Owner: Journey Mama URL:http://www.journeymama.com Join Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:23:11 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: My life cultivating joy and creativity with my husband, kids, and community. And laughing at myself. Like a hyena. Site statistics:Click here
“At our house, we play out back. We play a game called ‘Ring the Gack’… 2007-09-18 17:36:13 if you’d like to play this game, come down! We have the only Gack in town.” *
I don’t feel well today. And we have guests, many many guests. One guest, two guests, red guests, blue guests. Guests in the garden, guests in the tree house, guests around the fire circle, guests in the Big House. It’s awesome. But I wish I felt a little better today.
And we don’t have a Gack, and we don’t live near those guys who do, so I have another game that you can play with your kids, if you have some. You could play this with anyone’s kids, though, really.
Here’s an example of how we play this game: (everyone is piled on my lap or curled up around me)
Mama: &ldquo
;Kid A, what’s your favorite thing about YaYa?”
Kid A: “I don’t know.”
Mama: “Mine is the songs that she sings.”
Kid A: “Yeah, that’s my favorite thing, too. I like the songs that she sings.”
(YaYa beams.)
Mama: “YaYa, Read more:hellip
, lsquo
Follow-up to the tidal flow 2007-09-14 10:13:36 Lulu made a good comment on the last post about twenty-somethings burning out young.
She writes: “Many have left demoralized. They have barely had a chance to learn the rules much less to learn how to work with unhealthy people. They are beat up all the time until they quit. Many of these kids would have been just what we needed to “reform” the system. And we’ve lost them. We don’t allow them appropriate time for family, friends and life.”
Whoa. I wanted to clarify a little, after I read this. Because “Ranter Rae” was on the loose, and might not have been as clear as she should have been.
I kinda did that. I almost burnt myself out. I told Renee yesterday that when I was in the community house in San Francisco, which was one of the hardest points of my whole life, I realized that I didn’t know how to care for myself at all. I couldn’t figure out how to take care of my kids and eat, also. You know, ingest food. I lost a lot of
Riiiiiiipppp! 2007-09-13 17:58:53 Yesterday afternoon, as I was enthusiastically, sadistically, and tyrannically pulling weeds in the garden, I was listening to an NPR “Story of the Day” podcast. It was a little story on the new corporate world, and how much different it is for the twenty-somethings now, who seem to want to climb the corporate ladder much more quickly than ever before.
The corporate world was as far from me and my gardening; our wonderful trees literally crippled with apples, the grapes on the fence, the weeds that I was ruthlessly, murderously, and determinedly ripping; as maple syrup is from the poison dart frog. But one thing the guest mentioned caused me to sit up in the dirt and listen.
She said, and I paraphrase, that she would not encourage twenty-somethings to attend graduate school because the twenties are a time for many relationships, for fun, for travel, for discovering yourself and who you are, not for responsiblity, not for settling into something that will cause you t
An Open Letter to the Checker at Costco 2007-09-12 10:07:42 Dear Checker
at Costco
,
Yes, you. The guy at the register.
The other day you and I were having a little conversation about why I didn’t want to renew my executive membership. “Just give me the plain ol’ plain ol’ membership,” I said. ”Because we’re going away.” This is where our discourse became, well, ridiculous. Because you assumed that when I said going away, what I meant was going to prison.
You paused and said, “you mean, to the slammer?” And I scratched my head and thought, what an odd way to joke around with a customer, but I went along with your joke and said, “Yeah, what I should have said was, ‘they’re putting us away.’
And you paused, and said, “that’s terrible. When?”
I said, “Oh you know- soon.”
And then you looked at me and said, “Wow. Are you serious?”
And that’s when I realized you weren’t joking.
I was ha Read more:Letter
I have wheel-shaped feet 2007-09-10 12:56:33 After arriving home after two days of driving on Tuesday night, and a full shopping day on Thursday, we decided on Friday to run down to Sacramento for the weekend. Because we’re nuts. I was feeling very grumpy on Thursday, driving the four-hour drive to Sac, and finally pieced together that in five days I had spent more waking hours driving than not. Suddenly my grumpiness made sense, although I’m not sure if my Superstar Husband appreciated my over-attentive mean-ness any more, sense or no sense.
After the drive, though, we had an amazing weekend, spending time with friends, going out for our sixth anniversary. I meant to write an eloquent post about my Superstar Husband, but computer time was not abundant. So you can read last year’s eloquent post.
Today we drive home again, except that we have to take the long and loopy way, swinging by the Bay Area to pick up some work of mine. More car hours. Urg.
Read more:wheel
A little bit of real life 2007-09-06 14:52:16 We arrived home, the night before last, after a day of driving filled with rain, cold, NPR podcasts, (many, many NPR podcasts) and our friends who drove with us. They were coming from the same direction to visit us at the Land for a couple of days, and we had fun playing with the configuration of drivers and passengers and vehicles. Girls in the van! Girls in the car! Boys in the car! Boys in the van! There are endless possibilities.
