The Funny Little Blackbird

A Monday Journal (Week 1)

2012-02-06T12:38:00.001-08:00

It’s a new week. Things are happening. Some of it’s new, some of it’s not. That’s a bit how it goes, right?

IN MY LIFE THIS WEEK…
It’s another winter week in Alaska. That sounds so depressing in my head, and there’s a “winter blues” aspect we’re all combating to be sure. But it’s also February. And for the most part, I love February. Hearts, candy, chocolate, cupid. I’m a romantic at heart and I’m all about glitter and crayons.

I’m also taking a writing class over at Savvy Authors. I’m excited to learn about using the conflict grid in my work.

Beyond that, my life is blessedly dull for another seven days.

IN THE FAMILY’S LIFE THIS WEEK…
Boy Wonder has another week with the Junior Native Youth Olympics on Tuesday. He loves to come home and talk about how high he jumped or how far he hopped. He’s making friends and that’s good, too.

Boo turns 3 on Wednesday, can you believe that? He’s insisting on a “Spongebob Cake” so we’ll see what we can do.

Kenna is crawling and the whole “life at home” game has changed because of it. She’s also not sleeping much because of those darned “toofies.”

I AM INSPIRED BY…

Right now, I am struggling with inspiration. The world is still pretty dark and grey out, and with minimal sleep and a touch of cabin fever, I’m definitely a candidate for a “get over it” sort of pep talk.

We’ve been noticing that Boy Wonder’s handwriting/spelling/reading comp is slipping lately and it’s a bit disheartening for such a bright, upbeat young man like him. There are days that I wish we had the lifestyle to support homeschooling, but what’s to stop us from “homeschooling” anyway? At least in the time we are allowed.

Not that it’s inspiring by any means, but I got the idea to have a theme each month at home where we work on discovering something together as a family. This month we chose “Dinosaurs” and we’re learning all about the Triassic period right now. With his “discovery journal,” he works on his penmanship, spelling, and writing. He also self-motivates with projects he thinks he’d enjoy working on.

He’s already picked out “Vikings” for March, so I’d consider us inspired by this new turn of events.

LAST WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS…
On the “dinosaur” theme, I took the kids to the Alaska Museum of Natural History on Saturday and spent the day poking old bones and looking at rocks and minerals. It was amazing how much those kids can focus when given the chance. Me too, I guess.

WHAT I AM WORKING ON…
I have a short (ish) piece due to Entangled this weekend that I’m ignoring. But not for long.

I’m hoping to get going on organizing/spring cleaning. Winging it each morning “on the fly” is getting harder and harder. Some sanity would be much appreciated around our house.

I’m also working on my health and wellness. I’m not exactly brimming with energy lately so I got us a family membership at the local “dome” covered track and logged 5.5 miles last week (2.5 of them were with the little kids and we walked, but that SO counts!) This week, I’m working on making it there for my own workouts M, W, and F and taking the kids on T, Th. We need the movement!

WHAT THEY’RE WORKING ON…
Boy Wonder is working on earning back some privileges he lost two weeks ago. He’s well on his way, too. I hate punishing him and I’m really bad at it…I’m a “caver” at heart. But P is good at being the voice of reason and reminding me that learning right from wrong is a very good thing.

Boo is working on puzzles and drawing mostly. He loves those.

Kenna’s working on that whole babyfood thing. Somedays she gets it, other days she’s offended at the sight of a spoon.

I’M COOKING…
Not much lately. Cooking requires cleanup, and that’s just not fun. I’m trying a new spaghetti squash creation on Wednesday, though. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’M READING…
Re-reading, actually. Starting the “Hunger Games” trilogy over. I know, I’ve already read it twice, but the movies coming soon and my other books bored me.

I’m determined to crack open my Bible tonight, too. I really, really need some words of wisdom.

THEY’RE READING…
Boy Wonder is in the midst of his “Magic Tree House” books. He devours those things.

Boo has memorized his “No More Monkeys” book and reads it to himself at night.

‘Kenna crawls up next to Boy Wonder whenever he’s on the ground with his book and reads over his shoulder. True story.

WHERE MY PRAYERS ARE…
For Samantha Koenig’s family. For patience and compassion and even more patience. For opportunities for new things in 2012. Broader horizons.

WHERE MY GRATITUDE IS…
For our health. For my beautiful family. For having such awesome extended family and friends. For having a job I love. For a house that keeps us warm (ish) and a car that runs

AND FINALLY, A PHOTO.

(OK, that’s coming. i forgot my phone at home!)

Have a wonderful, productive, and peaceful week!

( P.S.: Credit for this fun little way to start the week belongs to my blog pal Misty over at Rainy Day in May. I love her posts. Really really. )

Making the "list"

2012-01-28T16:35:00.000-08:00

On February 12, 2008 I had surgery to repair a brain aneurysm.

It was a relatively new procedure back then known as “coiling” and the gist of what happened included a cable inserted into a vein near my hip/groin that held a tiny robotic arm that snaked its way up to my brain and installed a titanium coil into the aneurysm, as well as a stent in the artery to prevent collapse.

Neat, right? But so not the point of this post. Around that time I started dating the adorable man who is now my husband. We had lots of talks that winter leading up to the surgery about “bucket lists.” Who had ‘em, whether people needed them, and whether he was on mine. Ha!

I never got around to sitting around and thinking about what I wanted to achieve before “kicking the bucket.” I had kids to care for, bills to pay, husbands to nag…you know how it goes.

And it’s not that I’m necessarily morbid these days, it’s just that this stupid state has me so damned bored with it’s extreme cold and it’s “most frigid January in Anchorage history.” We’re housebound. We’re antsy. And we’re dreaming of things we can’t do right now because our cars aren’t starting and our finger tips freeze before we reach the mailbox.

But I’ve sat down and thought of a few and I’m ready to share. I didn’t number them. I don’t think the order is as important as just accomplishing them. And who knows when I’ll get around to them, but at least I’ve recorded them and if the law of attraction has anything to say about it, these experiences are already on their way to me. So there!!

So, in no particular order, here’s my “list.” (And yes, I’m refusing to call it a bucket list. It’s just a “list.”)

• Get a paper published in the Jane Austen Society of North America’s scholarly journal “Persuasions.” To celebrate, must visit Chawton, Jane Austen’s home and museum in England. Must. Will not be considered complete without the Chawton visit.

• Visit the great-grandfather’s hometown of Fredrickstadt, Norway. Eat some smoked cod without making a face and offending the locals.

• Read the entire collection of Roald Dahl’s children’s books. Watching the various movies DOES. NOT. COUNT.

• Watch a game at Fenway. Eat a hotdog, even. Jeer the Yankees with a fake Bah-stahn accent.

• Finish that journey to fluency in Spanish. Seriously. I was so close and then, well, I moved to Alaska and haven’t said much more than “hard taco, please” as practice. My bad.

• I’ve got this YA steampunk trilogy brewing in my head and the characters are based on my

kids. Obviously, this is the most important story I have to tell and life will not be considered complete until I get those three stories out into the world, publication or no publication. Tell their stories.

• Run a triathlon. I don’t have to win. I just have to finish. Just one. And yes, I have to ride the bike myself. And get up if I crash, which is likely.

• Visit James F. Wright’s grave. Say hello. And goodbye. Never really got to do either and I feel like that’s a chapter in my story that deserves some sort of closure. First step, of course, would be to find the damn thing. Good thing the man who raised me and who I consider my dad

happened to be very close friends with the brother of the man who is actually the biological father. Small, strange little world, isn’t it? Anyway, that Uncle Larry guy will probably know where his brother is buried and that’s always a place to start.

• Raise a mini-lemon tree. For real, not my version of keeping plants alive for a week before

killing them. I want a lemon tree that lives on and on. I want it to live in a bright, sunny spot in our home and produce real, live lemons. Save me from those godawful plastic squeeze lemons of fakeness at the grocery store.

• Shake Paula Deen’s hand. Don’t laugh. I love her. Like, a lot. Hell, it’s my “list,” I might even hug her!

Good start, eh?

And what about you? Do you have a “list” or do you just sort of make it up as you go?

Have a wonderful weekend. Hug someone special (but keep your mitts offa Paula, ya hear?!)

The Law of Attraction: 2012

2012-01-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

Simply put, your dominant thoughts will find a way to manifest themselves into your life.

I'm hoping and wishing for big changes in 2012 and it starts here. Mecca? Maybe not. But close enough for this half-frozen, sunlight-lacking soul...

There's This Girl I Want My Husband to Meet

2012-01-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

Now, settle down. I'm not talking any Alaskan version of "Wife Swap."

That’s just a cute way of saying that I sometimes I think about the other “versions” of me my husband will never know.

He’ll never meet the high school version of me and maybe that’s a good thing. While I might have been a lot of fun, I wasn’t always the nicest human being when it came to the opposite sex, so there’s always that.

The girl I wish I could introduce my husband to would be cowgirl I once was.

Now, I’m not saying I was a barrel-racing diva with real ranch cred or anything and the truth is that even in my Texas A&M hey day, getting on a horse was always a bit nerve wracking.

But something about the me from back then would have charmed the pants off him. (Not that I have problems charming my husband’s pants off or anything…have you seen the size of our family? HA!!!)

Cowgirl Megan wasn’t overly confident all the time, but she wore ropers and Levis on a Friday night out. She refused to wear those godawful pocket-less freakshows called “Rockies.” (The 90’s hick version of “mom jeans,” methinks!)

She drank beer. Probably too much beer, but any college girl who knows the difference between Shiner Bock and Milwaukee’s Best has some moxie. Cowgirl Megan two-stepped every weekend and loved country music. She knew the words to every Robert Earl Keen song and even got emotional, sloppy drunk when that sappy Gary Stewart song “An Empty Glass” came on. (That was actually pretty funny.)

She sat through sunsets and swam in creeks. She sat on tailgates and swung her legs back and forth for hours on end, just because. She left front doors open because there was this thing called a screen door. And they rocked...

She loved Steve Earl’s “Guitar Town” and drank her way through an entire pitcher of beer to retrieve her Aggie class ring once. (She lost that ring sometime in 2002 and hasn’t been the same since. So sad.)

(At the that point in time, my husband was enlisted in the Marine Corp. *drool* I think Cowgirl Megan and her counterpart, Marine Corps Patrick, would have been quite a team back in the day. Wild, reckless, constantly hungover. Fun, right?!)

Ok, so maybe once in a while Cowgirl Megan was a moron and did things like drink too much before the party started so she was unconscious and passed out in the back seat of her friend’s car for entire festivities, but still.

We’ll even overlook her penchant for fighting with sorority girls outside the Dixie Chicken that one especially hot summer and chalk it up to the madness that 87 straight days of 100+ degree weather will incite.

But there are days that I miss that girl. What’s more, I wish my husband got to know her before she turned into the bill payer, the floor scrubber, the uber mom. Not that I’m complaining…my life is a beautiful, beautiful thing…but Cowgirl Megan was a freer Megan and sometimes the chains of responsibility weigh heavy and the phsyical distance Alaska imposes between you and everything you grew up knowing is great. Sometimes you miss the Salt Lick and JJ's Pit BBQ just won't cut it.

Maybe more than him knowing that girl, maybe I want him to know the place and the experiences that shaped that girl. They were magical. They are magical.

I miss the things Texas represents from time to time… “ya’ll,” barbecue, bluebonnets, high school football, lazy rivers you can actually jump in without stopping your heart (though the occasional water moccasin might do that for you…just sayin’.) I miss them in a way that I wish my husband (and my kids) could experience it too.

I think about my roots on days like this…sub-zero, lacking sunshine, no fresh fruit to speak of, kids cramped inside a small living room because nobody’s interested in outdoor activities when your boogers freeze immediately on contact with the air.

And I wonder just how rewarding and different it might be to raise our family in a place like that.

Picture it: Cowboy Boy Wonder, Cowpoke Boo, Cowprincess Kenna, Cattle Baron Patrick…and Cowgirl Megan. Pick up trucks, blue jeans, and cowboy boots. Barbeque pits, sunny evenings on a porch swing, and country music.

Sometimes I think I’ll never live that life again…but you know what they say about saying “never,” don’t you?

The Acai Mustache Maker (Smoothie)

2012-01-17T14:58:00.000-08:00

I was reading an article yesterday and laughed my @## off at a commenter when they said that our sport (jiu jitsu) is known for a few things--acai bowls and cauliflower ear being chief among them.

It's true, and while cold weather and other assorted factors have kept me off the mat lately, the recent drop in temperature and rampant release of flu bugs makes me rethink the benefit of working a little more "jiu jitsu lifestyle" into our winter. Sure, we don't have the beaches the other schools have in So Cal (yes, I'm jealous), but we've got the sunshine. The blinding, eyeball-burning sunshine (which in Alaska in January usually guarantees that it's well below zero and into the negative digits. Blah.)

We love our local Acai Alaska shop, but the problem is that we just might love ourselves into the poorhouse if we frequent it as much as we'd like. They're not cheap! (For good reason, I know. But still...)

Costco had a special on Acai juice today (two smallish jugs for about $7.50). Can I get a "hooray?"

Hooray!

So, in honor of our half-frozen homage to the jiu jitsu lifestyle, here's a quick Acai smoothie that boasts all the superfood benefits of acai, bananas, and blueberries.

Acai Superfood Smoothie

Blend until smooth:

1 banana

1 cup frozen fruit (we used blueberries)

1 cup Acai juice

1/4 cup water (or more, depending on the consistency you like)

It passed the "Boo" test, too...hence the name "mustache maker." The boy sure loves his "smoomies."

Enjoy the day!

Tuesdays with Laundry

2012-01-10T12:03:00.000-08:00

There are no wise words today. No sad words, no declarations. Not much other than some soap and dryer sheets...maybe a glimpse into the 80s with me. Does anyone else have memories of childhood that seem to involve laundromats? Lots of laundromats?

I grew up for a spell in Chester, Vermont and I distinctly remember a few things about that beautiful little town...one of them being the laundromat.

I remember eating an entire pack of gum I stole out of my mom's purse underneath the folding table. I remember playing with a deck of Captain Caveman playing cards I'd gotten for Christmas from my aunt Dee. I remember finding a $20 bill outside in a snowbank and feeling like the luckiest four-year old in the world because my mom let me pick out a candybar at Gould's store.

Our washing machine is a piece of crap right now and either will, or won't, depending on the moon's gravitational pull and what color underwear you happen to have on, drain the water during the spin cycle.

Sometimes you have clean clothes, sometimes you have dirty clothes soup.

Out of socks and sick of "questionable" sweatshirts, the Boo and I loaded up 800 pounds of laundry and hit the Jewel Lake Washateria and hung out together. Turns out, wasn't so bad. What's more? He seems to be the laundromat fan that I always was.

And just to be super helpful and nerdy, here's a couple links to great laundry tips and advice. Who says you've got nothing new to learn on a Tuesday afternoon?

1. Top 12 Cleaning and Laundry Tips for 2012 from Everyday Cleaning

2. Laundry folding advice from Mamas Laundry Talk

3. 5 Easy Laundry Tips from Men's Health News

4. Money Saving Laundry Tips from Mint.com

Happy Tuesday!

What now? A 2012 conundrum.

2012-01-09T12:53:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012!

I know I’m about nine days late wishing you a happy new year, but here I am!

The Christmas holidays kind of flew by as a blur of baking cookies and sick children, and once we survived those, I found myself on a 35-hour nightmare plane ride that never seemed to end.

Though truth be told, I really only flew from Alaska to Phoenix, Phoenix to El Paso. In El Paso, I had a great couple hours with my parents, picked up my son, took a shower, took a 45 minute nap, and returned to the airport. From there, we waited on an hour delay before the plane that was originally supposed to take us to L.A. rerouted us to Ontario, CA because of fog. Once in sardine-smelling Ontario, we boarded touring buses like a band of refugees and drove to LAX. Our connection to Seattle had been delayed, thankfully, so after a nasty Burger King burger, we flew to the Emerald City. Our flight home started off great until 27 minutes into the flight, the pilot turned us around because both de-icers had broken. AUGH!

I’ve never been the biggest fan of flying and for some reason, I though the “cheap” flight would be fine. Never again. I’ll save my pennies for next summer’s retrieval mission and if I have any say in it, the boy and I will be in first class, baby!

So there’s where we are. Its 2012, the kids are now 8, nearly 3, and a little past 6 months. P is getting ready for the toughest semester in school yet, and I’m still trying to find a moment of time to decide who I want to be this year.

Things are bananas. Add to that some real heartbreak in our life when it comes to a very important institution my husband and I have been a part of for a very long time, and maybe you can tell that my heart just isn’t where it’s supposed to be right now. I feel like the sands beneath us are constantly shifting with the weight of broken heaters, broken friendships, raggedy gossips, giving up what you’ve fought so hard to build, and the day-to-day trials of trying to make even the most perfect of circumstances work (and we all know they’re never perfect, anyway), and I’m just worn out.

It's a mild depression. It's a sense of not going anywhere, despite spinning your wheels as fast as you can. It's that point where the things you used to enjoy (facebook, email, etc) became a source of stress and drama...and really, who needs fake drama when there's so much REAL drama to create in the world?? I'm kidding. Sort of.

It’s only the ninth day of the new year and I woke up with a heavy heart, some extra pounds weighing me down, and not a lot of steam to push me forward. I think it’s a damn shame, to be honest, and it was about noon time at my desk today when the most glorious peak of sunshine finally made its way through the trees and buildings of our city to blind me in the eye and make me take a second to recover. (Both metaphorically and literally--I really did sting my eye staring straight at that gorgeous sun out of disbelief that it had finally arrived.)

The past weeks have given me a lot of time to think about all the things I try to pack my plate full of, and how often I ignore my mama when she tells me I’m doing too much. Too much worrying about people who don’t matter. Too much planning and hoping for things without thinking them through and deciding what’s a real priority and what’s not.

And it’s true. If there was a gold medal for consistently rushing from good idea to hastily implmented process, I'd be an Olympian. I'd be the Michael Phelps of rushing headlong into things.

I thought long and hard about what to do with the blogs I’d created in the past couple of years. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I thought it would be wise to separate out my interests. I had a book come out in 2011 and thought I needed a separate venue to promote it—mostly because I didn’t feel like explaining to certain groups of acquaintances that I wrote that sort of stuff—but partly because it was a new, shiny website. Then there is the Hungry Little Blackbird, an effort that I absolutely love, but inevitably end up neglecting for a few months a year while I finish a book or bringing forth a baby. (Yes, it’s been one of those years.)

I also teach. Did you know that? Well, I do. I teach writing workshops online and in-person and this year’s going to a wild ride for me as I move away from teaching adults and get into teaching kids. I’m thrilled about it, and last year I thought it was be wise to have a blog about that, too. A blog I never got to update.

Do you see a pattern yet? I seemed to have about a million irons in the fire and with all the change and flux we’re working through right now, there’s just not enough me to make it all work.

So what now?

Well, who knows? But my first step is to take the first half of 2012, at least, and operate off of one blog. One platform. Jam all of my hobbies and dreams and pursuits into one place. I always thought the key to finding your niche online was to make your content as specific as possible, but I’m finding that’s not always the case. Sometimes it just drives you crazy, as it is currently doing to me.

So I’m putting all the other pursuits like HLB, my author site, my teaching site, and whatever else is out there on hold. And putting it all here. Cutting myself some slack and giving myself ONE place to dump all my energy into.

Don’t get me wrong…this new year is a tad bumpy on the takeoff to be sure, but if you know anything about me, you know I don’t sit around and play the victim too long. Sure, I love the wallowing in the Ben & Jerry’s for a week or two, but eventually I get bored with myself and paddle my way out of the %$^% creek.

So maybe this is just me collecting my canoe, my life vest, my oars, and my picnic basket. Turns out it’s kinda nice having everything in one place.

Happy 2012 and here’s to a year of making things happen.

Oh, and P.S.: I need to plug in my Happy light. I know, I know. Vitamin D deficiency isn't really helping much. Noted.

O Christmas Tree: Tish the Fish

2011-12-08T21:56:00.000-08:00

I haven't had a lot to say lately, this being my favorite (and busiest) time of year.

Truth be told, I've been much better at keeping The Hungry Little Blackbird current and up to date for once. (That never happens, in case you're wondering.)

But I miss you. I really do. I miss telling stories and feeling like my quiet little life matters.

So in lieu of some brilliant, meaningful post, I reckon I'm going to tell you about a Christmas ornament or two (and maybe some traditions) this month and call it good. Who knows, maybe if you're good little readers, I'll even regale you with tales of New Year's resolutions in a couple weeks.

Kidding, of course. I'm terrible at those damn things.

On to the ornament...

This is "Tish the Fish." Silly little thing, isn't she? I bought her about five years ago, the first Christmas Dom and I had in the new Eagle River apartment. I'd planned on forgoing a tree that year because I was strapped for cash and I honestly thought Dom was too young to really care. He wouldn't know the difference, right?

Wrong.

Thank goodness for mamas. Mine sent an emergency Christmas tree fund and we headed down to our local hardware store in search of our towering pine. That was the year we learned the ugly truth about price gouging in Alaska. See, it's not limited to gas, milk, fresh fruit, or rent. Seems it flows straight into the Christmas season, too. Humbug!

So, with our beautiful, half bald Charlie Brown Christmas tree sitting in the front seat (it was small enough to be wedged in the floor board and we were so worried the wind from the back of the truck would blow off the few remaining needles that Dom and I chanced it--he worried and fretted from his carset in the back), we made our way home.

But the problem with starting over is that you usually start with little to nothing. And that includes decorations. (Who thinks of holiday decorations in the summer when you move into a new place?)

So that first Christmas, Dom and I found an old paint pail around the back of the building and lodged the trunk between two rocks. We filled it with water, admired it a few seconds and headed out to the local super store to get whatever decorations we can find on what's left of our miniature holiday budget. Turned out, it wasn't much after the obligatory twinkly lights and small glass balls that every tree must have, according to a three year old.

We had enough left for one single "special" ornament to start our collection with. We couldn't decide between a hanging manger or a polyresin snowman and my boy child and I haggled back and forth for a good 15 minutes before we saw her.

She made us both laugh. We couldn't believe this sparkly, glittery fish was staring at us from a top hook--all alone and abandoned. It was almost as if Tish the Fish knew she didn't have a chance in hell in finding a spot on a typical Christmas tree and she'd all but given up. I mean, she was all dressed up in all that makeup and fabulous eyebrow tweezing with no place to go...the proverbial last girl standing at the school dance. I guess I could relate.

Who better to celebrate with us that year than a renegade purple lady fish that had absolutely nothing to do with the holiday? Exactly.

So Tish the Fish came home with us and, somehow, shows up every year. It's amazing with the moves and the kids pawing through ornaments like they're made of titanium. But there she is. And there she'll stay as long as she wants to come back each year.

Our tree and our family have grown in the years that followed and to look at our family Christmas tree today, you'd hardly know there was a time when I tied yarn around Hot Wheels and plastic army men to second as ornaments when I found glaring bare spots. Now we've got handmade next to hand blown and they all tell a story. But it all started with one purple fish with giant red glitter lips.

Merry Christmas, Tish the Fish! Here's to five great years...

And Merry Christmas to you, too.

xoxo

Thanks, I needed that

2011-11-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

Last week was tough. I'm battling change in myself and my habits and that's never easy. For the past few years, I've had this constant fear of failure and fear of falling short plague me like nothing I've ever experienced. It's crippling. It's ridiculous.

And I'm proud to say, it's almost over.

Change is never easy, but it's necessary. And easier to accomplish one little baby step at a time.

