In the Thick of It

There’s only the thick
In the thick of it
Twenty-four seven
Three hundred sixty five
Always on, always with
Never alone
In the thick of it
Early work, evening work
Dinner laundry breakfast lunch
Dinner laundry breakfast lunch
“Mama will you read me a story?”
More stories than time
More babies than laps
In the thick of it
Joyous screeching, angry screaming
Noisy running
Happy giggly noisy chaos
Swirling around and around and around the little house
“Mama watch this!”
In the thick of it
Lessons to plan in the wee night hours
Stealing moments of silence
Tired babies to tuck in
So tired mama can get tired time to be her tired self
And to do the things that should be ready
When the first eye pops open tomorrow
Twenty-four seven
Three hundred sixty five
In the thick of it
There are new friends, old friends, hurt friends, friends hurt
Boyfriends, girlfriends, best friends, not friends
There’s “See you tonight, dear,”
As he heads out the door
And passing in the hall
Is when you see him most of all
In the thick of it
Drivers’ licenses make him stay up now
Papa’s turn to be tired
Spending tired time
Hoping his baby is not too tired
And the other drivers are not too tired
Mind wandering
Pushing away thoughts as fast as they come
In the thick of it
There is a family
In a bubble
And there are babies
Big now
Pushing, pushing against the bubble
Elbow here, fist there, knees everywhere
Pushing, pushing until the bubble that holds them
No longer has smooth round skin
But distorted, lumpy, pushing spots
Where the membrane stretches so thin it becomes nearly transparent until
POP!
There is driving, there is a dorm room, there are classes, there is long highway
There is now a Self
You are both so proud of her
You are both so scared for her
In the thick of it
There is more pushing
There is more stretching
There is POP! POP! POP!
More work
More tired
More highway
More hurry money deadlines now

And then

You are at last alone
In the thin of things
It is quiet
Quiet in the garden
Quiet during movies
Quiet reading novels
Quiet in your chairs
Having quiet conversations
In a quiet house
You are looking at each other
“I love you,” you say
“I love you,” he says,
Quietly
The heavy, deafening quiet throbs in your ears
You look down
You see your lap
You feel your lap
It is empty
It is empty and weightless
The emptiness is crushing
The longing makes your legs hurt

“I WANT TO BE IN THE THICK OF THINGS!” you scream.
I want to be in the thick of things
Twenty-four seven
Three hundred sixty five
Is it feast or famine?

Then I choose feast.

I will eat it up, drink it up, nourished, full
I will feast.

I will choose to feast.

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screened

Last night, we had a small party where Jeff set off the rest of our fireworks that were rained out on the Fourth. One of his work friends came with his wife and their newborn baby, his 7-year old daughter and her 6-year old daughter. Sassy was thrilled, of course. I thought it was probably a good night to have guests since I was feeling a bit in a funk and figured being forced to “fake it ‘til I make it” was going to be the easiest way to improve my mood.

My dad showed up a few minutes before this other family, and we all sat down on the porch to watch the show. I didn’t have much in the way of snacks, so I set out some dried apple rings from TJ’s and popped up a quick batch of popcorn.

When I came outside with the popcorn, my dad commented on how good the apple rings are. “They were chewy,” he said, “Didn’t expect that. But the flavor was so good it made up for it.”

I teased, “Well, they were dried fruit. What did you expect? Crunchy?”

My snarky joke went way over his head when he nodded and said how he thought they would be like a chip. You know, he said, like those apple chips they sell.

The work-friend’s wife nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, those are so good. That’s what I thought they would be like too.”

I said, “Oh, I see. I figured they’d be chewy like raisins.” (Hint, hint. Raisins = dried grapes.)

“Oh…I never thought of that,” she said.

“Those apple chips are so good, aren’t they?” my dad asked her.

“I wonder if there’s a way to turn chewy dried apples into something more like apple chips,” I mused.

There was a 15-second-ish pause while they seemed to consider this. Then my dad said, “I think it would be easier to just go buy a bag of apple chips.”

Then they both had a big hearty laugh. In fact, this obvious assessment deserved even a rebound laugh on both their parts, where the hilarity started up after it had died down, just thinking about it again.

I was, in fact, not embarrassed or offended that they didn’t want to consider the possibilities of turning chewy apples to crunchy ones. Instead, it gave me a brilliant idea. That’s it! I told myself. A one-question, right-on-the-nose screener to let me know if the person I’m meeting is someone I want to pursue further or someone with whom a relationship would be superficial at best, or plain irritating at worst.

I’ve been thinking through each of my friends and mentally replaying the conversation last night, but inserting them into work-friend wife’s role. There are several of my friends who would have been interested in crunching up chewy apple rings simply for the creative challenge it would provide. “Hmmm….” the conversation might have gone with them. “I suppose you could put them in a dehydrator. Or maybe toss them with oil and cinnamon and nutmeg and put them in a low oven.” Some of these friends might have gone on to other things I could do with chewy apple rings instead of making them crunchy. Apple turnovers, perhaps, or a cheesy-apple-biscuit creation. Yum.

Other friends might have realized that I probably wasn’t going to buy those apple chips even if they were sitting right in front of me because of all the crap I found in the ingredients when I stood in Big Lots reading the label a few weeks ago. From that understanding, they might concur that though I am perhaps stuck with chewy apples versus crunchy, it sure beats putting all that other crud in my body. Yes, indeed.

Still another type of friend might weigh out the options. Well, they might figure, you could just go buy a bag, but then you would have to drive 20 minutes at minimum to do it, drag your two kids into the store, read the label to be sure it’s OK, then come back home. The apple rings are here. But if you try to do something to them, you might ruin them. And that bag probably cost at least $5.00 at TJ’s. I think I would eat them the way they are. Or if you do modify them, make sure it’s not something too risky, unless you absolutely don’t like them the way they are, they might tell me.

A few of my friends would say, “Just go buy a bag.” I still love them, and I still love my dad. That’s not my point. My point is that I now find myself in the middle of farm country where the people around me think an hour away is a “good neighbor,” but my hometown folks see a road trip. So I am, for better or worse, forced to find some more local folks with whom I can pursue friendships.

Past situations have yoked me with some “buy-a-bag” types, and I’m glad to have done so, loving these friends dearly. It’s not necessarily a case of not being able to think outside the box for them. They might be more mainstream thinkers, unable to figure out why anyone wouldn’t choose the easiest route. Or, they might be creative folks that have other things that are far more interesting to them than a bag of apples.

But I am interested in apples. And cooking and nutrition and eliminating driving and shopping and other hassles like these and weighing my financial options and knowing how to improvise and learning tightwaddy skills and making something out of nothing. And I think a screener like this is sure to tell me much of what I’d like to know about you, potential new friend, in five minutes flat.

on my mind

I’ve taken quite a long hiatus lately. It wasn’t intentional, trust me. At first, I couldn’t write because of writer’s block. I powered through, wrote it out, and was over it about a week ago. I was anxious to get back on the horse so to speak, but Magpie has had different ideas about what I do with my time.

So what’s been on my mind? A few things: habitual negative thinking, the evil of plastics, and nature-based learning. Let’s see how far we get.

First up: nature-based learning. I’ve decided to use the Enki curriculum for Sassy next year. I’ve been focused on finding a curriculum to use next year and ultimately decided this one was a strong contender for a good fit. I wanted something that would keep me focused and energized. Something that would allow us both creativity – me as her teacher and her as the student. Something that would teach the teacher new skills, especially more traditional skills. And finally, something that would focus on learning through experience and projects.

Although I can’t say Enki is or isn’t any of this, since I have no first-hand experience, my good friend C does. I trust her judgment implicitly, so I’ve decided if it’s right for her family there’s a very good chance it’s right for ours. Done.

Next: the evil of plastics. This is a baby topic in my head right now, just taking form, but I’m connecting little dots here and there and wondering if the USA – make that the world, the entire world – wouldn’t have taken a completely different direction had plastics never been invented & introduced into our available goods.

Think about it. What if everything we purchased were still made of wood, metal, or some sort of cloth (including leather). How would our lives be different?

Sweatshops in China? Probably gone. Wal-Mart? Definitely gone. Family businesses could stay alive. Woodsmiths, metal workers, seamstresses, all still in business. Landfills would be tiny compared to what they are now. Packaged foods? Difficult to achieve, and more expensive due to their packaging.

Would our woods all be stripped, our mines tapped out, our farmland filled with genetically modified cotton? Or would we have purchased things that were made to last and not purchased again for a long time, never getting a taste for the world of disposables. I suspect the latter.

You would pay $300 for a sewing machine, but then you’d expect to have that machine for the rest of your life.

Can you imagine this world? William Dufty in his book Sugar Blues claimed that the devil couldn’t have created a better food than sugar to cause the nutritional downfall of an entire society. I don’t think the devil could have created a better product than plastic to create a greedy, centralized consumerist culture.

