The long break

I have so much I’ve been wanting to say. So many posts that have so far gone unwritten. Events dating all the way back to Christmas (not that long really, but it feels like it in blogger-time). And so many pictures on my camera waiting to be downloaded.

I will try to catch up here in the next few days. But today . . . today for me is a day to pause. I can’t write about those wonderful things that have brought me such joy over the last month right now because two very dear friends of mine are in the middle of a tragedy. No, nothing of Haiti-type proportions, but a very sad and world-shaking tragedy nonetheless. Our dear friends watched their son die suddenly yesterday of cardiac arrest. He was in his mid-twenties.

The predictable shock and sadness are overtaking me, and my heart aches for our friends and their loss. I can’t imagine what it must be like, and I’m not sure I want to. There have been times in my life when I have found a peace and acceptance of death, even of those to whom I am very close. I have been able to look that loss, that transformation, in the face and nod my head in acceptance of life’s ever-repeating cycles. For some reason, even though I did not know him all that well, this is not one of those times.

So today gets to be a day of pause, a day of prayer, a day that needs to pass quietly. I am looking forward to documenting all our joys and adventures and getting back in touch with my blogging friends. But today is not that day.

My alarm clock

For the past four years or so I have had a reliable, never-fails-even-when-there’s-no-electricity alarm. She It is 100% fool-proof no matter what time I decide to wake up. And there’s no programming required! How she it knows I’m not sure, since I never say or do anything, but it works amazingly well.

For instance, the last two days I’ve had to get up for work between 5 and 5:30 a.m. for a 6 a.m. meeting. Both mornings  my little blond alarm crawled into my bed and woke me up precisely one half hour before my electronic alarm clock. Now that’s service. What a lucky girl I am!

One Small Change for the New Year

The New Year is upon us – a time for reflection, change, cleaning, relaxing, and spending time with loved ones. For the turn of the year we spent the night playing cards with good friends and laughing in front of the fire. I am so thankful for the community of people we’ve found here. Though I might wish for more friends with kids the same age as the Towhead I cannot complain about all the wonderful adventures and warm moments we’ve had.

The funny part is there’s not much to report for the first couple days of 2010. Lazy days are not something we allow ourselves to have very often for some reason. I guess Mr. A and I are too task-oriented. We’ve joked that although we do a number of leisurely and/or family-oriented activities on a regular basis, “relax” is something we have to put on the to-do list or it will never happen. Playing board games and splashing in puddles was about as ambitious as we got on Friday. It felt wonderful! It’s a time to just be.

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions. Anytime is a good time to change, to improve. All it takes a decision and the dedication. January should be no different from August in that respect. But this year I found something that fits the bill. You can read the details of the One Small Change project here, but the jist is that you make one small change in your life each month between now and April to make a positive green impact. The idea is to educate people about sustainability and “to create a community of individuals who want to make a positive change.”   

One thing each month. The wonderful and encouraging part is that the idea of greening up the way we do things one small thing at a time is an approach we’ve been taking for the last four years or so. We’ve managed to do a lot in that time, from composting and cloth napkins, to eating all locally harvested meat. And the best part is that much of it feels like no big deal anymore because it’s so integrated into our lives now. However, that makes this challenge  more of a challenge. The additional challenge is what’s on the calendar this month. Three of the next four weekends are filled to bursting with plans for our good friends’ going away party (they’re moving to Saipan for a year), the Towhead’s fourth birthday party and snowshoe trip, and a self-defense class I am teaching.  Add to that all the regular stresses that come with being a working mom, and deciding on a realistic change we can make and follow through with is a challenge indeed. To tell the truth I was at somewhat of a loss (and a tad overwhelmed) thinking of something until my lovely hubbie reminded me about one of my Christmas presents: Nellie’s Dryer Balls (These are balls that go in the dryer. They take the place of fabric sheets and reduce drying time.)

