Equilibrium

I don't know why I've been struggling so much to find my balance lately. Today's lesson in Relief Society at church was about "the one". The one who feels alienated, lost, confused or lonely within the congregation (and the world as a whole I suppose). I think that "the one" is often a person you might not expect her to be--she can be a pretty good faker. I've been her. Frankly, I think we all feel this way at some point in our lives. The lesson progressed and I spoke up more than usual, which felt a little awkward today. We talked about it being difficult to move out of our own minds and concerns enough to reach out, about how we need the connections even though they can be hard to make.

I found this quote today at Magpie Girl's blog and it brought tears to my eyes because it captures perfectly the kind of person I want to be.

May the blessing of light be upon you--
Light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great fire,
So that stranger and friend may come and warm themselves at it.
And may light shine out of the two eyes of you,
Like a candle set in the window of a house,
Bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.

~ a traditional Celtic blessing

Sundays are often hard days for me. I love church and yet I struggle to enjoy the process of getting there (which I am doing alone since my husband leaves several hours early for his own stuff) and the dealing with wild children during meetings which are supposed to be sort of quiet and that feeling that everyone is looking and wondering who I am and what I think I am doing. Self-induced I know, which is why I still do my best to show up each week. It's my issue and I own it and am working to change the part of myself that feels so much worry and stress about measuring up sometimes.

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.' ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

Today after the meetings, a woman stopped me to tell me that she saw me tumble in late this morning, dragging squirmy kids, and felt a pang for me. She spent a lot of years doing that, she said, and she knew how it felt and how hard it could be to keep yourself moving, to feel like it was worth the superhuman effort to not just give up and go home and cry. Lately, I have found myself surrounded by more experienced mothers who have reached out to let me know I am doing pretty good and that it's all going to be okay eventually--what a comfort.

Time flies...

Where did June go?

We've spent a lot of time in the garden. We picked out first 3 strawberries this morning. One even looked like it could have come from the store! we have tiny pea pods, tiny green tomatoes and microscopic zucchini. The flowers are awesome this year--or at least more awesome than I've been able to make happen in the past--so if you live near me you might find some on your doorstep! I finally got the herb bed dealt with as well and while my purple basil died, my neighbor gave me some great plants and I have an amazing lime oregano and pineapple sage! Pineapple sage actually smells like pineapple! I'll post the before and after photos next time.
Princess had her first real dance recital this week. The wore a white satin and sequined tutu and had a great time! I had a fiasco while trying to shop locally and order new tights so she wore the old ones with a huge black (irremovable) spot on the knee. We took dinner to the studio staff for the dress rehearsal and that was fun. Tuscan Chicken Salad, fruit salad, fresh rustic bread from Costco, chocolate and lemon-strawberry cupcakes Princess helped make and mints to deal with the after effects of the garlicky meal. Princess played hostess and gave everyone mints and drinks and it was cute. She performed Thursday and the show went smoothly and was lots of fun (even though we were close to late because I lost the tickets--a nice man let us in anyway thank heavens). Friday night I went to help backstage during the show since I didn't want to miss seeing Princess on Thursday but still wanted to help. The most polite thing I can say about that experience is that is didn't kill me. I frankly have no clue how the Gosselins manage six 3-year-olds . . . but it wasn't (as usual) the kids that were really the problem. My friend Joan P. came to see the show and I really enjoyed having her there. Bear slept for that last hour but really seemed to enjoy it until we hit bedtime. No screaming and no removing him though! How's that for a miracle?!

I love my new massage therapist and finally am making really good progress again! She has two kids about the ages of mine, and she's good at her job and a lovely commiserator and problem solver when it comes to parenting. Some people prefer silent massages--I've been blessed with MTs who like to talk as much as I do and we have a ton of fun! I leave feeling physically better and mentally refreshed. Maybe after I finish the treatments (probably before the summer is out) we can meet at the park with our kids!

Father's Day was pretty mellow. My husband got cards from me, the kids and the cat, pajamas (his request), and photos of me with the kids. I voluntarily get photographed maybe twice a year. Christmas with the whole family and Father's Day with the kids for my husband. This year my quota is already filled because of the 4-generation photos we took in Boise with my mom and grandma, so if I'm going to be in the Christmas card I'll need to buck up once more.

Baby bear has been growing like crazy. He has 8 teeth and is working on more, is walking by himself a good 6 steps at a time, has massively increased his hair output and had his first all-kid food meal for lunch today! Sliced penne noodles (so they look like cheerios), mozzarella cheese and peaches. He thought it was quite novel and ate a lot once I took the way-more-fun-than-eating bowl away from him.

Bear has also managed to tear down the horrid vertical blinds in the living room and escape repeatedly. This has caused us to get new blinds that we can actually raise high enough for him to not destroy and rearrange the baby gate configuration. I was not happy I was going to need to buy more and then the same day I was going to go get them, a lady posted on freecycle that she was giving away the exact gate I needed in the exact size I needed!!! When I emailed her she had offered it to someone else and I was sad, but then she sent me back a note saying the other person had declined! So I got a brand new one of these for free! This has allowed us a safe place for the Bear again since we have enough gates to block off both exits from the living room now.