Our van is kind of funny, with its no heat function, so when rain happens we have to open the vents and the windows to keep the windshield from fogging up. Choosing between no sight and being cold is easy, we choose being cold. Choosing between the $1000 needed to fix it and being cold is easy too. Blankets for everyone! (I’m going to look into it before winter hits, though, to see if there are any less expensive options. There is nothing quite like deciding not to go somewhere because you don’t want to be cold.) But then Read more:little
A Perfect Post for August 2007-09-04 09:55:47 I’ve been loving Kiwords lately. She makes me laugh, makes me think. In August
she wrote a beautiful, beautiful post about her blended family.
“In the evenings, as I stood at the kitchen sink, slicing into peach after peach after peach, as the juice ran off my wrists, I breathed in the scent and listened to the sounds of all these people I love, figuring out how to love each other.”
I thought it was Perfect
. To read more perfect posts, check out Suburban Turmoil and Petroville.
Dear Kid A, 2007-09-02 18:07:32
My heart is so full of you right now, I feel like I want to write you a thousand poems. I am almost shaking, starting this birthday letter.
I just don’t want to forget a single thing.
You are five, you turned five yesterday and to celebrate, you handed your grandma the first slice of cake, and then all of us could have thrown down our forks and eaten you, instead of the cake. You are just that sweet. Every day, it seems, I ask you in my most mournful voice, “Where did my baby Kid A go?” And you say, gleefully, wickedly, “He’s GONE!” And I smile, and say, “I guess I wouldn’t want you to stay little for the rest of your life. It would be weird.” And your eyes light up and you laugh because it is very silly, to think of you staying little for the rest of your life.
(Secretly, though, I’m thinking of trying to find a way to make it happen.)
And yet, yesterday, after we went to the waterslides (the WATERSLID
Trust 2007-08-31 11:41:15
Trust1, originally uploaded by journeymama.
Going home in order to move.
Excited, happy, afraid.
Missing my forest already.
Longing for Asia.
Feeling disoriented, away from the trees.
Waiting for a true home.
Taking care of my family.
Trying to rest in a restless soul.
Knowing how much work is ahead.
Looking around the world and shrinking back.
Reaching out.
Waiting for mercy that never ceases to come.
(New every morning, new every morning.)
Dilemma 2007-09-27 21:25:37 Still Day Two of my writing retreat. I have exhausted myself today, working on this novel. Exhausted, I tell you. Writing this book is like writing about a billion posts that I have to make up because none of them actually happened. Yes, I know, I should teach a writing class, because that is the most brilliant description of writing a novel that you have ever read with your very own eyes.
Now. Do I drive to the store and buy Ben and Jerry’s or do I not?
A Somewhat ill-advised Journey down Highway 1 2007-09-27 11:20:50 When you have three small children, being an introvert is a bit of a problem. Also, living in community can be a bit of a problem, and this doesn’t mean that you don’t love living with people, it only means that it is hard to get your batteries recharged. Solitude is almost extinct for you. This is why you asked for a writing retreat for your birthday, and are now using your coupons, almost five months later.
It is the first day of your retreat, and you made sure to leave early in the morning, as early as you could, considering that you are notoriously bad at leaving early. It is the type of slow morning you prefer that does this to you. But you pulled yourself away from your youngest who was giving you the biggest smiles he could possibly muster, and your middle who was sad on the couch with her blankie, and your oldest, clinging to you like a monkey. You pulled yourself away and an hour later you were kicking yourself for not bringing the camera.
You see, Read more:Journey
, Highway
Off the wire 2007-09-25 09:53:33 I’m writing from a non-self-imposed internet fast, one that took me by surprise. There is no use whining about this, saying, “How am I supposed to keep up my blooooog if I can’t get on the internet?” so I’ve just tried to suck it up and be content offline. Which I do merrily and happily. But I miss you guys.
We have a bandwidth ceiling which we are dangerously close to. It’s something unheard of in a city, where cables pour freely through walls and overhead and underground, but here in the woods we use satellite internet, and since we all have to share the satellite, we are not allowed to use very much. And we get punished if we go over. So, although I have posts coming out of my ears, I must sign off, at least until our rolling 30 day usage drops a bit. See you soon.
Even the animals adore him 2007-09-19 16:54:34
Chinua and the Squirrel 3, originally uploaded by journeymama.
For Wordless Wednesday. Read more:adore
Let them eat omelettes. 2007-10-03 10:17:33 There are many, many things that the internets are good for. Networking, for example, although Great Scot! How much networking can a person do? It’s exhausting. You can also post photos on the internets, if you like, although I hear that people are out there rubbing their thieving hands together and giggling over the “free” photos. So, posting photos can be problematic.