It’s not a lot, I know. My goal is to reduce the time we use the dryer this month (and hopefully every month from now on), both by using the Dryer Balls, and by line drying some of our clothes in front of the fire. There are a couple of benefits I’m hoping for. One is using less energy to run the dryer. I’ve also heard that in the winter, the dryer is taking warm air from your house to dry your clothes and then venting it outside. So hopefully we’ll save even more energy because we’re not venting warm air out of the house. Also, I’m hoping line drying some of our clothes will increase the humidity in the house. All three of us have been feeling the effects of a very dry house: coughs, dry skin, bloody noses. The fire and the natural-gas heating in our house are a deadly combination. The humidifier and dishes of water in our rooms have helped a little, but not much.  

I’m excited. And I’m looking forward to seeing what others are able to accomplish as well. No one looses in a project like this, and there is so much to be gained. Big efforts never seem to succeed – the effort is not sustainable. But one small thing at a time? I can totally do that

Happy 2010 everyone! For some reason even numbered years are always more challenging for me. But that doesn’t mean they’re bad. The year Towhead was born was very challenging, but it was also one of the most joyful and liberating years I have ever known. I hope I can say the same about this one.

Happy Solstice! Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Happy Eid! Merry Kwanza! ( . . .did I forget any?)

We’ve had our Christmas groove going lately – and it’s been good!

I had planned to write this post about the neat events we’ve discovered around Spokane during this season and maybe include pics of a couple of neat craft projects I’ve made for family. When I actually started cataloging things I nearly fell over backward. Holy scheisse! How am I not a total stress ball right now?? I think the key is that I haven’t done a damn thing I didn’t want to. I was determined to simplify the season – emphasize the fun stuff and let go of the rest. I couldn’t be happier with the results. So here’s what we’ve had fun doing:

One Friday, CT and I played hookie from school and work (we were sick, cough cough) and made our way downtown for some fun. First we stopped by the Davenport to check out all the decorated Christmas trees and sip hot chocolate in the posh lobby. Afterward, we ran through the 13 F weather next door to the Bing Crosby theatre to watch a noon performance of Holiday Inn. My parents and I have had a long-standing tradition of watching Holiday Inn  and White Christmas every Christmas eve. Watching it on the big screen with my girl on my lap was really fun. And she liked it! I still can’t figure out how or why CT enjoys black and white films so much, but I can’t say I’m complaining.

The next weekend, while I was busy with CPR/First aid training, CT and her Dad headed to the Davenport for a gingerbread making workshop. Professional chefs competed against each other to make the best gingerbread houses while the Towhead worked on making the best graham cracker “gingerbread” house.  The results, both amateur and professional, were fantastic! The chefs even created a gingerbread pirate ship with hidden items that the kids had to find  – it was a dessert, a game, and a work of art all in one!  Afterward they headed to the carousel and Radio Flyer slide in Riverfront Park. The story of the day though – the one I had to listen to intently as soon as I got home – was about how CT lost her mitten. You see, outside the carousel is a metal statue of a goat. When you hit a button on the rock wall to the side a vacuum turns on inside the goat. The idea is that you can feed the goat the leaves littering the ground; free entertainment for the kids, free grounds cleanup for the city. I think it’s a wonderful concept. Except that the goat does not discriminate. Like any healthy goat he will eat anything you stick in front of his mouth. Including mittens. CT found this out the hard way. Luckily, one of the carousel staff was able to extract the mitten from the goat’s innards.

The next event of the season was CT’s preschool Christmas program last Thursday. It was a short half-hour deal where the kids got up on stage and sang. You can tell the kids have been working hard on this for awhile. CT has come home singing all sorts of songs over the last few weeks. And their practice paid off – they did awesome! You can’t help but smile with that many dressed up cuties singing “This Little Light of Mine (I’m gonna let it shine).” I had a silly-stupid grin on my face the whole time. My hat truly goes off to her teachers though. Thirty kids onstage for 10-15 minutes. No one cried and almost every kid actually sang. Now that’s an accomplishment!

