.)  I was nonplussed to turn from the counter top and see this heinous pile of mess tucked in the corner right next to it.  Another no man's land that is in plain sight, yet gets seriously overlooked.

One step at a time.

That's the linen closet.  Usually, the laundry basket is in there overflowing with dirty laundry.  That is just classic...and sad.  I'm thinking I'm going to tackle this spot tomorrow.

Believe it or not, the day was not all about cleaning.  We also played Carcassonne, went to the library and did laundry.  The kids introduced a friend to their Minecraft server and gave him a tour, all virtual-like.  The kids wrote cards and watched a movie they borrowed from the library.  They did homework.

I have a new book from the library and am dying to get to it.  But, there is also laundry that needs folding.

Peace and love.