This week Princess started swimming lessons! She's like a little fish and just loving it. She's going to the city pool twice a week in the morning and is in a class with about six other kids. Bear and I sit and watch--he's fascinated and sleepy from the heat so he's quiet. I look over my list for the day and smile, wave and give the thumbs up sign as needed.

Yesterday we went to a local historical working farm for an arts, crafts and animal feeding class for Princess. It was a gorgeous day and they had peacocks roaming the grounds and Bear and I just walked (yes he walked a lot of it) and enjoyed the sun while Princess did her thing. There was this amazing white peacock trying to dig herself a shady hole in the ground. Weirdest thing I've seen in awhile--it looked like a cat wanting its tummy rubbed!
We've also made Jell-O jigglers, toilet paper butterflies, tried out a local church playgroup, been to the library a lot, played a lot of dress up, and enjoyed our brief moments of sunshine. All in all, it has been a busy and lovely month!

Pillows & Tagged

So I was ready for a new pillow! I like mine firm, fluffy and about 3 1/2 inches high and the old one was too flat for my tastes. I learned the hard way last time I went pillow hunting that more expensive is not necessarily best when I found a buy-one-get-one-free offer at Costco for their finest pillows. Now, I can't see myself paying $25 for a pillow, frankly, and even two for that price seemed a bit indulgent, but I thought maybe I'd been missing something in all my cheap pillow years, so I did it. They were horrid. I hated them. A week later I was back in Wal-Mart, and since I'd blown my pillow budget on the nasties, I purchased the $4.99 specials. Lo and behold. I loved the cheapos! Loved them! Best pillows I'd ever slept on!

Therefore I was once again in the pillow aisle at Wal-Mart, looking at the bottom rack (where the cheapo pillows reside) and I found three varieties of environmentally friendly pillows! How weird is that? I mean, Wal-Mart is hated by a large part of the population (especially in my local Northwest town) for its non-PC-ness . . . and here they are with sustainable, hydrogen peroxide bleached, recycled water bottle fiberfill pillows in biodegradable packaging! I picked the ECOTEX & nextlife pillows and so far, I'm sleeping good :)

I have to throw in here that Baby Bear started clapping on Sunday out of the blue. He's apparetly chosen Sunday as his official Milestone Day, as things like new teeth and cuteness appear mostly on Sundays. He's such a handsome kid and when he smiles he looks so much like my maternal grandpa it takes my breath away. I also recently found a photo of myself a little older than Bear is now, with my parents. It's a studio portrait and the little me looks amazingly like little him--when asked who was in the photo, Princess identified my mom as me, me as Bear and my dad as, well, try not to laugh, John the Baptist. Now, this photo of my father shows him as a skinny, clean shaven man of about 25 and Princess has never known him as anything but robust and furry-faced, but seriously, I was trying so hard not to choke because I was laughing so hard!

After I correctly labeled the picture for her she did wonder why Granny and Grandpa where in the picture together, and thus I had my first heartbreaking (for me) moment of telling my kid that my parents used to be married but now they aren't. I only said a sentence or so, since she is ony four, and she was not really interested in more than that and quickly went back to her computer game, but it did hit me a little hard. Honestly, I still have times when miss terribly my family being intact, even after all these years, even after all the work I've done to come to peaceful terms with it and to create positive relationships all around.

Cynthia tagged me.

Big 5 Tag
What were you doing five years ago?
Waiting for my first baby to be born, frantically stocking up on bibs and burpcloths from eBay.

What are five things to do on your list for today?
Well, my day's mostly over and they're still mostly on the list: blog, write a CU lecture, make Father's Day plans for for surprising my husband, make a chocolate cake from scratch with Princess, list 37 things on eBay.

What are five snacks you enjoy?
Pizza, ice cream, chickles (cheese+pickles), cottage cheese topped with 5 bean salad, nutella on graham crackers.

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
Pay debts, buy homes for the people I love, visit people I love who live far away more often, vacation to places where people I love do not live, dance.

What are five of your bad habits?
Worrying, fussing, optimisim, grumpiness, panicking.

What are five jobs you have had?
Photo session scheduler, fine art notecard packager, ballet teacher, newspaper librarian, companion (in the old fashioned personal-assistant-of-all-trades sense).

What five people do you want to tag? Anyone who actually reads this :)

Baby Bear had his 9 month check up today--he's only 3 inches shy of 3 feet tall! We saw a new doc, not our regular one, but I liked her . . . she kept cooing at him and saying how perfect he was :) As a mom, that tends to get people on your good side!