After four years, one brain surgery, and two babies later, I returned to competition. And it was a beautiful thing. Jiu jitsu is often a metaphor for life..what you do wrong when pushed on the mat, you often do wrong when pushed in life. It's a fantastic mirror, and for the first time in a long time yesterday, I got a chance to take a peek, and like what I saw in the reflection.

Welcome back to the sport, but more importantly, welcome back to the scrappy, stubborn girl you used to be, Megan.

Onward ...

A week in the life

2011-11-07T12:06:00.000-08:00

Early November.

As I stare out the window, there's snow. Everywhere. Deep and up to the calf-region, even.

It's tournament week, I'm battling a dislocated rib and some misplaced swagger, but other than that, it's a fantastic start to this, my most favorite month of the year.

I don't have any fabulous updates to give you with all that's going on. The wheels are turning, though. They always are. In place of a remarkable post written well and full of inspiration, I'll cheat and give you a glimpse of my life a week at a time.

Monday 10/31/2011

Halloween. It snowed. A lot. Our kids were troopers and demanded to keep going, even when the failed potty training caused an emergency on a stranger's front porch. True story to save for first dates and such.

Tuesday: 11/1/2011

My 'Kenna. She's a beauty. And four and a half months now. Sigh.

Wednesday: 11/2/2011

My view at the "factory." Not really a factory as much as a desk, but still. It can be a great view when I need to daydream.

Thursday: 11/3/2011

My Boo. He's so patient with me when I make him go shopping...especially if there is a Hot Dog truck handy for any mid-shopping hunger pains.

Friday: 11/4/2011

My Boy Wonder in the season's early snow. Also present in the photo is the goofy neighbor kid. Riding a bike. In the snow. Seriously. It was funny to watch.

Saturday: 11/5/2011

My grandmother's Ginger Crinkles. Boo and I call them our "snow cookies" because when the weather changes, we crave these. And the smell of cinnamon, ginger, and butter (yes, they smell like butter) that invades the house. Better than any Yankee candle I overspend on.

Sunday: 11/6/2011

I spent my mama's birthday recovering from an early Thanksgiving celebration we had with our Gracie family. It was such a wonderful time, it was well worth the constant running of the dishwasher, vacuum, and sink water. We love our hometown family. They are the only reason we've made it in Alaska this long (so far from our real families.)

Have a beautiful week.

Dispatches from Bottom Cross-sides: At war with the fear

2011-10-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

It’d be an understatement to say that I’ve been a head case lately.

My poor husband has watched me melt down at the drop of a hat, without provocation, and usually without warning. Like watching ice cream melt, P has watched my face move from the girl he married to the droopy, snot-nosed, weepy mess who can’t really explain why she’s crying or pissed off. Or both at the same time. I’m fun like that!

But he knows what’s going on with his vain, proud, and formerly-scrappy wife. Twice now he’s given me a pep talk about this crippling fear that invades my psyche and turns me into a sh*& show on the mat and beyond.

I’ve never handled the stress of performing well. Ask my folks. They’ll tell you about the countless swim meets where I spent the hours before my races in the bathroom, sick as a dog, pausing only to emerge long enough to swim before returning back to the chlorine-stank depths of that pool bathroom. Nasty, right?

My fighting days? I’d be nauseous for a week leading up to the event. Sick up to the second before my entrance music started. Sick as the ref gave us instructions. Sick until the very second I saw her make a move towards me and then I didn’t feel anything. I just did.

But it’s never been an issue with jiu jitsu.

It’s always been an escape for me, a second family where I felt safe and could be myself. Good, bad, ugly—whatever Megan happened to show up that day finished the workout and rolled until class ended.

But thanks to a brain surgery, two gorgeous babies, and a busy work and family life I’ve been away from the day to day regular training for a little over three years. These days, with the November tournament looming, everyday has become more pressure filled. More intense. More frustrating. More agonizing. Tournament time highlights everything you don’t know and everything you should know by now. The things you want to know but don’t have time enough to learn yet. The things “this person” knows or “that person” has perfected that stump you every time, no matter how hard you try not to fall for it.

Maybe that’s why it only seems like 1 in 3 really sign up for and show up to tournaments in our sport. It’s not easy, despite how gentle and laid back our art is supposed to be. Losing sucks. Losing in front of your entire town sucks more. There’s no way around the fact that you’re going to lose on your journey. It’s just that it stings so much.

The rush to prepare, to lose two babies’ worth of “outta shape,” and to gain three years’ of lost mat time turned me into a big weenie who gets pushed around, kneed in the head, scratched, and smooshed. A weenie who allows this all to happen in this strange, submissive, sorry state I find myself in.

I roll “safe” rolls and still spend an inordinate amount of time talking or stalling. I don’t rush to work with people I don’t know, fearing the worst in them. (Or maybe fearing the worst in myself, I’m not sure.) Hang out on the perimeter of the mat, waiting for a safe spot to jump in.

Fear has shrunk my jiu jitsu world incredibly small these three past months since coming back after Makenna was born and I’m starting to feel the tight space of this emotional and physical cage. Instead of a big, happy jiu jitsu family, I find myself living with the few people I’ll roll with and the rest of the world is “the others.” I avoid “the others.”

But this morning over coffee, P made it very clear that the time for feeling sorry for myself and being afraid of my own shadow was long past.

And it sounded just like one of the most influential men I’ve ever known said to me when I’d just turned 13 and moved up to the “grown folks” swim team from the safety of the little kids’ team.

“You’ve been here three months now,” Leo, my old coach, barked at me as I hid in the slowpoke lane with the injured swimmers. (No, for the record, I wasn’t injured. I was a chickenshit.)

“Quit acting like you’re lost.”

He didn’t feel sorry for me. He didn’t ask if the bigger, faster athletes scared me (they did). He didn’t coddle me.

He called me out and kicked my tail right into the lane I belonged where I had to work my ass off just to keep up for a few sets each day before I’d start falling behind. And then the next week, I’d hang on for a few more sets before falling off. And then months later, I’d be in a brand new lane, falling behind when my muscles and lungs couldn’t hang with the newer, faster swimmers. But I kept on moving upward and onward until I was doing everything I thought I couldn’t when I was 13.

Genius, right?

So in the coming weeks, if I accidentally pull your hair, push you around, fail miserably and keep coming at you breathing like I’ve got a Mack truck on my chest, bear with me. I’m looking for that fire I lost a few years ago and you’re helping me find it. I’m trying to switch lanes and you’re the only reason I’m going to get there.

Mind Candy: This Week's Finds

2011-09-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

The truth is that I don't have a lot going on these days. Oh, sure, I'm busy as I've ever been, but the family is on a sort of "buzzing along comfortably" track that's moving us past our short fall here in the AK and into colder weather.

But I hate to fall off the blogosphere radar because once I do, it's so incredibly hard to find motivation to pull myself back up.

That, and there have been some super fascinating reads out there this week that I figured I'd just share. A chance for me to check in, and a chance for you to find something useful. Win-win, see?

On to the mind candy, Jeeves.

Top Ten Books Lost to Time at Smithsonian.com
The list includes Jane Austen's Sandition, so what's not to love about this post?! (Yes. Still. Love. Austen.)

7 Reasons Why We Love 7 Reasons at Psychology Today
A look into why the number 7 is fantastic for many, many reasons. (Seven, to be exact!)

21 Ways to Pray Throughout Your Day at Beliefnet.com
Can never have too much face time with the Big Man, can we? And did you notice how the 21 was basically the 7 from the previous link, three times over? Ha! I didn't!

Would Jane Austen and the Bronte Sisters Have Self Published? at all about Jane's Ranch
Again with the Jane Austen. But I can't help it. I love her, I really do.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Dispatches from bottom cross-sides: A girl's guide to BJJ

2011-09-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

(Author note: This is a sad attempt at humor, and definitely not an approach I recommend you take on your path in jiu jitsu. It's simply the truth dispatched from from my tiny corner of the world's jiu jitsu mat--where I'm usually pinned beneath an opponent with plenty of time to mull over things like this. True story.)

I've been a part of the art for five years now. Can you believe that? I started out as a chubby newly-minted Judo brown belt (sankyu) with nowhere to train. Over the course of the years, I've dabbled in MMA, had a baby, had a brain surgery, had another baby, had a few temper tantrums, had some fun at Worlds, and picked up a few tricks along the way for surviving your occoasional "off day."

I hate to admit it, but the road back from LONG, LONG months off is tough. It actually sucks BIG TIME most of the days of the week. In fact, I was lying on the floor of our living room the other night, talking to P about what a crap-tastic night I had on the mat and I had an epiphany.

"I want to be good," I said to my husband, a blackbelt who hasn't had a bad jiu jitsu day in five years (he's been doing the art six, I think. Poo on him.)

"I just don't want to get good."

He nodded in his sage-like fashion and shrugged his shoulders in that "what can ya do" manner he does so well. (Well, for starters, you can give me that "get good quick" guide you're hiding from me....)

Does that make sense? It did in my head at the time, and I guess that's what counts anyway. So while I've been pinned beneath Brendan, or backpedaling like my life depended on it from Bo, I've come up with the following survival techniques. Hope they come in handy for you sometime. They sure get me through the agonizing hour or two....

A Girl's Guide to Jiu Jitsu: Surviving the Occasional Bad Day

1. Learn the gift of gab

We could be total strangers when the match begins, but if I'm stressed or at a loss of what to do, you can be certain I'm going to become your best friend. I'm going to ask you about your family, your favorite color, any good movies you might have seen, your pick for Sunday's game, or whether you'd take Big Bird over Grover in a cage match.

I'll talk faster and with more focus the more you push the pace. I'll comment on my toenails and their fabulous green color. I'll ask you to look and when you do, I'll increase the distance between us and shrug when you realize I've just talked my way out of a potential foot lock.

2. Choose your opponents wisely

Listen, you might be the next Dalai Lama with a pure soul and the cure for cancer somewhere in that brain of yours. But please believe I'm watching your roll, and if your a grabby, limb yanking maniac, well, chances are high that we'll never occupy the same 10-foot radius of mat together. We'll be like opposite ends of a highly-charged magnet...the closer you come when looking for a partner for the next round, the further I'll scoot away. We'll keep the same twenty feet of space between us no matter where you go.

It's nothing personal, it's just that since I turned 30, my joints are made of glass and my skin screams in protest whenever its pinched. What I used to be able to power through and return in kind when I was 29, now makes me weepy at 33, as though you meant it on purpose and had no other goal in that match other than giving me a thumbprint bruise on the fat part of my arm. And then I have to tattle on you to my husband, and then he as to address the situation...I'm kidding. Sort of...

3. In case of emergency, deploy "girly scream"

God, this one is embarrassing to admit. But I do it so often it has to count...and when I see my sisters on the mat out there doing the same thing, well, I understand its power.

When I say scream, what I really mean is that sort of shriek-slash-laugh we do when we're suddenly hoisted up in the air in a mega-sweep.

Usually when I've been caught unaware (which is always)...the moment I'm airborne, I'll let out this banshee-esque squeal that serves two purposes: one, it'll alert everyone in earshot that I'm up in the air and could end up anywhere...be warned.

Two, it lets the sweeper know that I'm terrified and have the expectation that when I land, I will have my spleen and kidneys still intact. It's a sort of "OMG" shriek that hopefully sends the message that I'm about to pee my pants in fear and for you to reconsider that the next time you catch me off balance. I'm like a cat and my claws will stick in the ceiling if you keep it up...

The girly scream's close cousin is the slipped expletive. I use this one mostly as I'm crashing to the ground in a failed take-down attempt. They slip out, unintentional, but make me feel better just the same. Therapeutic even, as my face is ground down into that smelly blue mat while you perfect your awesome sprawl. (Have I mentioned how much I hate your sprawl? Almost as much as I hated your jab when we used to spar, but nearly as much as I think your triangle is the Spawn of Satan.)

4. Embrace the power of distractions

Do you think it's a coincidence that I bring my beautiful kids with me to training? Sure, it's partly because nobody in the city of Anchorage wants to babysit all three of them at a time five nights a week...but it's also that they come in real handy at about the 42 minute mark of the 60-minute class.

You know, that point where you heart is hammering in your chest so hard you can't keep up with your breathing...like your lungs are sucking in while you're trying to push out and all you manage to do is make a lot of noise and NOT get a lot of air in?

The point where you can no longer sip water and you just sorta douse your face with half your water bottle and hope some ends up in your mouth?

Yep, that point.

It's no secret that my baby girl doesn't cry, but I still pick a point in practice to hover over her like she's wailing and hollering in panic. I'm not above pinching her foot to garner the desired sound effects.

In gi class, my favorite trick is the ol' belt/pants emergency. Just flattened me out for three minutes straight? Suddenly I have no mission in life save one: create the perfect obi (belt) knot. I will tie, retie, tie again, retie a fourth time until that darn thing looks so good Sensei Jigoro Kano would give me the thumbs up from his grave. After that, I'll redo my ponytail. Fix my eyebrows, and trim my toenails.

Beep beep!

Round's over? My bad. Next time, my friend, for sure... Ha!

5. Dish out "grossio jiu jitsu" and learn a few dirty tricks

I am not above the "accidental" elbow drive into your thighs to loosen a guard.

Have you ever watched two women roll? Especially two women who are friends...you'll see moves that would make Ric Flair proud. I've been in matches with Lauren that have ended and I have about a quarter less hair then when I started.

I've used a friend's ponytail as a means to keep her head pinned to the ground (a move we've dubbed the "hair bar") and I'm not above "accidentally" kicking you in the sportsbra if the situation calls for it. I've spit in Jayson's eye (not on purpose, but it sure helped the situation out a lot), pulled Patrick's leghair, and used Jordan's forehead as a post to help me stand up.

I'm ruthless, it's true, but what I lack in technique and gas tank, I sure make up for in creativity.

See you on the mat...

A Real, Live Writer

2011-09-12T08:22:00.001-07:00

I got to attend my very first writers' conference this weekend. Be it money, time, energy...whatever...I've wanted to attend one ever since I started my MFA program back in 2002 and have never been able to.

Over the summer, I saw a call go out for scholarships to attend this year's Alaska Writers Guild conference and threw my entry into the pool, thinking nothing would probably ever come of it.

That's the way most exciting stories start out, isn't it?

So there I was, scholarshipped to the max and sitting in a large hotel conference room waiting for brilliance. Waiting for leadership. Waiting for that line to be drawn in the sand that is my life, clearly marking "before" and then one for "after."

(Cue crickets.)

Turns out, not even access to literary agents, publishers, and industry experts can validate your feelings and dreams as a writer. Hell, if anything, they seem to be there to knock your dreams back a few notches and into the "doable" category.

I gleaned a lot from the speakers. I learned one's preference when it comes to the allmighty query. I learned how another turns her feature-writing abilities into short stories. I heard a take on where publishing stands in 2011, and even how I can be funny even if I am pretty sure I am not.

But nowhere in there was the magic equation to turn word documents in to gold...no literary alchemy that I always assumed one learned at a writer's conference. This entire time, I've been waiting for some experience to validate my existence as a writer...whether it's a big chunk o' change advance, landing an agent, or making that golden connection at a conference. Something out there would turn me into a real, live writer and I just had to find it.

Didn't find it hiding under the lunch buffet Saturday afternoon and it sure wasn't taped to the white board later in the afternoon. I was stymied when it wasn't on the agenda. Nobody took the time out of their presentations to tell me I was a writer. A good one. One that was going to make it big, and while they were at it, lay down the road map to get there, and believe me, I was ready. Never happened.

Alaska is funny, too. I think if a moose walked in and sat down at a table, the speakers wouldn't have been more taken aback than they were with the rag tag group of rowdy writers who showed up this weekend. Loud. Persnickety. Opinionated. Not impressed enough by the talent to wear an unstained shirt. Unimpressed by the pedigrees and the client lists, the Alaskan writers were unabashadly themselves and likely sent the guests back to California wondering what they just witnessed.

No. No literary alchemy this weekend. Just a couple new friends and the feeling that I've been on the right track all along...that I've been a real, live writer the whole time. Funny, right?

No shame in the long way, I guess.

xoxo

Vox Humana: A Manifesto of Sorts

2011-09-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

I've been lukewarm about blogging lately for some reason.

A lot of it has to do with the schedule changes, the season changes, and the regular, mundane stress that ebbs and flows. (Though we are most definitely on the upswing of an ebb, please believe!)

Much of the time, I read other blogs with a slight twinge of envy. How do they come up with posts so often? Where do they get so much material? I flipflop back and forth about what the hell the point is of this blog. Informative? (Probably not. I was never the greatest student, and there's a reason I didn't go into full time teaching after I earned my MFA. ) Anecdotal? Yes, mostly. Fun? I'm trying.

Today, NPR posted links to the StoryCorps project. (You can read all about this project and listen/watch their amazing stories here.) They collect stories from Americans of every background, creed, and age and save them. Some stories get turned into incredible animated shorts. Seriously. Go. Look.

One of the shorts is from a historian and he talks about how humans have used their voices over time (written and verbal). The power of a whisper, the excitement of a shriek. The timelessness of stories from our grandparents and how they're all disappearing before they can be told. And that's even if somebody's listening...

There a times when I'm typing these posts andI feel a little self-indulgent. More so when I link it to my facebook account. Who the heck really cares that I had a bad day? That my toddler can have the manners of a baby mountain gorilla? I drift, now and then, on a sea of doubt about what my voice is for in relation to this blog.

But then there was StoryCorps. And while I don't have tales of 9/11 or life-long loves (yet...we're working on it), I still have something to say.

I have our stories.

The chances are pretty high that a New York literary agent isn't going to come knockin' on my e-mail door with a big book deal to turn these snippets into a "Marley and Me" we could call "Gorilla Boy and Me." But I think that was never the point.

What I think this entire project is for, has to do with my kids. For them. Their kids. Their grandkids.

One day I'll be gone, and assuming that a zombie Apocalypse hasn't gripped the world and the Internet still exists, they'll have these words and they'll hear my voice telling them about us.

Our family. The time Andrew woke up forty-seven times in one night. The time Dominic stuck his tongue to the frozen flag pole. The sweet baby Makenna is, and how she'll smile for an hour straight as long as you say her name over and over in a sing-song voice. The struggles Patrick goes through earning his engineering degree while raising a rather robust family of loud individuals. My role as ring master in our entertaining circus of life.

Snapshots. Stories I won't remember ten years down the line, but matter just the same.

I'll remember the big stories--the births, the moves, the grand life changes--but maybe I won't always remember the way Andrew drinks his bathwater no matter how nasty we tell him it is. (We're almost 99 percent sure he pees in his tub. Just sayin'. Don't judge.) And I want them all to know who they were. How they became who they are. How Patrick and I, and our friends and families, helped them get there.

At last, I know what the Funny Little Blackbird is all about. And I'll never run out of material again.

Dear Makenna: You are Beautiful

2011-08-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

It was a conversation I had with P a couple weeks ago. It popped back up again when I was talking to a good friend of mine and her middle school-aged daughter. I see it all the time with various friends and family members who have teen or tween-aged daughters. It’s a memory I have myself. I grew up watching in with my mother and her constant diets and struggles.

How long have women had hate-hate relationships with themselves? Their self-image? The very body that does miraculous thing and proudly carries them through life?

Since…like, ever? I imagine cave-moms counting mammoth points or pinching the extra skin beneath their chins while bent over a running river and catching a glimpse of their reflections. Did cave teenagers freak out when the old sabre tooth skin didn’t fit the same as it used to? Probably.

It makes me sad. The hours I lost (and still lose, just ask my husband) hating myself. Hating the changes that came after each beautiful child was born. Lamenting a pair of size 6 jeans I can’t fit into as if those very Levi’s defined my very being.

I worry about Makenna. I was a self-loathing teenager in 1994. My friend’s daughter deals pressure in an amplified version in 2011. What will my beautiful girl contend with in 2026 when she’s 15?

I worry that when she’s 15, she won’t hear me anymore. Just like I tuned out my own mother for the most part between the years of 1993 and 2000, Makenna will flex her independence muscles and take whatever I say with a grain of salt.

So I’ll say it now. And I’ll pray she finds these words when she needs them. I pray she hears them.

August 26, 2026

Dear Makenna,

You are such a beautiful baby right now, and I know when you are reading this, you are a beautiful young woman. A light shines from you as I type this, and I have no doubt whatsoever that it is still shining, brighter than ever, now.

I wondered exactly how to put this. What was it that I wanted you to understand after you read this, fifteen years later?

More than anything, I want you to love yourself as much as we love you.

I want you to love yourself now, as you are, and not make ridiculous promises to yourself that you’ll be happy if…if you lose ten pounds…if you get yourself back into a size 6 or a size 12 or whatever ridiculous size robs you of your happiness. Love yourself as you are. Right now.

There’s a picture here of me when I was 15 years old. Like you are now. Look at me. Not too bad, right? Sure, the hair was a bit frizzy and unkempt and I was most likely rocking a uni-brow…but I was talented, bright, and had wonderful friends. I read a lot and smiled constantly. I got good grades. I had loyal friends who loved me. I was a good swimmer on the varsity team. I was on a fast track that would lead me to Texas A&M eventually. To graduate school beyond that… To your dad and brothers and you even beyond that…

And you know what? I hated myself at 15. I thought I was too chubby to be in a bathing suit. I ran from the locker room to the pool as fast as I could, lest some stupid boy catch a glimpse of me in a Speedo and gag. I cringed whenever teachers called on me in class because I thought the attention would eventually focus on how out of shape I was or how fat my thighs were. Isn’t that crazy? I hated pictures because I thought my face was too round.

(That’s a terrible habit I’m still trying to break. How many pictures of me do you really see? I have a few favorites that I keep on Facebook…but they are all highly screened and selected. There are NO random, casual shots of me. Anywhere.)

I spent so much time hating myself and worrying about what others thought of me, I let it rob me of joy. It made me uptight. It made me sad a lot, truth be told. I let stupid things, like a-hole ex-boyfriends who broke my heart, be my fault because I thought I wasn't pretty enough. Or small enough.

And I’ll be damned if you do that to yourself, my sweet girl.

You are beautiful.

I will tell you that thirty times a day for the rest of your life if that’s what it will take to break the cycle.

No size on the back of a pair of jeans will define you. No stupid boy in your algebra class will have the power to make you feel unworthy with a careless comment about “curves.” No fake, poisonous friends will ever pinch your cheeks and shatter your self-esteem by calling you Miss Piggy. You are too smart for that noise.

You are beautiful.

You will grow up and hold your head high. You'll do amazing things and make us proud, no matter who you become. You will shine your light--haters and naysayers be damned.

And the best part? You’ll have me, your dad, your brothers, and a whole army of family and friends behind you the whole way, cheering you on.

Shine on, baby girl…shine on.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over? (A WTF?! Post)

2011-08-18T15:53:00.000-07:00

I have this sick obsession with perfection.

Don’t misread that, though.

Notice I didn’t say, I have this sick obsession and I’m always perfect. I am pretty far from that noise.

But I beat myself up often. I have lists that I lose telling me all the things that I need to do to make my life easier. I have ideas in my head about what my kids should behave like, what my house should look like, and what size I should really be. (No muffin tops make it into my daily hallucinations.)

I tend to gloss my life over in my blog. I subscribe to the “positive thoughts bring positive outcomes” mantra and I generally try not to kvetch and moan in my posts.

But holy crap, BatCrazy.

I’m drowning here.

And I think I’ll take a minute and talk about it for once. My poor husband can’t take anymore of my preferred method of dealing (holding it in until I have an atomic meltdown and freakout).
In the past 24 hours I have really screwed the pooch a few times.

In addition to cheating on the chores and the daily to-dos, I’ve manage to piss of a supervisor at work, screw up meeting notes, and spill coffee all over my desk (and paperwork.)