And now I’d like to inform you of one more way that the world wide web can let you down.
This is about food. This is about baking. This is about Chinua’s birthday cake.
I have always loved baking. If I had an oven in my house this blog might be a bread blog or something, a place for me to show you my perfect golden loaves whenever I felt like bragging about them. I don’t have an oven, however, so my baking has been relegated to those birthday times when I am in the Big House baking and singing up a storm. (Yesterday it was the Sweater Song by Weezer. Totally an
And this! 2007-10-02 10:20:11 Happy day, I received a Perfect Post Award from Esme at Blowtorch in the Middle for my post, A Somewhat ill-advised Journey Down Highway 1.
I can’t wait to sit down and read the posts that got awarded, it always is promising for some good reading. Unfortunately my children are CRAZY and can’t watch themselves. I won’t be reading these any time soon. (sigh)
Head cheese 2007-10-02 10:09:52 One week ago I went back to the office of John the surgeon and had some lumps removed from my head. I know, what is it with me and lumps? I had some cysts on my scalp, cysts that have been my little friends for about eight years. John opinion on them was, as he threw them in the biohazard box, “These are totally not cancerous. They don’t even have the chance of being cancerous. I am throwing them in the trash because I know they are not cancerous.” I have history with John the surgeon, and I know that he likes to explain things a lot. He also likes to knock on wood.
I love my surgeon, because he’s nice and he really helped me through my cancer scare. But he likes to explain things a little too much. Enough that I came very close to passing out on him and the nurse.
I was a good girl for the local that he shot into my scalp. I was even fine for a while after that. But John, why do you have to say things like, “You may hear some cut
Confession 2007-09-28 20:06:21 So what is it, inside me, that chooses the wrong things for comfort?
It’s not that ice cream is bad. It’s not. It’s not even that I’m unhealthy, because I’m not. I eat well. I drink mostly water. My vices are usually too much pasta, brown sugar in my coffee, coffee. I don’t smoke anymore, unless I’m with an old smoking friend in Canada and just have to light up for old times sake.
But sometimes eating ice cream feels like the smoking in the alley behind my house that I used to do, late at night, when everyone was sleeping and I felt that teenaged hollow feeling, the hurting that I just couldn’t understand. I loved that house. We had just moved from the suburbs, where we were homeowners, to a rental in urban Edmonton. For my parents it might have been a sad move, but for fifteen-year-old me, it was heaven. Thanks to an understanding landlord, I painted my room a green called “Ireland’s Pride.” Y
More than the day before 2007-10-13 10:24:13 It is morning and I am writing with a little head snuggled into my shoulder. The other two kids are still in bed. Incense is thick in the air. I have begun the practice of burning incense while I pray in the mornings, in the dark, to see the rising smoke and know that God hears my little words.
Kid A sits beside me, he scratches his neck, where he still gets eczema, from time to time, especially if I am not careful enough with his diet. I remember how overwhelmed I was by feeding three kids with food allergies, back when I first started. Now it is simple to me. So much of life is like that.
Kid A is wearing his blue jammies with the feet. YaYa calls them her slippery jammies, and slips and slides all over the floor like a fish in them. I love Kid A’s eyelashes. Last night when I got home I felt exuberant, like I could float away because of the love that supports me. We played the game again, where we talk about what we like about each other, all piled on to th
Secrets and Pieces 2007-10-11 10:43:34 I always feel sad when I come here.
I am in the City, in San Francisco, the only city that I have ever known intimately. I know many secrets of this city, especially secrets about the dark underbelly, the shouting that goes on at night, the faces that are slammed into fences and gates. I also know good secrets, like where to get the best coffee and pizza, and which streets to travel on when you are in a hurry. I know no other city in this way.
But it never did let me in.
Now, I am staying overnight in the big sprawling flat where I lived before I moved to the Land. I don’t know what it is about places that gets into me this way, I only know that I grip things, and my knuckles are tired.
I remember walking up the back steps, the old wooden steps that are ridiculously steep and that smell like pee, with YaYa, barely four hours old. I was a little unsteady, but glad to be coming home from the birth center to go to bed. It was about 10:00 at night. I sat on the cou Read more:Secrets
Withdrawal 2007-10-10 10:57:01 I do have to take it back, what I said about internet recipes.
Three reasons.
1. All of your comments about finding the right places to look for recipes. (Duh, Rae)
2. The incredibly scrumptious apple turnovers (crostates?) that I found at Her Able Hands. Delicious. I tripled the recipe, which was an interesting form of self torture, (what with all that cutting of butter into the flour) but I was trying to make enough for all of us, as well as for our church potluck. I love our church potlucks, and I love that our church is so intergenerational, and that an elderly lady named Velma is possibly the brightest star I’ve seen. She pats my arm and tells me that I’m truly a beautiful girl and she loves my hair, just as she blesses everyone else she sees.