I’ve been dwelling on the old adage “penny-wise, pound-foolish” lately. Jeff and I went through a long period where we made many “pound-foolish” decisions. Lately, I’ve been closely examining those purchasing habits. I’m looking beyond cost to lasting value, not because we can suddenly afford much better, but because the whole plastic-dependent consumer machine pisses me off. Don’t you dare sell me a $100 espresso machine that has a cheap plastic wand so it will break as soon as my 30-day return period is up.

I now have another reason to add to the growing list against using plastic. It’s a rip-off, plain and simple, and it is a major contributor to the destruction of lives, traditional skills, small businesses, and the environment.

So if you have alternatives to common plastic items like Ziploc-type freezer bags, portable storage containers, etc, please let me know.

And finally we’re down to the psychological arena: the habit of negative thinking. I’ve been thinking quite a bit about my pattern of thinking negatively. I’m talking about self-doubt, insecurity, anger, resentment, self-pity, jealousy, envy, irritation, frustration – basically all of them except for true grief. True grief isn’t in the realm of habit. True grief is necessary and allowed and circumstantial.

I’ve been thinking about negative thinking because I just went through a nice little period of slight depression. It’s unusual for me to experience depression, so it made me examine what my brain was doing. I realized my brain was being negative with nearly every thought that popped up and I wondered if I could think of a time in my life when I wasn’t in a pattern of thinking negatively. I couldn’t. I wondered it it might not just be a bad habit, like smoking, or sugar, or caffeine. I wondered if I could more or less re-program my brain to make the first thought positive rather than negative. Turn a natural distrust and cynicism into a natural trust and optimism.

So I’ve been practicing. I’ve told Sassy what I’m trying to do, in a way. For example, I went outside the other day, frustrated, hurried, and found that Jeff had put shoes where I didn’t want shoes.

“Why does Daddy have to do this all the time? I’ve told him!” I started. Then I stopped. “Wait, I want to try again.”

“Daddy is good to us to try to get so much done this morning before work. It’s a shame he forgot his shoes. Let’s put them away for him. It’s hard to break a habit of putting things somewhere after you get used to that spot.”

Well her little face lit right up. “Yeah!” she said. “It is hard. Let’s help Daddy!”

My internal dialogue says, “I am so irritated I’m getting no time of my own to write.”

I change it to, “I’m so happy I have this baby to rock and nurse and cuddle.”

My inner dialogue says, “I hate living in a mobile home that seems to fall apart around me.”

I change it to, “I love not having a big mortgage payment and a little financial wiggle room right now.”

My inner dialogue says, “I wish Jeff would find a better hobby and interest than automobiles.”

I change it to, “Jeff has learned a lot about cars now. It’s good he has such an interest in it because it motivated him to teach himself and save us a lot of money on car repairs.”

I could go on and on and on. My inner dialogue spits these things out all day long so I’m changing it around all day too. I’m shooting for 31 days. If I do it for 31 days, will it be more automatic? Will my inner dialogue internalize the change?

Along with blatantly changing a negative into a positive, I’m also trying to do what I’m calling “assume positive intent.” Sometimes (not always), I assume negative intent with other people when none was intended on their end. I’m not sure why I do this, and it doesn’t particularly matter to me either. I’m sure it’s an evil stepmother, mom dying kind of childhood bullshit that makes me this way, but in the end, knowing why you do something never actually fixes the problem. I think that focusing on why someone ended up the way they did was one of the worst turns the field of psychological therapy ever made. (Cyndi, I’m expecting a comment now.)

So I’ve decided to practice assuming positive intent until proven otherwise. Jeff has been the nearly constant recipient of assumed negative intent, although he probably never knew it. Isn’t that terrible? For a long time, I don’t think I even knew it.

Now I do, I’ve recognized it, and I’m going to work on changing it. I wonder how my marriage will be different after 31 days of assuming positive intent and creating positive thoughts. I’m excited to find out.

be yoked then with your wife

There’s this story in the Bible I was thinking about today. Maybe it wasn’t even a story. Maybe it was more of a commandment (outside the Big Ten). The gist of it is that when you get married, you are then yoked with your new spouse and you are instructed -- commanded, in fact – to leave your birth family and go with your new family.

I’ve been thinking about this today because of a very big argument I got into with my grandmother Friday. Well, to me it was a big argument. To her, perhaps it wasn’t much of anything.

Here’s the background. I’ll be succinct and limit myself to one paragraph.

My mom died when I was 8. My grandmother raised me from that point forward. My other option was to live with my dad and evil (truly evil) stepmother. I wanted to live with my grandparents so they went to court and gained custody. She was the best surrogate mother I could have asked for, always loving, always supportive, always encouraging. When I was a teenager, I rebelled in a fairly normal teenage way, though my attitude was probably over-the-top rude. I moved out at 18 years old, spent the next 8 years in college living on my own, being supported off and on by my grandparents. I quit accepting any financial help from them when I was 26 and just recently began accepting their offers again here and there. She has never forgiven me nor let me forget how rebellious and rude I was between the ages of about 17 - 23. She still finds a way to work it into our conversation every. single. time we see each other. That is the long story very very short.

So on Friday, Jeff had a car accident on his way to work from Sassy’s party. He wasn’t hurt, but his car was broken and he had to fix it the next morning. I had to call my grandma to let her know Sassy’s family party on Saturday morning at our house would have to be cancelled, in case she was planning to come.

She wasn’t.

Since we’ve slowly begun to talk more on the phone and since she is like a mother to me, I told her the sordid details of the accident. You see, we found out after the accident that Jeff didn’t have insurance on his car. Yes, he was driving without insurance. We didn’t even know. When he registered his car, he registered in our new state. When he called our insurance company, they gave him a policy in our new state that was a completely separate policy from the one I was paying on. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a mailbox at our new property at that time, so all bills were returned to sender.

I didn’t realize this was going on. I thought I was paying for all cars on the policy I paid each month.

So all of a sudden, we are now figuring any and all proceeds from our old house, if and when it sells, will have to be handed straight over to the guy he hit. We can’t allow it to go to court at all. Jeff’s job depends on him having a CDL. If he loses his license due to driving without insurance, he’d lose his job, since I would not drive him to work an hour each way with a newborn in tow, and he’d lose his CDL, making it even harder to get another job.

You know why I share any of this with anyone? With my grandma? You know why I point out the worst case scenario first thing? I like to be prepared for the worst case scenario, that’s always my style. Prepare for the worst, be pleasantly surprised by anything better. But even more, I like to conquer. I’ve mentioned this before. All my blog posts follow that same pattern. I present my problem, then I share how I conquer it, or accept it, or view it differently. It’s all about coming out on top, rising victorious, right? That’s probably why I tell my grandma these things. So I can claim victory over them. That, and I like to share. And if I’m going to share, then let’s share worst-case because if I’m going to share, let’s at least be interesting, for crying out loud.

Jeff asked me what was I thinking, how could I not have known to keep that to myself.

Well….I was tired. I was weak. I was too trusting. I was needing a little support. And I was seeking a real connection.

My grandma said to me, “You two have more problems…”

I asked her what she meant by that.

“I don’t know,” she said, “Some people, problems just follow them around. You two, it’s like problems search you out.”

I told her that was a very hurtful thing to say, and it wasn’t even true. I didn’t say a few things I wish I’d thought of at the time, like:

“Well, that just makes me an excellent problem-solver.”

Or, “Yep, we do have major problems, we’re homeless, I’m hooked on heroin and my husband’s in jail.”

Or, “WTF is that supposed to mean you crazy loon?!?!”

OK, not that last one. That’s my emotions talking again.

Honestly, if your “mom” says to you that problems seem to search you out, you and I, all of us, we know what that means. It means, “I think you’re a loser.”

Needless to say, I was pretty hurt. I know her idea of success is very different from mine. Her idea of success involves how big your numbers are on your various investment account statements. My idea of success involves how many children I have and how many acres we live on. Her idea of success involves what title you have at your job. My idea of success involves being able to do what I want, even (especially) if that means not having a career at all.

But still? Will she ever let it go? Sometimes it seems she purposefully hurts me, though I’ve never seen her as mean-spirited.

So I told her it was a very hurtful thing to say, especially coming from her. I told her it only seemed like I had more problems that anyone else because I told her everything, since she was like a mother to me.

To which she said, two days before Mother’s Day, “Not really.”

Ouch. Okay then.

I cried all night Friday night. I wanted to cry all day Saturday. And then all day Sunday too. It still pains me to remember it. So, I’ll move on to the victory part. The realizing and the conquering.

Sunday evening I started thinking maybe the lesson I should learn from this is that I shouldn’t be so dependent on an earthly relationship. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so dependent on the approval of another human being – an imperfect human being. I think the lesson in this is that it isn’t in God’s plan for me to desire my mother’s approval for my whole life. Nor anyone else’s, except those in my immediate family, for any decision I make affects them as well.

