Resting, working, thinking...a lot...

Hi,

I have missed you.  I have missed me.  I have been thinking a lot.  Big picture ideas, little picture notions.  What is going on, what will be, what I have control over, what I don't.  Then....what to make of that.

My friend Beth made it out of surgery well, but not as expected.  They opened her up to take out the large tumor and found several small tumors in the connective tissue.  It did not go according to the original plan, a new one has to be made...  What will be now?  This is the scary part to me, the unknown, the uncontrollable.  I felt really numb and sad for a while.  I still feel sad.   BUT, she is still here with us.  This is cause for joy, despite the unknown.  

We all are here just for as long as we are.  There are no contracts on that.  We have the time that we have and during that time we need to LIVE.  We need to appreciate each other and the work of our bodies, to do what we can to leave the earth better because of our lives LIVED here.

In a round about way all of this thinking and dealing has really made my word this year fit.  My word is Welcome.  For me it is about me being inviting in my heart to all the things I am going to learn this year, all the things that I am going to experience this year, all of the change that inevitably will happen.  I did not know when I picked my word that it was going to effect me so profoundly, but it is really helping me to see the journey that I am on.  I don't know if I really have ever thought that a life as a journey, as silly as that may seem.  For some reason I have always thought that it was more a series of discrete chapters.  I have always thought of things ending and beginning.  It does not seem so black and white to me now.  I am seeing that there is a flow to things, one event running in to another, and flowing back to a happening in the past that suddenly makes sense. Going on and on...  the lives of your children carrying you further and then back to your own parents.

Yes, it has been a week of much thinking.

The thing that strikes me as totally absurd and also totally obvious, is that while I have been having these Jack Handey-esque "Deep Thoughts", my boys have been marching on in their own growth.  In the past week my youngest has decided to be potty trained and my oldest is venturing ever forward in his pursuit of language and reading.  I think that all moms must go through this from time to time....as you, yourself seem to be growing and expanding, the little ones around you are showing you how it is done with far more grace and acceptance than you can muster yourself.  Wow.... and wow.

I have a bunch of exciting quilting, sewing ideas (you are going to sew your own clothes you say?), and I want to share about a sabbatical I am going to be taking this summer... but I think that has to brew for a few more days.

Thank you all so much for your kind words and heart felt prayers, I feel blessed by them and Beth will too.

JMB

Like a weed growing in a crack...

I have been asking around....
Word on the street is... those of us with the SAD issues are in the dumps and trying to come to grips with the fact that this has been one long dark season. Well folks, I am doing pretty good today (2 days and counting) and I have some words from this side... WE ARE ALMOST THERE! Last night, the boys and I were outside enjoying the final wisps of a beautiful February day at 6ish....

"6ish??" you say,

I say "YES."

That is it folks...I have to say that YES we are going to have more of the rainy-grey in the coming weeks BUT that ol' sunshine is coming back and our days and evenings are going to be rosier, lighter, warmer and altogether happier!!! Hooray! I don't care that the silly groundhog prognosticated more winter, for me Spring is on the way.

Some things that are also helping welcome in Spring at our house that I HIGHLY recommend are:

1)Fresh Flowers right where you can see them A LOT!
Right now I have mine on the counter between the Kitchen and our sunroom/play area... I see them in morning and afternoon light and I think that I like them both ways, thank you very much. For those of you that work outside your abode...put some on your desk or your workstation...I used to put even just one bloom in a specimen cup on the high counter next to my lab bench. I especially like tulips because they continue to "grow" and change in their vase as time goes by (the stems grow, and the petals expand and expand until they gently fall.) I find that seeing a natural/organic growing and changing can be very hopeful and wonderful when I am feeling a bit on the gloomy side.

2)Watching a bulb grow...
I forgot to plant my paperwhite bulbs (I know they stink, but they are so cute.)for christmas and found them in a random paper bag 2 weeks ago. I threw them in a pot to see if they would still bloom and it has been nice to watch their greens get a bit bigger every day. They are in my kitchen window so I can check on them too.

3)I was thinking yesterday, about a bit of grass (not weed, people!) and how fast it grows and how it could be great fun to watch a little pot (of grass, people!) grow in the window also....I think that it could last long enough to feel like a hearty project for those of you not inclined to garden (maybe you will catch the fever) and kids could get excited about how fast it grows and maybe they could trim it with their scissors.....or if you get really crazy you could make a little grass baby out of old nylons and watch its "hair" grow. (it is a fun project!!)

4)Make a schedule, and make time for yourself to do something that YOU want to do everyday.
I was feeling like I wasn't getting enough "ME" time and that I was doing A LOT of caring for others...I know that most mommies don't want to admit that this happens because we are suposed to be a fountain of love, information, and patience...but the fountain runs low sometimes...SO, I am getting up earlier in the morning to workout and craft while the kids are sleeping and trying to go to bed earlier...so far, so good.