I’ve gloriously screwed up a chance to teach a kid’s writing workshop at the local library by being a couple days late getting the proposal to the librarian. She wasn’t very nice when she emailed this afternoon and told me, essentially, “thanks, but you’re too much of a flake right now…try back in 2025 when you’re kids are grown and you’ve got yourself together.”

I mean, obviously, she didn’t say those exact words…but that’s what I gleaned from her two-line dismissal. And the truth of the whole thing is that I am crushed. I was really looking forward to that October even (Yes, she’s a bit of a driver, isn’t she? The damn event wasn’t for two months!)

The toughest part of this season of my life boils down to one thing: I’ve got a million “sparks” going of in my head that I want to chase down. I have a perfect version of myself that I want to be—that slimmed down, organized, spiritual, civic-minded SAINT that tortures me from the recesses of my brain.

But it seems I don’t exactly have the life to support it at the moment.

I have three beautiful children. (And one fantastic, supportive and busy husband.)

All three kids are at incredibly needy, demanding stages right now that just don’t encourage long jags at the computer, recycling, or really, any other productive activities during their waking hours. (I ran a vacuum over the carpet between unloading my work items and serving dinner…and you would have thought I’d neglected them for days on end with all the clamoring they did to be heard over the din of the vacuum’s engine).

I had a twenty minute conversation with one of my best friends via text last night. She had to text message me off al edge because I really couldn’t take my attention off the toddler at that particular moment—had I taken the time to call her, he would have stolen my keys and driven himself to Pizza Hut. I had to express my roiling emotions with a damned emoticon.

I know, I know. Cut everyone a little slack.

Me. The hubs. The second-grader who started school this week. The two-year old who is, well, two years old (poor guy!). The brand new baby in a house of crazies.

But it’s hard. And when I’m crying with my face stuffed in the stained sofa (what is that oblong blob, anyway?!), all I can think about is: rinse and repeat.

“Every day is the same. You’ll never get your laundry folded or your book written.” rolls on a repeating loop with sinister pipe organ music grinding away in the background and Vincent Price laughing that “Thriller” laugh at me. Creepy!

I know it’s not exactly true and that I have a flair for the dramatic, but in my dark moments, when I’m sniffling or texting my woes away, I feel like a hamster in a big ass wheel. An annoying squeaky one, too.

What’s the solution?

I’m not exactly sure, but I’ve realized that mom’s have an amazing superpower that I should embrace rather than fight. It’s called “goldfish brain” and it boils down to the ability to forget the tornado that today was and start anew. Sure, tomorrow’s probably going to be another crazy day full of hiccups and stubbed toes, but if I learn to forget today’s frustrations, there’s no compounding effect. New slate. Wiped clean. Ready, and, go.

Brilliant, right?

So for all the missteps I had this week—those meeting notes I botched, the workshop I lost, the weight watcher points I didn’t track, the jiu jitsu class I skipped yesterday…I forgive myself. I forgive myself and start over tomorrow.

Hellooo, goldfish brain. Goodbye bashing my head against the closest…wait…is that a new plastic castle?

Hello, Second Grade!

2011-08-16T11:15:00.001-07:00

I really do mean to update more. It's just that, well... I don't. True story. Ha!

Boy Wonder started second grade today. Can you believe that? It seems like just yesterday he was telling me he wanted to be a motorcycle when he grew up.

He was hiding in the closet when he didn't want to use the potty. He was dressing up in every piece of Halloween costume in a five-mile vicinity...wait, he still does that. Nevermind.

We got together this morning and assembled the team to walk him the block and a half to school. Like his own ticker-tape parade on his own very special day. Boo was thrilled to walk him to the big school until he realized we had to leave him there. Poor guy just got his big brother back and now he's got to do without him during the school day? The world's not always fair to a two year-old!

Boy Wonder is in a program where you stay with the same teacher for two years. This was supposed to be his second year with her, but she quit two days ago. The same second graders (his buddies from last year) were there waiting, but the room layout was different. The energy was different. He hesitated at the front of the room when he realized there were no more seats at the "boy table" and he had to sit with the girls.

I was worried for a split second that this may not be the most auspicious beginning to his second grade year.

And then, well, Boy Wonder relaxed. He sat next to the cute little girl who rode on the sled with him at the winter party last year (she jumped on his sled as it started down the hill at Kincaid and shocked all manner of on lookers...Boy Wonder's mama included!) and I realized all was right in Boy Wonder's world. The ladies loved him. The new teacher was young and just as excited to meet her new class as they were to meet their new teacher. And the boys were jealous that he had a table full of girls all to himself.

Crazy how life works out, isn't it?

I remember my first day of second grade. I had to get on a bus and drive all across the city of Austin to a school that sat in the middle of the worst neighborhood in the city. I was terrified and wanted nothing more than to have everything the way it was before.

I wore a red and black plaid dress with too-tight capped sleeves. (I cut them with my safety scissors when I got to school). I had uber short hair that stuck out at my temples, despite eight gallons of hairspray and all the saliva my mom could muster. (Gross, right? Me and mom/hair issues go way back. I've mentioned my fourth grade "mullet" stage numerous times.)

Second grade was infinite possibilities. It was the beginning of multiplication and the awesomeness of chapter books. Second grade introduced me to Nancy Drew and the Babysitters Club. It was the beginning of me, my own separate, living, breathing person who had to face my own fears and make my own friends. Despite how scared I was on that bus, second grade was a fantastic adventure.

I wonder what's waiting for my Boy Wonder?

Summer of 100 Books Comes to a Close

2011-08-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo! We've made it, and with not much more than a few days to spare...Boy Wonder lands back home on Friday morning. Woooooot! (Can you tell we're thrilled around here?!)

It's been a fantastic summer at the Anchorage Library and I'm really happy Boo and I were able to keep it up, and even included McK in the fun the past few weeks.

We met some new favorite authors this summer and even re-read some old favorites that I remembered from growing up. We can't wait to get a new goal with Boy Wonder going in the next month or so...

So without further ado, here's the wrap up of our summer reading adventure.

Summer of 100 Books: Week the Last

92. Never Tease a Weasel
93. A Friend Like Ed
94. My Father Knows the Names of Things
95. The Magic Porridge Pot
96. There's a Wolf at the Door
97. Dog Tales
98. Sleep, Black Bear, Sleep
99. Dog Donovan
100. The Little Red Fish
101. Lulu, Boo, and Art You Can Do
102. Harold at the North Pole
103. Harold's ABC

Are you familiar with Harold and the Purple Crayon? They're a series by Crockett Johnson written in the 1950s and recently turned in to an HBO series a few years ago (when Boy Wonder was a toddler.) He's a kid with a great imagination, a purple crayon, and a bit of insomnia. Check out the books and the videos if you get the chance.

Happy reading and happy back to school to all our friends!

The Curious Case of Incoherent Babbling

2011-08-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

I love being an adult...I really do.

While marathon "Bob the Builder" stints are de-facto around here and I don't really mind, the chance to actually run a brush through the ol' mane and wipe the crusted mascara from underneath my eyes every now and then is something that gets the ol' blood flowing.

I had a chance to go to a fancy restaurant this week and talk tech. No, really. I was contacted through my food blog to perchance cover a new wine application this great business had developed, and with P's blessing, I jumped at the chance. Nay, I threw myself head first at the opportunity to put on pants with no elastic and an unstained shirt.

The only problem was that I hadn't had much time to practice my "adult conversing" skills. Most of my daytime talk includes "No!" or "Get offa that!" or "I swear to God, Boo...". When P and I get the chance to get a few sentences in undisturbed, it's usually centered around jiu jitsu or MMA and contains more than one "F bomb" or off-color remark. Not exactly the sort of small talk one makes over the top of a fancy wine glass.

That night, I was talking to one of the place's managers and he asked the innocent enough leading question "so where else do you and your husband like to eat in Anchorage?"

Whaaaaa?

Visions of the occasional Happy Meal flashed before my eyes.

No, that doesn't count, does it? What about the chinese take out we get from Panda? That's a real restaurant, right? Would I sound like a moron if I waxed poetic about the delicious zinfandel I drank last month with the greasy fried rice and hunks of mystery meat?

I was stumped for about three minutes, honest. I finally remembered a joint I'd covered for the newspaper (yeah, remember that job I had FIVE years ago??) and spit it out. Too bad, I learned, it had closed last summer.

I stood, slack jawed and staring into the left corner of the tiny room while my brain searched for an eating establishment P and I enjoyed that did not feature a color-on kids menu or waiters that 't sing birthday songs off key if requested. I had nothing.

My new friend mercifully guided the subject to the only thing I'm able to converse about lately: my kids. I regaled him with tales of wrestling tournaments, first "bad" words, and endless diapers.

But I drove home with that sinking feeling: when had I turned into uber mommy who only spoke the language of the sleep-deprived and developmental milestone obsessed?

And then I got home. And the husband was happy to see me and told me all about his night at MMA. And the baby was wiggly and smelled like that pink baby lotion. And the toddler had cried without me that night, and while that's not cool...it's always nice to know when you're missed. To the point of tears. Awwwwww, right?

Lucky for me, the tribe whose language I've adopted is an adorable one. Who can argue when you're fluent in cuddly baby and precocious two year old? When you can still enthrall a seven year old? When you're husband talks shop with you and you can keep up?

Not I, my friend.

Not I.

Summer of 100 Books: The Sheep on a Mission Edition

2011-07-24T11:41:00.001-07:00

I rhymed in my headline on purpose. You'd understand if you were a connoisseur of the "Sheep in a Jeep" series by Nancy Shaw, which by now, we are.

Boy Wonder read the original "Sheep in a Jeep" sometime last year and we loved it. Little did we know our enterprising wool bags went on a hike, went to a shop, went out to eat, and even went to sea. They're amazing sheep, really, with the amount of destruction they can muster in search of a birthday present or even lunch (which turns out to be the restaurant's front lawn.)

There's a few lessons and activities you can incorporate to the books, including recognizing the rhyming patterns (they are aplenty!) and bringing in circular activities like learning about real sheep. Here are a few links:

A to Z teacher stuff: Sheep in a Jeep activities
Teacher.net: Sheep in a Jeep Lesson Ideas
Sheep in a Jeep Coloring Page

As far as our Summer of 100 Books count, we are in the home stretch and will probably sail past the 100 mark today. I haven't logged our books since before McK was born, so I have a few week's worth of updates. Bear with me...we've done a lot of reading together, and with P's mom in town, Boo has had lots of awesome "Gammies" time with the books, too!

I've included links to more information on a few of our favorites. Read on!

Summer of 100 Books

66. Saint Francis and the Wolf
67. Delicious
68. Slim and Jim
69. The Carrot Seed
70. Can You Find Color?
71. Meal Time
72. Dinosaur Chase
73. Cowboy Bunnies
74. Noisy Barn!
75. When Mama Comes Home Tonight
76. One Red Sun
77. Clip-Clop
78. Click, Clack, 123
79. Off We Go!
80. Julius' Candy Corn
81. Three Billy Goats Gruff
82. Cows in the Kitchen
83. Hop!
84. Eight Animals Bake a Cake
85. How do Dinosaurs Say I love you?
86. Sheep in a Shop
87. Sheep in a Jeep
88. Sheep out to Eat
89. Sheep Take a Hike
90. Elephants Cannot Dance! (Another fabulous one by Mo Willems)
91. I Went Walking

We are so close! (And today happens to be another library day, so we'll get there before sundown, I'm sure.)

Happy reading...

Summer of the Wild Gorilla Boy

2011-07-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Do you remember that towheaded toddler from about three and a half weeks ago?

The one who would accompany me to the library three times a week and carry books to the car? Would bake cookies with me and swipe chocolate chips and batter when I wasn't looking? The very same who began sleeping 12 hour stretches and woke up bright eyed and smiling?

He's still around, to be sure, but it seems that he morphs into a young mountain gorilla at certain points in the day. (Lots and lots of points in the day, actually...)

Our sweet tempered Boo loves his sister...I swear he does! He browbeats preschoolers at the library who get too close to her stroller. He swats flies that land near her saying "go away FLY! not my baby sister!" He never misses her baths or a chance to wring a wash cloth in her eye.

But since the Sunday evening we brought McK home, the boy has shown certain silverback tendencies I've never seen in him before. If he were to climb the tree out back and start pounding his chest and screeching in a terrifying low gorilla yell, I'd not be surprised. Much.

To date, I've had "NOOOO!" shouted at me at least 3,423 times. I've been spit on (yes, actual mouth driven, icky boy spit) six or seven. He's rocketed me in the head with a water bottle, kicked me in the face when we were all lying on the floor relaxing, and launched a hotwheels at me more times than I can count.

Daddy's threats of "whoopins" are met with a laugh (and maybe another spit). The actual spankings that used to keep Boy Wonder in line (with the mere THREAT of one) do nothing. I swear to God, the boy actually chuckles when you swat his butt in spite of you.

And poor baby sister. In her short three weeks, she's been sniped by a Yoda happy meal toy (don't you dare judge me...), swiffered one or two times when big brother Boo thinks she "looks dirty", been drenched by a soaked washcloth during her bathtimes when big brother helps, had half her face brushed off by the soft bristled weapon Boo found in her toiletry basket, had a bottle nozzle shoved halfway up her nose ("she's hungry") and had her pacifiers and blankets stolen and tossed over the railing once or twice.

Anymore of this sibling affection, and McK is going to be cage-rage ready before preschool...we were hoping for a tough little girl, but neither P or I put in an order for the Terminator and that's just where we're headed if she's raised among the gorilla boys at this rate.

Don't get me wrong, we see enough of our "sweet angel boy" each day to avoid locking him on the back patio over night...it's just that the more stressful times seemed to have come out of nowhere and have me wondering what Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey might have suggested as a way to restore the peace...to regain balance and order. To save my sanity.

Tranquilizer dart, anyone?

Be Your Own Preschool: Introductions and Early Ideas

2011-07-13T11:58:00.000-07:00

A glimpse inside our madness

I should start with a snapshot of our house as it is right now.

We have a brand new baby that has taken any shred we might have had that resembled a schedule and imposed herself (rightfully so) upon it. We have a two-year-old caught somewhere between the new baby sister and two tired, busy parents. He's acting out. And at the same time, he's smack dab in the middle of an incredible brain and body growth spurt that we're going to let slip past if we're not careful.

If things work out this fall, our family will be in a new position for us. I'll be able to stay home two days a week and work a more flexible, part time schedule. P will be in school the two days a week that I am home and working in the evenings. Our kids will be with us and not in daycare. It's a wonderful thing, no?

But it also poses the challenge for us to be Boo and McK's first teachers. With Boy Wonder, I was on my own and sent him to daycare from the sixth week (sigh). But along the way, he had a number of fantastic preschool classroom experiences that laid a great foundation for him when it came time to start school.

P and I were shocked at his kindergarten screening to hear a little boy that would be in his class unable to count to five or recite his alphabet past the first six or so letters. Some kids just don't get the foundation that preschool environments offer. And with us being home with the two younger ones this year, I figured we had the opportunity to "be our own preschool" and I set to the library to learn as much as I could about age-appropriate activities and how children learn in these early years.

Just who are we dealing with?

Guess what? Kids are fascinating. Here is a little of what I learned about Boo's age group:

they are prime for memorization (something Boo can do in minutes, as long as it's a Black Eyed Pea song)
they value conversation more and more and begin to participate in back and forth exchanges
they need lots of praise and encouragement as they venture further and further out from their comfort zone
they are natural explorers
they seek strong gross motor activities as their coordination improves (movement is vital to this age!)
they love and rely on schedules

As I pored over the learning and early education books I found (and our library has a treasure trove of them available!), ideas began to take shape about what our days will begin to look like as we mold our time away from television and other media-driven activities toward the learning adventures Boo (and soon McK) craves.

Two warring theories that will make nice in our house

In my reading, I came across two very fascinating books that, at first glance, seem to offer contradictory theories. But I see the logic in both and as such, both will find a place in our logic and thinking.

The first idea is centered around the importance of free play from "Einstein Never Used Flashcards" by Kathy Hirsh Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff. The essentials I took away were:

children will learn best when you play with them
the goal should be to learn in context of an activity, not through rote memorization
educational toys are essentially pointless, while everyday objects will teach everyday, essential lessons

Brilliant, right?

On the other hand, two books about raising lifelong readers caught my attention and had TONS of practical, fun activities that might seem a little too structured for the Einstein group. But I like them.

"Raising Confident Readers" by J. Richard Gentry and "How to Make Your Child a Reader for Life" by Paul Kropp offered great learning games and ideas, along with some frightening facts, including:

% of 4th graders who read for pleasure every day: 45.7
% of 12th graders who read for pleasure every day: 24.4
% of 4th graders who use a library once a week: 59
% of 12th graders who use a library once a week: 10.2

Among 8th graders, 71% watch three or more hours of television per day, while only 27% will read for pleasure daily.

And finally, in Boy Wonder's age group (6-11), the number of hours per week watched: 10.9 with 2 hours of video game time thrown in for good measure. Number of murders a child will see before the end of grade school? More than 8,000.

I was floored. And determined that learning to read was going to happen early and often and that some of their suggestions would be hammered into my brain and daily schedule no matter what.

A few starter suggestions?

read to your child every day
provide books for your children and they'll turn into their favorite stories that they'll memorize and "practice" reading in the near future
limit exposure to media whenever possible

I've only just begun this journey of developing our own preschool-esqe environment in our day-to-day life. As far as I can tell, it's going to be a work in progress that will change as we do and adapt to our kids' interests and emerging abilities. But so far, a few guildelins I'm developing to help include:

Get thee a few resources
Again, I cannot state how helpful our library has been. The early literacy section has walls and walls of books that teach you all about classroom environments, curriculum ideas, learning strategies, creativity sparks, etc. And they're free. And when you're working reduced hours like I am, that's essential.

Develop a plan
Hard, solid schedules may sound too harsh and usually are. But we allocate time each day for specific pursuits, be it art, outside playtime at the park, science experiments, number drawing, etc.

Find a tribe
One of the greatest things the daycares and preschools that Boy Wonder attended gave him was socialization. The kid can make friends in any situation these days and is NEVER shy. That's missing when you take outside caregivers out of the equation, but it is so essential for children to learn social situations and cues from other kids. Find a mother/tot playgroups, church groups, folks at the local playground, etc. They are out there. You should find them.

Prioritize
Think about your own strengths and what you can provide your child with. Are you a natural born artists? Does your family love astronomy? Incorporate what you like, what your talents are, and what's important to your family into the learning process and let your tots feel like integral parts of the equation. At our place, P is working toward his engineering degree and loves numbers. I love creative pursuits like art and writing. We go with what we're good at and eventually, it will all fall into place.

In the next few weeks, we'll be exploring more topics in depth with project ideas and teaching philosophies. A resource page will be up soon, too.

Happy learning!

Patron Verse of Parenthood

2011-07-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

"We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."
1 Corinthians 15.51

The Lonely Hours

2011-07-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

Makenna and I have been sleeping in the living room for the past seven or eight nights.

It's not that I don't miss my sweet husband, or my bed, or my little nook of books downstairs. It's just this weird fear that keeps me on the couch and baby girl in her Moses basket.

Ever since I can remember, I've been a terrible sleeper. I walk in my sleep, hold the most random, confusing conversations in my sleep with my poor husband, I constantly wake up and look around, confused. And from this inability to stay asleep continuously, I've come to realize the fear I have of being the only person awake in a house of sleeping people.

Oh, sure, when I am writing or tinkering, I don't mind being awake by myself. But when I am tired and want nothing more than to drift back asleep, knowing I am there by myself in the dark is actually pretty frightening to me. Weird, isn't it?

So during these tough first weeks when the baby has such odd overnight hours and can't be depended on to fall right back asleep after eating, well, I find weird solace in the overnight court shows our antenna can pick up. And the 24-hour news channel from France with British telecasters. (It's fun to think of how it's really mid-afternoon where they are and there's a whole world alive and moving somewhere out there).

Every night when P goes down to bed, I tell myself that tonight is the last night I'm sleeping upstairs. And then the witching hour strikes and Makenna and I are awake and struggling to get back to sleep and I am grateful for the background noise on television...even if it is some comical televangelist praying for my soul and extolling the good they'll do around the world with my contribution.

And every night, when I think about finally heading downstairs to my bed, the memory of the lonely hour grips me and I hide under the John Deere blanket for one more night.

Just one more night...

Hello, Makenna!

2011-06-28T19:30:00.000-07:00

She's here...she's finally here! After what felt like 78 weeks of gestation (I know, I know, it was only 40!), Makenna Elyse arrived last Friday (June 24) at a dainty 8 lbs 11 oz.

Phew!

We were stuck a few days in the hospital with her, which completely spit in the face of everything I had planned. This was baby three for us...we're old hat at this game and there's no reason we can't take her home at the first possible second, right? Right? (crickets).

But we finally did manage to get her home and we've got the rest of the summer to get to know this little heartbreaker.

Big brother Boo is adjusting to life as the "middle man" now, and while he ADORES his little sister (he calls her "Fo-kenna") and dotes on her like a little mini protector...the guy has gone from love of our lives (last week) to terror on the high seas with a mindset to destroy his father and I. I'm not sure where this animosity and badness came from (I'm sure the changes have everything to do with it) but I sure miss my little Boo. I know, I bet he misses being the baby and absorbing ALL of the attention in the house.

Between being chained to a couch during marathon feedings and general fussy baby business and trying to threaten the toddler within inches of his life if he doesn't stop pulling the cat's tail (with no ability to jump up and make good on said threats), I'm exhausted and often frustrated. Dare I admit it...cranky, even?

But this life (these lives) are gifts and we've been blessed beyond a reason why. I will never, ever, EVER let that slip my mind. God has definitely graced me with more than I'll ever deserve.

Here's to a few more sleepless nights and a lifetime of love and joy.

Best,

Summer of 100 Books: The Naked Mole Rat Edition

2011-06-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

I have not fogotten! And we HAVE been reading around here!

We got a few more Mo Willem books a few weeks ago and one featured the Naked Mole Rat who loved clothes. Boo thought it was one hilarious story. So did I, actually.

38. Edwina, the dinosaur who didn't know she was extinct
39. What's Your Sound, Hound the Hound?
40. Let's Say Hi to Friends Who Fly!
41. We Are in a Book!
42. Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed
43. Moo, Baa, La La La!
44. Richard Scarry's Shapes and Opposites
45. There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed the Sea
46. If You Were My Baby
47. So Many Bunnies: A Bedtime ABC and Counting
48. Alphaducks
49. Flaptastic Shapes
50. What's the Opposite, PiggyWiggy?
51. Apples, Apples
52. The Grouchy Ladybug
53. Dinosaur Roar!
54. Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo!
55. Busy Monkeys
56. Waiting for Baby
57. A Color of His Own
58. Where Is the Green Sheep?
59. Sleep
60. Smile, Maisy!
61. ABC, Baby Me!
62. Going to My Big Bed! (It was Barney, but I let that one slide because the kid has NO interest in a big boy bed yet and well, it's time...)
63.Max's New Suit
64. Happy
65. My Little People Farm

Almost there...wonder if we can hit 200 books before the beginning of the school year?!

Week 40

2011-06-20T13:14:00.001-07:00

We have hit week 40 (ok, technically in a few days) and we were lucky enough to get another "glimpse" at lil' baby girl. Cute, no? All cheeks and forearms!

Any day now...

Summer of 100 Books: Week Three

2011-06-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

Another great week for books, and this week, Daddy was the guest of honor a few nights in a row.

Reading book after book after book after book...you get the picture. I'm pretty sure neither of us truly understand HOW MANY BOOKS our children really possess, plus the weekly library stash! (It's gotta be in the thousands...)

