woodsmoke and rain

a combination of smells...i love woodsmoke, rain and pine trees. i went for a walk tonight. the smoke and foggy rain hovered in the branches of the trees in the low hills, perched but moving and alive. there was something very comforting about it. reassuring me i'm still here, still in my beloved Willamette Valley, still where it rains to comfort me and take care of the green. walking in out of it, drenched to the bone..to a warm house, still smelling like stewing beef burgundy, and warm bread, greeted by a wiggly dog and a relaxed husband, was pretty darn great.

mortar fire.

oh these little injuries. so many tiny fragments of shrapnel. tiny and sharp, moving slowly just under the skin. so slow you don't even know they are moving, or even there, until one hits your heart, just a tiny prick is enough to take you down.

i'm feeling sort of battered by the days lately. it's sort of self serving, but i do feel a bit picked on. i've got wavering faith. wavering loyalties. wavering everything. the only sure thing is that these kids need me every day. test me every day. but they also love me every day. one is currently screaming in time out, the other is needing constant reminders of the rules, and honestly i want to chuck them both in their rooms and leave them there for awhile.

on the other hand, other things about me have been completely disregarded. it's fine, really. one becomes invisible after awhile. no matter how red the hair is. these little injuries.

packages, tied up with string.

i've spent a large part of my life trying to (cliche here) "find myself". i've tried country, rock and roll, jazz....literally and metaphorically. i've tried city and country, and urban farming. i've tried vegetarian, vegan and protein only. i've tried wild and free and reserved housewife (not as good at that last one). what i'm starting to figure out is that i'm all of those things. it's not an easy way to be. it confuses people. me, mostly. but i'm starting to settle in to this disconnection or lack of loyalty to one way. i know i'm a mother for sure. i know i'm a cook and a nurturer, also, certainly. i know i like wine and coffee and bread. always. i like orange, and retro furniture. i like gardens and clean floors. spring smells and first sunshine always make me want to be rebellious and unencumbered, if only for a little while. the smell of fall makes me want to bake pie and simmer stew.
i've realized insecurities make me act irresponsibly. make me act like someone who is not all of the above. we, as women, as people, should probably knock that crap off and just learn to love ourselves. i've learned i think i can do everything myself. and while i can't, i sure can do a lot myself. but not everything. well, i'm running out of things to say. driving today, i had a lot to write, but a lot of daily life and jumbles of stuff happened between then and now. jumble happens.

the silence is shattered by a pissed off chicken...

you know how it goes. same old story. kids in bed, dinner mess cleaned up, husband and buddy hanging out at the end of the driveway, chewin' the fat. it's quiet, and you know what's coming. a nearby, clearly wronged chicken cuts loose with a string of poultry profanity. i mean, really. i have children here, listening!

this day was fantastic. really great....i love thursdays..joe gets up early to go to men's breakfast..which means i get the bed for a whole hour to myself (ideally)until Cole tromps down the stairs and snuggles in next to me....for a bit, until Liam, who isn't brave enough yet, thankfully, to descend the stairs groggy, calls for me...then the madness starts. but i love it too, because i wake to the smell of hot coffee, and the house is starting to warm up. but today was especially stellar because a good friend came to visit. it's always fun with her. funny things are funnier with her around. catching the grill on fire, attempting to cook bacon...normally this type of thing would have made me nervous...instead, we stood around debating what to do as my grill flamed--parts that typically are not supposed to flame. finally, laughing hysterically, we called joe to make sure we'd done right (unhooked gas, closed lid, threw some flour on it(which ignited, thusly igniting more laughter from us). the attempt to keep the bacon smell out of my house backfired quite profoundly. and i loved it. made a cake from scratch, dinner was in the crockpot, so i walked resolutely past the laundry to play with my kids in the sunshine. it was just the kind of day you never remember you love so much until it happens. and now, alone in my breakfast nook, smelling an overripe lemon, thinking about doing my taxes...last years....i'm thinking, no, let's keep it up. let's just enjoy these simple pleasures, smells, sounds or lack of sounds, forever friends, kid messes, and every imperfection that makes us perfect. lets just camp there, and be still.

