is this thing on?

I haven't blogged in ages. What happened to a photo and/or post a day. I couldn't tell you.

BUT I want to share a giveaway opportunity:
http://tollipop.typepad.com/tollipop/2009/04/the-great-tollipop-giveaway.html

Go there quick and get a cance at some lovely little prints.

Maybe I'll come back and write something-share some poems perhaps.

late night

The kidlets are sleeping and I'm alone with my thoughts. I can think of other things I should do but this is good for ME. At least I think it is.

A little perplexed how to get more movement in my day so I'm not boxed into some kind of exercise routine I gag on. I danced briefly with Uly to a song he likes. I pushed him a half dozen times or more up and down outside..I tried to go fast enough to trot occasionally. That is not enough but a tiny bit is better than none at all?

I'm hampered currently by the weather and by the inconsistency of Carm's schedule. I could be firm about my schedule but its not my nature.

I'm thinking creatively and strategically about The Land of La. It has had the desired effect so far. I am visualizing it as a success for everyone involved.

I need to research if freelance writing is viable as a income stream. I am willing to invest my time and energy to that.

I really need to research more about raising fancy chickens.

I want another way to keep track of my days. This is partly helpful but I need more detail and I want it to be daily.

I have two ideas for Sophie's birthday presents but I don't know if I realistically have the time.
I gotta try to do at least one of them.

I want to spend a little time updating the links to my favorite blogs. I really do enjoy them. They are a bit of a time suck in one way but they are terribly inspiring in most ways. Just seeing and reading about all the other daily lives out there. People pursuing their dreams, raising their kids, trying to follow their bliss, taking chances, going against the grain. All that good stuff.

thinking a lot

and that's what always gets me into trouble. Not real trouble mind you, just I tie myself in mental knots.

I was thinknig today while I was sweeping, that my attitude towards home cleanliness has changed. I used to not really care, and that probably gave me more time for creativity (well not caring and not having kids!) but today I was wondering if in my incrementally encroaching maturity, MAYBE my attitude about it has changed because my attitude towards ME has changed.
I maybe have admitted to myself that I DO care what other folks think, I am willing to take into consideration now the intensity of first impressions and how negative first impressions are hard to shake. I also think I have come to a place where I genuinely care about myself more and there by care more about my personal environment more. I'll NEVER! be a neatnik. but I can more often embrace the Zen of housework and the lesson that you just have to do maintenance in life and its a lot of the same thing over and over again.....the dishes, the laundry, sweeping, vacuuming, scrubbing stuff. It can't be changed. The maintenance will always need to be done. Only your attitude towards it can change.

I also try really hard trying not to waste energy wishing and fighting about what other people in the house will and won't do. Ther are exceptions, I won't allow complete slobbery. I just made peace with the concept that if filth or some chore bothers me that is not done, than I just do it. I will ask for help, suggest help, but I won't bitch if it doesn't happen. It makes a postive differnece for me.

I'm really working on the psychology of my clutter and problems with getting systems or organization in place that would make my life easier. I waste WAY TOO MUCH time just looking for things. It makes me crazy!! I know some of my complication are the kids messing with the family desk. I also have to mesh with someone else and we haven't found something yet that works for both of us. I'm hoping google calendar could help but we haven't experimented yet. So much of the projects I have would get done almost effortlessly if I was organized and then I fantasize maybe, that I could do even more things.

This organization issue really hampers my homeschooling fantasy.

It also hampers my quest for creativity. I'm pleased that I'm trying to work through it and try to understand it rather than just getting disgusted and giving up.

If I can just figure it out slowly even it will help immeasurably. Especially for the new projects that are unfolding.

I've had to compromise with myself and come to terms with the fact that I realistically can probably only blog once a week. I may take pictures more often. I can't beat myself up because the blogging doesn't happen. Its not productive. I do wish I could use it better as a kind of daily journal but paper may be more feasible.

I need pen and paper on my body more often.

I need to finish my notion that different bags for different purposes will help me.