24. Harry, the Dirty Dog (the link will take you to a version read by Betty White...score!)
25. Harry, by the sea
26. Chicka, Chicka ABC
27. Busy Doggies
28. My truck book
29. Caillou's Baby Sister
30. Bow-wow's colorful life
31. The Best Mouse Cookie
32. Diddle, Diddle, Dumpling
33. Color Farm
34. The Pigeon Has Feelings, Too!
35. Daddy and Me
36. No More Diapers for Ducky
37. Sounds tough! Big Noisy Machines

I need to take a second and talk Mo Willems (see # 34.) Boy Wonder did a month or two reading Willems in first grade and even got to work on similar style art projects as the kids devoured the pigeon and elephant books. I never got the chance to read any of his work until we grabbed the board book this weekend. OMG. Fantastic, creative, funny stuff.

Coupled with the fact that my awesome husband read the cantankerous Pigeon in his best surly Jersey voice? AWESOME! I found Mo Willems' website and highly recommend it and the books you can get your hands on. He even has a really creative blog called Mo Willems Doodles that I'm a new super fan of. Where has this pigeon been all my life?!?

Autobiography

2011-06-18T08:25:00.000-07:00

Gardens are a form of autobiography. (~Sydney Eddison)

The light is different at 5 a.m.

2011-06-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." (Marcus Aurelius)

First it was contractions at 4:30 a.m. Thursday morning. On Wednesday it was the odd sensation that I had slept until four in the afternoon somehow. (Pshaw...like that's happened in the last decade or so...)

Today, well, I dreamed that I had a tea cup poodle (apricot) named Agatha Christie. When Boo stirred in the next room over, there was no way my disappointment in NOT having a tea cup poodle named Agatha Christie was going to let me go back to sleep. (I have a dream and a mission now, by the way. Husband will come around EVENTUALLY!)

I'm getting more and more familiar with 5 a.m. lately and I've got to say, the world looks different at that "dawn" hour than it does at 7 or 8 a.m. (The photo at left was taken at 5:07 a.m. this morning. I know of what I speak!!)

I call it "lemon sunshine." It starts down in our bedroom and illuminates the four walls like it's 3:30 in the afternoon with this cheery, optimistic light that you really want nothing to do with at such an early hour.

It could be the yellow curtains on our window...but when I drag my sorry carcass up the stairs, that same lemony goodness is pouring through the french doors from the back deck. It's waiting to shine on my cup of Irish Breakfast and it damn near blinds the poor bird in his cage.

(You know, Hawk...the parakeet that thinks he's a cat and meows? Yes, him. He needs sunglasses.)

There's just no way you can be sore at the world in sunshine like that. There's no way you can't think today is going to be a GREAT day because you were up at the a#$ crack of morning and got your fill of some personal sunshine and breathing space that you didn't have to share with anybody.

Have you looked around lately? Moments without chaos and noise are rare. Polar bear's melting habitat rare, is all I'm saying.

Maybe it's the body prepping me for the enduro-sport headed my way that is called life with a newborn. Maybe I'm turning into an uber, ultra morning person who can't stay awake past the evening news at 6:30. Maybe.

All I can say is that if all mornings look like these ones do, early risers know something the rest of us don't. The world belongs to a select few at such an early hour and that's kind of a good thing.

Sunshine

2011-06-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.

~Walt Streightiff

If I have a monument in this world, it is my children.
~Maya Angelou

Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.
~Robert A. Heinlein

You say "nesting." I say "domesticating."

2011-06-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

Right up there with the term “giving birth,” I balk at the term “nesting.”

I know, I know, it’s silly. It’s just that “giving birth” makes me think of fluids and placentas and…gasp!...pushing (while “having a baby” is just sterile enough to assist me in envisioning walking into a hospital and walking out the next day with a newborn). I told you, it’s silly. But it’s me.

Nesting, on the other hand, makes me think of hamsters. Dirty little clods of yucky sawdust and poo. Nests are not pretty, if you really think about…but I’ll stop thinking about it and get to the point. Eventually. I also dislike it because I hate it when people assume stuff about my actions with their smug little grins.

“Oh, you are so nesting.”

Oh, I am so not.

I merely spent 9 straight hours reorganizing my spice rack because I had the rational compulsion to do so. Duh.

Nomenclature aside, I’m at 38 weeks and some change and I have this unbelievable need to domesticate everything around me. Me. Our house. Our kitchen. My projects. The closets. (shudder) The garage. (vomit) They are beginning to haunt me and give me this frenetic energy for very detailed, specific tasks and periods of time. Then, of course, I need to sleep on the couch for three and a half hours and eat 2,300 calories worth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. ‘Tis true.

I made jam this weekend. Not just jam, but two batches’ worth of jam. Purple jam. Red jam. I had it in my hair, under the stove’s vent hood, between my toddler’s toes. By noon it was all cleaned up.

By 4 p.m., I had the itch to bake. And when I bake, I don’t just bake. I embody this “take no prisoners” persona…this manifesto to leave no surface unsullied and no pantry door unopened and un-emptied upon said sullied surface. Hurricane-level destruction occurs when I bake, and it’s not bound to change anytime soon…it’s part of the allure of baking for me.

It’s why Boo and I are kindred spirits in the kitchen together. We are mess makers, taste tasters, and risk takers. But mostly mess makers. So by 5 p.m., we had a plate full of Strawberry Rhubarb Bars that we ate until dinner sounded like the most vile invention ever created and our fingers were dyed red for the next 48 hours.

It was the longest stretch of time I’d spent in the kitchen for the past few months (I avoid cooking whenever I can these days, where “dinner” is often a four-letter word) and at the end of it, all impulse to bake or can or eat was gone. The domesticating instinct came on like a tsunami and retreated just as quickly. I am now back to my usual habit of perusing cookbooks and food blogs, happily imagining what life would be like if I had that plate of Salpicon in front of me.

The bottom line? Nesting by any other name smells just as sweet, and makes me just as manic. I do my best to just go with it, knowing in a few short weeks (or days?), the opposite reaction will begin taking effect.

Commonly known as wallowing or drowning in infant care, the post-partum phase will be upon us with a vengeance any day now.

Who’s excited?!

Summer of 100 Books: Week Two

2011-06-11T13:54:00.001-07:00

True to our word, we've been busy little readers around here. I honestly think that small little book bin of board books at the library is going to run out on us soon. That, or we're going to have to start reading the Spanish-language ones (not such a bad idea, actually).

This week, Boo met Maisy the Mouse. Boy Wonder and I used to watch Noggin on TV way back in the day and we loved Maisy. Oh, and more Jane Yolen books. I think the woman is slowly becoming a rock star in my author world. She's amazing.

11. "Here Come the Pirates!"
12. "Clifford's Bedtime"
13. "Find the Puppy"
14. "Cornelius P. Mudd, Are You Ready For Bed?"
15. "Good Night, Little Bunny"
16. "How Do Dinosaurs Love Their Cats?" (Jane Yolen)
17. "Sad, Mad, Glad Hippos" (Jane Yolen)
18. "Maisy's Colors" (Lucy Cousins)
19. "On the Farm" (Ant Parker)
20. "My Train Book" (The Smithsonian)
21. "Time For Bed" (Mem Fox)
22. "Big Dog...Little Dog" (P.D. Eastman)
23. "Good Night, Sleep Tight!" (Barbara Cratzius)

Pie and Queen Julia

2011-06-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

My love of Julia Child and all of her DVDs continues strong as ever as I nab every one I can get my paws on from our local library. It also lives on over at the Hungry Little Blackbird with this post: Pie Crust a la Julia Child. Long live the queen!

The Summer of 100 Books: Week the first...

2011-06-03T16:50:00.001-07:00

We miss Boy Wonder around here something fierce...especially on Tuesdays, our self-appointed library days.

He had this fantastic knack of running through the aisles and blindly grabbing handfuls of books as fast as he could and tossing them at me so he could play with the chess sets and checker boards.

Since we cut our cable this month and use the library's DVD rental service, we still go every week to find new "Bear in the Big Blue House" or "Bob the Builder" dvds for Boo, but we also keep stopping at the kid's section and finding extra board books and picture books to bring home. And the funny thing is, the kid LOVES to read books.

So in honor of missing his "bubba," we decided to embark upon the "Summer of 100 Books." Because I hate hard and fast deadlines and quotas, all we have to do is finish in 10 weeks before Boy Wonder comes home and we start anew with him. Some weeks we'll hit two books. Some ten. Who knows. But we already started and here's our first week's report:

Summer of 100 Books: Week 1 Tally

1. "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" (Eileen Christelow)
2. "Pat the Beastie" (Henrick Drescher)
3. Things that Go (Richard Scarry)
4. Thomas the Tank's Big Lift and Look Book (Ben Owell, illustrator)
5. No No Yes Yes (Leslie Patricelli)
6. Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? (Dr. Suess)
7. Can You See What I see? (Walter Wick)
8. Tatty Ratty (Helen Cooper)
9. Lunchtime for a Purple Snake (Harriet Ziefert)
10. Click, Clack, Moo...Cows That Type (Doreen Cronin)

So our favorites this week? Well, I have been delivered back to a magical, 70's-ish place with the Richard Scarry book and am hell-bent on finding more and adding them to our permanent collection. It was like a long, lost memory how much I loved those characters and now I can't wait to force them upon Boo and MK! Woo hoo!

Boo obviously loves the jumping monkeys, but he's spent more time on the lift/flap book than any other. Oh, and he caught on to Mr. Brown's mooing pretty quick and liked being able to buzz and stomp, too.

Books rule. True story!

Like petals flying by

2011-06-01T20:10:00.000-07:00

Time, that is.

We're nearly up to a week since our Boy Wonder left on his summer hiatus and we miss the boy like crazy. But he's having a blast, getting a tan, and drinking more salt water than he can handle at the moment and that's just what the kid should be doing.

Tomorrow (or today, I can't remember) I hit 37 weeks. Did ya get that? Full-freakin'-term. That's a bit intimidating. Exhilarating. And frightening, all at the same time. Whoa...

I was sprawled out on the couch a few moments ago as only a near-walrus-sized human can do so prettily and the thought occurred to me...what if this is the last one? Is that a normal thought/panic moment? It's very likely. We're about topped out on resources and energy and the chance is high that our brood will remain at three once M.E. arrives...and that made me sad all of a sudden.

I spent so much of this pregnancy pressing on and hurrying after kids that I didn't spend a whole lot of time relishing. Sure, I made jokes about squished bladders and gi-normous space boobs, but now that it's coming to a close sooner or later, I wonder if I took enough time to really enjoy the off-balance, mood-altering sense of wonder that accompanies this journey? And let's be honest...did I really spend enough time admiring my adult acne-free skin?! (to the mirror!)

I can't answer those big questions and most nights I don't try...but it seems like tonight the thought sailed through my mind quietly like a ship heading somewhere...

One thing that reminds me that I'm sorta okay with being done with this go-round is today's three hour glucose test. HELLO! Talk about chugging dirty Popsicle water the consistency of cough syrup! I had braced myself the best I could for the fallout of no food for 12 hours AND the syrup of hell but I was simply not prepared for how close to death the sh^% made me feel. Every five minutes I found myself moving seats in the waiting room one closer to the bathroom on the other side of the room. I walked outside. I prayed for a little relief. I wondered if this was how hot flashes felt and oh, dearlordy, how am I going to deal with those in a couple decades! AUGH!

I made it through the four pokes somehow without barfing OR biting the phlebotomist and spent the rest of the day unable to form coherent sentences or process logical thoughts. Oh, and with indigestion from the awful Mexican food I felt compelled to woof down an hour after being released from my glucose prison. Not fun. Not fun at all...

So as we scramble for any last minute necessities and my ridiculous need to wear more makeup now than I ever have in my life (true story...it's odd), we wait. And watch the petals of time drift by, on a breeze or on gale-force winds as they seem to sometimes.

Soon a baby will be here. Soon Boo will be in a big man bed. Soon Boy Wonder will be in second grade. Soon P will be done with school. Soon our lives will shift and drift and grow.

And soon it will be bedtime... and right now, that's just fine with me.

Baking time!

2011-05-27T17:12:00.001-07:00

At last, I had a chance to get myself organized and in the kitchen...with a camera...and plan. Aren't you proud?

My pride and joy second blog is The Hungry Little Blackbird doesn't get as much love as it should (and for that I am so, so, sorry!) But today I managed to tweak a recipe for strawberry buckle AND upload it.

I should get a medal. Or maybe an extra hour of sleep...

It Never Gets Easier

2011-05-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

There are 9 days until my Boy Wonder jaunts off on a big, amazing adventure in Florida for nine weeks with his dad and stepmom.

He’ll meet a new baby sister and be reacquainted with the joys of a demanding infant long enough to come home and meet ANOTHER baby sister and demanding infant. (Yes, we have dubbed 2011 “The Year of the Sister” for the poor kid.)

He’s a different kid to me these days. Just last night I went to his parent/teacher conference and had the chance to peruse through an entire binders’ worth of photos, art projects, math work, books we’ve read together…it’s been a beautiful year.

The photos of him in August compared to the photo taken of him last week are shocking to say the least. Gone is the little kid and in his place is this maturing, helpful boy who has his own distinct likes, dislikes, and preferences.

To me, this is the hardest time of year because I have to let go and paste a smile on my face in an attempt to match his enthusiasm for his vacation. It’s never easy. It never gets easier. I sat in a sort of funk/fog at the table the other morning while the world went on around me and fought like hell not to succumb to that burning in my eyes the more I thought about the massive changes only 9 days away.

This year, Boo sticks to his brother like glue (in good and bad moods, so it’s always exciting around our place) and you can bet he’s going to notice that his “Bubba” is gone next Sunday morning.

(The only consolation is that Boo is obsessed with sleeping in a big boy bed these days and we’ll take the time Boy Wonder is gone to get Boo used to sleeping in a great big bed before we re-assemble the bunk beds. Lots of changes going on around our place. )

I thought I had some “lessons learned” insight to offer readers about how I deal with a hole in my heart for nine weeks, but the truth is, I don’t. I have nothing. It's not easy. I can't just talk it away. It always hurts and I always over-worry everything.

I think this is just one of those instances where you do your best to understand the greater good and your small part in it. It’s not always about me, despite my best attempts, and the boy has places to go and loved ones to see. His grand adventure is waiting.

But, oh, how my heart aches when he’s gone…

The wheels on the bus went round (and round)

2011-04-29T17:51:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty important final for P so I took the day to stay home and take care of Boo AND get the almighty truck up to snuff (a four month expired registration makes driving to work exciting each morning and studded tires that become illegal at midnight!).

By 8 a.m. we were finished and not sure what to do with ourselves. And with Boy Wonder's sad eyes and soulful pleadings to stay home with us for the day...well, I knew we had to do something special if we were going to justify such a day to ourselves.

Remember when I rode the bus from Eagle River (about a 20 mile commute each way, to and from work)? I hated it by the end. But my children are fascinated by city buses and Boo loves to scream "GOOD MORNING, BUS!" as soon as he spots one each morning. Wash, rinse, repeat...each time a bus rolls by our busy street.

A quick trip to ol' muni.org secured out route and we packed an "adventure bag" as Boy Wonder calls it. (Snacks, diapers, change of clothes, phone, money, blankie) and we ran to the nearest bus stop, bound for the kid's science museum downtown. It was an amazing adventure we shared and when we got home, Boo and I each took three hour naps while Boy Wonder putzed around!

The photographic evidence speaks for itself...we had one of the best, impromptu days EVAAAR!

Boy Wonder checking the timetables to make sure we'd arrive downtown in precisely 41 minutes. We did...give or take a few.

This is Monkey Steve Nash. He came along in the adventure bag. He rolled in the stroller with Boo, too.

We got downtown before the science museum opened, so we killed time hanging out at the Muffin Man Bakery. We found an Anchorage map and Boy Wonder plotted our current location with his left and and figured the six-block walk it would take to reach the museum.

We finally arrived at the Imaginarium and the first thing they found was the pretend undersea/waterbed thingie. Very scientific when someone else explains it, I promise.What toddler can resist a water table and boats? Not mine, obviously.

Boy Wonder found a self-propelled elevator. About halfway up he realized the amount of work required and promptly returned to solid ground.

A train table replicating the Alaska Railroad trains. Boo loved it, needless to say.

Every first grader needs their picture taken by an inspirational Michael Jordan quote.

And then? Time to make our way back downtown and to the bus terminal. Success!

Here's to more happy adventures this spring/summer....

Dispatch from the trenches of the great Potty Wars II

2011-04-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

I doubt it's an accident that I have very few memories from Boy Wonder's potty training days.

I think I've blocked them out on purpose and the reasons are coming back to me now as we try to manhandle Boo through the halls of big boy-ness.

Trying to cajole, force, tempt, shove or in any other way convince this child to do something not on his own agenda is an exercise in futility. Dumping like a big kid, included.

Daycare basically potty trained Boy Wonder for me, and all I had to do was fix the willingness to poo in his undies to complete the process. (Every night at "dump-thirty," I hid his undies and made him walk around in the buff--which he hated. He told me dogs poop on the rugs, not boys, so give him back his Buzz Light year tightie whities. Smart boy, right?)

But this one? This one is on us. And so far, the Boo the Battlefield General seems to be winning. We can stick a monkey on the potty, a lego on the potty, his brother on the potty and while he's appreciative of your effort, don't expect any from his end. It's almost as if the potty seat were made of fire the way he carries on and clings to your arms like a cat hovering above a bathtub of water. Comical, almost, unless you're the one being yanked down to potty level as the kid climbs over the top of your head.

Today we introduced the pull ups and were promptly rejected. It's almost as if he were saying "There's no way this thin, little thing can hold all my whiz, woman." He carried on and on and even tried putting on his own diaper in desperation.

When Daddy got involved, the three of us were in our cramped little water closet and two of us were babbling like goofuses doing anything we could to keep him on the throne just a couple seconds longer.

Eventually, I was forced to take pictures and video of him so he could watch himself "being a big boy"...he's his own number one fan on my phone's camera roll and he can watch himself saying "I'm not a piggy!" at least 20 times in a row before it starts to get old. You can see by the picture above how happy he is...the smile lasted just long enough to be captured before he started fighting us again to get off the dreaded toilet.

Sort of like labor pains and birth horror stories, there's probably a chip in our brains that erases the memories of the tougher battles in raising children. I'm not sure we're winning this battle yet, but at least I have half a dozen pictures and video clips of our family bonding time at the commode.

Lightening the load

2011-04-24T16:18:00.000-07:00

I promise this is not one of those simpering "what I learned" posts, extolling the virtues of my lenten weeks of social media silence. No, no...certainly nothing like that. Well, maybe a little like that.

In a perfect world, I would come back here and tell that those weeks without twitter and facebook (and up until the end, blogging, too) helped me lose 20 pounds, gave me the inspiration to cure cancer, fixed my financial problems, and helped me solve the major riddles of the universe. Nope. Sorry.

What I did get from it mostly consisted of the afternoon I spent pruning my facebook friends list for people who wouldn't really notice I was gone. Or who don't really contribute much to my sphere of life in general and to whom I have no emotional attachments or memories. Funny how my list dropped from 300+ to a little over 100.

Baggage.

I did get a little insight, however, into how I use my own facebook and that was pretty eye-opening. Apparently, I assumed for these long months that facebook was a vehicle for connecting with others (family, friends, acquaintances) through shared bit$#ing and moaning. Little pithy observations laced with snark, or sad little "woe is Megan" moments that I obviously hoped would garner some sympathy love (or at least a "like" or two.) Back and forth, "wah wah wah."

Being without it for nearly six weeks was educational and looking back now, reminds me a little of my favorite Joyce Meyer's teachings about letting our words dictate our experience (instead of vice versa). Crying, complaining, and moping to anyone who will listen didn't brighten my day. Sharing my day to day struggles and frustrations really served nobody any good, but there I was. Wah wah wah.

So that was the start. I saw just how negative facebook can be. How I contributed to it, and how easily I'd get sucked into other people's drama superficially. ('Cause let's be honest...I might bother to type you a four-second note telling you to buck up, but I'm pretty sure that's where it ended. I probably didn't pray or bother to do something SUBSTANTIAL and tangible to really make things better. Sad, but true.)

On that note, I also saw how useless it really was on a daily basis. How little I contributed to interesting conversations or thought-provoking links that could actually help another person. A pick me up, a new perspective, a dash of good news. Anything other than "OMG I have a headache today" or "Boo hoo! Doctor's appointment tomorrow."

Yawn. Gag. On with it already...

So was the experience what I thought it would be? Not really. I thought the lack of social media would make me more in tune with my homelife. It worked a tiny bit, but that takes a concentrated effort of its own. What did become obvious was how little I take away, and contribute, to things like facebook.

Humbling, really.

So without further ado, I'll post a link to that awesome Joyce Meyer article I mentioned earlier, "You Can Win the Battle in Your Mind."

Call it paying my lesson learned forward. Maybe you'll get something from it. Maybe I'll be better about brightening up my social media usage now and then.

Maybe. :)

Work In Progress on a Wednesday

2011-04-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

This is a baby blanket I'm knitting for #3...who isn't due for another 9 weeks and that's a really, really good thing because I am not the fastest knitter on the planet. Garter stitch or not, I'm a slow poke.

I mentioned earlier that this lil' bird is going to be swathed in reds, whites, and aquas and so I started this stroller blanket out with the aqua color from Vanna's Choice Baby Yarn.

(Not only am I slow, I am NOT a yarn snob. I can't afford to be, honestly. Yarn is yarn is yarn as far as I'm concerned at this point in my needlework career.)

So in the beginning, I was going to follow this pattern from the Purl Bee. (I *heart* the Purl Bee.)

And I sorta did...kind of. (I've gotten this same blanket all the way to its fourth color on another project...but they are earth tones and I am NOT an earth tone fan. Don't ask why I picked them...I'm pretty sure it was a present for somebody but now I've forgotten who and lost interest in the darn browns and mustard yellows.)

Back to this blanket....in the original pattern, I believe I was instructed to cast on to 133 sts. I cut that down a bit to 120 for no particular reason other than I was bored at about 115. Ha!

From there, you knit your little heart out in your chosen color until you reach 20 countable rows (about 40 rows worth of knitting all together). Change color. Repeat seven times.

Easy, right?

Well, at about row 12 in the aqua blue, I got bored. And switched to white. After about four rows, I realized I did not want big blocks of blue, white, and berry because it looked a little more French flag-ish than I intended. So the new plan is to alternate 12 rows of the berry color with 4 rows of the white until I get it long enough. Then I'll finish with the 12 rows of aqua and call it a day.

Hooray!

Now here's hoping I can finish the darn thing before the baby graduates from high school...

Everything in its own time. Dang it.

2011-04-19T10:45:00.001-07:00

It’s no stretch of the imagination to guess that I’m a little more impatient than most.

In the pre-baby days, I’d preempt my morning coffee with a redbull or other energy shot just to make sure the coffee knew it had a little competition in the “wake this girl up” department and didn’t dawdle. Not the biggest fan of pre-heating ovens. Hate waiting for my car to warm up in the winter for so many, many reasons.

And this weekend, the sidewalks in the neighborhood finally opened up enough for me to walk the dog for a whole HOUR and only get wet shoes once or twice from the massive snowmelt puddles. FREEDOM! Never mind the fact that every block or so, said dog and I have to walk in traffic for a few hundred feet to avoid the six feet of deep ice water…that doesn’t matter. We were out and walking and not slipping on ice! Wahoo!

The kids and I spend our Saturdays in a constant state of waiting for P to finish school and then to finish coaching in the afternoons. It gets tedious. In the winter, when there’s no choice, we stay in our pajamas most of the day and get pale and creepy looking from lack of sunshine and exercise. It’s true. By 3 p.m. I freak out and realize we have not had a whiff of fresh air in nearly 24 hours and invent an excuse to go to the grocery store just to blow our carefully laid out budget.