pretty long roar, huh?

sitting with my 4 year old son. he's drinking a homemade smoothie. he looks like the purple pie man, with his blackberry handlebar mustache. he practicing his roars....and his dad's, and his little brother's....all in various pitches and lengths. this kid amuses me. he talks darn near constantly. not sure where he gets that. ahem. his heart and his capacity for expressing love are wonderous to me. his little brother...X-Games athlete in the making. fearless...but the same tender, expressive love. i feel so blessed and i hope they keep this quality.

sitting in this funky little fixer upper today, i feel content. this house is like me...solid foundation...cosmetically challenged, some rough edges and plumbing problems...but charming and warm and inviting. it's a house that likes to hug, and likes to be loved back. it feels happiest when full of laughter and good smells. it's nice to feel this way...after a spell of unrest, of uncertainty, of disconnect. it's nice to sit here, listening to the sounds of my kids playing, a vase of spring buds on my table, next to a window looking out onto the back deck, while a roast chicken bursts lemoney, peppery goodness out of the oven. it's good to be back.

do your research before converting...

i'm pretty sure my cat has peed on every moving box still left unpacked. we don't have carpet, so it's not in it...but i cannot escape this smell. no amount of vanilla amber candles will block it. it's true incentive for finishing the unpack, i guess. repugnant.
i'm surrounded by males. all my kids, save my stepdaughter, who lives on her own, are male. all my pets are male. i cannot escape the male-ness. it has it's place but today it's culminating in pee where it shouldn't be...down the sides of the toilet, on the wall behind the toilet, seeping out of diapers, and of course, on moving boxes. i've really had enough of all that today.

as i said earlier, and really mean...since i decided to try on perfectionism for size, my life has been much harder. i see stuff that needs doing and feel i must do it. and most of it can wait, like it has for most of my life. there are times when this foreign, perfect aiming behavior could have served me well...architecture school, for example. those kids are intense. i passed and i passed with good grades, etc...didn't pull a single all nighter, never had that harried feeling of not quite right yet. it was always fine, or good enough. but now...i know my kitchen floor is funky and needs to be mopped. usually i could say to myself "it's the weekend, i'll do it monday" and i'm desperately trying to say that now...because i have a whole pile of shoes and belts and hats to put away...since dumping a despoiled box out to get it out of the house....and really, my heart and butt wants to stay right here...but it's nagging me. i've a strong suspicion that if i finish this glass of wine, i'll win the battle. but i'll see that floor in the morning and flip out, internally for sure, externally, quite possibly. i want it to be shiny and clean and perfect. sundays do that to me.

reminders like a frying pan to the head...

i know someone with a pretty sick child. she celebrates the little things. first, when i read about her current victory, i cried. i couldn't help it. i hope i never know how these mothers get by day to day with the worry, the fear, the agony of wanting, needing to take the pain from your child and take it on yourself instead, if God would only let you. they do get by though. they do it for their babies, because this is what helps them to heal. but i hope i never have to summon the kind of strength that must take. so i cried. then i went upstairs and buried my nose in the hair of my sleeping children and kissed them, said a silent prayer, told them i loved them. and now, i cry again because i yelled loud and repeatedly today. i used the scary mom voice and made my littlest cry. why do we do this? why, in the moment, do we think they are trying to maliciously torment us? they aren't, they are being stinkers, because that is what 2 and 4 year old boys do. and my goal of being a kind, consistant, nurturing mother, well, that counter clicked back to zero to start again. it's all we can do. pray for a better day tomorrow and do our best to make it happen. but i'm reminded, that there are no guarantees. God gives much but also can take away. and my children will know love. they will know humor. they will know that mama isn't perfect but she loves them with an ache that only a mother can feel. they will know.

about face, left face....