I remembered I am desperate for more magic in my life. I haven't yet defined what that magic is...or if it even requires a definition or description. I think it has to do with art and nature.

My kids are amazing but soooo exhausting.

My grownup kid is going to Europe for the summer and I'm REALLY jealous. I want to sneak away and go with them. I would seriously consider it but I'm really good at making excuses and rationalizations why I won't go. sad isn't it.

I love trees. I love the play of shadow and sun on a floor or a wall.

I want to explore my femininity.
I've decided to celebrate my clutter by photographing it.

ya know, I can be an artist if want to.

time flies

I read somewhere that the sensation of time flying as we age is caused by the fact we don't record what we've done with our days. So the days have a tendency to blur together.

I like that idea. SO in addition to making this a creativity log (haha) I want to make it just a daily log.

Wish me luck!


Also really trying to change my food habits. more nuts fruits and veggies as staples rather than as snacks. I'm so trained to think a meal is meat, bread or pasta and a veggie. It can be soooooo many things.

Right now i'm eating an apple instead of a bowl of cereal. And i'm going to make brown paper bags of my own snack mix to carry with me always.

I'm one of those people who don't understand the concept of a schedule or routine but would most likely benefit from one or both.

This past tuesday night I went to Follow The Buffalo writing workshop at El Rancho Grande and was glad I did because it genuinely recharged MY interest in my story. Its been lying lonesome and untended for so long. Even if I never publish it, my psyche needs to finish it. I need that experience.

Uly was awfully cute just now playing the piano and singing his own material. Priceless.

Sophie was stressing this morning over her looming test of the day on simple machines. I hope the worry doesn't ruin her day. There are 6 simple machines. Do you know what they are?

The pics are my mom and Uly playing with the pigeons and gulls in Fells Point on tuesday.
They are phone pics, but you knew that.

does it ever make sense

Why do we have the utter illusion that if we just do this one thing, if just this undertaking or project gets done, then we will be better some how. We will feel more in control, more on top of things? Why do we insist on believing this fallacy? I mean, really, why?

Its so self defeating. IT will never all get done. NEVER. Something always comes to take the place of the thing that got done, that isn't done.

I beat myself senseless with this merry go round. I do sometimes get the satisfaction of seeing things get done, the joy of having a project come to fruition. Its particularly satisfying when its a creative project.

But house maintenance, laundry, dishes, all that stuff is eternal and never ever finished. I try so hard to be Zen about it and just try to be present and try to to do my best but ultimately I find it tedious and dull and unfullfilling.

Thats when I bust out and do a craft or something. Paint a wall that doesn't need painting.
Anyway, all that was to preface the fact that our Valentine's craft is done.

If i dig through my archives I can give credit to the original crafter who came up with the idea for the tree but I'm lazy right now. I promise i will find it.

The painting is one of my favorites...not sure who the artist is...its a mermaid and a man in a desperate embrace at waters edge.

I haven't been taking a photo every day and I have't been creative everyday but I am thinkng about it regularly. I have to figure out how to post the crafty/creative posts here to Creative Every Day blog.

I did make mini meat loaves again for dinner tonight. I will try to photograph them but I don't know how photogenic they are.

I went to accupuncture today after a long time. It was delightful.

Had a great readig at Mians' this past sunday. I read a couple pieces and got some compliments afterwards. That always feels good.

I want to take a good head shot of myslef for various reasons one of which is to show off my new hair.

phooey on personal challenges

I was SO intent on really following through on posting everyday iwth a pic or at the very least, once a week. How did that go? Last post -Jan 14.

I'm not gonna beat up on myself but it is frustrating.

I'll post a pic and that's about it.

Here is Valentine crafting underway. I'll show the finished product soon. Its only taken a week or so.

uh what day is it?

Missed yesterday's post because Uly was still clingy and by the time I got free time my brain was crispy. When he was napping I worked like a maniac to clean after the rearrange of the living room.
That's not creative per se but a necessity.

I don't think I took any pictures yesterday either. It was just work and mother kinda day.

Today was essentially a repeat although Uly is finally feeling more like himself. But I had to run around and take him to an appointment and do the school run.