But come mid-April, the sun finds its way out and melts 8-foot snow packs in one afternoon. It brings to light all the garbage tossed on the lawns over the past six months and it accentuates our near-albino Alaskan complexions. It brings the funky stench of soggy, half rotten earth that wafts on the wind and assaults your senses, until you’re looking around like mad trying to find the pile of doo the neighbor dog left for you to step in. No worries. It’s not dog doo, it’s the aroma of Alaskan melt. Breathe it in!

And we act.

Mostly we act too soon, but a few frozen boots and socks later, we don’t really care. Mostly. Until laundry day, anyway. We buy sidewalk chalk, haul out the bikes, the construction toys, the kites. Everything. All at once. All on my front lawn. And we play until our noses are red and our fingers hurt, because, darnit, there’s sun out and the thermometer is above freezing!!

So this weekend, we head out to the coastal trail for a Saturday afternoon adventure on Scooter and Stroller. We bring our bubbles, our helmets, our snacks, our drinks and we find the park is FULL of other sun-seekers. Good on you, people! Nevermind that the lake is still froze as we walk past; surely the ocean has broken up and is back to normal.

Surely.

Then again, surely....not.

By the time we leave the little lagoon park and make our way to the honest-to-goodness trail by the ocean, we’re shanghaied by two to three inches of slushy snow that will not let Scooter nor Stroller pass through with any ease. Darnit! We head back to the lagoon area and putz around, checking out the four feet of water that actually is moving and we talk to the six half-frozen ducks crazy enough to cut their Florida vacations short by a week or two. (Yes, poor dudes looked half frozen and cranky. They missed the shuffle board, most likely.)

On the drive home, a little cold but still thrilled from all the sun and movement, Boy Wonder announces to me that spring is not here yet. That spring will probably never get here, and by the time that it does get here, it will already be summer.

And in that one statement, Boy Wonder has just cracked the code of the Great Alaskan Spring Mystery. You can’t rush it. You can’t force the snowy trails to hurry up or the grass to go from trodden-on muck brown to vibrant green. Can’t clear the mud holes in the yard before they are ready, or pull the frozen lawn gnomes out of the dead veggie patch before the ground is ready to give them up.

And by the time Nature gets the memo, we’re headlong into 24 straight hours of sunlight and a month called June.

Alaska: 1. My impatience: 0.

Between the covers: April/May

2011-04-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

I can not tell you how this fantasy/historical/sci-fi ish novel ended up in my grubby paws. Mostly it's from the HBO commercial for the series now out (and we don't have HBO *sniff*!)

But I picked it up. I investigated the author--he's pretty rad. And I began reading. And it's not the most straight forward and you have to row your boat pretty hard against a current of shifting POVS...but WOW. The man can weave a tale, he can create a world that is at the same time fascinating AND will make you grateful you can walk to the neighborhood Starbucks for a triple-shot, no whip, Caramel Macchiato.

Suffice to say I wouldn't last very long in Winterfell...(hell, a number of his characters don't, either!) but it's a great book and I'm grateful to HBO marketing and too much TV for showing me the way.

Oh, and George R. R. Martin. Totally grateful for him, too!

On Distance

2011-04-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

Friday's Writing Prompt from the Gypsy Mama.

Ready? Go...

"On Distance"

I've always failed at distance.

Given enough room to run, and my legs and my heart would sprint for the wide open spaces of loneliness and I wouldn't quit running until I found it. Distance has meant and end to many things in my life..."out of sight out of mind" was more than so cliched words of wisdom, it was a living, breathing demon that ruined every flavor of relationship and dream I had.

There've been plenty of times when distance meant physical space, but many more times when it mean to quiet between two people--something else I've never been very adept at. In the quiet my demons would sing louder and drown out any sort of peace or appreciation.

But now I am grown and you are here.

We pass like ships sometimes and because of where we are in life, I don't have access to you every second like I'd like. And you've taught me that's ok. I don't need to fill every second of solitude and quiet with mindless chatter and I don't need you four feet from me to remind me how special you are and how lucky I am that we're in this together.

Now distance is the quiet when you are studying and I am writing and we are in our own little parallel words, being ourselves and being together. Distance is wondering how you are doing and that exciting flash of anticipation the boys and I feel when we realize you're due home any second for supper. Distance expands and contracts, it is the tide that sends us out into the world to be who we are, and pulls us back together when it is time to be "us." Beautiful, us.

Distance, the long and short of it, means breathing space and cherished breath. Distance is no longer a death sentence...it is a daily reminder to be grateful and to have care with one another. An opportunity for grace in a world where it is desperately needed.

Mid-week Links!: Tutorial Envy

2011-04-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

I have a list of sewing/knitting/nesting awesomeness that only seems to grow...never shrinks.

That said...here, lemme add to the list.

This week's tutorials that have me drooling and eyeballing my sad little sewing machine:

1. Upcycled Bath Mat at Mamacraft

2. Scalloped Edge Baby Blanket at Zaaberry

3. Fat Quarter Napkins at All Things Shea

4. Mini Bookshelf Quilt at Don't Call Me Betsy

5. Patchwork Coasters (Ideal for the new mug rug craze, perhaps?) at Craft Snob

In case of emergency...

2011-04-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

...take a big a#@ hammer and smash those silly little rules and expectations we force upon ourselves.

It was one of those days.

It started out normal and sorta just twisted and turned its way around into long, sorta emotional and annoying. Nothing bad, really, just a big ol' pileup of fatigue, frustration, and mundane daily routines...topped with a dash of 30 weeks pregnant.

I stood in the shower and didn't want to come out at one point.

The toddler (who doesn't understand the concept of "mommy time"...or closed doors for that matter) stood at the corner of the tub with the curtain pulled back and sprayed the plant water bottle at me while I did my best to shoo him away. (It didn't work.) The first grader didn't want much to do with me. Or dinner. Or anything not on his very own "to do" list. The husband snarked at the idea of chicken pot pie before he left for the night...but in his defense it was only after I'd done the same.

Who on earth wants to make chicken pot pie after a day like this? Despite my planning and my lists and my calendars...every once in a while, I want to pull my hair out and shake up our lives a little bit. Even if it's only with a happy meal or two.

Day in and day out, I've learned to live by lists, schedules, concrete expectations of when such and such should happen, what to do if it doesn't, what we're eating, what we're wearing...it keeps me (in particular) afloat during our crazybusyblurry weeks. But sometimes it really chaps my hide and the old me starts bubbling up from within, demanding rebellion and excitement and the chance to ignore the "shoulds" and the "need to's"..

So tonight, the boys and I invented the "pajama dinner dash" and cured Mama's mix of cabin fever and slight immaturity. We took our showers/baths/hybrid mix of the two and got in our pajamas. We walked right past the kitchen. Past the empty pots and pans and the cold oven. We got in my adorable little truck "Danny Boy" and we drove straight to the golden arches. Yes, I hate relying on happy meals. Yes, I know what damage I did to my kids' arteries tonight. No, I'm not sure I'm really digesting the guilt from it at the moment.

We drove past the neighborhood parks and looked for signs that the ice was melting off the lakes and that the city might be considering their annual clean up in the coming days. (From what we discerned, the lake thaws are still a few weeks to a month out...but the clean ups?? Already started!)

We came home. I had a small milkshake for dinner and the boys stayed up a half hour late with Mama watching the biggest loser (oh, the irony!). It was such a far cry from our rigid bed time and dinner routines that we were all a little lost at first...but loafing on the couch while Coach Bop cracks the whip has a way of easing the conscience.

News flash: I'm not Superwoman. I'm sorta soft around the middle. I cry easy somedays. And there are times when I foolishly feel constrained by my own expectations. You know what else? It's nothing a little cruise around the sunset-washed neighborhood and a vanilla milkshake can't cure.

Taking to the skies...

2011-04-11T21:35:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple fact: kites make me happy. Verra, verra happy.

Colorful. Free. Suspended mid-air. Defying gravity and that a@#hole wind just off the mountain range...

Officially, a kite is a "tethered aircraft." Now if that doesn't make you feel sorta dangerous and official, I don't know what will... And don't get me started on the Asian tradition of "kite fighting." Aerial MMA???? Yes, please!

They fascinate me. I daydream about owning a flock of them and setting them to the skies all at once. A big, bright menagerie of dragonflies, phoenixes, lumpy weird boxes, and long streaming tales. And a cupcake. It's true, I saw a cupcake kite once and I WANT ONE!

The sad truth, however, is that I am a lousy kite flier...right up there with Charlie Brown, and at least ol' Chuck had the tree to blame for his troubles. I have wrecked, tangled, and shredded beautiful blue birds and ferocious supervillains alike. I seem to spare no character and no level of complexity in my kite trashing. It's a gift, really. One that's incredibly hard to reconcile against the immense LOVE I have for the damn things. Flimsy little harbingers of heartbreak, they are.

Despite my inability to fly a good kite, I never let a spring or summer pass without buying the obligatory cheap kite from the local discount store and hauling my family outside for an afternoon of running in mad circles and craning our necks back in hopes of catching some good air.

I have folders upon folders on my desktop of Boy Wonder as a toddler and preschooler out in the great wide somewhere with a kite and a string. (I was a single mama at that point and somehow managed to make ends meet with $55 in the bank for two weeks. Kites were economical entertainment! They made up for the endless dinners of hotdogs and mac and cheese...)

Even Boo, who got his very own kite kit yesterday, carries it around and demands for it to be built...so excited is he for his own flying lessons.

With an engineering student in the house, along with a first grader with an engineer in training's thirst for building and creating, and a toddler who refuses to be left out, I'm determined to track down supplies and make our own kites this spring.

I started here, at popular mechanics. I started here, but I didn't last long. A box kite. Sounds great, right? Well, until said engineering student is available full time to help with the project, this one is out of my hands. At least until I can identify what all the materials on the list even are... But you should definitely try it if you're feeling froggy!

Other sites for kite building can be found here:

Kite Building at E-how

How to Build a Pyramid Kite

Simple Kids Kite

Stay tuned. We'll invent the baddest of the bad kites around the nest and post a tutorial for all you like minded "tethered aviators" out there. To the skies!!!!

So what's your love affair with springtime? Kites? Bikes? Kites tied to bikes? Wheeeeee!

even with a shoe full of slush...

2011-04-11T14:48:00.000-07:00

Rhythm of days...

2011-04-08T10:39:00.000-07:00

I thought about titling this post "traveling light" in honor of the recent spring cleaning madness in our playroom, in my cube at work, and most recently, of my friends' list on FB (whoa, that was exhilarating!)

But there's so much more to it than that. So much going on and at the same time, so little going on thanks to the weather. My boys are probably inches from fed up after being cooped up in the house with the snow/freeze/thaw cycle that's torturing us this week. I know I am.

Spring in Alaska can best be described in one word: ugly. You got it, U-G-L-Y and it takes a concentrated force of will not to become ugly and bedraggled and mean yourself when the scenery looks like this most of the days.

Then I figure, it must be hard to shed months and months of snowpile. Nearly impossible to do it with any sort of grace or beauty. Sorta like us, right? I've spent a year accumulating phsycial and emotional baggage...the shedding of said baggage ain't gonna be pretty and it sure ain't gonna be quick! So good on you, dear Alaska, for trudging through the spring cleaning of your landscape...

Inside the house, we've been on the hunt for inspiration. Inspiration to step away from the television, to enjoy the few hours we have together at night...to play. To create.

Boo and I spent a few hours last week cutting out flash cards, both for him and for Boy Wonder. Give the boy a cup full of laminated picture cards and he goes hog wild. Boy Wonder and I invented "Story Makers" this week and it's become our favorite Monday/Wednesday post-dinner tradition. Lots of notecards cut into smaller pieces with all sorts of words...fairy tale elements, verbs, fantasy creatures, mundane objects. You named it, we put it on a card. After dinner we all sit around the couch and pull a card or two (yes, even Boo gets cards!). From there, we invent a lop-sided, mismatched, amazing story of our own that usually involves a young prince or two battling sharks before bedtime, only to be rescued by the brave knight on a spaceship. And then the beautiful good witch bakes them all cookies and lets them stay up past bedtime.

My family amazes me with their creativity and sheer sense of fun when we do these. I see the wheels turning in Boy Wonder's head as he tries to one up his last contribution and when his stories show up in his artwork in the following days, I know we are on to a great thing. Something television isn't offering him... You know what else he's developing a taste for? Shel Silverstein. Could I be any prouder?????????

In other news as we move a week or two into the last trimester, I've spent way too many minutes stalking Etsy and looking for baby girl inspiration. I was sure I was going to be a pink/brown fan, but it turns out I'm not. Funny how that happens. Fell in love with and am pursuing with reckless abandon the new red/white/aqua theme (yes, I realize it's not all THAT feminine, but so what?!?). Oh, and a gnome quilt made by fantidesigns. How I heart that quilt.

Three months or so to go...lots to do. So get on with the snowmelt Alaska...Mama needs her brainpower and inspiration back!

Homesick Texan

2011-04-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

Happens every spring.

Or when I think about Salt Lick barbecue, Lake Austin, and Threadgills.

How I miss the bluebonnets...

Here's a food blog by the official "Homesick Texan." She makes me happy.

Happy like a longhorn moo cow in a field of blue...*sigh*

Snapshots.

2011-04-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

Because it's true.

2011-04-04T13:39:00.001-07:00

Lenten Hiatus: Giving up and Giving back

2011-03-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Today is the first Sunday of Lent and liturgically speaking, we're in the wilderness with Christ in today's readings.

I missed Ash Wednesday and was caught up in my blogging, tweeting, and internet surfing, I'm sure.

In the rush of life lately, something has been missing. A deeper connection with God. With my husband. With my kids. A shallow connection with millions of strangers who don't contribute positively to my day to day. I'm a "watcher" and a "collector" of links and ideas that are drowning me.

So, instead of giving up something "bad" like I normally do, I am giving up my social media addiction and am going to concentrate on focus. Focus on God. My marriage. My kids. My job. My writing. All without the constant social chatter and distractions.

I'm also going to think about the 'giving back' part and what that means. Whose life can I better? Who can I help within my time-crunched and humble means? I know there's more out there for me to be doing and I'm on a quest to find it...

I'm hoping I come back a little more centered. A little more focused. A little more "me" and a lot more "here."

I'll be back soon. Until then, love to you all!!

If I had my life to live over...

2011-03-03T21:00:00.001-08:00

These words are not my own, but I read them every year or so when they happen my way. I thought I'd grab them this time around and save them while I had the chance. Love to you all!

If I Had My Life To Live Over
by Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)

The following was written by the late Erma Bombeck after she found out she had a fatal disease.

If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more.

I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.

I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.

I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.

I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed.

I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.

I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.

I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life.

I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.

I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.

I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.

Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.

When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."

There would have been more "I love you's".. More "I'm sorrys" ...

But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it ... live it...and never give it back

The Wilds of Girl-dom

2011-02-28T13:27:00.000-08:00

The hours I’ve spent at Boy Wonder’s school have rendered me melancholy lately.

Funny how little boys rarely change over time—the ones I see walking the hallowed halls still talk about sports, they still play pranks on their buddies, still make those armpit farting noises with reckless abandon. Still ignore girls for the most part…

But the girls? No, I don’t see the same faces I grew up with in some of today’s girls.

There have been days when I’ve had to re-orient myself just to make sure I’m not at a nightclub on a random Friday night.

That I am, in fact, at an elementary school.

My ears have burned at the way they talk to each other. I’ve hidden my broke-down cellphone away in shame when they pop out the latest G4 gadgets at the sounding of the afternoon bell. The mini skirts I was never allowed to look at. The knowledge they’ve picked up long before they should have it.

It’s all led me to one conclusion:

I never would have made in today’s elementary school world.

These poor girls are body conscious by the time they zip up their first princess Ariel costume. Some have boobs in second grade. They have boyfriends and are breaking up with said boyfriends before they can spell the word boyfriend. They have little girl alliances that work surreptitiously to topple the nexus of power of the other little girl alliances. They trade friends like we used to trade worn out copies of “The Babysitter’s Club” and “Sweet Valley High.”

I’m actually intimidated by some of these girls. I’m afraid of making eye contact, lest I be deemed less than worthy.

In fourth grade I had a mullet.

No, really, people. It was a mullet with a capital M. Add to this mullet what’s known as a “rat tail” and you’ll not have to wonder why my first date wasn’t until nearly my junior year in high school. I was a late bloomer and in the 80s, that was just fine.

Friday and Saturday nights were spent at the neighborhood roller rink where I sported neon wind shorts, a Bobby Brown t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up (and tucked in to my neon wind shorts, thankee very much), my god-awful hair, and bright blue roller skates with an orange stopper on each toe.

I sang along and whizzed around in large circles to Rick Astley and any Def Lepard track they graced us with. I was never, ever the object of anyone’s affection, except, perhaps, the snack bar guy…but that’s only because I’d spend a small fortune on churros and Cherry Coke. The couples skate was lame and nothing more than an opportunity to clown the teenaged girls unlucky enough to have to skate backwards for an entire song. I loved it when they fell.

I was a nerd. Plain and simple. I had a best friend who went everywhere with me. Who I encouraged to do stupid things so that I’d have someone grounded the same time I was. Back in those days, there were no Ipods with songs like “Birthday Sex” or “Tooted and Booted”. There were songs we taped off the radio and played over and over (always fast forwarding through commercials) on our boom boxes. Double Dare came on every afternoon and if I wasn’t grounded for some infraction or another, I was allowed to watch it. Social Networking consisted of spying on my neighbors from the top branch of my tree with Smurf binoculars my grandparents gave me. Whatever.

The sad truth is that I would have been eaten alive in 2011.

I would have been banished to the back of the class and become queen of the paste eater tribe. That odd-looking recluse that cut her bangs with safety scissors when the teacher wasn’t looking. Pretty sure I would have had an excuse and phantom ailment every morning for my mom—anything to avoid returning to the wilds of modern elementary school.

Thank goodness my first child is a boychild. And my second child is a boychild. I consider them lucky, and myself doubly so for a chance to learn the ropes well enough before baby sister arrives.

Somedays it looks like she’s going to need all the help she can get.

Burdens: A round for everyone!

2011-02-22T13:49:00.000-08:00

I read a great post on one of my favorite Web sites about pride.

The writer was very clear that pride can mean quite a few things and she even provided a list of examples. With bullets, people!

Do you understand how shocking it can be to find your own personality traits on someone else’s pride list? My reaction ran the gamut.

Humbling. Embarrassing. Annoying.

I mention the pride thing because lately things have been relatively smooth. And then I go and trip on my own big ego…

Well, smooth up until the root canal and the brakes going out, and now… money/tax drama. I’d been doing fine, feeling fine, acting fine... thinking I’d finally gotten my stuff and stuff together and whatever wasn’t together, well, it didn’t matter. Obviously.

I guess I’m here to tell you, it most certainly does matter.

This lack of attention to detail…this ignoring the unpleasant tasks in life…guess what? Form of pride. It’s refusing to lower myself to tasks I dislike just to get them checked off my list. And DAMMIT, does it sting when they bite back. That whole Pride before the Fall thing really chaps my hide…

I called P in tears and explained the various stuff and stuffs and sniffled and snotted all over the place and you know what the man told me? Not buying into my pity party, he told me to get it together and keep a little perspective. Not exactly the pity party I wanted, but it got the job done. I un-smudged my mascara and hauled my carcass back up to my desk and went about my day. Work still needed to get done. Kids still needed to get picked up. Dinner still needs to be made.

Life goes on.

I know God has a plan for my life and that it’s a good one. I’d just like a copy of it…complete with a table of contents, a few appendices for further explanation, and a chance to voice an opinion now and then for scheduled and unscheduled surprises. Not gonna happen anytime soon, I know…

An informal poll of my friends revealed that at every given moment, every single one of them is dealing with some sort of energy-sucking trouble. Money. Cars. Spouses. Kids. Houses. Bills. Deadlines. Health scares. The list is endless. But so are the cures.

So while I am not happy that you are rowing your boat against the current alongside me, I am happy for the company.

And when the waters calm, maybe we can split my peanut butter sandwich. Or whatever you packed if it’s better tasting. Just sayin'...

Here's to a better week all around.

A baby by any other name may not smell as sweet...

2011-02-20T13:56:00.000-08:00

Do you know that Boo was very nearly named "Bilbo Baggins"?

Well, it was an idle threat I lobbed at his father out of sheer frustration around month number five when the man still refused to have the name discussion with me. He's a "wait and see what name sticks when thrown against a wall" and I'm the obnoxious "let's talk about every name in the name book until you wave the white flag" sort of namer.

The other possibility was naming Boo "Polamalu" as the dude was due on the very same Super Bowl Sunday that the Steelers were playing. The deal was that if the stinker hadn't arrived yet, and he happened to make his appearance on Super Bowl Sunday, it was a done deal. He came a week later and blew that attempt right out of the water. Oh, and because of his tardiness (SIX WHOLE DAYS) the turkey weighed over 9 pounds. Just in case you forgot...'cause I haven't!

Dominic hovered on "Aiden" for a minute. Not much longer than that. Then it was "Luke" (I was going to a St. Luke's Church in New Mexico at the time and lacked creativity.) Then it was "nameless" baby until inspiration struck one evening I sat outside with a lonely telescope in the front yard. St. Dominic, patron saint of astronomers. Done deal.

Andrew, well, his name wasn't at the top of my list by any means. I was all about "Griffin" and "Gabriel" and all sorts of cool, hip sounding monikers and his dad was having NONE of it. Andrew was weakly on my list and was the one name that stuck to P's wall that I didn't make gagging noises at. And there it was. Not the big epiphany either of us were hoping for, but it worked out well in the end. The name is perfect for him.

It seems easy to name a boy--your one job is to make them sound manly and tough. Distinguished and non-pansy-ish.

But, oh my lord, a girl? So many parameters you have to abide by. Nothing too froo froo, but nothing too boyish. Sweet and girly with a touch of toughness in case she's destined to be the state wrestling champ of 2028.

And we all know P's refusal to really entertain/decide on anything too early. Coupled with my ever-changing, ever-growing list of "This is totally the one! Maybe..." and it seems we're going to have another case of "Bilbette Baggins Applegate" come mid-summer.

That, and truckloads of dirty girl diapers...which I hear are thirty times worse than dirty boy diapers. Just rumors.

It's a lot of pressure, really. The chance to name your daughter (when you are a mother) is a chance to undo all the teasing, all the poking, all the wrong your own mother caused when naming you. (Not that Debra did all that much wrong, mind you, I've just always thought my name was damn boring. And common. Uninspiring. The least she could have done is thrown an arbitrary "y" or "h" in there to shake things up!)

Growing up, I wanted to be Marsha Brady. Changed my name to "Marsha" for about a week and a half. Then it was "Daisy Duke" in the summer of '84. Names are powerful, powerful tools and I've always been aware of the fact.

And now it's my turn to make the big decision for my own daughter and I'm coming up clueless. Sure, we like this and we like that...but nothing has really slapped me upside the face and shaken me yet. (Well, the root canal last week did, but that's another story that I'm still recovering from.)

Dom's contributed his part. He's still onboard for "Emily Elizabeth" in honor of his very first television crush from "Clifford the Big Red Dog." Not sure that flies with me, but it's damned cute.

And Boo? Well, he'll probably end up calling her "NO! NO! NO!" regardless of what her birth certificate says. Call it a premonition.

Onward, people...onward. Save us from Bilbette Baggins Applegate...

To Andrew...on the occasion of your second birthday

2011-02-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

"Up, up here we go..."

To our very own little Rocketeer,

The fact that I'm writing this in the midst of you cutting your two-year molars and I'm still being nice to you really says something about the type of impression you have made in our lives.