We hit Wal-Mart after that and I found nifty storage boxes for the kid's room that came filled with my favorite wipes! Happy me! I also found a purple ruffled basil plant and some wax bean and cucumber seeds. I've been looking for bean and pea starts with no success--maybe I am just too late in the season for them. On the way out there was a fundraiser for a local resource that feeds the homeless and when Princess saw the semi-preciousness of the stones in the key chains, bracelets and necklaces, she wanted one so badly and I gave in. She now owns a citrine turtle key chain. We talked about where the money was going and why we were doing it and she enthused about getting to help others and getting a turtle in return.

Then we all three schlepped off to the chiropractor for our Official Evaluations post fender bender. It was nice to be done with that. Now all I have left to leave this disaster behind me is to send the papers back to the insurance company and be done. This particular experience is just another thing to help me learn to relax and go with the flow.

For quiet time we read Leaf Magic by Margaret Mahy, and Princess was terribly upset at the end. I finished the final sentence and was enjoying that delicious warm feeling that you have after reading a wonderful, touching story and she began to sniff and then snuffle and then launch into full blown hysteria. I finally got her calmed enough that she could show me the page that had upset her so much and it was the page where the leaf was trapped in a dark box all alone. She had fallen in love with the leaf and was devastated that it was shut up in a box and then truly distressed that it had been turned into a dog.

She has such a tender heart and she sees life in everything from rocks to paper dolls to the crispy worm she found on the front steps this morning ("he's just tired mom"). I tried to help her see that it was like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly--a happy thing, a good thing, but the loss seemed too great to her . . . despite my attempts at comfort, diversion and explanation, the poor dear cried herself to sleep. I hope that as she grows I can help her keep the empathy and compassion she was obviously born for while teaching her how to handle change with as much flexibility and grace as possible.

"The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail."
Lao-tzu

Growth

As of Sunday I have a 6 Tooth Boy! Three on top, three on the bottom, and the left side is definitely winning. And today, my baby took two steps by himself! Oh my goodness! I can't believe it. Princess was not a really early walker, but this kid is cruising. Yes, for those of you trying to add it up, he won't be ten months old for another ten days. Watch out world, Bear is on the loose. Well, technically we have baby gates up, but he's more able to be on the loose, quicker anyway, then he was last week. Crazy.

Three beds in the back planted now and they're growing! Corn, pumpkins, potatoes, celery (which I hate but Princess loves), tomatoes, peppers and cantaloupe (yeah right, one can dream I suppose). Tomorrow I'll work on the onions, yellow crook neck squash, acorn squash, zucchini, Brussels sprouts & cabbage. I am hoping to get the herbs in this week too--I have purple sage, lemon thyme, tarragon, chives, oregano & parsley to plant. The garden is a great place to work things out lately. Makes the achy shoulder ache, but certainly does the rest of me some good. I recently found this quote and it made me smile--I sneak glances out the kitchen window much more frequently when I've just planted things!

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
--Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Ladybuggary

My Princess came in from the front yard a couple weeks ago to tell me how excited she was about her new "Ladybuggary". I had not ever heard this term before, but she told me (with no little amount of condescension at my ignorance) that it means a habitat for ladybugs. Not to be confused with an ordinary

"Buggary" which is a habitat for

regular kinds of bugs or a "Sluggary"

which is a habitat for slugs.

Thanks

Thank you to those who sent me nice notes in response to the last post. This week has been one of the most difficult I have had in a long time (and it is only Thursday), coming on the tail of another challenging week. I am hoping to finish up with some lightness. I meant to respond personally, and I will as I get myself together here, but I wanted to say thanks.

Yesterday was the worst and last night I after Night Writers I fell apart at the feet of two very wise women and I am so grateful for their willingness to sacrifice their sleep and comfort to let me talk myself through some of the things I have been struggling with and share with me some of their own life lessons. Today of course, I am trying not to regret it.

I have a hard time trusting people with my weak moments. I talked to a friend about this once, and I think it comes down to me believing I am a pretty strong, happy, person and worrying that if people see me in a moment of weakness or frustration that they'll forever after that see me as this needy person. Gratefully, my moments of complete and utter overwhelmance (new word?) are few and so I generally find it safer to just get through them by closing my eyes and hanging on until it's over instead of asking for support. I am afraid that if others see me as incapable of dealing with my life, even for short periods of time, I might be judged (by myself and them) by that moment instead of who I feel like I truly am--the person I am the rest of the time. The majority of the time. While I believe I am shaped by my struggles to a certain extent, I don't believe that I am my struggles and I hate the idea of giving people that impression.

I have truly worked on overcoming this phobia and opening up in the past few years, but apparently it's time for me to kick this dish up a notch (bam-bam-bam). I am a believer in the idea that if a challenge comes to you, it's time to deal with it and you are ready to do it and have the tools even if you don't realize it. I suppose that is sort of encouraging when I think about it. I can do this. I can get through this. I am meant to get through it.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

- Anais Nin