The craft-making tally is what has me truly flabbergasted. I’ve had so much fun I don’t think I realized how much I’ve actually done over the last month. I, or CT and I, have managed to produce the following:

• 1 fairy
• 6 bean bags with a laminated list of games
• 2 hats
• 10 pints apple butter
• 3 quarts of applesauce
• 2 apple pies (happily waiting in the freezer to be cooked later)
• 3 pints pumpkin butter
• 1 pint cherry butter
• a bagful of dried apples
• necklaces for CT’s cousins
• books for CT’s grandparents
• a tray with CT’s art modgepodged onto it for the grandparents

The irony, which I’m kicking myself for now, if that we have so few pictures of all of this. Maybe that’s why I’m not stressed – I haven’t worried about documenting any of it. We’ had fun and didn’t worry about how it was turning out or whether we had “captured” the moment. Smiles, giggles, skipping down the street, or dancing through the house were enough. Those images burn brightly right now. I hope the memories don’t fade.

Merry Christmas everyone!

You know you’re an English major when . . .

your almost-4-yr-old uses the words “opportunity,” “required,” and “glimpse” at the dinner table all in one night and knows what each of those words mean.

Look out world! You don’t stand a chance against this one!

Two years later, we finally got a dresser

Mr. A and I have been looking for a dresser for almost two years. We’ve been to tons of furniture stores but either a) they didn’t have anything we liked, b) it was too expensive, and c) it just didn’t feel right buying a piece of mediocre furniture made in China when there is so much second-hand furniture out there that’s better built and more reasonably priced (ya know that whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing).

So we’ve spent the past couple years scouring craigslist, finding nothing. Craigslist here is funny. There are tons of listings for certain items (like beds) and none for others (like bookshleves). We found tons of junk dressers on their last leg, or ones with only one nightstand (we need two). But we finally found what we had been looking for. It was bought brand new in March 2008 and has sat in a spare bedroom since then. It’s in perfect condition! Two night stands and a dresser. Mission style. With a mirror. I told Mr. A, I feel like respectable adult for the first time in my life. We are finally getting rid of almost all of our college-quality, hand-me-down furniture. I’m not sure I’m ready for this

How to go bald by age 4

Fine hair has its blessings, and curses. I’ve learned to deal with the peculiarites of fine, thin hair that doesn’t grow very fast. The Towhead has my coloring to a tee, and although she got my fine hair, thanks to her dad she has quite a bit more of it. I’ll be the first to admit that it’s very convenient we can use the same clips and rubber bands, but it does feel a bit pathetic in its own way.

I’m not sure if it’s a kid thing or perhaps Fate’s way of punishing me for being proud that I produced a kid with a decent head of hair, but I realized the other night that we’ve had more than our share of hair mishaps this year. I think it all started when she got sap in her hair on a camping trip . . .

The answer: olive oil. Situation was not nearly as sticky as it sounds.

Then there was the incident around Labor Day when she decided to crawl under her art table and create some new bangs for herself after we’d spent the last year growing them out. Luckily, it was not the scalping that many kids give themselves. Just a few strands near her face that went from chin-length to being about even with her nose. Again, not as big a deal as it sounds.

Now we come to the last two weeks (drumroll, please). At a co-workers retirement party she managed to do this:

Yep. Burrs. Hundreds of them. Right up next to her scalp. The next hour was a fun one. My thanks to the other people there who helped us get them all out. The upside is that they did all slide out – no cutting or olive oil required.

But the most recent was by far the worst. What could be worse than sap, worse than scissors and cockleburrs? I must painfully admit that it happened at the grocery store when I wasn’t paying attention. There was a small fan on the end of an M&M Christmas candy tube. You see, the Towhead loves LOVES loves M&Ms (thanks to her Papa). And I mean passed-up-a-cool-doll-so-she-could-get-a-small-package-of-M&Ms loves them. Would-refuse-her-mama’s-out-of-the-oven-cookies loves them. So when we saw a tube of M&Ms in the store with a cool little fan on top I told her we were NOT taking it home but that she could hold it while we were in the store. She was fine, and very well behaved, for a bit. But when I turned my back to grab some rice off the shelf I find her holding a huge chunk of her hair, saying, “Mama, sorry, but . . .”