Last year I wrote to you about what an individual you are and, m'dear, that hasn't changed one bit. In fact, I think if it were possible to be MORE of your own person 12 months later, you have figured it out.

Yet, at the same time, there's this full-on affection you bring with you that just takes my breath away. You can melt your daddy with a hug and you can make any owwie better with an "You alright, Mama? You alright?"

Your compassion and your concern for your family is beyond touching and something that is all you...came from within and expresses itself in all sorts of creative ways through your everyday actions.

But let's not forget your sense of humor. As I write this, you are running laps in your diaper around the kitchen table while your Dad studies. You're a raging ball of white hot energy and you make every day with you an adventure.

At this point in your distinguished career you love the following things in the following order:

Elmo
reruns of America's Funniest Videos (or what you call "Andrew's Show")
monkeys
going to the "pool" (bath tub!)
watching basketball with Mama
anything chocolate (with peanut butter is a bonus)
dragging a chair to the kitchen and helping during dinner prep
doing everything your brother does
stealing whatever your brother has
diving into bed with your brother at bedtime (his bed, not yours)
the dog
the cat
leaving in the morning (you're very busy and important these days)
stealing bags of chips from the hall closet

Life is beautiful and full with you in it and it seems as though you've figured out your place in our family with very little assistance and in your own style. As you get ready to leave the position of "baby" in the family behind, I'm excited to watch you grow into a big brother. What sort of boy will you be? Will you be protective? Will you take all the pink and tiaras in stride?

We have no doubt you will, little man. Family is what drives your world these days and it's going to be a beautiful thing to watch.

Happy Birthday, Boo! We love you!

To All the Germs I've Loved Before...

2011-01-04T13:22:00.000-08:00

"who've traveled in and out my door..."

Do you ever feel like your family is in the cross-hairs of some vindictive bacteria crime syndicate? That each time you step outside your house (or maybe it's each time we step INSIDE our house), another loved one gets "offed" by the nasty buggers? Well, I'm about to go all Elliott Ness on their a##es with a can of Lysol and some Clorox...

Week the first: It started at Boy Wonder's birthday party a few weeks ago. Two days after swimming in the Alaska Club pool and climbing all over the Alaska Club rock wall, poor little Boo wanders out from his nap with one crusty, gnarly looking eye. By the next morning, both eyes are filled with goo and we're sitting at the urgent care clinic discussing bacterial conjunctivitis. Ewww. Seven days worth of stinging, smelly drops later, we seem to be OK. Well, other than Boy Wonder conveniently announcing to the entire crowded Old Navy store (on Christmas Eve) that "My baby brother has the gross pink eye!" This, after Boo has already wandered up and down the aisles man-handling the merchandise and touching every debit pin machine in the store. I gave a non-committal shrug and a weak smile and threatened the first grader's life in a low voice as we left the store. Snitch! (Yes, he takes after me...)

Week the second: P has an "ingrown hair" on his arm. He squeezes the CRAP outta the thing and within 15 minutes, his entire forearm and wrist have doubled in size and grown angry (pissed off!) red. Oh. Holy. Sh^%. In a house with two parents who do jiu jitsu and a dad who has wrestled since he could put a singlet on by himself, those types of reactions don't bode well so P jumps in his truck and gets the beasty-looking thing checked out. Hello, Staph!! Ten doses of cephalexin later, and we don't have to amputate his arm or build a shed in the back for him to sleep in. Yay! P can stay with the family with all his limbs in tact! Yay!

Week the present: It started out when Anchorage decided to melt all its snow and ice in a freak temperature drop this weekend. I wake up Monday with a stuffed nose and the inability to swallow anything solid. Great. By night, I'm trying to beat my children to bed at 7 p.m. and I'm colder than a Puffin in the Arctic. (I don't know if Puffins get cold. I just think they're cute.) Then I'm hot. Then I'm crying because my bones hurt whenever someone else breathes. (Stop breathing upstairs, dammit! You're hurting my back!) By Tuesday, I'm so doped up I think I'm fine until 4 p.m. hits and I can swallow, breath, or sit because the couch cushions are too hard and the noise from the television is making my leg cramp. One visit to our favorite urgent-care clinic (Hello again, Dr. Kilkenny! Have you named the new wing after our family yet?) and one giant Q-tip down the throat later and I have strep. Hooray for my long-time nemesis, group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus--the bane of my sick existence since I was 8-years-old. (Oh, how I miss the good ol' days...the blissful gland-yanking times before removing tonsils became faux pas...take mine, really. No, please take my damn tonsils.)

After a z-pack, a pot of Matzo ball soup, three gallons of gatorade, and a big ol' bottle of Tylenol, things are looking better. Not sure I'll tell P just how much better because I really, really love the concern and constant babying. But I'm definitely not in tears at the drop of the hat and my sense of smell and taste are returning. Hurrah!

You'll notice in this narrative how Boy Wonder has somehow gotten through unscathed, despite hosting the birthday party that started the bacteria festival rolling around here.

Ironic, right?

After last year's bout with Fifth Disease, he has earned his "get out the sick house free" card, but knowing our luck, the kid will have bronchitis before the week is out.

Here's hoping things are less germ-y where you are...and God Bless this wonderful, itchy, sneezy petri-dish of a home we have!

2011 Doesn't Scare Me!

2011-01-01T09:08:00.000-08:00

Let's be honest here: 2010 ended with a bit of a stumble, trip, and slide across the finish line on my face. The energy was down. My feelings were always hurt. I had no motivation to do anything but fight with my loved ones and feel sorry for my fat, pregnant self. Great image, eh?

I talked about how I pulled myself together about 48 hours before Christmas and thank you, Jesus, for small miracles, right? But it was a close one and I'm pretty certain that neither my sanity (nor my marriage!) can survive too many more scrapes with the doom and glooms of that magnitude.

I love resolutions. I love thinking about them. I love writing them. And I love torturing myself for about nine days trying to keep them, but they never really make it to MLK Day, and that stinks. Last year I adopted the practice of the one-word resolution (I think I chose "brighten." Don't laugh, a##holes! I tried!) and it's something I'll do again for 2011...but not just yet. 'Cuz I don't have a word picked out at the moment--that's why!

So while I cogitate on my word for the year, I'd like to make a few observations I picked up in 2010 and hope they help me focus my efforts in 2011.

1) Marriage. With the right person, it's a blessed, chaotic, thrilling, tiring ride. With the right person, you're allowed to laugh and fight and not give up. That's a new concept for me--not giving up. Without a doubt, P is the rock that keeps me sane. I am so lucky God introduced me to such a stable man!!

2) Friends are the family you chose. OMG, doesn't that sound incredibly cliche? It does, I know, but this year more than ever, I learned that these girls that I read books with, that I drink coffee with, the special ones that I work with...these are my sisters. These are the stand-in aunties for my boys because their real aunties live on the other side of the country. Their children are my nieces and nephews and life would be incredibly dry and sad without them. I turn all hermit-y every once in a while and for that I apologize, but the bottom line is that my girlfriends make my world go round and I have learned how much I need them and need to be there for them.

3. Time flies. This has been a tough lesson in my 30s. All of a sudden the days and weeks fly by. Two weeks have come and gone and I haven't called my dad or mailed a postcard to my mom. I haven't gone to church or met my friends for coffee. Haven't gone to the gym or updated my beloved blogs. Good intentions sometimes remain just that...intentions. More than any other time in my life, I understand the sacredness of the gift God has given me. In the coming year, it's my goal to make the most out of the 1,440 minutes He's given me each day and do something with them...anything to make them count for my family and I.

I know, I know. A little cliche, but I had to get it out. I'll spend the day watching College Football and thinking about what I want to accomplish in 2011. And eating. I'll spend my day watching football, writing goals, and eating cinnamon rolls. Good plan.

Happy new year to all our friends and loved ones. Here's to a fantastic 2011!

Getting the most out of the season

2010-12-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's the day after Christmas already. For the first time in about two years, I took consecutive days off from work (on purpose and planned ahead!) and did nothing but run around like a mad woman and fight with my family. In other words, I prepared for the holidays.

In the midst of the madness, P and I took a look at each other and realized we were going to miss it all if we didn't slow down and soak it in. Because of custody agreements and crappy logistics, we only get our Boy Wonder every other Christmas...so if we spent this entire past week bickering and stressed...well, guess what? It would be another two years before we got to celebrate with him again. (Oh, gosh, I even hate reading those words.)

So long about Wednesday night, we called a time out. We ate dinner, gave the kids their baths, and loaded everyone up in their pjs into the truck. We stopped off and got hot chocolates from a coffee stand, and we went out in search of adventure. We found crappy light displays, great light displays, living nativity scenes (our personal favorites). We listened to the Christmas music station and we had a contest to see who was the most excited about Christmas. ("Me!" "No, mee!" "Meeeeeeeee!")

By the time Christmas eve rolled around, we were happy and in love with each other and the season again. Which is probably the ONLY reason I didn't freak out and cry when there were no seats at the Episcopal Christmas Eve mass and we had to leave. (Trust me, church is the LAST place you want to feel like you don't fit or belong. I hate it.) Packed back into the truck in our fancy church clothes, I made the off-hand joke that maybe we were a little like the first family thousands of years ago trying to find a place that had some room for them. So we kept going. And we found a church that I used to go to years ago and there was plenty of room and they were happy to see us. The feeling was mutual.

We stayed up late putting together plastic kitchens and basketball hoops and wrapping more presents than I remember buying. As I had just closed my eyes (at least it seemed that way) I heard a tiny voice saying "Mom! Santa came!" It was 3:30 a.m.

By 6:45 a.m., the destruction had hit and the boys were love drunk with new toys and stockings full of chocolate and match box cars. P was exhausted and had blisters on his hand from the 12-hour stint assembling toys. I was comatose and hid underneath my new electric blanket (yes!). My mom took a four-hour nap. But we had made it a beautiful Christmas with a little help and a lot of faith.

Merry Christmas and here's looking forward to an incredible new year.

Searching for this year's Christmas Eve-ning

2010-12-22T18:32:00.000-08:00

Remember last Christmas Eve?

Well, I'm sure you do, but what I'm specifically referring to is the Christmas Eve traditions post I wrote last year. With shrimp and pajamas in place, sorta, (minus the spiced wine, thanks to the whole pregnancy thing...boo!), our family is in need of a "movie" that night to distract ourselves from the copious amounts of little shelled sea creatures that will sacrifice themselves for our holiday enjoyment.

My personal favorite is "It's a Wonderful Life," but let's face it...it's in black and white and is a little too introspective to attract the average dweller in my house. We love, love, love the Griswold's "Lampoon Christmas" and after the last couple weeks we've been having around here, well, let's just say maybe we can relate a little more than we should. Ha! But maybe I'm sending the wrong message with that one? (Listen, between the double pink eye infection Boo got himself and the epic meltdowns and face-scratching arguing in these walls, it's enough to want to give up all together and break out the prozac...but we can't. 'Cause that would be cheating ourselves out of the wonder and magic and chaos of the season, right?! That, and we all really like presents around here. Just sayin'.)

Boy Wonder likes "Santa Buddies" and Boo is all about the Caillou Christmas Special (Yuck!). P loves the original "Santa Clause" movie from the 80s and I'm too wrapped around the clothing and hairstyles to let the message sink in much. And me, well, with my penchant for old movies, you can bet I'm usually up late during the holidays watching Turner Classic Movies by myself.

So, if you have a favorite, let me have it. Odd, hard to find, out of date...send them my way. Our Christmas Eve may very well depend on you! (Well, maybe not so much, but at least you might save us from an evening of Santa Buddies and Caillou! Ugh!)

Good luck surviving the last few days of the Christmas crush...we've got a few days left and my to-do list is miles long (including the nagging desire to make these salted caramels! Nums!)

xoxo
me

Seven is a grand number

2010-12-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

Just ask Boy Wonder.

Last week he had his birthday and I'm still having a hard time remembering that he's no longer five...let alone SEVEN!

I started the letter-writing tradition last year and figured I'd keep it going as long as he seemed interested in hearing them. So here goes.

Dear D,

Seven!!! I can hardly believe it. Just yesterday I was baking you a dino-cake for your fifth birthday at the museum, and now here you are all grown up and leaving me on the side of the pool while you swim with your friends.

There are no two ways about it, Sir...you are born to swim. In the past year we've dipped our toes in the proverbial pools of about a million sports and activities and they all stick for about 14.5 minutes before you'd rather stay home and watch cartoons than brave the cold weather. But not with swimming. From the moment we started your first lesson when you were three, swimming has been the one thing you never tire of. And you're good at it, kid. We like to joke that with that stretch torso and long legs, you're bound to put Michael Phelps to shame some day. Could happen...

First grade started off as a challenge. Not really because you weren't prepared, more because it was new people and new experiences that were waiting for you after your trip to Texas this summer. You weren't overly thrilled for me to leave your classroom on the first day and after the SHOVE out the door you gave me on your first day of kindergarten, I have to admit I kind of liked it! But you did fine. You've made some great friends who come over and eat all our food and never want to leave because our house is so, well, animated? Yes... that's a good word for it.

You shine in math, little man. Numbers are kind of like legos and you figure out places to put them and make it work. I'm amazed. You're on the road to reading and it's exciting to watch the wheels turn in that brilliant head of yours.

You're learning that being a big brother isn't always easy and sometimes a toddler is a challenge...especially when you have to let go of the power struggle, despite the fact that you're bigger. It's just what you do, kiddo, and you get it. You're protective of Andrew in a fierce, loyal way. I'll probably never forget the hike we took as a family at the end of the summer and Andrew did what wild, carefree toddlers do...he wandered off the path and into the thick of things. The tears on your face were real and you would not calm down until I had him back within arm's reach and safe from the dreaded Cow Parsnip! But that's you...even at such a young age you think it's your job to keep the ones you love safe and happy.

As you grow, I pray you learn balance...that sometimes your job is just to be a kid and laugh, fart, and get in trouble for putting gum in the dog's fur or something harmless like that (though be warned, you will learn what grounding is sooner or later and if you're anything like me, you'll spend a good portion of 4th through 6th grade under house arrest!)

Six flew by, my love. I see a pattern now, and it's bittersweet. Before long, we'll be packing up your room and shipping you off to college (Texas A&M, hopefully! ha!)...but not yet. You're still the boy who wanders around the house with one boxing glove on and a kitchen spoon tucked into your belt like a weapon...and I love you so much for it.

Always,

me

Outing Ourselves

2010-11-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

I have absolutely no good excuse for ignoring this blog for so long. Truly.

I haven't cured cancer. Haven't polished off another novel. Hell, I haven't even had a good cold to knock me off my feet for a week or so. I've been lazy. There, I said it. L-A-Z-Y.

In the past two months there has been a fantastic jiu jitsu tournament that I did not participate in (more on that later), a one-year super anniversary that me and the man of my dreams have YET to celebrate (ordering take out at 9 p.m. after giving each other the silent treatment all day does NOT count...for either of us...ha!) and a BOATLOAD of first grader activities to squeeze in (including Turkey Bingo at his school tonight...C'mon lucky 0 67!!)

I've also been in hiding. We found out a few weeks ago that M3 (short for "Minion the Third" aka "Baby #3) is due in June. Joyous news, right? We sure think so. We also think that me staying awake between the hours of 1 and 9 p.m. requires an Act of Congress, a miracle enacted by the creator, and some serious willpower. (And those who know me, well, you know that's not my strong suit by any means.)

So I've been overjoyed by a year married to the love of my life, endless hours of stepping on and clearing legos and blocks from our floor, swim practices, afternoons volunteering in the classroom during reading labs, and early pregnancy--you know, the part where you just sorta look fat and mushy, but not really pregnant? I'm so there.

My mom arrived this week. Did I mention that yet? We're all excited around here and she even managed to survive the first two mornings of 6 a.m. toddler wake up drills. So far. But she's no morning glory, so I won't be surprised to find her bedroom door padlocked closed from the inside any day this week...my boys are determined to jump on her super airmattress every morning and one of these days, it's going to burst with all three of them on it. And I'll probably laugh. And pee my pants. (It happens. Don't judge.)

My priorities have been right where they were supposed to be, I'm sure, but that also means that my more selfish inclinations (writing, gym time, knitting horrendous scarves) has been minimal, therefore making me a puffy, overtired, miserable tyrant. Can you believe I made it to my anniversary in one piece? Me either!

So there it is...the happenings around the nest from the last 60 or so days, along with a solemn vow not to let that much time pass again before posting. (Be warned, willpower and the ability to keep strict promises...I have bad histories with both!)

With love,

me

Nothing gold can stay...

2010-09-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

"I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air. " (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

I took a break from blogging for a minute or two. Partly because my house seems to be one giant petri dish meant solely for breeding rhinovirus carriers, and partly because I had a touch of ennui. Such a pretty word, isn’t it? Ennui. I feel sorta exotic just saying it.

I tried explaining this lame feeling I’ve been carting around to my poor husband and I’m sure I only served to confused the man even more. How can I be absolutely fine on the surface and yet feel so sluggish and down on the inside? The same dork in pajama pants doing the running man at breakfast day in and day out that fights this nagging sadness that looms just around the corner and at the blurred edges in my vision? I don’t get it.

I think the crux of the problem is that I am used to working towards something. At any given moment in my life, you can ask me what I’m into lately and I always have a fire-burning passion about something. MMA, jiu jitsu, knitting, sewing, writing, Warcraft, running, yoga, swimming, baking. Something. And yes, I love all of those activities, but I think I might have burned myself out when the realities of my life as it stands now hit.

Life is busy. And not always in the carpooling to soccer/swim/baseball practice, but in the everyday reality of raising a family, working full-time with one of us in school full-time. It’s nuts. And it leaves precious little time for selfish pursuits. (I know it’s selfish to want to be able to sew for four hours straight, and it’s a notion I’m adjusting to. My boys saved me from my own vanity and self-interest, but I am not an overnight success. A work-in-progress at best!)

Each night at 4-ish when we get home, a part of me sighs heavily, knowing that the longest four hours of the day are about to begin. Between picking up after our morning rush out of the house to doing the daily upkeep chores, to cooking, bathing, and cleaning the wild apes running through the house, I’m done by 8 p.m….and that’s assuming the wild apes actually stay in their beds and sleep and don’t stand screaming for 45 minutes until we can’t stand it anymore and go get them.

But today on the drive in, the leaves are changing. My town is green and gold and full of crisp contrasts in every view, and around here, it doesn’t last. Fall is orange and red, full of pumpkins and chilly evenings, tempered with bright, warm afternoons, and it’s gone all too quickly—replaced by overcast, snow-threatening days and sad, bare trees.

Much like this stage in life, right? Our boys are young and they’re needy and it’s a beautiful time that’s fleeting at best. Perhaps I ought to reconsider my viewpoint and be happy they require so much work, because if I remember my teenaged years correctly, the times coming where they want to be on their own and away from the house.

And what would I do without lunches to pack and babies to bathe? Where would I be without 24-hours of Dragon Tales and Spongebob.

Lost, my friends. I’d be lost.

So here's to folding mountains of laundry and endless bowls of macaroni and cheese… beauty in the small details. Happiness in the everyday...

Lessons I wish they didn't have to learn...

2010-09-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

We are blessed. Our lives are filled with Elmo and Dragon Tales, Legos and Scooby Doo. Our boys (and family, I suppose) live in a mostly sunshine-filled bubble were everyday is mostly the same glorious experience over and over again. I am so thankful for that.

But we’re moving into an intimidating age with Boy Wonder—one where he’s beginning to sense that everything is not always right with the world, that people aren’t always kind and patient. And that superheros (fictional and real) can’t always save the day for us.

We don’t watch much violent television in our house. Truth be told, Boy Wonder and Boo dominate the channels and they choose either Sprout or Cartoon Network (and even then, it’s usually Chowder, Scooby Doo or Phineas and Ferb.)

But every once in a while, I need to see something, anything, not animated and I turn on the news hour while I’m making dinner. And sometimes our local news is scarier than any horror movie Wes Craven can come up with.

Last Saturday in the small village of Hoonah, Alaska two village police officers were chatting in a parking lot with their families and were gunned down. On the spot. In front of their children and mother. (You can read the heartbreaking story of the village’s police chief’s reactions and remarks here. But keep tissue handy, especially if you dare view the slide show. The officers were larger-than-life, good people that Alaska was privileged to call their own the past four years.)

So when the news is covering the lives of Anthony Wallace and Matthew Tokuoka, it breaks my heart. It’s senseless and violent and so horrendous it shakes your faith in human beings. I’m standing in the kitchen glued to where I stand, dinner boiling over, tears streaming down my face.

My reaction was not lost on my sensitive, all-seeing first grader, who wanted to know what had upset me. What had broken the hearts of all Alaskans...

How do you explain this to someone who stills sees the world in black and white? Where bad guys and good guys meet on epic battlegrounds, where good always prevails and the heros go home to their families every night for dinner.

I included the information about Officers Wallace and Tokuoka for folks to remember them, their families, and the Hoonah Police Department in their thoughts and prayers. I’m sure they could all really use them right now.

I don’t have the answers when Boy Wonder wants to know how such bad things can happen. I try to explain that God’s got it all in control somehow and we’re not ever going to understand, but it’s not our job to worry ourselves into a frenzy over it.

And Boy Wonder, our little “rev” said he was going to pray for the policemen—and did so, right on the spot in his beautiful, simple prayerful way. He asked God to give the policemen who were killed hugs and to help their families stop crying.

Maybe he’s got it down. Maybe Boy Wonder and Boo really need to teach me a little more about blind faith and not losing hope in humanity. But every now and then, I wish my son didn’t need such a highly developed sense of empathy or understanding.

Sometimes I wish the world really was Dragon Tales and Transformers and would stay that way forever…

And to Wallace and Tokuoka, rest in peace. Thank you for your service and your selflesness. You will be missed by an entire state of grateful, heartbroken people.

Baking with my grandmother: An incredible find

2010-08-24T22:05:00.000-07:00

My trip to Texas this month was better than I could have imagined. Good times with my dad and my son. Good food. Hella sunshine. A chance to spend time with my Donna Lynn after a five year absence. Sleeping in my old bed.

And note cards? Recipe cards to be exact.

This year I've slowly become fascinated with cooking. And baking, though the results are mixed and vary, depending on whether I accidentally skip over the "baking soda" line in the ingredients.

In my dad's house, I was pawing through the old bookshelf and stumbled across three recipe boxes FULL of my mom's recipes, handwritten on index cards. Here's the thing about finding these...for years, my mom had the most beautiful handwriting. She had such pride in it, that she did her best to pass it on to me, even if it meant making me re-do my sloppy homework. (Oh, how I cursed her then!)

In recent years, since her diagnosis of the brain disease, her ability to write in the neatly rounded print has dwindled, and often times, when she's quickly jotting notes, I have a hard time reading it. But these recipe cards, well, they tell a story. Not only do the contain all the things I grew up eating, they show the progression of a brain disease of sorts, along with highlighting my mother's fascinations--cranberries, biscottis, cranberry biscotti. You see where I am going.

To make a good find even BETTER, one of the boxes I found had a different penmanship all together. Can you tell where this is going? Oh yes, the motherlode of all recipe boxes...my grandmother, Margaret. Nanny is a woman after my own heart. She devotes precious little space to nonesense like main dishes and vegetables. No, my grandmother gets down with the baking. Muffins. Breads. Biscuits. Cookies. Candy. Pies.

I sat on the phone with my mom on a recent Sunday afternoon reading off the recipes and getting whatever stories went with them. Hermits are Pop's favorite cookies. Penuche is Nanny's favorite candy. Anything with raisins in the recipe was definitely made for Pop. The god-awful sounding things in there like "Cabbage Casserole" and "Minced Clam Lunch" were from an era when Nanny was religiously shedding pounds with Weight Watchers. (Phew!)