I did take a couple pictures today. I need to teach myself more about camera settings. But the experimenting is also teaching me.

I would like to do a montage of the different ways the living room has been arranged but I'm not sure i have pictures of all of them.

I also still want to post a montage of my hair cut experience.

I may end up using this space as a kind of to do list if I'm not careful. But sometimes thats an essential kind of reflection too.

I definitely want to get either my novel closer to complete this summer or a poetry chapbook published. I know what would be easier but I'm not sure what would be more satisfying. I am depending on the Follow The Buffalo workshop to implement some of the discipline I'm lacking.
Maybe they would want to do a farm retreat. Although they may not be around much in th summer.

sorry this is a boring post but I am working hard at doing it everyday.

Day 6

hi! missed day 5 post because i had a Minas' poetry reading and then a migraine.

Today i haven't taken a pic for the day. wait! I just got one of our cat will post it tomorrow. no I'll just do it now.
but I did rearrange the living room so I'll take pics of that tomorrow.

Really! using my word for the year-effortlessness. It seems to help me just take the little steps I need to get things done rather than getting nothing done because I can't see beyond the big picture. I got a lot of poetry event stuff done today in 10 minute increments. Seems pointless at first but it really worked. woot!

It was refreshing to have Carm help me with the rearrange. Things got done more tidily.

Could write more but I'm tired. Need to chill a little.

day 4 i think

Today was a long day. Its still a long day. Uly is ultra clingy.
Tried to do what I could today while he was asleep. I chose practical stuff. I can see my desk.

Anyway. I took a couple pictures-here they are.

Tried to do new recipe again but all my meat was frozen.

I can't recall anything specifically creative I did today.... oh wait I further edited my poem and posted it to my critique forum. So that's a good thing.

The kid fussing and no grandparents tonight so short post.

Day 3 of creativity?

Well at first I didn't think i did anything creative. I was going to just use my daily photo. But then I realized I painted a rock with my daughter. My motivation was quality time for her and I see now it helped my personal challenge. woot.

Today was a little tough. Another day of Uly being a sick little guy and therefore my 2nd skin. I don't like feeling so helpless. But I just tried to spend time and make him happy that way. He's snuggling with his grandpa now watching Blues Clues.

I feel like my major goal is finding a system for getting poetry stuff done. The event planning and getting press out is such a huge task because I don't have a habitual system. I waste time looking for stuff always or crisis management. It will require a major information organization. And that thought overwhelms me. automatically. SO then I try to remember my word for the year. Instead of a resolution at New Year's, I took the suggestion of a Facebook friend and just picked a word to act as a kind of signpost throughout the year. I chose effortlessness. I thought that resonated with me. Thats ultimately what I would like undertakings to feel like, and daily chores to feel like-effortless. So, when I feel spastic or like my to do list is overwhelming I remember my word. So far, it does seem to be making a good impression on my psyche. I'll try to find the blurb about it and post it here for you.

Day 2

Tough being creative today. Uly was awake most of the night throwing up. So today I dragged a bit and was his shadow.

While he napped a blissfully long nap, I got some overdue laundry folding done. I'm going to count the extra attention to "correct" folding as my creativity because usually I just fling into a drawer willy nilly. Today I tried to remember how my mother in law showed me to fold patiently. I got frustrated pretty quickly but I did try to stick with it. I even rollered off all the fuzz on pajamas rather than pretend it wasn't on there.

I think creativity can be defined as stretching a little, trying new things as well as "traditional" artistic pursuits. Maybe creativity and zen have attention in common. its important to pay attention.

I took a picture today too. Its an effort to pretend its spring. I have a hard time with dreary drizzly winter anyway and the blahs of winter with the sickies just makes me want spring. Summer even.