I read a quote on Ali Edwards blog yesterday and it really resonated with me:

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also
teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever
fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michaelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must
work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
--Pablo Casals

This is a really important message for me to teach my boys, that I am teaching them. But, more important, right now, it seems like a message that I need to teach myself. To help me remember, I am claiming for my word this year, Marvel...both the noun and the verb. I had chosen a different word, but hadn't yet committed to it here on the blog...this one feels better to me.

Marvel:
(verb) to become filled with surprise, wonder, or amazed curiosity.
(noun) one that causes wonder or astonishment.

Curiosity and wonder are a good thing, a thing we need every day. Here's to a brighter day for us all!
JMB
PS
I apologize for any typos... the silly spellcheck on Blogger refuses to work, for a third post!

Lego love.

"Look Mom, how my face is shining at the camera?"

This was the pick from my son. He liked this one the best.

I was looking for some pictures for a new project I am making, a 365 day photo diary. (I just realized that it is a leap year, so THAT will have to be amended to 366, but so it goes.) I will admit that the first two pictures were done by my husband, but I think that is OK...cleave to one another and all that. If you would like to take a look here I am going to continue to add a few days at a time. I think that this should be interesting (for me at least) I am interested in getting a new perspective in my pictures and distilling a day in to one photo is a intriguing idea to me. We can see where that goes.

As for the New Year, I am trying it out like a pair of new shoes...I really like the look of them but they still seem like they are a bit tight across the top...I am hoping that they will soon ease a bit and I will be walking confidently into the coming months. Maybe just not yet...

I am have also been auditioning new words for the year...My word last year was COMPLETE. I had started with CREATE but it just didn't fit. COMPLETE did and I really put to rest some issues that I had been having about following through with my projects and feeling like a complete person in my own self without extras and the wit and doing things for people....blah blah blah Well, I think that it was sometime, maybe this past summer that I realized that I am enough just me, and that is just great.

So, this year, yeah...I have been trying out words, but thus far, I have not found one that fits....maybe it will come around when these new shoes start feeling right?
JMB

The tree and my garden...

While we were at the coast for our little "vacation", I thought that I better just dive right in with a project that I wasn't sure I had the skills to complete.

I felt like such a pioneer as I whittled a pencil to a point and drew on an unfolded paper bag. It was also quite liberating because I didn't feel like a mistake would cause me to "waste" precious supplies. (when did I become so anal-retentive?)
I then patched the pattern together with electrical tape...just like Laura would have on "Little House.."

Slowly, but faster than I expected the branches came together and started to look tree-ish. The hardest part for me was not the inside curves, but trying to figure out which parts of the material went under and which parts were tucked in.

Sometimes I had to fudge a bit, but that is OK!

I finally sewed the last little branch on and took an iron to the whole thing and all of the pesky (yet SO WONDERFUL) white lines just disappeared.

I think that my tree looks quite nice at this point and I am thinking about what kinds of leaves to put on it. I am also wanting some birds and some flowers. This could even be a center medallion for my own medallion quilt. (What do you think Diane?) In short, I am excited to have gotten this far and look forward to seeing where I can go with this.

Maybe this should be two different posts, but I have been taking stock of my summer and both my tree and my garden have been large foci for me these past few months. (not to discount the boys and all the energy I have given them, but these other things have been more of a personal challenge for me)

I was talking with my friend Laura at the beginning of the summer about my One Word challenge. She asked how that was going and I kind of sloughed it off, because didn't she see that I FINISHED a quilt in March?? Really.

Then we talked more and I remembered what a hard time I have doing the gardening in August. The past few years that I have planted tomatoes they end up rotting out there, because by August I AM TOO HOT. So, of course the nice friend that she is, Laura says "Well isn't that also a issue of completion too?"

THANKS! You are so right....

Every year I am so gang-busters in the spring and I poop out as the summer progresses. Thus, really inhibiting my ability to reap the rewards of all that hard spring and early summer work....the HARVEST. Please enjoy the latest pictures of what I am harvesting, it is quite amazing what a little box of bio-fish fertilizer can do. A note...I am just about 6 feet tall and I don't think that these canna lilies have ever been over 5 feet before, and that sunflower stalk is probably 12 feet high. Enjoy!

This year I really just planted what I wanted to, kind of all mixed up together. Below are some cosmos, cleome, nicotiana and some lettuce that bolted. I think that it looked great, even though the lettuce is too bitter to eat.

Also, I recommend putting a winter bird feeder in your garden filled with the black sunflower seeds. All winter we got a lot of visitors and we also get a bunch of volunteer sunflowers.

Below is a section of the garden that my husband thought was a "write-off" for the year. I think that he was dubious that any thing useful would grow because of all the annoying bind weed. I cleared the area 2 times and thought that I would just plant some seeds after the last time and hope that the veggies could out grow the blasted weeds. Well, as you can see I have crazy amounts of tomatoes (volunteers from last years rotten fruit) and squash. Hidden in there also are some bush beans and watermelon plants, that despite the "hairy" look to the area, are doing really well.