“What happened?” I asked, wide-eyed. “Did you stick the fan in your hair?”

“No. It just got stuck.”

The worst was not the cut hair though. It was the area above that that had spun itself into small, tight little knots. I laughed. The look I got from her was one one of confusion, like she couldn’t tell whether I was ok with it or I had lost my mind.

Eventually she laughed with me as I untangled her knots and made her answer the question over and over, “What did we learn today?”

“Don’t stick a fan in your hair!”

Endearing words

For some reason they are all around today — the sweet little bloopers that make me love my family so much.These are the mistakes I will never correct or comment on because they always make me smile:

When Towhead asks to be picked up, Mr. A and I will often tease her by only lifting her part way off the ground. Her response is usually, “No, I want upper.”

Mr. A’s use of the word “plausibility” instead of “possibility.”

My father-in-law’s spelling of “Christmass.”

Towhead’s requests for a “dambaid” when she has an owie.

The times when Mr. A pronounces celery the same as salary.

I am so grateful that I have such sweet and wonderful people in my life. I love hearing the laughter that greets me on so many mornings, often before I even get out of bed. The abundance of silliness, the chasing, the tickling, the games and fun that make up our family make me so warm and full I don’t think I’m going to need food on Turkey Day this year.

**As a postscript, I discovered three more eardearing word I don’t want to forget: Daddy drinks “beard” with dinner, Airplanes land at the “oar-port,” and after a storm it’s often “froggy” out.

There be treasure there, matey

The Crazy Towhead has been enamored of pirates and maps for quite some time. Any proof you need can be found in her Halloween costume two years ago, her insane love of the books How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don’t Change Diapers, and the box she keeps filled with a map (of France), a compass, and a magnifying glass.

We recently rented Disney’s Peter Pan, and this seemed to ignite her adventurous spirit and take her back to the days when we taught her how to put a hand over one eye and growl,  “Arg! I’m a pirate!” It all started thus:

I was working on the computer at the kitchen table. She was drawing pictures on her easel. Lines turn into shapes; shapes resemble letters; and soon she was calling to me. “Mama, look! A “D.” And a’ “X.”

“Yup,” I said. “X marks the spot.”

“I need to draw a map,” she said. “With an X on it. For the pirates.”

“Are we burying treasure?” I ask.

“And for Caleb. He needs it to find his skunk.”

“Oh?”

Well one thing led to another. I got excited (I love treasure hunts). We found a plastic sheet that came with a set of jungle animal toys. We discussed the journey, how treasure maps work, what obstacles the seekers might face, and what the treasure might be.

The consensus was that the seekers had to go along the mountain tops, past the bear cave, and onto the plains. Once there they had to split up by gender: girls go north where they must find and put on a pink dress with blue tights. Boys head west, where they must don a purple coat and two rings if they want to proceed. They meet up and journey on until they find the box of stickers, which will detail how to navigate the swamp of snakes and worms.

At the Shark lagoon . . . well, there’s a whole story about what happens in the shark lagoon, but I’m not sure I remember enough to give you all the details. Anyway, the treasure, which used to be in the shark lagoon has since drifted up onto the plains. And that’s where the treasure lies!

On the back of the map CT titled the map, and we wrote our names in code. The map has mostly been shoved in this or that purse since then, just waiting for the moment when the adventurous spirit strikes us again and we wander into the mountains to find that treasure.

First snow

What is it about the first snow, even just an inch or so, that makes us all run outside like fools to throw snowballs and whirl around with trying to catch snowflakes on our tongues? All worries seem to take the sidelines. There is nothing more important than rolling balls of snow around the yard to make the year’s first snowman. Even the fire, which has been burning regularly in the fireplace lately, takes on a new – a more essential – glow. Hot chocolate and warm blankets are ready when it finally gets so dark you can’t see, and the workers come inside. And afterward we turn off all the lights to see our new snowman by the light of the moon.