The in laws are here which is why this post is possible.

oh! AND I tried another crockpot recipe that turned out well. Pulled Barbecue Chicken. Here's the link:
http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/search.php?id=586

Cretive 2009 Day 1 officially

Trying to do a photo a day and/or something else creative each day. Today I combined them and took a photo of the new recipe I tried today. Its turkey and squash soup. I really enjoyed it!
Here's the link if you want to try it. A light but warming dish.
http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/search.php?id=664

I think cooking is creative. I'm a messy cook so I don't always want to undertake a new recipe. Sometimes cleanup is more effort than the meal prep.

The camera seems to be working more consistently. Happy about that.

The rainy weather, is making me crazy, I think this is only second day in a row but feels like longer.

Yesterday's creative endeavor was notes for a poem. Today I edited a bit. It might be a keeper.

I also did a lot of emailing for PIB today..getting ready for "Who Do You Love?" Should probably post the flyer here...

need to begin a Flickr for just me, have one that's been absorbed by PIB.

Must get the clothes on to the porch tonight for Purple Heart. did it!

Christmas stuff may have to wait until tomorrow to be packed.

(crap can't upload my photo. Will try again later) yay it worked later!

Got a lot done at the farm yesterday when I grabbed stuff for Purple Heart. Still so much to do. If I work steadily two days a week I should be able to have a room for us if we wanna stay overnight. woo hoo.

oh! I'll find the site that triggered the Creative Day 2009 and link it here.

self image

I wanted to attempt to map the impressions I've had since somewhat radically changing my hair. Going from long and a naturally occurring color to short and artificial color combined with facial hair removal and/or waxing.

I've always KNOWN that first impressions are like an imprint. I also know that its difficult to go against the grain of how a society imprints certain impressions.

I'm no different than before the hair change excepting maybe a hair less self consciousness but I am definitely getting treated differently. Its a positive change. But it strikes me peculiar.

Its like being my own anthropology/sociology experiment. I just don't have a control group/clone.

I have real experiment to perform soon. I was in a tiny italian restaurant and I noticed that my waiter paid much closer attention to two other female customers. I don't know if our ages differed but I would say they were more coiffed. I was almost anti-coiffed ( is that a word?) SO now I will go back and see if the waiters' attention alters since I have joined the coiffed ranks.
I think it should be a good comparison. I was outgoing and conversational with him the first visit but I felt our interaction was just professional or perfunctory. With the pair of other girls he seemed sincerely engrossed in the conversation.

I also, uncharacteristically for me, arranged an appointment to try on vintage gowns for an upcoming special event I'm hosting. Was it the hair that gave me the confidence or the way the proprietor interacted with me differently becasue of the hair-Or both?

Even the waxed eyebrows make a change...I had very thick dark brooding eyebrows. Now I have "normal" feminine eyebrows though they feel slightly transvestite to me and a little on the permanently surprised scale. I AM able to apply eyeshadow better, or more specifically, there is more surface area FOr eyeshadow and I do like that.

The most consistent comment is that it makes me look younger. I would have thoguht long hair was youthful. I wonder if the waxed brow isn't some of the age removing?

I definitely!! feel like I need to sass up my wardrobe now!

I'll try to keep updates of interesting hair related occurences.....

Christmas and a broken camera

Its funny how Christmas always sneaks up on me. Every year just before Thanksgiving I start getting the itch that I should be getting ready for Christmas. But I put it off and get distracted and then Thanksgiving comes and then its bang! Black Friday which is actually Buy Nothing Day for us because i don't like doing the crowded stores with crazy people thing. I tend to buy local as much as possible.
ANYWAY so then before I know it, its like maybe three weeks before Chrsitmas. We start debating our tree..we contemplate a tree with a root ball every year but I want a big tree so we can't afford that and I swear I'll research it in advance but I don't so we go somewhere nearby.
THIS YEAR we really waited until the last moment. This week. 10 days before Christmas. and it hasn't been feeling a Christmas Tree to ME because we had to forego anything fragile because The Beast will attack the tree. And if anything glass broke and I didn't know and he cut himself I would feel like dirt. SO we just aren't using anything glass. SO the tree looks naked.