If I keep seeking her approval or anyone else’s approval, I will never have the courage to do as God intends me to do, which is to use my inborn gifts for Good. I do not believe that the love of money is Good. It isn’t my path. For example, if I ever must use my investment accounts as a marker of my success, then I will be wildly unsuccessful for the rest of my life. When I seek her approval, I spend too much time upset about my lack of investment accounts and her ensuing disappointment than I do using my gifts for Good.

And as I explained all this to my good friend K on the phone today, that Bible verse struck me and I thought, “A-ha! That is why you must become yoked with your spouse and LEAVE your birth family.” In this modern day and age, is easy driving distance actually LEAVING your birth family? Not really.

I was nervous that this move would put Jeff and I at each other’s throats all the time. We can be prone to arguing, and with no one else around, I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough distraction when we needed it.

It’s actually turned out just the opposite. We argue less, if anything, and we actually cleave to each other. Cleave? Is that the word used in the actual Bible verse? I’d use the internet to find out if I could.

At any rate, it looks like the Bible is right again. It no longer surprises me; rather, I’ve now reached the point where I believe what is written as truth first, then always come to realize it on my own, in my own way, with my own experience later.

stepping out

When we decided to move from the close quarters of suburban America to 15 acres in rural America, one of our goals was to step out of American culture. I know neither Jeff nor I actually iterated this – to each other or to ourselves – but I now know that we both were thinking it in our own ways. The mass consumerism so rampant in our country was psychologically and physically making us sick. We knew there was a hole that needed filled & we knew we were trying to fill it with the same things every other home on our block was using….and we knew it wasn’t working.

Was the hole really there or was it a figment of advertising? Did our consumerist culture create the hole & then offer a convenient, albeit expensive, way to fix it?

I suspect this to be the case. After all, any Marketing 101 class will teach you that the standard tactic in sales is to first point out the problem, then offer your product or service to fix the problem. Turns out, most folks aren’t aware there even is a problem they need to fix with your product or service unless you spell it out for them. There are a few different ways to do this. Playing on strong emotions is by far the most effective, and the top contenders are fear for your family and love for your family. You love your family best when you are not risking terrible things happening to them, things that could easily be prevented with Mr. Widget. Don’t you want happy, healthy puppies and babies like Mr. Widget has? Puppies and babies always sell widgets.

Perhaps my babies will be adorable in clothes from Land’s End, stylish yet rugged, washed in Tide Free, so tender to their skin, fluffed with Downy, rendering them soft as a baby’s own skin when they come out. It’s an easy example. It’s one I could spout a hundred different ways, a hundred different products, a hundred different scenarios. But spouting a simplistic example such as this makes you think if you only avoid the advertising, the slick marketing, the top-educated, top-dollar, top-notch P & G executives, you’re in the clear.

When we decided to move out here, we decided to ditch television. We could always catch our favorite shows on DVD or download them from iTunes. We refused to get sucked into the TV habit again, especially starting the day with PBS cartoons and ending it with Family Guy or Desperate Housewives. We have fifteen acres outside our back door. How on Earth could we justify continuing with our TV habit?

Happily, I ditched the digital receiver box. Happily, I picked up TV shows on DVD from the library and Blockbuster. Happily, I downloaded the latest episode of Desperate Housewives onto my iTunes, popped my popcorn, and watched it.

I loved every minute of those commercial free episodes. Then, afterward, I felt sick.

Turns out, I don’t think it’s the commercials alone that are causing the hole. I think that the hole that can be conveniently filled by Mr. Widget is so pervasive in current American culture, that you would have to actually step out of the culture to recognize the hole for what it is. Or at least step away from video and internet media altogether.

Fringe made me upset at the sadness in this world, especially the sadness of children.

The Office made me cringe at the fact that there are countless folks out there that justify a cubicle existence that they don’t enjoy and never will enjoy because in their heads, it can be funny -- should be funny – like on The Office, you know. So they settle into this $15/hour crap job, happy enough with their window view and their gray-blue half-wall day prison. If they’re not amused and content, then the problem is with them, not the situation. Jim and Pam are perfectly content after all.

If they watch the evening news, then they’re “just happy I have a job at all.”

Big Love made me think I needed a new wardrobe.

Six Feet Under depressed the crap out of me.

Even The Simpsons or Family Guy leaves me spending too much satirical energy and not enough revolutionary energy.

I’ve noticed the old shows – Little House on the Prairie, Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Brady Bunch, Last of the Summer Wines, Keeping Up Appearances – none of these have the same effect. This leads me to believe that it truly is a rather recent change in American culture that leaves us with a big hole waiting to be filled by Mr. Widget. Current American culture really is depressing the crap out of us. And it really is changing us into something so far from what God intended us to be that we are becoming hardly recognizable.

Jeff and I can now see that the suburbs were making us sick and we never knew it. We had become immune to the disgusting shows of spending and the thoughtless wasting of resources around us. We didn’t need a big-screen TV to absorb the messages we were being fed. They are just as loud and just as clear on 13 inches of screen and a big fat window facing the street.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders how intentional the change in American TV actually is. A country of people who will allow themselves to be sold into slavery to mortgage companies, credit card companies, car loan companies, and banking institutions, all the while feeling “fortunate” and “blessed” to be in that position would have to be brainwashed by messages more prevalent and insidious than 30-second TV commercials and billboards. Wouldn’t it be an intelligent plan to create advertising to promote this attitude, advertising that showed very good-looking and successful people happily and humorously living as these slaves, call it entertainment, and sell it for $1.99 a pop on iTunes? Have a bag of Doritos with it, please, so that your MSG-clogged mind will never wake up.

We are so lucky to live in a society with free communications, aren’t we?

tending the fires

You know what’s fun? Blowing up when you are really mad. It is fun to stomp around, slam doors, throw things, yell & generally blow off steam. Not only is it fun, but it feels really, really good. It feels like a giant release…a big furious sigh, a poo that’s been building for days, finally pushing out the baby. I know how the proverbial tea kettle must feel when it finally gets past the boiling point into the loud, grating whistle. Ahhhhhh…..

In fact, blowing up like this is so fun, and feels so good, that it rather smacks of a lack of self-discipline and, well, immaturity. You expect these blow-ups from a toddler and you accept them to some degree. Children are naturally explosive. Mothers probably should not be.

I’ve known this for a long time, about as long as I’ve had children. Yet, I still do it. Why? Because I enjoy it. But following in the path of cigarettes, weed, long nights drinking and flirting at the bar, this too must give way to a more mature demeanor.

I’ve recently realized that blowing up like this is in fact, extremely irresponsible. As surely as it is my responsibility to cook dinner for my children, to dress them, to comfort them, to teach them, and to hold them when they fall, it is also my responsibility to provide a household that feels secure. Blowing up in anger at them, at Daddy, at myself, at a situation, at the dog – it doesn’t matter – creates a household of insecurity. And although it feels really, really good to do it, it is part of my parental responsibility to not give in to that desire. Pretty simple, actually.

But wait! I hear you saying, It has to go somewhere! You can’t hold it all in!

Or maybe, Sounds great for you, but I just can’t help it – it’s uncontrollable!

Though I used to spout the same arguments, I’m not buying it anymore. How many times have I been stomping around in anger when a business call comes in and I suck it right back in and put on my business phone “smile?”

Or how many times have I been furious about something or other and begun talking to a friend? I might vent to my friend, but I don’t scream at them. In fact, their calmer attitude and sense of humor makes me feel better by the end of the conversation. Wouldn’t the same apply inside my home?

Maybe it’s not about sucking it in or letting it out. Maybe it’s more like a snowball. You can keep it small and let it melt itself out quickly. Or you can let it roll….and roll and roll and roll.

I was burning some of our garbage today and heard all those old adages in my head about fueling the fire and fanning the flames. A temper is a hot thing, a thing that can get out of control quickly like our fire. Or it can be smothered and it will peter itself out in minutes. How big the fire goes is completely the choice of the person tending it.

Would my home not be better served if I make the choice not to let the fires of anger explode? I think so. And I actually think I can do it.

news alert: i am not perfect

Well, alert the presses, news is in. I am actually not perfect. What? You’re not surprised? Well I am!

This is a post about my husband, with whom I’ve been arguing, fighting, pecking, & generally grousing about for a few weeks now. High stress in our family = high levels of arguing. Go figure.

Now in case you’re unfamiliar with my stance in arguments I undertake with individuals in my life, it’s this: I’m right, I’m perfect, you’re an idiot & I’m now rethinking why the hell I’m yoked with you in the first place. I’ve always had an uncanny ability to turn an argument about, say, a toaster into a litany of reasons why I’d be better off without you, enumerated and catalogued by year and date, if necessary. Yeah, I’m that partner. My readers, you’ve had that partner before, haven’t you? Or, like me, maybe you are that partner?

Jeff has sometimes accused me of “blowing things out of proportion” or “expecting him to be perfect.” Well of course! Since I am clearly perfect, why shouldn’t I be married to someone else who is?

It takes a unique special rather arrogant person to need a mid-night insomniac moment to realize, revelation-style, that they are in fact, not perfect. This is how it occurred to me.