3. Well, you could say that I rush things. I do, okay? I’m sorry. But I always try to make cheesecake on the day of, and now I will change my ways. Because Renee and I found that the resemblance to
In lieu of depth or wit. 2007-10-06 11:30:28 Maybe some people can be on the computer while their children are conscious. But me? Not really.
The following is an example of what happens if I try to squeeze fifteen minutes of blog reading in between breakfast and school.
I look up and scratch my nose. What? Leafy is running around the house with a box on his head and his diaper, which I apparently haven’t pinned very well, around his knees! What is going on? When I attempt to fix it, I realize that he has very obviously pooped.
But where is the poo? The poo is MIA.
The poo is found on the kids’ bedroom floor, among the blocks, where Leafy has apparently been thinking of ways to solve the poo problem by himself, since several more diapers have been pulled off the shelf and there has been an attempt to “clean up”. (Smear it around.)
Hallelujah! I was feeling a bit down anyways, and this will totally be the shining moment that I can use as a foundation for the rest of my day!
Fifteen
Oh Leafy, 2007-10-04 19:26:36 You were sick yesterday, and snuggled ferociously in that hot-headed way that you have when you are feverish.
Before I realized you weren’t feeling well, I told you that your pacifier, or Ny-ny, as you have named it, was for bedtime, and I put it away. While I was folding clothes and not paying attention, you took matters into your own hands, dragging a chair into your bedroom, climbing onto it so you could reach the dresser, and grabbing all of the pacifiers out of the container that I keep them in. When I next looked up, you were sitting at the kids’ table with a pacifier in your mouth and two in your little hands, just in case.
You barely let me out of your sight, yesterday, sick baby that you were, you chose to hang onto my legs, or simply follow me around, and so we sat together a lot, you facing me on my lap, laying your head on my chest. If my attention was directed at anything other than you, you simply put your fingers on my face and turned my head bac
Life with a three-year-old girl 2007-10-18 23:46:15 (At the dinner table tonight, after taking about 0.34 bites of splendid navy bean soup.)
“I’m full, Mama. I’m all full of food. Look.” She turns to me and I expect her to show me her rounded adorable belly. Instead she lifts her little bird arms in a parody of showing off her muscles.
“What?” I ask.
“I’m strong,” she says, completely exasperated, because that’s what food does, it makes you instantly strong.
Then, later, when she has finally convinced me that she is completely full, she needs no more food, not another morsel, I let her get down from the table. Kid A asks me if he can have some more scrumptious Renee-made garlic bread. I say yes, and cut off YaYa’s question.
“You can’t have any more bread because you are full.” She starts to make those terrible sawing noises, the ones that sound like forests crying because they are being destroyed, the ones that make you shiver in
A few words 2007-10-17 10:22:17 1. It rains and rains and rains. This is good for the river.
2. I am in a little cabin in the woods with three children, ages almost two, three, and five. Just, use your imagination.
3. I am trying to get ready to move. Our community has been here at this Land for ten years. There are files in the office from 1993. I found a 1957 Ford truck manual yesterday. (Why on earth do we have this?) I will have to pull out the camera, so I can show you guys the extent of what I believe will eventually make me insane.
4. Let’s see. Yesterday at our community meeting we discussed: a) Dumpster vs. trash runs, which is basically money vs. pain. How much scrap do we have? We can get money for this, maybe offsetting the cost of the dumpster. b) The eleven vehicles that we still need to deal with. (Abandoned, not working…) c) What can we sell? Stoves? RV? Chainsaw? d) Which day should we go shopping?
5. Yesterday we also received a scathing letter from someone
More impromptu poetry 2007-10-16 10:07:35 My heart song glad,
incense in the morning. Thanks and praises.
We have come into a spacious place,
stepping into thin air
only to find that
falling feels more like flying.
***
I feel aware and alive this morning. You could chalk it up to dance class last night. I’m not sure if you remember my “give it a year” philosophy with my West African Dance class, but it seems to be working. It has been a year, maybe a little less. All I know is that when I started it was dark outside while we danced, turning the windows into mirrors that we could critique ourselves in, slightly. And the big barrel stove was going, turning the room into a sauna, making us slightly light-headed. And then when we drove home we shot through the dark on steep curves, under the trees that are as tall as mountains.
It’s that season again. All the vineyards are turning, the ivy is turning. The poison oak is turning. Everything is beautiful, even the unbeautiful, and my year of
No one has eyes like the Leafy Boy 2007-10-23 22:42:08
LeafBaby eyes.jpg, originally uploaded by chinua000.
My Superstar Husband grows more talented daily.
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