Nanny's penmanship is classic cursive they must have taught back in school. It's slanted. It's tightly spaced and feminine. Her s's are perfect. Her f's are elegant. And her recipes? Fantastic.

My mom has made ginger crinkles before. I remember them well, so when I found Nanny's recipe...well, I had to. Consider these my new favorite cookies. And they went well with the boys, too, so I can talk myself into them more often. After all, molasses has a lot of iron, right?

The magic thing about this is that I never grew up close to Nanny. She and Pop always lived on the opposite coast as me, but something happened during that first attempt to cook from her recipe. I learned to trust.

I squinted at the recipe card a few times when I didn't see butter. I saw a whole lot of oil. A lot of the recipes were different than what I'm used to out of today's magazines and recipe Web sites.

"Are you sure?" I asked nobody in particular.

The card was stained and worn. It had obviously been used before, and obviously the results were good if the baker came back to the card time and time again. So I trusted. And I used the nearly one cup of oil. And it was good. Earthy and spicy and crunchy and sweet. So good, I wanted to share Nanny's recipe.

This discovery lit a fire under my butt. I wanted more family recipes. I want them in a book. I want Pam's buckeyes and Dee's peanut butter cookies. I want Cheryl's pie recipes, instructions for my mom's rustic apple tarts, and I want the stories that go with them before nobody wants to tell them anymore. I want my kids and Jeff's kids and Brandy's kids and Justin's kids and Carissa's kids to have this piece of our far-flung, odd, and beautiful family, too.

And I'm working on it, people. :)

Ginger Crinkles

2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
1 egg
4 T molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/4 cup sugar for coating

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix oil and sugar thoroughly in large bowl. Add egg and beat well. Stir in molasses. Sift dry ingredients to oil mixture. Make walnut-sized balls and cover in sugar. Put on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Do not overbake. Cool on rack. Store cookies in tightly covered container. Makes about 3 dozen.

The education of me and the meaning of grace

2010-08-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

I was getting a bit tired of writing about baking and cooking, even though I'd planned to do a post today about food (and I still might. You never know...)

I figured it had been a while since I did a post with any sort of substance, you know...the stuff friends and family members read to get a sense of what's going on in this corner of the world. I thought about lots of stuff, and really, everything has been overshadowed in the last 23 hours by the fact that my son, Boy Wonder, called another woman "his mom."

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about it. I ran it past a couple friends last night...do I correct him? Or do I let it go? Do I let the kid call us all whatever he wants. High road? Low road? Off ramp short cut to enlightenment?

I got stuck writing this post, and like I do anytime that I get self-inflicted writer's "goldfish" brain, I cruised around blogs. And cruised.

And I came upon one of my favorite crafty-ish blogs and there was a video about forgiveness and taking God's messages seriously. (I'm not so good at that, you see.) The video is here.

It's about a man who in one awful accident, lost his pregnant wife and two of his four children to a teenaged drunk driver. The video goes on talk about how forgiveness and grace was never NOT an option for this man, Chris Williams and how it has changed not only his life, but every one involved in the horrific accident...including the young man that killed his family. He likened it to how forgiveness and grace is never NOT an option with Jesus Christ either... and it was one of those A-ha moments. (They're rare these days, I guess.)

I admit that I cried when I watched it, and I even forgave the fact that it was a huge ad for the Church of Latter Day Saints at the end...really, the message got through and that's what it's supposed to do, right?

In comparison, my problems are small, my friends, and in the end...anger really isn't an option. When it comes to our children, the high road is really the only road if you want to do it right.

I have two sons. One is blessed and has his parents together all the time. The other has to make do with the reality he was given--based on choices his father and I made. It was never Boy Wonder's choice to live with his heart split across the continent. I'm sure he'll look at Boo someday and feel the smallest bit of envy that everyone he loves is right there under one roof.

My heart caught in my throat when he told me he had to ask "his mom" (the stepmom) to take a picture of his toothless grin, and I won't lie and say it didn't hurt. It stung like hell. But guess what? So does having to up and leave every few months and say good bye and hello four times a year.

Good on you, Boy Wonder, for making the best of this situation and embracing everyone in your life as your family and not some ridiculous label with stipulations and explanations. Moms, dads, brothers, cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles...they come in all shapes and sizes in your life and you are wise enough to see it even when we can't.

So, thank you anonymous Mormon video poster for furthering my education today and getting me to think a little less about me...and a little more about the ones that matter most.

The Wednesday Baker: Boule Bread

2010-08-04T19:19:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I bought all of the necessary equipment and ingredients for bread, according to the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day."

Bread and I have a long history. According to local legend, I used to take naps in a laundry basket on the floor of the bakery, Baba A Louis, where my mom worked. Bread is a weakness. It's a blessing. It's something I seek and destroy when in the mood.

Except I've never really been that great at baking it. I manage hockey pucks. The occasional door stop. But never fantastic, earthy bread.

So when I bought this book in the Spring, we were weeks away from moving into Anchorage and I never really got to turn loose in the book. Until now. Until today. The day I deemed Wednesdays as "baking days."

The concept of the book is that artisan bread is actually possible without having an advanced degree in chemistry or fancy equipment. No back-breaking kneading. No nonsense. You mix your ingredients. You let them set overnight. You bake your bread. You eat your bread. Bada-boom...bada-bing.

The Master Recipe makes four 1-pound loaves, so I always halve it.

3 cups lukewarm water
1.5 tablespoons granulated yeast (2 packets)
1.5 tablespoons kosher or coarse salt
6 cups unsifted all purpose flour.

The book goes on to have you mix the water, the yeast and the salt. Add the flour. Mix very loosely until there's not dry spots. And then...well, that's it. Put it in a container. Leave it in the fridge. Let the yeast work its magic. In the morning, you knead it very lightly. Let it rest. Bake your bread (with the help of a "steam bath") for 30 minutes. And you're done.

The book is amazing and highly recommended...eventually you can work yourself up to making cinnamon rolls and other super fantastic-ness. But for now. The bread.

It had the bakery-guaranteed"skin" that crackled and broke when you tear into it. It's chewy. It's yeasty. It's perfect for a rainy Wednesday in Alaska.

The authors have a site here. Just so happens today they blogged about baking in Tuscany without their normal equipment. Nice, right?

Happy Wednesday!

The Joy of 32

2010-08-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

I've had about a week now to walk around with my new identity and it's about as anti-climactic as any birthday has been.

It just sorta is. The day came. And it sorta went. (But not without some FANTASTIC birthday love from my facebook family out there. THANK YOU!)

(I'm pretty sure the most exciting birthday so far has been 25...the year I was allowed to rent a car! 21 doesn't really count...because, honestly, who hadn't been drinking since the day they arrived on their college campus? But rental cars...well, there was one place you couldn't cheat.)

My husband had flowers for me. Boo had an Elmo balloon that he shared with me, and there were two cakes and lots of princess-themed partyware. I love my husband, have I mentioned that lately?

It was low-key and when it came time to figure out the birthday gift, the practical nature of 32 became very apparent when I asked my husband not to buy me a fancy espresso machine and to let me purchase a new vacuum instead. (The horror!!)

A fu*&ing vacuum, you say?

Yes, dear reader. Our floor was nasty, what can I say? (It sorta reminded me of that Mother's Day back in 1986 when I had my dad buy an iron for my mom so I could sign the card. She laughed then and I didn't get it. Oh, but I get it now...)

Clean floors aside, 32 seems like a magic number to me. It seems to be the nice, well-rounded age I've earned after a few long years of struggle. Fighting against myself, against an ex, against jobs that went nowhere, against rash behavior just because I could. Fight fight fight, strife strife strife. No longer. This is a well-earned age where my phsycial and mental scars tell the story of me becoming me.

32 seems to be the year when I am no longer my own worst enemy, where I have built an incredible foundation around me with friends and family who want the best for me and are no longer afraid to speak up when I'm wrong (though I rarely am, so watch yourself.)

This past week has been like many others in my life. Some good news, some bad. Some drama. Some worries. But here's the thing, at 32 (and beyond, right?) you bend the problem to your solution. At 22, you bend yourself to the problem and try to claw your way out of a hole. That's my take anyway.

At 32 I've become a master at triaging my life. Sure, the electric bill might be late, but the car insurance and the gas is paid, so two outta three ain't bad. Yeah, I might get short with P if we're both lacking sleep...but have you seen Houswives of New Jersey lately? We seem pretty damn normal compared to those fools, and that's a fantastic place to start.

So happy belated 32nd to me...the first of many, many more. I hope, anyway...

The return of something great

2010-07-24T17:03:00.000-07:00

Thomas the Tank Engine has returned to our lives this summer. Some of the tracks and most of the engines that Boy Wonder collected between ages 2 and 5 survived the move to Anchorage only to be saved from obscurity in the garage by Boo himself.

Though we don't quite have the language down (he screams "NO!" and hands you a piece of broken track when he wants you to fix it. A sad consequence from the afternoon we spent playing together...I'd build the track, he'd destroy it. I'd tell him "No!" over and over again and repair it. Somehow screaming "NO!!" at his dad with two pieces of tracks is supposed to mean "Hello, Father. Can you please fix this for me? Thank you."

We're working on it.

I missed Thomas and his friends. Boy Wonder and I used to watch those DVDs on endless loops and it was such a treat when we found the more rare episodes that George Carlin narrated. Yes!

He's also discovered plain old blocks. The kid loves them. It's a magic age where the bling-bling lights of battery-operated toys hold no interest to him (nor does the television) and all the kid wants to do is build piles and knock them down. It's a grand summer.

And MEEMAWS. I can't forget "meemaws."

Meemaws are magical creatures. Maybe it's because mama might have a bit of that Texas twang when she says "pillow" but meemaws seem to be any plush or comfy item in our living room that Boo wants to claim for his own and snuggle on top of. If you find yourself over at our house in the near future, beware. He might spot the pillow you're sitting near and come by and snatch it, yelling "My meemaw!" You've been warned.

Toddlers are magical, tiring creatures. How could I have forgotten this so quickly?

In other blackbird news, the fight is off. I know, I know, you're heartbroken, right? Haha. Didn't think so. The stars didn't align for this one and it seems that I am a much different person at 32 than I was at 27. But that's the whole point, right? (And thank goodnes...I'm not sure I was much to shake a stick at in my 20s...I was kind self-absorbed and pushy. Just sayin'.)

Oh, and I rescue Boy Wonder August 12. I bet you're just as excited as I am. :)

MMA and the meaning of life

2010-06-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

"They sicken of the calm, who know the storm."

(Dorothy Parker)

My Fairtex gloves are getting old. Nearing five years, and in MMA glove-life, that’s seriously past your prime and nearing the walker-stage of life. But I love these gloves. More than I love my “undefeated” Sprawl shorts. My blue, 4-ounce companions have won with me, they’ve lost with me. They’ve been to hell and back during that one trip to Las Vegas in 2007—and in all the subsequent changes in my life in the past four years, I’ve managed to NOT lose them.

Which is saying a lot if you know me.

They’ve been getting more use lately…especially since I sought out, and got, a fight in August. And so it begins…

People think I’m crazy, and for lots of reasons, I’m pretty sure they’re right. Why on earth would I want to fight after a four-year hiatus? What’s in it for me? It’s not as if Dana White is going to call with a UFC contract just waiting for my signature…and I’m certain that at 31 years old, that’s not my life’s dream, anyway.

So why now? Why after brain surgery and babies and a happily-ever after marriage? What’s left to prove?

Plenty.

Fear is a funny thing. It gives nothing, and seems to take everything. I’ve got a great poker face, but by nature, I’m a fearful person.

Fear of commitment. Fear of conflict. Fear of failing. Fear of people touching the inside of my elbows (true story.) Fear of letting the people I love down. Fear of failing my sons. Fear of always dreaming and never doing. Fear of talking the talk, but never walking the walk.

It’s true. My life so far has been a study in how to address fear in a way that let’s you live your life without limits. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I fail. But at the basis of the crazier things I do in my life, it’s always about identifying some sort of fear and facing it.

I started MMA on a whim in 2006 when I walked into Gracie Barra Alaska. I had a different last name back then that I’ve since returned to its rightful owner (thank god!), and I had no concept of what I wanted out of the sport. I just knew I wanted to give it a try.

Those early days of training were recorded in a story I wrote for the Anchorage Daily News a few weeks before my second fight. You can read the article here. I know, it’s a random location and that story was printed in the STRANGEST places thanks to modern wire news services…I got e-mails from Alabama, Ghana, East London, and the swamps of Florida. Oh, and Sitka, Alaska, too! (Hello, Sitka!)

It was a whirlwind time for me. The ride was fun and all of a sudden, I had a profile on Sherdog, Fight Girls…even MMA Babes.com. (Hahahah! “Babe”….who woulda thought?) I made lots of friends on MySpace that I’d never ever met in real life. I got to go on radio shows at 6 in the morning and sound ridiculous because I was half-asleep.

In October 2006, I entered a four-woman tournament to vie for the women’s belt. I won one of my fights against Mae Osborne. And then….well, I lost. I got hammered and in between rounds, I couldn’t take anymore. My coach tossed in the towel for me. The championship was well-won by a girl who trained her ass off and beat the hell out of me. We became friends and occasional training partners after that. Funny how life happens, right?

Anyway, I took time off and was offered a chance to fight in Las Vegas in early 2007. Against someone way bigger, way tougher, with way more experience. My team was supportive, but I could tell by the look in their eyes, they felt like they were watching a “dead girl walking.”

Hell, when I got to Vegas and saw her, I knew what the outcome would be. She was HUGE. Her shoulders were half the distance of a football field and she had more muscles than Mr. Olympia himself.

But guess what? I got on that plane and showed up anyway. The lead up to the fight with Erin Toughill was an exercise in facing your demons. To me, she was every excuse I’d ever given for not following through with something.

“It’s too tough. I can’t do it. She’s too big. I’m too inexperienced. Why should I bother?”

Fear. I was there to battle my fear, win or lose.

I showed up in Las Vegas ready to give it hell and take as big of a piece of her with me as I could. I had no illusions.

God, on the other plan, had other ideas. Two days before the fight the Nevada Athletic Commission called me and told me to go home, back to Alaska. I had a brain aneurism. Game over.

Stunned silence, right? Totally my reaction, too.

I found a doctor that could do a surgery that would require them cracking open my skull like a coconut. I scheduled it. And postponed it. And postponed it some more. And hedged. And hemmed and hawed.

Let’s face it folks, I was scared. What if I didn’t wake up? What if I couldn’t remember my son’s name? What if my motor skills were jacked? Wasn’t a 2 percent chance of it rupturing (increasing 2 percent each year I was alive) a pretty low number? Couldn’t I just ignore it?

But, taking lessons learned from MMA and training, on February 12, 2008, I faced my fear and had brain surgery. The recovery was slow and I lost most of my hair a few weeks out (with no warning from the damn doctor…thanks a lot for that one, dick!) but eventually, it was all over and I had a nice, shiny new brain.

In the time between then and now, I got married to the man of my dreams, my big man started school, our second son joined the party, and I jumped into the deep end of life when I turned 30. None occurred in that particular order, but you get the idea. I spent the past four years living.

But MMA never left me and each summer I’d bug P about “just one more fight…c’mon! Just one more. Pleeeease!”

He finally relented this summer, based on two assumptions:

1) I wouldn’t get dragged back into the drama that usually follows MMA fighters and their careers. I was doing it this summer because Boy Wonder was with his dad—but we all understand the fact that when Fall returns, it’s all about family again. (Fighters have a real “all about me” thing going on right before fights. No kidding.
2) More babies! Yep. It’s true. We want a whole team and I’d be content to fight this summer and go back to the whole beached-whale thing next year. (Seriously, it’s not cute. I’m not a glowing, happy preggo.I’m King Kong.)

Don’t get me wrong…each second up until that “DING DING” sound that comes from outer space to start the fight, I’m terrified. I want to pee my pants. I want to crawl over the cage and join my friends at a table for a beer—I want to do anything BUT fight. But it’s a beast I overcome, one long, neverending second at a time.

The journey you take from training hours and hours each week to the fight itself is long and it’s awful and it’s full of frustrations and anger—but it’s definitely a vision quest.

One that can’t be replicated.

How you react when the cards are stacked against you and you’re out of breath and can’t think straight—it’s a priceless gift the fight game gives you. You learn more about yourself in one round then you ever will by over thinking yourself and pondering “the big questions”.

And fear. Truth be told, you learn to kick it’s ass. And that right there is worth every piece of sh^% second I spend getting punched in the face and knocked around by my teammates.

So there you have it. I’m not crazy for wanting to fight..I consider it a part of me. And whether I never fight again after August 11, I’ll never be far from the sport and I’ll never be the same because of it.

SharkBaby and the Night of the Living Dead

2010-06-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

No, seriously.

Last night poor Boo and I went to war against an unseen enemy and the casualty? Sleep. It didn't have a chance in hell.

Currently, our 16-month old sweet baby is cutting tooth #4,765. That officially classifies him as a shark, right?

I swear the kid has five rows of teeth popping through. And we've felt every single one of those nasties from inception all the way through the raw, gum ravaging end. I think Boo just has to think about teeth (or a mouth, or sleep) and he starts to drool and the hacking cough returns.

The night went something like this:

11 p.m.: Ahhhhh. Mom takes a Melatonin and starts to feel fantastic. And sleepy. And....*#$%$...was that just the baby I heard? Get up. Resettle the baby. Administer pain relief. Administer Baby Vicks for the hellacious cough. Return to bed.

11:23 p.m.: Again? What now? Give baby back the bottle. Tuck him in. Night night, Boobear.

Midnight: No, seriously. Go to sleep kid. Here's your bottle. Sleepy sleepy, k?

1 a.m.: This isn't funny Boo. You better have a gaping chest wound in there. No? Here's your bottle. Go to bed.

1: 34 a.m.: No, no, no, no! Resettle baby. Tuck him in. Promise him his brother's toys if he'll just stay asleep. He can have his bed if it would do the trick...

2 a.m.: I. Hate. My. Life. I love this baby, but I hate my life right now. Take the damn bottle, kid. Hell, take my car keys and drive yourself around the neighborhood at this point, if you'll just let me close my eyes for more than 27 minutes at time.

2:17 a.m.: C'mon... I just laid back down...this baby is doing it on purpose, I swear. He hears me sigh in sweet relief and jumps back up to see if my reaction time is still on point. He's got a stopwatch hiding underneath the blanket and he's charting my progress...

2: 39 a.m.: Dear God, I'll go to church every Sunday if you'll just...

3:07 a.m.: Fragal;alkjda;sldfkjeowelkafna;lsdkjfakl;gj;l....

3:30 a.m.: By this point, I'm in tears and playing possum, lying as still as I can, while he fusses in the next room, hoping in vain that either he'll give up or I'll just fall asleep and it won't matter anyway. P is sympathetic to my over-the-top pity party and gets up, resettles him and the kid sleeps until 9 a.m. (WTF?!?!?)

I quit.

No, I mean it.

Boo and I can be friends again once all his teeth come in, but until then, I'm holding a grudge.

That's a lie. I got up this morning to the world's sweetest baby, complete with a pirate hat and a big toothy grin. It's nature's way of ensuring the survival of these little buggers, isn't it? So damn cute...

I don't remember what Boy Wonder's story was when he was breaking teeth--but I guarantee it is nothing compared to what Boo goes through, as I will never, ever, ever forget this experience (or the other 4,000 teeth pains).

I'm also going to store this in the memory bank for future guilt-inducing uses when the kid is old enough to fall for it. Just watch me...

Like a stranger in a familiar town

2010-06-01T16:00:00.001-07:00

Somedays, when I feel like being really cruel to myself, I browse photos of tropical islands. I look at my pictures from Vegas and the California beaches I visited a few years ago. I look at pictures from my best friend's Facebook profile and dream of finally getting to Italy to visit her and my "nephews." I crack open the Barcelona travel guide I bought for a book I was writing last summer. I paste pictures of Scottish castles as my background on my desktop.

I dream about vacations. I ponder what I'd do with two weeks off and a bank account that didn't threaten mutiny every freakin' three weeks. (Seriously, it's getting old, Alaska USA.)

I mope. I shrug. Whatever, right?

Well, here's a little story about how my husband and Boo opened my eyes this weekend.

Anchorage was beyond beautiful. It was cloudless, sunny days that hovered in the 70s. We'd do our normal morning routine, and when Boo would wake up from nap #1, we'd go. Go go go. Grocery store, Gracie Barra, didn't matter.

On Sunday, we ended up at the Downtown Market. It was empty, compared to the shoulder-to-shoulder nonesense you normally deal with. Everybody was fishing. Everybody was camping. Everybody was, in short, not at the market.

We tried to find Boo one of those bucket hats popular with sunworshippers, but the kid has a man-sized head that hovers between child and grown up. The only toddler sized hats were pink, and we love our child too much to subject him to that sort of treatement.

We love fair food. Love love love it. And althought it's not a fair, per se, the market has that "food row" that smacks of being at a summer fair. Unlike my patient husband, I am unable to walk down one side and up the other before making my selection. I was ready to drop all my money on the grilled corn guy (and his neighbor, Mr. Funnel Cake), but ultimately held out for three more stalls and bought up a plate of fried catfish and hush puppies, complete with Frank's Hot Sauce. Ooohhhhheeeeeee. It was fantastic. (Boo loved Catfish! Boo loved Catfish!)

P got some corn fritters and honey butter and if I thought it might have worked, I would have shoved him off the bench and eaten his lunch, too. 'Cept he's bigger and stronger and better at jiu-jitsu than me. Just sayin'.

When we'd seen all that we could see at the market, I wasn't ready to pile back in to the car yet, so we hoofed around downtown Anchorage. A cruise ship has started docking in Anchorage once or twice a month for the first time in nine years, so there were plenty of middle-aged, fanny-pack and matching T-shirt wearing couples on the streets. Oh, and bums, too. I had to give a holler to my old bus-riding homies in case they wanted to forget the crazy, coffee-wielding chick from the 102 Express. Hi, guys!

Crossing the street, P found a trillion dollar bill. Yes, you heard correctly, One Trillion Dollars (forget that it was some relgious mumbo-jumbo..it was a TRILLION, baby!). I will no longer be reporting to work at 8 a.m. every morning. You can forward all mail to the Bahamas. Thankeeverramuch.

We found the Alaska Cake Studio as we randomly passed by. Hello. Cupcakes in the window? I am so there.

P got a peanut butter brownie. I got a lemon-lavendar cupcake. (Have you ever heard of one of those before? Me either. It was amazing.)

Boo liked both. I think he liked my frosting best of all, 'cause we sure fought over the yellow, delicious stuff.

So while we sat there in the little bakery, with tourists milling in and out with salted caramels and margarita cupcakes, it struck me. The three of us had just spent the last two hours as Anchorage tourists. We saw downtown through their eyes. We explored new stores. We ate obnoxious fair food and paid way too much for it and we were happy to do it!

Spending less than $35, I got an afternoon with my husband (and one son!) that I'll smile about for months to come.

Sitting there with P and with Boo in his little man stroller, it hit me. I don't have to go far to feel like I'm getting away from it all. I just need the right frame of mind, a little adventure in the spirit, and the right company.

Consider me schooled, World.

It's time we say so long, for now...

2010-05-26T20:15:00.000-07:00

Can you believe that Boy Wonder’s kindergarten adventure is over ?

It seems like last week when we were dropping him off at school and sending him into the wide, unknown world of school. My "baby" left for Texas last weekend, so I’m starting to feel a little like Demeter, who had to send her child into the bowels of hell once a year. (No, seriously, I can relate.)