I woke for the 4th time the other night. My family members had each taken turns waking me that night, but the 4th turn I somehow took myself. As I laid there thinking about everything and nothing in particular, in this busier-than-ever deadline weekend, I thought perhaps if I took that time to be thankful of things that were going right rather than fretting over the things that were making me insane, maybe I could get back to sleep. Utilitarian gratitude, it warms the heart of the Creator I’m sure.

I’m always thankful that I have a husband who will support my decision to stay home with the kids (without complaining about it very often) so I threw it into my list. It was then that the thought struck me that if the situation were reversed, if I were the one who was going to the chemical plant day in, day out for years on end, I couldn’t – wouldn’t – hack it.

And I remembered what an amazing thing it was that this other person, the one that I can fight with at the drop of a hat, the one I complain about in my head, the one that, yes, I laugh with and cook for and seek companionship with, but that I also show irritation at daily, would go to work at a job he doesn’t enjoy for 9 hours out of the day, just to bring home a check & hand it over without complaint.

99% of the time, this amazing arrangement isn’t even brought into our conscious daily lives. Occasionally, he will be upset that I don’t seem to grasp the fact that he doesn’t have any time to do what he wants or that I don’t appreciate his work ethic. The rest of the time, it isn’t even mentioned.

Now here’s what I know about a hypothetical role reversal.

Number one, I would mention it and complain about it all the time, and I would basically expect the other person to kiss the ground I walk on if I were going to a job I hate more than 40 hours a week, while they stayed home, made their own schedule, and didn’t get a whole lot accomplished most days.

Number two, I would have to really, really love my spouse to allow this arrangement to exist.

Number three, I would burn out quickly and eventually devise a way to flee.

Jeff has a Major Flaw that I always seem to dwell on in my head, and that is his temper. Thing is, his temper is quick and then it’s usually over and he’s coming around to say he’s sorry. I also have this flaw, it just doesn’t show itself quite as often as his.

But looky here, it seems I have my own Major Flaws. It seems that I am not cut out to support a family without constant resentment, if I would do it at all. It seems holding a full-time job would make me crazy. It seems I don’t recognize the level of love and support that is proven by simply handing over years’ worth of time to another person.

And, most importantly, it seems that I like to point outward quite a bit, while patting myself on the back because I’m not laying blame out loud.

So you see, turns out, I’m not perfect. Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

random thoughts on a simple kitchen

Glassware

Why do we have so much of it? There we are, always caring for glasses, looking for glasses, toting glasses around the house. Then there are the jars. The canning jars, the recycled jars, the spice jars, little, big, many sizes in between. All of their lids fill an old coffee can, which we comb through looking for the right fit, over and over in varying degrees of frenzy, depending on how late we are at the time. Why do we do all this? There is a much simpler solution & it’s called wide-mouthed canning jars.

They are glasses, they are storage containers, they are canning jars. They have lids of uniform size. They have a classic look that fits in any farm kitchen. And best of all, they are easy to clean…no bottle brush necessary.

Trash

Again, why do we have so much of it, number one? And what would happen if we made thoughtful decisions about incoming based upon a conscious awareness of outgoing? How would our purchases and collecting habits change if we didn’t have anonymous folks carting off our unwanteds each week?

Consider this for a moment, as I am these days: is it actually possible to walk the environmentalist talk if you allow someone else to deal with your garbage? It certainly isn’t possible to be completely independent that way.

If you were your own trashman, you would have 5 options for what normally hits the landfill, and they are: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Consume & Burn. In reality, this would mean all of your daily life would function a little differently.

Vegetable scraps would go to the chickens (consume) or into the compost (reuse). Meat would go to the dogs (consume) and bones to the firepit (burn). Wood brush would hit the firepit while leafy yard waste would hit the compost pile. When shopping, you would always bring your own bags because you wouldn’t want to have to dispose of the plastic ones. You’d choose paper whenever possible because it would burn. You might buy cookies based on which box had the more disposable packaging. You might bring small paper bags to fill at the bulk bin.

You’d likely check the bottoms of all detergent bottles, dishsoap bottles, shampoo bottles for recyclability before bringing them home. You’d realize a trip to the recycling center would be necessary as much as once a week if you consume lots of things in bottles & cans or just once a month if those aren’t in your usual diet.

This would definitely be more work, but once the routine was down, it would be akin to giving up the microwave for the stove. It throws other people for a loop though your own family doesn’t notice it anymore. It falls under the category of a “simple kitchen” because it’s the type of change that would encourage (and often require) more simple living.

The benefits? No money out of pocket to the garbage collectors, complete self-sufficiency with your family’s waste, and the end of any and all opportunities for your family to be environmentally obtuse.

Greens

It’s that time. Dig out your seeds. Peas, lettuce, spinach, kale, cabbage…they’re all ready to be planted sometime between now & April. Our only conundrum is whether to plant them here or on the land. One thing’s for sure, I can’t plant them in containers & cart them there or I’ll be carting dead plants. My garden survives only because I receive generous help from Mother Nature herself.

The Never-ending Stream of Artwork

One of my projects today is to put all of Sassy’s loose artwork into a 3-hole binder. The back of each sheet will be my notepaper. I’m tired of shuffling her art from place to place and I’m tired of looking for notepaper when I need it (or worse yet, notepaper I wrote something important on but now can’t find). When it’s full, it will be a slice of our life – hers on one side & mine on the other. Date it, file it, start over.

And speaking of the never-ending stream of artwork, we’ve recently begun buying inexpensive blank sketchbooks for Sassy to do her artwork. It keeps it contained & already bound, plus it eliminates the wasting of so much computer paper.

birthing support

There were a few details I left out of my original birth story. They weren't facts, like the rest of the story. I don't even know if they were real, and if they were "real," then in what way? A real dream? A real visualization?

At any rate, this is what happened. Friday afternoon, my labor started when my water broke. That whole day, I didn't really progress, just had spaced-apart early labor contractions. I was supposed to sleep that night, but I couldn't really sleep. The contractions woke me up enough to make sleep impossible. So I laid downstairs on the couch by myself and slept lightly, dreaming & day-dreaming all at the same time. You know, that state where your mind kind of floats around on top of sleep & dips in every now & then?

In this half-dream, I started to see my mom. I always wish she were here in times of stress or upset, and especially in times of pregnancy & new birth. This night, it wasn't so much the wishing that came first, but the seeing & feeling her. In my awake-dream place.

I sensed felt thought - really, what's a good word? Dreamt. I dreamt that this new baby was part of her. I dreamt that she would be born with dark hair. I dreamt that she had a part of my mother's soul. I dreamt that my mother was behind me (literally), supporting me. I dreamt that she said made it clear that she would stay throughout the birth.

And as I dipped in and out of dreaming into thinking, floating on top of the dream, my thoughts turned to all of those people before me in my family who had also given birth at home without drugs, without the hospital staff of strangers killing their birth spirit. I started thinking about these different women in my ancestral past, and I thought of my Native American great-great-grandmother, my Irish great-grandmother, my English great-grandmother. I vividly remembered the picture of my Native American great-great-grandmother that my great-grandfather had shown me at his house when I was a little girl. I remembered her face and her hair. I thought about where she might have given birth. I thought about what she might have sounded like, looked like then.

And then when I dipped back into dreaming a bit, I dreamt of her, and my other ancestors, woman after woman, many generations back, forming a circle one by one around my little house. After that, there were others, there was my mother, my grandmother, my great-aunts, and then true friends, many of whom read this blog and would read their name here.

In my awake-dream, there was a circle of these women around my house and they chanted something. It was Native American in feel, the sing-song went up high, back low, up high, back low. They formed a chain around my house, there were not words -- if there were, I can't remember them now. Just the chant, up high, down low, up high, down low.

And then I woke up for real. No dreaming, just awake. I lied there awhile, how long I don't know. Labor always comes with a time warp. I lied there trying to see my wake-dreams from the night in the concrete light of consciousness. I held to their residual feelings and burned their images into my waking mind. Then I got up and put curtains on all my windows.

One day soon, I'll probably forget those residual feelings and images in the day-to-day busy life I have. I wanted to record it before it completely left my mind, because it was very interesting. I am not a person who has spiritual experiences, so I'm not calling it that. But I will say that if there is ever a time in your life where your body is prepared and open to a spiritual experience, uninterrupted birth would be that time.

As much as I wanted my mom to be physically here after the birth, in a terrible way, emotionally I didn't miss her as much as I did with Sassy. Sometimes I think she was and is still here, gently, maybe dipping in and out of our home and our reality like I dipped in and out of my dream.

My little Magpie does have a piece of my mother, and so does Sassy and so do I. And she did come out with dark hair. Funny.

the life you want: the dirty kitchen

I haven’t written about my list lately, but it isn’t because I’ve forgotten about it. Quite the contrary. I started by prioritizing nutrition & health for myself and my family, and I said I wouldn’t move on until I felt that I had that completely under control. I’ve been making big strides, and I think I’m almost to the point where my new weekly routine will stick. But, I’m still not quite there on my daily routine. Too many times, I ignore my body’s daily needs for other projects or errands or chores.