let's change directions for a bit. i've grown weary, for a time, of my thinly veiled, grey observations about daily life at the moment. food. it's how i express love. the process, each cut of the knife thru vegetables, carefully selected. the blend of herbs and spices, just right...the way the cream and butter and garlic and wine swirl together forming a culinary heaven. the crackle of a chewy bread, with a bubbly crust that makes a huge, delicious mess when sliced. the way love and food come together to form comfort, or refreshment or just what you needed at that moment. now...the rub....the people i cook for--a preschooler, a toddler and a man who, bless his heart, has seared his tastebuds and sense of smell with paint fumes (to clarify, he's not a freaky inhaler, he spent years in the automotive paint industry). my love falls on empty mouths. joe tries to appreciate. he really does, but my carefully thought out, blend of herbs, dashes of spices...go unnoticed, or pronounced flavorless. i should say, they aren't flavorless...but you see what happens. if i don't catch myself, and remind myself of my tough crowd, i get hurt. i'm so connected to nurturing, that to feel like i've fallen short is difficult for me. i recently decided that i'm going to cook, my intentions are clear, and if my efforts go unheralded with sighs of delight, it's okay. i'll do the sighing.

...i'm not sure, well, maybe i should?

okay, so i'm not actually sure i should be writing anything tonight. it was a long day. filled with a lot of tasks that had to be done, and many did not but i got to spend time on hold anyway. i've got a dog at my feet, a cat on the table next to me, and three sleeping people in the house, and i need to be also. but i wanted to find time to say that girlfriends are invaluable. Girlfriends who help you wade thru your life, who remind you to look for God everywhere, who remind you to celebrate tiny victories because sometimes that's all we get for awhile. my small victory tonight is taking the upper hand in an internal debate. this debate will happen again. but for tonight, i win.

life is so not what i thought it'd be which is pretty wonderful in some ways if you can see past how disappointing it can also be sometimes. these little dramas of the day today--they are my movie, my theme song....i don't need to find drama, or find a way to attract it..it's in the toddler meltdowns that end in tiny arms locked around my neck, in sloppy kisses and in cold dog noses on my cheek in the middle of the night. it's in the terrible beauty of those rocky spots in a marriage--that you pray you get thru. it's in all the things that make you, you..when you wake up and realize you're who you are. and have always been, even when you spent so long pretending you weren't. this drama, the beauty, the pain. it's all worth it and it's all here for us to savor. this door, this life is short and ends fast. i think i'll just live in my own soundtrack of rocket noises, matchbox cars down wood stairs, of mommy calls in the middle of the night, the symphony of opening doors and fruit snack wrappers, of barking dogs and snoring husbands, of the dragon tails theme song. all of it. it's all mine.

home in a place that's not...

i had to move recently. i did not want to, and i'll spare the sordid details. i've always been known (more, like a family/friend joke) for my wandering nature. I've lived in 23 different houses in 16 years. the house i just moved from was the first place i'd lived that i didn't want to move from. i'd been there a year. it wasn't so much the house, it was the town. my hometown--the one i swore i'd never live in because i was much too cool, metropolitan, blah, blah, blah. i'm not. i wanted the comfort of home. i loved taking my kids for a walk and always running into someone i knew and liked. i liked walking to the coffee shop to talk to dave, or jenna or one of the sweet people who worked there. i liked the surreal mix of bmw's and monster trucks in the parking lot of the local grocery store. i liked finding a church that didn't scare me, that helped me find God. so i had to move back to a town, about an hour away, that i had some bad experiences in...but into a fixer upper house i actually like. i've been trying to convince myself that home is where my family is (true) and it's just geography (also true)..but there is something to be said for connecting to a place and it's people. i saw things in this new place that touched me--the dapper old gentleman pushing his classic bicycle, the line of Harley's that's always parked in front of, or just pulling away from the rough bar on Main Street, rosey cheeked kids in sports uniforms, or a mom pushing a stroller. I see these things, and it makes me smile. this is someone's hometown, just not mine.