So in honor of one adventure ending, and his annual adventure beginning, I’d like to share

“Kindergarten: A Scrap-blog.”

First day.
As much as I wished he’d cry and beg me not to go, he actually looked a little embarrassed that I was hanging out in the hallway with all the other parents. He knew two kids in his class from church and the local playground, so as far as he was concerned, he had a lunch and he had some friends—he was good to go. I was bummed out on the ride into work that day, thinking this was the beginning of the end. My little boy was a “real boy” now in that Pinnochio sort of way…the strings would be harder to pull as he became his own little person.

Taking the Show on the Road

My fears that he didn’t need me anymore were for nothing. I met him and his class at the fine arts center downtown and he couldn’t wait to introduce me to everyone he saw. (It’s sort of his thing. He likes to make connections between people and he wants his enthusiasm to be YOUR enthusiasm). We sat in the darkened theater with about a million other kids from across the school district and I decided right then and there that I really loved elementary school and that I should never have been so impatient to leave.

Watch this, Kobe!
Can you believe I coached kiddie basketball? Me? The girl who can’t hit the rim to save her life? Lisa Leslie I am not, but I still managed to get six kids through 18 games with minimal tears and hurt feelings. We even got a few baskets, and though we weren’t officially scoring, I’m pretty sure we won most of our matches. Just sayin’. Dominic wasn’t much of a shooter. Or a dribbler. But the man could rebound like the scrappiest alley cat and he lived for snack breaks and Capri Suns. He was the one who came up with our team name “The Rhinos” (along with his little buddies). They learned sportsmanship, teamwork, and how to have fun. I learned that I’m not the biggest fan of most other parents in the sports world. True story. P had to teach Boy Wonder what to do when people crowded your space. My suggestion to poke their eyes out obviously wasn’t going to work…

Trick or Treatin'.
No, it wasn’t his first Halloween, but it was his first Halloween CARNIVAL at his official school. We packed up the family, dressed the kids as a shadow ninja and a lion and hit the town. Boy Wonder and P braved the haunted maze and came out with relatively few wounds to show for it. Maybe a couple of fake webs stuck to them, but no worse for the wear.

Winning the school art contest
Did you know our little man could draw? Sure enough. In the fall, his school held a contest for all the students to design a bookmark for the city library. And our man Boy Wonder beat out the ENTIRE school. He got a T-shirt with his design on it, a chance to bask in the spotlight at the front of a school assembly and one proud mama in the audience. He also won first place in the food art sculpture contest with a huge clay chocolate chip cookie that we cut a big bite out of. We skipped the science fair out of sheer protest—I was annoyed that fizzy volcanoes had to include some sort of hypothesis to test. I’ve got one for you: Fizzy volcanoes are COOL. Test that one…

Yellow Days are Sad Days
As the year got rolling, Boy Wonder began to learn about consequences. His teacher had a rating system for their days and every afternoon, he’d have a colored stamp on his folder letting us know how it went. Green was good, Blue was fantastic. Yellow was not so good. Red was principal’s office-material. We did our best to let the first few yellows slide, but when they started showing up a little more frequently, he started seeing his after-school cartoon watching disappear. I hate being the bad guy with him, because honestly, he’s probably one of the sweetest humans on the planet (he and his brother are), but that’s the whole parent thing in a nutshell, isn’t it? It was a crash course in actions and consequences for the child and his parents alike.

“Can Sam come over and play?”
He started (somewhat) talking to his friends on the phone this year. It was mostly “Dude….dude….DUDE! Wanna come to my house, dude? Awesome!” But still, there he was, asking to call his buddy Sam. With it came the failed attempt at a sleep over I wrote about a few months back, but mostly it was afternoons at a buddy’s house (or ours) with snacks, the WII, and a mountain of legos.

I Double-Dog Dare You
It wouldn’t be a complete scrap-blog without mentioning the ol’ Flick incident, would it? Inspired by the 24 hours of “A Christmas Story” on TBS, Boy Wonder stuck his tongue to a pole on the frozen playground and hilarity ensued. I saw a mom at the last field trip and somehow that came up. She said her kindergartner came home and told the family all about it. Boy Wonder is famous!

Kindergarten winds down
This past month has been a whirlwind of moving across town (way way way across town), field trips to the zoo with Team Wolverine, Field Day to celebrate the end of school, and preparing for the long journey to Texas. As Boy Wonder said his good byes on that last day, he was mobbed by his classmates and I was quick-thinking enough to keep my camera handy. I can’t explain the genuineness of this age—they really are that sad to see a buddy go. Boy Wonder posed with his teacher and it hit me. As bummed as I was that he’d grown up enough to enter kindergarten, I was having trouble fighting back the tears now that he’d OUTGROWN it and was leaving it behind.

But that’s how it goes isn’t it? I sat back and watched Boy Wonder win his sack race and remembered the day my best friend in 4th grade and I won the three-legged race at our own field day. I remember the epic catch I made in sixth grade to win our class the kickball game. Time is our biggest enemy and our greatest ally. Without it, I’d never get the chance to be the proud mama bear of one Boy Wonder and I’d forever be stuck in that awkward, bony-kneed, mullet-wearing phase I was so fond of in the late 80s. (I’ve still never forgiven you for those god-awful haircuts the first 11 years of my life, Mom. Just so you know!)

So now it’s time for Boy Wonder to go and soak up some summer sun. He’ll come back a little taller, a little tanner and his mama’s very own first grader.

Team Wolverine and the Alaska Zoo

2010-05-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

(Note: I have acutal, real, live pictures of "Team Wolverine" and our adventures and will upload them tonight. Promise!)

This week I had the privilege to trek through the Alaska zoo with a crew of five kindergarten boys. Yes, that’s right, FIVE of them.

Talk about ants-in-the-pants, HEY YOU STOP RUNNINGANDGETOFFATHATFENCE nonstop action. It was a trip. And a treasure.

Boy Wonder was so proud that I was chaperoning, that he had to introduce me to every single kindergartner he could see. And some of the first graders, too. Not to mention, he tried to introduce me to some kids that didn’t even go to his school. Talk about a social kid. (I wonder if he’s going to be that excited when P and I show up to chaperone his first middle school dance? Hahahaha!)

There was no way in Hades I was going to be able to bark out commands to each antsy, fidgety boy in my group fast enough to keep them from being eaten by the grizzly bears or pecked to death by the horned owl, so before we set out, I named them “Team Penguin”—only to have the lame group next to us call themselves penguins. Lame! We ran through a list that included Team Duck, Team Dinosaur, Team Lemon (seriously, who’s kid was that??), and even Team Elephant, which I flatly REFUSED to entertain for one MOMENT, and finally “Team Wolverine.” (There was also a Team Polar Bear and the copycats, Team Penguin. A couple groups of girls didn’t get into the naming thing, and preferred to be the Princess Squad. Ha!)

Our first area was the “rescue” area, full of ravens (yay!) and owls (yay! yay!) some eagles (golden and red), a raccoon, some foxes (arctic and red) and finally a skunk. (Really? A skunk?) I was provided with an information sheet for each animal, and the only thing the kids wanted to know was where the animals were born. Which mostly wasn’t provided (except for the raccoon, who was born in El Paso, Texas. Same as Boy Wonder. Who thinks they might have been born at the same hospital, and now wants me to look and see if, in fact, they were both born at Las Palmas.) I doubt it , Boy Wonder, but I can look into it if it’s that important to you.

We wandered down to the tiger enclosure and found the tiger brothers both asleep. Same with the grizzly bears. One boy, Caleb, thought they looked “hung over.” I asked how he’d know what that looks like and he told me he heard it on Cartoon Network once. (I hate you, Cartoon Network.)

We heard an incessant yapping and I thought maybe the old neighbor lady’s dog had followed me somehow to Anchorage, but finally saw the coyote being a real whiner in the center of his cage. Boy Wonder’s best buddy, Sam, told me that it was “probably just pissed off.”
“He’s what?” I asked, needing clarification. That wasn’t what I thought it was, was it?
“Pissed off, Megan. He’s pissed off.”

“Oh, right Sam. Might not want to offer that explanation to Mrs. Ives, though. Could land you a yellow day, buddy.”

By the tenth animal cage we passed, we decided that Tuesdays were really “Nap Day” at the Alaska Zoo. Even the Dall Sheep were sleeping, and those things never sleep. Sleeping river otters, sleeping moose, sleeping caribou, sleeping camels, sleeping Tibetan yaks. My wolverines were getting impatient.

To keep Team Wolverine awake, we tromped across the bridge as loud as we could to scare up the troll from the “Three Billy Goats Gruff” (a story they’d read the week before and we’d just seen sleeping “Billy Goats”). I got dirty looks from the other chaperones, but I aimed my troll gun at them and pulled the trigger—the universal “Scarface” warning to “mind yer own biziness, eh?”

Our tromping then turned into “Troll Hunting” with a few snipers, some gunners in the rear, and a team scout. (Not to worry, I rotated our leader/scout after each animal exhibit, so the whole troop got to lead the men to troll battle.)

The big hit was the “water” exhibits. We saw seals peeing in the water (true, and gross, story), otters sleeping (surprise, surprise!) and Polar Bears chewing on tires and a white bucket. The water exhibits had upstairs and downstairs (underwater) views and by the time I got through lifting five boys multiple times from each vantage point, I felt buff like Jillian Michaels.

Hidden in the back, behind the polar bears and beside the sleeping lynx, was our buddy, the Wolverine. Not only was our namesake awake, he was OCD. That little animal ran the same lap circuit around his cage the entire 20 minutes we stood there admiring him. Every once in a while, he’d change his course and run next to the bars in front of us to give us a better view, but the guy never quit running. It was impressive, almost as impressive as the boys’ favorite wolverine fact: an adult wolverine is strong enough (and mean enough!) to take down a full-grown moose.

Was the moose placed across the trail from the wolverine on purpose, then? Is that sort of like sticking a mirror in front of a fighting fish’s bowl and letting it charge itself?

The finale was worth the 2+ hours of pulling boys off exhibits and out of trash cans. The wolf exhibit had a sibling set of six wolves (three brothers and three sisters) that romped and “wrassled” in front of us. As we were turning to leave, the pack gathered about four feet from Team Wolverine and began howling as loud as they could. I’ve never seen something so amazing in my life and I doubt I ever will again. It gave me chills. To show solidarity, my own wolverine pack joined in the chorus and I snapped away with my camera like a fiend. Moments like that don’t repeat themselves and I’ll carry the image of “my” boys singing with the wolf brothers as long as I live.

So there it is. Kindergarten comes to a close in a few weeks and I got to top it off with the “trip” of a lifetime. Here’s hoping you find your own “wolfsong” moment this week.

The Little Apartment that Could (But Can't Anymore)

2010-04-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, I get really nervous about change.

Oh, sure, I can dye my hair bright red at the drop of a hat or add $500 worth of tattoo ink to my skin, but when it’s time to dive into something that shakes up everything about the way we live, I get sentimental.

We’re moving next week. And, lordy, I am so so happy. But before this house became a nightmare, before the crazy lady upstairs and before the landlords let it slip into slum-dom, this house was something special to me at a point when I really needed.

I feel like reminisching a bit as we begin pulling pictures off the walls and taping up boxes.

Adventures on Young Drive:

A little more than three years ago this month, I was lost. I was on my own for the first time in a long, long time and I was scared. I had a crummy job that paid peanuts, but I had my son and I had my freedom. And you had a vacancy. Amazing how things work out like that.

When I shuttled the first box of dishes through thefront door, and rounded the kitchen wall, I was in awe. My very first kitchen with my very own dishes that I didn’t have to defend or “put up with.” I could put saints all over your wall just because I wanted to. There was no dishwasher, but I was happy to do our dishes by hand because they were, in fact, just ours. Me and the Boy Wonder. For the first time in a long, long time (maybe ever?) I was driving the ship and responsible for every single moving part--every bill, every dollar...everything. My responsiblity. And man, did it feel good. (Ok, so since then, I've come to realize it's not ALWAYS so fantastic to be responsible for everything, but at that point, I thought it was pretty freaking cool.)

I bought new furniture because I had none. In the divorce, I gave up everything just to keep the one thing I wanted—me. I remember the day the movers showed up five hours late with my new couches and the new bunkbed with a slide for Boy Wonder. Those guys took another three hours, at least, trying to build that stupid bed and on the first trip down the slide, Boy Wonder (he was three years old at the time) crashed when his feet got stuck on the metal, sending him flying into the wall. He called it a “bad bed!” and avoided that slide for about a month. He stayed with his father every other week for a while there, and when it was just me alone in that house, I felt at peace. I had my space. I had my freedom. And while I didn’t have my son for 7 days at a time, I knew he’d be back soon enough.

For the first year and a half, I didn’t own much by way of a cable or entertainment. I had an old-fashioned TV that had a VCR deck in it, and when I moved in, the previous tenant had somehow left two VHS tapes behind—“Phenomena” and “The Sound of Music.” At that time, I’d just found out about my brain aneurysm a few weeks before, so I had absolutely NO desire to watch “Phenomena,” despite how great of a movie it was.

So each night I’d lie on the world’s most uncomfortable futon (Boy Wonder got the new bed, not me), with boxes upon boxes of unpacked knickknacks, and eat dinner with Julie Andrews. Every night. For weeks at a time. I’d never seen the movie before and now it’s one of my favorites. For a while there, I felt just how Frauline Maria felt—in between two worlds, trying to find her place.
My landlords were my close friends. I was extremely close with the other residents and getting out and exploring the wild Eagle River nightlife (I’m kidding here), helped move me forward at a time when I just wanted to hide away for a few months’ longer.

Times changed. They always do and they always should. Neighbors moved on. The landlords sold the place off.

At the same time, P (and eventually Boo) filled that void that missing in our lives. And this perfect-fitting, insulating home that I’d loved now was overcrowded and costing us both a lot of money with the long commute. We had more laundry than we could keep up with and always running out of quarters. We inherited a neighbor who makes us crazy. Dogs that charged us whenever we stepped outside.

Our lives are moving in a direction where we need to be closer to Anchorage. Our friends are there. Our jobs our there. Education is there. Life is there.

We’d lost hope for finding a decent, safe place that we could make a home in the city until some good friends of ours came to our rescue. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? In 2007, I was just about out of hope that I’d ever find a place for Boy Wonder and myself that I could afford that would make us happy when the housing fairy waved her magic wand at us. Happened again in 2010. A beautiful place with three bedrooms, a washer, a dryer, a dishwasher. A place to start up new and make a home.

I couldn’t be happier, and in a way, I owe a big part of it to that little apartment on Young Drive that gave me that second chance to start over.

Farewell, little abode… and hello, Anchorage!

Balance and organization: And other lies we once believed

2010-04-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

You know what?

Parenthood is tough.

You know what else?

Anyone who attempts it in addition to any other sort of activity is crazy with a capital CR. Just sayin'.

I’ve been chasing this dream of the perfect, balanced life for years since Boy Wonder was born. It was tough enough when it was just him and I, but add in the missing, crucial elements of P and Boo to our life? A couple careers and a full-time education? Kindergarten? Enriching activities? The desire to do some enriching activities of our own?

Ohmigod, I think P and I are headed for a loony bin.

Lemme add some horror to this fantasy fiction: we don’t own a dishwasher. Or a washer/dryer. We fight the beast of chaos four quarters at a time and with stank-ass drying towels taking up our counters at all times.

But fear not. Our lives are not in peril and I’ve yet to have the school call to complain that Boy Wonder smelled funny.

Along the way, I think we’ve developed a method to make the best of what we’ve got—and I’m pretty sure we’ve given up perfection. I think I tossed that out with some dirty diapers about ten months ago.

1. We embrace the beast. Her name is Gigantor and she consists of mismatched socks, stained bibs, mama’s work pants, and P’s jiu-jitsu shirts. Some days we can beat Gigantor into submission, only to find her cousin, Huge-appatamus (consisting of stacks of folded clean clothes) waiting for us on our bed at 10 p.m., just as we’re trying to pass out. Huge-appatamus gets moved to the floor (temporarily, of course!) and within a day, dirty underwear gets mixed in and we can’t tell what’s clean and it all gets transferred to the dirty stack, where Gigantor is waiting with open dirty-towel arms. We know the cruel cycle and we embrace it now.

2. Our baby looks like a million bucks when he leaves the house. His older brother will look straight GQ. There’s a good chance, however, that their parents might look like vagrants. Boo will have matching socks, a coordinated hoodie to match his Polo jeans, and gel in his hair. His nose will be wiped and there will be no remnants of lunch left on his face. Dominic will have on a Hurley shirt and brand new Nikes. He’ll even get a spritz of Guess cologne and a stick of mint gum to make sure he’s “so fresh and so clean, clean.” P, however, will still be wearing yesterday’s sweat pants. His new, clean shirt will have a piece of peanut butter bagel stuck to it from Boo’s breakfast. I will have crusties in my eyes and last night’s make up on. I will wipe the bottom of the mascara from beneath my eye and hope it passes for smudged, smoky eyeliner. It usually won’t.

3. If we are busy, or if we just don’t feel like it, we will ignore the dishes until there are no spoons left. Then we will panic and steal one of the baby’s safety spoons to eat our ice cream with until one of us caves and tackles the dishes with a nasty scowl on our face.

4. We will have a long list of things we want done each day, only to pass out, face down, on this list and drool on it. Sorry, list. You were conceived with the best of intentions, but you’ll likely get tossed in the over-full trashcan. Right next to the electric bill we didn’t notice. It’ll be ok. The disconnect notice usually gives you a 24-hour grace period, right?

5. When we are going somewhere fun, the last five minutes before we leave will probably be panic-filled and one parent will likely not be speaking to the other one. The conversation will go down something like this: He: “Did you pack the diaper bag?” She: “Exactly when was I supposed to do that? I was getting them dressed. Did you pack the diaper bag?” He: “Yeah, right in between feeding the dog, putting the dishes away, and finding the lost blanket.” She: “Yeah, well I was busy finding the left shoe and pulling the baby’s hands out of the toilet again because SOMEBODY left the damn door open…” Silence ensues for the first six miles down the road. Luckily, all is soon forgotten once Boo overturns his bag of cheerios on the floor of Mommy’s beloved truck. Scraping up crushed cereal products together has a real bonding effect on a married couple. True story.

6. We forgo fighting for sleep. Truly. I’m sure there are times P would like to get to the bottom of why I can never screw caps back on the milk or OJ. I’d love to know why he can’t toss his clothes into the dirty clothes right before he gets into bed. But you know what? We haven’t had eight straight hours of sleep in 14 months and we’re not gonna jeopardize the precious few minutes we do get sorting out the gory details.

7. We acknowledge the fact that sometimes our kids don't get the memo. There are days when P needs to study. I work on deadlines. And sometimes, more often that we'd like, our kids just don't give a damn. There are owwies to kiss and Wii games to load and babies to squish. Our priorties don't always match up and P and I have learned to sometimes throw in the towel for a minute or two. We can blame them later in life for our unrealized dreams if we need to. :)

7. Bottom line: “good enough” really is good enough at this point. Despite the fact that I’d like to take a lit match to our unorganized house much of the time, we manage to keep our priorities straight enough on a daily basis not to waste our blessings. At the end of the day, we know our kids won’t be young for very long, so we tiptoe around the roadside Lego bombs, we use broken laundry baskets as impromptu baby gates, we leave peanut butter and jelly smears on the counter for a couple hours, and we get down on the floor and we play with our kids. We drive them 45 miles for a swim lesson. We pack too many toys in their diaper bags and bring the damn Nintendo DS with us wherever we go, despite how loud Boy Wonder likes to play it. We swallow our pride and ask the boss for the morning off to go see “Stone Soup” with the kindergarten class. We’re mildly surprised when we get it with a blessing to boot.

We think the universe conspires, once in a while, to remind us how great everything really is.

Life is good, my friends, life is good.

Searching for it

2010-04-04T21:22:00.001-07:00

You know the feeling.

In tennis, it's the perfect spot on the racket where the return just about sings and the ball goes right where it's supposed to. In boxing, it's the "off" button you nick on your opponents jawline with just enough pressure to turn the lights out.

In jiu-jitsu, well, according to Patrick, it's the part of your game where you don't have to think...the groove you find where your body just "knows" what the opponent is planning...and you just do. (I, personally, have never experienced that in jiu-jitsu...I manage to know just about everything they don't do. But that's another story.)

It's the sweet spot. And in sports, it's easy to pinpoint.

In life, however, the sweet spot is tougher to define. It's a moving target where none of the pieces are ever aligned at the same time.

I've been absent from the blog (and much of life) for just about five or six weeks now, and while I couldn't really come up with a good excuse, just know that I was out there seeking something.

This time of year is tough on me. It's dirty outside constantly--the snow melt and the dirt mixed together makes for a dull, gray looking city that isn't pretty to travel through. We live in a hovel with a psycho upstairs. The bus was wearing thin. The people on the bus were wearing thin. There were collections and medical bills haunting me. It was a job that hated me as much as I hated it. It was the extra ten pounds I had left that weren't going anywhere. It was a laundry pile that never seemed to shrink and dishes that never seemed clean. There was a serious case of writer's block. Did I mention the two rejections I got in the mail from Harlequin on the same day? (Yeah, thanks for that one!) Lots of thought about giving up the whole "dreams" thing and just being a pencil pusher the rest of my life. Life was bland. It had no taste. It had no color. It was March and I had no idea what would drive me through to the happier season in Alaska. I felt empty, with no direction.

Then I thought about life's sweet spot and how it's never really that far away if you think about it.

Life's sweet spot is when there's more paycheck than bills at the end of the month, it's gas in your tank and enough money in the bank when that tank goes low, it's a week straight of babies sleeping through the night, it's getting to bed on time, taking your vitamins, and knocking out two chapters in two days on your story. It's no collection letters in your mailbox. No meetings ALL WEEK at work. It's clothes without wrinkles. Mornings you manage to do your hair AND your makeup BEFORE you leave the house. It's waking up on time. Eating breakfast. Taking time for that cup of Darjeeling at 3 p.m. each day.

The sweet spot is taking your sons to swim lessons and getting in the pool with them--the tiny little scratches you get all over your arms from their sheer panic and joy at being in the water. It's packing a kindergarten lunch each morning. It's your husband's coffee mug on the kitchen table next to yours. It's a baby who smiles despite the pain of molars breaking through the sensitive skin in his mouth. It's a boy who wants to tame dragons and who tapes paper monsters all over your doors just so he can fight them with his paper towel roll sword. It's the phone call from your mother at the exact moment you need to talk. Or the text message from your dad telling you he's proud of you--for no reason at all.

It's big things. It's little things. It's everything. It's amazing how off track I managed to get myself...and how lucky I am that I can pull myself back together again.

Just about a week ago, ourGracie Barra family suffered a pretty tough loss when one of our own took his own life. It'd been a few years since he and I'd last hung out, but for a time there, we had a lot in common and got to be good friends. Our sons are the same age, and if there is one thing I'll remember about him, it's how much he loved his child and how hard he worked to make a better life for them both.

Nobody knows what happened to cause him to feel that this was his only option, and I'm certain there's plenty of us who will wonder how much more we might have done. I've been thinking about this friend since I got the news and I wonder how badly he must have been hurting behind those bright smiles and hearty hugs he always offered us so readily.

If anything can come out of this loss, I hope maybe it's that we learn to look around at the people we love, the ones who matter to us, and to remind them that maybe their own "sweet spot" isn't as far off as they might think.

Maybe all we need to do is remind each other once in a while that life is beautiful, even when it isn't, and if the road is tough, we're here to help. Maybe we need to remind each other that life is what it is because of who's in it--not what's in it.

I've spent a long time searching for the sweet spot, and I know that I'll never be done--but for the time being, it feels good to be back.

Happy Easter, everyone...