As I’ve been working on putting diet and health first, I’ve realized that maintaining a clean kitchen is an integral part of consistently making healthy meals for us. I noticed that we almost always eat more junk food and eat more carry-out food on the weekends. It’s not because we don’t like to cook, because we all three do. Part of it is due to running around more on the weekends. But part of it is also due to the fact that our kitchen quickly becomes a disaster on the weekends, and we don’t want to clean enough space to cook when we’re already hungry.

I’ve been waking up Monday morning to a huge mess to clean up every week. Often, it takes until Thursday to catch up on the backload of dishes along with the new ones we generate each day.

So I’ve added “keeping the kitchen clean” as my next step in getting The Life I Want. And how can I do that so it actually works?

Well, as I mentioned before, logistics are huge for me. A simple logistical problem can keep me stuck in a bad habit for a really long time. With the dirty kitchen, for example, I’m stuck on emptying the dishwasher. Right now, I can’t physically empty the dishwasher because I can’t bend over that much without re-opening my birth tear. Other times, I put it off because I don’t have a good place for, say, glass jars and our baking dishes. Cabinet space has always been lacking here and the places we have for those items are extremely inconvenient.

So I’m looking at this chain of events and how it is affecting my life. It goes like this: the dishwasher is sitting full of clean dishes with a clean kitchen around it. We start generating more dishes and as they build up, I don’t have anywhere to go with them because the dishwasher is full. But I put off emptying the dishwasher because there’s no quick place to go with some of the bottom rack, heavier dishes. The dishes continue to pile up, and then we start pulling clean ones out of the dishwasher when we run out of some high-demand items.

Meanwhile, we’re cooking and generating food trash and regular trash around us. The counters are already so full of dirty dishes and crap that we don’t notice more trash if it ends up on the counters. Or a book or a crayon or the phone or an envelope or a hat. They’re too full by now to focus on anything in particular. They continue to build up and then they get so full we are simply not inspired to cook anymore. So we eat packaged, quick foods.

There are some creative activities that I do where I feel trying to maintain a spotless home would greatly hinder my creative process. Cooking isn’t one of them. The cleaner the kitchen, the more I want to cook.

Since I’m trying to analyze the logistics – the part of the process where all my good intentions go straight downhill – I can see that maintaining a clean kitchen clearly breaks down at the point of emptying the dishwasher. I thought through possible solutions and I’ve come up with two.

First, having a more convenient place for bottom rack, heavy dishes would certainly help. Perhaps I don’t need all those heavy dishes anyway. Perhaps clearing some out to ensure I could find a good eye-level spot for them instead of shoving them way back behind the mixing bowls at ankle-level would be a good start. In our next house, I plan to arrange our dishes according to what is used most rather than simply what fits best where.

Second, I had to admit that I am simply not reliable when it comes to emptying the dishwasher each day. Of all the tasks I currently have on my plate, this would be the first one I should contract out. Unfortunately, Jeff isn’t a good dishwasher emptier either. But Sassy could be. I’ve started requiring Sassy to help me empty the dishwasher in order to “earn” the sweets that she wants each day.

So, as it sits now, I’ve made quite a bit of progress on the first item on my list – preparing nutritious foods for myself and my family and putting our diet and health first. Here’s a quick recap of the new changes:

• I have a printed schedule reminding me to drink several glasses of water throughout the day, take my supplements, give Sassy hers, and prepare food for snacks and dinner before we are going out.

• Each Sunday, I take stock of what we have in the refrigerator that we need to use up. I then make a quick menu plan of 4-5 dinner or lunch meals, 3-4 breakfasts, 2-3 snacks and 2-3 sweets for the week.

• Each Sunday night or Monday morning, I grocery shop for the meals on my menu plan.

• I ask Jeff to choose one or two meals that we can eat as a family for lunch before he goes to work, so we are sitting down for meals together a few times a week again.

• I try to keep the counters clear and the dishes caught up. I’m using Sassy’s help to empty the dishwasher so that the dishes don’t pile up like they used to.

• And probably the most significant change is that I have designated nutrition and health as my greatest priority, so when I’m doing the unfocused, here-to-there, whizzing brain thing where I can’t focus on any one task because they all seem to draw my attention, I know what to focus on first. This one change alone has helped me to actually get things accomplished again.

I hope I’m not boring you all on my progress toward The Life I Want. It helps me quite a bit to articulate and synthesize my thoughts on my progress. I hope reading mine helps you to do the same for your own goals.

babies in america

Okay, here's your fair warning - I'm probably about to step on your toes in one way or another. I'm in a venting mood & I'm about to tell y'all about it without tempering my opinions (much). I apologize in advance, and friends, I love you. That isn't contingent on how you raise your babies in America and this isn't about you.

But now let me say how irritated I am today with those stupid bucket infant seats that every mother and father carts around like a damn extension of their baby, here to there to there to here, never considering that they could just pick up the baby.

As I was carrying M around today, part in an ABC carrier and part just in my arms, I never realized how odd it is for people to see someone carrying a newborn who is not in their stupid plastic carrier. Why have people fallen for this big sham? Why have parents decided that they are incapable of carrying their babies outside of the plastic contraption?

At first, I noticed the odd looks I was getting from people, and their reluctance to smile at us, even though there was a darn cute baby being carried around, if I do say so myself. I then noticed a few different tables (we were at two different restaurants for carry-out today), look, judge, & snicker among each other. This floored me! I am just not used to people finding baby-carrying odd anymore I guess.

So I started to notice all the other young babies around me and all of them under the age of one were carried in their buckets. The babies had become the buckets. The buckets had become the babies. They were as one. They announced, "I have a baby here! Baby! Right here!"

And what about us?

We announced, "Weird, strange, no bucket. That baby's naked! Where is its bucket?! Is that even safe?! Is it even legal?!"

I caught a glimpse of us in the windows outside Penn Station, where I was carrying her outside of her carrier, just in my arms, and I was struck by how odd it looked. I realized I never, ever, ever see people carrying their newborn around outside a sling or a bucket in America.

And this made me very, very sad.

My M likes to be in my arms. It can wear on me, trust me. I would very much like to be able to sew right now, but little M likes to be in my arms all the time. You know, when she is in her little bucket, riding in the car even 2 hours, as she was today, her little eyes are more anxious & worried. Jeff said she had worried eyes tonight. I told him she'd had them for the past half hour. She likes to be in my arms.

Parents in America would call her 24-hour desire extreme, Mama needs her space and all, Baby needs her independence. But is it really extreme?

Isn't it more likely that all babies want that?

But I have the luxury of actually doing it, because I'm a stay at home mom. I can hold her all damn day if I want (and I usually do). The work out of the house moms don't have a choice but to transport Baby in a bucket far more than Baby probably wants. So when you go to Bob Evans on a Sunday morning, why not ditch the bucket and give Baby some of the in-arms time he's missing during the week?

I don't think I have any work away from home readers, but if I did, I probably don't now. My apologies...you were forewarned.

the life you want, part 2

After I wrote my blog post the other day about moving toward the life you want instead of the life you live out of habit, I asked Jeff to read it. He and I then talked about the changes he wanted to make when we move to the land, and I was glad to learn that he and I are seeking a strikingly similar path. It doesn’t always happen that way. We managed to get 45 minutes of uninterrupted conversation time, thanks to Martha Speaks, some wooden blocks, and a certain 5-year-old’s drive to build a garden and farm scene out of them. It’s rare that we get so much time to talk about our longer-term goals instead of the usual daily logistics.

I decided after our conversation that it really was possible for us to live our daily lives more closely aligned with our values; it didn’t have to be a dream that could happen “one day”…*sigh*…if we could only get more organized.

Throughout that day, I noticed my scattered behavior pattern in everything I tried to do. Laundry was interspersed with decluttering and cleaning up the basement. Cooking was interspersed with 2 minutes of dishes, then 2 minutes of freezing extra food, then 2 minutes back to cooking, then 2 minutes of cleaning off the counters.

Obviously, my scattered brain is a major player in keeping me from moving forward toward a more organized life. So what to do?

I decided I needed to use the wonderful list I actually took the time to write out and prioritize it. For me, fixing nutritious food for myself and my family, and taking the time to take care of our health, was the number one priority. During my pregnancy with M (still need a good screen name for her, suggestions appreciated!), poor Sassy was pretty much on her own with food. With Jeff on second shift, nightly dinners didn’t happen. She would say she was hungry and I would point her to the kitchen. “Then get something,” I’d tell her. Luckily our home isn’t stocked with much junk food, but nevertheless, I knew that wasn’t something I wanted to let continue for long.

Just after M was born, I went on a major caffeine & sugar binge myself. I quit taking my supplements. I’m not pregnant anymore, I thought, woo-hoo! I can eat whatever I want! I can drink all the coffee I want! It’s just MY body I’m potentially harming! YEAH!