I also like how the echinacea flowers just kind of grow in the middle and add some interest to all that green.

Here is a picture of our hanging tomato garden. Next year I think that we will decorate the buckets (good idea Em!) but I love to watch them grow and they are also very fun to pick.

Below are some of our everbearing raspberries. The key is just to keep checking them every few days and them you are sure to be gifted a lovely handful of berries. The rains this past week made me a nice bowl for dessert last night!

These last few pictures are just me enjoying what I have grown and wanting to document for myself some of the things that I enjoyed in my garden this season....

Dahlia as big as my sweaty head!

Wonderful sunflower.

A nice border of Alaskan variety nasturtiums











Plant Dahlias...so much color, so little work!

My eldest son planted a beautiful sunflower and the most bountiful tomato plant this year. He won't eat them yet, but it does make him excited to go in to the garden!

Here is a wonky kitchen-window perspective on how tall those flowers actually got...got to love the ol' self-portrait!

How did you all spend your summer? Take a look, there might be more there than you first thought!

JMB

Complete-ness

About my word..... COMPLETE

I have forgotten it a few times this week. I think it was due to the fact that it is written HUGE right by my computer, but no where else in the house. So, this week, since Oldest Child thinks that going "nap-less" is very "in" this year, I have not been looking at my word, nor meditating on my word.

BUT, after I was prompted, I found this quote that I liked:

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.

Dr. Wayne Dyer

(side note: I am going to look up this Dyer dude to make sure he is not some sort of psycho.)

This is something that I really need to learn in my heart...not just in my head, because I think that it is already there. That I am a complete and whole person, not an apprentice. I think it is all to easy to think that about yourself, you know "I can do something different, what I really want....next year."

This is a lie, I don't know when I even first started believing it. I may have told it to myself to just try to get through uncomfortable times, dangerous, numbing. Eventually, it just becomes a way of "living". "Living" meaning that you are getting by, you look really good, you can say the right things, but you are really small inside, you are scared, you are living a small life. Not risking joy, because you are afraid of failure....and you don't even really look at what failure is, but it is what you are living when you are living the life of an apprentice person.

And now I have found that I am not "on the way to someplace else" I am here, where I want to be. I need to get living.

So, I am off to risk some joy....
See you soon!

JMB

New Year.....

What to write about this year, 2007??

I don't know yet.

We are embarking upon some home repairs and updating. I think that we finally decided that we are NOT going to move for the next couple of years and so maybe we should have a home that is more functional and comfortable for our growing family.

I have lived here for 7 years, very monumental for me....I was always the "new girl" in school, I think that the longest I had ever lived in one place was 3.5 years. (Can you still think of yourself that way when you are approaching your mid-mid-thirties? I haven't even been in school for almost 10 years....time to update the ol' self image I guess.) So, yes, 7 YEARS!!!! A long time and I am still staring at the holes in the crown moulding that my lover (oooo la la, I just totally heated up this rather pedestrian blog) and I installed the first year we moved in here.

Well, I am tired of my unfinished projects. I deserve to finish them. I deserve to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. It is a rare thing around here...what might it actually feel like??
A sigh of relief?
The sweet, sweet release of the ever-growing lists of things that I have started and need to get done?

Yes, I will take one of those this year.

I would like to thank a good friend of mine for showing me the error of my ways. She will be known by her hipster name ALITHA. This summer we were working on a quilt together for a friend's wedding. The wedding was in a week and we still had a long way to go.

I was really in the mode of "finish it late, 'Biscuits and Gravy' will be so busy on her wedding day, she will never notice."

But that ALITHA, she said to me "Why wouldn't we just want to get it done, B&G will really love seeing it, it will be so special."

So, I was a bit annoyed,
How was it going to get done? Blah, blah, blah, my usual chorus for putting off for tomorrow what can be done today. And of course the only bad thing that I could think about ALITHA was....

Eeeeww, you finisher, you.

That is when I thought about all of the projects she gets done, finished, COMPLETED! We both started a log cabin quilt at the same time, like....9 YEARS AGO. Hers has been on her bed for years now, I think that she actually wants to update it......where is mine?? Oh yeah, cut up in strips, in a box, hidden from view.

Long story short, we finished the quilt and the look on B&G's face as she opened the quilt was so sweet. She loved it. It was finished. There were no loose ends, the project was off my list. A discrete check mark, one less thing to worry over or feel small about.

Thanks ALITHA!! You, finisher you.

So 2007, what about that?

Originally, I picked "CREATE" as THE word for my new year. After writing this, I realize that I am good at the "creating thing", I struggle with what comes next. And so in recognition of things that I would like to have as my own in this new year, I am re-choosing (I can do that, I am the boss of me) COMPLETE.

Because I am, and I can!

(thanks em, I needed to write.)
JMB