AND to complicate my habits around Christmas, we had the Ornament Party in NOVEMBER! NEVER again. I need the party to get me in the spirit IF I'm not. Like this year. But we already had it. So its just me and the kidlets and the husband to festoon the house and create the festive atmosphere. I'm feeling a little nervous. I EVEN missed all the goofy Christmas tv programs and a handful of Christmas events around town I wanted to catch. I was REALLY excited for Alistair Sim's Scrooge at the Senator but I mISSED it.
crap.
SOooooooo finally Sophie badgered me into sorting th ornaments and bringing them downstairs and she started putting them on. Still not kicking in the spirit. I'm starting to feel I'm skirting the edges of Scrooge ya know.

For a couple days Soph plugs haphazardly at the ornaments, and Uly shakes the tree and flings low ornaments around the room and I yearn for my glass ornaments because I think the tree looks bare.

Today I jumped in the decorating fray because it was my last hope. Ok a little drama. I plugged away in my annoying perfectionist way getting endlessly frustrated. I finally just say it is what it is and I have to leave it alone.

But just now. In the darkness and quiet of sleeping little ones and no one else in the house, I'm typing and I look over at the tree. It has transformed! Christmas magic arrived while I wasn't paying attention AND IT LOOKS ALL CHRITMAS-Y!!!!!!

This is what I look forward to about Christmas. Its always so hard to explain to the little Scrooges in my life. There's something transformative and reassuring about enacting the rituals. Bringing out the sentimental ornaments, baking cookies, hanging the Christmas cards...doing the things that bring a yearly continuity. And its no ONE thing that marks the arrival of Christmas for me...its the culmination of the little things that seem meaningless on their own.

There is all the adult knowledge of the world and its wrongs and dreads and poverty and death and wars, but Christmas, the holiday season, allows that tiny extra thread of optimism and soulfulness to express itself. Its carrying on despite the impracticality or absuridty of it all because it makes you feel good and helps others feel good too. Even in just small ways. Like hot chocolate, a fireplace crackling, a cookie smell in the oven. But what I'm learning is that these rituals cannot be awakened alone. The performance alone doesn't awaken anything. Both the pageantry and the goodwill require a recipricocity of human beings.

So truly do yourself a favor and let go of the competitive, commercial trauma of the Christmas season and just bask in the simplicities that make the heart feel good.

Once upon a time I was a real writer. I put things on paper and went back later and looked at it and made changes and was happy when it was good.

I'm not a real writer anymore. I'm something else. I don't know what to call that something else.

Ok. I lied. I didn't EVER think I was a REAL writer.

One day in the near future I will put words on paper, go back and read them, change them, pretty them and make them into a real live manuscript and send it to lots of people who may or may not like it. But one of those people is going to find a reason to put it in bookstores and then I will be neurotic and happy simultaneously. I imagine that then I will be a REAL writer but i'm not entirely sure.



In case you were wondering, parenting is HARD.


It keeps dawning on me that I'm never going to get IT all done. not ever.
What I need to figure out is how to be ok with that and WHAT to do when I can do SOMETHING.

I have an aching desire, a twisted, pathological need to be cool. I can't define what cool is.

I'm a pacifist who likes to shoot BIG guns.

I like nature and all that goes with trying to keep some around but I like me some big FAST engines too. Loud ones draped in shiny chrome.

I can't decide if bitching is healthy or just annoying.

I want a media agreement that there must be equal time for good news.


Its emotionally frustrating to have brainstorms and rarely have them come to fruition.

I've recently become a different person financially but I don't feel like a different person.

My kids make me smile.

eating seasonally

dumb title but kinda what I'm about lately.

REALLY concerned about the crap going into our bodies becasue all the food we eat for convenience is just one food-corn.

I've recently read The Omnivore's Dilemma and it was sobering. I intuited a lot of what he was pointing out but here was some validation.

SO I'm working towards eating real food. This means, mostly, cooking from scratch. Tough with a toddler but making the effort anyway.