Of course, that didn’t work for long either.

So yesterday morning I decided to organize this one item on my list, this one part of my life. I wrote a quick schedule for 4 key times during the day: waking, noon, 5:00, and 8:00. On the schedule were different tasks all related to our health and nutrition. For example, at noon, my list tells me I have to drink a full glass of water, take 4 supplements, eat lunch with Sassy and/or Jeff, make a plan for dinner, and pack snacks if we plan to go out in the afternoon.

This is stuff I should have been doing as a matter of course, but I’d veered so far off course, I needed to write it out to get myself back in line.

I also decided it would help if I had a meal plan for the week. I didn’t feel like I needed to decide on every single meal, but I wanted to have 4 dinners planned, a few snacks, a few breakfasts, and a few sweets, because who am I kidding? I can say I’m off sugar, but in reality, that means I’m driving through Proverbs to pick up my chocolate chip cookies instead of buying the ingredients at the grocery.

I prefer to cook most things ahead of time or whenever I’m in the mood to cook, so yesterday, I had a big cooking morning. It was an interesting change since I’d made the decision to prioritize nutrition over cleaning. I was so very tempted upon walking into my messy kitchen to clean it before I began cooking, but I kept telling myself that nutrition was my priority. I could clean after I made good food for myself and my family.

It was so hard to keep myself on this task alone! Countless times I found myself starting to get diverted to cleaning out of habit, and I had to reign myself back in. But in the end?

In the end, after 3 hours in the kitchen, I had a double-batch of biscuit dough made, a double-batch of pie crust dough, chicken a la king made, vegetarian tacos prepared, lunch shared at the table with my family, the table cleared, the dishes loaded into the dishwasher and the dishwasher running, the counters cleaned off, and the floors swept. And Sassy had helped me all morning so I could cross “baking with my kids once/week” off the list. (Not that I want to limit it to once/week – she is really a big help now!)

So this week, at least, we are going to focus on this one item, health and nutrition for our family, and try to turn it from a scattered part of our lives to an organized one. If I feel like it still needs more attention next week, then I’ll keep focusing on it next week too. I’ll keep it in the forefront until I feel I’ve worked out a good system for our family, then I’ll move onto another item.

Z, I noticed your comment on the last post where you said you’re on a similar journey right now. If you make a list (hint, hint) on your blog, I will totally read it & comment! Lara, you too! It would be so easy for me to take this desire to change out of focus in a couple weeks and fall back on old habits. Having others around me to talk about it with would definitely help me stay focused. What about you?

On a quick side note, most of you know how my job was handed over to my maternity replacement at the eleventh hour. This irritated me far more than I let on at the time. I had quickly gotten used to having some extra pocket money.

I now see this as a blessing, though. Having an outside job definitely kept me securely in the scattered whirlwind, playing constant catch-up. I’ve now decided that I won’t be seeking or accepting any outside employment until my domestic and homeschooling life is in order. This should be added incentive to get “the life I want” since I can’t make any extra money until I do.

the life you want

As you all know, we’re getting ready to move in less than a month. And with this move, we are halving our available square footage. This means I’ve had to halve our belongings to prepare for the new place.

Now as much as I preach against consumerism and material goods to anyone who will listen, I am actually a packrat. So is my husband. And so is Sassy. I would like to say that I’m a packrat because I want to plan ahead and save in these times of fat for times of lean. I’d like to pretend that it adds to my ongoing work toward being a survivalist. But in reality, most of the stuff I hang onto is useless for survival purposes and is kept instead out of either guilt or emotional attachment.

It’s weird the stuff that I get emotionally attached to. It’s beyond what I consider the “normal” items, like photos, gifts from someone special, etc. For example, when I was going through Sassy’s toys, I realized that I am more attached to some of her toys than she is. It was very hard for me to let go of any wooden toys, even if she had far too many of that genre or if she never touched it. It was also hard for me to get rid of any toy that I bought for her, regardless of whether she or I even liked it anymore.

Clothes are a whole ‘nother category where I have a hard time breaking my attachments. I wonder if it’s the memories that the clothes generate? I think it must be. At some point, though, I have to let go of 30 pieces that generate similar memories when 1 piece would do.

We all know about the guilt factor when you’re ridding your home of extra stuff. It goes something like this, “So-and-so gave me this item. I love so-and-so. If I get rid of this item, does that mean I don’t love so-and-so as much? Will so-and-so think that I don’t love them as much?” UGH! It’s exhausting, this constant doubt, this constant caretaking of items to prove our love to so-and-so.

Isn’t it possible to separate love from material items? Isn’t this what the thinking, aware person in the 21st Century should be striving towards?

To help me through this process, my dear friend Lara has been sending me some links to essays that explore this subject. And they have really helped me give myself permission to let go. One essay in particular pointed out the value in articulating what we want our daily life to look like so that we can use this vision to evaluate what stays and what goes. I liked this idea a lot, especially since I always feel that I am trying to get to the point where I can have the life I want. I know that my current daily routine is far from what I want it to be and I feel I’m in constant catch-up mode. I think to myself, “Once I finish all that laundry and get the house cleaned out and finish that project and clean the kitchen and xyz and xyz, then I can spend my days reading to my children and relaxing outside and focusing on their schooling.”

So instead of spending my days being the mother I want to be, I spend them in a whirlwind of work waiting to be finished, my mind darting from one project to another, my efforts flitting between rooms and tasks in 10-minute increments so that by the time I go to bed, nothing is actually completed even though the day is gone. And none of that time was spent focused on my kids.

When I look at the big picture, I can see that the overwhelming majority of my time is spent maintaining my things. It would only make sense that fewer things would equal less time maintaining these things. And this would mean more time spent on fulfilling activities.

What would my day look like if I could snap my fingers and make it all change?

• First and foremost, my things would be organized so that when it was time to leave the house, everything I needed to take with me would be ready to go in 10 minutes time. We would leave the house quickly and easily and arrive at our destination relaxed and on time. This is a daily anger trigger for me.

• I would read a book to my children each day.

• I would snuggle with my children each day.

• Our bills would be paid on time and I would know at all times how much money was in each of our accounts.

• I would spend some time each day outdoors, even in the winter.

• I would connect with Sofie each day in some way.

• I would thoroughly enjoy my morning coffee every morning, by myself, quietly, doing whatever I wished on the computer (internet research, email correspondence, or writing).

• Our dinners would be planned in advance and we would sit down as a family for a meal at least 4 times a week, even if it were just lunch with Jeff still on second shift.

• I would wake up to a clean house and come home to a clean house, so that I didn’t dread coming home from wherever we are.

• Our house would be a comfortable place to drop in and visit at all times.

• Our house would be filled with unique and eclectic things, all of which were loved dearly by at least one person in the home and thoughtfully included in the space.

• I would bake each week with my children.

• I would write each week in my prayer journal and start the week with my church’s Sunday message (which they post online).

• I would tithe.

• I would carefully consider the stuff coming into our house and carefully sort the garbage going out to reduce the impact on our natural world.

• The time I spent smiling would outweigh the time I spent complaining and giving orders.

Wow. You know, there are more, but this is a good start. These aren’t huge items and wouldn’t require all that much to implement. So why am I still whizzing around in my daily whirlwind, where entire weeks or months are sucked away into the netherland, all the while feeling dissatisfied with my life? Why am I not already living the life I want to live?

I usually feel like this sort of thinking is barely above feel-good self-help books that promise you a brand new life but end up blending into the other hundred books on the cluttered bookshelf when you’re finished with it. So I scoff at it, laugh about it, try to accept things the way they are, and try to pretend like the mess around me doesn’t play a part in my being dissatisfied (all the while preaching that a consumerist mindset will lead to dissatisfaction).

But this time, I’m asking myself this question: isn’t making a change in your daily activities to more closely match your value system an example of spiritual growth? And doesn’t true spiritual growth require exercise – exercise such as focused thought and prayer on particular issues or exercise like deliberate changes in your actions and environment? True spiritual growth goes beyond an “a-ha!” moment and overhauling your environment in a spiritual way goes beyond a checklist from the newest self-help book.

Flylady talks quite a bit about “baby steps.” I think this can be a useful idea if you have your own list in front of you, detailing what you want your life to be. Very often, I have a hard time getting from Point A (messy, cluttered whirlwind of a home & a life) to Point B (organized, relaxed home & life) because the logistics get in the way. A good example is this: I want to organize our school & art supplies into one place, but I don’t have a suitable cabinet, so they stay disorganized.

It is helpful for me to anticipate all the logistics and baby steps I’ll need to take to get from Point A to Point B and even write them down if necessary.

On a final note, it helps me to reiterate that things do not equal love. If I love you, I will love you no matter what I do with that thingamabob you bought me a year ago. In fact, for me, time more closely equals love. Instead of spending a couple hours shopping for me, plus $10 on a gift, come spend that 2 hours with me. Let’s spend that $10 on a lunch somewhere or on supplies to do a project together or on an entry fee to a fun activity.

