because I'm not writing...

...feelings and moods meld, muddying colors into indistinguishable pools of gunk that glob together and splotch up my view.

...the nagging murmurs remain within earshot but too garbled for me to understand.

...the random bits of information I do blurt out are only those bubbles that float to the surface, and the underlying denser things stay hidden below, in the dark under-waters like shadowed blobs where I can't make quite make out their shape or size.

...all the little things I'm thinking/worrying/bitching about fill the space around me with lights flashing rather than reveal themselves as stars in a constellation. I see them scattered but the big picture doesn't emerge.

...I'm stuck up here at this discursive level, this choppy surface where I bob about in the waves, and I can't sink down to the lakebed to see where the wave starts rolling.



Because I'm not writing, I'm not connecting the dots or following the spiral and I'm not making sense of anything and so what's here instead are just unarticulated feelings and senses and a whole lot of restlessness.

Writing would help. Sleep, too. And yet I surrender to resistance one more night and go to bed with it all swirling madly, none of it making particular sense.

Read more...

juicy drops of goodness

I'm one of those too-rare people who actually uses all of her vacation time. And when I'm not at work, you can find me out here.

I hope to find the time for telling stories sometime soon, but I've been too busy living them to get anything down.

:::

Hope you're enjoying your July. I'm squeezing every last juicy drop of goodness out of each and every day.

Read more...

twenty years from now maybe we'll both sit down and have a few beers and I can tell you 'bout today*

I'm headed to my family reunion this weekend. Meaning, my children and my parents and my siblings and my cousins and their children and their parents. I will see "little cousins" who are grown men and I will be a grown woman to those cousins who saw me as their "little cousin" and my dad and his siblings will look at the crew and think, when did this all happen? weren't we just here on these beaches as kids ourselves?

And I'll swim in the same lake I swam in at 5 and 10 and 16 years old, and I'll watch my boys play with their cousins and my cousins' kids, and when we hear Mom and Dad it will be me and my sisters and cousins turning our heads because our Mom and Dad are now Grandma and Grandpa and before we know it these little people of ours will be the ones that are grown up and looking around wondering how that just happened.

::

A friend posted this video on facebook and I bawled my eyes out. I love Ben Folds, and I hadn't heard this song before. It just hit on something in me that I've been thinking about a lot lately - this wish for my boys - for me and all of us really - to be able to hold on to the very best parts of being a kid. That uninhibited urge to run and jump and spin and laugh, the wonder and the straight-up joy and delight in just about everything. Being small enough to be picked up and carried when you just can't keep at it on your own, and the uncomplicatedness of love. Oh, wouldn't that be good?

My mind has been sitting there in that place for a week now, after camping with my family and my parents and my sister and her boys last weekend, sitting around the fire with my 13 year old nephew, listening and talking honestly with each other, remembering what that felt like, thirteen, and being able to zap myself right back to that wonderful-horrid spot of not being a little kid and not even being close to a grown up. Oh, my heart.

Anyway, this song is so good, and I'd pull out my favorite lines from the lyrics for you, but just listen and tell me your favorites, instead.



*title from lyrics of Still Fighting It by Ben Folds

Read more...

I wonder if anyone would notice if I just stole him....

My baby sister and her little family were here for a very brief visit on their way to see my parents before heading to our ginormous family reunion next weekend. It was my first time meeting Jude, my sweet little 2 month old nephew, whom I pretty much want to steal and make into my fourth son. Isn't he darling?

so squishy

Honestly, I'd have another son in a heartbeat, if only I could get God and my husband to agree to my terms and conditions. 

seriously. that face. 

I snuggled him and smelled his milkbreath and kissed his fuzzy little head. The boys all waited patiently for their many turns to hold him, and when I asked Owen, Babies are nice, aren't they?

he nodded,

Yeah. But you have to be careful not to crush them. 

Read more...

If I were really a blogger...

...I would be writing about

• how I am flying solo through the boystorm this weekend while John's in Door County teaching people how to kayak. I'm taking all 3 boys to Cars 2 in a couple hours, and while I'm excited and think it will be fun, I'm conflicted about how I've caved my principles between Child #1 and Child #3. Really? I am taking my two and half year old to see a movie with cartoon vehicles shooting and bombing each other? Wait, he's seen Kung Fu Panda and knows all the characters in Star Wars? Oh. Crap.

• how the boys and I will meet John up north on Sunday for four days of camping at the same state park at which I grew up camping with my own parents and sisters. How much better of a place I'm in mentally and emotionally than I was last year at this time, how grateful I am for that.

• how I am struggling with weaning my littlest (he's 31 months old, I just realized I've been telling people he's 28 months. How did that happen?). It's been a gradual process because he loves nursing so much, and I had it down to just the early-morning-back-to-sleep moments, and then I tried to cut that out and boy-oh-boy it has been sucky. It's either a 5a.m. start to the day or a 5a.m. tantrum to nurse, with fights between tired parents and toddler a given. How long will this last? Is this my fault? Is he going to keep asking to nurse for months after I'm done? [Insert additional self-doubt and insecurities about decisions and methods here.] Add to that the guilt/feelings of failure of giving in a couple times, and you've got yourself [I've got myself] a mess.

• how the transition to working full-time with John at home full-time is going. This one is loaded. Overall positive, but I won't lie. There's a whole host of things this transition has stirred up for me. Mother-wise, wife-wise, kid-wise, career-wise, does-this-mean-we're-done-having-babies-wise. This could be a 2,000 word essay. Or a freaking book. 

• how lately I feel simultaneously apologetic for my boys behavior and defensive/protective of them when confronted with [my perceptions of] other people's perceptions of them. Three boys is a very different dynamic than two. Or than three girls. Our a combo of boys and girls. It really is, and I have to say only those with three boys really truly get what I'm saying here, and I walk that tightrope between letting them be who they are, expend their energy, test their physical and behavioral limits, yet teaching them to respect themselves, others, property, and societal expectations. 

• how I've finally decided to do something about these extra 15lbs of "baby weight". I have a closet full of clothes that don't fit and I'm supremely out of shape. I don't want to jinx it, but I've started something I always thought I hated, and it turns out I love it. It starts with an R and rhymes with FUN and thankfully I've found a program that's helping me stick to it. 

• how a new tube of red lipstick can make a world of difference for girl's mood.

• how I find myself questioning my online writing/social media. I google the people I hire, I can count on the fact that people I work with and encounter professionally will stumble their way over here. I already made my facebook and twitter private, and I certainly don't share anything too personal here, but context is everything. I feel weird and a little vulnerable thinking about certain people 'overhearing' my online conversations with friends.  

• how tired I am of being tired. Why am I so sleep-deprived if we don't have a newborn?

• [    ]

• [    ]

• (Leaving those blank for the points I'm not even going to allude to out of respect for the privacy of my children/family. Nothing dramatic, just not anyone else's business.)

...but I'm not really very good at this whole blogging thing, so I'll just leave it at bullet points. Or maybe I should just leave this post as the permanent homepage for this blog. Anyway, thanks to my sweet friend for her advice to just start typing and see what comes rather than wait for the time and energy to come up with something that will be "worth reading". 

Read more...