Today i ate frozen waffles (mostly a no no but its good ingredients ) with farmers market white nectarines. oh man was it good. the nectarines were soo juicy they were the topping
and the syrup.
Meant to take pic but batteries in camera dead.

its nice to be dreaming again

Gosh I just can't get into the blogging habit. It seems like such a theoretically easy thing to do.
I enjoy reading other blogs and I'm inspired by them and I see how absolutely useful they can be. And yet here this poor blog sits abandoned.

There is a learning curve disadvantage. Things I'd like to do here but don't know how and a there are small people in my life who don't like when I sit at the computer.

But the smallest person is getting bigger and

woo hoo The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

Hi!
I'm really excited that this book is about to hit the shelves any second now! Joshilyn Jackson has become one of my really favorite writers...I discovered her blog, Faster Than Kudzu http://www.joshilynjackson.com/mt/
and I have never laughed out loud so much at a blog. SOooooo when I realized she had published real live books I found them and read them voraciously, oh so fast I reached the end and now I have another one to devour yay!

So please do yourself a favor and pick up this new work and prepare to get sucked in.

Here's a little blurb to whet your whistle:

Laurel Gray Hawthorne needs to make things pretty, whether she's helping her mother make sure the very literal family skeleton stays buried or turning scraps of fabric into nationally acclaimed art quilts. Her estranged sister Thalia, an impoverished Actress with a capital A, is her polar opposite, priding herself on exposing the lurid truth lurking behind middle class niceties. While Laurel's life seems neat and on track--a passionate marriage, a treasured daughter, and a lovely home in suburban Victorianna--everything she holds dear is suddenly thrown into question the night she is visited by the ghost of a her 14-year old neighbor Molly Dufresne.

The ghost leads Laurel to the real Molly floating lifelessly in the Hawthorne's backyard pool. Molly's death is inexplicable--an unseemly mystery Laurel knows no one in her whitewashed neighborhood is up to solving. Only her wayward, unpredictable sister is right for the task, but calling in a favor from Thalia is like walking straight into a frying pan protected only by Crisco. Enlisting Thalia's help, Laurel sets out on a life-altering journey that triggers startling revelations about her family's guarded past, the true state of her marriage, and the girl who stopped swimming.

I lost some days somewhere

I am glad to report that I am mostly in the habit of walking now. This weekend was a bit of a bust. I only got a mile-ish walk at 5 year old pace, with a stop at the park, but we needed the sunshine that had poured forth briefly after days of grimness.

Then friday at mall was a goofy walk because Uly was impish and fussy and didn't sleep the whole time but then I probably made up for what I lost by shlepping him all over the mall and then to trader Joe's and then back to the car with a full bag of groceries and then I did something else physical but damned if I know what it was.

I think thursday may have been a day where I walked without Uly but lost track of how many laps I walked. OR Soph had a snow day and I didn't walk at all.
I think that I walked monday and tues.

I find that I am less frustrated in the course of the day if I get out and about. I also remember that I like physical activity and have begun daydreaming about what else I can do.
I really want to add some yoga and strength training because everything but my belly is shrinking. I probably also need to start trimming my food intake since Uly will be weaning soonish. I read the other day you only need 500 more calories a day for breastfeeding. That may be scientifically true but if I don't eat like a horse when I nurse I would probably get to a point where I would start just randomly eating people who crossed my path.

Got major brainstorm fever lately. I hope I can carry them to fruition. I need to do significantly more research and buckle down and get soem words on paper and get some more human beings on board. But I do feel like they are feasible.

I Did Walk The Neighborhood

and surprisingly made better time than i did ever! Like a twenty five minute mile. yeah. groovy.

So that was saturday. It was cold and grey-ish but i went anyway while Carm had Uly. So glad I did it.

Sunday I got a kind of power walk at walk looking for tennis shoes to buy for myself. About 20 minutes or so. some consistency.

Then monday got to mall and got probably 5 or 6 circuits in. At least a 1/2 hour of quick walk. And tuesday too!

SO much better when Uly is in stroller.

Today got nuthin..visit Soph at school day which I missed because Uly was fussy :(

Tomorrow will be back.

Feeling definite attitude improvement and better energy. MUST keep it up.

Why don't human beings hibernate the winter?