And just so you all know, if I gave you a thingamabob last year, last month, or last week and you don’t want it in your space anymore, please, let it go with joy and abandon! If I loved you enough to give it to you, then I love you enough that I want you to be free.

happy birthday mom

A day late, but still. You've been on my mind lately.

M's birth story

Alright, folks...here it is, in all its detail & length. I'm glad, too, because I keep having things I want to write about, but won't allow myself until this is posted. :-)

I have felt guilty that I haven’t written this out yet. The biggest reason I’ve neglected the task is because M allows me very little two-handed typing time. But then, as time passed, I became less and less driven to do it. Yesterday, I was reading my friend Caitlin’s birth story, and realized so many details of M’s were already becoming fuzzy; my time was limited if I wanted a detailed recollection.

I give this preface because I’m still not feeling motivated, and I’m 50% the writer I should be when I’m not motivated. So if I bore you with this, I’m sorry.

I will say that the things I loved most about M’s birth were the parts where I knew things before they happened. Some people would call it intuition, and that may be correct, since I think the whole process of labor and birth puts you in a spiritual and animal/instinctual position that could easily heighten all your senses, including the sixth one.

My take on it is a little different. I think M and I were communicating very clearly, and that I heard what she was telling me through an intuition or sixth sense. We still communicate pretty clearly now, but it’s so obviously different. All of our communication is now external communication, which includes my observations, her language (vocal & non-verbal), and my past experience with babies. Within a couple days of her birth, however, I realized I felt like my inner advisor was gone and that while my maternal instincts were still strong, my intuition was greatly decreased. I still had lots of strong hormones having their way with me at that point, so if my way of knowing things were simply a side effect of hormonally-induced heightened awareness, then you’d think I’d not notice such an immediate difference.

It probably doesn’t matter one way or the other. Regardless of the science behind the phenomenon, I feel very connected to M and very calm about her birth and her person today. We still have quite the little love affair going on.

I’ll start with the fact that although she was in an optimal, head-down position throughout the entire 3rd trimester, she flipped breech on me at 38+ weeks. And I chose not to turn her. Tracey (my midwife) and Dr. Bowen both told me that sometimes babies turn because of a cord issue and that turning them back can actually be harmful. But that they were both willing to try while she was under close monitoring if that’s what I wanted.

I felt that if M turned on her own all the way at 38+ weeks, then that’s what she wanted. I half-heartedly tried turning her one night in the birthing tub. I talked to her, I put gentle pressure on her, I told her I trusted her judgment, but that if she could turn, that would be best.

She didn’t turn. So I decided to go ahead with the plan and leave her as she was. In my mind, she was as much a lucid individual capable of making individual decisions as I was. Perhaps she knew best. After all, she had the best (only) view of her environment in there. Tracey requested that I look into the dangers of birthing breech so I could make an informed decision of whether I was still comfortable with my homebirthing plan. I promised I would look into it. I didn’t. I just wasn’t worried at all. I look back on that decision now & think, “I was crazy!” But at the time, I strongly believe M herself let me know it was okay.

I had only one somewhat persistent fear, and that was that I would birth her all the way to the head and then she would get stuck & I would have to transport to the hospital to get her out, with her body hanging out the whole time. I now know that would probably be impossible – she would have almost certainly died in that situation. But that was my only fear.

I started having widely spaced, noticeable contractions on Thursday afternoon. They continued through the night, but weren’t terribly regular and I was able to sleep through them. They picked up again to about every 15 minutes Friday morning. I had a chiropractor appointment that morning and on the way there, I called Jeff to tell him I didn’t want him going to Indiana the next morning as he had planned. I didn’t tell him I thought I was in labor or anything. I’d been having contractions for a couple weeks that were irregular and noticeable. They had even been every 15 minutes for several hours at a time on many nights. I didn’t know if this was it or not, I just knew I did not want him going to Indiana.

He protested that it had to be done and that he would only be an hour away, so if anything happened he could come right home. At that point, I broke down and cried and sobbed on the phone, yelled at him, told him to just do whatever he wanted, I would find someone else to be with me! I hung up on him. I said to myself, “Screw him, he’ll be lucky if I even LET him be at MY birth. I have other people! I don’t need him!” I cried big heaving sobs all the way to the chiro’s office. When I got there, I thought that I was having an awfully strong reaction to this fight. I wondered if maybe I was really in labor.

At Dr. Lang’s, she asked how I was doing. I told her about the spaced-out contractions. She said, “You look like you’re in early labor. I think you are. I think this is it.” Later she told me I had that faraway look of a focused mother about to give birth. Maybe Dr. Lang is just intuitive herself. I think she is.

That afternoon, I had been planning to go to Dana’s for a playdate. As the time got closer, my contractions were still the same. Jeff agreed he wouldn’t go to Indiana the next day, but we both were still wondering if it would be a trip missed for no reason. As I prepared to go to Dana’s, I kept thinking I should take a change of pants in case my water broke. As I worked through all the stuff on my list to take, the pants kept getting put off, and I kept reminding myself to grab them – just in case. I walked out without them.

It was a shame I left them at home, because when I walked into Dana’s, I went to the kitchen to make my green drink & get some water & I felt something different that made me run to the bathroom. It turned out to be my mucous plug. I know this because I made my friends come up and examine it. I have good friends.

I was very excited, but I knew it could still be days off, so I went downstairs & planned to stay for our playdate. I got down to the living room and was standing there when all of a sudden, here came the big gush of fluid all over the living room floor. Dana gave me towels and dry clothes. I’m so glad my labor started with friends in that environment instead of, say, Kroger.

Well now there would be no relaxing. I could barely even carry on a conversation. I called Jeff to come pick me up and bring dry clothes. Now we knew cancelling the Indiana trip was a wise choice! When Jeff showed up, he had that excited, which-way-do-I-turn look about him. It was cute. Sassy stayed at Dana’s with Caroline offering to bring her home when I called for her. We didn’t realize that would be Sunday morning!

For the next 24 hours, I had the same every 15 minute contractions. They were uncomfortable enough that I couldn’t sleep. At 2:00 a.m. I was up digging out curtains and fabric from the basement so I could cover all of our windows. I did not want to give birth if any of my neighbors could see inside. When Tracey came to check on me, she said that the baby was posterior and was probably trying to turn herself before active labor would start. All day Saturday, Jeff and I waited for the contractions to pick up. We had just discovered we had a bunch of free cable channels, but I couldn’t stand the TV on. I couldn’t focus on anything except the labor. But strangely, I wasn’t as bored as I’d have expected. We just talked and joked about stuff. We ate food. We sat around. Sassy was still at Caroline’s. She had just had her first sleepover!

Around 3:00, we decided I should get into the birth pool and try to get M to switch to anterior so we could get this show on the road. We both talked to her, me from the inside, Jeff from the outside. Jeff tried to do some hands-on energy work with her. Afterwards, he said he felt she was scared and nervous about what was going on. He said her environment had changed and wasn’t very comfortable and she didn’t know what to do. He said it would be like going from a swimming pool to a wet, warm garbage bag, and it scared her. He talked to her quite a bit over the next hour, telling her how brave she was, and how she could do it, she could turn for us. He told her we were so excited to meet her, but she had to be strong and turn over first. We kept monitoring my belly, and within about an hour’s time, she had made the flip.

My contractions picked up to about every 6 or 7 minutes then, but I was getting tired and knew that I’d already lost a full night’s sleep. Plus, it was Caroline’s birthday (and my due date – the due date I chose for myself, at least), and I wanted to have her that night. Tracey had extensive dental surgery scheduled for Monday, and she was nervous that the labor could go on into that time. We had talked of resorting to castor oil if things were still stagnant by Sunday morning.

Jeff told me I should try to take a nap around 6:00, but I didn’t want to go upstairs by myself. He said he’d come up with me if I didn’t want to be alone. As I laid there trying to sleep a little, I remembered all the induction stuff I’d read and I joked to Jeff that we should mess around and “get the show on the road the old-fashioned way.” Besides, I told him, that’s all he’d be getting before the long drought ahead. He said, sure, why not.

I didn’t think much would come of it. I certainly didn’t expect that my contractions would pick up from every 6-7 minutes to every 1-2 minutes in the span of 10 minutes. Honestly, after all that gradual build-up to labor, going from zero to sixty in 10 minutes time was very overwhelming.

I came down and got into the pool, and by now, I couldn’t keep quiet during contractions and had to actively manage the pain with them. I knelt in the pool with my hands against my back and swayed with each one. This helped the pain. We called Tracey in at this point. I think she was relieved!

By 10:00, the contractions had become so intense and long that no pain management techniques seemed to help. I made Jeff follow me around and press on my back with each contraction. I don’t think it helped the pain so much as distract me from it. I remember very little of this time-warp time except a few random images.

I remember walking around the house, just pacing in a big circle through the hall, through the kitchen and dining room, around through the living room, back through the hall. I joked about it to Tracey and she said all her ladies did the “labor walk.”

I remember getting in the shower on my hands and knees which helped for some indecipherable period of time.

I remember going into the bathroom and leaning against the towel rack with each contraction while Jeff pressed on my back for another period of time. Apparently I banged my head against the bathroom wall during these. The next day, I had a bruised sore spot from the head banging.

I remember leaning against the kitchen counter with Tracey on “back pressing duty” for awhile. I was very vocal during all of these contractions. I think a more accurate analysis was that I screamed during every contraction throughout my entire active labor. I was so glad I was at home and not at the hospital. I don’t think I could have been that uninhibited at the hospital and for some reason, the screaming helped the pain. At the hospital, I would have been begging for the drugs.

I remember feeling I had to poop and Tracey telling me I had to “birth my poop” before I could birth my baby. She suggested I sit on the toilet. I did, with my legs up on the tub in front of me and Tracey in the tub. OUCH! OW OW OW OW! That was the most painful of all the contractions. There was NO WAY I was going to be able to “birth my poop” there. I believe this to be one of the worst parts of the labor. When I finally came downstairs after my 6-day bedrest upstairs, I had uncomfortable flashbacks when I tried to use the downstairs toilet for several days. I joked it was post-traumatic stress syndrome.

After I was unsuccessful in birthing my poop, I went back to the birthing tub and hung over the side. Later, I looked up the signs of “transition.” I think this was my transition period. I remember chanting “Come baby, please come. Come on baby, pleeease,” with each contraction.

Tracey taught me how to vocalize low with contractions instead of the high-pitched screaming I was doing. Right about this time, I would start with a low-pitched vocalization, but it started to turn into a grunt. Tracey told me I was wanting to push and I had to “blow it off” (think Lamaze type breathing) because of M’s breech presentation. I wasn’t allowed to push until she was rumping (not crowning, but rumping).

Eventually, they gave me the go ahead to push. The videotape ran out around this time (gotta love the timing), but the second midwife Tracey had brought in, Candace, was snapping pics like crazy. I love Candace for this! And for many other reasons….she was very sweet and instantly likable.

I pushed with each contraction starting around 1:20 a.m. but made very little progress at first. I was on hands and knees at this point, which is how Tracey told me I should visualize birthing breech. I asked if I could flip over onto my back in the pool and Tracey said I could try, but it probably wouldn’t work as well. But, as soon as I flipped, I started to make some pushing progress.

I have so many wonderful pictures to document this part, so I’ll be brief here on the things I remember. I remember that it took Tracey, her assistant Sora, Candace, and myself to hold my legs apart so that I could push better. For some reason, it is nearly impossible for me to keep my legs apart if I feel threatened in any way. And of course, there was a lot going on, a lot of people around, and a lot of pain down there, so my legs were acting independently of my wishes.

I remember pushing being very painful but very satisfying at the same time. I remember being excited that I was about to hold my baby. I remember being excited that it was almost OVER! I remember looking at the (tape run out) video camera square on, and screaming, “F*** ME! THE RING OF FIRE F***ING HURTS!” I remember Tracey telling me to put my legs up on the side of the pool but not to push with my legs. She said to imagine I was pushing a grand piano up a mountain with my vagina. I remember at the next contraction, I screamed, “I AM PUSHING A GRAND PIANO UP A MOUNTAIN WITH MY VAGINA!” And I remember it being a very productive push.

There was a time, longer than the midwives would have liked I think, where M’s rump and folded-up legs down to her knees were out, but I wasn’t making very fast progress past this point. They asked me if I wanted to touch her, and I said no. Jeff said, “I think you should touch your baby. It’s okay.” So I did, and things quickly sped up then. I was so tired feeling, but as soon as I felt her, I got renewed energy. “I’m sorry, baby! I’m so sorry! I’ll do better! I’ll push harder! I’m so sorry!” I don’t remember saying this exactly; Jeff told me about it later.

So with the next push came all of her legs, and then an arm with the next, and the other arm with the next. And then, my contractions went away. Tracey hypothesized later that it was because I felt threatened, my legs were being held open, and my body shut down. Jeff hypothesized that my body thought she was already out. Either way, we had a head inside waiting for another contraction which never came. It was interesting to note in retrospect that this had been my only persistent fear of birthing breech.

For 3 whole minutes we waited. Candace got a dozen pictures of body-out head-in during this time. Tracey checked M’s heartbeat almost continuously. We still waited for the contraction. Then I saw Tracey give a glance to Candace after a heartbeat check, a glance that said, “Now,” very clearly, although no words were spoken. She said something to me along the lines of, “Okay, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to push, you’re going to push now, you’re not going to stop pushing until the baby is out. I’m going to go inside and help you.” Jeff said, “You can do this, this is for our baby, you can do it.” And so I did.

I pushed and pushed. I pushed through what I later called the “tunnel of fire.” I didn’t quit until she was out. Tracey laid her on my chest and was in high-action, concerned mode. M opened one little eye at us, then shut it and laid on my chest while Tracey did her infant resuscitation routine, which she had shown us before the birth. She had warned us that many babies, almost 25%, need a little help after birth from a difficult journey. I still wasn’t very worried despite Tracey’s serious face and focus on the task. I help M, rubbed her feet and arms, talked to her. My only anxious thought was, “I don’t want to have a stillborn and be blamed for it.”

But that thought didn’t stick around long because Candace was listening to her heart rate during this time, and after 30 seconds or less, Candace had a reassuring voice. She said, “Tracey, we have good heart tones. We have 60, we have 80, okay we’re at 100, 120. I think we can stop.” And then, right on cue, M coughed, spit up a little and cried. It’s the only cry she’s ever had that made me happy. We all smiled and Tracey put her equipment away. (She only told me her lowest heart rate later, when I pressed her. She said 20-40, but she didn’t get a good count because there wasn’t time.)

I still wasn’t having contractions, so we didn’t wait for me to birth the placenta in my own time. Tracey told me to just push it out, which I did. Then I really wanted to get out of the pool.

I handed M to Jeff and all 3 midwives helped me to the recliner in the living room. I was shaking & shivering uncontrollably, so they wrapped me in blankets. Apparently, this shaking is common with the post-birth hormonal shift.

Tracey was concerned about my lack of contractions and my pale color, so she was insistent that I latch M right away to stop any uterine bleeding. I was so tired! I felt like I could fall asleep on the spot. I couldn’t pay attention to anything around me and was trying my best to keep my eyes open, since I wasn’t allowed to go to sleep for at least 3 hours. I honestly didn’t even have that much interest in latching M or getting to know her at that point. I was just too tired and out of it.

Tracey’s assistant kept trying to get M latched on for me, but I barely remember it. I just remember feeling like a rag doll, with my breast being shoved into M’s mouth over & over by her assistant while I stared off into space uninterested. I kept thinking something didn’t feel right, that I was too tired, but I didn’t want to alarm anyone.

Finally, maybe 45 minutes later, I told Tracey I needed to use the bathroom, maybe walk around. I needed a break from the weird rag-doll like latching thing; plus, I just really wanted to use the bathroom. When I sat on the toilet, it became obvious that I was bleeding too much, and Tracey started to explain why she thought I should have a shot of pitocin. I welcomed the medicine. I just wanted to feel better.

Within 15 minutes of the pitocin shot, I was a new person! I became assertive enough again to tell everyone to leave me alone and give me my baby. I held her, engaged her finally, and began to bond with her. Within just a few minutes more, I latched her on myself…not because I had to, but because I wanted to. It hurt hurt hurt! My nipples were not toughened at all! But it was still enjoyable & felt just as it should be.

Tracey was called to another labor then, but she wanted to check for tearing first. This was the part I’d feared about a homebirth. If I tore & needed stitches, what would I do? I couldn’t imagine having unmedicated stitches on such a sore area.

Turns out, I did tear, and it was enough for a couple stitches, but it was also small enough that I was okay to heal without stitches if I agreed to stay in bed for 6 days, then only take the stairs once/day for the next 8 days after that. It would be a total of a 2-week healing period where I was allowed to do little more than sit, nurse & watch TV.

It was hard to go for those 2 weeks. I felt like they would never end! I didn’t anticipate that nursing would be as difficult as it was in the beginning either, but that’s for another story. The thing I forgot to factor in with learning to breastfeed was that my birth injuries would make it very hard to maneuver my body. This made latching her on much more difficult.

All in all, though, staying out of the hospital made everything worth it. I have a few regrets…the most notable was that I didn’t vocalize the fact that the extreme tiredness I felt after birth did not feel normal. I feel a little robbed of that first 45 minutes with her. Yes, she was in my arms, but I barely noticed her there.

The next 24 hours more than made up for it though. We were together the whole time, the three of us. (Me, M & her placenta – ha!) I was able to sleep in my own bed without strangers coming in and out of my room, requiring things of me. I was able to eat real food that my dear husband made for me and was able to be nursed by him instead.

And by the next morning, I was securely in love.

new house!

We found a home today. Interested?
Check it out here.